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WTF is going on with TikTok? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The sequence of events as far as I can recall:

Trump promised to ban TikTok
TikTok was slated to be "banned" in the twilight of Biden's term
Trump says he'd give it 90 days to make a decision
Biden decides not to ban it, handing it off to Trump
TikTok goes dark
It returns, but if you search for something anti-Trump in the United States, you can't find it
Using a VPN will give you that content
Various news outlets are now calling it Trump's "Propaganda Arm"

What the fuck is going on? From a political or technological standpoint.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 hours ago

He had to defend TikTok to win over youth votes for the election.

Now that he's pres again, he knows that in one year it will become very apparent that he can't lower grocery/gas prices, and isn't willing to take action on home prices, the deficit, AI, or wage inequality.

So instead he has a list of things that will prop up his approval rating, because that is the only metric that actually matters to him. Right now that seems to mean keeping TikTok, and annexing new territory (even if that just means renaming the Gulf of Mexico).