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TikTok goes dark in the US

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Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#881

Post by dtquad »

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".

As a European I noticed all the neo-authoritarian Russia supporters crying on X and BlueSky and therefore support the US ban on Tiktok. I am usually against the EU frenchies making up new regulations but they get a pass if they manage to ban Tiktok.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#882

Post by whimsicalism »

roca wrote: post #488
epolanski wrote: post #434

Earlier 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...

belief laundering, as if “network contagion research institute” is some long-standing research org and not basically an extension of the state like the “Atlantic Council”

anyone with half a statistics brain can see the problems in this analysis

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#883

Post by fargle »

i'm conflicted. i don't want chinese controlled propaganda but i don't want us controlled propaganda either. but i suspect that the "safety"/propaganda arguments are window dressing and it's really economic protectionism, which at least i understand. but from a free-enterpise perspective, banning a legally operating company simply because of it's ownership seems worrisome, and it would seem a toothless unenforceable thing in the long run (e.g. sell TikTok to its own "independent" company on paper and keep pulling the strings).

the realization is that this is a binary choice, either we ban it or we don't. but we shouldn't be in this position in the first place. neither choice is the right answer. i don't want any of the outcomes. i don't want a chinese facebook. i don't want a us controlled facebook. i don't want a facebook controlled facebook.

you want to know how to keep giant governments out of your shit (us and china and russia, etc.)? how to keep giant corporations out of your knickers? if you favor economic protectionism, how to keep other countries from undermining your industries? how to keep giant corporations (us or chinese) from exploiting their monopolies to wreck our culture just so they can serve more advertisements?

everyone on this forum, especially if you decry this ban, needs to stop defending, accepting, and allowing closed monopolistic computing and networking. app-store monopolies, for instance, secure-boot, device-non-ownership. we've given these companies persistent 100% control over our own devices and we (as surprised as you are) got monopolies. now we have to argue about which flavor of monopoly we want.

the minute, via app store policy or via crypto/secure boot, you allow a company to select what i am or am not allowed to do, see, or buy on my own devices - this is what we are doomed to deal with as a result.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#884

Post by thuanao »

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #413

Can someone please explain to me, why it is illegal to publish biased media? Please relate your answer to US native broadcasters like Fox News. The public discourse in the US appears very distorted. The rececently elected legislative heavily tampers with the executive/judicative and somehow this is stil democratic? IMO the tiktok ban is only about media control, no morale or legality, just political power and somehow…

I didn’t expect HN to be full of bootlicking fascists totally fine with censorship as long as the bogeyman is China.

Red panic is back. I’d be careful honestly.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#885

Post by jonny_eh »

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".

China banned Youtube in 2009. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#886

Post by oh-contrare- »

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".

Eh-- Interjecting one's own opinion arguably amounts to intellectual imperialism.

Imperialism is a part of life-- whether it's mold in a petri dish, prides of lions or chimpanzees raiding neighbors.

We live in the wild where strength conquers. It's just that we forget that when we're insulated from reality by convenience, comfort, concrete, and naivete.

No one should be ashamed for conquering or for exercising their own strength to their own benefit. Only those unable to do so are the ones to complain. And the complaints are futile-- Resource Competition is a fact of life and it is not going away.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#887

Post by whimsicalism »

someonehere wrote: post #878

There’s proof from Federal agencies that they knew the algorithm was intentionally being weaponized to agitate and promote domestic protestors. Just look at the Chinese consulate shut down when 45 was in office last in Texas. It was rumored to be the base of operations for where the Chinese were weaponizing the algorithm against American interests.

we’ve seen this strategy of “intelligence agencies have proof, but they’re not releasing it” play out many times. i remember when the Hunter Biden laptop story had “all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign”.

i am not sure why this would give you any confidence that they have actual proof.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#888

Post by tensor »

psiconaut wrote: post #689
neither_color wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we're not discussing ways to circumvent the American firewall, since there isn't one, we can still say that one country tries but sometimes fails to live up to a free speech ideal perfectly -making exceptions for national security- and the other is blatant authoritarian.

Just a hypothesis: the fact that there's no need for an American firewall might be a consequence of the information controls being enacted at the level of platform moderation, or DNS resolution. (I agree with you about authoritarianism in a political sense, but I'm trying to look at the informational "water" in which we're swimming in).

The mistake is in thinking that there is no need for an American (or Canadian, or EU) firewall. The reality is that either due to corruption or naivety, western countries let foreign information attacks and foreign propaganda spreads completely unchecked.

One could argue in the US that this was very useful to the new regime gaining popularity.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#889

Post by moneycantbuy »

good, not only is it malware/spyware, the chinese government can shape the beliefs and behaviors of > 100,000,000 americans at the flip of a switch. albeit users are idiots for giving their attention in the first place. and because capitalism = god, will probably end up selling to the saudis and/or elon co.

Re: TikTok goes dark in the US

#890

Post by sashank_1509 »

chis wrote: post #848
sashank_1509 wrote: post #805

As someone who has used TikTok, I don’t hate the outcome, but hate the mendacity with which it was executed. TikTok is brain rot, a better way of describing it is digital crack. You can spend hours and hours on TikTok in a numb state, with no sense of what’s going on in the world around you. If the government decided, this addiction is not good, let’s treat it like a drug and ban it, I would be all for it. But claimi…

I don’t understand this argument that China couldn’t possibly use the app to influence public opinion. The TikTok algorithm works by tagging a bunch of features onto a video. How positive is it, political bent, comedy, cat, depressive, anything. And the people running these apps can then pull levers as they see fit to change the distribution of content shown to users. In fact in a very real sense I think it’s impossi…

Think of it like parenting a teenager. If you be extremely disciplinarian, ban a bunch of stuff, have rigid rules, you don’t get an obedient child, you just get painful rebellion and if you quash it hard enough, you get a child ready to run away at the first notice.

The best way to deal with teenagers, is if you are cool in their eyes, then they will naturally try to copy you. This is hard for most parents, try too hard to be cool and you will be relentlessly mocked. In fact if you can’t be cool, it’s best to just be neutral and let them drift the way they drift, because if you try to impose too much, you just encourage their natural rebellious streak and get opposite results.

The Chinese government has always been in the position of the uncool parent who is trying to take control by being a disciplinarian. Thinking they can control US public through some hidden levers, is like thinking the parent secretly is making the teenager do his bidding by playing 5D chess. It is a fantasy. The US regime was more cool, maybe not as cool as actual Gen Z, but cool enough that they were not relentlessly mocked. Unfortunately this act, just exposes them as uncool after all, and makes them get relentlessly mocked. If the goal, is to win hearts and minds, US could not have scored a better own goal. That said, maybe this was going to happen anyway, the newer generation seems the most ironic and the quickest to mock existing social mores and ideals, and this act just sped up the process.

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