Was the whole TikTok drama a bait-and-switch to make Trump look good?

https://lemmy.world/post/24529642

Was the whole TikTok drama a bait-and-switch to make Trump look good? - Lemmy.World

Lemmy

Why, he had no need of it whatsoever, unfathomably he has won control of everything and owes no one anything. Also the world is just not this well managed, it’s all just chaos and carnage and design in hindsight.
Ah, but he does need something… continual attention and praise. Narcissists gonna narcissist.
Then why mention his name at all. It’s just like the covid checks, Trump demands/wants the attention.
I don’t think there was any grand Machiavellian scheme. Trump just capitalized on historic democrat incompetence to make himself look good.
Which part of Trump proposing, implementing and then yesterday delaying the ban was down to Democrat incompetence?
Please explain how Trump managed to implement this ban with a democrat controlled senate and Joe Biden as president.

Thanks, I’ll field this extremely easy question - By executive order before it was a bipartisan bill supported by every level of government:

In 2020, President Donald Trump proposed a ban of the app as he viewed it as a national security threat. In August, he signed an executive order instructing that ByteDance divest from the app, though the order was blocked by a court injunction in September and was reversed by the Biden administration in 2021.

To me, making sure that everyone agrees with a new policy before it becomes law, and sending it through the proper channels to be debated and then enacted, doesn’t really seem like a dumb thing.

The dumb thing would be to propose a new law, enact it unilaterally, have it revoked because it was enacted unilaterally, then have everyone agree on it anyway when you pass it through the proper channels, then toss it in the trash yourself at literally the first opportunity.

Restrictions on TikTok in the United States - Wikipedia

So why did Democrats fall for it?
To try to make him look bad, is my theory.
So they’re fucking stupid?

The law stipulates that the POTUS is the person who determines that a platform or app is in violation. Once that happens, an investigation is launched through the AG’s office and applicable agencies. After that the AG’s office makes a determination about whether or not the app/platform is in violation of the law. Once that happens, the platform or app can appeal. But if they lose that appeal then they have a limited time to divest to another entity before their platform is banned and the POTUS can pause not revoke this process for a period of time (to give the app time to divest as is required). So basically Trump now has given Tik Tok a stay of execution so to speak but that doesn’t mean they won’t be forced to shut down or divest.

This was a direct politically planned and intended effect of this push so close to the inauguration, so far as I can tell. It’s politicians doing political stuff.

Right now he looks like the savior (and that’s intentional, both Tik Tok and Trump get something out of that). But in the long term I don’t know that most Tik Tok users are going to remember that Trump bought the app back and to actually remove the law requires an act of Congress. That will take more time than the limited amount that Trump can essentially delay the removal of the app from app stores and American servers.

I honestly think this was a fuck you to Trump from Biden because essentially Biden’s political career is over. Trump is going to do a lot of damage over the next 4 years and do as much as he can to undo any of the progress that has been made. It’s kind of a petty move on Biden’s part, but Trump started this colossal movement against Tik Tok in the first place.

Long term Trump probably won’t benefit from this, but it does give him a strong boost right at the start of his term while he’s also passing a bunch of controversial executive orders.
@queermunist @atrielienz there is also a contingent calling it all out and either leaving or moving to a non-US account if they can. The problem is the algorithm/platform is a pretty strong siloing mechanism. https://www.tiktok.com/@oliviacarneyx/video/7461706669509201198
TikTok - Make Your Day

Give’em the disease then sell’em the cure.

I feel like this is an incredibly obvious yes. They were down for 12 hours. They put Trump’s name as their savior in the error message… Then the CEO shows up to his inauguration. Trump freely admits that it is because he believes TikTok helped him win the election:

“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points,” Trump said in December. “And there are those that say TikTok had something to do with that.”

So. Yeah. Of fucking course it was. Fuck national security and all that nonsense, ME ME ME!

I was thinking the same, I’m 99% certain Trump required his name to be included in the welcome back message as a condition for not implementing the ban.

It’s very poorly written theatre

The audience who enjoys this theater isn’t exactly sophisticated. Pro wrestling has more complex plot and believable characters.
And didn’t they explicitly state that they went down because “the US government is not working on a solution”, 12h before this government changed?
TikTok says it will 'go dark' in ban if US government does not intervene

The Supreme Court earlier upheld a law that would ban the video app in the US unless its Chinese parent-company sells it.

Also they’re now censoring anything anti Trump.
Do you have a source for that? I’ve heard about this, too, but the evidence was dubious at best
Is TikTok blocking anti-Trump content? What we know

A number of social media posts claim that the Chinese-owned app is blocking content which is critical of the new President.

Newsweek
“These reports have not been confirmed at this time,” the article notes.

www.tiktok.com/…/7462086721652428078

Looks like they may be coming from inside the house.

TikTok - Make Your Day

I can’t see this. Would you care to explain?

Some Tik Tok creators are complaining on the platform that they are being censored, specifically in regards to talking poorly about the Trump administration.

As much as some people harp on Tik Tok being a bastion of non-censorship, it has been proven repeatedly that this is not actually true. They just pick and choose carefully what to censor and when. Most platforms do that. It’s not surprising. It also wouldn’t be surprising for them to not promote or prioritize content with their algorithm that could be seen by the current POTUS as inflammatory because they are attempting to gain favor with him at the moment in exchange for potential political favors in regards to the platform in the future.

theguardian.com/…/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-vid…

Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing

Leak spells out how social media app advances China’s foreign policy aims

The Guardian
Thank you. I understand the situation, I was asking specifically about what “inside the house means” and what’s coming out of it?
Oh. I see. Sorry. I didn’t understand. Inside the house means the claims are originating directly from users of Tik Tok on the Tik Tok platform. There was an old horror movie about a babysitter getting prank calls about the children in the house being in danger. It turned out the calls were coming from inside the house.
It did not make him look good to anyone with a half of a brain.
Fortunately no one with half a brain voted for him anyway
Truly all the more scary
It will go on like that for several years now. One shit show, and then the next one, and then the next three ones…
I will argue that so was the Israel cease-fire “strong-man” act. In fact my conspiracy theory is that Israel explicitly delayed the cease-fire so that Trump could look strong by finishing it, then whined a bit in the newspapers to sell it. This is not even the first time they GOP has done this, as per the Iran hostages affair.
Yeah and it’s not far-fetched considering how openly Netanyahu endorsed Trump. With Trump in office Netanyahu can do whatever he wants, waging a costly in terms of PR war will be no longer necessary.
Sounds like the Iran hostage crisis remake.
Which was itself a sequel to Nixon trying to stall peace negotiations during the Vietnam War.

Judy Woodruff was forced to publicly apologize because Trump and Bibi said they didn’t talk about delaying it, but I still think she was right:

newsweek.com/donald-trump-accused-crime-benjamin-…

I mean, I’d trust unnamed sources over these two guys any day.

Donald Trump accused of committing "massive crime" with reported phone call

Trump has been accused of calling the Israeli Prime Minister to discuss a possible ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Newsweek

because Trump and Bibi said they didn’t talk about delaying it

Oh well, if the two known liars said so…

I believe it was because under Trump Israel would get better terms as Miriam Adelson paid for that.

Headline from fox news: “Oliver North: Israel will have to put people on the ground and it will be bloody”

Reality is truly stranger than fiction. If any writer continued to use a character like him for so long in such obvious ways without suffering any consequences, readers’ suspension of disbelief would be shattered.

He was there for Iran-Contra. He is still here for Israel-Hamas. The exact same playbook. Place political gain over national interest. Put lives needlessly in danger and extend suffering for an easy win.

Obviously. They see the game. They played the game.
The only thing that can make Trump look good is his obituary
TikTok had to make Trump look good as he presumably saves it so they did that stunt. In the end both sides know TT has to agree to selling majority stake because it isn’t anything China didn’t do to US firms multiple times already.
He’s already truly beloved by most. This really isn’t needed to rally further support. This seems like nonsense. To any thoughtful few there are no options for redemption for this dumb shit.
Put down whatever it is that’s causing ypu to believe Trump is beloved by most. He has the second lowest approval rating in history.
Give him a chance. He has a big base of hateful bigots and his approval rating is climbing. He’s currently at 50%. Are locked in a big liberal city or something? Where I am at people absolutely rave about him. I’ve never seen banners for presidents hanging on homes, so many bumper stickers. Even in NYC, every gift shop is full of trump memorabilia. He’s wildly popular and while polarizing factors will make approval ratings and averages not get much higher than 50%, the hateful scum that love him really love him.
there are no approval ratings for a day one POTUS.
There are constant polls on ‘popularity’. Fox News has recent data and Marquette and Reuters do too. Sure these are imperfect but it’s a pretty sane thing to say he is beloved / popular. Denying that is what had people so shocked when he one the popular vote. People are so siloed now that they fail to see how so much of the population really likes the guy. This willful ignorance is dangerous.
Popularity and approval rating are not the same. Approval trating is asking peoplehow he is doing as POTUS. Popularity determines if you know who they are.
Yes

No, popularity is if you recognize the name

Likeability is if you like them.

Approval rating is how you feel about the job they are doung.

These things all have real meanings in polling. There are no approval polls for the first day available immediately. His first approval poll will come out on Monday.

Your perception based on what you see around ypu might not reflect how the nation feels as a whole.

You are mislead. Have you ever been a political activist and done door to door polling? I have. What is your alleged source in this? You are spreading misinformation on what popularity polling is.

Yes, I have assembled polls too as a poll worker. I studied polling as part of my college degree.

You have no clue what you are talking about and frankly I don’t think going door to door and asking the questions means you understand polling as you weren’t collating and assembling the data. Had you done that part you would realize that you cannot do an approval poll in 24 hours.

The original idea came from him. To me it just makes trump a hypocrite
How so? It was politically convenient to go after TikTok when he did it, and it’s politically convenient to reverse course now. That’s a pretty consistent gameplan from Trump, attack something when it’s popular, reverse when reversing is popular.
When he came with the ban idea he used the same argument of national security that is the hypocritical part. Like you say the real reason is just political convenient
He also claimed national security when he messed with tariffs. At this point, it’s just an excuse to do something to grab headlines.

Hypocrisy: The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.

Holding a position when politically convenient and reversing your stance on that position due to political convenience is hypocrisy. It may be typical and expected, but it’s still hypocrisy.