The number of people in the comments celebrating censorship by our own government while also claiming China is authoritarian is insane.
People aren’t as principled as they like to think they are.
censorship??? there are a ton of other apps that do the same. China censors people and created a credit # for them to punish them if they dont act they way the gov wants you to act. What are u on about?
Says the person that is clueless on the Chinese credit system
Tell me how great tik tok is and how great the chinese credit system is…. Pls
It’s no one’s job but your own to filter through propaganda. And everything you’ve claimed is propaganda.
Bye tik tok
It’s not going anywhere
Tiktok = brain rot
You must have a lot invested in that particular shitposting app.
You don’t have to attach yourself to everything you enjoy. It’s okay to leave yourself some wiggle rook to learn and grow.
Omg china has a credit # for their people? Thats evil! Good thing we dont have a Credit Score in the freedom country. And yeah its not censorship if you can get around it! Especially if its shutting people’s communication down for our freedom and safety 😎🦅🇺🇸
Ours is an actual credit system based on money not theirs… they want to control and brainwash you and I gotta say they are doing an amazing job! In a few days this app will be gone hopefully! Also if it was about money they would have sold it they didn’t cause they know its a tool they need to keep brainwashing people.
Why don’t you go on rednote and ask them about social credit? They have a search function where you can see other posts tagged as much.
Google works better!
Instead of asking chinese people living in china about a system which supposedly exists in China, you’d rather just keep listening to western propaganda?
It just works better… you know what I asked it??? Well here is the answer - * TikTok may be banned in the U.S. by the end of this weekend.
You clearly dont even know what their system is. Their only “credit system” is the sesame seed thing that two of the big companies use its not a government thing punishing you for wrongthink. Also to think we’re not brainwashed in the US is ridiculous.
America and China are the two most propagandized countries but at least they have the excuse of not being the most powerful country for the last century while still actively committing multiple genocides and denying their citizens healthcare or housing.
You live in china? If not you should move there!
An app has been shut down on the unsubstantiated claims that it was a tool of foreign influence but on the apparent reasoning that it was facilitating conversations that western social media is hostile to such as the Israeli extermination of Palestinians.
Palestine and Gaza were specifically cited by congresspeople as an inspiration and justification for the ban. It is plainly censorship. That’s not really debatable.
Whether or not you believe that the censorship was reasonable or if there is sufficient evidence of subversive foreign influence using the platform is possibly debatable, but the fact that it is censorship is not.
Aww man, the government here won’t let me use the reeducation of undesirables as a smokescreen to produce fast fashion in my chattel-slavery styled sweat-shops :(
Wah wahh
Are they banning temu?
Both can be true. I’m against banning TikTok, but I also think TikTok is absolutely terrible and nobody should use it. China is authoritarian, and this ban by the US is wrong. I say this as an American.
Why is it terrible? Have you ever even been on it? Most people I’ve encountered that say it’s terrible or it’s brain rot or something along those lines have never even been on it, they’re simply parroting what they’ve heard other people say
I’ve seen people scrolling on it their whole time on public transportations on materials worse than the worst of TV commercials, like they were in a trance. I know people who using it for at lease an hour every day before bed, and admitting they don’t know what they get from it, just boredom. From what I know, it’s like brainwashing for people who don’t know what to do with their lives.
They could listen to a Joe Rogan podcast the exact same way. They’re on public transport, what the fuck else are they going to do but look at their phone or listen to something with headphones?
I have to admit, you are right. If there is nothing been stuffed into their minds, most people really don’t know what to do with themselves, just like Montag’s wife from Fahrenheit 451. But there are differences between actively seek something you interested in than going blank and let the algorithms do the job for you. I thought people in Fediserse mostly against the idea of the latter. Otherwise, you will go to Tiktok or something.
Once you’ve spent some time the algorithm learns what you like. For example my feed is a lot of indie music, civil rights, and table top role-playing stuff. Once it gets enough information on the stuff you like you don’t really need to do more than swipe past the ads.
So you have your nose so far up in their business you know exactly what app they’re watching and what type of materials they’re consuming? I’m going to wager none of the things that you just claimed you’ve ever witnessed
Why, don’t you know there’s a thing called observation?
There’s also this thing called making the shit up
Looks like where your heart truly belong is Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia. You’ve commented quite a lot of things.
I know that advertisers love that TikTok knows when a user desires your product. I wonder why they can target you so well? All state sponsored social media, X and Meta and company as well as TikTok, should be avoided if you don’t want corporations and capitalists and authoritarians having that much information about you. If you hate corporations trying to sell you things, maybe don’t use a dopamine and social habit tracking app that’s designed to sell ads to play on your fears
I have never received targeted advertising on tiktok. I can’t remember the last time I had seen an ad on there.
oh bless your heart 😌
Apologies for the southern passive aggressiveness, but I believe you may not notice how much content is an ad
How do you know heroin is bad for you? Have you tried it? You can’t say it’s bad unless you’ve tried it.
Where do I begin:
- China has more-or-less direct control over the app, and China is an enemy of the US
- extensive tracking
- it’s designed specifically to be addictive instead of beneficial
Other SM apps do 2 and 3, but that doesn’t mean TikTok is okay, it means those other apps are also terrible.
Where’s the evidence then?
I’m guessing you’re talking about the first point, so I looked into it and it seems China only owns a “golden share” (1%?), which doesn’t seem big enough to really cause problems. That said, I don’t know much about Chinese business, so maybe there’s still something there. But that’s just speculation, not evidence.
That said, that doesn’t change my opinion of it being terrible, because the last two points still stand. They also apply to domestic social media apps as well.
I’ll repeat it again, I don’t think it should be banned, but I also don’t think anyone should use it.
That’s the thing, the last time the government did something this sweeping without showing it’s evidence, me and a few hundred thousand of my best buddies got sent to Iraq.
Banning a SM app is nothing like declaring a War on Terror. For the record, I opposed both, as well as the War in Afghanistan. I’m sorry you were sent to fight in a pointless war.
Wow. They really went with Xiao hong shu?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Tse-tung
I knew Xiao Hong shu translated to little red book, but I didn’t put two and two together until now. That’s freaking hilarious
I thought it was hilarious for the same reason, but I don’t think anyone in Chinese refers to that book as 小红书. It’s the 红宝书. I’ve never been to China and perhaps google/Baidu/Pleco isn’t going to perhaps pick up that kind of usage, but I think it is more of a cross cultural accident.
It’s an obvious cultural reference.
https://collection.sina.cn/yejie/2015-01-21/detail-ichmifpx5063889.d.html
The article is about a bookstore in Manhattan, called “Little Red Books” though. Your link is an abbreviated translation of this article, which you might notice from the link at the bottom. I don’t know if that serves as the kind of linguistic evidence that’s called for here.
You are correct - I had forgotten (been quite a while). I still think it’s funny but thanks for pointing this out.
But 宝 (Bǎo) means “precious” or “treasured” and 红宝书 probably only gets translated as little red book because it sounds better in English.
Reject modernity, everyone go back to
forum boardsusenet lolAfter Chinese spyware banned, users of banned Chinese spyware migrate to not-yet banned Chinese spyware.
This is the third story I’ve seen today that was basically “Tiktok users flee service to other chinese service app you’ve never heard of”
So basically the usa banned tiktok, and now there’s 3 other tiktoks, all connecting the same amount of data for china, just through 3 different services instead of 1.
Sounds about right, From my understanding, they singled out TikTok instead of addressing the actual problem they claim to care about.
[Edit, another comment says its any app with 1million users. So now there’s just going to be a hundred TikTok clones all under the same umbrella just different names.]
To be fair, the law is broad enough that it could target these other services as well pretty easily.
The law is broad enough they could target Discord.
That seems like a bit of a stretch since it’s US based company. I guess some of its investors could be based in China though.
your edit sounds like the fediverse model
I suppose. I was thinking more of 1 Chinese company just spinning up a hundred copy/paste apps.
If they addressed the general problem it would also affect US social media platforms and they want to continue doing that when American companies do it.
Due to the network effect, having a hundred apps instead of one is a big negative.
XiaoHongShu is much older than tiktok, it started shortly after facebook, though resembles more a mix of Twitter and Instagram.
XiaoHongShu was founded in 2013, Facebook was founded in 2004…
Your sense of time is a bit warped…
Honestly, I don’t even believe these articles. At some point it just starts to sound like they are making things up.
I mean, this is real easy to fact check. Open whichever playstore you prefer and sort by most downloaded. Red note and 8 will be up there.
Rednote is very cool. Very nice people and no ads. It’s almost weird that I haven’t seen any ads, even for Chinese products.
Starting to notice all these American apps are full of trolls, racists, and ads. So many people parroting shit they read on Faux News about China bad and about safeguarding their data. There is no threat.
The oligarchy is the same in China and the US. Corporate powers and billionaires running everything. The moment we as people realize that borders are made up and governments are meant to divide us the better we’ll be as a planet. Might even learn something from each other.
Anecdotally my daughter is learning mandarin in school and I’m taking this opportunity to learn some and bond with her over it. Very cool.
Why try to hype this as a trend?
because “red note” paid them to?
From the frying pan into the fire. Well done.
They don’t view it as a fire or frying pan, obviously
Why should I care about who the US sees as the enemy? I was born here and I’m seen as nothing more than livestock for our capitalists, when they aren’t funding and supplying a genocide against poors halfway around the world.
No way I’m going to rejoin Metabook after 10 years now that they’ve gone full Nazi.
Downloaded Rednote. Cool app. Fuck the hometeam that chose to be the opposite of a society. It’s only the home team if it’s a team, it’s been made clear to most Americans that we’re just a bunch of rugged individuals at each other’s throats for oligarch scraps and we can get fucked and die to profit healthcare scammers.
I’d rather have my clicks profit our supposed enemy than us at this point with “friends” like my country.
So, regarding your distaste for genocide—you, uh…might want to read up on Tiananmen Square and the Uyghurs.
Also, I notice you didn’t mention any Fediverse (or other) alternatives. I’m not going to make any accusations, but what you wrote sounds a lot like astroturfing.
If your ultimate goal is to say, “Fuck the US,” fine, but if what you really want to say is, “Fuck capitalists and authoritarians,” you’re going about it all wrong. What you’re essentially saying is that you’d rather be punched by this other guy just because it’s not the one you hate. Meanwhile, you don’t have to be punched at all.
China is and has committed genocide.
The US is and has committed genocide.
That’s not a point in either’s favor. That’s a moral wash.
I’d rather both nations failed, so something more humane can potentially take its place (and revolution over and over until that happens) but as an American, rejecting China means nothing, just as a Chinese citizen rejecting America means nothing.
Rejecting evil empires begins with undermining the one that you’re expected to support and be a loyal cog of. A Russian openly hating America or a Chinese person openly hating Russia is indistinguishable from patriotism/nationalism.
I can only hurt one empire materially, the one I materially live within. The Chinese have to reign in China, and the Russians Russia. The best I can do is my part not to strengthen or support the evil empire I was born under to the best of my ability.
I can only hurt one empire materially, the one I materially live within. The Chinese have to reign in China, and the Russians Russia. The best I can do is my part not to strengthen or support the evil empire I was born under to the best of my ability.
What you can do is not grow the ones you can’t hurt.
Zero good will come from using this app. If you want to support something positive go sign up for Loops and use the Fediverse alternative rather than support genocidal empires in any form.
That’s not a point in either’s favor. That’s a moral wash.
Ok, you’re either trolling or been fed a lot of misinformation. The problem is about recency and extensiveness, and China is worse on both.
The USA has killed orders of magnitudes more people in the last few years. Just, objectively.
Source?
The problem with the Uyghurs in China is less about deaths and more about cultural genocide. They’ve been rounded up and jailed en-masse (estimates are upwards of a million people), threatened, surveilled, etc, all to force them to submit and abandon their cultural heritage. It’s pretty similar in scope to the Japanese Internment in the US, but much larger in scope and with a much more nefarious goal.
I obviously don’t have hard figures on the actual death toll (not sure anyone does, as China doesn’t seem interested in disclosing it), but again, regardless of whether it’s higher or lower than whatever you’ll attribute to the US, the worst part here is forced cultural assimilation, or in other words, psychological violence (i.e. punishing “wrong thing”).
Is your point here that China’s actions against Uyghurs is more recent and extensive than the US’s part in Gaza?
Recent, extensive, and active. The US doesn’t have a direct part in Gaza, China has a direct part in the issues w/ the Uyghurs.
I’m not saying the US is innocent here, just that they’re very different situations.
The US doesn’t have a direct part in Gaza
This argument is incredibly hallow to me.
hallow
Odd, because I didn’t get it blessed by a priest. :)
Seriously though, there’s a pretty big difference between doing the genocide yourself and supplying weapons to an ally, who uses those weapons for genocide.
I can only hurt one empire materially, the one I materially live within.
Right, but you missed the core of my point. If you don’t like either, you don’t have to support either. If that means going to a decentralized option or going without a TikTok alternative, seems like you’ll achieve your dual goal of not helping either terrible option.
From my perspective, being disloyal to my country’s attempts to monopolize the information I imbibe, and being counted as part of that mass movement directly is again more important than also rejecting receiving the social media of another evil empire that, again, would simply be seen as patriotism/nationalism/nothing at all. It doesn’t actually meaningfully benefit China, but it does very publicly, as a movement of people not just me, work as a demonstration of undermining the authority of the evil empire I do have some tiny insignificant influence in.
They’ll ban it of course, and there will be another one. And that continuous “We don’t respect you or your authority because you arent on our side” does over time diminish the misplaced faith some still have in our captured institutions. Unfortunately signing up for Lemmy over reddit’s greed or some scandanavian social media doesn’t send the same message.
It has to be an enemy evil empire for the powerful of our evil empire to take notice and be concerned at all. Otherwise, it’s akin to “protesting” with a permit at a designated protest zone out of the eyeline and profit operations of those you’re protesting, aka masturbation.
Well, you do what you think is best. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, and I think our goals are aligned, but it seems we’ll have to agree to disagree on what we each think is the best course of action.
Good luck out there. Gonna be a rough couple of decades.
Agreed on all counts my friend, and best of luck to you as well.
The same people that sold you on Uyghurs is also telling you Tiktok is about privacy. They are lying about both
I have no idea who you’re referring to. The people that have said there’s ongoing human rights abuses against the Uyghurs, that collectively meet the UN definition for genocide, have nothing to do with TikTok or privacy. And if they made such a statement on the latter two, I would ignore it, since that’s not their area of expertise.
Is there a particular reason you’re denying that the Uyghurs are being targeted and that the survivors’ testimonies should be disregarded?
Christ, dude. It’s not that serious.
Fuck lemmy.world for being shit! I’m joining Hexbear
Is the shit take vibes I’m getting here from Allonzee
The only vibe I’m getting is “edgy 15 yo who just learned about politics”
More like they just learned about politics from some very biased sources.
More likely people will just install/update tiktok outside of Google play and apple store.
Rumor has it that tiktok will be unplayable with accounts linked to an American SIM card
Tiktok is going to be paradise without all the US problems in everybody else’s internet. It’s going to be the best social network ever
That is actually a really funny point I hadn’t thought of.
That… would be interesting. I wonder how they would implement that, and what else they decide is worth that restriction. Curious to see it play out
Edit: helpful info from Toms Hardware
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/online-security/what-will-happen-if-tiktok-is-banned
You can’t open douyin (the Chinese Tiktok) with a non-Chinese SIM present. So implementing it on the software side would be trivial, if google was to enforce this change software-sided.
The block is trivial to bypass though, all you need to do is use wifi while disabling the SIM slot in your phone settings. My wife is Chinese, and I had to figure that out for her.
Any China market tablet can install douyin even without a SIM, most even come with it installed by default.
Maybe that’s an Android thing?
My wife uses douyin on an American SIM all the time. She had to get someone from the mainland to type a pin for her when she first installed it, but there wasn’t any hardware based attestation on iOS
The app will stop working in the US. Doesn’t matter where you get it from.
Isn’t that what a VPN is for?
If someone is savvy enough to install from outside of the normal install mode especially on iOS, wouldn’t that imply that they are at least aware of a VPN?
There are lots of good free vpns out now, so it’s not unlikely. People that spend hours on it can follow a guide for 10 minutes. It will lower the amount of people on it for sure but anybody who wants to can bypass it easily. It will probably mean more for creators and stuff, and their us bank accounts maybe won’t be able to accept money from tk if they’re sanctioned.
I can’t imagine anyone using a VPN just for TikTok. Not to mention free vpns are garbage and don’t work well.
Tiktok got banned in India some years ago and it doesn’t work if you sideload, or even VPN somehow. But pretty much the next day instagram launched their reels things and people jumped ship without talking about tiktok anymore…
I read online somewhere, that you will still be able to have Tiktok. It will only be removed from the App stores. Then gradually faze out the site itself later. So, you have some time to get on the site. It won’t be completely offline on January 19.
I’m kind of surprised by the response in the comments. Generally I think Lemmy is anti Tik Tok and I don’t understand why. You don’t have to like the shit but why do people have to be so negative about what other people do with their free time?
I think people here are just trying to be edgy and hate tik tok because it’s popular.
Lemmy is Anti-Tiktok, but Lemmy is even more Anti-America
Tiktok is Chinese spyware, that’s been caught again and again to send user data to servers in China. How can anyone in their right mind not be outspoken and negative about this shit?
Users leaving tiktok in favor of xhs are totally insane.
I understand it perfectly, if american companies harvest their data, their govt is only a step from having it, and companies over here have immediate use of that data.
If the chinese companies have it, the chinese govt has it, and then what? Is china gonna prosecute us internationally with the info? At minimum they are making the US companies and govt crawl to china for the data they so desperately want.
Like, the US gets more use of data on US citizens than China would. Maybe if the concern was improving the security of american apps and data I would see the point, but seeing how many american companies continue to get away with it, it is blatant “America Good, others Bad”
But why give your data to anyone? I totally understand the argument that you don’t want your own government to have it, but willingly surrendering it to another nation is sketchy at best. With Lemmy, Mastodon and Pixelfed there are sufficient tracking-free alternatives with solid enough apps for most use cases.
It really puzzles me that many people in this thread that don’t know to what degrees an authoritarian country censors their dada, never lived in one, and can’t read their language, somehow think giving your personal information to that one is better. Being able to discuss such things is already a privilege. If your bag has to be searched twice a day just to be able to commute, I thought you will at least feel uncomfortable.
Agree. I lived in China until last August and left after about 7 years, my wife is Chinese, I speak Chinese. Yet I was alienated on a near constant basis (comes with not looking Chinese, I guess).
Luckily I avoided most of the bag searches by driving my own car (and admittedly, at least where I was at the searches on subway stations were half assed at best), but it sure is a nuisance to be under constant surveillance.
I’m in the camp that thinks in 25 years there will be some regretful studies about how attention span demolishing apps like TikTok and yt shorts fucked civilizations progress for the next 150 years. I’d agree with you if I only cared about my lifespan and what happens inside of it. Some people want to see progress across the centuries even if we don’t get to live it. TikTok is a sign of regression, whether there is good content or not.
That is a terrible mentality that is essentially “your generation bad, my generation better”.
People have been saying the same thing about any new technology. They said it about phones, they said it about tv, they’ll say it about literally anything. To boil down a generations problems to an app is ridiculous.
I’ll tell you this for nothing, not many kids know how to knap flint any more, and there’s the truth!
Sure but after phones and TV we raised gays, disabled, and the mentally ill out of the mud, transformed nations, inspired by inclusive initiatives humanity went through 50 years of progress.
After 20 years of social media we’ve full regressed to 1938. I think if you look around, there is some pretty obvious proof, society’s critical thinking has been intentionally dismantled by these social media algorithms and the bad actors that manipulate facts around them.
Congratulations you’ve been successfully brainwashed by Fox News. I’m not even going to address everything wrong with your comment. May God have mercy on your soul.
Meet the new app, same as the old app.
fucking idiots
Why? Cuz Chinese bad? Stolen data bad? I think you don’t understand that there is no safe data. It doesn’t matter who is taking it but your data is owned by someone. If not the Chinese it’s the US government. If not them then you’re phone provider. If you purchase ANYTHING, that store is collecting your data.
What if that’s what they were talking about? That’s it’s idiotic to ban it given everything you just said.
People keep making this argument comparing TikTok to American social media companies when talking about data.
What is hard to understand? Americans are fine with other Americans or American companies having their data. Americans are not fine with China having their data.
It is pretty simple.
Okay so China bad, America good?
That’s one way to look at it, not my intent but if that’s how you took it, enjoy.
More like, foreign control of my mental state is bad.
It really just sounds like unintentional racism to me. A vague dislike and distrust of foreigners. Nobody able to prove the Chinese intentions are any worse than the American gov’s intentions.
I agree mas data collection is wrong, but if we’re gonna be upset, it’s gotta cover the whole topic, not just china
I’d rather the Chinese government have my data than the US government. The US government has a lot more power over me.
This sentiment will be the downfall of America. Maybe that’s what you want. Not me.
It isn’t just about data, but influence.
Not Chinese bad, Chinese government bad. because the Chinese government has so much control, Chinese companies can’t be trusted. yes, stolen data is bad. I know that data is being stolen anyway, but tiktok has historically been very bad about it. however, i was reffering to them moving from one shitty Chinese platform to another even more shitty and even more Chinese (as in controlled more by the Chinese government) one, when there are platforms that are from places that do not have an authoritarian government able to control any company if they so choose. of course something like instagram (reels) or youtube shorts isn’t much better in terms of data theft, but who has the data does matter no matter how hard you’re coping.
I don’t get it, are they going to steal my bank login? Like what’s so bad about knowing I liked a fried meme?
They are stealing data that can be (and is, often) used to track you across the entire internet. many social media platforms (again, especially tiktok) use this data to straight up manipulate people into spending more time on their platform and having views that align with the interests of the company. this is especially bad if the interests of the company are really the interests of an authoritarian government that is blatantly hostile to other countries unprovoked.
Your statement applies whether we’re talking about American or Chinese companies. One of these countries has affordable groceries, the other has school shootings.
But yeah yeah “what about Tianeman Square, and Taiwan?” OK sure, fine. What about police brutality and the ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST?
It’s more than just what you do in the app though. Check out some of the data any random website can find out about you here: privacy.net/analyzer/
Expand that into an app, given lots of permissions, that is tied to your phone number and email account. Given enough time and logging, it knows where you live and work, when you commute and sleep, every WiFi or mobile network you connect to and where they are located. This metadata is linked to your account and in-app activity. They have this data for you, your friends, colleagues, that weird guy you see on the bus every day… Right now, the app just uses all this to influence “your algorithm” (side note: this is also why people think some apps are actively ‘listening’ to conversations). But imagine a case where the govt owner of the app wants to start pushing a specific narrative, gradually swaying opinions or sowing the seeds of discourse, reinforcing it with the artificial echo chamber that is your new algorithm. /TedTalk
You are just parroting shit you read on the internet and I feel bad for you. You literally have no idea how fucked we all are in terms of our data being stolen. I guess you want to be the one who determine who fucks you. Well TikTok users are doing the same
You are essentially virtue signaling that you are so much more security minded than everyone because you “safeguard your data”. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but our oligarch owns our data and is selling it to the highest bidder. The fact that you own a phone/computer means your data has already been bought and sold.
Those users:
“Hold on. Stand still as I do a back flip over your shoulders so I can kick you in the face bro.”
“Ok bro”I do recommend the movie, if you haven’t seen it!
Oh, yep, I love Kung Pow! It was one of the more memorable ones growing up. It’s tupid fun watching it every time.
I will always upvote Kung Pow!
Good ole wimp lo.
We trained him wrong. As a joke.
