alt Hacker NewsTiktok was about only one thing and that was Israel losing the narrative war as unlike most of western social media which was deranking and censoring showing of Israeli atrocities to the world Tiktok was not.
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TikTok was about capital realizing that feed algorithms are cheaper and more subtle to buy than advertising or a newspaper.
Same reason Elon bought Twitter.
Money is money, but convincing people is power.
Anyone who says it’s about one thing is probably under-informed, we also saw how tiktok was pressured into showing people different realities in Russia and Ukraine.
No, there were efforts to ban TikTok well before Oct 7th 2023 in 2020-2021 by the first Trump Admin, and there was ongoing effort in 2022-2023 during Biden Admin.
TikTok Agrees to Sell U.s. Operations, https://www.tiktok.com/en/trending/detail/tiktok-agrees-to-s... , 25 Dec 2022
Biden approves banning TikTok from federal government phones, https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144519602/congress-is-about-... , 20 Dec 2022
U.S. is 'looking at' banning TikTok and Chinese social media apps, Pompeo says, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/us-looking-at-banning-tiktok... , 7 July 2020
That was the straw that broke the camels back but it was always a big concern.