> give it up in a heartbeat for a Western replacement.
It's important to recognized that it's not a coincidence that TikTok exists and is run by a Chinese company.
In the West that replacement would have been immediately purchased by FB or Twitter and then summarily destroyed. This is literally what happened to the closest Western equivalent: Vine.
The Chinese government has many faults, but unlike the US government, the Chinese government still enforces the idea that Chinese companies should operate in the interest of the nation.
Facebook did try to buy Musical.ly, the company that became TikTok, and would have likely destroyed it just like Twitter did Vine.
If the US government was remotely functional it would put a little effort into challenging the ability of near monopolies to simply destroy any competitor through acquisition. I agree that it's not ideal that the Chinese government is tightly connected with TikTok/ByteDance, but the reason there is no Western TikTok is because our governments (particularly the US) are so deeply aligned with the interests of larger corporations that a viable competitor to these cannot exist.
Besides "FB would have bought it," social media doesn't generally do "replacement." Nuanced differences in product lead to different products, because the "social" aspect is made of culture.
Any replacement for tiktok wouldn't be a replacement. It'd be a different product in the social media space. One way or another, a tiktok ban benefits FB, whether they build a competitor, buy it, or their existing products pick up tiktok's market share.
We are totally ill equipped to deal with modern monopolies. We weren't great at dealing with the old, monopolies. Now though, the laws, norms and political MOs are nearly irrelevant.
One trite example is prices. The default way to "prove" the effect of monopolies historically has been price. Prices don't exist in social media.
A deeper difference is the microeconomics. When Bell was being broken up, one big problem was creating viable component companies. If the courts screwed up and created failing child companies then telecommunications would be broken. This is a hard problem for a court, well outside their comfort zone. With social media the microeconomics is totally different. Even if FB disappeared, consumers would not lack for social media. The market is capable of replacing FB easily, all that's needed is for facebook to move aside. Commercial/profitability considerations are barely an issue.
It may be harder to monetize short video content than short text or longer videos (maybe that drives YouTube revenue nudges for longer content?).
But people like short videos, so there's a tension there. If you're in ads, maybe just buy a few short video companies, get their patents to sue their competitors, and shut them down, so no one gets access to the thing that they like but is less lucrative for you.
But maybe you're right and they would have followed an IG model just fine.
How can Twitter destroy the idea of Vine? Twitter can destroy Vine.co, but why is there no competitor with the same idea?
The moment they had shut down vine.co, a new site with the same idea could have gone life and absorbed all the users.
Why does this not happen? There are Facebook user groups, reddits and other social networks, even Twitter itself. A replacement for something that popular should be known instantly and take over without friction. Why does 'The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it' not work here?
>* a new site with the same idea could have gone life and absorbed all the users.*
But that did happen - it was called Musical.ly, which is now known as TikTok (US). I don't think people realize that the US version of TikTok was preceded by an app called Musical.ly, which was also Chinese owned, but failed in China but had massive success in the US.
> the Chinese government still enforces the idea that Chinese companies should operate in the interest of the nation.
In most cases, Chinese companies are basically owned and controlled by the state. This has nothing to do with monopoly or trust issues. Acquiring lines of credit in China after you get to a certain size basically means you're owned or partially owned by the CCP.
It's important to recognized that it's not a coincidence that TikTok exists and is run by a Chinese company.
In the West that replacement would have been immediately purchased by FB or Twitter and then summarily destroyed. This is literally what happened to the closest Western equivalent: Vine.
The Chinese government has many faults, but unlike the US government, the Chinese government still enforces the idea that Chinese companies should operate in the interest of the nation.
Facebook did try to buy Musical.ly, the company that became TikTok, and would have likely destroyed it just like Twitter did Vine.
If the US government was remotely functional it would put a little effort into challenging the ability of near monopolies to simply destroy any competitor through acquisition. I agree that it's not ideal that the Chinese government is tightly connected with TikTok/ByteDance, but the reason there is no Western TikTok is because our governments (particularly the US) are so deeply aligned with the interests of larger corporations that a viable competitor to these cannot exist.