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TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

reuters.com

261–270 of 1001 posts

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#261
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they have the engineering experience to launch anything at this point. They try to do a weird tiktok like thing where watching a video on mobile will randomly scroll to another video, but I think this probably has more to do with juicing "unregretted user seconds" than anything.

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Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#262

Congress shall make no law respecting ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble ... unless they mumble 'national security', and then screw the constitution ...

Congress does have the power to regulate foreign commerce however. Not that I disagree with you, but rarely can something be distilled to a single concern.

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#263
post #29

If X ne Twitter knew what they were doing, now would have been the obvious moment to relaunch Vine.

I've been wondering for the past couple of years, why did Vine fail but TikTok succeed? Based on my increasingly fuzzy memories of Vine and my rough understanding of TikTok as a non-user, they appear to be pretty much the same app.

TikTok’s algorithm for the feed and their data science and recommenders are pretty amazing. You can tune it to show you what you like really quickly and it’s effective. Mine is tuned to old house preservation and restoration, a couple guys doing skits as blue collar workers that are some of the funniest parts of my day, motocross videos, and some dog/animal content. I’ve never liked a video or commented on a video, it’s just so effective using dwell time and they have so much data that they can give you exactly what you want and little that you don’t. There is no politics on my feed. I challenge you to get that with twitter, reels, threads, Facebook, vine… any of them

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#265
post #33

noahpinion has a great post [1] on this today and he points out the interesting observations we can make: 1. because it's "Beijing" who is tasked with deciding whether or not TikTok can be sold makes it extremely clear Bytedance is not an independent private company the way it would be the case in the US. They are legally required to obey CCP directives [2] 2. Beijing had every opportunity to sell the application off…

noahpinion is generally very insightful but I don't think his analysis holds water here. ByteDance is a major Chinese company -- if the EU tried to force the sale of Google you can sure as shit expect "Washington" to have strong feelings about this. The implication that Beijing controls ByteDance is not really supported by this evidence.

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#266

Given that (as the article mentions) the ban essentially only directs Google/Apple to remove the app from their US stores, what's the rationale on ByteDance's part to immediately revoke existing US users' access? My naive assumption was they'd want to keep it going and support the current dead version of the app for as long as possible to continue squeezing US revenue for at least a few more months until that becomes…

I was surprised by that too. I assumed we would see a sudden interest in android and iphone jailbreaking.

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#267

Given how easy it is for China to buy US data legally from data brokers and how similar the functionality of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, I feel like the only explanations are: 1. The govt is mad that a foreign company is outcompeting a domestic one Or more likely, given that there are so many other industries that didn't get a ban: 2. The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on…

Mitt Romney basically came out and admitted that the reason for the TikTok ban was that young people were getting unfiltered access to information about the genocide in Gaza.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#268
post #115

"I would literally write my social security number on a sticky note and stick it to Xi Jinping's forehead than go back to using Instagram Reels" I saw this yesterday and it's hilarious but this is the feeling right now. TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect (not to mention ads and so many bots and spam). It's like shutting down Reddit and telling everyone…

The comment and quote is telling of the zeitgeist. I would be more aghast by it, but then I remember that my SSN has been a subject to multiple data breach notices in past year.. so.. what is one more bad actor at this point?

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#269
post #230

> The outcome of the shutdown would be different from that mandated by the law. The law would mandate a ban only on new TikTok downloads on Apple or Google app stores, while existing users could continue using it for some time. Does anyone have thoughts on why TikTok would choose to stop for existing users? I.e. why would they choose to do more than the minimum required by the law? It's nice that they want to point p…

The obvious play would be to incite those active users to take action by letting their congress critters know their opinions in an effort to have them reverse their vote

those plays can easily backfire - like when tiktok first did it

although there are success cases, like prop 22 in california and uber

Re: TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

#270

I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up: Just get rid of all of them. They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. If you have to combine your online interactions with people with the interactions you have with them in real life, you're better off, and that doesn't hap…

> early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc. This was really a fun time and it was a whole new vista for interaction. It was really something to enter a new age. That feeling didn't last long, but I still got value from Facebook until the early 2010s.

FB Marketplace is definitely the best way to buy and sell anything locally. Of course you will have to filter through the usual flakers and what not but that was always the case since craigslist days.

But for actual social media? Burn it all down lol

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