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I cannot decide what to support here. On one hand, Tiktok is a blight and a cancer upon the whole world. But on the other hand, I’m kind of a libertarian, anyone should be able to do what they like.
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Excellent
Cheering on censorship and protectionism, the American chauvinist way
Obviously being on Lemmy you get people who support open access. But seeing the state of the average American, and the results of their latest election, maybe it’s time for big brother to step in a little bit…
If that’s the logic, explain why meta and google still exist.
… They said the populous of Lemmy was more scrutinizing of privacy than other platforms. He never said anything about the people using meta or Google. I’m not sure people here are even reading what others are saying.
To me it comes like this. If China won’t allow a Chinese owned app to be used in China, it gives other countries reason to worry about it. Meta and Google can be controlled by the U.S. government and are allowed within the nation they are owned in.
Is it a good thing they collect so much data, no. But this law has nothing to do with privacy, and everything to do with the flow of usable data and who controls that.
Yeah, full support for the Trump administration to have the power to say which social media is acceptable, that’ll fix everything! /s
It’s not “censorship” to ban a product like TikTok any more than it’s censorship to ban any other product. TikTok had the opportunity to sell to an American company (the same way all products on the Chinese market are forced to go through Chinese companies) and, for reasons that only they can explain, they chose not to do that. They would have made billions of dollars selling, but perhaps money isn’t their primary concern…
At any rate, we absolutely need to have a separate conversation about all social media in terms of privacy and data rights (though it’ll never happen under Republicans), but that doesn’t mean TikTok is free to continue being a completely opaque and unaccountable backdoor to the Chinese government.
Good riddance, vertical videos are cancer, short form obliterates attention spans, and their algorithm is engineered specifically to addict people, especially kids.
Now to ban all the rest of them. Let’s start with Facebook. Twitter is already killing itself but could stand to be “helped” off the cliff.
I think even people who use facebook know its a bad thing.
Depends what you use it for.
I joined Facebook when it first came out, when it was still only for Uni students, used it for many years and stopped probably about 8-10 years ago now. Fuck, how long has it been around for?
Anyway, I’ve recently rediscovered Facebook as I bought an old muscle car and I’ve been enjoying the groups and marketplace for parts.
Anyway, just a thought from an old Facebook user.
Is facebook marketplace competing with Craigslist or is Craigslist dead?
At least where I’m at, Craigslist is absolutely dead. Marketplace actually has consistent new listings.
Sorta rough facebook is the avenue for that nowadays. Sorta like if public libraries were located inside walmarts or something.
Yeaaaaah I hate it.
I am rubbing my nipples in anticipation of the FLOOD of pissed off teenagers who don’t know how to human without sharing their dances now.
…can someone explain the point of overlaying closed captions over the center of the video, but one word at a time fast paced?
I don’t understand it either but it’s a product of how people consume the videos in their upright depression rectangles in public places with no volume I’d imagine.
I’m on the spectrum. I can process reading way, WAY faster than I can process someone just audibly speaking to me. That shit’s actually helpful. I admit, it doesn’t need to be in the center of the video though.
Actually captions like that can help you read faster. I’ve seen speed reading training things like that.
Ok, but how is it helpful for the general population?
They’re not the target audience.
So who is it for? This is everywhere. It’s in YT shorts, Instagram posts, etc. As a style, it’s getting pretty ubiquitous, and I don’t understand the reason for it. At best it’s annoying because if I look away for a split second, I’ll miss a couple words and it won’t make sense anymore.
Shit site, but not a legal precedent we want to be setting.
Fuck tik tok though. CCP propaganda
Yup, I only want to see American social media! Because it has no propaganda!
It’s less about that and more about stopping an extremely powerful attack vector currently active in your own country.
Literally the biggest reason why the western world is in such a giant political crisis is the weaponization of social media.
100%
Social media 15 years ago: cat pics and friends.
Social media today: shit you didn’t subscribe to, but shows up anyway to push wedge issues in to things you enjoy.
had youtube open in a new private window on a vpn connection the other day after clicking a link to a video about the new raspberry pi compute module
was scrolling down thru one of the top comment threads and noticed, sandwiched between relevant tech videos on the right? some talking head, designed to enrage (as opposed to inform) fox news video about nothing related.
I think Im just done with youtube for the forseeable future. if your profit model requires inducing engagement like that, your product isnt good enough to stand on its own, and/or you’re ok with being shitty to make more money. either way, I want nothing to do with you at that point.
Yeah, kinda miss that era. Luckily Lemmy emulates kinda well, just wish that there were more proper old school forums for nich but large communities like NCD or Rimworld.
The biggest problem is them doing illegal shit like scanning all your photos instead of just what you pick
This week on How to Raise an Entire Generation With an Intimate Knowledge of Counter-Surveillance: Ban Their Favourite Social Media!
This week on the Effectiveness of Foreign Influence Campaigns on Impressionable Youths: Young people refuse to even consider that TikTok might be bad.
That is true for all social media. Everything is being used for disinformation campaigns, that is not why TikTok is being banned.
Yeah but the others are US companies. They can be regulated. Which they don’t want and they will at least make an effort to get rid of at least the obvious disinformation.
With TikTok, there is no middle ground. Can’t keep them in line with the threat of regulation as they’re a foreign company. Operating in the country that has superseded Russia as the biggest source of disinformation. The only leverage they have is the threat to ban it outright.
Besides, Zuckerberg and Musk live in the US. They don’t want things to get too bad. Though they’re so disconnected from reality they may inadvertently make things bad. But they at least have an incentive to not have the US go to shit.
With TikTok, US cities could burn to the ground and they’ll still be fine. And we see TikTok making people particularly unhinged already.
Next week on effectiveness of foreign influence campaigns: muricans don’t spy on me. Except when they do it’s for my own good and protection. Except if it’s not for my own good it’s important to sell my data so they keep running. Except when they accept state agents to buy ad in bulk to influence elections
I’m sorry, which part of your comment do you suppose relates to me?
The fuck is the point of banning tiktok if the Chinese government already hacked our entire communication network lol
to suppress video coming from Gaza and Lebanon? just a guess; but I’d imagine that’s at least a part of it.
Because when US politicians advocate for a single, global market, and a single, global internet, it is with the understanding that US firms and allied parties will dominate the space anyway. When that is no longer the case they get about as nervous as the Chinese got when they went and built the Great Firewall and made a clone of every popular western platform. Now that US/Western dominance is seriously challenged, we are seeing more and more signs of protectionism.
That and labor organizing, environmental awareness, and many other things where the absence helps the rich get wealthier .
It’s also just a blatant theft; there is a lot of money to be made here however it goes down , and that money goes to connected arseholes
It also broadcasts propaganda disproportionately highly and harmful ideologies as much as that little list of yours.
On its face the platform itself is neither good nor bad, but the massive theft of identifying information, photos, and personal conversations leading to increasingly common hacking and theft from Chinese sources tips the scales a bit.
They aren’t banning it because China can see what you put on it, they’re banning it because China can control what you see from it.
Except there’s no evidence of that.
There’s no evidence that China can control what’s shown on a China-owned app?
In case you’re still unaware, the China govt is the ultimate authority within China, even in private companies. More so after recent crackdowns on their oligarchs and billionaires. The idea that they have no control over tiktok is plain laughable.
TikTok has gone out of their way to show they’ve siloed American operations. There has been no evidence that the Chinese government could or would breach that.
So you’re arguing that TikTok US, despite being fully owned and controlled by China, has full independence and decision making capability? Even regular western companies don’t have that. What the home office says, goes. At most, their American operations are making sure they’re abiding by US law with regards to data and such (and even then I’d highly doubt that, given all the forensic breakdowns about TikTok sending encrypted data to China).
If it sends encrypted data to China it would be the first I’ve heard of it. The worst the news could come up with last time is headcount data. And yes they went on an entire project to silo it. At the end of the day they want the money, and TikTok shop provides it. Other than that they sell the same info Meta does on the open market.
If it sends encrypted data to China it would be the first I’ve heard of it.
No shit. Do you think they would tell everyone? Do you think it would be easy to prove?
I really don’t think China is nearly as interested in siphoning data as controlling the algorithm. Getting people to see more pro-Chinese videos, more anti-US videos, and some bias toward candidates they want to see win is completely doable without exfiltrating any data.
Basically, all the stuff people are pissed about Musk doing to Twitter (changing algo to push right wing content) are just as feasible for TikTok to do, with the main difference being China is a state actor, whereas Musk is a private billionaire.
We should be very worried about any social media app that’s very popular and controlled by an org with political motivations.
Except for the extremely obvious disparity between chinese tiktok and american tiktok.
Nothing at all.
So are you saying they run the algorithm in their country? On their internal mirror app? The exact same setup TikTok offered the US?
I don’t see how that’s the evidence you’re looking for.
https://nypost.com/2023/02/25/china-is-hurting-us-kids-with-tiktok-but-protecting-its-own/
It’s extremely well documented that TikTok offers extremely different experiences within China than it does elsewhere.
I’m just a bystander, China sucks, but referencing a NY Post opinion piece feels a bit like using a Fox News segment as a source. They’re pretty trash.
Banning TikTok would actually help the Democrats though, so it will probably be reversed
Left vs Right is a distraction.
The fight for a better life is Top vs Bottom.
Theater.
Cybersec is hard. There are always more holes. China exports a LOT of stuff with holes. We can do little more than stick our fingers in the dyke. This looks like they’re doing something.
What they’re not going to expect is how much people hate them for taking their entertainment away.
China already doesn’t control US TikTok servers.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/
Could I interest you in a bridge?
What are you suggesting? That Congress didn’t force TikTok to hand over control is US servers years ago? You didn’t see it in the news at the time, or you just don’t believe it?
Or do you think China has been censoring on behalf of the state dept?
I think they still get all the data of what goes off the servers, and I think that the Chinese side of the company still has ultimate control over what gets displayed.
The servers being in the US means that the Chinese government doesn’t have to have access to the servers but it doesn’t mean that they still don’t have the equivalent situation silently going on.
I really don’t care if China gets my data. They don’t have any jurisdiction over me. I’m concerned about domestic surveillance.
Short videos are dumb. Are people really that addicted? I have it and go on it sometimes. And by sometimes I mean like 10 minutes per week. The videos are OK at best, but half of them are ads or live weird shit and the search function for relevant topics are trash.
Yes with the attention span of a ground squirrel.
Why do you think they all talk vast with stupid ADHD inducing shit on one side. (Minecraft parkour, GTA V driving or subway surfers)
Because people will scroll away if you don’t jingle keys in front of them
I stay the f away from it. You haven’t spent enough time to properly train it. As you watch, it tracks time spent on each video, interactions, passive and active choices and slowly builds a dossier on you.
As you keep going, it occasionally throws adjacent stuff in. It starts tossing you stuff that other people with your likes watch. If there is content on there that you’ll appreciate, it will eventually find it. If there is enough, it’ll stream it to you non-stop.
They’ll find people who share your political alignment and say precisely what you want to hear. If you like brunettes with flowy blouses or redheads who are gym rats, you’ll get them. If you like skeptics or preppers, you’ll get them.
My wife gets a lot of her news from it, I find probably 1/3 of it to be suspect and 90% of it biased toward what she wants to hear. Nothing there is telling both sides of any story. (to be clear we have the same political/ethical views, but I’m a touch more skeptical about journalism and random influencers, especially popular influencers)
My wife gets a lot of her news
Wow, that’s scary. I’m guessing a surprising number of people do this as well.
For my wife, it never occurred to her that she could trust tiktok influencers far less than even corporate journalists. They have to ethical requirements on tiktok, no verified sources or corrections or redactions, or any accountability at all.
I had to point that out over multiple videos, although to be fair some of the people on there do put up a front like they are legit to trick people into taking them seriously.
The same nonsense happens on YouTube and Instagram. Just look at the motivations, these “content creators” get paid via ads (so views) and corporate sponsors, so they don’t get rewarded for truth, they get rewarded for saying things their spomsors and viewers like.
I’m not saying they’re intentionally misleading people, but journalism is hard and clickbait and copycat “journalism” is easy, so they’ll tend to do more of the latter.
I think its the mentality in america of, “whatever I need to do to get ‘mine’ is good”.
Theres a reason people ask “was it worth it” about nearly everything here. I dont know how to convince people theyd be happier if greed didnt drive their values.
Why is it shocking that people hear about topics through social media? Seriously? Why? I heard about the UHC shooter through TikTok. And it’s not necessarily just memes, there are “real” news accounts on TikTok. The same way I hear about new on Lemmy because people post links to stories. Like the literal platform and thread we are currently discussing.
It’s not shocking that they hear about news through social media, it’s shocking that people trust it anywhere near as much as traditional journalism.
There’s no incentive for someone on social media to fact check or tell any more of the story than will get them views.
Actually tiktok is not just china, its the soviet union too, used by putin’s services…
Incorrect. Control of US TikTok servers was handed over years ago. The State Department has been actively censoring content on the platform, but I guess they’re having trouble keeping up.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/
Yeah, handed over formally 😉
I get it, but also can you imagine a foreign country banning Amazon because “it means the US can see what you’re up to and it gets to choose what deals to push at you” etc?
I mean… Facebook for god’s sake…
Being protectionist makes sense sometimes but it screws you over when other countries start banning your apps in favour of home grown alternatives…
The People’s Republic of China has banned Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc). Brazil has banned Twitter and the European Union is considering it.
China has banned practically all US social media sites, not just Meta-owned properties. A bunch of other sites are blocked too.
China generally wants major internet services to have servers in China itself, similar to how the EU wants citizens’ data to remain in the EU. In order to operate servers located in China, you need to get a license from the Chinese government (ICP license). Large sites that don’t do this tend to get banned by the Great Firewall.
Ah well that makes sense then
Brazil banned Twitter because Musk thought he could just ignore their laws.
The was hilarious 😄
Well, TikTok refused to abide by the law saying they had to be sold to a US company, which is why they’re being banned, so it’s technically the same situation, if for different reasons.
Not really, Brazil’s demand was to stop spreading seditious material and to engage with their court system.
The American law is to bar them from the market. Reducing that to “follow the law” is a bit disingenuous.
Uh, there are several countries that ban Amazon. And amusingly, the EU Parliament has also banned their employees from entering the building.
I cannot decide what to support here. On one hand, Tiktok is a blight and a cancer upon the whole world. But on the other hand, I’m kind of a libertarian, anyone should be able to do what they like.
Trump said he’ll unban it, if he does that’ll be the one brightside of the new admin
Your instance is the same kind of malignant cancer as TikTok.
^ Imagine being this mad about TikTok. This is another reason why libs lost the election.
Ugh wah wah wah
The security and privacy of hundreds of millions of people being penetrated to the benefit of a massive hostile dictatorship!
I’m so angwy! How dare an actual militaristic attack on the USA be allowed?! RRRrrgh!
ugh liberals are insufferable.
A bit of a self-report to note the opponents to the platform hold a stance of personal liberties and freedoms, which you oppose as a user of said platform.
I didn’t say you were wrong, I said you’re insufferable.
This is only great news if you are Mark Zuckerberg and you want a near-monopoly on social media.
You are aware that no western social media is allowed in China, are you not?
Fighting tryanny with tryanny isn’t the answer.
It’s been the answer in international trade for the last 1000 years.
TikTok could have sold to an American company (read: a company that we can hold legally accountable for bad things that their product does) and made billions of dollars in the process. They chose not to, for some reason, and thus knowingly opted to face a ban in the United States. Those were the options and they knew it.
As I understand it American companies doing business in China almost always have to go through a Chinese company in order to operate legally and make products available to the Chinese market. Platforms like Facebook are already banned in China and must be accessed through a VPN because they don’t play ball with the Chinese regime, so why should it not be reciprocal?
Until TikTok is being managed and operated by a company that can be held legally accountable here in America, they are nothing but a security threat and a backdoor for the Chinese government into every cell phone of every person who is dumb enough to install that shit. Is that what the people want to hear? Probably not, but it’s the truth.
I wouldn’t install TikTok on my phone any sooner than I’d install RedStarOS on my PC, because the implications of using a proprietary, closed source application with ties to the Chinese regime should be fucking obvious to anyone with bare minimum technical knowledge. Likewise, I wouldn’t blame a Chinese person for being skeptical of Microsoft Windows or X.com for their close relationship with the American government. To think otherwise is just not smart.
ITT: Braindeads defending government censorship of the internet as if Zuckerberg won’t immediately replace the void with his own platform or by buying out TikTok in a bid.
Banning one platform would not magically get rid of short attention span and brainrot you fools. Every social media company already copied or utilizes the same techniques as TikTok, which is already a massive platform because they don’t spam ban or regulate content as hard as Facebook and YouTube do.
It is insulting that a Chinese run social media platform provides more freedom of speech online than its US competitors.
They’re banning it to remove competition, congress does not care about its effects on privacy or health, otherwise they’d have done something about Faceebook, Insta, Twiiter, and YouTube decades ago. They pulled their usual committee shenanigans to pretend to care by calling in CEOs to testify, and then promptly accepting a shitload of lobbying money.
Absolutely none of this law was ever about privacy or mental health. No one ever claimed it was. The law is banning tiktok because it is based in China. That is the reason given by the law itself. The possibility that meta or Google or some other American company will buy or replace tiktok and operate the same way is not an unintended outcome. It is literally the whole point of the law to get bytedance to sell tiktok to an American company.
Hence them saying it’s braindead to say otherwise.
What would be interesting to see is if other countries ban Facebook because it’s a “national security risk” lol.
Banning one platform would not magically get rid of short attention span and brainrot you fools.
Ah yes, the old “Taking this action won’t solve all of the problems therefore we should do nothing” argument.
Agree on this except I have doubts that this statement is true
It is insulting that a Chinese run social media platform provides more freedom of speech online than its US competitors.
Isn’t this the one where people started saying “g*y” because there’s only one sexuality and Taiwan doesn’t exist?
You think the communist party of China will allow western billionaires to buy one of their asymmetrical psyops weapon systems? Ha!
Honestly, I don’t see any downsides to this. Tiktok and Instagram are horrible platforms that are actively hurting, and in some cases killing, young teens. Sure, they did it for propaganda reasons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a net positive.
For me the downside is the precedent it sets. Yes, most of us agree getting rid of TikTok is a good thing, but how long until they start banning other sites “for the children”? How long until they target federated sites they can’t control “for the children”?
To top it off, it doesn’t solve the data harvesting problem their so scared of with TikTok. They only care about that one because the data is going to China. Instagram and others can stay because they are American companies spying on citizens.
I understand your argument, and I don’t disagree with it. Nor do I agree with the absolutely ridiculous reasons the government has given for the ban. It’s the end result that doesn’t bother me.
As for federated sites, they aren’t as threatened as you might think. Sure, the government could shut some of them down if they tried. But that’s only true for those that are hosted and ran by people in jurisdictions that the US government can affect. That’s the strength of federation. Not only can platforms like Lemmy not turn out like Twitter, since you can defederate from instances that allow things like white supremacy, effectively purging those types of people from the fediverse at large, the decentralized nature of the system means that there’s no practical way for any one government to take down the entire ecosystem. A good example of governments trying to take down something they collectively hate, is piracy. Even united behind the cause of capitalism, and with the billions of dollars of the recording and motion picture industries behind them, nations across the world have not had great success in stopping piracy of any kind, mostly due to the patchwork nature of takedowns. I don’t have any fear that the US government would be any more effective in tackling federated platforms.
I would go so far as to say that federated sites are the only social media people should be using, because it’s much easier to control things like disinformation, since the power in adjusting the flow of information isn’t centralized to one group with one agenda. Some would say that just creates an echo chamber, and for some instances that’s true. But unless those admins defederate from everyone, their users are going to be exposed to viewpoints that disturb that echo chamber, from places they don’t have power to control.
Please enlighten me to how Tiktok is killing teens.
If you are actually serious about asking, then I’m sure you can find no shortage of articles interviewing doctors regarding the perils of social media on young minds, or news reports linking dozens of teen suicides to the network. That’s a rabbit hole that’s deep enough that some psychologists have dedicated their entire careers to studying it. The problem isn’t unique to TikTok, it just happens to be one of the worst offenders, considering how popular the short video format is, compared to something like Twitter.
I feel like, judging from the tone of your comment, that you’re not really interested in knowing, so I’m not going to bother linking you anything.
News reports and interviews aren’t exactly peer reviewed science?
Listen, we both know your mind is made up. You’re not actually interested in the science. Let’s not pretend you are, or that you’re open to changing your mind on the matter.
Now, I’m not saying you have to admit you just desperately want TikTok to keep being a thing. I’m not saying that, because I don’t have the patience to sit here and waste time arguing with you, so I’m going to block you immediately after writing this. That way, I don’t have to listen to you move the goalposts, and you can get back to doomscrolling through dance videos. We both save time.
Don’t bother replying.
My eyes rolled out of my head reading this. Take a massive chill pill. Holy shit.
You commented on a thread you weren’t a part of, just to tell me you rolled your eyes.
Thanks for that valuable contribution, but you don’t need to let me know when your body does something.
Eating tide pods? Stealing Kia cars? Other silly trends that are deadly too
Tide pod trend was long before TikTok, these types of trends have existed for decades now.
I hope that Europe will follow soon.
Yeah, normally I would say fuck the government, but in this case it’s exactly the same as the people who got pissy about Juul getting in trouble for targeting children. I’m all for “freedom to choose”, as long as whatever it is you’re choosing isn’t directly targeting kids with something that has an actively detrimental effect on their health, and that’s being tracked as an emergent medical problem by psychiatrists around the world.
the law doesn’t protect kids tho, everybody who supports this law has to rant about how bad social media is but at the end of the day the law is only about foreign companies. It just says instagram has the right to do all the same shit as tiktok and the only problem the gov has with tiktok is its not US owned.
News Flash: If you gotta lie about what the law is for to justify it, you’re part of the misinformation problem.
I didn’t lie, I specifically stated they weren’t doing it for altruistic reasons. But the why isn’t what’s important to me. If them being shitty is a net positive, then I don’t really give a shit.
You don’t see any downside to the government banning a platform people use for communication? That doesn’t sound like a problem of overreach at all?
Also, you know other platforms are just gonna take its place. Reels and Shorts will still exist. Depending on how the sell goes, it’s possible TikTok itself won’t go away and might be unchanged as far as users are concerned.
I don’t get why people like you are being dishonest. Just admit you like TikTok and don’t want it to go. You don’t need to frame it as a supposed free speech issue, I would respect your option more if you were honest.
Either way, I don’t feel like hearing more about your body, so I’m blocking you too.
