The timing isn't lost on anyone.

It comes just days after TikTok finalized a sale that gave a consortium of mostly American investors control of TikTok's business in the U.S, a deal that averted a nationwide ban of the app over national security concerns tied to its Chinese parent company.

Among the lead investors is tech firm Oracle, which is run by billionaire Larry Ellison. He's a close ally of President Trump, whose connection to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has plagued the administration for months.

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[–] 107 points 6 months ago

TikTok, tomorrow: "We found the issue that was causing some users to be blocked from sending the word 'Epstein'. Now all users are correctly blocked from sending the word 'Epstein'."

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  • [–] 69 points 6 months ago*

    Oh, look... Streisand is trending again.

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  • [–] 60 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    "We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing."

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  • [–] 23 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Just what I was thinking.

    No way is this a technical issue, they probably tried to fuck with the algorithm to reduce any Epstein related stuff as much as possible and messed it up so now it's glaringly obvious what they tried.

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  • [–] 46 points 6 months ago

    "Investigating"

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  • [+] 30 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 23 points 6 months ago
    [–] 11 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Compromised app.

    Time to delete.

    That is, if you prefer the government not being able to easily spy on you.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    People claim the Chinese government spied on Americans in TikTok. Like, that's probably true, but unlike America, China didn't have legal jurisdiction over Americans, and American interests couldn't censor anything. Obviously that couldn't stand.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Did everybody forget the time when TikTok sent a push notification to its users telling them to call their congresspersons? The issue has never been spying, the issue is manipulation. The US oligarchs couldn’t handle another country being able to pull the strings like that.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    I was genuinely unaware of this. What was it about?

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Stopping this whole sale of tic tok thing. Briefly.

    It seemed genuinely disconcerting to these people that youth were engaging in the political process by the officially sanctioned methods. After decades complaining about "apathetic youth".

    But that can't be used as a post hoc rationalization for the initiative it was trying to stop. Also, it didn't work did it. So the efficacy of this "manipulation" ability is rather questionable.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    It didn’t work because people getting calls from teenagers saying they would kill themselves if the ban went through made people more worried about it, not less. Not to mention that the calls overwhelmed the system at congress to the point that it went down.

    Rock the Vote has existed for decades, nobody cares about youth engaging through officially sanctioned methods.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago

    Everyone who never touched TikTok with a 10’ pole: what?

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  • [+] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
    [–] 6 points 6 months ago

    THAT'S IT I'M DELETING TIKTOK AND REINSTALLING FACEBOOK

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    "We totally investigated ourselves and ... "

    See Part 2

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago

    tryna figure out why any can

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    I'm sure it's totally an accident.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Maybe TikTok just isn't smart enough to get it?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago
    [–] 2 points 6 months ago*

    In Dutch, this is called a “wij van WC Eend”-moment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_Duck#Advertising_slogan)

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)