U.S. investors, Trump close in on TikTok deal with China

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Oracle as TikTok Owner (Tone: Mockery + Schadenfreude)

  • Many find Oracle owning TikTok inherently funny and deeply mismatched (“Yahoo buys Tumblr” vibes).
  • Widespread hope that Oracle’s culture, licensing mentality, and “enterprise” mindset will ruin the product and effectively kill TikTok in the US.
  • Numerous jokes about Oracle-style licenses, Java rewrites, and aggressive compliance/audit behavior applied to end users.

Why People Dislike TikTok (Product, Brainrot, and China)

  • Strong current of “TikTok is pure brain rot” and should die along with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
  • Others note that Reels/Shorts only exist because TikTok pioneered the format; hating the originator more than clones is seen as reasonable.
  • A key distinction for some is foreign state control: they tolerate Meta/Google manipulation because it’s domestically regulatable; they fear latent CCP influence over political narratives, especially via geographic/demographic targeting.
  • Skeptics argue TikTok’s behavior is not clearly worse than US platforms; they see mostly geo-based recommendations and little hard evidence of unique malice.

Deal Structure and “Great Firewall of America”

  • Summary of reported deal:
    • New US-only TikTok app, separate content graph and users.
    • ~80% owned by US investor consortium (Oracle, Silver Lake, a16z), ~20% ByteDance.
    • US data hosted on Oracle in US; initial algorithm licensed, later reimplemented to comply with law.
    • Board includes one US government–appointed director.
  • Many see this as de facto nationalization plus vendor lock-in: forced divestiture, mandated Oracle infra, and direct state presence on the board.
  • Repeated comparison to China’s model: party/state seats on boards, domestic clones, and national firewalls; talk of a coming “Great Firewall of America.”

Media Power, Propaganda, and Fascism Concerns

  • Intense worry about Trump-aligned billionaires (Oracle leadership, VC backers) consolidating control of TikTok plus major legacy media (Paramount/CBS, possible Warner/CNN).
  • Several frame this as the next phase of a US “oligarch + state” project: state capitalism/fascist playbook, propaganda alignment on Israel/Palestine and Gaza, and tighter control over youth discourse.
  • Others argue both parties enabled this: Trump initiated TikTok pressure, a bipartisan Congress passed the latest law, Biden signed it; now Trump’s administration is leveraging it.

Free Speech, Surveillance, and Which Government You Fear More

  • Government-appointed board seat widely read as a political commissar to steer moderation and amplification.
  • Some see US control as strictly worse for them personally: US agencies can prosecute, deny visas, or weaponize centralized datasets; China cannot.
  • Others argue the core issue is not data but “controlling the message” and that US elites simply want the same speech control tools China uses.

Global Split and Future of Short-Form Video

  • Concern that US users and content will be siloed from the rest of the world; some non-US commenters welcome less exposure to US culture wars.
  • Debate over whether a US-only “OracleTok” can retain creators and users, or whether people will route around via VPNs or abandon it for other platforms.
  • Underneath everything is a broad critique of short-form video as maximally addictive, low-information, and misinformation-prone, regardless of who owns TikTok.