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South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

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Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#261
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with both of your points. This reminds me while visiting the holocaust museum. The guide explained similar conspiracy popular believe that Jews have a great secret plan to poison European society. I assumed this kind of thinking is commons in Xenophobic situations either subconsciously or un subconsciously.

People criticize Israel all the time. Criticizing the state (Israel) is unrelated to criticizing the people (Jewish). Similiarly for China, criticizing the state is not the same as criticizing the Chinese. And adding on, there's multiple types of Chinese people. There's Chinese in America, Chinese in Taiwan and Chinese in many other countries. No one fears "the Chinese" that's just CCP government brainwashing to try…

How can you tell whether they hate the govt or xonophobe? Some racists use the same excuse to justify their behavior.

There is some CCP scheme to use TikTok to turn American society lazyand teach some Stems sounds very conspiracy to me. Paranoia and conspiracy thinking are the symptoms of xenophobia.

In my home country, Youtube recommendations are mostly related to porn and I have to use VPN to access good-quality content on Netflix. Should I assume the US want to turn my countrymen stupid and horny. Or should I use my critical thinking youtube recomend things that are popular in my Country.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to single out the government from the people is a convenient way to justify an anti-China stance. Have you even considered the fact that even if the majority of Chinese may not like their own government, that doesn't mean they support yours?

It's perfectly fine to separate the government from the people. That is why it is fine to hate the Chinese, Israeli, Iranian, Russian, and Saudi Arabian regimes.

You can but I don’t think it’s possible to without at least some blame by association. Even if I didn’t support the invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan, I am still culpable as an American, and as a benefiter of American government policies (in general).

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#263
post #17
post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

The US doesn't reward factual programming, that's why the History Channel turned into the Ancient Aliens Channel.

Same append to the learning channel now know as TLC. Not much to learn from "my life with 300kg" or "Dr pimpel popper".

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#264
post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

Oh, please, as a Chinese I can say with 100% certainty that this is false. The Chinese state media and parents lament in the same way how douyin (tiktok’s version in China) dumb down the next generation of children.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual amount of protests in China were laughably small in comparison to how the state depart... I mean 'free press' in the US portrayed it. Yes, there were reasonable protests against zero-Covid measures, no there was no revolution in progress.

They were not laughably small in comparison to other protests in China, which as I'm sure you know are extremely rare ever since the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989. > no there was no revolution in progress. Who said there was?

there was also a labor protest at a foxconn factory last week, but it seems to have failed to capture the liberal imagination in the same way as these “white paper” protests, gee I wonder why

https://www.reuters.com/technology/foxconns-zhengzhou-plant-...

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#266
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People criticize Israel all the time. Criticizing the state (Israel) is unrelated to criticizing the people (Jewish). Similiarly for China, criticizing the state is not the same as criticizing the Chinese. And adding on, there's multiple types of Chinese people. There's Chinese in America, Chinese in Taiwan and Chinese in many other countries. No one fears "the Chinese" that's just CCP government brainwashing to try…

How can you tell whether they hate the govt or xonophobe? Some racists use the same excuse to justify their behavior. There is some CCP scheme to use TikTok to turn American society lazyand teach some Stems sounds very conspiracy to me. Paranoia and conspiracy thinking are the symptoms of xenophobia. In my home country, Youtube recommendations are mostly related to porn and I have to use VPN to access good-quality co…

> How can you tell whether they hate the govt or xonophobe? Some racists use the same excuse to justify their behavior.

Most xenophobes tend to be pretty clear what their opinions are and rarely deny them. Also occam's razor applies. Why assume that they're xenophobic when they repeatedly deny being xenophobic and say that they don't like the chinese government (which is the more rational opinion to take)? Ask such people what they think about Chinese people and it'll become rather clear whether their viewpoints come from xenophobia or not.

> In my home country, Youtube recommendations are mostly related to porn and I have to use VPN to access good-quality content on Netflix. Should I assume the US want to turn my countrymen stupid and horny. Or should I use my critical thinking youtube recomend things that are popular in my Country.

That sounds like a "you problem". Youtube in general does not have much porn. If you're being recommended it somehow then you or someone who shares an ip address with you has been actively searching it and it has narrowed it's suggestions to suit your "interests".

Also this tiktok issue is a reverse situation. Tiktok shows one thing to China and something else to every other country. It's not just the US.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sinophobic How?

If you are concerned about the content that American's consume, there is no reason to single out TikTok. Instagram has been shoving the same garbage into the feeds of teenagers for nearly a decade and Reels is nearly exact clone of TikTok. There is little "educational" content on Instagram Reels. The solution would be regulate all the social media companies, like how China does. If the problem is solely TikTok, then…

> The solution would be regulate all the social media companies, like how China does.

Twitter and Facebook are both banned in China, isn’t it? Is that because the CCP is afraid of western ideals if freedom? Or is it protectionism? Put differently, is it because of ideological or because if commercial reasons or perhaps both?

Because, to follow your thinking, why does the CCP not simply regulate them using the same rules as is uses for homegrown companies like TikTok?

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#268
I had the weirdest interview of my life with Tik Tok.

Tik Tok, like anything run by the Chinese or other totalitarian regimes, is not very respectful of autonomy or freedom of expression, but I still want to know what went down at my old NGO after I was forced out -- I had thought the CEO worked for the Russians or something, she was so effective at destroying the organization like one of the sabotage guides I used to read in middle school on textfiles dot com, but one day I pop over to LinkedIn and she ended up working for Wal Mart, and the general counsel ended up at Tik Tok as people on Signal would do literally anything but connect me with a decent job but tell me the weirdest shit like "The Mayor of Albany beats his wife"

(Apparently one of my friends may have given their phone to some now dead FBI agent around the time I renewed my passport and loudly declared presidents last 8 years max and switched from learning javascript and CSS to learning Python and Metasploit.)

Anyways, Tik Tok sucks, Facebook sucks, all social media sucks. Delete your accounts and learn the value of verbal conversations in a room with NPR cranked to 11 on an analog radio you built yourself in a 3rd floor walkup with the door bolted and barricaded.

(Or maybe the above is disinformation... reader beware, you're in for a scare!)

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#269
post #7
post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

How would a skeptic confirm this? Can one get a VPN inside China?

There are VPNs tunneling back to China, search for 翻墙回国 (+ DeepL) and you can find a lot of providers. Those are quite popular for Chinese speaking people outside of China to get access to geoblocked contents (video, music, etc.).

But usually the biggest problem is how to get a Chinese phone number. In China, most apps require you to register with a phone number (+SMS verification), which is your de facto personal identity number.

Back to the topic, I can confirm this for you. Douyin is also serving shit to Chinese children and the Chinese government do "regulate" them. And of course, between STEM content and shit, most Chinese children I have met (well, genius do exist), prefer shit.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#270

It matters which country controls the platform. The recent protests in China have been suppressed by the CCP. No doubt there are close to zero protest videos on TikTok. There are protest videos on YouTube - though anecdotally YouTube management is attempting to suppress them because Google is tightly bound to China. The question is, does it matter if protest videos are shown or hidden on social media? Can the videos…

I learned about the protest on TikTok from scrolling, probably because I have shown interest in content about China.
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