alt Hacker News>owever, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.
How is it self-incrimination? That logic doesn't work.
80% of TikTok's users are outside of the U.S., why would they sell the whole thing?
And the law is written in a way that there is no value to just sell the American operation without the algorithm, they have to sell the whole thing, including the algorithm, in order for there to be a serious buyer.
It's technology highway robbery. Imagine if China told Apple "sell to us or be banned", we'd tell them to pound sand too.
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The West told plenty of its companies, through public pressure or laws, that they have to divest from Russia, and they did. Rationally they recognized that selling their assets is financially more lucrative than just closing their operations and making 0$. Now why would an corporation which alleges to not be controlled by a government refuse to sell and forego billions in income, even though it is against the interest of their shareholders?
from what I know the bids that have been put in place are just for the US operations and there are some bids that dont include the algo as a part of the deal.
No one is asking them to sell the entire company. Just the US arm.
Not sure that changes much but you seem to be talking about non US users, which wouldn't fall under this ruling.