The sequence of events as far as I can recall:

  • Trump promised to ban TikTok
  • TikTok was slated to be “banned” in the twilight of Biden’s term
  • Trump says he’d give it 90 days to make a decision
  • Biden decides not to ban it, handing it off to Trump
  • TikTok goes dark
  • It returns, but if you search for something anti-Trump in the United States, you can’t find it
  • Using a VPN will give you that content
  • Various news outlets are now calling it Trump’s “Propaganda Arm”

What the fuck is going on? From a political or technological standpoint.

  • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    i can understand your confusion: actions speak louder than words; so break it down based on what they did (not what they said) to make it make sense:

    1. trump tries to ban tiktok and fails
    2. biden, democrats & republicans try to ban tiktok and they succeed
    3. tiktok goes dark because it is banned
    4. trump promises to issue an executive order to save tiktok and follows through
    5. tiktok is back, but now has to depend on trump for its survival so it’ll do whatever trump wants
    • niucllos@lemm.ee
      01·
      9 days ago

      Except it went dark before the law had a chance to be enforced, and was back up before trump was ever in office and able to use executive orders. So points 3 and 4 have nothing to do with the actual law and are decisions completely from within tiktok