To be honest if I had a choice between if America was allowed to spy on me or China was allowed to spy on me, at this point I really don’t care. In the past I would have said America spying on me is better than China spying on me if only because fuck China because they have an iron grip on the video game industry. But since I hate short form videos, fuck all of them.
My assumption is everything everywhere on the internet is already assumed to be fair game for spying, scraping, training, whatever.
At this point the interests seem more about serving than gathering information - hence the political games to control specific platforms now.
The problem with the American government trying to propagandize us against China is that there is currently nothing that they can say about China that is not effectively the same or WORSE in the United States.
But China spies on their citizens…Yeah, that’s the NSA.
They can’t Google Tiananmen Square. They don’t want people knowing their history…We’re trying to ban history books right now because we don’t like that white people look bad during the slave trade.
But China doesn’t have freedom of press…All of our press sources have been bought up by billionaires who also contribute enough campaign contributions to effectively own all of our politicians so that they can control which laws are passed as well as control the narrative surrounding those laws.
China doesn’t have freedom of speech…The United States is officially banning a platform on January 19th that is used by millions of Americans to communicate and share ideas!!!
But China has massive amounts of human rights violations…Forced birth is a war crime that is happening in America RIGHT NOW. Child marriage is legal in the United States right now. Our prison system is legalized slavery. There is a reason that we have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. It’s because it’s legalized slavery. The 13th amendment to our constitution says “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Convenient for a nation that imprisons black people at more than FIVE TIMES the rate of white people.
China is condoning/committing a genocide…That’s fucking laughable. Smile and say that to America’s indigenous peoples. Say that to Palestine. Say that to Congo. Say that to Sudan. Fuck it… Say that to ANY COUNTRY in the global south.
But the working conditions for the Chinese people are terrible…We haven’t raised the minimum wage in 15 FUCKING YEARS! The minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour, meaning you could work a full time job and still only make $15,080 per year. BEFORE TAXES!!! With basically no guaranteed benefits. And on top of that, the government is actively banning an app that is a secondary source of income for people.
There is really not much we can say about China right now, in a negative light, that we cannot find some equivalent here in the United States. And on top of that, at least China has universal healthcare. At least China has public transportation. At least in China, they’re not having their kids shot to death on a daily basis. At least in Chin/ they have managed their homeless population. Do you know how we manage our homeless population? We throw the In prison. We take our veterans and turn them into slaves. In China they give them temporary housing and a job.
I’m not going to sit here and condone the awful shit that China is doing and I do not have any desire to live/suffer there, but if you wanted American citizens to actually believe that we are better than China, then maybe we should actually fucking BE BETTER THAN CHINA.
I’m going to miss TikTok. Some of the smartest, kindest, most generous people I’ve met in my whole life, I met on TikTok.
Honestly, you’re probably better off without tiktok. Short form video is bad for humans, and it’s much worse if it’s not educational
I’m genuinely sorry for the potential friends you’ve lost, but tiktok was not a good thing… An American controlled version wouldn’t be better, I hope you double down on the fediverse
that’s a whole lot of words used to sell tiktok as a fun wholesome platform…
I’m getting strong “both sides are the same” vibes from that wall of text.
tiktok will be the first(of many) apps that will be removed from access within the US. why? to protect the people from outside influence and to protect national defense.
I’m not here to argue about the shit the US has or is doing that’s the same or better or worse than China. I don’t care because, it’s a red herring.
tiktok has a well known and documented history of lying about their privacy protections. on the record they have sold American user data to Chinese backed MICs.
it’s a threat to national security. the end.
You actually tricked yourself into believing this isn’t all about shutting down competition to American companies or stopping people’s (especially young people’s) power to disseminate even remotely left leaning views that could gain traction and threaten the oligarchs.
I mean even the politicians who back this bill state as much, so I’m not sure why you think this is about national defense. American citizens are just under as much threat as before, but now they have one less way to express themselves. Ain’t that great. /s
More likely people will just install/update tiktok outside of Google play and apple store.
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…
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… 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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. /TedTalkThey 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?
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.
I’d rather the Chinese government have my data than the US government. The US government has a lot more power over me.
Okay so China bad, America good?
What if that’s what they were talking about? That’s it’s idiotic to ban it given everything you just said.
Why try to hype this as a trend?
because “red note” paid them to?
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.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
The number of people in the comments celebrating censorship by our own government while also claiming China is authoritarian is insane.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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!
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?
Meet the new app, same as the old app.
I don’t want to rain on everyone’s parade but I think the law bans all apps with over 1 million users that are based in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea (“foreign adversary controlled applications”) where you can make a profile and share content. WeChat would definitely count. So, Red Note is probably/possibly going away soon too. I guess VKontakte is Russian and still in the app stores.
The media is focused on creators and TikTok, obviously. But a WeChat ban would probably suck for people with grandparents in China since that’s the “everything app” there. (I don’t know what China bans but even if there’s other messaging apps allowed in China, teaching your elderly Chinese grandma to use a different app on a ~12h time zone difference is probably not a fun activity.)
Russia is no longer an adversary with the incoming administration, Putin owns Trump and their interests are now are own.
Their interests are his interests, not ours.
No sarcasm, I’m happy that you agree. But we have no power to stop whatever the fuck he’s going to do, so we’re just talking semantics.
It’s any app they can point to as being controlled. It does not matter where it is based. As an example they could allege that one of the owners of Discord has Russian contacts and is therefore controlled by a foreign adversary. (He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine; where contact between Russians and Ukrainians wasn’t uncommon before the current war.)
Congress can request a briefing but if they want to prevent a fire sale they have to pass an entirely new bill amending the law.
And this article is so transparently an ad for Red Note it’s ridiculous.
From the frying pan into the fire. Well done.
They don’t view it as a fire or frying pan, obviously
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.
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.
Those users:
I will always upvote Kung Pow!
Good ole wimp lo.
We trained him wrong. As a joke.
“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.
Meanwhile the mainstream will probably just focus on Instagram and its reels feature as pretty much all bigger creators crosspost everything there as well.
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.
The instagram reels and YouTube shorts algorithms are utter shit. I’ve tried, but holy shit there’s some crap in there.
In all likelihood, Red Note will be banned banned, probably before the Red Note devs add a built-in translate function.
Meanwhile the mainstream would probably just download whatever VPNs they can.
Way to much credit for the average user.
I am saying this because I saw this happen. Whenever I accidentally peek into a random’s phone on a bus, chances are the homescreen has a VPN app. The blocked social media did have a bit of a decline, but remain very popular, especially Youtube, which was likely the biggest drive for people to bypass the blocks. The lack of credit is more about them often choosing shady VPN services.
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.
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.
They won’t freeze the assets until the company is officially barred from working here. They won’t just fuck around and blindly try to figure out what they’re doing, once they command Apple and Google to remove it from the App store, they’ll start freezing assets and stopping financial transactions. It’s just the nature of the beast.
We have a similar situation on Youtube - the site itself doesn’t pay the creators anymore. But everyone who had Youtube as a profession is still there. Some depend on a Patreon-like service, some on their own sponsorships.
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.
I meant because of sanctions they don’t receive anything from Youtube itself. Yet they go on.
Ahh, well, we’ll see I suppose.
I wonder if Tiktok would respond by making their mobile webapp better in this case.
By the way, if the traffic is throttled and not outright blocked - that would mean things like GoodbyeDPI would be likely possible instead of VPNs!
“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
“NOOOO the foreign man who’s been fucking me is gone, I MUST find a new foreign man to fuck me or I will die!” -Idiot humans
foreign man
Why „foreign man”? Why not „Capitalist”? Or „Megacorporation”?
Foreign people are not the only ones who are fucking you over.
Why „foreign man”? Why not „Capitalist”? Or „Megacorporation”?
In this specific case, the man fucking them over is banned because it’s foreign. The position of domestic man fucking them over is not vacant so they only need to find a replacement for the position of foreign man fucking them over.
The foreign capitalist/imperialist app ran by a despot who approved this app for me to useeeeeee.
OK then, foreign communist megacorporation & government
Taiwanese communist? What world do you live in?
Communist mega corporation and government? What strain is that
The China kind.
“We may disclose any of the Information We Collect to respond to subpoenas, court orders, legal process, law enforcement requests, legal claims, or government inquiries, and to protect and defend the rights, interests, safety, and security of the Platform, our affiliates, users, or the public. We may also share any of the Information We Collect to enforce any terms applicable to the Platform, to exercise or defend any legal claims, and comply with any applicable law.”
Wow, a very normal, and widespread TOS part. Which almost EVERY SINGLE COMPANY has. And whatever yammer yer were doing with “communist mega corporation” is also very strange. I hope for the better of yer.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Fair, but alot of people are going to wind up on a corporate social media anyways, and if they aren’t willing to jump over to more private options this is a mitigation of the damage and simultaneously is an act of defiance, so while not the best choice, I still regard it as better than, say, anything Meta owns. So I feel this shouldnt be beaten down on so hard, but rather used as a chance to say “Yeah, that is a step, but here are some better options”. Talking down about their choice on a platform they already aren’t on as if it is somehow worse than what is being pushed on them is just screaming into the void.
What is China going to do?
Hell with China’s track record, it’s better that China has it than the US government if you’re in the US.
China treats data as bad as the US, I want neither of them to have access.
man, keep these hits coming!
I’m building a database of y’all that keep trying to say “both sides are bad” just to track what your other opinions are over time.
don’t worry, I’ll keep the data on a server outside the US so you’ll feel safer.
This is so funny because it’s suppose to sound scary but no one actually gives a fuck.
you think I said it to be scary?
no. I didn’t say it to be scary. I said it because it’s the only way to identify platform manipulation.
like users that flip from one extreme to the other from comment to comment…
one second they say nobody cares about privacy and the next time they bemoan how the oligarchy owns us and we can’t stop it(a clear cry for help if I ever heard one).
I want to track users like that so we can have a clearer understanding of who is abusing the platform.
