It is looking grim for the Chinese company:
A federal court in the United States has upheld the legality of a bi-partisan action that could cause social media app TikTok to become inaccessible nationwide beginning in January 2025. Attorneys representing TikTok are expected to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, but they’re currently up against a January 19 deadline.
This is one of those complicated topics that have relevance to both my former and current lives. Focusing strictly on the latter: this will have a serious impact on BookTok, in the ‘high explosives steadily dropped on it’ sense of the word. I imagine that a lot of people who use that service are absolutely freaking out, right now.
Personally, I’ve been expecting something like this to happen for a couple of years now. Which is one major reason why I haven’t been moving into the TikTok space. The other reasons? …Ehh, those are more in the ‘my former life’ column. Suffice it to say that there’s a reason why the app wasn’t sold to a non-ChiCom entity.
On the one hand, it’s the only real competitor to Alphabet’s YouTube. (Yes, Rumble, etc. exist, but their market penetration is next to insignificant.) And it doesn’t answer to our governments efforts to censor information. I’m against enabling Alphabet monopoly. And having a channel not under our government’s authority has unfortunately proven to be good.
On the other hand, it’s effectively a Red Chinese data mining and subversion operation. It’s largely intellectual poison. And I’d rather like a family member to go through forced detox.
I think both your former and current lives would agree that relying on Commies for anything, no mater the current utility, is just silly.
Furthermore, my impression of BookTok is its mostly all the garden implements who made 50 Shades and Handmaid’s their core fantasies. It can burn with the commies.