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“Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

thechinaproject.com

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Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#41

Post by aa-jv »

LinuxBender wrote: post #25
aa-jv wrote: post #14

I'm just waiting for someone to make an open-source TikTok analog that can just replace the functionality with a platform not controlled by a single party .. we still have that dream right, cryptonerds? Seems like the best solution to the problem.

There are quite a few open source platforms that could be modified to technically replace TikTok. Peertube could probably be forked or modified to fill that gap. I do not believe that is the obstacle. Running a massive site like that is incredibly expensive, requires a lot of employees, servers, bandwidth, geographic locations, moderators and more moderators. Then there would be the fun that comes with creating a com…

I'd wager its just a matter of time until someone gloms a front-end to Mastodon that will do all the transcoding/transfer magic required to produce the same functionality. Lets see ..

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#42

Post by LinuxBender »

aa-jv wrote: post #41
LinuxBender wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few open source platforms that could be modified to technically replace TikTok. Peertube could probably be forked or modified to fill that gap. I do not believe that is the obstacle. Running a massive site like that is incredibly expensive, requires a lot of employees, servers, bandwidth, geographic locations, moderators and more moderators. Then there would be the fun that comes with creating a com…

I'd wager its just a matter of time until someone gloms a front-end to Mastodon that will do all the transcoding/transfer magic required to produce the same functionality. Lets see ..

I could see that being an option. It's totally doable technically. FFMpeg, some libraries, some code changes and then the Mastodon hosts will need more CPU, bandwidth and disk space. Maybe some of them already have some beefy servers. There is still the mater of discoverability. One could find video shorts in the same instance but AFAIK there is not a centralized search unless one is depending on Google.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#43

Post by rat9988 »

Symbiote wrote: post #28
rat9988 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The official discourse is that tiktok ban comes from a security point of view, and not economic war. No one buys it though, at least not oversea.

Which overseas? Several European countries are seeing TikTok banned in government, large businesses etc.

Chinese? The concerned oversea.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#44

Post by sys_64738 »

There's definitely a lot of behind the scenes lobbying from American internet companies against Tik Tok as they can't control what they don't own. They also can't buy it as it's a China company. I still don't see why Tik Tok is any worse than kids being brainwashed with American social media or ad companies. Zuck is as much a devil as the villians in the Communist Chinese Government.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#45

Post by sys_64738 »

aa-jv wrote: post #14

I'm just waiting for someone to make an open-source TikTok analog that can just replace the functionality with a platform not controlled by a single party .. we still have that dream right, cryptonerds? Seems like the best solution to the problem.

Who is going to pay for that storage for all these crappy videos? It has to be stored somewhere which costs $$$. No open source solution will ever gain critical mass due to that.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#46

Post by freerangebat »

RobotToaster wrote: post #33
schuke wrote: post #22

Hasn't China been preemptively retaliating since 2000? Among FAANG only Apple still works. And FANG is actually the surname of the father of the Great Firewall. (Fang Binxing)

Not really, they either pulled out or got banned because they wouldn't remove content that broke Chinese law, any Chinese company who did the same would also be banned. Tiktok hasn't broken any American laws that result in more than fine.

No. 1. China's constitution protects free speech. Rendering many 'laws' unconstitutional. This may be too philosophical, so there is 2. Many 'laws' are intentionally vague so their application can be as arbitrary as possible: anything can 'disturb public order' or 'violate social morale'. Who's to decide? Of course it's the Party, not the law. 3. If you look carefully, even those catch-all regulations aren't there in many cases. Chen Yun, one of the Deng Xiaoping-era elders famously argued against making a News Law, saying "When the KMT was in power, we [the Communists] studied their news laws very carefully and exploited loopholes. Now that we're in power, it's better there is no law at all." In China, laws are "made strictly, violated widely, and enforced selectively." This is the real world Constitution.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#47

Post by ashwagary »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #16

Funny, but they won't. TikTok isn't going anywhere. There's too much money involved, not to mention constitutional rights and law. China won't ban the iPhone because they love it too much and they can't make something better. All of this is a complete waste of time.

>China won't ban the iPhone because they love it too much and they can't make something better.

Incorrect, there are many iPhone substitutes.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#48

Post by nickthegreek »

aa-jv wrote: post #40
favaq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's going to pay for that? Not only the software, but the video hosting, transcoding, etc. And don't tell me you can do it with p2p - the entire point of tiktok is that you can load new videos by swiping your finger. If every video takes 10 seconds to begin buffering nobody will want to use your app.

I heard these same arguments about the Linux kernel, back in the days before it came along and ate everyones' lunch. This app can be built, quite easily, by anyone motivated to do so. Just like the kernel, just like a distribution vendor, just like any one of the thousands of highly successful open source, community-oriented projects out there.

Their algo is the best. Not even the big players have been able to copy.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#49

Post by EE84M3i »

schuke wrote: post #22

Hasn't China been preemptively retaliating since 2000? Among FAANG only Apple still works. And FANG is actually the surname of the father of the Great Firewall. (Fang Binxing)

> Among FAANG only Apple still works.

Hmm, is this true?

Amazon has amazon.cn still running as far as I know, and supports china regions in the aws-cn partition via separate companies that "operate" the regions for them.

As far as I know, meta and Google don't operate their normal services in china, but I thought they still had offices there, which presumably do something.

Re: “Can we ban iPhone in retaliation?” Chinese internet reacts to TikTok hearing

#50

Post by falcolas »

nickthegreek wrote: post #48
aa-jv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard these same arguments about the Linux kernel, back in the days before it came along and ate everyones' lunch. This app can be built, quite easily, by anyone motivated to do so. Just like the kernel, just like a distribution vendor, just like any one of the thousands of highly successful open source, community-oriented projects out there.

Their algo is the best. Not even the big players have been able to copy.

Hypothesis: it’s not being copied because it connects users to more users, instead of connecting users to brands.
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