What's your thought on the TicTok ban?

cypherstream · 2025-01-19T04:34:21+00:00

TicTok and some other apps like CapCut are now starting to trickle offline for users. This seemed to start happening around 9 PM and continues to shut people out. Curious what your thoughts are on it? I think it sets a slippery precedent for banning apps. Sure there was some bad content on there, but there was also educational content, a lot of people made a decent living on there. The data collection happens on every app you go to these days. Part of me thinks good riddance, but then another part of me thinks everyone will just go to Instagram, Youtube Shorts, Facebook Reelz, or something else I've never heard of. Its interesting times.

OmegaWolf747

I'm against any ban on any website/app because I think bans have no place in a nation that calls itself a free country. If they can ban TikTok, then why not BlueSky and Mastodon as well? Then it gets to the point where each administration bans sites they dislike. That's the playbook of a dictatorship like China, Iran, N. Korea. I think it has no place in our country.

broknsymetry

OmegaWolf747 I have no issue with banning government and military personnel (and contractors) from any activity involving foreign owned entities (not just China) but the American public should be able to decide for themselves.

Disclaimer: I am not now or ever have been a TikTok/TwitX/FB/etc. member.

toolman1990

OmegaWolf747 I'm against any ban on any website/app because I think bans have no place in a nation that calls itself a free country. If they can ban TikTok, then why not BlueSky and Mastodon as well? Then it gets to the point where each administration bans sites they dislike. That's the playbook of a dictatorship like China, Iran, N. Korea. I think it has no place in our country.

I disagree since at some point you have to balance national security interests when a website is run by a hostile foreign nation who wants to destroy you. Let's not have a false equivalency by lumping in other social media sites that are not owned by a hostile foreign nation since that is such a dishonest argument. Nobody is a fan of this ban that is why the United States gave Byte Dance the option to sell Tik Tok but they declined so far.

toolman1990

broknsymetry I have no issue with banning government and military personnel (and contractors) from any activity involving foreign owned entities (not just China) but the American public should be able to decide for themselves.

Disclaimer: I am not now or ever have been a TikTok/TwitX/FB/etc. member.

The issue is Tik Tok being able to use that data to blackmail government employees with security clearances since China will know if they lied or not due to the extensive data collection by Tik Tok. So just banning it to existing government employees with security clearances does not remedy the national security issue.

ElQuintron

toolman1990 Not sure if anyone has financial or general security consulting training, but the issue of "Potentially Exposed Persons" being on Tik Tok is huge, not only because they can be identified as "PEPs" but the data being collected allows to target them more efficiently... by a hostile power. This isn't really all that different than Meta/Twitter/Google but those ostensibly fall under the purview of friendly powers.

I don't support banning Tiktok, and it isn't banned in Canada, but there are more caveats than normal social media.

toolman1990

ElQuintron Tik Tok application has already been used to spy on journalists to identify whistleblowers, but Tik Tok claimed it was just rouge employees. https://www.androidpolice.com/tiktok-spying-journalists/

ElQuintron

toolman1990 That's not an accident, and goes back to my previous comment about TikTok helping to locate PEPs and then providing the resources to exploit them.

aurgathor

toolman1990 mandated by the Chinese National Security law to hand over all data requested to the CCP

Evidence please that they have been "mandated to hand over data". What specific data and when was it handed over? As far as I concern this is a red herring and just enables sinophobiacs. Much to the chagrin of some there is no evidence that the PRC would have much to gain from collecting videos of US teenagers posting cat videos.

toolman1990

aurgathor Evidence please that they have been "mandated to hand over data". What specific data and when was it handed over? As far as I concern this is a red herring and just enables sinophobiacs. Much to the chagrin of some there is no evidence that the PRC would have much to gain from collecting videos of US teenagers posting cat videos.

Let's be clear there is a bunch of classified information that was in the court hearing that Tik Tok was not allowed to see but the judges could so sources were not burned but under China's national security law they cannot refuse any orders from the CCP. Quite frankly Tik Tok has already used their infrastructure to spy on journalists, so the application has the ability to conduct surveillance operations on US soil. It is far from an innocent app that displays innocent cat videos.
https://www.cna.org/quick-looks/2023/chinas-national-security-laws-implications-beyond-borders

aurgathor

toolman1990 aurgathor Evidence please that they have been "mandated to hand over data". What specific data and when was it handed over? As far as I concern this is a red herring and just enables sinophobiacs. Much to the chagrin of some there is no evidence that the PRC would have much to gain from collecting videos of US teenagers posting cat videos.

Let's be clear there is a bunch of classified information that was in the court hearing that Tik Tok was not allowed to see but the judges could so sources were not burned but under China's national security law they cannot refuse any orders from the CCP. Quite frankly Tik Tok has already used their infrastructure to spy on journalists, so the application has the ability to conduct surveillance operations on US soil. It is far from an innocent app that displays innocent cat videos.
https://www.cna.org/quick-looks/2023/chinas-national-security-laws-implications-beyond-borders

Rubbish.

I asked for evidence that TikTok was actually ordered to turn over information to the PRC, not that they might be required to. There is no such evidence, no ifs, buts or maybes.

All of this hyperventilating over China is nothing but ideological red meat for the fringe. Furthermore I shall note that a particular person has changed his tune on shutting down TikTok. 😉

toolman1990

aurgathor Rubbish.

I asked for evidence that TikTok was actually ordered to turn over information to the PRC, not that they might be required to. There is no such evidence, no ifs, buts or maybes.

All of this hyperventilating over China is nothing but ideological red meat for the fringe. Furthermore I shall note that a particular person has changed his tune on shutting down TikTok. 😉

I provided the law what Byte Dance which owns Tik Tok is required to do under China's National Security law. It is well known that Byte Dance has full access to the US Tik Tok servers and the application has already been used to track journalists to find whistleblowers. There is a bunch of classified information that we cannot see that scared lawmakers enough that there was bipartisan agreement to force Byte Dance to sell Tik Tok or be banned. In addition, why don't you search for Salt Typhoon hack, since China hacked into our critical infrastructure. There is not hyperventilating over China and younger people who use Tik Tok are very immature and highly addicted to the application.

Thane_Bitter

Not much of a loss, most of the content is very short, much of it is wrong, misleading, sometimes dangerous and the majority of it is stupid. Unfortunately YouTube copied their ideas and came up with "shorts". I have yet to come across a tiktoc video that was informative or knowledgeable in some subject.

The platform has a number of grifters, the psychic tarot card lady infamous for claiming alternative murder theories and ending up destroying her own life via libel lawsuits; far too many welfare and other social safety net program fraudsters which openly show how they piss government money away on useless things and scam in order to convert it into cash as well as young sociopaths which churn out cringe content for views with no regards to other people (that guy that was pouring ant poison on food at walmart). Perhaps there is good useful or entertaining content but it seems to be lost in an ocean of shit.

egeezer

Thane_Bitter

Counting on social media for news is like believing the sideshow barker's claim that the guy in his cage is really half wolf.

From a practical standpoint I think Bytedance was "playing chicken" to see if the U.S. government would cave, which it's doing. Had the U.S. remained strong, a sale would have been made prior to the deadline. But it signaled weakness, so Bytedance stayed strong.

In the end, Bytedance will probably be steered to a friend of the administration or go dark. If anybody else tries to.buy it they will be disuaded by the government to defer to its preferred purchaser.

urbanriot

cypherstream I'm against stupid people giving their data to the Chinese military and I'm against stupid people encouraging unwatched children to kill themselves and overall I'm against all the stupid whiny people that post their latest videos crying about how hard life is.

But at the same time I'm more against the government involving itself in suppressing free speech regardless of the internet, whether or not its because used to spread propaganda that damages our societies, whether or not it's used to harvest our data for a future war, and whether or not stupid people are doing stupid things as a result.

The libertarian in me does not support the ban.

Thane_Bitter

egeezer Yes, unfortunately some people do think it's both real and true. It is not new, facebook, twitter, perhaps even myspace offered distorted reality that some found/find very attractive.

Your new guy has flipped, years ago he wanted to ban it, now he has blocked the ban for two and a half months. Hope Musk buys it and runs it into the ground like he did with twitter.

edited for clarity.

urbanriot

Thane_Bitter

Your new guy has flipped, years ago he wanted to ban it, now he has blocked the ban for two and a half months.

He didn't 'flip' so much as he listened to the valid complaints of citizens who are making a living off TikTok and delayed the ban to try to, basically, figure it out. I believe a lot of people underestimated how many people were earning a significant income through TikTok which is why he's delayed it. He doesn't have the legal power to stop the motion unless the parameters of TikTok change significantly.

Hope Musk buys it and runs it into the ground like he did with twitter.

Twitter is 1,000x better post-Musk but I would rather someone else buy it so we have multiple options.

MrBeast claims he wants to buy TikTok:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-potential-us-buyers-rcna188655

ElQuintron

Thane_Bitter The Idea that social media aggregates more of what you want of is fine, so say if you wanted to know more about guitars and flagged guitar news for you, then it would be OK, but when it runs out of guitars news and has to decide what to show you after that is where it creates problems in order to maximize engagement.

Thane_Bitter

urbanriot I would like to meet some of these people that allegedly complained to him, perhaps bring in some specialists to look for certain patterns/defects/trends. IMHO expecting youtube or tiktok to pay the bills is insane and I am sure the bulk forgot to include that income on their taxes.

X is inaccessible to anyone without an account, given the small market share he has self exiled all non-user traffic to his platform. I don't even bother with x links when posted, I wish more media outlets would do the same or just quote it verbatim so the poster can't backtrack, delete or otherwise alter their comments. Recall that in its infancy Facebook was only open to at first a select group of universities and colleges and eventually opened up expanding, Musk has managed to shrink his user base and ensure its nothing by an echo or reverb box. Phil Spector would have loved the circular feedback and amplification but the company has just shrunk to a mere quarter of what it was.

GrumpyCanadian

urbanriot Apparently, Kevin O'Leary is interested, and has been trying to cozy up to Trump as a preferred insider. Given his tendency to involve himself with TV personalities, O'Leary may yet get his way.

urbanriot

ElQuintron

has to decide what to show you after that is where it creates problems in order to maximize engagement.

I agree that this is a huge problem.

The best example I can give is National Geographic, that magazine we associate with beautiful pictures of waterfalls and stories about aboriginal tribes. Unfortunately since about 2015 it's been a race hustling trash mag focusing on Donald Trump and everything the lowest common denominator wants to make into news...

Or is it? Oh, weird, I click on National Geographic and it does have those beautiful pictures of waterfalls and stories about aboriginal tribes but the only articles making it into my feed are poorly researched posts that stir up the pot to get eyeballs on the post. On one hand I'd think National Geographic is basically The Enquirer, on the other hand if I go out of my way I can see that National Geographic still does the stuff that people actually want to see, the stuff that makes people happy.

If I "Like" National Geographic, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Vogue, I expect to see articles about aboriginal tribes, the latest colognes, the hottest bands nobody heard about, and chic fashion; I don't expect to hear about Trump, Trump, Trump, and Trump with a battalion of people on both sides of the spectrum arguing against everything that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Edit: I should add that this is as much a problem created by the outlets I mentioned and less to do with 'the algorithm' so we should probably point the finger at all the involved parties. Hey, GQ, focus more on gentleman's style and less on Trump.

Thane_Bitter

ElQuintron Do you make use of their suggestions? Perhaps its dollar chasing but I find on any subject or story a number of people all jump onto it making their own take on whatever it was.

[deleted]

Thane_Bitter Phil Spector would have loved the circular feedback and amplification

Is that a Wall Of Sound reference!

Astyanax

Thane_Bitter

Thane_Bitter I would like to meet some of these people that allegedly complained to him, perhaps bring in some specialists to look for certain patterns/defects/trends. IMHO expecting youtube or tiktok to pay the bills is insane and I am sure the bulk forgot to include that income on their taxes.

If those social media companies 1099-ed them they better report it on their taxes! 😉

ElQuintron

Thane_Bitter if I'm understanding you correctly only so much as in if I already want something and reviews seem to indicate the product is bad, then I may hold off.

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