> Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay the ban
I already foresee a Mueller investigation part #2 “Trump is a Chinese puppet” stories.
TikTok goes dark in the US
371–380 of 1001 posts
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#372I think a lot of people on here never spent much time on TikTok and it shows. It wasn't just for young people and it wasn't all brain rot. There were vibrant communities, subcultures. Real issues were aired there. Real people connected. From the early days of Covid it provided a window into a broader world.
That's great, but the people there should realize it's a bad idea to put all your eggs in one social media platform basket.
would you say the same thing about Meta and Google? Clearly social media monopoly is not the issue. In fact, USA government want US dominance in global social media, digital world, and digital marketplaces.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#373The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…
Blatantly pandering to Donald Trump is the new ESG, DEI and woke combined for silicon valleys
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#374A point I think most people don’t understand is that the government interest in TikTok has little to do with exploiting user data per se, a lot of other companies do that. The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts. This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone…
This. I suggest to read Unrestricted Warfare to understand more on how TikTok (or FB, X, Instagram and such) can be used as tools in modern conflict.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#375The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…
I wonder how much ByteDance got from the incoming administration to pull that stunt. Super shady. "We voluntarily shut down our service in your country (er, I mean, we HAD TO, for real!) but don't worry, a true hero is soon arriving to save the day!"
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#376I'll bet none of the people responding here actually read the Supreme Court decision.
This isn't about data that people agreed to allow ByteDance to scrape. It's about ByteDance going beyond that and scraping contact information of NON-TikTok users, which could be used for blackmail or in other illegal and adversarial ways.
Everyone knows U.S. companies gather user data. Oracle had been doing it for decades. This is not the issue and not at all why TikTok has been banned.
The difference is that ByteDance was blatantly going after data that was legally not within their rights to grab; NON-TikTok user data on TikTok user's devices.
In addition, there are hints in the decision that the FBI provided evidence that China was using this information for adversarial purposes.
The decision very clearly walks through the First Amendment issues in relation to foreign adversaries and explicitly states that this is a singular decision.
It would have been VERY EASY for ByteDance to stop scraping data or to find a U.S. partner to host the data of U.S. Citizens. I've worked at global consulting firms and Germany requires this. All German citizen data must be hosted in their country. This isn't anything new. Companies make these kinds of compromises all the time and have for decades. Some companies explicitly state their data has to be on-prem or not in AWS. As an enterprise architect, I make these kinds of design decisions all the time. (Scenario: If customer is located in XYZ country, where do we store their data?)
ByteDance simply refused because even though they claim they are not handing data over to the Chinese Intelligence Service, they ACT LIKE THEY ARE.
None of this will matter in a few months. There are active projects to build Instagram and TikTok clones on the atProto network (Bluesky) which will serve the same content without advertising and without an algorithm. There will be Feeds for cat videos, pirate dress up videos, and APT dance videos and I'm 100% sure all the users that join that service will completely forget about TikTok. And the moderation will be given to the users so they can decide what to see.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#377The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1] The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines. [1] https://a57.foxnews.com/st…
I wonder how much ByteDance got from the incoming administration to pull that stunt. Super shady. "We voluntarily shut down our service in your country (er, I mean, we HAD TO, for real!) but don't worry, a true hero is soon arriving to save the day!"
There are much bigger factors at play than a few billion dollars
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#378It's a shame that it's come to this. I feel that all arguments that TikTok is unhealthy or spyware and bad for our general public are valid, but the same arguments also apply to Instagram/Twitter/Whatever. Rather than have some sort of further regulation for what data any application can collect and present to Americans, we've just brought the hammer down on the millions of people that use this application for their…
Those arguments have nothing to do with why TikTok was banned. The banning is purely a geopolitical move. TikTok is the only major social network that is (hugely!) popular in Europe and North America that is not controlled by the USA - and even worse for US geopolitical ambitions, it has major ties with China. This is not some conspiracy theory: this is 100% of the official reason that Congress voted on this. They fe…
Interesting that a Romainian sounding username wouldn't mention the mess with Romanian presidential election where tiktok played a major role. The threat seems very real
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#379A point I think most people don’t understand is that the government interest in TikTok has little to do with exploiting user data per se, a lot of other companies do that. The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts. This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone…
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Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#380I hope trump will reverse this action. I don't want government to decide what I am allowed to watch.
Are you ok with the Chinese government deciding what you’re allowed to watch?
Sure, when I use ${Chinese_App}, I expect a Chinese bias to the algorithm. Same with every other aggregation service or media provider. Same way I expect a US bias to moderation here or on other US sites.