• Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    My understanding is that the algorithm at the core of TikTok cannot be ecported from China without the approval of Chinese regulators, and it seems pretty likely that they’ll not approve a sale at gunpoint.

    It also makes sense to me that they’d rather just amputate their US operations to preserve their IP and prevent an American competitor from fighting over their market share everywhere else.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      it seems pretty likely that they’ll not approve a sale at gunpoint

      This seems like the issue to me: if the U.S. can force this sale at a deadline-discounted price, what would stop the U.S. from doing this to every Chinese company that has success in the U.S.?

    • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      I might be wrong but I think their data centers are in the US and there’s not really that complicated of an algorithm, just a lot of raw data on what each user likes/watches

      • LanyrdSkynrd [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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        6 months ago

        Yeah, I don’t think the algorithms are the valuable part of social media sites. It’s the active users that make up the network effects. Meta has likely already figured out the algorithms already, Instagram reels is struggling because creators go where the viewers are and viewers spend the most time on the platform that has their favorite creators.

        • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          6 months ago

          Yeah tech companies all want to present themselves as having created a very clever and scientific “algorithm” when really they’re just hoarding personal data and exploiting the network effect to entrench themselves. Google web search is actually one of the more complicated algorithms because of the variety of types of results on the open internet, but even they are completely reliant on just troves and troves of user behavior data. If 80 people Google something and 2 people Bing it, Google has way better information on what results should be on top.