Live data from Hacker News

One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

nrk.no

271–280 of 371 posts

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, do you really think residents of a city 80 km away, one that they used to commute to for groceries and stuff, get their news from Tik Tok ? How out of touch are you? For God's sake, they can practically see Kharkiv out of their window!

I think TikTok is the primary news “source” for an alarming number of people.

You write that like it makes a difference.

It doesn't. At all. Why?

Because it's the same dumb people, regardless of source.

It doesn't matter if they believe TikTok or any other mass media. At all.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#272
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not though, so your point is irrelevant.

so what's your response to Ukraine banning all left wing parties even the ones that won popular votes? What about panama papers proving zelensky and ukrainian politicians having twice as many illegal activities as whole or russia? and ghost of kiev or the snake island bombing or the tank dude or the other million of fake news being peddled

Whatabout?

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what your experience is, but when I've used TikTok, only a very small percentage of the content I'm shown is recent. The vast majority is months old, which I think is part of the genius of TikTok; they don't discard good content just due to its age, and instead show it based on novelty to the individual user

To add on to this - a truism of the internet is that most people don't upload content. They only consume content produced by others. It stands to reason, with the nontemporal algorithm behavior parent comment pointed out, that a vast amount of those consume-only users will not even notice the new content restriction.

The poster above is referring to the 1% rule of the internet.

Wikipedia as a source is good enough for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#274
post #36

If governments are censoring our internet we need to change the way we're being geolocated. VPN is too much configuration and centralisation. TOR is over the top privacy. I want something as accessible as turning the flight mode on my mobile. The button can be placed next to flight mode and called CENSORSHIP. You can turn it on. It will then reveal your true IP address and make the internet very fast. However it's of…

None of this matters when people don't believe other people.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#275
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the US government explicitly picking the leaders of the Ukrainian government before they were put in place https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 Not to mention that leading up to this transition of power we backed a violent coup of their democratically elected government in 2014. What of the Ukrainian people in Eastern Ukraine who have been getting bombed for 7 years in a civil war? The Ukrainian peop…

> What of the Ukrainian people in Eastern Ukraine who have been getting bombed for 7 years in a civil war? What about them, exactly? https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine/5... There was a major decrease in ceasefire violations in 2020 and 2021. Looks like to Russia that sounded like it's time to escalate and fix "the problem" whatever that is, by starting a major war and invading straight to Kyiv…

> There was a major decrease in ceasefire violations in 2020 and 2021

Yeah, according to your own linked report there were only "93,902 ceasefire violations" in 2021 with the violations clearly growing by the end of report period. I don't know anything about the credibility of this report, but your own evidence refutes your argument.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tool of the Chinese government, and secondary tool of other governments because they want to remain dominant to push their own agenda(s).

TikTok doesn't even exist in China. The parent Bytedance does, and their Chinese equivalent is Taiotao. Even the TikTok data servers exist in South Korea. This is an important distinction because there has been zero proof that TikTok is spying or is a tool for China, despite clickbait articles, memes, and accusations existing. This is the first time TikTok is being used observed to be used for government political ce…

Douyin (TikTok's brand name in the PRC) adds server-side search censorship, and the ability to remotely execute arbitrary code for a specific user.

Study: https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-priv...

Original Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/RonDeibert/status/1374010176534118400

This is ongoing government political censorship in the PRC.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#277
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't any global German social media apps, and the US has a very different media landscape, so like all "what if the situation was completely different" hypotheticals, it would be completely different. The US operated censorship during WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship ; who knows what would operate during the war with Canada? I'm not sure whether you're ignorant of the near-total state c…

Do you actually believe anyone else gets accurate news? Because that thought's beyond ridiculous.

How accurate do you want it to be?

Picking a random story from the BBC front page, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-61002096 , what do you think is inaccurate about it? Do you think the MD has not resigned? That there have not been queues? That they have mistaken the names of people involved? That Manchester does not in fact exist and is a liberal conspiracy?

(The main problem with political news is disproportionate coverage, double standards of scandal, and the selection of who gets quoted - as well as a vast area of "op-ed" which is not technically news but is on the same websites.

As well as reporting on "future" or "possible" events, which by definition are difficult to be accurate about)

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#278
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RT's funding doesn't come from the government?

The BBC funding is primarily through TV licensing fees, so it's essentially an optional tax.

> The BBC funding is primarily through TV licensing fees, so it's essentially an optional tax.

That's a long-winded and highly convoluted way of saying government funded.

You have to admire the BBC. They've done such a good job brainwashing people that they jump through all kinds of hoops to hide the fact that the BBC is government funded state propaganda. BBC is what RT aspires to be one day.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#279
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC funding is primarily through TV licensing fees, so it's essentially an optional tax.

> The BBC funding is primarily through TV licensing fees, so it's essentially an optional tax. That's a long-winded and highly convoluted way of saying government funded. You have to admire the BBC. They've done such a good job brainwashing people that they jump through all kinds of hoops to hide the fact that the BBC is government funded state propaganda. BBC is what RT aspires to be one day.

No, see, that's but one example of how your unwillingness or inability to accept any complexity or nuance gets in the way of thinking.

The TV license system is set up specifically so that the institution is somewhat isolated from day-to-day politics. It's a completely different situation if the PM can decide on a whim to fund you or not, or if there's a difficult-to-change law that sets the fees that you get for a decade in advance

If you insist that everything is the same and all politicians are corrupt and all media are lying then you're just giving away any power you might have. Why would any politician not turn corrupt or leave id you are screaming invectives at them at the top of your lung, completely divorced from their actual work?

That's why RT loves cynicism and tries to amplify exactly that work view: it's a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#280
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was very clear Ukrainian NATO membership was a red line for him No, he wasn't. That's just another bullshit excuse manufactured to justify this criminal invasion. Here, read it from the man himself: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21598

> No, he wasn't The Hill, April 2021 "Putin draws a ‘red line’ on Ukraine, and he means it" https://thehill.com/opinion/international/550036-putin-draws... The Ukrainian Weekly, June 2021 "Following summit, Kremlin says NATO membership for Ukraine would be a ‘red line’" https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/following-summit-kremlin-says... Reuters, September 2021 "Kremlin says NATO expansion in Ukraine is a 'red line' for P…

Exactly. So they were completely fine with NATO, but in 2021 it suddenly started being a problem.
Post reply on HN