Comment by throwaway287391
4 days ago
Given that (as the article mentions) the ban essentially only directs Google/Apple to remove the app from their US stores, what's the rationale on ByteDance's part to immediately revoke existing US users' access? My naive assumption was they'd want to keep it going and support the current dead version of the app for as long as possible to continue squeezing US revenue for at least a few more months until that becomes untenable. Are they instead hoping to rally the user base into mass protests and pressure lawmakers into reversing the ban?
As far as I know there's no real calculation, it would just be for revenge.
ByteDance is very pissed about how they are being treated and so they would rather burn it all down than hand it over to some American.
It is endlessly fascinating to me that people ascribe emotions that individuals experience to organizations, companies, nation-states, etc.
As the article says ByteDance is a massive company with thousands of employees in the US alone. It’s ridiculous to think a corporation of that size operates as if it was a singular (and extremely petty) individual, especially to the detriment of its own self interests.
There’s a dozen potential motivations for pursuing this strategy and none of them boil down to being “pissed”.
I'd like to offer an alternative perspective: TikTok's main revenue comes from China. Succumbing to the US gov would challenge the domestic nationalism, thereby causing more losses.
I was surprised by that too. I assumed we would see a sudden interest in android and iphone jailbreaking.