It keeps going until we stop it folks. The adults are no longer in the room.
TikTok US to be rebranded as LikKok
Damn you … I shot coffee out my nose with that. 😂
I can’t wait to see zoomers burn down the Whitehouse
What? I’m not sure how it is in the US but in many countries zoomers (men) are very right wing. These are the guys that watch rogan and Andrew Tate.
Gen z and younger are consumers of tiktok. It’s important for conservative parties to shore up their future bases. We already saw effective other platforms were
“Converted into a Propaganda mill” my ass… What is it now if not a Propaganda mill
It’s currently a propaganda refinery.
Ya when I learned the Chinese have a different algorithm for NA I automatically didn’t trust it.
They had to get a different algo and server infra under Trump I and Biden because they were threatening it back then on grounds that they would spy on american’s data. They proceeded to start deranking anything political during the 2020 protests and hiring former spooks to moderate content, but that was never going to be enough.
TikTok To Be Sold To Trump’s Right Wing Billionaire Buddies And Converted Into A Propaganda Mill [1.1]
The title feels misinformative to me given, the following from the article:
[…] Trump insiders claim to be zeroing in on a deal that would sell 80% of TikTok’s U.S. assets to […] [1.2]
To me, the title infers that TikTok is being sold with certainty, whereas the content of the article sates that a deal has yet to even be reached.
References
- Type: Article. Title: “TikTok To Be Sold To Trump’s Right Wing Billionaire Buddies And Converted Into A Propaganda Mill”. Published: 2025-09-17T10:50. Accessed: 2025-09-21T01:29Z. URI: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/17/tiktok-to-be-sold-to-trumps-right-wing-billionaire-buddies-and-converted-into-a-propaganda-mill/.
- Type: Text. Location: Title.
TikTok To Be Sold To Trump’s Right Wing Billionaire Buddies And Converted Into A Propaganda Mill
- Type: Text. Location: ¶2.
- Type: Text. Location: Title.
- Type: Article. Title: “TikTok To Be Sold To Trump’s Right Wing Billionaire Buddies And Converted Into A Propaganda Mill”. Published: 2025-09-17T10:50. Accessed: 2025-09-21T01:29Z. URI: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/17/tiktok-to-be-sold-to-trumps-right-wing-billionaire-buddies-and-converted-into-a-propaganda-mill/.
US media fell for it again award. This is how Trump always negotiates he announces a “deal” that’s actually just his initial offer and then calls up whoever it is and begs them to play along and not embarrass him because he already announced it, which works on NYC construction contractors but Xi doesn’t give a shit.
Like the backpedaling of Trump’s T1 phone to initially be claimed as “Made in America” until being publicly called out, not only by inquisitive people but also by a company furthest along in producing a fully “Made in USA” phone. The T1 phone marketing has been relegated to featuring a “proudly American” design.
Kind of sad that you have to root for a fascist dictator prick to keep the fascist wannabe dictator prick in check.
Nice, another of those shit platforms nobody needs is dead.
Is it not already a propaganda mill by convention? I assumed that was part of the deal to continue operating.
Yeah but… not the right propaganda!
right propaganda
Well…
I’m pretty active on there and my entire feed is academic and thoughtful left-leaning commentary. Granted I had to work at curating it. Day one was all thirst traps. But now I really enjoy it. I will actually be sad when it becomes unusable.
It wasn’t always purely right wing propaganda, they want it full right wint propaganda,
Before it was a vague sinophobic conspiracy theory pushed by big tech and other fascists… Now it’s a reality.
The only time I ever hear the term “sinophobic”, it’s someone using it to hand-wave away criticisms of the Chinese government.
Sort of like “anti-semitic” and criticisms of Israel.
Didn’t you invalidate your own comment though?
No?
You should read the comment you replied to then. Or is it your own you’re confused about?
The person I replied to was saying that the idea that Tiktok was a Chinese propaganda machine was a “vague ‘Sinophobic’ conspiracy theory”, and I’m pointing out how they used ‘sinophobic’ to dismiss a legitimate concern about a state government. Much like people use “anti-semitic”. Or “Russophobic”.
What are you confused about? How did I invalidate my own comment? Please elaborate.
You dismissed sinophobia by admitting you dismiss the existence of sinophobia. Both in your first comment, and your most recent one.
If you recognized the sinophobia pointed out to you, your comment would invalidate itself. It seems, however, that you are unable and/or unwilling to do so, which takes away credibility from the rest of your claims.
Young people decide what’s popular, if you fuck it up they will bail for another platform. Hopefully someone spins up a competitor quickly to grab the people in between the forced “new app”
Dude Facebook hasn’t been cool in a decade and it’s still very much a thing
I’d be genuinely curious what the real age demographic of regular Facebook users is in America, but I highly doubt Meta would ever release those figures.
Doubt they can even sort out who is and isn’t a not, themselves
It’s alive due to Messenger and Marketplace.
God, I miss Craigslist.
I just had this funny thought— so boomers adopted and settled into Facebook after millennials made it popular. And then everyone except for boomers stopped actively using it. It’s kind of their “retirement social media platform.”
Now you have TikTok, which the millennials flocked to after GenZ popularized it. Does this mean after Gen Z flees the platform that it’s just going to be the Facebook equivalent for millennials?I’d say the biggest difference is that Millennials tend to be more aware that Boomers of who else is actually using the platform and why, and to have/acquire knowledge about other platforms and transition to something new.
I dunno… I’m a millennial and no one I know uses TikTok, they all use Instagram.Anecdotal, sure, but still.
Unlikely. Millennials are internet-native, more savvy than Gen Z if anything. They grew up with more platform changes. I think the next big divide like that is more likely when the next big medium shift happens (maybe AR?) and both millennials and Gen Z don’t jump on the train.
“you sweet, summer child”
You’re underestimating the propaganda machine . All those right-wing influencers didn’t get to the top of every chart because young people decided them to be popular.
Susan Wojiciki genuinely spearheaded the rise of the far right on social media by giving endless support and exposure to the likes of the Paul brothers, Mr.Beast, and right wing commentators who regularly broke ToS but rarely if ever got banned or demonitized for it.
She truly was the Ronald Reagan of social media personalities. May she burn in Hell.
So it’ll be the same but maybe a little more america based?
It is being sold to Larry Ellison, one of the biggest donors to Israel. So you bet TikTok is going to be filled with IDF thirst trap propaganda soon.
It was already a propaganda mill. Now it will be for the Nazis instead of China.
Its already turning into Ziotok
Is that z as in Zionism or gen-z or ruzzia? Or a little bit of all
Yes.
I don’t think sharing such biased media is useful
It’s pretty useful to own all the media though. Which the right wing do in fact own.
knowing trump is pissed off at many media, i’m not so sure about this
Anyways, any obviously biased media is close to useless to me
There are always biases though? I’m having trouble understanding why you find obviously biased media less useful. The more obvious the bias, the easier to boil it down to facts, no?
I prefer making my own opinion of things. Consuming biased media will make me think a specific view is the truth, but there can be more to it
Biased media makes you think an opinion is the truth, and that’s dangerous for your critical thinking abilities
I disagree. Critical thinking abilities are the antidote to thinking an opinion is the truth.
Illiterate medieval serf with no critical thinking abilities: “it is written, therefore it must be true”
Vs.
Modern, educated person subjected to gigabytes of information at their fingertips: “I’ll need to see a primary source for the info in this video because it looks like this YouTuber might have an axe to grind”
