Israeli-Aligned Billionaires Seize TikTok in Battle for U.S. Narrative Control \ stacker news ~news

Quietly, I observe as mainstream media/information channels continue getting gobbled up by the largest individual donor to a murderous regime in the ME.

Is this normal?

I guess we just keep stacking

The White House has announced that the forced sale of TikTok will be finalized this week. The new ownership led by Larry Ellison - the largest individual donor to the IDF - will take control of U.S. user data and the algorithm which the White House says will be "retrained".

Ellison, who made his fortune developing Oracle - a database system he originally built for the CIA - already controls CBS, Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central, Showtime, Nickelodeon (which makes kids shows) as well as Channel 10 in Australia and Channel 5 in the UK. Ellison is also expected to finalize control over Warner Bros. Discovery (including CNN, HBO and the Discovery channel) before the end of 2025.

[...]

Will the EU and other U.S. allies align with the “Israelified” TikTok algorithm, or attempt to create a politicised alternative of their own?
Decentralised alternatives like Keet and Nostr offer strong resistance to censorship but are still young. Larger platforms like Telegram and Rednote carry serious risks of censorship, including eventual sell-off to other interests. For users the sweet spot may be to use both. One for political reliability, the others for a (politically temporary) audience.

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 27 Sep

Makes sense. TikTok was the main vehicle for countering Israeli propaganda, so it had to be converted into a vehicle for spreading Israeli propaganda.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @billytheked OP 27 Sep

There's something particularly dystopian about the phraseology, "the algorithm... will be "retrained,"" (to which ends i think is obviously propagandistic, as you pointed out) like there's been a gradual blurring of the line between computer and social enengineering (or, otherwise the line was never very distinct in the first place.)