121–130 of 1001 posts
If I were Bytedance I would cut off the US. I certainly would not sell to a competitor. And I’d probably do a licensing deal for the content with a new entity without US based shareholders.
I can almost hear the Meta execs cackling in their bathtubs of cash. Seriously though, this decision just feels unsubstantiated and rushed. There are so many claims of manipulation and our data being used by China via TikTok but I can't help but feel a company like Instagram does the exact same thing but it's not a Chinese company so we are just... okay with that?
People talk about data collection. I am sure that is happening, but the far bigger issue is having a regime who wishes you harm in change of what your young people are and are not seeing for hours every day. There is a lot of propaganda, a deluge of videos pushing of divisive extremism and misinformation. The people pushing this are also using western platforms, but they're doing it more effectively on TikTok. This cannot end soon enough.
I think the biggest effect of this is going to be that a lot of creators are about to lose a lot of money that they were generating from sponsorships: whether above or below the table. But most will slowly migrate to other platforms due to uncertainty (users and advertisers), though it remains to be seen exactly to where. Maybe Snap? YT Shorts is bad, as are most other “shorts as a feature” platforms where discovery…
Why do people believe that TikTok will stop functioning? That is not the intent, and is not the likely outcome. TikTok will just not be owned by a Chinese company.
Crazy, all the spying we do and we can't provide any definitive proof of anything yet we're jumping to banning a company. Looks like all that red scare stuff isn't a thing of the past, eh? And we all get to suffer for it. From losing a platform, to facing shadow bans with no recourse, to laws being passed that continue to stamp out our civil liberties to the point that we forget they were even there, what's it all fo…
China can and already has used tiktok to influence the U.S. population. Just because the US spies a bunch doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protect our best interests.
>The "Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act" was approved as part of a larger appropriations bill that provides aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Regardless of your opinions on TikTok, this type of thing is incredibly frustrating and routine practice in American politics. Can't actually get support for the legislation you want? Just add it on to some other completely unrelated piec…
It seems to me that the most likely outcome is that some money will opaquely change hands and that TikTok will remain available, either because of a shell game divestiture or because of a policy change. There's just too much money at stake. But even if that doesn't happen, and the US state starts to regard TikTok as banned, what makes anyone think people will stop using it? Many western resources are banned in China,…
If the ban is on new downloads, it will mean that the ban doesn't hit particularly hard, except for there will be no more platform growth, which would mean that the company sees all of the issue with it, but the users do not which would stagnate the platform and lead to its eventual death. Frogs in a pot of water turned up to a boil, instead of dropped in at a rolling boil kind of thing.
If it is banded in ISP level, there is essentially no real chance that anybody will put any effort to get around it. I see big statements all the time about how people slightly younger than me don't even know what command prompt is, which is frankly a wild statement because even people I know my age that are not techy. Like I am still know how to do almost all of the basic commuter commands and know how to download a VPN and similar. We are either going to see a Renaissance of tech people opened up because of the ban on tick tock and them learning about technology to try and circumvent it, or we are going to see the total death of the platform because most people don't really know how to do anything technical on a phone or computer anymore.
Either way, it's going to cause some fairly large shifts until something is done, and if nothing is done, maybe the main shift will be just to a different platform rather than a different societal state of mind.
I can almost hear the Meta execs cackling in their bathtubs of cash. Seriously though, this decision just feels unsubstantiated and rushed. There are so many claims of manipulation and our data being used by China via TikTok but I can't help but feel a company like Instagram does the exact same thing but it's not a Chinese company so we are just... okay with that?
I doubt instagram will replace it. Just like Youtube Shorts, they will fail to grab its audience. People who are using instagram/youtube are there because they like the format, and if they wanted tiktok, they 'd go to tiktok
If I were Bytedance I would cut off the US. I certainly would not sell to a competitor. And I’d probably do a licensing deal for the content with a new entity without US based shareholders.
They could also tell TikTok users to install a VPN and access the servers in China directly.
I actually see this as a silver lining. I want young people to realize the government effects them and can directly ruin things they enjoy. I want young people to be more involved in politics and to vote.
Crazy, all the spying we do and we can't provide any definitive proof of anything yet we're jumping to banning a company. Looks like all that red scare stuff isn't a thing of the past, eh? And we all get to suffer for it. From losing a platform, to facing shadow bans with no recourse, to laws being passed that continue to stamp out our civil liberties to the point that we forget they were even there, what's it all fo…