Business: America’s confiscation of TikTok
must protect Big Business at all costs
Last week The House overwhelmingly passed a proposed ban on TikTok, effectively forcing a sale by the Chinese owners, ByteDance
For all intents and purposes a forced sale such as this is isomorphic to confiscation. Confiscation generally refers to seizure without fair confiscation to the owners.
And even if they do sell at the alleged valuation of $100B, ByteDance hasn’t asked for that price — its been assessed as “fair” value by third parties. Nobody apparently has asked ByteDance how much they’d sell it for, just that you need to sell it and the price you’re getting is $100B. No, for all intents and purposes, this is confiscation, which is commonly associated with punitive actions by the government in response to criminal actions.
TikTok has no active criminal charges or investigations. Actions like this are fundamentally anti-American. Of course government initiated confiscation of private property is concerning, but as an American living abroad, I was initially concerned about the contradiction between The US’ boasts of freedom and a forced asset sale. But at the same time, news broke that former Treasury Secretary Steve Muchin is assembling a consortium to buy TikTok
so
IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW
Someone with obvious and what must be tight ties to DC, someone who has allegedly lobbied hard to force a sale of TikTok stands ready to buy. What a coincidence, considering TikTok’s explosive revenue growth of some 300% YoY in 2019 alone (the last year I can source data for). So who else could buy TikTok if Mnuchin’s bid fails or if other bidders emerge (highly likely, by the way)? Any of their competitors who can’t effectively compete with TikTok: Facebook and their Reels product, Google with YouTube’s Shorts, to name but two. And trotting out
THE OFT USED NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS
is ridiculous; why is what some 170 million Americans do on social media so important that it raises concerns of “national security”? Is the same metric being applied to Facebook or Google. I don’t think so, and they capture huge amounts of user data, and with apparent immunity to misuse, suspected or proven. These intermediaries have effectively created the entire industry of Data Broking, or the re-selling of personal data, which is sizee at almost $500B
Or, as anyone familiar with American politics will confirm, too big to kill. Looking at the demographics of TikTok’s user base
focusing on American users alone, we see roughly 80% are below the age of 34, and fully 62% are below the age of 29. National security or prime targets for data broking? When The Biden Administration initially raised these “national security” concerns, Oracle was to track TikTok’s data, and insure misuse. What most Americans didn’t realise was this deal gave The US government vast snooping rights
on what Americans were doing on social media. So why are they forcing the issue now? It seems this was always the plan, hence Mr Mnucin’s pitch just some five months later. It was always planned that ByteDance would be forced to sell. I predict
this will backfire on The US and in a Big Way
China has already banned some US products — such as Apple’s iPhone — from being used by Government employees.
According to Chinese I’ve spoken to, American business are leaving the nation. The Biden Administration should be building bridges with China, not continuing to alienate the nation. Clearly The Administration hasn’t considered that many Chinese are patriotic, and I’m willing to bet soon we’re gonna see the almost inevitable response and it will be epic. And it may not be just China. Looking beyond the TikTok “deal” we are seeing a massive expansion of Government Power. In Europe Apple was recently forced by Brussels to allow users to by pass The App Store
which I (a founding member of The MacTribe) believe is a negative, simply because Apple’s focus on security and review insured malware would not be offered on The App Store, and apps didn’t misuse personal data; this is why I never install banking, finance or cypto apps on my Android devices. They are far, far less secure because of the way Google’s Play Store operates. Also, Facebook and Instagram have been forced to no longer allow the sharing of personal data
even as Google’s search and associated businesses have been targeted by The EU
thus creating a big market opportunity for domestically created, EU native search engines
Considering all these actions, The US will look like total hypocrites if they resist other nations actions. After all, violation of fair market practices and violations Europe’s GDPR are clear breeches of the EU law. I predict this will erupt and quickly into a full on forced sale of some assets, as we are seeing emerge with TikTok. After all, America has set the precedent, and that precedent is
must protect Big Business at all costs
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