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TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

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Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#221

Post by melzidek »

_s4uu wrote: post #181
melzidek wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CCP subsidizing a social media platform hurts no one. Meanwhile, are you aware how many countries the US military is simultaneously occupying at the moment? We have become a major evil, hated across the world. Not all Americans want this empire to perpetuate

The favoured retort of the pro CCP group is American imperialism. No doubt, I agree it is no longer in America's best interest to defend foreign nations and to meddle internationally. However, that does not excuse your ignorance. A totalitarian regime that has caused more death than any other regime in history; one that primarily values wealth over freedom; one that does not believe in the sanctity of human life (ie…

I agree both are bad. I just believe most would prefer the evil that primarily stays within its own borders to the one that constantly wreaks destruction abroad.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#222

Post by melzidek »

LunaSea wrote: post #192
melzidek wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CCP subsidizing a social media platform hurts no one. Meanwhile, are you aware how many countries the US military is simultaneously occupying at the moment? We have become a major evil, hated across the world. Not all Americans want this empire to perpetuate

> The CCP subsidizing a social media platform hurts no one. It hurts everybody (especially children) influenced by the censoring peddled by the CCP.

American social media censors in tons of ways that harm our children too. Is your outrage properly calibrated here?

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#223

Post by throw964563 »

partiallypro wrote: post #154
progval wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Facebook, which is data collection being funneled to Western companies and US agencies.

The US isn't using that data to put Muslims into concentration camps and killing them to take their organs, or marching troops into Hong Kong.

I wouldn’t be so sure,

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#224

Post by Aperocky »

komali2 wrote: 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…

How do you suggest doing this? Fighting censorship with censorship? Banning pro China voices because they must be shills and have to be working for CCP in someway or the other? Establish an Committee of Un-American activity in Congress?

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#225

Post by izacus »

rumanator wrote: post #152
GordonS wrote: post #114

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.

You are simply wrong on so many levels. NATO is the reason why the iron curtain stayed where it was and why the Russian federation hasn't steam-rolled Western Europe. If you believe the US is the only actor that benefitted from this development, you're somehow ignoring about 800 million people and over two dozen countries who remained free and independent thanks to NATO.

> You are simply wrong on so many levels. NATO is the reason why the iron curtain stayed where it was and why the Russian federation hasn't steam-rolled Western Europe.

There are no historical artifacts claiming that USSR ever had a serious plan to "steamroll" Western Europe. If anything, they were deathly terrified of NATO incursion into Russia and almost pathologically attached to creating a buffer zone of Warszaw Pact states.

Please do not mix up US cold war propaganda with historic facts, those are not quite the same.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#226

Post by dang »

mgbmtl wrote: post #73
whatshisface wrote: post #65

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)

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. This is insanely off topic and can't end well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#227

Post by neonate »

kp98 wrote: post #169
Barrin92 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is not an obvious example of 50 cent army; in fact you're unlikely to find anything that you can incontrovertibly call the CCP. This was an example of Chinese nationalism in general. I watch a ton of US China trade war stuff, the closest thing I could give you to an example of what legitimately appears to be a state actor was triggered by something like this: 'yeah China might be good but gdp per capita america…

You said "The level of infiltration of the 50 cent army on YouTube is absurd" and gave an example which you now say "is not an obvious example of 50 cent army". If the infiltration level is absurd, and you and your friend have been analyzing it for a long time, why not give a clear example in the first place?

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#229

Post by akfanta »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #72
komali2 wrote: 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…

[flagged]

You are being downvoted because you are talking nonsense.

> Reddit is overrun with pro-PRC shills and trolls

I challenge you to link one example in any popular post. My experience is that if you dare to say anything remotely pro-China, you will get downvoted to oblivion.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#230

Post by dang »

komali2 wrote: 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…

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, especially not off-topic rants about astroturfing for which there is no externally verifiable evidence.

I've spent countless hours looking at this problem in HN data, which admittedly may not be representative of the internet at large, but is the most relevant here. By far the overwhelming finding is that users are massively prone to leap to "astroturfing" (or "shill", "troll", "bot", or "spy") based solely on hearing something they dislike on a charged topic. This is plainly a psychological bias—probably one we all share—and it dominates all discussion on the topic by at least 99% if not 99.9. The phenomenon is so universal, and conforms so closely to what I see on other platforms even though I can't study their data, that I have to believe it's the same everywhere.

The parsimonious explanation for comments expressing strongly opposing points of view is that humans are the same on both sides of any divisive topic: emotionally charged and primed for reflexive, predictable responses. That's why these arguments are all the same (in the case of China v. US: "but imperialism", "but totalitarianism", etc.) and also why they are off topic on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

This was the top subthread before I marked it off topic. That's mostly because of upvoters, but the reason we ask people not to post this sort of flamebait is that upvoters simply can't resist it. When it comes to indignation, upvotes are a statistical cloud of fruit flies showing up near a decaying banana.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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