I’m just waiting for Truth Social to be identified as a potential buyer.
TikTok goes dark in the US
571–580 of 1001 posts
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#572Not my country so I couldn't care less. Just my observation from two oceans away: US is a hypocrite. How about Meta and other US companies? Those companies does the same if not worse damage to your citizen.
IMO Pandora's box is now open, and it's a matter of time before we see countries around the world offer the same divest-or-ban choice to Meta, Google, etc. The question is who first and how quickly it will happen.
Facebook and Google are already banned or blocked in multiple countries.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#573It'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…
You can always seek asylum in China if you want protection from the "evil American tech monopolies".
You could just not do that and reap the benefits of both. It's super useful to play them against each other that way. Real the benefits of living in one place, while using the others to get access to things you couldn't otherwise. TikTok for Palestine activism, Yandex for piracy, whatever. None of the overclasses in control of these warring states gives a shit about any of us. Profit from their conflict instead.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#574A 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…
whenever the words ''national security'' appear in a paragraph, what follows next is usually nonsense or propaganda.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#575It'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…
None of those arguments are the salient one, which is that a geopolitical adversary has control over a major influence vector on US public opinion. They could simply have divested.
How will you react when other countries start banning Meta/Twitter with the same argument?
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there solid evidence about that? The only study I've seen said that TikTok wasn't any more biased than other social medias.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tiktoks-content-political-subje...
That's not a scientific study but a report from a no profit and the method and data has not been reviewed.
It's not like those hashtags were even banned, so what's the point here?
It's also likely that demographics between the apps are different.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#577From CBSNews: > U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that TikTok threatens national security because the Chinese government could use it as a vehicle to spy on Americans or covertly influence the U.S. public by amplifying or suppressing certain content. In other words, US officials are scared that China is going to do what the USA has been doing with American social media apps in various countries
> In other words, US officials are scared that China is going to do what the USA has been doing with American social media apps in various countries Yes, and? It's naive to think that this is anything new or surprising -- a country attempting to further it's own interests ahead of other countries that it is competing with.
> Yes, and?
Americans usually whined and complained that China banned US social media
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#578This morning I felt the urge to download TikTok for the first time. I did, but I didn't bother creating an account. There is a passage in the book Life of Pi, where Pi's family is gathered and ready to leave India for Canada. And his mother does something out of the ordinary: > The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, "Should we get a pack or two?" > Father replied, "They ha…
> Do I use TikTok? No, I've always advocated against it. This, to me, is a weird stance. On what grounds did you advocate against it? I just had to create a new account tonight after the ban[0] to keep using it. When you first start TikTok you might be presented with a wave of seemingly crap, bizarre or boring videos, but after several minutes of liking and watching the good stuff the algorithm very quickly starts se…
Yes, there is high quality long form content on TikTok, but most people just mindlessly consume the short form garbage, wasting their time and destroying their attention span. Everytime I watch teenagers or kids use TikTok I am genuinely horrified. It is clear that the platform does not optimize for thoughtful content, on the contrary! I certainly wouldn't advocate for it.
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#579I wish we would ban social media for at least 2 days per week, these apps are extremely distracting and will be seen like gambling addiction in the future.
Where's the line? Does hn count?
Re: TikTok goes dark in the US
#580Is it possible that all of these are true at the same time?
- Tiktok has great content and a great algorithm to help you find it
- Tiktok advances Chinese interests
- Tiktok spies and collects data, such as scraping your clipboard, network
- Tiktok collects face recognition data on citizens worldwide
- Tiktok is addictive, and designed to be
- Tiktok is cultural expression, and contributes to people's feeling of identity
- Tiktok provides a platform for critical thinking and debate
- Trump wants to control it for his own profit motive, not because it's what's best for the US
- Tiktok contributed to Brexit, and similar political crises in the EU
- Tiktok is part of the Chinese 100 year marathon strategy
and so on...