Firebrand

What’s frustrating about discovering Substack content is I would have no idea Simon Owens wrote about why Patreon’s business model is under threat if I didn’t see this post on HN. I’m unable to come for the topic, and then stay for the author.

If I search “Patreon” on Substack I get a bunch of people who moved there from Patreon:

https://imgur.com/a/L0qYrUQ

What gives? How do I search by topic?

From TheWrap:

>But the proposed deal is being complicated by a split between ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming and General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, two U.S.-based ByteDance investors with long ties to the Trump administration and Republican causes who both would like to see the sale happen. They approached Ellison to buy TikTok and have reached out to the White House to close the deal, according to two individuals with knowledge of the matter.

>However, Zhang is resisting any sale, the two individuals said, and did not inform his investors before suing the White House on Monday to block any sale. The insiders said Zhang is being advised by Silicon Valley billionaire Yuri Milner, another early investor in Zhang’s company.

Apparently Zhang thinks he can still save his company. Maybe the $45 billion will help change his mind.

https://www.thewrap.com/oracle-nears-20-billion-tiktok-deal-...

Not if Oracle and Sequoia have anything to say about that.

Sort of a Frankenstein’s monster situation Zuckerberg created for himself. He took Bytedance’s money so they could plaster TikTok ads all over Facebook and Instagram back in 2018.

TikTok pays its approved creators around $0.035 per 1,000 views. Maybe compete with that.

>They plied him with gifts such as a bottle of cognac and the Russian military uniform.

> he traveled to Russia one last time in 2010, emphasizing to his handlers that he wanted to pursue business there but that his handlers encouraged him to get a job with the American government.

Not much incentive for risking life and liberty here. And a bad advertisement for any would-be spys.

Reliance Jio is rumored to be purchasing TikTok’s operations in India as well. Seems even more complicated given Facebook and Google’s investments.

>“While the news about Microsoft’s potential acquisition of TikTok was a huge relief for its American users, it was received poorly on the Chinese internet, with many calling Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s founder and CEO, a ‘spineless traitor’ and a ‘despicable coward,’ among other insults.”

Seems like Weibo users are just as inflammatory and insufferable as Twitter users. Probably just as irrelevant too.

Why push axing it back until November 12th? Is it more likely someone lobbied President Trump for more negotiation time or is this an election play?

>But Apple — just as Sweeney seemed to expect — fell right into Epic's trap. It now has to find its own way out.

Weird framing. Like Apple doesn't have sources on the periphery of Epic or Cravath? People talk.

TikTok has been skating by the issue of sexualizing young girls because it’s operated by a foreign company. Once an American company like Microsoft owns it...I think the nation will have another moral panic leading to protections that will take away what made TikTok popular in the first place.

TikTok has become too top heavy with its current creators. Its most popular stars not only live together but have conglomerated to form their own talent agency as well.

You may not see it on your feed, but millions of middle schoolers seem to be highly invested in the drama that goes on between these people. These creators and their followers is what as known as “straight TikTok”.

What’s to stop them from demanding the big bucks from Microsoft or leaving for another platform?

Is this an attempt by ByteDance to retain control of the company?

Was this necessary? If it was really a national security threat he would have made the ban effective much sooner. Now it just looks like it’s part of a shakedown to give Microsoft or some other interested party more leverage.

How is Epic able to attract great talent when they’re headquartered in a small town in the middle of North Carolina? It’s a beautiful area with plenty of activities to enjoy outside of work but it seems pretty isolated from the rest of the tech world even for the East Coast.

Reels’ inclusion in Instagram makes the UI confusing for me. Right now it only feeds me three or four videos that are peppered in my discover feed when I scroll down so I have to swipe up to refresh for more videos:

https://imgur.com/a/jDtYbVP

Why not have a separate section dedicated to Reels content instead of having it interspersed with photos and regular video posts?

This gives a general idea of how the algorithm works:

https://www.veed.io/grow/reverse-engineering-how-tiktok-algo...

>At the time Musical.ly got renamed TikTok, it was still dominated by teen girls doing lip synch videos. Many U.S. teens at the time described TikTok as “cringey,” usually a kiss of death for networks looking to expand among youths, fickle as they are about what’s cool. Scrolling the app at the time felt like eavesdropping on the theater kids clique from high school. Entertaining, but hardly a mainstream entertainment staple.

TikTok devs mentioned PewDiePie reacting to these cringey videos as a large impact for the company. His massive gamer audience downloaded the app to make fun of the early TikTok users too and got sucked in. They started making memes instead of lip-sync videos and it took off from there.

One wonders how much wealthier Bezos would be if he had the same procedures done.

> Under ByteDance's new proposal, Microsoft, which also owns professional social media network LinkedIn, will be in charge of protecting all of TikTok's U.S. user data, the sources said. The plan allows for a U.S. company other than Microsoft to take over TikTok in the United States, the sources added.

Interesting. So Microsoft would (eventually) get cloud traffic and user data while the business gets managed by some sort of holding company?

Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory is wholly owned by Tesla.

The same reason why they bought Minecraft and tried Mixer: to acquire the next generation of technology consumers.

Apparently Microsoft is in talks to purchase TikTok:

https://twitter.com/cgasparino/status/1289254703705075722

Maybe not a major flop, but Facebook’s original TikTok competitor, Lasso, was shut down. They tried to go after the Musical.ly half of TikTok’s user base that likes dancing to music.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut...

It’s been reported Facebook has been offering exclusivity contracts to some of TikTok’s most followed personalities for its new competitor, Reels. It reminds me of Microsoft’s streaming platform giving millions to Ninja and Shroud only to close it down months later.

TikTok has been very good at focusing on new content discovery first when you open the app, making you swipe left to see the people you follow second—this is the opposite of Instagram. If Facebook does manage to pull people like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae to Reels and makes them more prominent, it would really be interesting to see two different philosophies compete against each other.

What’s the appeal of eating sugar free Haribo if they give you gas and diarrhea?

So either this Kirk worked at Twitter and went insane or he’s lying and gained access through a third party. Should be easy for the FBI to track him from Discord.

> Detectives believe that the motive for the killing stemmed from Mr. Saleh having discovered that the assistant had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from him, despite the fact that Mr. Saleh had not reported the man and had set up what amounted to a repayment plan for him to return the money, one of the officials said.

Wow, that’s really sad.

It appears Twitter has now prevented verified accounts from posting. Us schlubs can now run the asylum for a while.

It was likely after this incident:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41854482

I wonder if they have access to the accounts’ DMs too. Lots of juicy info potentially there.