TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

Post by 2024user » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

uniq7 wrote: post #881

_7acn wrote: post #876

I think apps like TikTok or YouTube Shorts literally brainwash people. It’s one of the dumbest things ever invented on the Internet, yet incredibly addictive at the same time.

Never had TikTok, but that's exactly what I thought when Youtube introduced Shorts and I found myself spending long sessions in them. However, now I think it's the same infinite scroll we already had in twitter and reddit -- but instead of text and images, now it's just videos. At the beginning the content was really dumb and bad, but after some time it became way better. Now my feed is basically cooking recipes, che…

Post by kshacker » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

kshacker wrote: post #826

karmajuney wrote: post #807

While it’s back in the US, it seems to be a separate version from the rest of the world. My account is European and I can no longer log in within the US without a VPN out of the country. My GFs account is American and she can login but has lost access to some accounts and the ability to watch livestreams which my version of the app still has. I wonder if the 13 hour “outage” was for a larger scale data migration for…

I also can not see livestreams. It says "Unstable Network Connection". And I have 2 separate "air gapped" phones and TT accounts - no shared details and both behave the same. There are lots of conspiracy theories online. However, I think it is just that the process of bringing the stack back up may be difficult. They also have a huge shopping network, that has also been down, and there are emails/communications to sh…

Post by myko » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:48 PM UTC

theshrike79 wrote: post #941

There's anecdotal evidence that something funky is going on in the background. More so than usual. A handful of very prominent creators critical of the US (or other) governments have had their accounts just disappear. The algorithm is also showing decidedly different type of content.

Post by isk517 » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:56 PM UTC

hbn wrote: post #918

nico wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement They were following the law. Anything else is just promises by people who are not exactly known for following through with them Shutting down because the law says it, and to prevent really big penalties, is not making “a big political statement

It seems like striking fear into the hearts of users to make them realize a ban is really on the table is in their best interest. They want to not be banned, and giving everyone a 48 hour show of users on the platform counting down to the end, then being really upset when they think it's gone is a great demonstration that people want their Tiktok. * Trump gets a free layup to look like the hero for unbanning it * Tru…

Post by throw0101c » Mon, Jan 20, 2025, 3:58 PM UTC

scarab92 wrote: post #774

appleorchard46 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_Un...

Fiduciary responsibilities make it unlikely that many companies would risk it. There’s always a chance you don’t come back, and there’s likely to be a loss of marketshare for simply being unavailable for a period and forcing users to trial alternatives. But, TikTok is not purely commercially focused. A majority of the voting stock of ByteDance is held by the Chinese government, who clearly see non-financial strategic…