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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

#231

Post by d0mine »

yywwbbn wrote: post #212
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What would the alternative be if US banned all independent media sources (like Russia did)?

unrelated: could you name one just one US media source that you consider to be independent (with an anti-war article where US is perpetrator).

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

#232

Post by bbarn »

LightHugger wrote: post #140
bbarn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What freedom of speech? That freedom doesn't exist in two of the three countries involved here.

What is this reply? The complaint is that the freedom doesn't exist. You seem to be implying that people just don't know, when it's exactly what they're talking about?

"A textbook violation of the freedom of speech" assumes there is a "textbook" to violate.

There isn't one at all here, so why is there any debate at all on the freedom of speech being violated?

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

#233

Post by d0mine »

bacan wrote: post #219

This is exactly what happens when algorithms tailor what people see on their newsfeed. They will push narratives. One of the main reasons I prefer Reddit is the existence of r/All. Provides a very balanced view

Reddit is a typical western media that promotes corresponding world view.

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

#234

Post by elygre »

cinntaile wrote: post #20
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…

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

As a Norwegian, I have never seen the Norwegian word “mil” translated into English, because there is no English equivalent. Instead, we always convert into kilometers or miles, depending on the audience.

This was a first, and I blame someone else.

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

#235

Post by krapp »

verisimi wrote: post #229
krapp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you remember when Alex Jones was removed from everywhere in a couple of days? Regardless of what you think, should he be allowed a voice? Alex Jones has a voice, it just isn't on mainstream platforms.

Is that not effectively censorship? Do you remember when Trump was banned from Twitter?!?

It is not effectively censorship. Censorship is not effective if it merely makes communication slightly less convenient.

>Do you remember when Trump was banned from Twitter?!?

Yes, and he deserved it. And yet everything Donald Trump says and does still gets national press coverage, and he's starting his own social media platform with a backlog of millions of followers. It's garbage, but that isn't censorship's fault.

We should all wish to be so censored.

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

#236

Post by d0mine »

older wrote: post #176
cabirum wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do you consider pro-Ukrainian media? The BBC?

If you consider that the Ukrainian conflict is a war between US and Russia, then yes all western media are pro-Ukrainian (it serves US interests at the moment).

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

#237

Post by not2b »

jabbany wrote: post #145
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).

Every company has to comply with local regulations or not operate in a country. The same applies to a nonprofit, non-capitalist collective. The alternative to that is fines, or in the case of more authoritarian governments, arrests and jailing of local employees. The choice is to either comply or leave the country, though in some countries it's possible to appeal to the courts.

Though it's so bad in Russia now that it seems the only moral choice is to shut down services.

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

#238

Post by AlbinoDaffy »

latchkey wrote: post #199
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?

While no the answer you are expecting, but the answer nonetheless. If you have android phone (or android emulator wink wink, nudge nudge), you can install modded TikTok client[1], which has a bunch of settings. The one you are looking for is "- Remove most of regional restrictions". Change your region to russland, and try scrolling it for yourself. If you are an advanced enough programmer, you can check out the changes made to the app in the github repository[2].

Bots may be prejudice to the war content in terms of how they watch videos and how they scroll through them, and as such changing recommendation algorithm, but the original reporting is about censorship of war related content. Which doesn't require that much of a proof, it is officially confirmed by TikTok even in the statement at the end of a submitted report - it doesn't show newly uploaded content in rus region.

[1] https://www.pling.com/p/1515346/ [2] https://github.com/tigr1234566/TikTokMod

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

#239

Post by d0mine »

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.

Nobody in power wants it. For example, look at how alternatives to reddit that gain any traction are treated (they have a reputation that only bigots, incels, other unsavory characters use it--any such platform is overrun by government trolls).

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

#240

Post by Ma8ee »

idealmedtech wrote: post #63
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

That sounds like YouTube. I’m often recommended almost a decade old videos.
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