It keeps going until we stop it folks. The adults are no longer in the room.
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.
Nice, another of those shit platforms nobody needs is dead.
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/.
“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.
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
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.
Well, we root for the more rational and predictable dictator.
Asked about final control of the app’s algorithm — a central question in the legality of any deal — he said that was “being worked out” and that American investors are “going to have control over it.
I wonder if they’ll actually sell the code source… that would be surprising. The best they’ll get may be just a compiled version they can’t do anything with.
Thanks for posting that. I was looking for confirmation or debunk and this adds some clarity.
TikTok US to be rebranded as LikKok
Damn you … I shot coffee out my nose with that. 😂
Burn baby burn!
Comes in flavours, likkok orange, and likkok red.
Its already turning into Ziotok
Is that z as in Zionism or gen-z or ruzzia? Or a little bit of all
Yes.
Both. Both is bad.
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.
Soon? Its been for a while now.
Is it not already a propaganda mill by convention? I assumed that was part of the deal to continue operating.
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,
Yeah but… not the right propaganda!
right propaganda
Well…
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.
Yeah I thought this deal happened months ago. I guess now they’re being public about it.
Don’t worry.
The Dems are just about to write a sternly-worded letter.
Schmuck Schumer is hard at work, editing his last one, so we don’t think it’s the same one.
Jokes on him, nobody is paying any attention to him anyway. He could give the same speech every time, and nobody would even notice.
What a loser. If we aren’t going to kick him out, just ignore him, and let him get back to his insider trading. That’s his only priority anyway. He might as well be a MAGA.
Yep.
JFC
*An official letter, signed by at least three colleagues.
Voters made sure they can’t do anything else.
Dems made sure they can’t do anything else.
And they will even threaten to wag their fingers!
If we’re lucky they’ll do something that speaks to the youth, like doing Tiktok dances in protest
One can only hope, friend.
Chat GPT, I need a sternly worded letter please.
Oh words many sternly worded words in a letter.
I don’t mean a letter with words on it, I mean I want to tell a group of people things so I want to write those ideas down on paper in a sternly way…
No I’m not angry! You know what? I’m just gonna do this by myself!
This is your reminder that tiktok has always been brain rot and you need to delete your account and app.
The fact it was bought by Nazi’s to spread their propaganda is just one more reason for people to delete the app and give them the least amount of views possible.
I would love to start a petition to ban tiktok in states once they turn it into GestapoTok. I mean the right is all about states rights right?
Yeah but uncensored brainrot is still better than propaganda brainrot.
One of the reasons tiktok became so popular is that it didn’t go around banning entire swaths of content under the guise of “healthy content” like Facebook (Insta), X, and Reddit do.
This isn’t even a Trump issue specifically, Biden wanted TIkTok to do the same. Either follow policy demands or sell to an American owner.
In what fantasyland is Tiktok uncensored? Tiktok is the whole reason we get screenshots where words like sex, kill, dead, gun, assault, rape, and every swear word imaginable are censored. Tiktok is the reason for euphemisms like “seggs” (sex) and “grape” (rape). There was a time when food content struggled on Tiktok because you’d get shadow banned for having a knife in your video.
those concepts arent the ones americans at-large are being blinded to, nor the ones the establishment american government is worried about
That’s irrelevant. The claim was that Tiktok is uncensored, not that it didn’t censor the things “Americans at large are being blinded to”. If they’ll censor one thing, they’ll censor anything, as we’ve already seen with pro-Palestine content.
not talking about palestine, that is just a(n ever more obvious) distraction from problems closer to home
It’s always been propaganda brainrot. The CCP was just more subtle about it by suppressing content that was critical of them, suppressing content by “ugly” people, and quietly siphoning all of your data.
And no, that’s not en endorsement of any alternative. They’ll all bad. That just all have different bias.
Half the reason it was banned was because they would not put the fix in against Israel criticism. For some reason the video footage of our lawmakers having sex with underage kids has led them to have an Israel first policy.
It was already a propaganda mill. Now it will be for the Nazis instead of China.
Oh it’s been working for GovCo and Israel since it came back from the 1 day ban and Chou started licking Chumps ass. The change was immediate and noticeable.
Yup every top comment on TikTok now is almost always the most divisive shit. I assume they’re doing the equivalent of reddits “sort by controversial”. It changed as soon as it came back.
Of course it was about Israel
It will actually be for both! Emphasis on the part of the article where it says China will still have a stake of 20% in the company, AND they get to keep the algorithm.
All the US is doing is buying up physical assets and infrastructure, and the user base. The juicy bits they wanted, they didn’t get. Everyone is likely going to jump off of TikTok the moment it comes time to segment the US market from the Rest of the World. China doesn’t have to do a thing because Douyin is already maintained separately for the Chinese market.
The thing that will kill this is forcing users to migrate to a new app. Removing the largest friction barrier that prevents people from leaving your app by forcing them to cross it is a great way to scatter the TikTok userbase to the four winds.
I hope this kills TikTok, and that the people who enjoyed using it remember who was responsible for it.
China doesn’t have to do a thing because Douyin is already maintained separately for the Chinese market.
Nobody really wanted to grapple with the reality. They just saw “Chinese investors mean Communist propaganda means Americans most be protected from the thing”. Then Cold War brainrot kicked in and that was that.
A country that fumbles this hard doesn’t deserve to exist.
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It’s the same kind of people who think Socialism means Communism, without realizing that anything funded by taxpayers is already, technically, a socialized knowledge/service/product. That includes the roads their vehicles drive on and the military if you want to put it that far.
One might incorporate principles of the other, but that doesn’t make it the other product automatically.
In the meantime, the Poopaganda machine will continue running with the kind of ignorance being shown.
“Socialism is when the government does things” is dumber than thinking socialism and communism are the same thing.
Now it will be for the US fascists instead of chinese fascists, Nazis were german.
Let’s be real. They’re all working together.
Now it will be overt instead of a vague conspiracy.
I remember when Rupert Murdoch’s company, News Corporation, bought Myspace. Maybe US TikTok will see the same fate
Tiktok’s popularity is already going downhill, so it checks out.
It will lose its luster when there is a noticeable political slant.
Ok, but didn’t they buy Myspace when it was already getting less popular and a lot of people had switched to Facebook?
