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TikTok To Be Sold To Trump’s Right Wing Billionaire Buddies And Converted Into A Propaganda Mill
(www.techdirt.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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Young people decide what's popular, if you fuck it up they will bail for another platform. Hopefully someone spins up a competitor quickly to grab the people in between the forced "new app"
Dude Facebook hasn't been cool in a decade and it's still very much a thing
It’s alive due to Messenger and Marketplace.
God, I miss Craigslist.
Craigslist still exists. Use it.
Craigslist exists like my totaled car exists: yeah, it's technically there, but it's a shell of itself and doesn't actually have anything worthwhile. Maybe in large metros it's still a viable option, but even in a 250,000 people metro it's a ghost town.
Can't buy things if no one is selling there, can't sell things if no one is buying there.
Yeah, I hate that I had to use Facebook market as it was probably the first time I had logged in in years. But there were easily 20x more results when I was looking for a server rack on there than CL.
I just bought a great bike using Craigslist in February. Maybe it's a locality thing, folk use a different platform near you but it still gets plenty of traffic here.
I still use Craigslist! Have alerts set up right now
Craigslist is still around although not as active as Facebook Marketplace.
wait until the boomer generation stops using it...
I've been waiting for the boomer generation to stop any of what they're doing for 30 years. I suspect they'll still be a viable political bloc for the next 20 years. And even then, gen x and gen z will pick up right where they left off.
Genz conservative voters tend to be more right wing than their parents or boomers family. That's why they want to target the younger population
The mass die-off of boomers will be a great thing. They ain't all bad, but they are the worst generation. Absolute poison.
Based on my parents, I’m pretty sure it’s genx keeping it alive.
At least in 50 more years humanity will finally be free of Zuckerberg
I don’t think that will be enough time…
Lol, you mean when they die? Yeah, that's not a bad point. They aren't getting any younger.
the dieing days are here for the first wave of boomers and it's only going to increase.... day by day
im genx and I'm of the opinion that my parents and their generation are the most selfish and most self centered generation in the history of this country. They spoiled their opportunities to do what they thought was right as young people.... so some genxrs are also pieces of shit but most people of my generation understand we are a skipped generation and the young people are the future. We are not like our parents that is for sure.
I just had this funny thought— so boomers adopted and settled into Facebook after millennials made it popular. And then everyone except for boomers stopped actively using it. It’s kind of their “retirement social media platform.”
Now you have TikTok, which the millennials flocked to after GenZ popularized it. Does this mean after Gen Z flees the platform that it’s just going to be the Facebook equivalent for millennials?
Unlikely. Millennials are internet-native, more savvy than Gen Z if anything. They grew up with more platform changes. I think the next big divide like that is more likely when the next big medium shift happens (maybe AR?) and both millennials and Gen Z don’t jump on the train.
I dunno.. I'm a millennial and no one I know uses TikTok, they all use Instagram.Anecdotal, sure, but still.
I'd say the biggest difference is that Millennials tend to be more aware that Boomers of who else is actually using the platform and why, and to have/acquire knowledge about other platforms and transition to something new.
I'd be genuinely curious what the real age demographic of regular Facebook users is in America, but I highly doubt Meta would ever release those figures.
Doubt they can even sort out who is and isn't a not, themselves
Ya because of boomers and people using messenger and marketplace
You're underestimating the propaganda machine . All those right-wing influencers didn't get to the top of every chart because young people decided them to be popular.
Susan Wojiciki genuinely spearheaded the rise of the far right on social media by giving endless support and exposure to the likes of the Paul brothers, Mr.Beast, and right wing commentators who regularly broke ToS but rarely if ever got banned or demonitized for it.
She truly was the Ronald Reagan of social media personalities. May she burn in Hell.
Done and done.
Wouldn't it be cool if people used loops instead!
You have to use words like "unalive" and it's still popular?
They might also start using another platform. But they’re unlikely to leave completely.
Cory Doctorow put out the first hour of the audiobook on Enshittification for free, and it covers this very well.
True for us 1%ers, nobody else seems to give a fuck.
"you sweet, summer child"
First and foremost: That is not what this is about. Well, that isn't what the sane parts of this is about. It isn't that tiktok is too popular.
It is that it is very blatantly a tool of the CCP. Much like facebook and twitter are tools of the US government. There are many articles documenting how facebook has been used to steal elections and... fuel coups. And musk et al are pretty open that they did the same with twitter and the 2024 US Presidential election. And... it is hard to not be suspicious when "tiktok is the only streaming platform that is willing to talk about the genocide in Palestine" and "I refuse to vote for genocide, full stop" were so tightly coupled.
No country should allow such blatant manipulation of its people by a foreign nation. Whether it is the US, Russia (see: RT getting banned the fuck out of most western nations), China, or even frigging Mauritius.
Second... Do you really think People have that much agency? Not individuals, but People.
Trump made a deal with TikTok that allowed them to continue operating. How likely is it that they were allowed to choose the ranking algorithm freely?