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

reuters.com

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

#321

Post by bbqfog »

jimbob45 wrote: post #297
bbqfog wrote: post #186

I downloaded Rednote and was already blown away by just the app quality. So much better than X. I'd never used TikTok but I really hate the idea of our government censoring what I can and cannot see. Rednote has a bunch of great content on it too. Thanks for the Streisand rec US gov!

?? X/Twitter is not the main competitor to TikTok/RedNote. Meta's Instagram/Instagram Reels is.

I was commenting more on the code quality and app performance. It’s very well written.

The content is good too though. It’s nice to see so much amazing Chinese cooking.

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

#322

Post by tivert »

lolinder wrote: post #150
science4sail wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the law "banning" TikTok applies to any Chinese app with over 1 million US users, so Xiaohongshu/Rednote or anywhere else the TikTok refugees flee will be a target - except YouTube shorts and Facebook/Instagram reels of course.

No, the law doesn't give a users threshold: it names ByteDance and TikTok specifically, and provides a mechanism for the President to add new companies controlled by a "foreign adversary country" to the list. So anything at all by ByteDance is banned, but RedNote is owned by a different company that would have to be targeted separately under this law. https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr7521/BILLS-118hr7521rfs...

> No, the law doesn't give a users threshold

It does have a threshold:

> (ii) has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users with respect to at least 2 of the 3 months preceding the date on which a relevant determination of the President is made pursuant to paragraph (3)(B);

So if it stays unpopular, it's protected from this law.

> but RedNote is owned by a different company that would have to be targeted separately under this law.

I think that's a foregone conclusion if it actually gets popular with Americans.

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

#323

Post by fckgw »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #290

What if any practical effect will this have on American users if 150M of them already have the app downloaded? A pop-up that doesn't block use of the app? Haven't seen anything about an IP ban/block (ahem, great firewall), nothing's going to block anyone from business as usual on Sunday right? There's no 'shut down'. And other than a bunch of misinformed users jumping over to RedNote briefly or whatever, the only dif…

Yes, you can do an IP block and you can also detect VPN clients and block those.

If the companies is barred from doing business with US users then they will be required to take reasonable steps to block those users.

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

#324

Post by stonesthrowaway »

lvl155 wrote: post #128

Why doesn’t China simply open up for domestic competition? What are they afraid of? It’s a serious question. Are they that much afraid of their consumers switching to Western products? I frankly think it’s overblown. Chinese people will simply stick with homegrown products at this point. It’s way too entrenched for anyone to enter their market and succeed. I think they have made enough progress to open up their marke…

> Why doesn’t China simply open up for domestic competition?

China does allow competition. It's just that google, facebook, etc chose not to follow chinese laws.

> they have so much to lose by growing anti-sino sentiments abroad all because they didn’t want US tech monopolies to compete in their home turf

Funny how microsoft, apple, tesla, etc are competing in china?

You are just parroting stale propaganda.

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

#325

Post by gruez »

pjc50 wrote: post #159
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…

[flagged]

>Speaking of foreign propaganda, does anyone remember when one of the most destructive advocacy organizations in the US was found to be heavily influenced by Russian spies?

"heavily influenced by Russian spies" seems like a stretch. The BBC article you linked basically says she attended some NRA conventions/events, and got some NRA officials to travel to Russia. There's no indication those activities actually changed anything.

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

#326

Post by suraci »

whimsicalism wrote: post #260
cvoss wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US gov's intention was not at all to shut down TikTok. It was to force ByteDance to sell it. The fact that ByteDance is opting for a shutdown instead is a huge PR stunt, and their unwillingness to sell under the circumstances kinda proves their whole First Amendment claims are made in bad faith. Something deeper is going on, and it's not about your social security number.

i think there are obvious reasons why bytedance would not want to spawn a US-based competitor and why a US only social media network would be ineffective. this is exactly the same as what China does with their gfw, they allow american apps to divest and be owned by a chinese company.

Wrong

1. China asked American SNS companys to 'obey Chinese laws', which mostly refer to content control and data ownership, these companys refused, China didn'tforced them to sell 2. Are you sure to play the 'same as what China does'? hey, we are a totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial regime, are we same? think twice

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

#327

Post by kingstoned »

Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #254
paxys wrote: post #222

Anyone remember when they were in school and adults tried to ban access to a popular website? I imagine this ban will go down exactly the same. Never underestimate a bored teenager's ability to bypass tech restrictions. Heck maybe this is what is needed to finally get a new generation out of the comforts of their tech walled garden and get their hands dirty.

Don't underestimate the human ability to "settle for less" if said less requires less effort from them. There's a reason people pay for Netflix despite pirating proposing a higher level of quality ; Netflix is just easier. They will settle for the "easy" solution, which will be any one of the TikTok clones already existing (YT shorts, reels, whatever).

Netflix is not easier, but marketed heavily and competition is censored in search results. Some random pirating streaming site is unknown and probably not even easily discoverable on google (you have to use yandex for that).

I stick to pirating with adblockers because it is more convenient, there is a much bigger library of content and I don't have to share any personal info or pay for anything.

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

#328

Post by Funes- »

smeggysmeg wrote: post #251
Funes- wrote: post #243

I dream of the day we give ourselves a decentralized protocol that, while providing an opt-in way of following current events, offers us an extreme breadth of content without being a hypercapitalistic, attention-grabbing nightmare that tries to get us to compulsively consume absolute junk constantly, at the cost of everything else. In the meantime, looks like Sunday is gonna be a fun day.

ActivityPub is exactly that. Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed, etc. What you're asking for exists.

It doesn't. I'm talking about true decentralization (peer to peer), not federation (the worst of both worlds). It should also be uncensorable and come with some implementation that does away entirely with the idea of "social media" or "microblogging". Just a better version of what the web 1.0 was.

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

#329

Post by matthewdgreen »

beAbU wrote: post #299
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…

> Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. Herein lies the rub. How do you decide what the threshold is? Who gets to decide what that threshold is, and how do you do it without inviting accusations of regulatory capture? If you make it blanket all social networks, then things like discord and even public slack orgs will inadvertently become collateral damage. If you make it focussed on only a few large…

Require human moderation. That naturally limits scale.

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

#330

Post by supriyo-biswas »

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…

This is how you end up with the UK's Online Safety Act. And personally, I'd prefer to have international networks where you can get exposed to different opinions; my life would be in an objectively worse place if I had only had the opinions of the people of my country to go off of.
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