TikTok Isolationism

Plus: New Yorkers favor decriminalizing prostitution. An academic inquiry into "body counts." AI chatbots everywhere. And more...

TikTok is here to stay…sort of. After months of extending the deadline by which ByteDance would be required to sell off U.S. operations of TikTok or be banned, President Donald Trump seems to have finally struck a deal for it to be purchased by American investors. But the deal may leave American TikTok users cut off from the rest of the world.

On Tuesday, Trump once again extended the sale-or-ban deadline, this time until December 16. But he also announced this week that "a deal with China" was now in place. "President Trump and Party Chair Xi will speak on Friday to complete the deal," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday.

Details of this framework are still sketchy. But from what's been reported, it seems that a group of U.S. investors—including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz—will essentially be launching a spinoff TikTok app for the United States.

"The arrangement, discussed by U.S. and Chinese negotiators in Madrid this week, would create a new U.S. entity to operate the app, with U.S. investors holding a roughly 80% stake and Chinese shareholders owning the rest," The Wall Street Journal reports. "This new company would also have an American-dominated board with one member designated by the U.S. government."

(Combating the prospect of Chinese propaganda by giving the the U.S. government partial control of the app? That's logic only a propagandist could love…)

"Existing users in the U.S. would be asked to shift to a new app, which TikTok has built and is testing," the Journal reports.

If this happens, it's unclear how the U.S. TikTok app would interact with the global TikTok app.

Some are worried that U.S. app users would be cut off from the rest of TikTok's global community, unable to view videos from users in other countries or to share their own videos internationally.

According to the Financial Times, this isn't what TikTok's sellers want. A "person familiar with the matter said TikTok had been developing a standalone US app in anticipation of a deal but was keen to ensure that content generated by American users would still be available to users in the 'rest of the world' app and vice versa," it says.

According to Wang Jingtao of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the U.S. buyers will be "licensing the algorithm and other intellectual property rights" from TikTok parent company ByteDance for their new app.

But a deal in which users of a U.S. TikTok app are still fully plugged into the main app, and still reliant on ByteDance's algorithms, might not satisfy the requirements of the ban-or-divest measure signed into law by former President Joe Biden in April 2024. "Analysts have said the algorithm must be fully operated by the US entity to meet the requirements of the divest-or-ban law," notes the Times. "But the law allows the US president to determine if ByteDance has fully divested from TikTok, giving Trump the power to approve the deal."

That means it ultimately might not matter whether the terms of this deal meet the requirements set out in the law; if Trump decides he likes the terms, then that's enough. And Trump has already shown his willingness to ignore the law's actual dictates by repeatedly extending the sale deadline, despite it possibly being unconstitutional for him to do so.

It would be funny if the ultimate deal ends up letting ByteDance keep control of the algorithm. One of the main stated rationales for the sell-or-ban law was that China could influence and control U.S. users of TikTok through its control of ByteDance (by way of ByteDance having developed TikTok in China). That fits an interpretation of this whole debacle in which the real impetus for the law was more about signaling anti-China sentiment and/or making a show of "protecting children" rather than any real "national security concerns."

In any event, the precise contours of the algorithm deal are yet unclear. The Journal says "TikTok engineers will re-create a set of content-recommendation algorithms for the app, using technology licensed from TikTok's parent ByteDance.…Both sides are still working out the final details of the proposed deal and terms could change."

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Lawmakers Reintroduce Bills To Decriminalize Sex Work, as Polls Show New York City Residents in Favor

New York lawmakers have once again introduced legislation that would decriminalize prostitution. The measures—Assembly Bill 3251, sponsored by Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest (D–Brooklyn), and Senate Bill 2513, sponsored by state Sen. Julia Salazar (D–Brooklyn)—would remove the crime of selling or offering to sell sex acts in exchange for money and only keep the crime of "patronizing a person for prostitution" when the person being patronized is less than 18 years old. They would also remove criminal penalties for "promoting prostitution" unless the prostitution involved a minor or an adult being forced or coerced.

Politico talked to Forrest and Salazar at a Tuesday screening of Sex Work: It's Just a Job, a documentary about efforts to decriminalize sex work in New York. "The biggest challenge that we face is humanizing sex workers, getting legislators to understand that, actually, whether they want to believe it or not, or recognize it or not, there are sex workers all around us," Salazar said. "I know that we still have our work cut out for us, but I hope to see it move through the Codes Committee and hopefully the legislative process this year."

A plurality of people in New York City support legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution, per a new survey. Conducted by Public Policy Polling on behalf of the group Decriminalize Sex Work, the poll involved 556 registered New York City voters. Forty-four percent of the poll's respondents said prostitution between consenting adults should be legal, while 33 percent said it should be a crime and 24 percent said they weren't sure.

Related: Watch Kaytlin Bailey and Melanie Thompson debate at a recent Soho Forum about whether paying for sex should be a crime:

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Sexual History, Quantified

A study published in Scientific Reports "investigates whether the number of previous sexual partners someone has influences whether people would consider entering a long-term relationship with them," reports Stephanie Murray. "Or in Discourse speak: does body count matter? Across three different studies covering 11 countries spanning 5 continents, they found that the answer is a pretty firm yes."

On one level, this falls under the rubric of, um, did they really need a study for this? We all know that there's still a strong strain of purity culture alive basically everywhere and that people have lots of reasons—cultural, religious, psychological, perhaps biological—for preferring mates with less experience, in theory.

But studies like this fail to take into account that people aren't dating abstracts. Many people who may say absolutely not to someone on paper whose "body count" is high could change their minds when confronted with an actual someone that they're interested in, especially if they thought that person's promiscuous days were in their past.

And, indeed, the Scientific Reports study found some evidence of this, too. "We found that past partner number effects were smaller when the frequency of new sexual encounters decreased over time," write the study authors. "This moderation effect was stronger, and often curvilinear, when past partner numbers were higher."

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More Sex & Tech News

• AI is making online dating even worse, writes Anna Louie Sussman at The Cut.

• "Is social media driving people crazy, or just showing us the crazy people?" asks Corbin Barthold.

• It seems beyond a doubt now that the next tech panic is unfolding and it revolves around AI chatbots.

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Today's Image

Los Angeles | 2018 (ENB/Reason)

Comments

[Chumby]

TikTok Mastodon is here to stay…sort of.

[Quicktown Brix]

President Donald Trump seems to have finally struck a deal..."This new company would also have an American-dominated board with one member designated by the U.S. government."

Of course. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[Use the Schwartz]

It must be weird to spend your entire life reclaiming sexuality and re-branding promiscuity, only to have the next generation become neo-Puritans and asexuals.

[Rick James]

Imagine how frustrating it is to live in a world where a chick that does nude body painting for tips gets stage dancers at a gamer convention fired because it was 'exploitation'.

[mad.casual]

I think the weirdest part is that there's still a massive portion of the population that's enthusiastically supportive of making pussy-grabbing great again, more than willing to lend the ladder and buy the jell-o for their college-age grandkids' jell-o-wrestling-and-panty-raid weekend, but they're all deplorable, opportunistic, beyond-redemption misogynists promoting rape culture. And if they expect their kids to marry someone they meet at a panty raid or jell-o wrestling or settle down after a couple years of gallivanting, promoting rape *and* purity culture.

[Wizzle Bizzle]

*Sexual History, Quantified
We all know that there's still a strong strain of purity culture alive basically everywhere and that people have lots of reasons—cultural, religious, psychological, perhaps biological—for preferring mates with less experience, in theory.*

Grabs popcorn. Gets comfy.

[Rick James]

Plus: New Yorkers favor decriminalizing prostitution

Finally, the term 'sex work' wasn't used.

[Rick James]

Lawmakers Reintroduce Bills To Decriminalize Sex Work, as Polls Show New York City Residents in Favor

And then we pivoted back to it in the article. Fuck, I thought I had finally made some progress. "Sex work" is "illegal" in New York? That's patently false.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Cartels in AOCs district want this even more.

[Roberta]

Because not all sex work is prostitution.

[JFree]

"This new company would also have an American-dominated board with one member designated by the U.S. government."

Well thank God the yoots of America will have a safe space protected from non-American algorithms. USA! USA! USA!

[Rick James]

We all know that there's still a strong strain of purity culture alive basically everywhere and that people have lots of reasons—cultural, religious, psychological, perhaps biological—for preferring mates with less experience, in theory.

But studies like this fail to take into account that people aren't dating abstracts. Many people who may say absolutely not to someone on paper whose "body count" is high could change their minds when confronted with an actual someone that they're interested in, especially if they thought that person's promiscuous days were in their past.

Of course that's true, but that's now how this type of research works. Researchers don't stop studying the rule when we come across and exception. Sure the exception can be an interesting or informative study on its own, but when you're studying sexual behavior and attitudes across a wide spectrum of the population, you don't optimize for the margins.

[mad.casual]

Lady, if living in the "strong strain of purity culture" is what keeps me from contracting syphilis and dying of the plague, I'll make up whatever numbers you want.

I thought all the people who weren't in the "strong strain of purity culture" died in 2020?

Seriously, the phrase "strong strain of purity culture" is so laughably retarded only a leftist could use it. You don't drink out of the same ditch you shit in? Puritan. You engage in some risky behavior, just not until you and/or everyone around you is destitute, sickly, and dependent on others for care? Disgusting purist.

[mad.casual]

Hilariously, her "found evidence" doesn't really address her exception specifically nor refute the narrative either. Whether it's cognitive bias or just a plain old point of diminishing returns, the good looking 50 yr. old who stacked up the bodies in their 20s isn't as burdened by the body stacking as they were in their 30s but they still aren't as well off as if they'd been even a little more discreet.

So, even the "They might meet the right person and relax a bit on their numbers." is really more "They might meet the right person and settle for or always wish their number had been lower."

Too bad for the people who built their lives around sex work.

[sarcasmic]

It’s only socialism when the left does it.

[Overt]

I think this meets the Fascism moniker better. I called it that when Obama was putting party apparatchiks on GM's board, and this really isn't materially different.

[sarcasmic]

With GM there was an exit strategy, and the government exited.

What Trump is doing appears to be intended to be permanent.

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

A more gentle, temporary fascism is ok by sarc.

[Overt]

"With GM there was an exit strategy, and the government exited."

Why am I not surprised that you reflexively do exactly what you accuse trumpaloos of doing ("it's different when my side does it").

For the record, there was no "Exit Strategy" when GM was bailed out. And even assuming they knew they would sell GM stock, the board members (which is, you know, the fascist part) remained.

[Overt]

* I will note that the board members were later replaced. My point was there was no "Strategy" of buying and holding for a period of time (and in fact the government finally had to sell at a loss). In return for the bailout, they put union lackeys and government chumps in charge. Several board members are still former government Party Apparatchiks.

[Eeyore]

Maybe Mandani should propose taking over the pimping and make all prostitution a public utility. To save money every hooker has to service at least 3 clients at a time.

[Eeyore]

Come to think of it, this is how public grocery stores can save money. Every piece of bread has to have 3 consumers. Human centipede style.

[LIBtranslator]

Econazis would break out the soup and superglue and ruin everything

[XM]

Yes, I would trust tiktok under American control over Chinese control. The latter still uses slave labor. "You're a propagandist!" No, that makes a sane person with a sense of perspective.

Congress deemed this as a security issue. If you're not satisfied with its argument, that's fine. But if it is, then no, we shouldn't allow the commies to mine data from brain dead American liberal.

[mad.casual]

we shouldn't allow the commies to mine data from brain dead American liberal

I hold an orthogonal view of IP than most libertarians or people here but the rest of my assertion lines up pretty well and... technically, that's intellectual soil that the American taxpayer has paid to till and have seeded.

[LIBtranslator]

ENB could well notice that the Dems "favored" legalizing weed (but not in their platform) back when Nixon bloodied McGovern. Only AFTER losing to Trump thanks to 4M Libertarian Spoiler votes covering the gap to reshuffle outcomes in 13 States casting 127 electoral votes did they sort of ape the LP position. When they won, sharknado warmunism, taxing and vows to ban energy became the new reason for voting against Dems. This is Darwinian artificial selection in action.

[AT]

But he also announced this week that "a deal with China" was now in place.

Ugh. From now on, I don't want to hear about any "deals with China" unless it involves us bombing them for looking at us funny.

[Roberta]

A priori I'd think the more previous partners a mate had, the more valuable and flattering a long-term relationship with them would be. It says, "Wow, I must be better than all those previous ones were!"

[mad.casual]

I'd say a priori you're retarded, but you already gave us the evidence that you don't know what a priori means, how the scientific method works, how to interpret the data, or a general understanding of the world around you.

A key that opens any lock* is a master key. A lock that opens for any key is a shitty lock. The last key to open a shitty lock isn't really anything anybody else can recognize as special no matter how much you may want it to be.

*NB: This doesn't apply strictly to vaginas. It can/does apply to romantic love or even just broad tastes and preferences in decision making. The 10,001th song a person listens to is statistically less distinguishable from the other 10,000 than the 1 song is to the person who has listend to 2 songs.

[AT]

Why limit it to previous? Go out and cheat on your partner, it's all just extra practice to bring home new skills and expertise to them! They'll appreciate your go-getter attitude!

ps I'm screengrabbing your post and sending it to Women Posting their L's Online.

[mad.casual]

By the logic, only sleeping with 80-yr.-olds with no money, no family, and inordinately high bodycounts is the key to a meaningful relationship or most meaningful sexual encounter or whatever.