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TikTok goes dark in the US

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Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#761

Post by jedimastert »

cheshire137 wrote: post #670
gdubs wrote: post #224

I 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.

I’m sad to lose the cross stitching videos, the travel log clips, the live streams of people playing instruments, and the tons of animal videos. Trying Instagram Reels, everything feels performative, which is annoying.

> live streams of people playing instruments

As one of those people, I definitely hope I can find somewhere else. It's essentially the only way I can play live anymore

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#762

Post by seandoe »

crandycodes wrote: post #712
moviet wrote: post #695

(Perspective from an American) Information is the gold of the 21st century. Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power. Therefore, data is the greatest currency in the world. This outcome was never intended to happen, but ByteDance is taking a chance that the American government will relent. We’ll see in a few months who wins the stalemate. TikTok has an immense amount of cultural p…

If the government was also addressing the concentration of power in the American social media apps, I’d buy it. If this was about making laws on what info phones could record about you, I’d buy it. If this was about establishing transparency laws to allow the government to better enforce the privacy laws it has, I’d buy it. If it was a law saying recommendation algorithms can’t be used for political content, I’d buy…

You're right. This is what it says. I don't think you have to buy anything outside of that. I think most Americans are more comfortable with American entities spying and manipulating them than a Chinese entity.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#763

Post by maxdo »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

The demand is literally stated to American or allies company. So this is not true. But that’s what national interest protection looks like.

Look at Germany and Europe in general , they pay money to arm their aggressive neighbor, still not able to shield themselves from China. And asking US to protect Europe .

I don’t think Europe , giving the situation is in position to suggest about national interest protection. It’s like drug addict talk about healthy lifestyle

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#764

Post by gdubs »

jedimastert wrote: post #758
gdubs wrote: post #224

I 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.

> I think a lot of people on here never spent much time on TikTok and it shows. I agree whole heartedly, along with a horrendous dearth of empathy but unfortunately I find very common in Hacker News comments. Regardless of whether or not you feel that 170 million Americans all fell for Chinese propaganda, there is still a profound sense of loss. For me personally, I've been writing and performing music on TikTok for…

One of the coolest things for me was seeing a musician start out, and then several months later seeing that they'd blown up. And this happened often! There are a lot of musicians (artists too, etc) who never would have surfaced.

People say "you can just post on xyz" and yet none of those places surface these kinds of creators.

Many of the other sites are either pay-to-play at this point, or surface content that aligns with something they're looking to surface.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#765

Post by atomicnumber3 »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

>amend the rules

I dunno. I wouldn't say the EU has done an amazing job of actually twisting companies arms enough to get them to a) provide the actual fucking product, not some bastardized version that's intentionally bastardized to make people voluntarily keep using the evil version, AND b) not be evil. At the same time.

Look at apple with the payment shit. They managed to do neither a NOR b! The data privacy stuff usually has companies just opting out of serving the EU.

So, there's clearly a very hard problem here, of how do you make these entities whose sole goal is to maximize profit, who have managed to figure out a way that makes tons of profit while having the only "pollution" be the damage we do to our culture/dopamine receptors. Which is a lot harder to get people mad about compared to oil in the ocean and smog in the air.

In the meantime, I don't mind us just trying to keep things at least vaguely geopolitically aligned. Look at what russia is doing to US politics with very basic tactics (reddit comments etc). Now imagine China trying to do something actually subtle.

To underline the difference I'm referring to, just look at tiktok vs rednote. Western users immediately getting banned from rednote for posting the "wrong" kind of LGBT stuff. There are some fundamentally different cultural expectations about freedom of speech. Can you imagine how censored talking about vietnam would be if the US took the same approach as China did w.r.t. Tienanmen Square?

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#766

Post by mcherm »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

An an American, I also find it outrageous. In fact, as I understand it, our most fundamental law (the Constitution) clearly guarantees "freedom of speech and freedom of the press" which specifically means that the government may NOT shut down a particular publisher because the government does not like what they say, or who it is that owns them.

Unfortunately, our Supreme Court unanimously disagrees with me about what our Constitution requires.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#767

Post by dleeftink »

jmyeet wrote: post #729
moviet wrote: post #695

(Perspective from an American) Information is the gold of the 21st century. Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power. Therefore, data is the greatest currency in the world. This outcome was never intended to happen, but ByteDance is taking a chance that the American government will relent. We’ll see in a few months who wins the stalemate. TikTok has an immense amount of cultural p…

3 comments total from this account totaling 28 karma at the time of writing and this of the top comment on a 1500+ comment thread about a major issue? Ok. That fact is relevant to the issue. This comment is the most “State Department talking points” comment you could make and the finger is put on the scales to elevate it. That’s exactly what Google and Meta do with content via recommendation algorithms and comments.…

Maybe an oldhead can shed some more light on this: hasn't it always been the case that comments are ranked by a combination of timeliness and votes, as to prevent any single comment to dominate the top of the page for the duration of a story's frontpage time?

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#768

Post by micromacrofoot »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #725

As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held. It is the old-school imperialist school of thought. If you think Bytedance is harming Americans, despite following american law, then amend the rules for social media companies. Or at least be honest enough to say: "The free market is great, but only if we hold all the cards".

You can't have this take without acknowledging the US is currently in a technological cold war with China. It's not old school at all, they've been hacking our infrastructure and stealing proprietary data from corporations for years (and vice versa, no doubt).

Having a direct adversary control what young people consume for hours a day with a black-box algorithm is very dangerous.

Also note that TikTok has been banned in Hong Kong for years now.

I also think it's dangerous for domestic companies to do this, but obviously the US gov't is going to prioritize China because politicians can take bribes (in the form of lobbying) domestically.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#769

Post by snozolli »

arczyx wrote: post #719
moviet wrote: post #695

(Perspective from an American) Information is the gold of the 21st century. Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power. Therefore, data is the greatest currency in the world. This outcome was never intended to happen, but ByteDance is taking a chance that the American government will relent. We’ll see in a few months who wins the stalemate. TikTok has an immense amount of cultural p…

> But China ultimately having that power scares me more than an American company having it. Well for people not from US, China having that power is absolutely better. After all, unlike the US, China hadn't invaded another country or instigated coup for the past 40+ years.

unlike the US, China hadn't invaded another country or instigated coup for the past 40+ years.

No need to invade when you can do neo-colonialism to take over Africa, social media to influence the vote of your primary rival, and forcing a puppet government in Hong Kong (i.e. a coup). Not to mention destroying coral reefs to build artificial islands for military outposts in other nations' waters and blatant sabre rattling against Taiwan and even maritime attacks on peaceful neighbors.

China is regularly swinging their fist within range to tweak noses and crying foul when they're called out on their aggressive behavior. The only reason a war hasn't started is because their victims haven't stood up to their nonsense yet.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#770

Post by dredmorbius »

tsukikage wrote: post #636
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censoring is different to banning though. Banning in this case is the correct word to use, censoring isn’t. You can censor things on a platform, you can’t censor a platform entirely - that is a ban.

...and yet when discussing ways to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, the term used is "Chinese censorship", never "Chinese bans". This sounds like one of those irregular verb conjugations English is so full of: I ban; you go dark; he/she/it censors.

GFoC specifically filters not only sites (banning) but specific topics, keywords, discussions, and participants (censorship).
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