TikTok and Trump show that politics are center stage in 2025
TikTok must divest or shut down US operations in January, and tech execs travel to Mar a Lago and donate millions to Trump's inauguration fund.
While I worked at Google, the company invested heavily in lobbying infrastructure. Previously the company tried to be apolitical — or even above politics. But it turns out it’s better to influence people who write rules and allocate funds. So Google expanded their DC office and increased their efforts to expand their influence with politicians. They also explained to Googlers that Google needed to donate money to both Democratic and Republican candidates. It was more optimal for Google’s long-term survival for everyone to pinch their nose, since it gave Google allies during votes and influence over the language used in bills.
This made many Googlers unhappy. And that makes sense! Software has a fixed development cost and is effectively free to copy. When applied to the right problem, code has a tremendous quality-of-life impact, especially when summed across a population[0]. It can also enable the Torment Nexus to torment more effectively. Many engineers understand their code has impact, and feel strongly that this impact should be positive. So of course Googlers — or other employees of other companies — dislike when their employer uses revenue they helped generate, and donates it to their political rivals.
But ultimately, Google and other large companies need these lobbying efforts. Internet titans touch a huge surface area of online life. As the surface area increases, so does the “attack surface” of what bills can ruin. For example, many businesses rely on Section 230 for their operating models to work. Trump’s pick for FCC chair wants to eliminate Section 230. He’s not the only one.
So the year is 2024 and we are in what many call the Darkest Timeline. Trump’s incoming agency picks want to eliminate Section 230. Tech companies now have over a decade of experience in lobbying the government. So what do they do? They curry favor to their new boss, of course.
Donations have come from Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Meta. Tim Cook met with Trump at Mar a Lago, a trip also done by Sergei Brin and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet.
Others are getting even more directly involved than that! Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading up DOGE, an effort to slash government spending. Some Tech CEOs are also tripping over themselves to try to join “advisory councils” for AI and cryptocurrencies.
In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor With Trump
Marc Andreessen, an influential Silicon Valley venture capitalist who endorsed Mr. Trump during the campaign, said in a podcast interview this week that he had spent about half of his time since Election Day working on the presidential transition. He framed Mr. Trump’s win as a cultural moment for a “techno-optimist” ideology.
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Mr. Andreessen has joined tech executives such as Mark Pincus, who founded the gaming company Zynga, and David Marcus, a former Meta executive, at Mar-a-Lago to help staff the new administration and to work on reducing regulations in industries like A.I. and cryptocurrencies.
It’s not surprising; there is already blood in the water. TikTok must either divest or shut down their business within the United States by January 19th. They attempted to lobby an extension on their ban, and the extension was rejected.
US court rejects TikTok request to temporarily halt pending US ban
Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by Jan. 19. The law also gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans' data.
The U.S. Justice Department argues "continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security."
TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app's ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the U.S. on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect U.S. users are made in the United States.
This doesn’t only affect TikTok. Many creators rely on monetizing their TikTok account. For many businesses, TikTok marketing is their best-performing ad channel.
TikTok Ban Signed Into Law: What It Means For America's $15 Billion Small Business Economy
The impact of the TikTok Ban could be catastrophic for millions of users and businesses. According to TikTok Newsroom, small businesses using TikTok as a marketing tool stand to lose over $1 billion in revenue in just one month if the ban goes into effect. In comparison, creators could see nearly $300 million in earnings disappear. These numbers represent the livelihoods and communities TikTok creators have built.
So not only will this hurt ByteDance, it also torches billions of dollars in US revenue and hurt American small businesses. But since the government has its own policy goals that outweigh the concerns of those businesses, TikTok has just over a month remaining to operate in the United States.
If you’re a rank-and-file tech employee in one of these companies, and you are something like a Democratic voter or a never-Trump Republican, there’s not much that you can do about this. Lobbying is necessary for political survival. Trump is the incoming president. The money you helped earned is going into his pockets and he is taking the time and praise of your CEOs. Like the rest of your company, you’ll have to hold your nose and try to effect change on the parts of the company that you can control.
[0] This is really obvious if you ever run A/B tests for small changes. Tiny tweaks can cause millions of dollars to revenue to appear out of thin air. These are real transactions that never would have happened without the experiment.