TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by rwarfield » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

eunos wrote: post #238

rwarfield wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big issue isn't data security; it's propaganda. Irrespective of whether the government has control of the narrative on Facebook (I would argue they pretty clearly don't) there is no reason to let a foreign adversary have a deniable propaganda line to millions of Americans. Would we have let the USSR acquire a major television network? And even if you disagree with the national security reasons for disallowing Chi…

> propaganda It's so amusing seeing the society that lionizes itself as the paragon of open society and can't stop boasting about the effectiveness of free-speech soft-power compared to sclerotic communist propaganda now having panics over short video apps. Bush Sr. or Bill Clinton could never think that. Well, maybe we will be on yeltsin-on-supermarket stage soon?

The propaganda on TikTok comes disguised as Americans sharing points of view that just happen to serve CCP interests. Often the creators are expressing a genuine (but rare) viewpoint that China just needs to amplify. This isn't about keeping Americans from reading Pravda.

It's not hard to imagine the messages China will be pushing to weaken support for assisting Taiwan in a conflict. "Don't waste money propping up the corrupt Taiwanese government, spend it on health care /tax cuts at home!"

Then China gains control over TSMC without a fight and much of the American economy is at their mercy.

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

#272

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #247

rsanek wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would this actually work? iOS is so dominant among US teens it's crazy, and the ability to sideload on that platform is nonexistent even to very technically savvy users.

If the holding power of TikTok is strong enough (which it just might be) then you might actually see teens start to switch to Android.

you won’t

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

#273

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #262

serenadeineb wrote: post #185

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.

It is a balancing act for sure, but is it 'right' to have all those choices, but only as long as they sufficiently support governing body overall worldview?

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

#274

Post by abeppu » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #239

abeppu wrote: 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

They did try that last year though it did generate a lot of calls in absolute terms and it didn't actually work as political pressure for them to vote against the ban.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/07/tiktok-us...

Getting congress to reverse something seems much harder, in that they also have to get someone to introduce the bill, get it through a committee, get it scheduled for a vote, etc, in both houses.

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

#275

Post by lm28469 » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

serenadeineb wrote: post #185

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 ...

Americans finally discovering their constitution is interpreted all day every day is the funniest thing on the internet. You also don't have free speech, and your rights to bear arm are very restricted.

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

#276

Post by ixtli » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:29 PM UTC

lenerdenator wrote: post #41

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…

I think around here people will all agree with you, the problem is that in practice this isn't at any level about cleaning up peoples experience of each other. it's economic protectionism injected with yellow-scare nonsense reminiscent of the 20th century. they're gleefully making the large ones worse while closing down anything which doesn't benefit US oligarchs

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

#277

Post by ixtli » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #6

The migration app of choice appears to be .. xiaohongshu, or "little red book". I'm guessing this won't last since it wasn't intended to have lots of Westerners using it and neither government is going to be happy with that scale of unfiltered contact between ordinary Chinese citizens and US citizens. In the meantime, it's the place for Luigi Mangione memes.

It depends on how they respond over the next 1-2 weeks.

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

#278

Post by thuanao » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #9

Can anyone enlighten me as to what this TikTok ban is supposed to be about? It feels a bit satanic panic from a distance.

Red panic, racism, and corporate welfare. The usual motivating factors in US policy.

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

#279

Post by zeroonetwothree » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #126

rwarfield wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big issue isn't data security; it's propaganda. Irrespective of whether the government has control of the narrative on Facebook (I would argue they pretty clearly don't) there is no reason to let a foreign adversary have a deniable propaganda line to millions of Americans. Would we have let the USSR acquire a major television network? And even if you disagree with the national security reasons for disallowing Chi…

Looking forward to Europe banning Meta and X considering how their CEOs are meeting weekly with their government overlord, quite clear those social networks are in the pocket of the new US government.

The US didn’t “ban” anything. If the EU required Meta to divest I imagine they would do that rather than shut down and lose billions.

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

#280

Post by stonesthrowaway » Wed, Jan 15, 2025, 3:32 PM UTC

science4sail wrote: post #47

poszlem wrote: post #5

I am not saying that it's good or bad, and the geopolitical situation has changed a lot, but I miss the relative innocence, openness, and sense of unity that characterised the 2000-2010s internet. We are slowly going in the direction of European internet, American internet, Chinese internet, Russian internet...

The 1990s-2010s Internet was a golden age in the sense that even though the Internet was a child of the US military-industrial-research complex, political powers didn't yet perceive it as a potential threat vector or even comprehend it at all ("the internet is a series of tunes"). Many of its users also came from academic or technical backgrounds, which helped to maintain shared cultural values (although this was con…

> The 1990s-2010s Internet was a golden age

It was the golden age because from the 1990 to 2010, the internet was majority american. For the entire 90s, the internet population was something ridiculous like 95% american. Fun times.

> in the sense that even though the Internet was a child of the US military-industrial-research complex, political powers didn't yet perceive it as a potential threat vector or even comprehend it at all ("the internet is a series of tunes").

Comprehend it at all? Are you joking. Maybe the dumb politicians didn't know it but certainly the real people in charge certainly knew it's potential.

> Social media and "Web 2.0" were probably the death knell for this era

The death nell of the era was the smartphone which allowed millions of computer illiterate peoples around the world to join the internet. The demographics of the internet was definitely changing in the 2000s, but the arrival of the smartphone toward the end of the decade accelerated the demographic shift. Now americans make up a small portion of the internet population.