The establishment of "Chinanet", such as Alibaba and Tencent, do pledge allegiance to (and are owned in part by) the party in name and action, in return they benefit from the protection and favorable policy it ensues.
I personally don't like ByteDance mainly due to its product philosophy of reducing users to mindless eyeballs (it's a general indifference to social consequences in China tho ), but can't
help but clarify that ByteDance isn't like those.
Having billion-dollar app killed by the party without recourse is just not a remote possibility for the Chinanet establishment, but it is a reality for ByteDance. This is not to say it's impervious to CCP influence, but the dynamics is more nuanced. Old comment:
>The CCP high officials don't really care about anyone but their own relatives and cronies, while your assumption is mostly right as in the cases like Alibaba and Tencent, ByteDance isn't exactly like them, it has a kind of autonomy and internationalization those companies wouldn't dare to dream of. ByteDance isn't as beholden to the party as those two since it's a startup capitalized on the app economy, it's growth is organic, didn't rely on government policies and protection.
>In fact ByteDance already has blockbuster app Neihan Duanzi killed by Chinese authorities overngiht.
> it's a general indifference to social consequences in China tho
Interesting parallel to learned helplessness. [1] (Note: not making a value judgement, just using the psychological terminology)
If (a) you are a company that exists in a state where the government can and does intervene at any time for purposes of social engineering, then (b) you would expect, over time, to develop a culture that deprioritizes considering social consequences, as (c) it's not something that's reliably in your control.
By taking a more active hand in private-social interactions, it would seem the CCP ironically makes those same companies care less about it proactively, and simply follow the letter of the law.
I personally don't like ByteDance mainly due to its product philosophy of reducing users to mindless eyeballs (it's a general indifference to social consequences in China tho ), but can't help but clarify that ByteDance isn't like those.
Having billion-dollar app killed by the party without recourse is just not a remote possibility for the Chinanet establishment, but it is a reality for ByteDance. This is not to say it's impervious to CCP influence, but the dynamics is more nuanced. Old comment:
>The CCP high officials don't really care about anyone but their own relatives and cronies, while your assumption is mostly right as in the cases like Alibaba and Tencent, ByteDance isn't exactly like them, it has a kind of autonomy and internationalization those companies wouldn't dare to dream of. ByteDance isn't as beholden to the party as those two since it's a startup capitalized on the app economy, it's growth is organic, didn't rely on government policies and protection. >In fact ByteDance already has blockbuster app Neihan Duanzi killed by Chinese authorities overngiht.