One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by otabdeveloper4 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #66

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seriously?

Imagine an alternate universe where Canada and USA went to war. Do you really think that people in Seattle would have to depend on German social media apps to figure out what goes on in Vancouver while it's being bombed? Seriously?

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

#192

Post by bogwog » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #147

Hm... Pretty solid argument in favor of federated/decentralized protocols, this. Is there anything out there that doesn't suck? Not for chat. We've got Matrix and chat is usually not censored anyway.

How well would a federated social network hold up to an attack from a government like Russia? Either to flood it with propaganda, or simply to bring it down?

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

#193

Post by hermannj314 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

Aggressor nations have the privilege of lying to themselves on the consequences and reality of their wars. The defenders do not get the privilege to ignore that.

Americans barely talked about Afghanistan. For 20 years, our internet was full of funny videos, stupid songs, and memes of Osama bin Laden. Sure we bombed civilians targets and committed war crimes too, but we had very smart lawyers that taught us clever words for why it was moral when we did it. And we nodded our heads in agreement and turned the channel to American Idol.

Americans are well aware that technology enables us to live in our own artificially constructed reality. We spent the last 20 years building it.

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

#194

Post by RyanShook » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #150

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ce…

TikTok is available in China. The app is called Douyin. And the content being shown to Chinese citizens is very different from what is being shown to Americans. Social media apps are the Trojan horse of politics today used by all sides.

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

#195

Post by ec109685 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

dcchambers wrote: post #185

This is a great visual and concrete example of how easily a narrative can be controlled. This is but one example of a larger systemic issue with media in the 21st century, and an issue with how people consume that media. Virtually every platform is like this, not just TikTok. It's not like TikTok tries to present itself as a neutral, unbiased source. Their whole premise is delivering "highly curated" content to you a…

This where sanctions could be used. TikTok is profiting by keeping this neutered version up in Russia, so US government could prohibit making money in US until they take it down in Russia.

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

#196

Post by kreddor » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

WelcomeShorty wrote: post #35

cinntaile wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 Scandinavian mile = 10 kilometers. Only used in Sweden and Norway by the way.

I thought you where joking, but you are not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_mile TIL.

As a Dane, that really surprised me.

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

#197

Post by psyc » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

prionassembly wrote: post #113

This made me finally download TikTok and.. OW! that's REALLY NSFW! (I didn't think I'd live, as a man, to be offended by sparsely-clad voluptuous women, but there I am.)

If you weren’t offended enough, many of those G-cup Megan Thee Stallion fans are self-admitted minors crying “stop sexualizing me! I’m a kid!” while they gyrate. I deleted TikTok shortly after I installed it. (Not just because of that. The last thing I need is another attention-optimized vapid rabbit hole.)

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

#198

Post by artem247 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

cabirum wrote: post #172

Zanfa wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given russian media is legally only allowed to spout government-approved propaganda, it really makes sense to ban them from social media. This does not equal to only allowing pro-Ukrainian media.

Why don't you call pro-Ukrainian media "propaganda"? They did recently ban all but a few pro-gov political parties, and all their media is equally under total government control

No post body was provided.

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

#199

Post by latchkey » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

dcchambers wrote: post #185

This is a great visual and concrete example of how easily a narrative can be controlled. This is but one example of a larger systemic issue with media in the 21st century, and an issue with how people consume that media. Virtually every platform is like this, not just TikTok. It's not like TikTok tries to present itself as a neutral, unbiased source. Their whole premise is delivering "highly curated" content to you a…

Speaking of controlled narratives, I'd like to see the source code to their bots so that this experiment can be reproduced.

I'm not saying that they didn't just make up the article, but how do we know?

How do we know their bots didn't have bugs in them that pushed the results in favor of the tone of the article?

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

#200

Post by Tenoke » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

d23 wrote: post #135

Tenoke wrote: post #43

Isn't tiktok's whole thing that it shows you very personally curated content based on data about you including demographics and most users see different content? Wouldn't users from Ukraine and England or ones from Mexico and America also see different videos? Are the Ukrainian videos actually unavailable in Russian TikTok if you search for them? It seems obvious that as you watch more non-war stuff (which might be t…

Are you serious? In the time it took you to write this comment you could have actually read the article to find the exact answer to your question. It's basically the whole point of the post.

At least on phone it only gives you one sentence per page with a slow transition, so it wasn't as quick as you suggest to go over it again to confirm.

Either way, the point seemed to be more about the different feeds which is not a surprise anywhere while the real and only relevant information actually is that the content is banned.