• Sorgan71@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    I think tiktok should be banned for its addictive algorithm. It is far worse than any other social media for that reason.

  • hark@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Can someone explain to me how it’s worse for a foreign government to have your information than your own government having that same information? Your own government is far more likely to actually be able to do something about you.

    • JargonWagon@lemmy.world
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      It probably won’t make a difference for you, but if you worked in a government facility and they’re spying on you, obtaining credentials, obtaining information on infrastructure in the energy sector, government facilities, etc., getting network credentials, getting floorplans, getting times where a changing of the guard occurs, etc. - any foreign entity can use that info to tear a country down from the inside and kick off a full scale war.

      Local government isn’t going to self-saborage with that information. Yeah, spying on the citizens is awful and we should avoid any apps/devices that do that too, but that’s not as bad as war unless it gets so bad that it gets to a point of civil war which seems unlikely.

      inb4 tankies claim “conspiracy”:
      China hacked US Telecom Infrastructure
      China hacking US Treasury
      Two recent events I was able to dig up fairly quickly. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more. Apparently they tapped Trump’s phone too, but not sure how credible the article/source is.

      • hark@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        That’s true but it doesn’t apply to the vast majority of people. People who work in the government should be more aware of these things and I believe the tiktok ban started as only on government devices which is a lot more reasonable than a blanket ban.

    • frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe
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      10 hours ago

      Not a foreign gov. China.

      This is analogous to the diff between Ireland having nukes and Russia having nukes.

  • FrankFrankson@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    There is sooooo much weird conspiracy shit in these comments. The government is banning TikTok becuase they collect too much data and the Chinese government could eaisly get access to all of it. The correct thing to do would be to regulate data collection but that would be problematic for Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple…etc etc… so instead they just ban TikTok. All this TikTok refusing to spread deep state US govt propaganda horse shit is a bit past nuts.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      15 hours ago

      This is a pretty sane explanation.

      I’m also at least partially convinced that it’s motivated by our social media giants’ interest to “think of the children” their competition away.

      Seeing as the order was basically “Get bought by an American corpo or get banned.” They either plunder the competitor’s insane data collection, userbase, and profits, or kick them off their corner.

      • Tja@programming.dev
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        10 hours ago

        You can also see it as retribution.

        “Get bought by a Chinese entity or get banned” is the default posture of the Chinese government. BMW China is Chinese. Samsung China is Chinese. Panasonic China is Chinese. GM China is Chinese. If TikTok US is forced to be American, it wouldn’t be the most unfair thing this week.

    • SamboT@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      I mean occams razor is the best way to feel sane in the disinformation age so im with you. But i think its more accruate to do our best understand what is possible and suspend holding a specific belief like that because it doesnt matter if you are right or wrong. Many things could be true at the same time, especially with who you ask.

      Kind of makes our conversations worthless, which i think is the strategy of disinformation. We cant know, so should we really be claiming whats true or not? Seems like we should just offer what seems most likely rather than tell everyone they are wrong unless you have information sources to help them understand why they are likely wrong.

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    17 hours ago

    Since this is the place for the most serious discussion:

    If US lawmakers focused on protecting American’s privacy with some sensible privacy laws coughGDPR equivalent cough, we could avoid pulling out the ban hammer to play whack-a-mole on these companies.

    Companies would simply be punished by the law for being malicious or irresponsible with your data, forcing industries to take privacy seriously and make investments in protecting and not leaking it.

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    21 hours ago

    Oh yeah, I forgot the other social media apps don’t collect data and spew propaganda. Oh wait… They do.

  • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    22 hours ago

    FTFY

    edit : ooooh the wee St Petersburg trollies are tryin’ ta tryin’ ta ain’tcha!

    News flash, responder-guys: if you’re even humans & not the AI bots who took most of your colleagues’ jobs, you’re still always be undervalued by your bosses. They’ll never, ever save you: they’ll save their Teslas and stock portfolios instead. Your life kinda sucks and there’s nothing you can do about it AND YOU CHOSE THIS LIFE, DIDNT YOU. Free yourself. Quit this shit job and go back to school before it’s too late.

  • crossdl@leminal.space
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    14 hours ago

    The interest your domestic and foreign corporate social media platforms have in you are VASTLY different. It’s naive to equivocate them. Yes, TikTok should get “banned”, which will just be pulling the app from the app store and likely still available as a web app maybe through a VPN. They’re just going to create more friction in getting access.

    Instead of advocating for spyware, perhaps we should be highlighting open alternatives?

  • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Fuck you. I’m going to RedNote. Purely out of spite. Because I’d rather dropship my DNA to the Communist Party of China HQ than give my data to Zucc or Elon.

      • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Which is a reddit alternative. I refuse to use any American based TT alternative.

        Musk and Zucc can go stick hotsauce doused cacti up each other’s asses. Fuck them. And anyone like them.

        And most of all fuck GovCo.

  • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    Tiktok got banned not for peddling “chinese propaganda” but instead not peddling the US one.

    All the major tech companies in the US take measures to ensure content deemed unworthy by the government never become mainstream or viral.

    This is done under the pretense of stopping “hate speech” or “terroristic propaganda” but often include things like pro-palestinian content or class struggle content (like luigi mangione stuff).

    Tiktok was bold enough to not do that by default, cuz they wanted someone to ask them to do this and then it would become a huge scandal about how the US suppresses free speech. And US gov don’t want to do that for this exact reason as well. So they decided to ban it.

    Remember talks for this “law” were initiated when all of a sudden tiktok became a host for pro-palestinian voices. We should ask ourselves, how is it that 60% of americans want the government to stop arms sales to israel but this 60% never shows up on the big social media platforms. But on other platforms like here in lemmy and tiktok, pro-palestinians is the majority.

    For further reading, listen to employees fired from big US tech companies for voicing their concerns over the palestine issue, or read Meta’s new terms and conditions specially the section on “dangerous organizations and individuals”.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Ah yes, TikTok, the land free of censorship. Where you can’t say “gay” and must insert a stupid little asterisk.

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        18 hours ago

        I didn’t say tiktok is the bastion of free speech. They only do this in the Palestinian case because it does not serve them anything to be against palestine. We can criticise one party without making the other one some kind of “moral hero” of a story.

        • Tja@programming.dev
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          10 hours ago

          The user you are answering to isn’t making “the other party” any kind of moral hero, it’s literally just criticizing TikTok.

    • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 hours ago

      It’s outright shadowbanned at best and straight up banned at the isp level at worst.

      That’s why tik tok is getting banned, because US spooks can’t control it.

    • ToucheGoodSir@lemy.lol
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      22 hours ago

      Funny how the Chinese are using Palestinians to try to further their own geopolitical position. It’s almost like the October 7th attack as engineered by Israel AND Iran. You know who Irans allies are… Right?

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        And “Israel” fell right into their trap by…committing genocide.

        • ToucheGoodSir@lemy.lol
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          18 hours ago

          Bibi did. The guy who would be in prison for corruption charges without Hamas being retards. HURRDURR

          • dx1@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            That is quite the logic. That it is the fault of the militarized resistance against a colonial state (just a political party really, but putting that aside) that the colonial state’s prime minister is using genocide against their people to hold onto power.

            At some point you have to actually ask yourself, am I apply equal standards for assigning blame across the spectrum?

    • Saryn@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Thank god for bold platforms like TikTok that refuse to push US propaganda. Really smart of them to not censor valuable information as a way of fooling the US government into exposing its evil censorship ways. TikTok’s fate in the US was never a topic before the current wave of pro-Palestinian activism started. It certainly wasn’t one of Trump’s main talking points ten years ago. Good thing he changed his mind after getting his hands on some Chinese money lucrative investmenet from Chinese citizens that are not at all connected to Tencent.

      None of this discourse on combatting foreign information manipulation started over a decade ago, its all about censoring pro-Palestine voices here and now. TikTok and China in general are known for their calm, collected attitudes toward Muslims. They certainly would never weaponize a contentious topic every which way imaginable in pursuit of financial and geopolitical goals. We need more of these open and bold platforms.

      • ilega_dh@feddit.nl
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        22 hours ago

        I wasn’t sure this was an actual a tankie rant or sarcasm until the

        TikTok and China in general are known for their calm, collected attitudes toward Muslims

        • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          Its just another troll. You give them labels like tankie but they are just trolls.

        • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          20 hours ago

          Know what the other “tell” is? They write a wall of text. Big thick paragraphs. It’s a thing, start looking for it.

            • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              20 hours ago

              & when you call them out they want to lead you down this endless response chain. You wonder if they get bonuses for it

              • dx1@lemmy.world
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                19 hours ago

                Oh yeah, nothing like hallucinating that everyone you talk to is an enemy, and when they complain, well that just proves it.

            • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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              15 hours ago

              I feel seen. LOL

              I feel like with all the posts I ramble on (and TRY to pare down) in Lemmy, I could just have easily had a somewhat healthy blog going by now…that nobody would read because it wasn’t on Medium or some other monolith. XD

    • ConnecticutKen@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      They track the location of people in the US and gather large amounts of data. They didn’t get banned for refusing to spread US propaganda.

      • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        18 hours ago

        These are very loose terms. Pretty much every major website saves IP addresses when you create an account (to prevent abuse/spam detection). And you can get location info from the IP address. Hence the first condition would be true for all of those websites.

        Next, any website/app that builds a recommendation system will save user interactions to build the “algorithm”. So every social media with an algorithm will fall into this category.

        With enough bending of terminology, we might be able to prove that the lemmy also collects user data (although it will be really hard cuz the algo here is based on upvotes and time posted iirc). And “large amount” part is just legal filler words.

      • Anas@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Not to defend tiktok (to this day I have not ever used it), but if the issue is the tracking and data collection, you could ban/regulate that specifically instead of singling out the app.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          19 hours ago

          It is obvious that they want the other (US-based) companies to be able to continue collecting that data so they can gain access to it if they want/need it. It’s bullshit, but it’s clearly what they want.

          But that being bullshit does not mean that they are wrong in not wanting the one that is under the control of a foreign adversary having access to that data. Two separate things.

      • underwire212@lemm.ee
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        22 hours ago

        False dichotomy. They could’ve been banned on legitimate pretenses AND other reasons threatening power.

        If they were legitimately only banned for “tracking the location in the US and gathering large amounts of data”, then just about every single social media service would be under investigation for the same reason. But do we currently see that happening?

        • ConnecticutKen@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          They’re owned by a Chinese company so the Chinese govt has this information. I’m not saying it’s a good reason to ban it, or that there isn’t another secret reason, or that American companies don’t gather the same information. This was the problem all along - China receiving vast amounts of information about Americans. Actually the US was probably worried about China spreading their viewpoints, now that I think more about it. IDK

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          19 hours ago

          If they were legitimately only banned for “tracking the location in the US and gathering large amounts of data”, then just about every single social media service would be under investigation for the same reason.

          We aren’t talking about TikTok simply gathering the information though, are we?

          But yes, absolutely. Let’s do it. And we know that: just because the other companies aren’t being investigated/regulated in the same way, does not mean that it shouldn’t happen at all. That’s not how it works.

          Also, you are making a fallacious argument yourself… If we were talking about banning US social media sites in China, then the comparison holds (and even then, it’s not 1:1 given the political structure of the CCP vs. that of the US). Otherwise, TikTok is clearly unique among them in that the Chinese Government ostensibly has access to any and all information that is being collected.

          There is a reason China made their own version Facebook. Because they don’t want us to have all that information on their citizens.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          21 hours ago

          Of all the social media popular in the US, only one of them is doing that tracking and is under the thumb of a foreign adversary. That is specifically the line drawn in the law. I’m actually curious if WeChat shouldn’t fall under it too?

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        1 day ago

        So does facebook, twitter, google, microsoft, and pretty much every mobile app development shop.

      • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        19 hours ago

        As does all the American owned networks. That’s not the reason. Not pushing American propaganda is the reason.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      You’re on the Fediverse. Most of the people here are already actively avoiding Facebook and Xitter. Unfortunately, getting the US, EU, etc. to ban American propaspyware companies is, uh, extremely unlikely. China, however, has banned them long ago, which is why I don’t see why people think it’s hypocritical of the US government to ban Chinese social media.

      • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        23 hours ago

        But they claim that China banning the apps is authoritarian. The hypocrisy isnt in banning the app, it’s in their claims about motivation to do so.

        • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          Yea but we’re not getting anywhere with “tolerance 100%”

          The Chinese government is a tyrannical undemocratic dictatorship and I’m OK with not tolerating them or their propaganda wing.

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            22 hours ago

            Have you tried actually comparing the content on Tiktok vs other social networks? Or are you just regurgitating some talking point?

            From the few years I’ve been on Tiktok, it is by far the least toxic and bigoted social network I’ve seen, Lemmy included.
            I’m no fan of China, but if we’re considering “being less bigoted” to be commie propaganda, then we need to take a look in the mirror. Absolutely throwing the baby out with the bath water here

          • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            19 hours ago

            The Chinese American government is a tyrannical undemocratic dictatorship and I’m OK with not tolerating them or their propaganda wing.

            Fixed that for you.

      • Zement@feddit.nl
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        1 day ago

        Try saying negative stuff about China on .ml I doubt that they are not completely undermined by the Chinese intelligence. (They delete every post critical about china).

        So being vigilant is the only way to avoid getting manipulated.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          .ml might just be useful idiots tbh. But I remember speedrunning an /r/sino ban and that took me all of 1 minute, with a comment that wasn’t even critical about China. It was a thread about how it’s awesome that the west can’t live without China for 5G connectivity and I said that “maybe it isn’t all that great that an entire industry has been entirely centralized to one country” just to see if an absolutely lukewarm take would get banned. It did.

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            Yeah, it’s strange. Like even slight criticism. I mean that’s okay, but what about actual constructive discussions? None!

            If you are not allowed to criticize a system, that system is inheritly flawed. But that’s my personal take on this.

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        22 hours ago

        Not sure that it’s “most” anymore. Propaganda huffers realized there was more new land to destroy / minds to influence & they had to come settle here too

  • khaleer@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    Yeah, so prepare for battle between people who want to tell you that their empire is better.

    • ToucheGoodSir@lemy.lol
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      22 hours ago

      Obviously the US. China imports and exports everything through the oceans. Have fun with Russian potatoes dumb dumb CCP members xD

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    I’m not a fan of government banning stuff, but like… if they are gonna do it, ban Wechat too. My parent’s be so deep in the Wechat propaganda, I wonder what they do without Wechat.

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldOP
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      What? Wechat is a thing here? I have literally never heard about Wechat like anywhere, pretty sure more people know about Lemmy in the US than Wechat lmao

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        WeChat is very common amongst the Chinese diaspora worldwide. Everyone in China uses WeChat. Its like China’s Facebook. Its either that, or just sms, which lack many features like, group chats, or some weird Lunar New Year gifs, stuff like that. So if you want to communicates with relatives that are still in China, or with other first-generation immigrants, WeChat is just the default method. But that’s only for first-generation immigrants tho. People born ouside of China, Taiwan, or any Chinese-speaking areas would probably not use WeChat. I arrived in the US at before I was 10, I hate the idea of having any corporate apps on my phone, regardless of nationality. Many Chinese Americans born in the US just use the typical Instagram, Snapchat and stuff like that (and yes, some use TikTok as well, but that just a “kids these days” thing, nothing to do with ancestry)

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

        TLDR: Chinese “Facebook” (actually its more like Facebook+Instagram+Twitter+ every social media combined into one + Googlepay/Applepay + A lot of government censorship)

        Its app only, no webpage or computers, requires a smartphone, requires a phone number. How much censorship and survelliance depends on what phone number you use. Accounts with Mainland Chinese number will have a much stricter censorship and more data collected. Accounts with a western number will have less strict censorshop and less data collected (probably about the same amount of data collected by western corporate social medias).