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  • If social media apps exist to slurp up as much user info as possible, and they do, then it makes sense to be concerned about the government that they're subject to.

    • Why is it okay for domestic companies to collect the same data and sell it to China, then?

      This shouldn't just affect foreign companies if it's about data collection. It should have been an actual privacy bill. US citizens' privacy will be no better after this.

      • It's not ok.

        But the fact is that China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia are adversaries of the United States, and the US government is justified in its concern.

  • I probably shouldnt be celebrating this but I am. I fucking despise Tiktok with a passion, I hate its users, its creators, I hate the short form content trend it started and its algorithm based content delivery systems that every other app copied but worse, I hate the sexualisation of minors and peddling that content to pedos, I hate the clout chasing in general, I hate tiktok trends and "challenged". and I hate the general brainrot it has caused.

    • What are you celebrating, exactly? TikTok isn't going away, it's just going to be sold to American investors.

      • At the very least they will have to split tiktok since I doubt the CCP will let them sell the whole thing, nor will they want to.

        Best case scenario they pull out of the US entirely and then maybe some other western countries also ban it.

      • If they comply.

    • I hate the short form content trend it started

      always has been, with vine.

      its algorithm based content delivery systems that every other app copied but worse

      always has been, with twitter, facebook, instagram, snapchat, youtube, uhhhhh... vine, yeah, just mentioned that one. discord, tinder. literally everything.

      I hate the sexualisation of minors and peddling that content to pedos

      Look at what the great adpocalypse of youtube was ostensibly about, then look at what it was really about. In any case, always has been.

      I hate the clout chasing in general

      Always has been.

      I hate tiktok trends and “challenged”

      Assuming you mean "challenge", you could check out the harlem shake, the ice bucket challenge, god, there's a lot of them honestly. Gangnam style. I think probably this is just like, meme culture more broadly, which, say it with me now: always has been.

      I hate the general brainrot it has caused.

      And finally, always has been.

    • Also that damned Disco music!

    • Yeah but that's just on YouTube and Facebook now. Nobody is going to regulate them in the slightest.

      It is a slap in the face if they want to say it is too influential to have an adversarial state control it, at the same time leaving it fine for local billionaires to do the exact same things.

    • I hate its users, its creators, I hate the short form content trend it started and its algorithm based content delivery systems that every other app copied but worse

      I mean... eh? TikTok is hardly the first platform to embrace short-form video. I think the dislike for the app is overblown.

      The style is reflective of the medium. No point in making big budget audio/visual multi-hour immersive experiences for a cell phone screen with some headphones. The media has to be short because its for an audience that's stealing time in the middle of a commute or during a break at school or the office. The continuous-feed style is something we just managed to achieve with high speed mobile internet (TikTok would have been impossible on a dial-up device).

      Its a young medium. People are still learning what works and what doesn't. And its as prone to getting enshittified as every other venue, thanks to the endless need for higher profits.

      But as someone who grew up watching Albino Blacksheep and YTMND meme-tier content and owns a DVD of Super Bowl Commercials, I gotta say that we've had a lot worse.

      I hate the general brainrot it has caused

      People say this shit about every medium. And there's definitely awful pieces of individual content.

      But a lot of it just comes down to the hyper-sensationalist marketing. And its common to every conceivable media, from Comic Book style front page of print to the "Bwooooong!" they put in every new movie trailer.

      If TikToks suck, its largely because they're aping the worst aspects of all the other established media forms.

      • The media has to be short because its for an audience that's stealing time in the middle of a commute or during a break at school or the offic

        Except most people you speak to will tell you they spend hours in bed scrolling. Short form took off because it drives higher engagement.

        And its as prone to getting enshittified as every other venue, thanks to the endless need for higher profits.

        Except its never not been shitty. I wa son it back when it was musical.ly it has much of the same problems.

        Albino Blacksheep and YTMND meme-tier content

        Which are far more creative than doing whatever the current trend is, or a thirst trap or click bait.

        People say this shit about every medium. And there's definitely awful pieces of individual content.

        But with tiktok you can feel it. I hate short form but still end up scrolling mindlessly through YT shorts or IG reels. And it really does measurably affect your attention span. And it's so noticeable that the user base openly acknowledges the brain rot.

    • The people that create TikTok content are still going to exist even if TikTok goes away. They'll just move to another platform.

    • Me too. I see no issue with banning it. I've said this before, but people are only outraged because they're addicted to it and may possibly lose it. Fuck tik tock. Among your examples, I will add the misinformation pounding left tok with things like autism and other mental disabilities. Plus, the way people are self diagnosing themselves and acting like it's a fashion statement is outrageous. And then you have the outrage bait videos that explicitly cherry pick information for viewers while holding back the full context of things, which is a tactic there's already far too much of in this country.

      • pounding left tok with things like autism and other mental disabilities. Plus, the way people are self diagnosing themselves and acting like it's a fashion statement is outrageous

        [Respectfully] fuck off.

        Anyone the bemoans "self diagnosis" is just a classist dickhead.

  • Me, laughing as the idiot americans will be banned from the app, and only the pure VPN users will remain:

    No but seriously this is pretty dogshit stupid. The only people happy about this are the omega boomers and pick mes that hated tiktok anyways for what are basically unrelated reasons. Otherwise they'd be equally calling for a larger set of privacy enforcements that encompass all social media sites, which I agree should happen. This seems, to me, to be pretty transparently a protectionist racket. Only we shall control the data of americans, only we shall track them.

    And then there's also the people saying that any social media getting banned is kind of a net positive. Fuck you mate what the hell? You're on a pretty explicitly manipulative social media platform right now, it's just one that you're able to tailor to your own biases. Probably it's a net negative to have less propaganda from a variety of sources. Both sides my ass, I guess, fuck your corporate-state disinformation, I got mine.

    I dunno. I watched this guy that makes sandwiches, back when I used tiktok. I thought he was pretty cool. I think it would be a shame to see his content get disappeared, which tiktok already has a pretty huge problem with.

    The benefit of tiktok and short form content is that you can watch it anywhere, and almost anyone with a phone at this point can produce it. Those of you who hate vertical video content should understand that a phone is the optimal platform on which to consume it, and you should probably be happy for that, because it's not going to outright disappear from the internet otherwise, as we saw before all of this had started. You miss the forest for the trees when you call for heavy-handed outright bans of this stuff. The corporate influence, I can understand getting rid of that, but the platforms themselves, there's legitimately value there. Twitter as a microblogging platform has been used for actual reporting, and even as it exists now, it's being used for that. If you were to get rid of youtube, you would be eliminating a frankly staggering amount of information available out there that, sure, might exist in other places, but that both takes a large risk and relies on google MORE to feed you that correctly when you use a search engine, which as we've seen recently, hasn't been the case. You could do the same with reddit. Delete reddit, and you are deleting a metric fuck ton of information on some valuable stuff, you're deleting a fuck ton of internet culture. These platforms need to be disentangled from their corporate overlords and made more free to own, browse, and use, not outright destroyed.

420 comments