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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

#141

Post by jabbany »

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 Internet has never been a "democratizing" force. Even now there are hardly any large services and/or platforms that use anything even close to a real _democratic_ process when it comes to dealing with content and moderation.

At best the Internet gives us some _freedom of choice_ in selecting whichever authority we'd like to operate under the reign of. Having (some) freedom of choice does not in and of itself lead to democracy.

That said, even this freedom of choice is increasingly being challenged with the erection of more and more national boundaries on the Internet. Collectively we do need to figure out how the Internet is to be governed in the future, because if we just take the default, we will end up replicating the same national borders as we have now.

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

#143

Post by foverzar »

axus wrote: post #120
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.

Certainly the ones paid to produce propaganda can upload from outside of Russia.

I've tried uploading some SMM content to TikTok for Russian audience using proxy gateways in multiple states. It just ends up as "not found" when accessed from Russian IPs.

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

#145

Post by jabbany »

karencarits wrote: post #3

I like the systematic approach they have used, and am a bit scared by the results. In one way, it is not that surprising that a social media app is so tightly controlled and used as a tool by the Russian government to hide unpleasant parts of reality. But I think it is a bit surprising that TikTok hasn't met more criticism and resistance on this

I mean this is exactly what you'd expect a capitalist company like TikTok (Bytedance) to do: cave to any local regulations in order to make more money, even if that means bowing to pressure of a dictatorship.

What's truly unsettling is that in the world today we must contend with the conflict between achieving capitalist goals (more money) and ideological ones (democracy).

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

#146

Post by pydry »

selestify wrote: post #99
pydry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My great hope in the early 2000s was that all you had to do was provide a route for information and the effect of propaganda would crumble once people had access to the truth. And, the internet did provide the route that did not exist before it just didnt matter. Truth is that people largely place trust in institutions and people they are used to and identify with, often for irrational reasons. People are prone to FU…

> Truth is that people largely place trust in institutions and people they are used to and identify with, often for irrational reasons. Is it really so irrational? How many people have the technical know-how and access to equipment to personally verify that COVID vaccines are safe for human consumption? (Can you even verify that on your short of running mass human trials?) And yet, by and large, most of us are not co…

>placing trust in people and institutions is often not so irrational.

The question is which institutions and people do we place trust in? When they contradict each other whom do you believe? Should we believe them sometimes but not others?

That's where people get irrational and antivaxxers are just one example of that.

Yes, it's blindingly self evident that you cant run your own vaccine trials.

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

#148

Post by foverzar »

querez wrote: post #133
eunos wrote: post #103

From the experiment they only change the IP addresses and no need to spoof the GPS?

I don't understand how they're able to just "change their IP" to something that's located in those 2 cities. How does that work, do they have someone running a proxy for them in those 2 locations?

> How does that work, do they have someone running a proxy for them in those 2 locations?

Sure, there are thousands of proxies in Russia and Ukraine. Lots of them are free. Besides, any decent paid VPN with multiple exit nodes would likely have nodes in both Russia and Ukraine.

You could even order a VPS hosting, if that's your thing.

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

#150

Post by bduerst »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #14
karencarits wrote: post #3

I like the systematic approach they have used, and am a bit scared by the results. In one way, it is not that surprising that a social media app is so tightly controlled and used as a tool by the Russian government to hide unpleasant parts of reality. But I think it is a bit surprising that TikTok hasn't met more criticism and resistance on this

Tool of the Chinese government, and secondary tool of other governments because they want to remain dominant to push their own agenda(s).

TikTok doesn't even exist in China.

The parent Bytedance does, and their Chinese equivalent is Taiotao. Even the TikTok data servers exist in South Korea.

This is an important distinction because there has been zero proof that TikTok is spying or is a tool for China, despite clickbait articles, memes, and accusations existing. This is the first time TikTok is being used observed to be used for government political censorship... And in Russia of all places.

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