• @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    205 hours ago

    Gavin Newsom was enthusiastically in favor of forcing the sale of TikTok to US-aligned billionaires under Joe Biden.

    Wonder what changed.

    • @renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net
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      194 hours ago

      There’s definitely some “our team, their team” going on, but this isn’t really the same thing.

      “Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports, and independently confirmed instances, of suppressed content critical of President Trump”

      This is not a criticism of the sale itself, but of reported censorship after the sale. Make no mistake, Newsom is still on the side of the billionaires. He just wants the billionaires to return to their progressive facade.

    • @Kissaki@feddit.org
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      63 hours ago

      I’m pretty sure under Biden, it was a matter of Chinese control outside of US government control, not bringing it under US billionaires specifically. Now it’s a political instrument of corruption and control, which is something different.

      • queermunist she/her
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        251 minutes ago

        It was the exact same motivation under Biden, they just had the self-awareness to know that they needed to pretend.

      • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        42 hours ago

        it was a matter of Chinese control outside of US government control

        TikTok was controlled by a private company based out of Singapore, with investments from a host of international funds including both the US and China.

        The “China is controlling our internet” narrative was always bullshit fear-mongering, fully disjoined from the actual business structure. What TikTok enjoyed that Facebook and YouTube and Reddit did not was a sufficient distance from US policymakers such that TikTok’s policies weren’t dictated by Western oligarchs.

        not bringing it under US billionaires specifically

        That’s exactly what Biden (and then Trump)'s forced sale intended. Bring the US branch of TikTok under American control by awarding it to exclusively American financial interests.

    • @FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
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      24 hours ago

      Likely the consortium that currently bought TikTok does not agree with his political bias, where the Biden one did.

      Same with Covid shots, Biden and Kamala were essentially saying that they would not or would hesitate to take “Trump’s Covid vaccine.” Then, a month later they won, and then had no problem pushing it onto everyone because it was no longer “Trump’s Vaccine,” buy their own administration’s. I can’t be the only one that remmebers that.