the Empire gets its algorithm in ominous TikTok takeover.
the US regime is handing its digital public square to the very forces that will silence dissent.
Good day, spectators,
And I was not really keeping up with this story over the past few months because there were not too many developments but over the weekend I decided to catch up and oh my…today’s spectacle is terrifying.
The United States government, in a move of breath-taking but not particularly surprising imperial hypocrisy, is 'saving' TikTok and ‘protecting your data from the evil Chinese’ by executing a hostile takeover of the most potent political and cultural communication platform of the a whole generation, and it is handing the keys to a cabal of some of its most loyal enforcers.
The stage for this obscene heist was set by the 'Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act' which is a piece of legislation whose dystopian title perfectly masks its purpose. The law demanded that TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divest its US operations or face a ban. The pretext for all this was 'national security'. The real reason, as anyone who has watched American youth use the platform to organise for Palestine and against the Empire knows very well, was always about control.
And now, the winners of this forced sale are emerging from the shadows, and the picture, I'm sorry to say…is grim.
the usual suspects.
The new joint venture that will control TikTok's US operations is to be majority-owned by a consortium of US investors, with ByteDance's stake reduced to less than 20%. This isn't a free market deal; it's a state-sanctioned transfer of power. And the new owners read like a who's who of the American-Israeli security and tech nexus.
Oracle will lead the consortium, tasked with hosting all US user data. Its co-founder and chairman, Larry Ellison, is not just a tech billionaire. No no no. This man is a prominent pro-Israel donor who made one of the largest-ever individual donations to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and once offered a board seat to Benjamin Netanyahu. Let that sink in.
Oracle's CEO, Safra Catz, is an Israeli-American who has reportedly told employees that disloyalty to America and Israel means they have 'no place at Oracle'. This is the company now in charge of the data and digital integrity of an app used by 170 million Americans.
The other investors, including firms like Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, have been steadily deepening their financial and strategic ties to Israel's tech ecosystem, particularly in cybersecurity and AI. This isn't mere coincidence but a convergence of interests. The very entities that have a strategic, financial, and ideological commitment to a specific foreign policy are being handed the keys to the algorithm that has been a thorn in their side.
And this abomination is the 'qualified divestiture' the White House is touting as a victory for national security. It's a victory for the hasbara dealers, indeed. They have solved 'Israel's TikTok problem' by simply buying the problem and installing their own managers.
important note for non-US readers:
Before we continue, a crucial clarification: this takeover only affects TikTok's US operations. Users outside the United States will continue to access TikTok as it currently operates, still under ByteDance's control as far as I understand. The Chinese-run version has proven very good at allowing under-reported content to flourish. Anything from Palestinian solidarity to anti-imperial perspectives that would struggle to find audiences on Western-controlled platforms usually do well there.
So if you're reading this from Europe, Asia, Africa, or anywhere else outside America, your TikTok remains the same uncensored platform it has been, for now. A new digital iron curtain is descending in the United States though.
the end of the digital frontier
Why does this matter for our American friend? Well, it's because for a brief, glorious moment, TikTok represented a crack in the wall of the established mainstream media monopoly. Its algorithm, unlike the friend-curated feeds of old, was a mercurial, unpredictable beast that could propel content from anyone, anywhere, to viral fame based purely on engagement. This is why nearly half of its users under 30 use it to keep up with politics. It's why it became the primary news source for a generation that no longer trusts corporate broadcasters.
This 'algorithmic television' model broke the traditional gatekeepers. It allowed raw, unfiltered footage from Gaza and other parts of the world to bypass the sanitised if not false narratives of Western news desks. It allowed dissent about the empire, about ICE, about the very structure of power, to find a massive audience. It created a space where political identity could form and shift organically, outside of traditional party lines.
That space is now going to be liquidated.
The new ownership structure explicitly puts the 'operation of the algorithms and code, as well as content-moderation decisions, under the control of the new joint venture'. This control will be intensely monitored by 'trusted security partners' of the US government. The Jewish Federations of North America, which supported the divestment bill, have already pledged to monitor the new owners to ensure 'measurable action to curb antisemitism' but this is a term they have proven adept at stretching to include any legitimate criticism of Israel.
I'm not even speculating about the future here either. I am just connecting the dots they have laid out for us. The appointment of Erica Mindel, a former IGF (Israeli Genocide Forces) soldier who speaks proudly of her 'Zionist identity' during the ongoing genocide, as TikTok's Hate-Speech Policy Manager was a trial balloon.
Watch: Eric Mindel tells us about her time in the IDF.
The ramifications are staggering to say the least. I estimate this to be the end of uncensored political speech about Palestine on the platform for most Americans. The beginning of algorithmic suppression of anti-imperial content. The blurring, into oblivion, of the line between tackling genuine hate speech and silencing political dissent. It is the final, chilling merger of corporate, state, and ideological power.
They watched the platform fuel a global solidarity movement they could not control, and they have moved to reassert control. The 'free speech' debate was, as experts have noted, always just a 'marketing ploy' for TikTok; the real fight was over who gets to own the data and control the narrative. The empire has decided it will be them.
In my opinion, what makes this particularly insidious is the precedent it sets. If the US government can force the sale of any platform that challenges its narrative control, what's to stop them from targeting other sources of independent media? The message to any platform that allows uncensored political discourse is explicitly clear: you play by our rules, or we'll make you. Or just buy you.
They have seized the algorithm. The digital public square has new landlords, and they've already changed the locks. The question is, what will the tenants do now?
And on that note, I'll let you go for the day. Hope you have a good start to the week!
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Read more from the magazine:
The biggest concern I would have as an American is that now they can build cases for "digital terrorism" against any creator's platform if they've acquired a large following. They now have access to the database and records and they will use them in a witch hunt for "dissidents" and "terrorists"
If only Americans would read a ton more, rather than awaiting their next shite advertisement to end, they might understand that genuine free speech, while codified in the Bill of Rights, has hardly been a reality in practice for the 200+ years of the country's existence. Just ask trailblazing American women of the 19th Century who, in their fight for entrance into professions like medicine, were usually treated as if they had no speech at all. This isn't hardly as much out of character as folks might think.