And Donald Trump saying “We destroyed your business so we should get half of it” is a very scary precedent. You know that’s what the Israeli settlements do. The will burn the olive groves of neighboring land owners and then say, your land is worthless, sell it to us for a quarter of it’s original value. You are now in ruin you will need the cash. They will often do it in the night, but I saw video evidence once of an altercation where they were openly burning a farmer’s field in the day time right in front of him. But there was an IDF soldier ready to shoot the farmer if he tried to defend his fields physically. An entire family’s future going up in smoke because someone else wants a deal on buying land not by producing anything of value themselves but by destroying things.
In a lot of ways TikTok is an American company. To operate here it has to be structured and registered in the US. It just has foreign investment. If they can do it to TikTok (single out a company) they can do it to American companies. They just have to find some secondary reason to dislike you. Is Lemmy next if we say Free Palestine on here? All so that Israel can have their Labensraum.
But think about it. Even small companies will self-censor in fear that the government will act against them. Every company exists in hope of being big enough that they could have a target on their back. Yes lemmy operates at a scale that it can be considered a personal project and will likely stay at that scale. But that’s not the majority of social media. Maybe it was a bit of a joke on my part to say Lemmy would be targeted. But I don’t think it’s ridiculous that American business owners should think woah the government will intentionally wreck me and try to sell me off to their friends if there is some 100% legal and reasonable conversation on my platform they don’t like.
Either there are principles to protect you or there aren’t. The fact that we have a politician openly saying we attack companies to buy them cheap or ask for half should be pretty fucking scary to anyone who owns a business.
The Eastern European countries for a long time were said to lack economic development precisely because of corruption. This is exactly the kind of interaction with government that caused that. The idea that it doesn’t matter because they are big and I am not doesn’t work. In the long run small businesses will be more vulnerable if the principle doesn’t stand that the government can’t attack you and sell you off to their friends. If that principle is gone then it’s gone.