Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TikTok goes dark in the US

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

821–830 of 1001 posts

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#821

Post by chrisco255 »

mcherm wrote: post #766
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…

The CCP does not have freedom of speech in America and it's not press. China has banned American apps including Google, Facebook, etc for decades at this point btw.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#822

Post by nthingtohide »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #768
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…

US was doing the same thing to its own citizens. refer Zuck's podcast with Joe Rogan. The DeepState used carrot and stick approach to make Zuck kneel. They would have destroyed Meta if Zuck didn't succumb to their demands.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#823

Post by beretguy »

TikTok is a dumb, cringy, addictive product. That is enough for it to be banned in my book, regardless even of "propaganda, surveillance" etc. stuff. I can't even imagine how little life you have to have to tolerate using it.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#824

Post by etempleton »

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".

It has too much influence for China to hold. Let’s be clear if an EU country held Bytedance this would not be an issue.

Really this is about not allowing China to do things and then not retaliating in kind. This is what China does to American companies and so no American company can really survive long term in China. It creates an imbalance and will eventually lead to China’s complete domination in most key industries. America is finally catching on.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#825

Post by TulliusCicero »

yyyfb wrote: post #776
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".

Compare with China though. There is absolutely no way that a company like Bytedance would be allowed to operate inside China while under American control.

Correct. All the popular US social media sites are fully banned in China.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#826

Post by senbrow »

bionade24 wrote: post #591
spacechild1 wrote: post #588

Today I learned that TikTok has been used by over half the US population! In Europe, usage numbers are significantly lower and it's still generally regarded as something for young people. In fact, I only know very few adults (in my country) who actively use TikTok. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tiktok-us...

Any US resident that could write something about their insights how Tiktok became so popular with residents over 30? What are the typical usage reasons for more mature people that differ from the incentives for young people?

35 year old US resident here - the recommendation algorithm is incredibly good at being very quickly tuned to your interests, so if you learn to take that seriously it's an incredible tool for learning about different crafts / trades / topics from experts who create content.

For example, my feed was full of electrician and HVAC content, philosophy, skiing tutorials, constitutional law, international news, physics, etc.

You have to use the app with intention to arrive at and maintain this state. I actively press the "not interested" button on videos that are mindless or just not in line with the kind of experience I want (rage bait, suggestive content, brand content, etc). That's a skill that many non-TikTok users don't really understand as well I think.

The algorithm is very much like an AI companion in some ways, which can be good or bad depending on the user's maintenance and steering of that relationship.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#827

Post by markus_zhang »

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".

I think we can just cut the crap and say, now the gloves have been taken off. It's a jungle. Let's grab whatever we can.

I mean it has always been like this anyway, just with some gloves. There is no law above the states(elites).

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#828

Post by motorest »

rsanek wrote: post #815
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".

they didn't demand it be sold to the US. they just said it can't be owned by china, NK, Russia, Iran. a European company could buy it and everyone could keep using it.

> they didn't demand it be sold to the US. they just said it can't be owned by china, NK, Russia, Iran.

On that note, I wonder if the same approach should apply to Elon Musk's Twitter takeover.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#829

Post by gchamonlive »

mancerayder wrote: post #817

Let's put aside freedom of speech and Meta v China for a moment: Has anyone suspected foreign interference in our social media during the height of the culture wars in the last decade? We had people encouraging civil unrest on the Left (whenever there was some police shooting or event where racism was suspected), and we had people encouraging civil unrest on the right (an immigrant committed a crime, or similar). We…

I think it does, but you make it sound like it's a symmetric information war. It's not.

From your examples de difference is that we've witnessed police brutality in the us with countless examples of excessive force (the hood and the knee to the throat are example. Whereas the same cannot be said for immigrants, first because I think it's an opinion that wins votes for these anti-stablishment ultra right wing, second because it's totally different to compare immigrants and the police as an institution.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#830

Post by elsonrodriguez »

quotemstr wrote: post #791
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…

> Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power Control of information is not a legitimate function of the state. The only real reason to ban TikTok or any other platform is establishing control over narratives, and the government must never in a free society put a thumb on the scale of ideas. So what if the Chinese can boost this message or that message? Is our society so fragile it'l…

> Is our society so fragile it'll fall apart if people are exposed to the wrong ideas?

Yes.

Post reply on HN