Imagine cheering that your government decided witch social media are you allowed to use.
There is sooooo much weird conspiracy shit in these comments. The government is banning TikTok becuase they collect too much data and the Chinese government could eaisly get access to all of it. The correct thing to do would be to regulate data collection but that would be problematic for Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple…etc etc… so instead they just ban TikTok. All this TikTok refusing to spread deep state US govt propaganda horse shit is a bit past nuts.
I mean occams razor is the best way to feel sane in the disinformation age so im with you. But i think its more accruate to do our best understand what is possible and suspend holding a specific belief like that because it doesnt matter if you are right or wrong. Many things could be true at the same time, especially with who you ask.
Kind of makes our conversations worthless, which i think is the strategy of disinformation. We cant know, so should we really be claiming whats true or not? Seems like we should just offer what seems most likely rather than tell everyone they are wrong unless you have information sources to help them understand why they are likely wrong.
This is a pretty sane explanation.
I’m also at least partially convinced that it’s motivated by our social media giants’ interest to “think of the children” their competition away.
Seeing as the order was basically “Get bought by an American corpo or get banned.” They either plunder the competitor’s insane data collection, userbase, and profits, or kick them off their corner.
Since this is the place for the most serious discussion:
If US lawmakers focused on protecting American’s privacy with some sensible privacy laws coughGDPR equivalent cough, we could avoid pulling out the ban hammer to play whack-a-mole on these companies.
Companies would simply be punished by the law for being malicious or irresponsible with your data, forcing industries to take privacy seriously and make investments in protecting and not leaking it.
Fuck you. I’m going to RedNote. Purely out of spite. Because I’d rather dropship my DNA to the Communist Party of China HQ than give my data to Zucc or Elon.
Both are bad, one is worse.
I hope you mean Google, they track you all over the web whether you want to be tracked or not just because lazy web developers can’t be bothered to host their own fonts (and other ways but that’s just one example). You have to deliberately download or use TikTok for them to get your data.
Polly wants a cracker
Oh yeah, I forgot the other social media apps don’t collect data and spew propaganda. Oh wait… They do.
Yeah but only for the benevolent western ultra rich oligarchs, so it’s gucci.
FTFY
edit : ooooh the wee St Petersburg trollies are tryin’ ta tryin’ ta ain’tcha!
News flash, responder-guys: if you’re even humans & not the AI bots who took most of your colleagues’ jobs, you’re still always be undervalued by your bosses. They’ll never, ever save you: they’ll save their Teslas and stock portfolios instead. Your life kinda sucks and there’s nothing you can do about it AND YOU CHOSE THIS LIFE, DIDNT YOU. Free yourself. Quit this shit job and go back to school before it’s too late.
whataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhatabout tho?
(For anyone reading this in the future: they made that edit addressing “responder-guys” when the comment had only one reply lol 🤡)
nice try sweetcheeks but as predicted, a second came
Oh is that what you were doing? Predicting?
Go away CCP shill
Cambridge analytica you fuck
Why are you mad at the truth? We’ve known for over a decade that Facebook steals your data and listens to your conversations…
Cuz logical fallacy commie dibshits
I don’t think that means what you think it means
Tiktok got banned not for peddling “chinese propaganda” but instead not peddling the US one.
All the major tech companies in the US take measures to ensure content deemed unworthy by the government never become mainstream or viral.
This is done under the pretense of stopping “hate speech” or “terroristic propaganda” but often include things like pro-palestinian content or class struggle content (like luigi mangione stuff).
Tiktok was bold enough to not do that by default, cuz they wanted someone to ask them to do this and then it would become a huge scandal about how the US suppresses free speech. And US gov don’t want to do that for this exact reason as well. So they decided to ban it.
Remember talks for this “law” were initiated when all of a sudden tiktok became a host for pro-palestinian voices. We should ask ourselves, how is it that 60% of americans want the government to stop arms sales to israel but this 60% never shows up on the big social media platforms. But on other platforms like here in lemmy and tiktok, pro-palestinians is the majority.
For further reading, listen to employees fired from big US tech companies for voicing their concerns over the palestine issue, or read Meta’s new terms and conditions specially the section on “dangerous organizations and individuals”.
It’s outright shadowbanned at best and straight up banned at the isp level at worst.
That’s why tik tok is getting banned, because US spooks can’t control it.
Ah yes, TikTok, the land free of censorship. Where you can’t say “gay” and must insert a stupid little asterisk.
I didn’t say tiktok is the bastion of free speech. They only do this in the Palestinian case because it does not serve them anything to be against palestine. We can criticise one party without making the other one some kind of “moral hero” of a story.
Funny how the Chinese are using Palestinians to try to further their own geopolitical position. It’s almost like the October 7th attack as engineered by Israel AND Iran. You know who Irans allies are… Right?
And “Israel” fell right into their trap by…committing genocide.
Bibi did. The guy who would be in prison for corruption charges without Hamas being retards. HURRDURR
That is quite the logic. That it is the fault of the militarized resistance against a colonial state (just a political party really, but putting that aside) that the colonial state’s prime minister is using genocide against their people to hold onto power.
At some point you have to actually ask yourself, am I apply equal standards for assigning blame across the spectrum?
Thank god for bold platforms like TikTok that refuse to push US propaganda. Really smart of them to not censor valuable information as a way of fooling the US government into exposing its evil censorship ways. TikTok’s fate in the US was never a topic before the current wave of pro-Palestinian activism started. It certainly wasn’t one of Trump’s main talking points ten years ago. Good thing he changed his mind after getting his hands on
some Chinese moneylucrative investmenet from Chinese citizens that are not at all connected to Tencent.None of this discourse on combatting foreign information manipulation started over a decade ago, its all about censoring pro-Palestine voices here and now. TikTok and China in general are known for their calm, collected attitudes toward Muslims. They certainly would never weaponize a contentious topic every which way imaginable in pursuit of financial and geopolitical goals. We need more of these open and bold platforms.
I wasn’t sure this was an actual a tankie rant or sarcasm until the
TikTok and China in general are known for their calm, collected attitudes toward Muslims
Its just another troll. You give them labels like tankie but they are just trolls.
Know what the other “tell” is? They write a wall of text. Big thick paragraphs. It’s a thing, start looking for it.
No, that’s neurodivergence.
I feel seen. LOL
I feel like with all the posts I ramble on (and TRY to pare down) in Lemmy, I could just have easily had a somewhat healthy blog going by now…that nobody would read because it wasn’t on Medium or some other monolith. XD
Who? People with a lot to say?
& when you call them out they want to lead you down this endless response chain. You wonder if they get bonuses for it
Oh yeah, nothing like hallucinating that everyone you talk to is an enemy, and when they complain, well that just proves it.
Yuppp. Newsflash, Chinese government is committing a genocide against the Uighur peoples
They track the location of people in the US and gather large amounts of data. They didn’t get banned for refusing to spread US propaganda.
These are very loose terms. Pretty much every major website saves IP addresses when you create an account (to prevent abuse/spam detection). And you can get location info from the IP address. Hence the first condition would be true for all of those websites.
Next, any website/app that builds a recommendation system will save user interactions to build the “algorithm”. So every social media with an algorithm will fall into this category.
With enough bending of terminology, we might be able to prove that the lemmy also collects user data (although it will be really hard cuz the algo here is based on upvotes and time posted iirc). And “large amount” part is just legal filler words.
As does all the American owned networks. That’s not the reason. Not pushing American propaganda is the reason.
False dichotomy. They could’ve been banned on legitimate pretenses AND other reasons threatening power.
If they were legitimately only banned for “tracking the location in the US and gathering large amounts of data”, then just about every single social media service would be under investigation for the same reason. But do we currently see that happening?
If they were legitimately only banned for “tracking the location in the US and gathering large amounts of data”, then just about every single social media service would be under investigation for the same reason.
We aren’t talking about TikTok simply gathering the information though, are we?
But yes, absolutely. Let’s do it. And we know that: just because the other companies aren’t being investigated/regulated in the same way, does not mean that it shouldn’t happen at all. That’s not how it works.
Also, you are making a fallacious argument yourself… If we were talking about banning US social media sites in China, then the comparison holds (and even then, it’s not 1:1 given the political structure of the CCP vs. that of the US). Otherwise, TikTok is clearly unique among them in that the Chinese Government ostensibly has access to any and all information that is being collected.
There is a reason China made their own version Facebook. Because they don’t want us to have all that information on their citizens.
Of all the social media popular in the US, only one of them is doing that tracking and is under the thumb of a foreign adversary. That is specifically the line drawn in the law. I’m actually curious if WeChat shouldn’t fall under it too?
Not to defend tiktok (to this day I have not ever used it), but if the issue is the tracking and data collection, you could ban/regulate that specifically instead of singling out the app.
It is obvious that they want the other (US-based) companies to be able to continue collecting that data so they can gain access to it if they want/need it. It’s bullshit, but it’s clearly what they want.
But that being bullshit does not mean that they are wrong in not wanting the one that is under the control of a foreign adversary having access to that data. Two separate things.
And the US social media companies are filled with spooks.
Ding ding ding
So does facebook, twitter, google, microsoft, and pretty much every mobile app development shop.
hankie hugger, yall ain’t gonna win this one
That’s what they’re telling you, and since when are they telling the truth?
I think aliens did it.
Facebook does the same tracking and data harvesting. Is Facebook up to be banned? It isn’t the tracking and data harvesting.
Person 1: I think it’s because the tracking and data harvesting
Person 2: that’s an obvious lie (see above)
You: I think aliens did it
Shut up alien
Factually untrue, the only person who has control of what the algorithm shows you on any social media is the end user. So say8ng that it is used to spread propaganda (which that’s super vague), is blatantly false. Pretending otherwise is just being willingly ignorant to how the technology works. Hell, a 6 year old understands how the algorithm works and how to shape it. Plus, US based users have their data stored on US servers hosted by Oracle, China has no access to it. Do two seconds of research and you will see that I’m correct
LMAO, The company that makes the algorithm has control over what that algorithm “weighs” it’s not that hard for them to tweak the values so it “weighs” whatever propaganda or content they want to push more of much higher than other content.
It’s true, the end user does have some influence on the algorithm, but when they have it tweaked to “weigh” pro-CCP or pro-Right-wing trash much higher than other content it doesn’t take much to end up falling back. For example, watching part of single pro-Trump video would make the algorithm push much more Trump trash where it would take 5 “normal” fully watched videos to continue showing “normal” videos.
And that’s assuming the average user is even aware enough to influence it to that degree, which they don’t.
Plus, US based users have their data stored on US servers hosted by Oracle, China has no access to it.
Yea, the data is stored in the US, but it still influences the TikTok US algorithm (because they have a separate algorithm for China ofc) which is still wholly controlled outside of the US
Here is a video going over the bill in detail https://youtu.be/tMe3ZdWUnU8
Not only on american citizens…
TikTok singlehandedly got a neonazy elected in eastern Europe.
X got one elected in the US so I guess they’re 1-1 in that regard :’)
Putin?
Georgescu in Romania. Who campaigned exclusively through Tiktok. The election was temporarily suspended through.
Yeah, so prepare for battle between people who want to tell you that their empire is better.
Obviously the US. China imports and exports everything through the oceans. Have fun with Russian potatoes dumb dumb CCP members xD
Yeah but not Facebook and Twitter and other American ones. Right?
You’re on the Fediverse. Most of the people here are already actively avoiding Facebook and Xitter. Unfortunately, getting the US, EU, etc. to ban American propaspyware companies is, uh, extremely unlikely. China, however, has banned them long ago, which is why I don’t see why people think it’s hypocritical of the US government to ban Chinese social media.
But they claim that China banning the apps is authoritarian. The hypocrisy isnt in banning the app, it’s in their claims about motivation to do so.
Yea but we’re not getting anywhere with “tolerance 100%”
The Chinese government is a tyrannical undemocratic dictatorship and I’m OK with not tolerating them or their propaganda wing.
Have you tried actually comparing the content on Tiktok vs other social networks? Or are you just regurgitating some talking point?
From the few years I’ve been on Tiktok, it is by far the least toxic and bigoted social network I’ve seen, Lemmy included.
I’m no fan of China, but if we’re considering “being less bigoted” to be commie propaganda, then we need to take a look in the mirror. Absolutely throwing the baby out with the bath water hereThe
ChineseAmerican government is a tyrannical undemocratic dictatorship and I’m OK with not tolerating them or their propaganda wing.Fixed that for you.
You fixed nothing, just added some whataboutisim nonsense.
Try saying negative stuff about China on .ml I doubt that they are not completely undermined by the Chinese intelligence. (They delete every post critical about china).
So being vigilant is the only way to avoid getting manipulated.
.ml might just be useful idiots tbh. But I remember speedrunning an /r/sino ban and that took me all of 1 minute, with a comment that wasn’t even critical about China. It was a thread about how it’s awesome that the west can’t live without China for 5G connectivity and I said that “maybe it isn’t all that great that an entire industry has been entirely centralized to one country” just to see if an absolutely lukewarm take would get banned. It did.
Yeah, it’s strange. Like even slight criticism. I mean that’s okay, but what about actual constructive discussions? None!
If you are not allowed to criticize a system, that system is inheritly flawed. But that’s my personal take on this.
Someone ban this man NOW
Ah, but they also delete every post that isn’t critical of Western countries.
I haven’t seen a proof of intelligence on .ml yet.
Not sure that it’s “most” anymore. Propaganda huffers realized there was more new land to destroy / minds to influence & they had to come settle here too
Except they’ve banned 1 source for appeasement rather than enact a strong law or policy for long-term safety.
Well yeah. Why would corporations write laws against their own self-interest?
I’m not a fan of government banning stuff, but like… if they are gonna do it, ban Wechat too. My parent’s be so deep in the Wechat propaganda, I wonder what they do without Wechat.
What? Wechat is a thing here? I have literally never heard about Wechat like anywhere, pretty sure more people know about Lemmy in the US than Wechat lmao
WeChat is very common amongst the Chinese diaspora worldwide. Everyone in China uses WeChat. Its like China’s Facebook. Its either that, or just sms, which lack many features like, group chats, or some weird Lunar New Year gifs, stuff like that. So if you want to communicates with relatives that are still in China, or with other first-generation immigrants, WeChat is just the default method. But that’s only for first-generation immigrants tho. People born ouside of China, Taiwan, or any Chinese-speaking areas would probably not use WeChat. I arrived in the US at before I was 10, I hate the idea of having any corporate apps on my phone, regardless of nationality. Many Chinese Americans born in the US just use the typical Instagram, Snapchat and stuff like that (and yes, some use TikTok as well, but that just a “kids these days” thing, nothing to do with ancestry)
What the hell is WeChat? Did that WeWork guy start a social media service?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat
TLDR: Chinese “Facebook” (actually its more like Facebook+Instagram+Twitter+ every social media combined into one + Googlepay/Applepay + A lot of government censorship)
Its app only, no webpage or computers, requires a smartphone, requires a phone number. How much censorship and survelliance depends on what phone number you use. Accounts with Mainland Chinese number will have a much stricter censorship and more data collected. Accounts with a western number will have less strict censorshop and less data collected (probably about the same amount of data collected by western corporate social medias).
app only, no website
Oh fuck this future! Anyways, thanks for the information.
And the very next day:
Now do one with Xinnie the Pooh
Neither he nor his country seem to be on their way out currently. Same old authoritarianism as usual.
Hybrid Regime with democratic features
And one naturally says the reason why we are in such a mess is not simply that we have wrong systems for doing things—whether they be technological, political, or religious—but we have the wrong people. The systems may be alright, but they are in the wrong hands, because we are all in various ways self-seeking, lacking in wisdom, lacking in courage, afraid of death, afraid of pain, unwilling really to cooperate with others, unwilling to be open to others.
—Alan Watts, Mind Over Mind
We were trailblazers for a time. Other than that, we were always kind of fucked as a democratic system.
Democracy is the worst form of government…
Except for all other forms.
Probably no nation ever should last for more than 100 years. That seems to be about the time it takes for things to go bad, even if they were good to start with.
And of course there are countries like modern Russia that should have lasted for about 5 years.
What time was that? (genuinely curious)
Late 18th century. The chaos of the French Revolution arguably diluted its viability as an example to other countries, despite the structure of democratic government being objectively better, so you can argue that we were still on the cutting-edge through the 19th century, even, when most countries were still autocracies or constitutional monarchies with extremely questionable de jure voting systems.
I would argue as late as the 1950s, our democratic structure was closer to average than below-average, but by the 1970s, what gave the US more in-common with other developed democracies was that we had extensive practice with our democratic system; by then our structure was not just hopelessly outdated, but a structure that no one in their right mind would take seriously as a foundation for a new government. Come the fall of most of the single-party Soviet-backed regimes of the 1990s, and the only countries we actually beat out for being a ‘good democracy’ are ones that… well, are only questionably democracies to begin with. And even then, most of them have structures that are superior to our’s; only a tradition of civic participation has led us to hobble on as long as we have without becoming an outright authoritarian state.
Though this might be the last month I can say that, which says a lot about the failures of our shitshow of an attempt at implementing democracy.
Late 18th century
The majority of the population could not vote, either due to their skin color, sex, or degree of property ownership (colony by colony/state by state as I recall).
And how was the situation in the rest of the world?
The majority of the population could not vote, either due to their skin color, sex, or degree of property ownership (colony by colony/state by state as I recall).
Yeah, you should look into other governments of the period.
Just to be specific, your argument is that the United States of the late 18th century can be considered a “trail blazer” in terms of democratic achievement. You are agreeing to my assertion that the franchise can be used as a measure of democracy, and you are asserting that the United States was uniquely forward in this area. This follow up statement is limiting this to a comparison of similar governments of the 18th century?
Which is a comparison that makes complete sense. When you say that someone is leading the way, you are clearly referring to them being at the forefront at the time when they were leading the way. Any system that was a trail blazer 100+ years ago should be outdated by now, unless progress stopped or went backwards in the meantime.
Late 18th century, yes. And if I hear pop history myths about the Iroquois, I will be irritated.
Before any of us were alive. Some would say before centralized banking in the early 20th
I think “For a minute or two” is a more apt answer.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
A republic you say?
Republic just means a country without monarchy.
China is a Republic
North Korea is a Republic
The US is a Democratic Republic
Where do you think the name of the political party “Democratic-Republicans” come from?
North Korea is also. Democratic Republic too!
So much good, amirite?
xD
Technically true. But instead of two-party system, they get one-party system. Decision is overrated anyways!
Hail the the supreme leader 🫡 /s
Hey now! The US is much more democratic, because we get to choose between two hand picked selections from our oligarchs.
I mean yeah the US absolutely is much more democratic than North Korea, but it’s the lowest of bars
A republic is a kind of democracy.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
Because democracy is an abstract name for a system and republic is the more concrete result of that system
In other words, a republic is a kind of democracy.
Oh my god, can you people shut up with this already.
The senate, and SCOTUS are verrrry democratic.
Not having primaries for either of the two available parties is very democratic.
The electoral college is the most democratic way to make sure the minority voice maintains a dictatorship.
If he meant “this system isn’t democratic enough”, hard agree. It sounded like the “the founders wanted a republic and we should stop trying to be a democracy” you hear from MAGAs.
When a person says the US is a republic, not a democracy, I take it as them defining “democracy” as a “pure democracy” only, despite the fact that there are other kinds, such as republics. Kinda like saying “that’s not a dog, it’s a Labrador.”
Well, the founders wanted an oligarchy, and we have an oligarchy…
The first step to fixing the problem, is admitting we have a problem: The US was never intended to be a democracy for anyone except oligarchs, and it’s still not a democracy for anyone but oligarchs.
On paper, it was a rejection of monarchism, so a step away from centralized control - but, in the same sort of way as the Magna Carta, where they didn’t make the leap all the way to popular democracy, and instead sought to partially democratize power only among the ruling class. More democratic features have been added since then (suffrage, equal protection clause, etc.), though not nearly enough. IMO we do need to completely throw the system out and start over, only carrying over things for the sake of streamlining/continuity.
But I like fish.
He wrote “it’s not a democracy, it’s a republic” originally.
Do hollywood next (aka the propaganda machine of the US).
