Unironically yes, at least the US government is something we can openly criticize and attempt to change while living within its borders. Try criticizing the Chinese government from within China, let me know how that works out for you. I'll take homegrown American spyware any day.
They're both focused on profit. The only reason you see the other one as scary is because it's owned by the scary scary Chinese. Red scare all over again.
Case in point. Vine literally can't survive and so shouldn't TikTok. Unless of course it's getting propped up by a government with endless funds and not focused on profits.
Why are you so convinced that an advertising platform that a 1/3rd of the country is glued to is unsustainable. And that's ignoring the rest of the world, which is the majority of their user base.
The same reason why twitter was NEVER profitable and it had more eyes glued to it. World presidents were using twitter for announcements. Never profitable.
What's the connection between Uber and China, then? I thought it was somewhat common for tech companies to be unprofitable for very long periods of time backed only by capital, but it may be China. Has anyone looked into this? Does Xi know what I like to order on weekends? Why haven't we banned this yet
In 2019, Douyin limited users in teenager mode to 40 minutes per day, accessible only between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Then, in 2021, it made the use of teenager mode mandatory for users under 14.
You say “red scare” as if China isn’t a hostile nation state to the US. Go look at western company penetration in China if you want. Are you calling it “western scare” when China blocks yet another western company? I didn’t think so.
Lemmings love to poopoo on Google and Microsoft, but they love thmselves some Meta! Oculus and Facebook are ok to them because "they use it." The hypocrisy is astounding.
Facebook is not intentionally doing it. It was a byproduct of capitalism. While TikTok doesn't care about profits and only wants to control our government and people.
You know though that the United States have "taken down" governments before? Americans do not have any right to feel superior on this issue in the slightest way
Yes. Tell me what is more effective. Having a software that you own that you can segment and target directly or buy data from a 3rd party and then try and use that platform which is not designed to influence elections and is also monitored by the NSA.
According to SAI sources, the following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Brutal.
Could Mark have been completely joking? Sure. But the exchange does reveal that Facebook's aggressive attitude toward privacy may have begun early on.
It's not the same. China wants to fuck up the American youth. That's why their version of tiktok is so different from ours. But you already knew that I'm sure
Nah, I don't use tiktok, Chinese or otherwise so I wouldn't know the difference. But you're missing the point.
USA organisations abuse social media to spy on and influence citizens.
Chinese organisations abuse social media to spy on and influence citizens.
And yet, you claim one is inheritly worse than the other or should be preferered. To me, they are equally bad. If anything, the USA manipulation is worse - they can use that knowledge more easily and to greater effect than an attacker on the other side of the world.
I doubt it, parents will just move them to YouTube, Instagram, or some other platform. The TikTok ban is intended to limit misinformation by the CCP, and that doesn't really matter for this age of kids.
The more important thing to me is building habits. I care less about how much they're watching vs how they're spending their time generally.
We have a rule where our kids need to read to be able to watch/play games, and we cap at 2hr/day. If they read 1hr, they can watch/play for 30min. My kids seem to have a pretty good mix of reading, watching/playing, and playing outside w/ friends, so I think it works.
Yea. We do something similar. It's an electronic allowance. If you use it it's done for the day. I change it for rainy days and vacations if we are traveling in the car or whatever. But it's easy to set up with Google family. And then you can see what they are doing. Not to be snoopy. Just to teach them the right way to protect themselves online. I don't want them to turn 18 and be completely lost.
I give my kids 30 min "free" on Saturdays, which gets doubled if they spend it in a game with a sibling. For trips, I make my kids all do the same thing, so either watch the same show, listen to the same audiobook, etc.
I personally don't digitally track what my kids do at all, I instead rely on trust and keeping devices in a public space. I tell them what's acceptable, and occasionally hang out with them while they're doing whatever. As they follow the rules, I give them more autonomy (e.g. my oldest may get their own PC soon-ish), but if they break the rules, they lose access. The only parental controls I use is for my 4yo, because she keeps getting into my Steam Deck and Switch w/o asking, but my other kids know the passcode on the Switch (not my Steam Deck, that's mine).
It's a bit bumpy, but I'm hopeful that having rules but no actual walls teaches them to learn to self-regulate and will help them in the long-run. It worked for me as a kid.
My oldest is a gamer just like me. We hang out in discords. That's why I monitor him. It's not necessarily him or the friends I know about that worry me. It's the random pedo like people that can come from many games and many interactions.
The youngest just watches silly videos and doesn't have a gaming bone in her body. So I just try to make it fair. Since they both need time away.
Probably plenty. Tik tok is just the biggest owned by a foreign government that also is showing pretty immediate extreme negative effects on children’s attention spans and learning capabilities.
But people are still gonna whine because they’re 25 year olds who need to watch 80 videos of unboxing shoes in 4 minutes . That’s really the only pro tik tok argument there is.
Hopefully the response is "the USA is basically 110% hypocritical here having actually intervened and destroyed the democracy of many countries before"
I've said many times.bfore I agree the Chinese government is bad and cannot be trusted, but let's pretend the USA government is trust worthy
Nothing but Chinese shills or boys here. It’s wild anyone is stupid enough to say this
All I see here are people who can't read critically and whose brains seem to only work on fallacies
It really doesn’t set a bad precedent forcing a foreign adversary to have less control over the US population. We should really force the sale of a lot of Chinese properties in the US as well. A foreign government should not have so much control over rental and housing prices in the US.
Why are you pro foreign adversary controlling the daily lives of Americans? It’s a very odd stance to take and openly say unless you’re not American obviously.
I'm guessing you've never been on TikTok. It's a pretty good news source and information disseminator. Your algorithm feeds you what you pick so if you linger on posts from physical therapists and psychologists about child development, that's what you learn about. If you linger on political posts highlighting our local and federal government's corruption, you get that.
I'm all for banning it (and all social media) for children, but if you think TikTok is all trash TV, you've been successfully propagandized.
Wtf? You see nothing wrong with your first two sentences??? “It’s great at disseminating information. The Chinese government learns how I think then starts to show me propaganda they want that will align with my opinions so they can drive how I think and what I learn in the future”
That’s fucking wild that you’re saying all of this is a positive thing.
Wow, that is literally 1 example of an obscure time in the early 19th century.
A mass majority of an American company has zero interest to hurt the community it is based in. The stability of a government and the strength of it's community determines if people would buy/use a product. It also supplies a competent workforce and a network of security that helps a company prosper.
It's cute that you think corporations have any national loyalty. They move their operations abroad for tax breaks. They outsource for cheaper labor (even skilled labor). Most of them aren't even headquartered in the US. Their leaders globetrot on their private jets enjoying events around the world with their wealthy peers.
You really need to realize that the people at the top are living post-national lifestyles and don't have an ounce of loyalty to the people of any nation
I use TikTok routinely. I actually spend time on Chinese parts of TikTok, because I know a little Chinese. I’ve seen content that the CCP would be very much opposed to - including discussions of the Tank Man from Tiananmen Square and homosexuality in Chinese history.
TikTok has censorship certainly, but it’s more targeted towards the Gaza conflict.
Your experience is different from other experience. That's the main issue. They are and can target specific people in specific groups and in specific regions. You seeing this content just means you're not important enough for them to target.
As can/do Facebook and every other social media platform. But I find it hard to take this idea that TikTok is an arm of the CCP seriously when I routinely discuss Ughyur Muslims and Tiananmen square with folks, and see depictions of Chairman Mao as Pooh Bear.
The more shady shit is the shop and how every third video is an unlabeled ad. TikTok wants to make money first and foremost. I don’t think TikTok is some force for good in the world, but what they are doing is no different from what Meta and Google are doing.
That's the thing. You don't know. Nobody knows except the CCP. That's the problem.
But you do about every other social media platform?
Fake news is not exclusive to a single platform. Teach your family about reputable news sources and stop trying to shoehorn US propaganda down everyone's throats like it makes you look smart. Tiktok learned everything it does by the likes of facebook, Google and Twitter.
Why do you think US social media is everywhere all over the world with near instant or sometimes even get higher bandwidth preference in some countries? If you don't think the US government has nothing to do with the level of complexities that entails dealing with local governments/infrastructure and planning, then I guess "ignorance is a bliss", and I hope the US government will bring you peace and much freedumb. Don't complain when they come in blasting tho.
It's one thing to have fake news that is uncontrolled. It's another thing when a literal adversary uses fake news as a tool to create discourse.
A social media company has one thing in mind. Profits. Even if it means that a byproduct of profits is discourse. But TikTok sole purpose is discourse. They literally don't care about profits.