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.
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.
I just use it to find shitty $50 flat screen televisions when the next one dies. Works a treat.
Agreed. Much of my family is on it, and most of them live in other countries. My brother, who is ASD, prefers to communicate with it rather than text or phone, and I live at least an hour’s drive from any friends. I use it to talk to them and I have joined a handful of groups, most of which I don’t post in, I just lurk.
I also tell them I don’t want to see any ads of any type of thing except the narrow number of things I don’t give a shit about if I see an ad for. Lots of telling them “I don’t want to see ads of this type” for a while, but it’s not anywhere near as bad now.
I did discover recently that if you go to “feeds” rather than just look at the main scroll, you see a lot less bullshit.
As a video editor, let me tell you how much I hate that not only do people watch shitty vertical videos all the time, but I’ve had to learn how to edit the fucking things.
I hate vertical video on a professional level.
That’s not just a TikTok thing though.
Why would America ban Facebook for being a “national security threat” to America lmao? Nothing about this had to do with protecting kids or the dangers of social media. Don’t act like it did.
These bans are bad. All it takes is for the US to think the fediverse is a threat and this goes too. You clearly don’t like the platform and that’s okay, but don’t root for government censorship on the internet.
The only reason this is bannable is that it is owned by china essentially; based on national security grounds. As long as the fediverse is never sold to an enemy nation, there’s nothing to worry about.
Sounds very much like you’re telling me that if I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear.
The US has control of US tiktok servers. This is bannable because politicians want the power to control social media.
Not true. That’s why the banning has a clause allowing for the sale of the US portion to a US (or other allied) company.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/tech/tiktok-user-data-oracle/index.html Definitely, definitely correct. A company that’s owned by a foreign nation shouldn’t be a problem. And if you think that this doesn’t set a precedent for banning anything politicians don’t like, then I feel sorry for your naivety.
There’s no national security basis to ban social media from the US or a friendly country. It would be protected by the first amendment otherwise. They have actual evidence that China was using TikTok as electronic warfare, which is the only reason they can ban it.
I’m baffled by your blind faith in politicians. There’s been clear foreign influence on just about every major social media platform.
Yeah, I’m all for Australia style banning to kids, however that gets implemented, but this is slippery slope and all that. But hey, maybe not, maybe it’s the only time they do it.
Wouldn’t that be nice, if the powers that be didn’t grab for more power lol
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.
Are you implying we should firewall free internet like china?
No. I’m implying that in general, international trade works by shared openness or shared closeness. If one country or economic region an import tax on something, the reciprocal thing is likely to be taxed by the opposite partner.
I was responding to someone saying “oh this just creates a monopoly for Zucks” when in fact the Chinese social companies have a monopoly in China (an ENORMOUS market) because our products are blocked over there.
So what we are doing is in line with the norm in international trade.
Is anyone else besides China doing this? Cannot really call it international norm if 1 country is doing this.
I don’t think I’ve explained my point very well, or you’ve misunderstood what I’ve said.
My point is all international relationship is tit for tat. Since China chose to block western social media, it’s not unreasonable for the west to block Chinese social media.
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.
Now the horses are completely out of the stables, we close the door before the cows get any ideas
The ban will not stand up and, because he had no core principles and is an opportunistic scoundrel, when this fails inevitably, trump will folly shift position and reframe/embrace the failure as deliberate action he took to “give tiktok back to the young people”. He’ll then do his double jerk off dance on the white house account and cement another couple decades of loyalty from the underinformed gen zers who will make up the bulk mass of humanity that officially drives us into full “ouch my balls” idiocracy
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.
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.
You think the communist party of China will allow western billionaires to buy one of their asymmetrical psyops weapon systems? Ha!
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.
From China’s perspective, Facebook probably IS a “national security risk”, which is why it is already banned over there.
For American to do business and sell products in China, they almost always have to go through a Chinese company. I’m sure that’s part capitalism and part accountability theater, but it’s just a fact. So why is it such an outrage for America to ask TikTok to do the same?
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.
Yeah tiktok is the reason we have words like unalive, I wouldnt call it freedom of speech just incompetent moderation.
Words like “unalive” are a form of doublespeak just to get around the restrictions, it’s silly.
I have to admit, it’s a bit bizarre seeing so many comments holding up TikTok as if it’s a free speech bastion away from western-run social media companies.
Isn’t this the one where people started saying “g*y” because there’s only one sexuality and Taiwan doesn’t exist?
Competitor lobbying doesn’t even enter into it, I’d guess.
The US State Department won’t tolerate Americans being exposed to media that doesn’t adhere to its view of the world. What large groups of Americans think - and vitally, the bounds of what they are permitted to think - is a national security ‘issue’ in the eyes of the state. No such problem exists with Facebook, cable news, the establishment newspapers, etc. As Chomsky teaches, propaganda is equally about what isn’t in the news.
stupid rule that helped cost Harris the election. Fuck every moron that voted for 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?
Or why the video is of minecraft gameplay that’s entirely unrelated to the voice over and captions?
I think that’s to keep you occupied to force you to listen to the shitty voiceover that you’d normally skip. Or I guess the opposite?
Because it wouldn’t be a video if it just had audio
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?
So you can doom scroll faster… duh!
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.
Well. A good assumption in life is if something is popular, and you don’t get it, it’s not for you so don’t worry.
People like weird shit.
I personally find that words on screen keeps my attention. But it annoys me if the thing I’m watching isn’t worth my attention. So it’s 50/50.
OK boomer.
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.
Yeah, removing the headphone jack and jacking up the price for Bluetooth headphones will do that…
The one word at a time thing is a way to demand more of your attention. It’s just a side path of the old advertising stick where words would ‘pop’ in weird ways. See this video for an example.
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.
It also shouldn’t be one word at a time imo
I guess, but as someone who’se functionally deaf, I’ll just always be grateful for subtitles.
Beats 80% of other content.
…the same shit is on Facebook.
The same exact mindless drivel bullshit.
They don’t care what the content or format is, just who owns it, and where the data is flowing. They want the data flowing into the U.S. and sold out. Rather than into China and sold out. That’s all it is.
Well this is going to go extremely poorly.
Imagine if this was what make kids choose Android over iOS.
.apk goes brrrrr
Even with APK, it wouldn’t work if traffic itself is blocked.
VPN time
No. The app will be removed from the store and just stop working once they block traffic
The fuck is the point of banning tiktok if the Chinese government already hacked our entire communication network lol
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.
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.
That 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.Sure, I’m just saying that Republicans are taking over and they rely on the disinformation machine to have a chance to get elected so banning TikTok goes against their interests.
They already have a massive disinformation machine across every medium.
Are we still supposed to be on this shithole’s side or something?
I don’t care about winning the global economy. Do you? Does anyone who isn’t a sociopath that would. Drown a thousand babies for another nickel of quarterly earnings?
The nords are quite happy without playing herp derp growth or die.
Uh reply to the wrong comment?
Except there’s no evidence of that.
Inversely, they’re banning it because the US cannot control what is posted on it— regardless of whether the central party in China can (they can and they do though so I am not sure why you’re debating it).
Really? Then you can point to the news article that lays out evidence of that actually happening and not just quoting FUD?
What the government wants out of this is to make an example. Then whenever they want something from Meta, Google, Apple, X, etc, they’re going to remind them of TikTok while pointing to the third section of the definition for foreign control. The catch all that says the app can be considered foreign if the government claims the owner has been unduly influenced by a foreign entity.
Meta is already a willing partner of the USSD, they don’t need to ‘make an example’.
SD?
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.
And yes they went on an entire project to silo it
So? It doesn’t matter what internal bureaucratic sleight of hand they pull. The bosses are in the CCP, and when they say ‘jump’, the answer is going to be ‘how high?’. That’s how private companies work.
At the end of the day they want the money
TikTok wants money. The CCP wants other stuff. As long as the CCP isn’t making demands, TikTok will make their money. The moment the CCP says to do something, TikTok will do it.
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.
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?
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.
Of course it does, and for two major reasons:
- Chinese law is very different from American law
- China’s domestic propaganda interests are quite different than it’s international propaganda interests
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.
There’s individual sources for practically every paragraph in that article, so I’m not seeing the issue in this case.
OK, so lets say they moderated it the same way here as they did in China… All good now?
I don’t think it matters at all how tiktok is actually being managed or moderated in the US - Americans simply do not trust anything Chinese.
The cold war never ended.
By moderating, if you mean using the same algorithm for the content feed, it would make a significant difference to a lot of people I believe.
Because it’s bad if China has the information. It’s fine if “US entity” had the information. The ban is ultimately fake. No one banning the app cares about TikTok, they just hate that China is getting the information they want. What will happen is some US based company, Oracle last time, but someone like that will buy a sufficient enough stake in the company and the ban will not happen. It will be declared “safe” and the data will go to a US controlled entity, but also still secretly to China. (The later will be revealed years later, to the shock of no one.)
They already have a condition of “sell to an American entity or shut it down”
In other news you can’t shit in the street anymore either.
That implies that social media is going to be banned; it isn’t. The only thing this ban does is punish Tiktok for allowing content that revealed Israel’s genocide.
The thing about freedom of speech is that we are only allowed speech that doesn’t threaten the interests of the oligarchs. If any speech creates a real movement that threatens the oligarchy then the government takes swift action against it (hence outlawing socialism during the red scare)
Sign up for https://loops.video — the fediverse alternative
the issue with loops is there’s no algorithm. so I get 10 random videos that don’t interest me and just one that does, almost.
that’s not going to work long term for engagement. i already get bored on loops after like a minute.
that…sounds super healthy? where’s the downside? lol
healthy? what do you mean by healthy. healthy for whom? the life of the app itself? because it won’t survive without dedicated users.
if there is no algorithm to keep track of what users want to see vs don’t want to see, they’ll stop using the app in favor of apps that cater to their interests.
watching a random video of something I’m not interested in isn’t particularly all that fun.
if an app learns I like anime and video games or specific types of content, then I’m more likely to use the app.
Though they’ve announced plans to do so, Loops is not yet federated. It’s presently still a closed site and not part of the Fediverse.
“We got rid of the brain cancer. Here, have leukemia instead”
The way I see this is that it’s not TikTok that’s the issue. It’s short form videos.
How much more ADHD can I really get at this point ?
My kids have to be forced to watch anything longer than about 10 minutes. Movie night! one and a half hours? that soooo lonnnng.
Short-form vertical video social platforms are here to stay.
We are not going to turn back the clock. I say this as someone who doesn’t use TikTok.
The only semi-realistic (and I use this term very casually) option would be some sort of radical, never-seen-before change in our global societal and socioeconomic models. The dynamics of short form video social media will be the least of our concerns in such a scenario.
The real issue is that these companies are purely for profit and couldn’t give a flying fuck about any negative social implications of their product. Every Le bad thing about any service is just down streamed from this reality of society.
Loops feels like that website that showed you YouTube videos with 0 views.
Without the super addictive algorithm, it won’t draw the Tiktokers. It’ll take a serious marketing department to make it even start to compete. TT and Insta have spent an assload of money to make their algo addictive. FB and YT shorts took years of paid content injection at enormous scales to even become interesting.
I doubt there’s many here that are even interested in that format.
or vice versa
Don’t worry musk will buy it…
TikTok has said multiple times they will not sell. They will just exit the US market.
we’ll see, we’ll see
How nice must it be to be able to force your biggest competitor to sell their business off. You either get it on the cheap, or get to make the replacement product.
