Live data from Hacker News

TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

businessinsider.com

171–180 of 331 posts

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#171
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian, random examples: Indifference to violence, hypocrisy on nudity, monetizing privacy (no respect for privacy), monetizing medical care. (I don't mean to start a flame war, but they are topics where EU and Canada tend to disagree with major US trends)

As a fellow Canadian can you expand on this? Canada has been involved in every war that the US has been in my lifetime (born in 1993). Don't know what you mean on hypocrisy on nudity, but I only became comfortable with it when I visited Scandinavia when I was 22; seems like Canada has a similar issue. I'll maybe give you medical care, but this is an incredibly complex topic. To think that public health care isn't mon…

> Canada has been involved in every war that the US has been in my lifetime

Since the US is Canada's largest trading partner, this will always be the case, but there are huge and important differences in the level of involvement. Famously the level of involvement in the Iraq war was almost non-existent. Canada's involvement consisted of patrolling surrounding waters, and approximately 100 Canadian soldiers who were embedded in American forces as a sort of culteral military exchange[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Iraq_War

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#172
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, the Chinese government doesn't care what you do as long as you don't challenge it. The US on the other hand seems intent on enforcing its whims everywhere on the globe it can. War on terror, war on drugs, war on encryption, war on financial privacy, war on intellectual property infringement. To quote CS Lewis: "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. Th…

I think we can criticize both the Chinese Govt as well as our own government. For instance, China sees no holdback from imprisoning and killing anyone on the thinnest of pretenses, it's basically wielding ultimate authoritarian power to ruin or end lives. On the other hand, the US actually wields a similar authoritarian imprisonment power much more frequently than China, actually more than almost any nation in the wo…

What!? A few thousand migrant families arrested at us border is bad. Agreed. But million minorities in re-education camps with organ harvesting is really bad. Not even close on the scale of shittyness.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#173
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The level of infiltration of the 50 cent army on YouTube is absurd. I don't know if you can post links in comments, but try this video on decoupling and read the comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAZGd_Dj0 some comments from pro CCP: ``` decoupling is good, US collapses faster. ``` ``` Why accuse China of nationalism? In the past they said "Good Christians" and today they say "Patriots". It's the same old t…

sorry, but how do we know that this is an 'infiltration' or paid for content and not just angry Chinese people shitposting on youtube? Because I can go to just about any political video and find comments like this from any nationality. I don't think anyone doubts that there is a large contingent of nationalistic internet users in China which is very often on display, but going from that to asserting that this is coor…

It's both. A combination of propaganda and propaganda doing its job

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#174
post #51

Aight, conspiracy theory time. I'm becoming concerned about PRC influence in my country (USA). From my perspective the PRC (government) is blatantly evil, and happily engaging in cultural warfare, and nobody seems to be fighting back. I see absurd astroturfing and shilling on social media here (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook). It's always obvious - whereas a genuine criticizer of the Hong Kong protestors might ask about v…

There's no conspiracy in critical thinking like that.

The actual conspiracy would be to believe this is NOT happening at all. Countries have their own propaganda,espionage and information warfare campaigns, it would be really naive to never think about connections like these in the internet sphere.

Obviously engaging in such thinking can very quickly push you down "the rabbit hole", but that's why people need to discuss topics both online & IRL about things out of their control, because only then you can try to eliminate as much bias as possible and filter out all the "BS".

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#175
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this is sarcasm? The things the USA did supposedly in the name of stopping "red danger" were utterly dispicable, and still have an impact today.

Wait So you think that "red danger" was fake? Or "red danger" did (and do) less despicable things?

[flagged]

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#176
post #68
post #51

Aight, conspiracy theory time. I'm becoming concerned about PRC influence in my country (USA). From my perspective the PRC (government) is blatantly evil, and happily engaging in cultural warfare, and nobody seems to be fighting back. I see absurd astroturfing and shilling on social media here (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook). It's always obvious - whereas a genuine criticizer of the Hong Kong protestors might ask about v…

It will be interesting to see how all of these silly videos recorded by kids will be used against them in 10-20 years. Everything that they do and say will be indexed and accessible for blackmail.

Exactly what I thought when I first saw Facebook and Instagram. And it turns out that I am the idiot.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#177
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the issues that America is trying to push in Europe?

As a Canadian, random examples: Indifference to violence, hypocrisy on nudity, monetizing privacy (no respect for privacy), monetizing medical care. (I don't mean to start a flame war, but they are topics where EU and Canada tend to disagree with major US trends)

While i agree with you on the first two as US movies and culture to propagate those values, third you could argue that europe and canada are pushing more privacy onto america due to GDPR and PIPEDA and companies having to follow them, but the last one i entirely have to disagree with you on the last one.

I don't see the US trying to export or push that idea/policy and i can't see it ever gaining traction in canada or the EU.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#178
post #93
post #51

Aight, conspiracy theory time. I'm becoming concerned about PRC influence in my country (USA). From my perspective the PRC (government) is blatantly evil, and happily engaging in cultural warfare, and nobody seems to be fighting back. I see absurd astroturfing and shilling on social media here (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook). It's always obvious - whereas a genuine criticizer of the Hong Kong protestors might ask about v…

The level of infiltration of the 50 cent army on YouTube is absurd. I don't know if you can post links in comments, but try this video on decoupling and read the comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAZGd_Dj0 some comments from pro CCP: ``` decoupling is good, US collapses faster. ``` ``` Why accuse China of nationalism? In the past they said "Good Christians" and today they say "Patriots". It's the same old t…

One thing you can do it reply to those comments with some copypasta about the Tiananmen Square protests. Something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/aphqv6/for_every...

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#179

My only concern with TikTok is data collection being funneled to the CCP.

I think there’s a bit of hysteria here. Tiktok have completely separated their Chinese business and international one, with international server hosted outside China. Saying that data collection is funneled to CCP is like accusing any US company of _potential_ acquisition of foreign data by the US government. Or to rephrase, no Chinese business should have the ability to operate elsewhere because they are from China?…

it is actually very doubtful even tiktok has a separate section for internationals. for example, do you trust huawei's international operations?

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#180

What amazes me is that Tik-Tok fills the void created when Twitter killed vine. Given the popularity of Vine, and the outrage when Twitter killed it, I have no idea why they thought it was a good move. I’m bullish on Tik-Tok because I think it’s the next logical evolution of social media (and totally captures the Vine fan base which was pretty big to begin with) First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then i…

> First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then images with instagram. Now people want videos that they can consume in short bits of time en mass. What you are describing is the continued fall to smaller and smaller bits of stimulation and information. I’m worried about the consequences of this on the human mind and humanity in general. Our tech is gradually eroding our ability to focus on anything for more t…

Idiocracity is based on the trend that has been a trend for a long time now: as we’re able to scale more in most industries, we need less people relative to the population in the work force, but the minimal intelligence required to fulfill those roles is growing.

This is the reason that Silicon Valley is pushing minimal guaranteed income: rich people need to pay off people who they can’t provide a job for anymore.

Post reply on HN