TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues

> Ok, well here where I live the government has never physically assaulted me or my neighbors,

Lucky for you I hope you can keep saying that. But uh, where you live didn't need to have a civil rights movement?

Plain and simple I think americans, and the american government, and movements formed in america and made of americans, are far more likely to harm me than any foreign power and I act accordingly.

In fact they already have!

> On the other hand, the CCP (and others) has created lots of fake accounts, engaged in paying off people to help incite riots, and is responsible for algorithmically promoting divisive content which has caused people to go out and riot, shoot at each other, become white nationalist goons or antifa goons

This is americans doing this to americans with the help of the american tech industry for the benefit of american elites. How have you come to lay the whole thing at chinese feet. I know... but do you know? You worried about the wrong propaganda my man.

As a former employee in TikTok US Data Services, the division that was stated working to separate the US TikTok service and infrastructure, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the algorithm reset theory, because the reset this time is qualitatively unlike the others.

Since 2020, when the first Trump administration attempted to ban TikTok, work has been ongoing to separate out the TikTok US business in all aspects from the parent company Bytedance. Setting up dedicated infrastructure for US users was already accomplished by 2023 for the most part, and this included the restriction that US user data couldn’t be used to train or otherwise influence non-US user operations.

However, there were a few major caveats. First, all the actual videos, at least if they’re public, were considered to be Bytedance data, even those created by US users (although the actual user intent signals - likes, watch behavior, and the like, were considered to be US user data). This allowed them to be used to train the main Bytedance-owned algorithm. Second, the Bytedance-trained algorithm continued to form the basis of the algorithm to serve US users. At least when I was there, US user data was used to tune the algorithm for US users, but the algorithm was not necessarily trained from scratch only on US user data in practice.

One of Bytedance’s main conditions for the TikTok US sale has always been that they own the algorithm (both the code and the models) and would not transfer it to the US, so this was definitely a foreseeable issue. With the chaos of the TikTok Us divestment between the Biden and Trump administrations, though, I suspect that it was hard to hire and retain ML engineers that could build a proper replacement for the algorithm in time for the divestment, let alone build one that matches the behavior of the previous algorithm.

If the algorithm is separated between US and non-US as strictly as the TikTok US Data Services mission always aimed for, then TikTok for US users is in many respects a new service entirely that shares the same UI and features. I also don’t know how US users get trained on non-US content, or if they’re even exposed, nor if any other countries use the US algorithm. So this change in content may last at least into the medium term, if not permanently. The question will be if you start seeing more left-wing anti-ICE content in the coming weeks or months.

I will save this for the future, when people complain about Chinese open models and tell me: But this Chinese LLM doesn't respond to question about Tianmen square.

Normalizing state-sanctioned extra-judicial murder along with a message of compliance? Maybe go find videos of where compliance got people killed because the fact is the slave catchers enjoy brutality and murder.

> but at least we wouldn't have this

I think you might have forgotten recent moves from Meta about removal of moderation, relaxing rules on hate speech, settling lawsuits with Trump and similar moves that imply they wouldn't really fight hard against what this administration wants.