"I would literally write my social security number on a sticky note and stick it to Xi Jinping's forehead than go back to using Instagram Reels"
I saw this yesterday and it's hilarious but this is the feeling right now. TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect (not to mention ads and so many bots and spam). It's like shutting down Reddit and telling everyone to go to LinkedIn.
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
I must live in another universe because it all feels fake.
The US gov's intention was not at all to shut down TikTok. It was to force ByteDance to sell it.
The fact that ByteDance is opting for a shutdown instead is a huge PR stunt, and their unwillingness to sell under the circumstances kinda proves their whole First Amendment claims are made in bad faith. Something deeper is going on, and it's not about your social security number.
> I would literally write my social security number on a sticky note and stick it to Xi Jinping's forehead
Somewhat paradoxically, I am actually more comfortable giving out private data to foreign countries than my own. I mean, what is Xi Jinping going to do with a US social security number? If I am in the US, it will be hard for bad people in China to reach me, because there is a border between the two countries, in every sense of the word. There is no such protection if me and my data are both in the same country.
Xi Jinping can have my social security number, in fact, he can have my whole life, it is not like he is going to do anything to an random guy who lives in a foreign country. I will definitely won't give these data to a neighbor I barely know because my neighbor can do something I don't want him to do with it and may find some motivation to do so.
Funnily enough, the lawyer who quit Meta has resorted to doomposting on .. Linkedin. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/meta-lawyer-lemley-quit...
My tiktok feed was night and day better compared to IG reels. IG reels is simply attrocious memes. Like the same recycled crap over and over again. Where my tiktok feed always felt fresh. Makes me embarrassed that Zuck and co can't make the feed better. I thought this was America!
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect
They're very different, and I understand what you're getting at comparing it to the hyper-manufactured perfectly glossy Instagram culture, but I wouldn't call TikTok 'authentic'.
Of course, Tiktok is large and there's many different subcultures there, but overall I think TikTok is heavily drenched in Irony. It's a stark difference to the very fake Instagram, but that doesn't make it authentic.
Are tiktok dances 'authentic'? They might have started as just innocent kids doing a fun little dance, but the moment anything turns into a trend I think it loses authenticity. The whole NPC live streaming trend[1] from a few years ago was anything but authentic. TikTok 'suffers' from the exact same paid 'influencers' promoting whatever garbage of the day, and even has its own version of affiliate marking spam with 'TikTok shop' junk.
[1]: https://theconversation.com/people-are-pretending-to-be-npcs...
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
Yknow creators get paid _by tiktok_ to do natural ad placement in their videos?
It’s just as fake as everything else, if not more so.
> I saw this yesterday and it's hilarious but this is the feeling right now. TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
Exhibit A for banning tiktok right here
Just break the addiction to both apps. It's not good for you anyway
Link in bio is literally killing instagram, it’s so anti user for the sake of $$ so people don’t link out easily
The best account on TikTok is that old man who champions his cause of stopping circumcision. One must ask oneself why it's not considered on the same plane as genital mutilation in our so called modern civilized society.
A glaring example of the fakeness of insta reels I saw yesterday was comments regarding the LA fires. On multiple reels, I saw the exact same back and forth exchanges between a handful of accounts. I thought maybe it was some kind of caching issue but there were different accounts commenting on in the fake threads across reels. Good way to boost engagement for the bot accounts.
The fact people are using either is mind numbing. Such a waste of life.
>TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
Probably the most bizarre thing I've read on here in the last few days. You actually believe that what you're seeing on TikTok is real? It's literally the antithesis of base reality. It's a living, breathing delusion.
TikTok has simply beaten FB and YouTube, its algorithm is much better. That's why it has to be killed now in the US, big tech needs to be protected.
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness
I'm shocked how easily manipulated people are by social media. The vast majority of TikTok content is very intentionally produced, largely to attempt to generate revenue or, at the very least, to feed ones ego.
The "real" people you see on there are all, to different degrees of success, actors. Nearly all of the spontaneous/I can't believe this happened!/caught on camera style content is entirely staged.
Likewise all of the "freedom of speech must be protected" posts are laughable. Everything on TikTok is ultimately created for and prompoted to ultimately drive profit.
This movement to 小红书 is also, surprise surprise, not some spontaneous movement. The people at 小红书 have intentionally be working on becoming a TikTok replacement for awhile now.
Virtually all media you see is very heavily filtered and manipulated to ensure you're getting the right message.
The comment and quote is telling of the zeitgeist. I would be more aghast by it, but then I remember that my SSN has been a subject to multiple data breach notices in past year.. so.. what is one more bad actor at this point?
YouTube Shorts doesn't even get a mention?
It's more like telling people that they're gonna have to visit a mobile site instead of use a mobile app.
Strange, I found Instagram Reels' algorithm to be much better suited to my interests than TikTok's, and I've tried both multiple times, deleting them multiple times and seeing if it would improve, but TikTok's never did.
Reddit is absolutely terrible, it has an extreme far left bias and banned anyone with a different opinion.
Very interesting. To me TikTok is nothing but memes and useless stuff. Whereas Instagram has been an amazing community for many of my passions. And now Threads is gaining in popularity as well (it really feels like hope scrolling in comparison to X's doom scrolling). I wish it wasn't owned by Meta, but if TikTok actually gets banned I would say good riddance. Something about Instagram/Threads is just perfect to me.
Is it actually Instagram Reels that is inauthentic, or is it the content that people post there? The Instagram Reels service is just that - a service people can use to post videos, same as TikTok. It's the people who choose to use the service that cause it to seem inauthentic, not the service itself. If everyone migrated from TikTok to Reels overnight, then wouldn't Reels become more "authentic"?
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect
I feel like this is what so many people (including myself) are missing about TikTok.I'll be honest I saw TikTok largely as an "extension" of Reels and vice-versa where folks with a following on one will post to the other because they are so similar and that would increase their reach.
"“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."
I wonder what would happen if we shut down all the socials.
HN excluded of course.
Imagine outing yourself as someone who uses these mind numbing apps.
> TikTok has such a culture of authenticity
Oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even louder!
How do I downvote this.
>TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness...
LMAO
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The migration app of choice appears to be .. xiaohongshu, or "little red book". I'm guessing this won't last since it wasn't intended to have lots of Westerners using it and neither government is going to be happy with that scale of unfiltered contact between ordinary Chinese citizens and US citizens.
In the meantime, it's the place for Luigi Mangione memes.
Related ongoing thread (though not much there yet):
‘TikTok refugees’ flock to China's RedNote - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42709236
for those curious why an app would name itself Little Red Book despite the association, obviously they could have been better about the naming, but they're actually not the same name in either language:
The social media app Xiaohongshu (小红书) does literally translate to "little red book" in English. However, this is completely different from Mao's famous work, which was never called this in Chinese. Mao's book was informally known as "Hongbaoshu" (红宝书) meaning "red treasured book" and formally titled "Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong" (毛主席语录).
The apparent connection in English comes from translators using "Little Red Book" for both terms (maybe due to training or an agenda? who knows, choosing word-by-word translation for one and popular translation for another), even though they're distinct and unrelated in the original Chinese, and of course in the official desired English "RedNote" too.
In English, it seems to be called rednote. But I doubt that it will be a real successor. At the moment it's a funny meme, and for some people satisfied cultural curiosity. But we already see the problems appearing, from the poorly localized interface, to people getting banned for reasons outside their understanding.
My guess is, at the end we will see maybe some million users from the USA and some more millions from around the world moving to this app, and maybe bringing a new interaction between the countries, but the majority will end up somewhere else.
As a casual observer, I don't understand why YouTube Shorts isn't the obvious successor? The UI is better than TikTok ever was and a lot of the most popular creators are already mirroring their content there?
Well it's more... Xiaohongshu is for cosmo PRC cool kids (read: lean wealthy), and also a large ecommerce portal that targets that demographic. Not sure if the userbase is interested in... western and RoW "riff raff" shitting up the content for too long. I say this more as an insult to Xiaohongshu, I like TikTok (or Douyin) because I like seeing entrepenurs sell neon signs and industrial glycerine between my swipes.
> it's the place for Luigi Mangione memes
I read a lot about TikTok the last few months from users all over the web. Trust me, that's not what TikTok is actually full of, its just what algorithm you got sucked into, for whatever reason. I assume there's some specific bubble for "current viral thing" that you're locked into. Make an alt and like completely different content, you'll see that your feed will be night and day.
Teens are rebellious & want to be far away from parents.
It disqualifies mainstream apps like Twitter, Reddit, BlueSky, Reels & now Snapchat as well. This leaves Tiktok and now international apps like Xiaohongshu as the obvious alternatives.
The more the US govt. forces youths to use American mega-corps, the less they want to use it.
Even Top 1 in the german app store where TikTok isn't banned. People identify on Red as TikTok refugees
I have a friends group where everybody is hopping to this in the group chat. They are so eager to run from one addiction to another - and I told them so. They are so eager to give China all their data and to focus their own lives around an addictive app. It's baffling. Go live your life, enjoy not being indoctrinated by bullshit and having your time wasted by manipulative algorithms.
It's pretty wild in there...I remember seeing the comment 'IN THE CLERB, WE ALL LEARN MANDARIN'...I went in there and started commenting about Tienenman...curious if I'll get banned. It's very wild to see so many CCP memes and Chinese military people making content. Very odd experience so far.
It is amusing that the reaction to using a Chinese app being banned because your government says it is dangerous to give them your information, is to give your data to another Chinese app instead. Not that I'd feel any less safe with Chinese companies having all my cat picks & ranting than I feel with American companies having the same (particularly under the upcoming regime).
Not that it makes a lot of difference to me, facebook is the only social-media-y thing I use and that is just under sufferance (only way to easily keep tabs on what is happening with some people, mainly family) and because I sometimes like to “breakfast with Lord Percy”. I might try bluesky at some pint as many contacts are moving from fb to there (though that seems rather twitter-like and that has never appealed to me even before I even knew Musk existed).
I think that the law "banning" TikTok applies to any Chinese app with over 1 million US users, so Xiaohongshu/Rednote or anywhere else the TikTok refugees flee will be a target - except YouTube shorts and Facebook/Instagram reels of course.
Looks like that app may have a backdoor https://x.com/d0tslash/status/1878959715033694492
It definitely won't last because even the medium is different. TikTok is all about short videos, but most of the content on Xiaohongshu are static images, and some even an image of text.
I would be amazed if the company who runs that application wasn't working around the clock to make it a better tiktok replacement and to retain this swath of new users.
It wouldn't be that hard to keep users separated by location.
Is there a problem with Youtube Shorts? Or Facebook videos?
It depends on how they respond over the next 1-2 weeks.
Given how easy it is for China to buy US data legally from data brokers and how similar the functionality of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, I feel like the only explanations are:
1. The govt is mad that a foreign company is outcompeting a domestic one
Or more likely, given that there are so many other industries that didn't get a ban:
2. The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on TikTok
The big issue isn't data security; it's propaganda. Irrespective of whether the government has control of the narrative on Facebook (I would argue they pretty clearly don't) there is no reason to let a foreign adversary have a deniable propaganda line to millions of Americans. Would we have let the USSR acquire a major television network?
And even if you disagree with the national security reasons for disallowing China to control a major U.S. social network, there is still the issue of trade reciprocity - nearly all of the U.S. Web companies are banned in China.
In the words of Noam Chomsky [1]:
> [Manufacturing Consent] argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.
The problem with Tiktok, as far as the government is concerned, is the lack of control on narrative when Meta, Twitter and Google are an extension of the US State Department (eg [2]).
The Tiktok ban came together in a matter of days as a bipartisan effort weeks after the ADL said (in leaked audio) that they have a "TikTok problem" [3].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[2]: https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
> 2. The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on TikTok
If the last four years are indicative of anything, it's that the US government has fairly limited control over the narrative on American social platforms.
I lost count of how many times I saw people typing in "FJB" and "MAGA".
Totally. I find it very interesting that we tend to criticize China for their protectionism, but as soon as something out-competes US companies, it gets banned: Huawei, DJI, TikTok.
Of course it cannot be said like this, because "free speech" and "democracy", so the official reason is "national security".
> how easy it is for China to buy US data legally from data brokers
A law passed at the same time as the tiktok ban attempts to address this:
> a) Prohibition It shall be unlawful for a data broker to sell, license, rent, trade, transfer, release, disclose, provide access to, or otherwise make available personally identifiable sensitive data of a United States individual to— (1) any foreign adversary country; or (2) any entity that is controlled by a foreign adversary.
To echo what other comments have said about it being propaganda related, we can already see this occurring today:
https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/A-Tik-Tok-ing-...
it's not the same data or data quality. the concern isn't just data collection but manipulation of the american public (psyops). What russia is doing through their trollfarms, china is doing through tiktok.
Mitt Romney basically came out and admitted that the reason for the TikTok ban was that young people were getting unfiltered access to information about the genocide in Gaza.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
In support of (2): https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...
I personally see this as the beginning of a slippery slope - a move that follows in the footsteps of China.
Wrong - it's practically impossible to buy video and audio data at the PII level like Tiktok is getting.
it's been said many times, it's a national security risk, and it is very obviously one. Tiktok has already gone against the wishes of the US, there's evidence Chinese engineers accessed Tiktok data hosted in the US (related: project Texas). It's so easy to sway public opinion when you own the largest megaphone to the people... That's literally what's happening right now on tiktok.
Only legit reason would've been trade. China won't "import" our products, so we do the same. But that seems like not the reason.
but your 2. implies China has control rather than the US.
Isn’t that what the government has been saying?
> The govt is mad that a foreign company is outcompeting a domestic one
China certainly engages in security theater for their own economic advantage as well. It's no coincidence that any American internet company that tries to operate in China gets throttled or "accidentally" blocked by the great Chinese firewall. And no, economic retaliation against China isn't "stooping down" to censorship of China. That would be like framing the EU's retaliatory tariffs against Trump as a punishment to European bourbon lovers.
> The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on TikTok
Yes, but people do not appreciate what that really means. Countries need to eat the consequences of influencing domestic media, so you at least need to maintain a weak form of checks and balances. For example, anti-lockdown censorship during Covid in China eventually caused even more resentment against the CCP.
On the other hand, look at examples of Russian election interference in 2016 [1]. One of the posts is "Satan: If I win Clinton wins. Jesus: Not if I can help it. Press like to help Jesus win." The entire goal is to get Americans to distrust and hate each other. Nobody in America has anything to gain from posting this, but China and Russia have nothing but to gain from a more fractured America. We only found out about this because Facebook cooperated with American intelligence to find this foreign propaganda. At best, you can't expect the same cooperation from TikTok they are accountable to the CCP. At worst, TikTok would actively be working with China to disguise this propaganda as genuine content.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...
> 2. The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on TikTok
This was the case for the first attempt, but then TikTok gave the US government access to everything. So the effort completely stalled, and the only people still banging the drum about it were R's who had run on anti-China rhetoric.
Then Oct. 7th happened, and the followup genocide that the US decided to go out of its way to participate in. The most, and most influential, anti-genocide activity was on TikTok, simply because TikTok has a hold on the young audience and young content producers, and being young they aren't cynical and hollowed out inside, and can't justify being silent in order to protect their own incomes and families (which they don't have yet.) The Lobby quickly picked up the dropped ball and carried it over the line, and Biden continued his unbroken record of being completely humiliated by Bibi, a regular criminal before he was a war criminal.
Now the ban is a zombie, because opposition to (and support for) the genocide is now set in stone, and it already looks like Trump has ended it even though he isn't in office yet through the technique of placing the slightest amount of pressure on Bibi.
All we'll have left is a horrible soon-to-come Supreme Court decision that enshrines the idea that bills of attainder explicitly intended to limit free speech are ok now because China. Which is also because Russia and also because Hamas, and because Maduro, and because hate, and because sowing discord, and because, because, because...
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edit: and if the Trump peace fails, and all the kids migrate to some other platform, that platform will be attacked. They lucked out that TikTok was owned by China, and Americans are such racists that they could use that racism to get them to agree to silence Americans speaking to Americans. But before, they were attacking every social network for allowing speech from Trump supporters, people criticizing covid policy, always Palestinians, women who don't accept transwomen (to get the libs onboard), etc...
3. The government is concerned that having a company that's beholden to a foreign government control the algorithm that feeds the rising generation much of their worldview may not be a good long term plan.
This has a passing resemblance to (2), but the key difference is that the government doesn't believe they have control over the narrative on Facebook, they just know that a foreign government doesn't. It's strictly better from the perspective of the US government to have the rising generation's worldview shaped by raw capitalism (after all, that's how all of the older generations' world views were shaped) than to risk the possibility that an adversary is tipping the scales.
What I don't understand is why the politicians insist on talking about spying as the concern. The people who are pro-TikTok are pretty clearly skeptical either way, and "think of the children" is usually the most effective political tool they have.
I'm fine with this, based on the simple principle of Turnabout Is Fair Play.
China already bans practically all the popular US social media apps and similar apps/websites. I'm for free trade, but it ought to be fair trade too, as in, roughly similar/equal policies. If another country bans X imports from your own, it's hardly unfair to respond in kind.
This is exactly it. If China allowed fully uncensored American social media to operate in China I’d had zero issue letting them do the same in the US.
But the CCP wants to have their cake and eat it too. Fully repressive social media lock downs and censorship for their citizens but exploiting the west’s values of free speech and debate.
Couldn't you argue the opposite? That is, if we are so opposed to China then shouldn't we do the opposite of them? I don't think it seems very American to change our policy to be more like the "enemy"
Sure but that is the ruling class's perspective.
What about the people who want TT? You can not hold them hostage to Chinese people not having TT or other apps. That's what the current Red Note revolt is all about.
TikTok is banned in China.
> China already bans practically all the popular US social media apps and similar apps/websites
Sorry but not ALL of them. Myspace is not banned lmao
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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Maybe this soundbite applies in an information vacuum like North Korea or ironically, and to a lesser extent, China. But in an environment where there is too much information for people to process, and truth is drowned out by lies and nonsense on social media feeds, it works against society.
It's bad enough that US based social media corporations are allowed to wash their hands of responsibility for the content on their platform and add to the executive bonus pool in the process. But having a hostile government control a platform is just insane.
There is a middle ground between being bundled into the back of a police car if someone speaks against their government, and freely allowing enemies to manipulate your population.
There's nothing free-flow about TikTok, though. Like Twitter/X, Instagram, etc it's actually a carefully curated experience that can be tuned opaquely by whoever runs it to control the flow of information. The US took umbrage to this being in the direct hands of a foreign adversary.
TikTok is a restricted information environment controlled and manipulated by literal tyrants. Subjects that are disfavored by the CCP are heavily penalized by their algorithm [1]
if you are looking to safeguard against tyranny step 1 is to not have the CCP be in full control of your country's public square
[1] https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...
Google the phase "flood the zone with shit". Your strategy only works if most of the people speaking/writing are genuinely trying to make the world a better place. If state actors are trying to flood the zone with anything and everything, then it becomes impossible for John Everyman to distinguish signal from noise.
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The "War on Drugs" ensured that when an American dies from a drug overdose it is an American company, like Purdue Pharma, that made money killing them.
And when an American is brainwashed into believing a lie, it better damn well be an American company that sold them that lie.
That is the dream this country was built on.
Anyone remember when they were in school and adults tried to ban access to a popular website? I imagine this ban will go down exactly the same. Never underestimate a bored teenager's ability to bypass tech restrictions. Heck maybe this is what is needed to finally get a new generation out of the comforts of their tech walled garden and get their hands dirty.
Don't underestimate the human ability to "settle for less" if said less requires less effort from them. There's a reason people pay for Netflix despite pirating proposing a higher level of quality ; Netflix is just easier. They will settle for the "easy" solution, which will be any one of the TikTok clones already existing (YT shorts, reels, whatever).
Popular creators will leave, if they can't monetize their content anymore. Then, everyone else will follow the creators to whatever platform they will end up on.
The only reason social media is popular is Americans are too lazy to find stuff on the open web. They'd prefer the lazier option of the single web site deciding for them what to see and think about.
There's zero chance most will put in effort to access TikTok.
This ban does nothing about the mobile tick tok website. You don’t need to be a techie to use the browser on your cellphone. Yet it is a point of friction compared to an app with native notifications. And given the expectations of the average american tech user who has been coddled for the last decade into safe app store apps instead of the scary web, people are legitimately concerned.
how would this actually work? iOS is so dominant among US teens it's crazy, and the ability to sideload on that platform is nonexistent even to very technically savvy users.
That is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that if I have a tiktok channel, and the only way for people to see it is through a hack, then obviously my channel won't do that well.
The bored teenager will learn ways to get tiktok. But the bored tiktokker won't learn ways to get the audience on tiktok
All they're really banning is the app on the App or Play store basically. Anyone who still has tiktok on their phone can continue on and even make a new account. Anyone who cares enough can probably get a cracked APK too
TikTok will probably die slowly not suddenly
The duopoly of app store and play store makes this kind of ban much more effective. India banned TikTok and nobody uses it over here now. It's simply too hard to download the app. Google won't let me download it even when I'm traveling abroad.
Banning websites has been very hard, but today's closed marketplace ecosystems make banning apps much easier and people are not motivated to find loopholes.
When Ukraine banned russian social networks in 2015, all the teens had free FSB-sponsored VPNs running on their phones in no time. Like, almost 100% of them. In mere days. Now leaking not just the social network data to russia, but rather the entirety of their traffic.
Let's see if US teenagers are as savvy and motivated.
If it works on 75% of the population, that’s good enough. The other 25% will give up and move on as well, because people flock to social media where the others are.
> Anyone remember when they were in school and adults tried to ban access to a popular website?
Uhhh there are many websites that are banned in the USA. Otherwise working URLs that wont work in the USA. Mostly hostile state actor stuff.Iran, NK, etc. The fact that you don't know about it just says how effective it is.
Sure, VPN. But (serious question, not rhetorical) is that going to get the app on your phone? And are you going to go to the trouble when the algorithm thinks you're eastern european? When the user base is smalelr?
AFAIK most teenagers use iPhones in US. What are they going to do? I'm Apple fanboy but this is the exact type of power they shouldn't have.
Maybe you agree with the ban, I'm curious how would many people be feeling around year of 2028 after a few years of oligarchs consolidating their power and designing an obedient society through full control of the communications. Maybe you have ideas against H1B or maybe you use birth control, whatever your current opinions oh these are there's non-zero chance that you will be enforced into the correct opinions.
US citizens do not want this.
Every news article descending into tangents on any other point than that is part of why we can't have nice things.
The whole country has turned into some sort of lower primate improv troupe where whatever stupid thing comes up gets a "Yes and let's" diversion instead of an adult in the room standing up and cutting the crap.
We certainly _do_ want this. I think the fact that we let a foreign company own a social media platform in the first place is preposterous. As others have said, we would never let the CCP own a TV broadcast, why should we let china own a major social media platform? That's just absurd.
> US citizens do not want this
Ha ha, I guess you are discovering, many many people do want this.
Pew has it at 32–28 in support of the ban[0]. I think that's pretty low for a bipartisan effort where the opposition hasn't really had a chance to air it's case.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f...
I'm for the ban chiefly on the grounds of economic fairness in access to markets. China doesn't allow access to any US social media products. We should only open our doors to Chinese companies conditioned on reciprocation.
I am a US Citizen and I 100% want this. I think this is far too small a step; I think all social media should be banned.
I’m a us citizen and I do want this. Speak for yourself. China bans us social media. Us should ban Chinese social media.
The Senator you voted for this probably voted for this so yes, America does want this.
I think part of the problem is everyone thinks they are the "adult in the room" and everyone else is the "primates". I agree policy discussions are a bit of a farce though (in a sorta funny twist places like TikTok are responsible for that since the engagement metrics have a tendency to promote nonsense and lies)
Hey, the ADL president is a US citizen, and he said "we really have a TikTok problem."
US citizens most definitely want this.
The ones that use the app don't want this. The ones that don't use it ... don't care.
Naturally either you don't want it. or you don't care.
My opinion on this has not changed since Trump tried to ban TikTok in his first term [0]: if the USA wants to ban TikTok for XYZ reason, they need to pass a general purpose law in Congress that applies equally to all foreign-owned companies.
Singling out TikTok without a universal principle or law leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, and the US gov. will just be playing whack-a-mole with whatever the TikTok successor is.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/07/944039053/u-s-judge-halts-tru...
We all live in a bubble that consists of the people and things we interact with. People in your bubble not wanting this doesn't mean other people outside of your bubble don't.
Banning individual apps in this manner is wrong, IMO. In a country where concepts like freedom of speech and restrictions on government censorship are not insignificant considerations (in theory, at a minimum) a decision like this is unfortunate. China bans apps... tons of apps... in order to maintain strict control over the content and identity of users. This strategy is not something the US should be mimicking.
The claim that it's a "national security" risk and the ban is needed to mitigate that is silly. If it is really that then ban it from government facilities and devices. The actual risk from TikTok is no greater than the risk from Facebook, Instagram or any of a myriad of apps.
The correct thing to do would be to strengthen laws that address the core concerns so that we are protected from ANY app that represents a threat to privacy or security. Just banning a single app (and then another, and another...) is ridiculous and goes against a number of things this country is supposed to stand for.
So what if a conflict breaks out and the CCP essentially use TikTok as a pathway directly into the brains of millions of Americans. Let's say they tweak the algorithm with a button press to create confusion and public discord when we should be united to protect taiwan.
That's a possible tool of disinformation.
If they would ban what they think tiktok does wrong. Mr Zuckerberg would be very sad I guess.
But so much this, just banning TikTok will change nothing but more distrust in American politics
I broadly agree with this, but there was a path for the Tiktok app to not be banned, which is basically the China playbook of handing over control to a domestically controlled entity. Which in the case of a social media company with the reach of Tiktok i don't think is unreasonable.
Strengthened laws would be welcome, but all the social media companies would resist this as hard as they can. I don't see any real regulation happening until there is a crisis of some sort that will push it through against all the lobbyists and bought politicians.
Lots of American social media are banned here by the Russian government (all for the same reason of protecting citizens from foreign avdersaries), and we just use VPN. We're used to it, and if a service is popular (like Instagram), it's practically impossible to ban it. Monetization provided by the service is replaced by embedding sponsors' videos directly in the video (and getting money directly from the sponsor without third parties), or by selling merchendize to fans.
I wonder how many Americans will just use VPN? Is it common to use VPN in the US? Here, almost everyone uses it now. A few weeks ago they suddenly banned Viber for some reason and I barely noticed it.
As someone in Australia which I assume is fairly similar, we really don't use VPN's, at the very least the average person doesn't and their use isn't common knowledge. However I have friends in China like you, where VPN's are used by the majority.
We are used to having access to pretty much everything we want access to.
The most popular apps and services used around the world are largely readily available in the US and do not need VPN's to use.
A Tiktok ban is in my memory probably the first time that a major platform used by the masses has been banned for use in the US. Because of the lack of VPN usage by every day people, I'd say everyone will flock to Instagram rather than continuing to try accessing Tiktok. If nobody else you know is using Tiktok, then why use it would be the question.
Almost nobody uses a VPN here, just the geeks and people who need it for their corporate job. We're not used to this at all.
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If X ne Twitter knew what they were doing, now would have been the obvious moment to relaunch Vine.
I've been wondering for the past couple of years, why did Vine fail but TikTok succeed? Based on my increasingly fuzzy memories of Vine and my rough understanding of TikTok as a non-user, they appear to be pretty much the same app.
I doubt they have the engineering experience to launch anything at this point. They try to do a weird tiktok like thing where watching a video on mobile will randomly scroll to another video, but I think this probably has more to do with juicing "unregretted user seconds" than anything.
People in here literally argue that they should build a great Firewall because China has one too.
Do these people listen themself when they write things like this?
I think it's absolutely worrisome if this mentality gets an actual thing, if it isn't already.
I’m puzzled too. By the rationale I read here, Europe should ban all non-European social networks (which would be great since we don’t really have any). Whilst TikTok based propaganda is clearly being used to wage war on European elections, US propaganda targeting Europeans is equally being peddled by US tech giants as well. Social media is truly the worst widely accepted invention of the internet.
I am not saying that it's good or bad, and the geopolitical situation has changed a lot, but I miss the relative innocence, openness, and sense of unity that characterised the 2000-2010s internet.
We are slowly going in the direction of European internet, American internet, Chinese internet, Russian internet...
The 1990s-2010s Internet was a golden age in the sense that even though the Internet was a child of the US military-industrial-research complex, political powers didn't yet perceive it as a potential threat vector or even comprehend it at all ("the internet is a series of tunes"). Many of its users also came from academic or technical backgrounds, which helped to maintain shared cultural values (although this was constantly eroding over time - see "Eternal September").
Social media and "Web 2.0" were probably the death knell for this era - while they were wonderful for democratization of the Internet's benefits, the merger of Internet culture and non-Internet culture meant that all the ills of the latter were inflicted on the former.
> European internet, American internet, Chinese internet, Russian internet...
Not sure about the European one. Unlike Russia or China, we don't seem capable to produce our own services, or to not use the US ones. Maybe it'll change with the increased hostility of US government and tech CEOs?
> We are slowly going in the direction of European internet, American internet, Chinese internet, Russian internet...
That has always existed, you just may not be aware of it if you are from an English speaking country, because those other parts are not easily accessible without knowledge of the respective languages.
Not only,
European computer, American computer, Chinese computer, Russian computer...
European OS, American OS, Chinese OS, Russian OS...
European programming language, American programming language, Chinese programming language, Russian programming language...
Just like in the good old days of computing during cold war.
I 100% agree, I think social media has been a complete mistake, facebook's creation is my version of eternal november since I joined the web in 1999
The big reason I think it changed is that the internet went from being a place for nerds and geeks, when there was a technical barrier to getting online, to a place where there is essentially no barrier. As a result the web now reflects the innocence, openness, and intellectual curiosity of the average person, since the internet has become a daily part of everyone's life not just a subsection of the world that appeals to us.
I miss that too. I was in China before 2005 and the Internet was pretty much free. I used to speak to the quake editing group on IRC about mapping until deep into the night.
I think it's going to get more segmented. And not only that, the hardware, the OS, everything.
That said, I believe HN is a good platform. I don't think it's banned in China and people here can keep politics out of technical discussions, at least for now.
Bound to happen when the internet becomes weaponized, unfortunately. It's kind of crazy to begin with that we put all of our public infrastructure on a network Russia and China have wired access to from their home countries and it's lasted this long when you think about it.
"I miss being 9 years old"
It wasn't possible to share videos with the world in 2000 unless you owned a television broadcasting network. In 2000 you could not freely socialize with Chinese people on the Internet.
One thing that would make social media much better, is forcing providers by law to ensure everybody sees the same content.
Example: I can be on Reddit in subreddit A. You can be on Reddit in subreddit B.
We would obviously still see different content.
But ALL members of subreddit A MUST see the exact same topics in the exact same order with the exact same comments and likes/dislikes.
This would help build up a more shared “worldview” like mediums such as radio and TV did; you chose the channel, but everybody on the same channel gets the same information.
This would then allow the service provider and potentially government agencies, as well as users themselves, to moderate harmful content or false information more reliably.
Originally (and I don't know if this is still the case) the case for randomizing the content view on Reddit a bit (fuzzy numbering) was as a layer which helped prevent vote manipulation and brigading/bandwagoning. There may be similar reason for other platforms where not being exactly the same is unrelated to tuning the types of information presented to people. I.e. I don't know how much it matters that "all member absolutely must see the same exact order" as much as "the ordering defaults are not gamed for individual engagement"
Even then, I'd settle for "must have the option to use chronological/absolute vote based/similar type by default" type option. I'm not as convinced I know what others need to do to save themselves as much as I'm I think it'd be nice if it to be easy for us to be able to choose how we engage with content feeds (regardless what the platform is).
And then there is a matter of content groups when it comes to exposure rather than the addictive nature. Does it really make a difference if people end up seeing only /r/MyEchoChamberA and /r/MyEchoChamberB anyways. After all, each is perfectly representing the same echo chamber to all of the users who bother to browse there.
>This would help build up a more shared “worldview” like mediums such as radio and TV did; you chose the channel, but everybody on the same channel gets the same information.
That would be a nightmare, going back to the bad old days when people's worldviews were entirely decided by whatever flavour of government propaganda their preferred TV station happened to favour.
> One thing that would make social media much better, is forcing providers by law to ensure everybody sees the same content.
This sounds terrible. I don't want to see the same content as everyone else. A good chunk of Youtube right now is rightwing content that I don't have to see.
> ensure everybody sees the same content.
Terrible idea.
On what order would you show things? Upvotes/downvotes? Could work but "social" media implies we all have different social circles, so my social circle of friends is very different from yours. I can probably see posts from my friends which you won't (since you're not friends with them) Maybe I follow certain pages that you don't. How do we still have the same feed then?
> The outcome of the shutdown would be different from that mandated by the law. The law would mandate a ban only on new TikTok downloads on Apple or Google app stores, while existing users could continue using it for some time.
Does anyone have thoughts on why TikTok would choose to stop for existing users? I.e. why would they choose to do more than the minimum required by the law? It's nice that they want to point people to a way to download their data, but they could also keep showing videos after notifying people of that option. What's the rationale here?
> Does anyone have thoughts on why TikTok would choose to stop for existing users?
What business would choose to keep operating if it can't gain new customers? Think about it. The law makes it impossible for tiktok to grow or be profitable. What advertiser would be interested in a platform that will lose users every day and won't gain more in the future?
The law was sneakily and intentially written to outright ban tiktok. It would be like congress creating a law saying you specifically cannot buy more gas. You can keep using the gas in the car, but you can't fill up your tank anymore. Would you spend thousands to fix your car? Change the oil or the tire? No. You'd either sell the damn thing or just throw it away.
The obvious play would be to incite those active users to take action by letting their congress critters know their opinions in an effort to have them reverse their vote
Political pressure. There are more Americans on TikTok than voted in the last election. I think the parent company is calculating that they can draw attention to the government taking away something the users love and turn that into political pressure to undo the law. We’ll see what happens, but I’d imagine they are right. Taking away the opiate of the masses has not worked out for governments in the past.
Drawing attention to the stupidity and agenda-driven approach of the USG by causing pain to millions of users, is my guess.
The downloading your data thing is actually part of what is required by law.
> Does anyone have thoughts on why TikTok would choose to stop for existing users?
For the same reason Google or Facebook or many other major players might choose to stop operating in a jurisdiction that's trying to impose restrictions on them that they feel are unconscionable, rather than knuckling under?
The "national security" angle that FedGov is attempting to hang this all on is pretty bullshit... defense contractors that do classified work for the DoD can be foreign owned!
I'm tearing my hair out... how is the solution here not just better data privacy laws? Doesn't that solve all the issues, both domestic and international?
It's not about data privacy - it's about social control. I don't know why it's always lost on every commentary that the TikTok ban became a widely bipartisan issue after October 7th.
TikTok was the only large social media platform that did not overtly deplatform Palestinian users and sympathizers.
Because the point is to funnel people to US apps where the US Govt has control of the narrative
Data privacy is not the concern, or else they'd have done what you suggest
Because it's not necessarily about the / data privacy/, it's about the ability of a foreign adversary to influence the American populous in subtle ways over time.
By simply suppressing topics, or elevating trends they might find helpful in swaying the populous.
That's what propaganda is and it works.
Because better data privacy laws would be bad for American companies for collecting the same data.
I believe there was a bill that addressed this, but if failed shortly before the TikTok stuff.
Privacy is irrelevant in this case. It’s a free line of propaganda for almost all our youth at their most vulnerable age.
> Privately held ByteDance is about 60% owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock and General Atlantic, while its founders and employees own 20% each. It has more than 7,000 employees in the United States
That’s probably a very stupid question, but is how this is a Chinese company when 60% are owned by American funds?
Same way the Singaporean CEO is part of the CCP: He's not, it's not, but there are a lot of vested interests like Facebook lobbying to treat them as the boogeyman.
Presumably, the relevant factor here is not ownership on paper, but who has real control via being able to tell Bytedance employees (including the executives) what to do. Which, in this case, is assumed to be China’s government leaders.
The tiktok ban law forbids chinese ownership of 20% and chinese control of 100%. That is how it is a chinese company, either by 20% ownership or 100% contro.
In the US government's view, as expressed in its brief in the Supreme Court:
"Because of the authoritarian structures and laws of the PRC regime, Chinese companies lack meaningful independence from the PRC’s agenda and objectives. As a result, even putatively ‘private’ companies based in China do not operate with independence from the government. Indeed, “the PRC maintains a powerful Chinese Communist Party committee ‘embedded in ByteDance’ through which it can ‘exert its will on the company.’ ... the committee includes “at least 138 employees,” including ByteDance’s “chief editor”
...
"Even assuming that the law would recognize Zhang as a bona fide domiciliary of Singapore and not the PRC, ByteDance would nevertheless qualify as being “controlled by a foreign adversary” under one or more of the other statutory criteria. For instance, ByteDance is “headquartered in” China, which is sufficient on its own.... ByteDance also is “subject to the direction or control of ” Chinese persons domiciled in China (in particular, Chinese Communist Party officials), which likewise is sufficient on its own."
http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-656/336144/20241...
I find it pretty telling that the two sides of this argument boil down to:
1. This is a platform owned within China which can easily be used to silently and effectively spread highly targeted propaganda to extremely vulnerable demographics. If it has already been used for this purpose we will never know.
2. They make the most engaging internet junk food and other competitors don’t do nearly as good a job.
Does that about cover it?
Maybe the Chinese people will be able to teach the US people how to side-load APKs (on Android) and use a VPN.
That would be ironic.
No it wouldn't be ironic because all of that is allowed.
In fact, existing tiktok users are welcome to keep the existing app on their phone.
What's being banned is the commerce.
The only real irony is your continued use the word.
It's really rare for me to be pro-intervention when it comes to the government vs free-industry but TikTok has become undeniably, geopolitically hazardous for the US. The dismal bit of it is that nation state backed, habit-forming propaganda apps are only likely to proliferate.
Can you provide examples of China controlled propaganda happening on Tiktok?
Things that are factually true don't count, obviously.
I continue to be baffled by people who simultaneously believe that TikTok is dangerous because of Chinese propaganda that may happen in the future, but that all the other social media networks are not dangerous despite the mostly Russian misinformation and election interference that has been ongoing since 2016. So far as I can see the important part is not who owns the network, but just how easy it is for misinformation to be published, and basic info like "is this poster a real human?" or "was this person paid to say this?" or "is this a factually incorrect statement?" are not readily visible to users.
Zuckerberg and Elon got what they wanted. Regulatory capture. Got the govt to ban a superior product. Elon even gets dips on acquiring it and expanding his megaphone.
I guess US is becoming more like China. Choosing their horses and warding off competition.
So much for free markets.
I created a quick tutorial on how to backup and download all of your TikToks.
obviously bad policy for many reasons, but as a geriatric millennial I'm selfishly happy. As long as the ban continues, I will never have to sit on the bus and listen to those horrible robot voices blasting nonsense out of someone's phone speakers.
I don’t understand why, with so much advanced warning that users would need a good replacement for TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are still so bad. Why not invest in matching, at least, every TikTok UX feature? And beyond that, how are these two leading AI companies really unable to make a recommendation algorithm that actually shows people things they like?
Let’s be clear about one thing: it’s never about protecting the privacy of private citizens—that’s just the justification.
Social networking platforms are among the most effective tools for mass influence, second only to religion.
The U.S. has held a monopoly on this power, leveraging it to gather data on citizens worldwide and projecting our value systems onto others.
Banning TikTok is simply an effort by us to maintain that monopoly, and making sure a foreign adversary do not wield such power.
Perfect time to ditch TikTok, Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts and restore your attention span.
And nothing of value was lost.
Given that (as the article mentions) the ban essentially only directs Google/Apple to remove the app from their US stores, what's the rationale on ByteDance's part to immediately revoke existing US users' access? My naive assumption was they'd want to keep it going and support the current dead version of the app for as long as possible to continue squeezing US revenue for at least a few more months until that becomes untenable. Are they instead hoping to rally the user base into mass protests and pressure lawmakers into reversing the ban?
Congress shall make no law respecting ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble ...
unless they mumble 'national security', and then screw the constitution ...
I wonder if this will have an effect on iPhone sales vs Android. On android the app can easily be side loaded while on iPhone (in the US) it's incredibly difficult for the average user.
What if any practical effect will this have on American users if 150M of them already have the app downloaded? A pop-up that doesn't block use of the app?
Haven't seen anything about an IP ban/block (ahem, great firewall), nothing's going to block anyone from business as usual on Sunday right?
There's no 'shut down'. And other than a bunch of misinformed users jumping over to RedNote briefly or whatever, the only difference will be an oddly American-free app for the rest of the world?
Do you know Shang Yang's Shangjunlun?Any superior will divide and disintegrate the lower class groups，This is the same everywhere, so who is the real enemy?
This will be such a fascinating moment to track statistically. Like how Covid in 2020 shows up every graph. Tiktok day might too.
I'm not assigning a cause, but US culture, these days, seems to encourage folks to treat others as "NPCs," and that can have rather bad consequences.
It's always been an issue (sort of human nature), but it seems (to this battered old warhorse), that it's a lot more prevalent, these days, than it was, just twenty years ago.
The one source of true, lasting happiness in life is the love of others.
All of this stuff - TikTok, Instagram, etc - are entertainment, distraction, and that's fine, but taken to excess is unbalanced, and no matter what, cannot bring true, lasting happiness because they are not the love of another person.
This move shouts “you win China, your products are superior than ours”. We hate losing at our own game don’t we?
I was surprised most by the general publics ignorance regarding possible work arounds. Nobody I spoke to on large Tik Tok lives believed it was even possible to download and install apps from somewhere other than the Play Store. Apple users believed their ability to install apps was identical to Android users
In the future I think the government can force the public to do things simply because the public is unaware of the options they have.
The good news is Rednote seems to be a potential replacement, which is also Chinese owned.
Americans may turn to experience of other countries. E.g. in Russia Istagram has been blocked for years, however it does not really stop everyone from using or running business in it.
Someone tell me what data TikTok is collecting, that is making it such a national security threat. I guess it knows what videos you like. Awesome, so does every other social media company out there. Its not like the sign up form is asking for upload of SSN and DL.
I guess the US is afraid of manipulation of the video feed by China, that may influence elections. There might be a kernel of truth there, so I d be curious to hear anecdotes of something like that actually happening.
Here's the lesson: We need our social media platforms to be distributed and out of the hands of any government to promote sharing knowledge and creating peace.
When the mass Tiktok exodus tsent Red Book [1] to the top of the App store, it was the first time in history that American citizens started talking directly to Chinese citizens in mass. I've heard all sorts of stories of both sides learning a lot about each other, including the lies and propaganda each others government places in the media, but mostly more positive things like art, fashion, cooking, food, healthcare and -- probably the most important, each other's different humor.
Video, and an AI algorithm to drive the For You page, is probably the most difficult part. We have some good ideas on privacy[2], and I can imagine some sort of crypto ledger system paired with AI learning, but video expensive to store/stream and at such a high volume of streaming, I don't know what kind of end points would really work to keep quality up.
Then there's the problem of policing such a system, and who the police would be. There's some dark places on the internet that I think everyone but a handful of people think should never be allowed on such a network, but more generally there's questions on politeness, stalking, harassment, "facts", memes, and other culture differences that would need to be ironed out.
Who's building this? We need it by Jan 19th, 2025.
[1] Not to be confused with SF's Redbook: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/redbook/
[2] Tim has been making the rounds about his Solid project: https://www.inrupt.com/
This only shows how incompetent Twitter's management was; they not only ruined Twitter but Vine too and gave the opportunity to TikTok to fill the massive vacuum.
At some point SCOTUS will have to revisit the massive deference they give the other branches on natsec issues. We are days away from a new president applying blanket tariffs to everything on the same grounds. What isn't national security in that light? They might as well start with this case and send an early message. Otherwise they'll be fielding all manner of lawsuits over ridiculous overreach for the foreseeable future.
I don't believe the super addictive, antidemocratic backdoor into US citizens lives is actually getting TKO'd. Crisis is their (misquoted) word for new opportunities[1], and the value of the spy tool is too damn high for it to simply go dark.
Any guesses on how this will actually work? The apps will be definitely be removed from app stores. Will existing apps work? Will the website still work? Will the death of the app come from "creators" not getting paid? What if users continue to use tikok, but there are no longer professional creators or ads? Would a social network like that be the most radical of all?
noahpinion has a great post [1] on this today and he points out the interesting observations we can make: 1. because it's "Beijing" who is tasked with deciding whether or not TikTok can be sold makes it extremely clear Bytedance is not an independent private company the way it would be the case in the US. They are legally required to obey CCP directives [2] 2. Beijing had every opportunity to sell the application off, and in fact they did just that with another app called Grindr some years back [3] without any fanfare. 3. That Beijing would rather close TikTok entirely, rather than sell it, shows how deeply important it is to Beijing that TikTok does not come under the control of another nation, including the US. it's well established that the government censors speech on TikTok including the speech of US citizens [4]
noah bangs on the "the government of China is really trying to weaken or destroy the economic capacity of the US" drum pretty hard and it's hard to disagree with the many books and arguments he cites. The current rush to Rednote has a lot of TikTokers making the argument that "See? Chinese people are great!" which is where they are confusing sentiment about the citizens of China with that of the Chinese government itself. It actually is great if there's a big cultural interplay between young US and Chinese citizens (not sure w/ Rednote though), so that we would be able to counteract a key propaganda point from Beijing which is that the TikTok forced sale is some kind of strike against the Chinese people. It's important that the point be made that this is about the hostility of the Chinese government itself, which is pretty clearly a hostile adversary to the US.
[1] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/tiktok-is-just-the-beginning
[2] https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/experts-agree-byte-da...
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21168079/grindr-sold-chine...
[4] https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...
A few months ago I'd have cheered on this news but now that Zuckerberg has made his coming out and basically promised to turn Instagram and Facebook into yet more MAGA echo chambers, I feel... conflicted.
I do still think the world would be better with less social media, but the only words in my mind right now are "not like this".
So they want to ban only the mobile app, but the Tiktok website would still work from the mobile browsers? Huh... I guess they can get less user data from the website than an app, but the content manipulation and the usage data collection could still happen that way if that's the real fear of the US...
Why can't the decentralized social media be made? What are the technical obstacles for this? Why cant it run in your browser, users could store their content on their own devices and share it P2P. Noone knows whats being shared, no problems with censorships, regulations, laws...
Americans have a fixation on freedom of speech. They even defend the right for people to express hate speech that would be prohibited anywhere else in the world. Why aren't people outraged by the censorship of TikTok?
I'm surprised they're shutting down rather than trying to push the web version. The law does not require ISPs to block the website or forbid anyone from using it; only US-based mobile app stores are affected.
Let's remember this when the discussion again centers around the US' immense commercial success.
It is easy when you have been placed at an advantageous place and use all the tricks in the book against competition.
I have some concerns about TikTok, as well as with a shutdown, but if I can imagine a silver lining of a TikTok shutdown, it would be if huge numbers of teens are inspired to learn the tools and awarenesses to not be total b-words of Big Tech.
In this fantasy, initially it would just be to get onto a particular Big Tech (but Chinese) thing that "grownups" don't want them doing. But then they'd start to realize they're also being exploited there, and also by many of the people who are pitching circumventions. And eventually they'd figure out and create genuine empowerment. And rediscover better conventions for society, where everyone isn't either exploiting or being dumb. And it would just be the grownups who are hopelessly b-words of Big Tech, and the teens just have to roll their eyes and be patient with them. Then those teens become grownups and have kids, and raise them to not be airhead b-words. And those kids teach their kids, etc.
Of course, within several generations, the lessons would be diluted and then forgotten, and people would get dumb and shitty again. But society would have improved enough that at least there's room for people to backslide, and fritter away what their great-grandparents achieved. :)
This is about censorship
小红书 (pronounced Xiaohongshu) is the Chinese version of TikTok by Bytedance (EDIT: I’m wrong, it’s a different company, see below). It’s currently #1 on the USA App Store.
The people on there are super kind and accommodating to all the “American TikTok refugees” today! Lots of little Mandarin 101 classes, UI tutorials, and co-commiserating about government overreach.
I have a negative view of all of social media, but I think banning it is extremely politically unwise. Appreciate the hospitality of these users inviting us into their platform for a bit
Tiktok is obviously a massive national security risk, and I find it funny people don't see that.
It is extremely well established that propaganda has great value, and so allowing a foreign adversary the capacity to potentially control the information your citizens receive in a clandestine way is insanely dangerous.
This is very welcome as a parent in the USA. It is also sound legally, and was a long time coming. Nothing of great value is being lost and in a year users will have moved on to something else.
There are two positive effects here: 1. A company that is meaningfully foreign is losing control of a mass media asset. 2. Children and young adults are losing access to a product that is not good for them.
A country should not allow foreign powers to control platforms with so much reach--full stop. We do not allow foreign entities to own radio stations... Imagine how much deeper these platforms penetrate a person's mind, and how much larger their audiences are. We should all be MUCH more concerned about how these apps are stretching the social fabric (throughout the world) and how every society's ability to function is effected. I challenge anyone voicing discontent at this result to question whose interests they are voicing.
American manipulation of American minds... Yea! That's the point. I'd rather have someone with interests as aligned as possible with mine working for, owning and ultimately making business decisions at these companies. Regulation as appropriate to further align them.
Which leads me into my next point: I think that everyone here would argue that TikTok is in a class of its own with regard to very engaging short form content and rapid feedback feed training. I would argue that these attributes make it necessarily vapid and reactionary, providing little to no net benefit to either the individual or society to begin with.
If you disagree, what is the value of this product to the user and to society? Does it make people's lives better? I think that when the harms are considered, the answer to both is ultimately no. There are very well-documented negative effects on focus, happiness, and anxiety in children, which persist into adulthood from social media[1]. I don't think it can be argued that something that makes you feel good and connected in the moment but disconnects you from your immediate neighbors and friends and is highly correlated with mental illness is good.
Social platforms (TikTok included) are putting our children at a disadvantage mentally compared to previous generations and need to be more regulated. If these platforms (TikTok and other short-form rapid feedback products most of all) are of dubious value to begin with, what is the harm being done here?
Finally, I conjecture that we've only gotten a taste so far of how power can be wielded through these instruments. Even if Elon decides NOT wield his asset overtly during this administration, I believe we'll see more overt demonstrations of the power of social media sites in the next few years if relations with China continue to deteriorate and Russia becomes more desperate, with Meta clearly becoming less scrupulous.
----
Has anyone written up exactly how TikTok is a distinct national security risk?
The best I’ve heard is “they get your data”, which is something they surely can buy from Facebook through an intermediary, “they influence content”, which is a moderation decision that every social media app does, and “there’s a part of the report to congress that’s redacted”, that could be a recipe for tuna casserole for all I know.
Edit: I’m assuming the downvotes are a way of saying “no”? I would assume that “national security threat” would involve some sort of concrete standard of harm or risk that could be communicated beyond “just trust us”. I haven’t even seen concrete examples of what content they influence, just people assuring everyone that it happens and it’s Bad.
The two reasons behind the TikTok ban:
1. Domestic big tech lobby
2. Domestic Israeli Lobby [1]
The China data is just a scapegoat. The risk is very minor. The US is banning TikTok because is a domestic big tech competition, and because lawmakers cant control it.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-ban-israel-palest...
Can anyone enlighten me as to what this TikTok ban is supposed to be about? It feels a bit satanic panic from a distance.
Why doesn’t China simply open up for domestic competition? What are they afraid of? It’s a serious question. Are they that much afraid of their consumers switching to Western products? I frankly think it’s overblown. Chinese people will simply stick with homegrown products at this point. It’s way too entrenched for anyone to enter their market and succeed. I think they have made enough progress to open up their markets and they have so much to lose by growing anti-sino sentiments abroad all because they didn’t want US tech monopolies to compete in their home turf. Maybe 10 years ago it made sense but Chinese tech companies can compete on merits at this point. They have the ecosystem to compete without govt protection.
From an engineering point of view it is VPN companies that need to be bracing for 1000x spikes.
What a weird Jira ticket it must be to get "implement complete turn-off".
Let's just be clear on what this is. Supporting a TikTok ban has several valuable benefits to politicians.
1. You look tough on China
2. You look like you're being tough on "misinformation"
3. You get to look like you are in favor of privacy
4. You get to implicitly support the American competitors of this product
5. You get to look like you're helping kids by getting rid of something that they like but older voters are skeptical about
6. None of this affects the supply chain so won't impose consumer costs
None of these things are real (except the competitors and supply chain ones)
I dream of the day we give ourselves a decentralized protocol that, while providing an opt-in way of following current events, offers us an extreme breadth of content without being a hypercapitalistic, attention-grabbing nightmare that tries to get us to compulsively consume absolute junk constantly, at the cost of everything else. In the meantime, looks like Sunday is gonna be a fun day.
I downloaded Rednote and was already blown away by just the app quality. So much better than X. I'd never used TikTok but I really hate the idea of our government censoring what I can and cannot see. Rednote has a bunch of great content on it too. Thanks for the Streisand rec US gov!
I've never felt inclined to use TikTok. I've always kept my online presence psuedo-anonymous, all the way back to AOL days. I don't use Meta products at all.
The day TikTok is banned I will create an account and post a video showing my face, in which I will state my name and address.
Considering how many of our sites they ban, this seems pretty reasonable.
Perhaps other countries will also regulate or ban social media companies.
Good.
And I want this to set a precedent that we CAN reign in the social media companies.
How many users does Genshin Impact need to have before it gets banned?
> TikTok... estimates one-third of the 170 million Americans using its app would stop accessing the platform if the ban lasts a month.
If customers care that little about the product, maybe it's a good sign that it isn't providing significant value to their lives.
The Trump attempt to force TikTok to sell or get out failed. Stopped by the courts in 2020 ¹
Then everyone was fine with TikTok more or less. A few departments, if not all banned it, have given warnings about it.
Then when Gaza blew up, TikTok was not quick enough to ban all pro Palestine content and that is when congress again decided that it was time to take on TikTok ²
¹ https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-courts-a526c144fad9f... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...
² https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-ban-israel-palest... https://forward.com/culture/688840/tiktok-ban-gaza-palestine... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/tiktok-faces-renew... https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-... https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lawmaker...
Won’t the website still work? Or do kids these days only open apps?
Once again, digital drug addicts getting their supply cut off and running to the next hit.
Neither this TikTok "ban" or the new app "Rednote" are going to last in the long term. They will run back to TikTok again.
Would have been better to fine TikTok in the billions just like we already have done for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and all the other social networks.
But this is all temporary.
Looks like we’re about to witness a digital apocalypse...
America deserves more for supporting authoritarian gov
surely this will be the big break for bluesky
I don't care about tiktok. But if this is the reality we are stuck in right now. I really hope the EU is banning all the privacy melting Meta apps soon.
So basically, tiktok will be unavailable in the US for 24 hours until Trump takes office and then he'll probably extend the deadline
I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up:
Just get rid of all of them. They're battery acid poured on the human psyche.
Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. If you have to combine your online interactions with people with the interactions you have with them in real life, you're better off, and that doesn't happen when social networks span the globe.
It's honestly wild how many people in these comments are defending some vague, unsubstantiated, paper thin national security scare vs recognizing this as a clear suppression of free speech and active stoking of xenophobia.
I would genuinely rather drop ship the CCP my SSN/banking info than trust the US government to do something in favor of it's own people when there's lobbying money involved. Why are so many of you pro-government and anti competition only when it comes to tiktok specifically? It's completely the opposite on nearly every other topic from what I've seen.
Lemon8 is taking over?
My prediction, based off raising kids and working with teenagers? The teens are going to give a big ol' Yankee Doodle Middle Finger to Uncle Sam. They'll flock to any social media site not hosted by a US megacorp.
If you don't understand why that would be then I posit you haven't spent much time around teens.
Honestly I'm fine with this. I look forward to a break from the nonsense until whatever comes next to replace it.
Hope they do that worldwide soon too!
Do yourself a favor and delete social media and go outside and touch grass. Life was so much better before social media.
Meanwhile many are going to another chinese app, RedNote.
...Good?
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Good riddance. Hopefully whatever fills its place is stricter on sexual content, insane what kids have been inspired to do on there.
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TikTok practically saved my life by exposing me to alternate worldviews and the spiritual nature of existence, so the US government singling it out feels like a personal attack to me. To think of all of the people earning independent side incomes on TikTok - one of the few places outside of eBay/Craigslist/Uber/etc where that's even still possible - who will lose that lifeline, well, words like travesty barely convey the loss.
I also don't buy the national security argument. Considering how much of our personal data is leaked through all of the other social media apps, as well as international ad markets, that argument is nonsense. This is about the US government and corporations going to any length to control the narrative as the US falls to authoritarian dystopia and fascism.
I'm disappointed in the Democratic Party for not standing up for free speech and the rights of its constituency. It's forgotten where it came from, and what its goals are. This move means that there effectively is no Democratic Party - we just have two Republican Parties, both beholden to their corporate overlords (Meta and X/Twitter), as well as the billionaires behind them (Zuckerberg and Musk).
It's also tragic beyond words that Donald Trump may be viewed as TikTok's savior if he lifts the ban after he takes office. After he has undermined so many aspects of American tradition and our institutions. It reeks.
And most of all, I'm at least as mad at all of you as I am at myself for not organizing to stop this ban. 170 million TikTok users and we can't come together in solidarity to have real leverage on our elected officials? As in, withholding our participation in keeping the web running? Talk about ineffectual.
The more time goes by, the more I'm giving up on the tech scene. We've lost our values on such a fundamental level that we are now the clear and present danger threatening the American democratic experiment. Shame on all of us.
If we keep losing the way we are, and with the rise of AI and unprecedented wealth inequality, we have maybe 5-10 years left before revolution. We've entered a Cold Civil War, divided along ideological lines. I dearly hope I'm wrong and it doesn't come to violence, but after watching America's decline as a beacon of freedom post-9/11, the safest bet is continued cynicism.
"Chinese leaders simply think that TikTok, unlike other apps, is so important that they would rather destroy it than see it escape their control." -Noah Smith