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One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

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Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#61

Post by short_sells_poo »

haliskerbas wrote: post #42
sourthyme wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me TikTok is not the "internet" because no matter how much the app gives, the user doesn't own their content. You can still write anything in a blog that you own and have people see it. To me that freedom is the "internet".

I see this comment and others like it. It's important to also know where the mindshare is. Where are most average individuals spending most of their internet hours? It is likely not niche-blog.com. TikTok is quickly becoming "the internet" for all intenents and purposes for some people. It's also how some folks get their news, etc.

The bigger issue is that you may own your blog content, but if your blog is publishing undesirable opinions, it'll be difficult to find a host even in democracies with freedom of press.

In other words, you may have a legal freedom to express your opinions but nobody is forced to give you the platform to do so. It can become arbitrarily difficult to actually disseminate your opinions at the extreme. E.g. I may vehemently disagree with Trump's opinions, but I have to admit that I feel deeply uncomfortable with private entities controlling whether he gets heard or not.

At the same time, I don't have a good solution if I'm fully honest. Private entities absolutely should have the freedom to determine what they want published on their platforms. Maybe we need (as a society) realize that the social media has become a de-facto utility that needs to be provided as such, regulated as such and taken away from the hands of private entities?

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#62

Post by Symbiote »

karencarits wrote: post #10
tokai wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something went wrong with the distance. As there is ~80km between Kharkiv and Belgorod and not 80 miles. If they meant to use Norwgian miles eight would have been correct.

You are right, the original says "Fra russiske Belgorod til ukrainske Kharkiv er det rundt åtte mil" which is 80 km

AI-powered translation tools (Google Translate) can be terrible with this situation.

Naturally, I can't get Google Translate to do this now, but I see text like "Vi kjører 100 km. Det koster 30 kr" translated to "We drive 100 miles. It costs 30 SEK" -- km/miles is obviously wrong, and I think kr→SEK (even when it's either kr, kronor, crowns or NOK in English) is because there's more Swedish than Norwegian on the internet.

(I get unreasonably annoyed when people convert metric units into American when translating text into English. The English is used by a far wider audience than Americans, and outside the USA it's reasonable to expect Americans to understand metric units.)

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#63

Post by idealmedtech »

catchclose8919 wrote: post #9

...uhm, isn't TikTok practically irrelevant in Russia now that they've stopped allowing users to post new content?! I mean, this is what ppl use it for, viewing new content from ppl like them and posting new content hoping to get "famous". With all respect for the author's work, this is not very relevant, since TikTok is in "zombie mode" now for Russia.

Not sure what your experience is, but when I've used TikTok, only a very small percentage of the content I'm shown is recent. The vast majority is months old, which I think is part of the genius of TikTok; they don't discard good content just due to its age, and instead show it based on novelty to the individual user

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#64

Post by criddell »

wanda wrote: post #53
toxik wrote: post #24

The dream of the internet as some sort of great democratizing force is already dead and buried, but for any who still believes, this must surely be the final nail in that coffin. Controlling the narrative is only a problem for existing democracies with press freedom. All bets are off once the threat model includes control of the media. So cherish your freedom of speech, and exercise and defend it. I don’t know what t…

I wouldn't be so hasty to call time of death on the internet. We are all of us here discussing this matter, after all. More significantly, controlling the narrative is not new. The Cold War was a narrative war, each side warning their citizens of the dangers of the other, and that even the ideas from across the seas were virulent and treasonous. World War II was a war that featured a huge amount of propaganda, and wh…

> I wouldn't be so hasty to call time of death on the internet. We are all of us here discussing this matter, after all.

What has died is the idea of the internet. It is thoroughly balkanized now.

We're here on this internet talking. Things are different on other internets.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#65

Post by trasz »

nameisname wrote: post #57
dotancohen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat that you're modeling against is not a threat to the internet. The internet is a group of technologies enabling near-realtime dissemination of information. It has no implicit promise of freedom of speech or press, democracy, or any other political ideal. Even the World Wide Web has no such implicit promise. The great democratizing force to which you refer is the ability to publish content, and to an extent…

If you actually watch the video you can see they are no longer allowed to upload content so I think you're wrong. It's also going to be very difficult to host anything when the government has a total crackdown on internet. You host some videos of war there and I can guarantee it would come back to you very quickly.

Tor, IPFS?

It's still besides the point, though: Internet is like radio waves; sure you can be prosecuted for using them for activity that's illegal in where you currently are, but it does not constitute a threat to electromagnetism.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#66

Post by pjc50 »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #13
sdfhbdf wrote: post #4

This article is well made and uncovers very interesting thing. I love how it was technically put together, browsing it on mobile was a great experience, chapeaux bas, i love how great new formats are available to publishers in the digital era outside of serving autoplaying ads. On thing that caught my attention was the supposed USCentric approach since it counted a distance in miles. I also wonder whether it was tran…

Wait, do you really think residents of a city 80 km away, one that they used to commute to for groceries and stuff, get their news from Tik Tok ? How out of touch are you? For God's sake, they can practically see Kharkiv out of their window!

You can't see 80km from the ground, and it's on the other side of a closed international border and the war itself. Residents of Belgorod can have little to no idea what's happening in Kharkiv other than the news. Well, that and the gigantic explosion of the local oil depot.

Heck, in many places around the world people get most local news from social media apps.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#67

Post by GuB-42 »

toxik wrote: post #24

The dream of the internet as some sort of great democratizing force is already dead and buried, but for any who still believes, this must surely be the final nail in that coffin. Controlling the narrative is only a problem for existing democracies with press freedom. All bets are off once the threat model includes control of the media. So cherish your freedom of speech, and exercise and defend it. I don’t know what t…

This is TikTok, it is not a platform for freedom of speech or whatever. It is a platform to see cute dance videos and more generally a happy place to waste time.

For that I'd say that the Russian TikTok is more in like with what TikTok is for and that's the Ukrainian TikTok that is unusual. I guess that you can't avoid it when there is a war in your country, despite all the efforts TikTok makes to keep things carefree.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#68

Post by Izkata »

haliskerbas wrote: post #42
sourthyme wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me TikTok is not the "internet" because no matter how much the app gives, the user doesn't own their content. You can still write anything in a blog that you own and have people see it. To me that freedom is the "internet".

I see this comment and others like it. It's important to also know where the mindshare is. Where are most average individuals spending most of their internet hours? It is likely not niche-blog.com. TikTok is quickly becoming "the internet" for all intenents and purposes for some people. It's also how some folks get their news, etc.

There was a post here, I think last year, about how in parts of the world WeChat is the internet: friends, school communication, payments, everything.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#69

Post by trasz »

tommiegannert wrote: post #55
haliskerbas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this comment and others like it. It's important to also know where the mindshare is. Where are most average individuals spending most of their internet hours? It is likely not niche-blog.com. TikTok is quickly becoming "the internet" for all intenents and purposes for some people. It's also how some folks get their news, etc.

You don't even have to go that far to shoot down GP's argument. The blogs can be censored just like TikTok, as long as ISPs are incorporated in local states. Whether censorship happens by telling TikTok the rules, or telling the ISPs the rules seems inconsequential to the democritized availability of information. Starlink et al. have a unique possibility of being state-agnostic and even leave citizens room for plausi…

Perhaps there could be a charity making payments for those who legally can't.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#70

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

toxik wrote: post #24

The dream of the internet as some sort of great democratizing force is already dead and buried, but for any who still believes, this must surely be the final nail in that coffin. Controlling the narrative is only a problem for existing democracies with press freedom. All bets are off once the threat model includes control of the media. So cherish your freedom of speech, and exercise and defend it. I don’t know what t…

The old dream is gone, but now that we saw what corporate takeover and commercialization brings, maybe we can reconsider and attempt to save the pieces that we can.

At the end of the day, we still have a choice. All of a sudden, Mastodon and like projects start looking more attractive.

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