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?
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.
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
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.
Tiktok = brain rot
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I’m not really one for Tik Tok, but I went on REDNote to see what it was about and it was incredibly wholesome seeing American and Chinese people getting to interact as normal human beings and understand each other without it being filtered through our governments. Even if they don’t shut down Tik Tok, they’re gonna have to shut that shit down. Can’t have future soldiers seeing their “enemies” as humans.
I wonder if they’re actually chinese troll farms
For those unfamiliar:
The 50 Cent Party, also known as the 50 Cent Army or wumao, are Internet commentators who are paid by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China to spread the propaganda of the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The program was created during the early phases of the Internet’s rollout to the wider public in China.
Who like all of them? Why?
Insane to me that people can be this xenophobic. Wholesome Chinese people? No internet troll farm.
China paying entire offices of people to be friendly, entertaining, and educational to foreigners online would be cool actually.
I look forward to the people who don’t realize that Red Note will just get banned too.
I don’t think they care. For most, this is just a middle finger to the government
The problem is that that sometimes if you give the government the finger… you might not get it back.
You just need to be careful of which part of gov you give the finger to, and where you are when you give it.
Snowden did it the right way, he gave the middle finger on foreign soil and made it to an enemy of the state’s soil before the gov caught up.
Middle finger to the US or Chinese government?
It goes both ways, users are giving the middle finger to the US gov, the US gov is giving the middle finger to the Chinese gov. Lots of middle fingers flying around.
Wow. They really went with Xiao hong shu?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Tse-tung
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.
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.
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.
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
In a way I would feel more comfortable with china having my shit posting data than an American company. At least if china has it, there is slightly less of a chance of them selling the data to a data set deanonymizing company who in turn sells my data linked to me to like an insurance company who jacks my rates because I said their CEO should get Luigi’d. What is china gonna do to me if I never go to China and exist largely outside of their sphere of influence?
It isn’t about you. China doesn’t care about you. If they have a computer tracking cell network info of groups of soldiers, they can glean actionable information about US military posture. They can do large-scale data analysis on the information they have and get a startling amount of information. They can also use it as a vector for injecting their favorite form of aggression against the US, soft power. They can’t defeat the US in a fight, but economic and cultural warfare is a vulnerability in the US where the battleground is far more level. The incoming administration has indicated it plans to further increase the US’s military strength, which is functionally untouchable as it stands and is more than ready for the fight nobody plans to bring against it, while weakening the actual fight we are seeing. The US is objectively safer, however little, against the machinations of the CCP with tiktok gone, but it is a band-aid on a firehose. Also, the CCP is clearly ready for that move given the move to Redbook, likely stoked by CCP operators under the guise of “haha let’s go to another Chinese app, that’ll show 'em!” because Americans are very easy to predict and manipulate…they are born and raised to be manipulated. It’s rough, but quite interesting to see play out.
But that’s my point. china doesn’t care about me. American data gobblers care very much about me because I exist as a consumer in their sphere of influence and am far more likely to be exploited by said data.
Do they actually? I mean why can’t I sell my days. If I quit the big tech companies and paid for the equivalent services, could I sell that data at a auction? Not having a go at you, just wondering how much our individual data is actually worth.
Could you sell your own personal data at auction? Maybe. It depends on who is buying the info and what they stand to gain or mitigate their risk if you want it in corpo speak.
Car insurance already does this by giving discounts for having a gps tracker connected to your car. These things give data like location, speed and g forces. If you drive outside of their parameters your rates go up. So your driving data is worth whatever the discount they give and that’s just a fraction of your data.
Sounds like a problem for the TRILLION dollar military industrial complex. I’m sure they can spare a few bucks to solve that issue.
Yeah, China doesn’t have jurisdiction over me. I don’t have to worry about the CCP showing up at my door to harass me for what I post. But it’s a very real threat from the US feds.
I mean you do, that’s what the Chinese police operating in the United States thing is about.
No, it’s sinophobic propaganda.
No that actually happened boss.
Meanwhile the mainstream will probably just focus on Instagram and its reels feature as pretty much all bigger creators crosspost everything there as well.
The instagram reels and YouTube shorts algorithms are utter shit. I’ve tried, but holy shit there’s some crap in there.
“I would rather stare at a language I can’t understand than to ever use a social media [platform] that Mark Zuckerberg owns,” said one user in a video posted to Xiaohongshu on Sunday.
but uh, why tf did they use tiktok in the first place
deleted by creator
Way to much credit for the average user.
deleted by creator
You can still connect to it, the app store has to take it down and it can’t be hosted in the u.s. assuming your ISP allows it, you can still access the TikTok servers outside of the u.s. but that’s going to cause a lot of traffic and ISPs will throttle it or block it completely.
You can still side load the app, not sure how iOS users are going to do that and that’s going to be the majority of people.
So you may or may not still be able to use the current app without a VPN until TikTok updates it or the OEMs push an update that bricks it.
Connecting to it isn’t hard, But they won’t be able to pay people, so the US content will just get starved out.
deleted by creator
Youtube has backed down a lot, but they’re still paying their golden geese.
Spiffing britt has let a new recent video payouts out of the bag, a good multi-million hit view video still nets him around 20k.
deleted by creator
Ahh, well, we’ll see I suppose.
I’m not actually seeing anything preventing creators from being paid, they’re just going to lose the majority of their u.s. audience on the platform.
In all likelihood, Red Note will be banned banned, probably before the Red Note devs add a built-in translate function.
Not with a ten meter cattle prod for me, anyone willing to indulge Zuck’s midlife Nazi crisis deserves him.
Not with a ten meter cattle prod for me
I’m waiting for by Loops verification mail but I’d say the average Lemmy user has not that much in common with the average TikTok/IG user.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reject modernity, everyone go back to
forum boardsusenet lolThose 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.
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.
After Chinese spyware banned, users of banned Chinese spyware migrate to not-yet banned Chinese spyware.
From the frying pan into the fire. Well done.
They don’t view it as a fire or frying pan, obviously
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 should I give a fuck 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.
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?
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
And those people will turn around and cry about privacy issues. The cycle repeats…
No one on TikTok cares about privacy
he does ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@mor10web
Not clicking that link, but the mere fact of having an account there means you don’t care about your privacy IMO.
i don’t have an account “there”
i see that you like making assumptions, now, please tell me what we can assume about you after your comment above knowing that it’s false
check these if you care, while you think ☞ https://mor10.com https://www.youtube.com/@mor10web https://github.com/mor10
I don’t think he meant YOU specifically.
the mere fact of having an account there means they don’t care about their privacy IMO.
would have been clearer then?
and in that case, we can say that for mor10, as an educator, reach is probably more important than strict privacy
@mor10@front-end.social ?
I meant the user on TikTok, I used “you” in a general sense. I apologize that wasn’t clear.
And after a quick review of the links you posted (<5 min), it looks like he’s more a software design and ethics enthusiast than a privacy advocate. The fact that he has no privacy-friendly platforms on their website and the only ones listed are perhaps the worst for personal privacy (LinkedIn and TikTok) makes me more confident that my assessment is correct.
It’s certainly not conclusive though, since other privacy advocates also tend to have accounts at those places (e.g. Naomi Brockwell has IG and Twitter (hasn’t updated to X lol) in addition to TikTok, LinkedIn, and YT, but she also has Odyssey, which is a step in the right direction. She’s looking for maximum reach, and her content is almost exclusively about privacy. I would prefer that she also have PeerTube, Matrix, etc, but she’s targeting a specific demographic here.
So yeah, idk, but it definitely seems that privacy isn’t nearly as important to him as software ethics, and those are very different (though related) things.
Most of them are joking about reuniting with their Chinese spy
Right? The tech-user bubble is funny, sometimes. The average TikTok user couldn’t care less about privacy, they care about having an app that delivers the experience they want. The reason many aren’t going to Instagram reels and Youtube shorts is because their algorithms and content are awful.
Similar vibes as “Why are Twitter users going to Bluesky and not Mastodon? Are they stupid?”
