Banning TikTok and not banning Meta and Google is a stupid idea that will just give more power to the fewer people with less competition.
They are all bad of course and they should all be banned, but giving one bad group all the power is worse then letting two bad groups compete for power.
OK, you have this all wrong. Let me explain what the differences is. Tiktok has NO COMPETITION. Tiktok’s ***intent *** is not like the others. The others are competing for ad revenue. Tiktok’s purpose is solely to influence us Americans. Tiktok doesn’t care about your ad revenue or even a sustainable business. They are banked rolled by the CCP.
If META or Google(um…what social media company does google have?) was banked rolled by Russia and had its servers all there and the app was installed on 75% of all Americans, they essentially have eyes and ears on everyone in America. But they are not owned by Russia. Its own by stakeholders who only care about money and how much they will make them.
While I agree that META and Google(really google?) has too much control over our data, at the very least the intent is not to disrupt the American democracy.
They’ll double down on condescension, derision, and dismissiveness in order to maintain a rhetorical higher ground while never doing any work to substantiate their point.
Inevitably, they’ll distort your question to something you’re clearly not saying and answer that. It’s all very predictable and still frustrating. The only thing left for them is to ignore your question because they don’t have answer to it.
Google owns Youtube (and gmail, most popular mail provider).
You should think more deeply about what ads are and what are governments motivations. It is both the same thing.
Google and META want power, they want money, because money is a voting power for allocation of resources in the society.
Chinese governments want power, so they can have more money and more voting power for allocations of their resources.
The nationality of people in these governments doesn’t matter at all to them. Chinese government doesn’t care about regular Chinese citizens no more then US government does about their own. They simply care for their own power/money. And that is their interests.
Google and META work with the governments, they have actual NSA offices and follow any orders from the government, just like TikTok does.
The problem here has nothing to do with what country it is in, it is simply that one set of rich folks are bothered that they can’t control something other rich folks are controlling. People, in both cases, suffer and have no power whatsoever in the process.
Meta has zero interest in destabilizing the American democracy. China does. China wants to take over Taiwan. Meta doesn’t.
You see where I’m getting at? It’s in Meta’s best interest to have a vibrant democracy and a strong economy. China does not.
Meta doesn’t give a flying fuck who owns the south China seas. Guess who does and has the tools to influence the people who vote for the politicians that will ignore an invasion to Taiwan?
Sure China probably wants money. But imagine how much money they can have if they influence America not to step into an invasion into Taiwan. 90% of the world’s semiconductors would be under the influence of China.
Meta has a vested interest in making money. This has caused them to force polarizing content onto users pages, even when the information presented is false. They have worsened the political divides in America, and caused a significant number of people to believe lies about their fellow citizens.
The fact is Meta has damaged democracy for it’s own profit.
Facebook “accidently” created a polarizing bubble for neo fascist. Because they only cared about user engagement, regardless of what kind of engagement they get.
Now imagine an adversary was more intentional with this. Imagine the power they would wield.
Meta has absolutely best interest in removing any democracy in US since it profits from abusing rights of the citizens that would very much like to regulate it. So it is in their interest, like of any company, to strip away it’s workers and customers of any rights it possibly can.
Don’t fall for tricks of politicians when they pretend that they are any better from politicians from another country, they are not, they just have more influence in the media to elevate problems in other countries and minimize the problems in their own.
Abusing rights can still be done without removing democracy. Shit, they are doing that now and making a shit ton of money. Billionaires actually might lose it all under communism. Did know why the CCP came into power, right? The working class got sick of the rich and started a revolution. They drove the KMT into what is now modern Taiwan.
Did you know what happened to Jack Ma? The old CEO/Founder of Alibaba. Dude was the richest person in China. Under China, dude just slightly mentioned something negativity about the CCP and he hasn’t been able to go back to China.
You think Zuck wants to risk communism so he “might” make a few more bucks at the sake of losing all his wealth? Bro. Our adversaries are the only people that wants to end of democracy.
They constantly make such risks when they make anti-consumer policies and somehow it doesn’t seem to hurt them, because they have the power to force the people in a system they don’t want.
They can’t abuse rights without removing democracy, US has no democracy since the people don’t support the policies of their governments. They are forced to vote between two worst possible choices and they are brainwashed to think that is somehow a democracy.
The American political system is not perfect. It has its flaws. But that isn’t what we are talking about, are we?
We are talking about how the CCP has created an app that has the ability to manipulate the US population in their favor. Having the ability to mobilize Americans to vote for politics and politicians that fits in their favor.
The American politics already has a shit ton of problems than to add another one like the CCP/Tiktok.
You can do both. I usually just let it show me videos, because they’re usually really interesting. There will always be videos that get through that are like little tests to see if you’ll like the content or not.
For example, I’m more interested in world affairs and technology. I get plenty of videos about those subjects. Then, once in awhile, they’ll throw a car mechanics type of content at me because I thought one video was interesting and liked it (stuff to make sure you keep your car in the best shape it can be, etc.) so it throws those videos at me and sometimes it is hit or miss.
You can always tell when someone has not used the app, because their opinion is always that it must be harvesting SO MUCH DATA! When (on iPhone at least) it asked me for my camera and location once and has not ever asked me since. I denied it of course because fuck that, and I also used Apple’s hide my email feature to create a dummy email for the app because I too used to shit on the TikTok because I too thought it was just a bunch of people doing stupid shit and dancing or whatever. Turns out I was wrong! It’s almost like if you used it, you could form a better opinion than TikTok = China = Bad
Well, China = Bad. No contest there. Uyghurs concentration camps, Tibet, South China sea conflicts, conflict with India, illegal policing in other countries, Taiwan. The list is literally endless.
If TikTok is rolled into that is what we are discussing.
Letting them show you videos they think you want to see is fine. If TikTok was a traditional corp not owned by the CCP.
Now, by default, it seems like they are curating videos to interest you.
WHAT IF the CCP decided to influence your thoughts by giving you a style or tone of a video that starts hinting its OK for China to invade Taiwan. Maybe you like history and they gave you a video showing how sad the CCP when KMT was ruthless animals.
Or you like car videos and they start showing you videos on how Chinese cars are superior to American cars and then conveniently tell you that the US government has a 100% tariff on all foreign electric cars and how you can never drive one unless you vote for X party.
It will seem innocent on the surface, and my example might actually be more intentional than what they will do to the American people.
The thing is, China already weaponized TikTok. A couple of journalists was stalked with data they obtained by TikTok. Why were they monitored? Because these journalists exposed that TikTok was sending data to the CCP. Another example. Tiktok sent a regional notification to users about the upcoming ban and got hundreds of people to call into the representatives, which they did, but without knowing the context. They literally didn’t know why they were calling.
This is how elites can keep bamboozling us. How the fuck our life would improve without tiktok?
At least If you ban every personalized social network or add strong regulation to them, but no, just ban tiktok and pretend you are doing something. CCP can eat shit, I’m worried about what is happening around me and not in a country in the other side of the planet.
An adverserial nation in control of an algorithm that influences and effects behaviors here in the united states effects you.
Have you not once considered the NSA or silicon giants a potential adversary?
At least with NSA you could say for the purpose of national security, but Google would happily kill people for money if they figured out a way to not get caught.
No because if these silicon giants want to continue to do business in the USA, they would not try and influence the American people for a foreign adversary.
Tiktok’s intent is not to make money. It’s to influence us and use our data to spy on us. Did we all forget about the Forbes journalist that was tracked on Tiktok?
Simple. When the bill was first introduced, TikTok blasted a notification telling people to call their congressman to stop them. We then had literal lemmings doing that exact thing without understanding the entire scope of the bill and why it’s being done. Good fucking thing it was mostly younger kids.
Now imagine the same scenario where we have 18 year old voting adults. It can and would be able to sway an election or worse.
I completely understand why these companies are assholes, but we ALL understand why they are being assholes. Money. Greed. You gotta keep sqeezing the bottom half of Americans to get that fucking G6.
But Tiktok’s intent is not money. Its power and intel. Power and influence on our American citizens. They don’t care about your money. They want your data and so they can better influence you into thinking how they want you to think.
And what they want you to think directly benefits China. A weaker America is a stronger China. Fuck the CCP.
Uber and Lyft were telling voters to vote against their own interests and it worked. If you think that US companies aren’t using your data to influence how you think then you’re a prime example of their success. It’s not just “innocent” money-making schemes, it includes manufacturing consent for wars.
Now, how about the when TikTok influences Americans to vote to politicians that align with China. And let’s just say… China decides to invade Taiwan and America doesn’t step in to stop it. Now they own 90% of advance semiconductors.
How about after China finishes with the south china seas then gets grabby and decide that Korea is now part of China again. Or when they finally invade India.
Imagine if they had a tool that can influence a country that would stop them.
Not to mention common lemmy shills post this garbage up constantly to keep the youngins riled up. All ploys. All benefiting not us.
I would prefer legislation towards protecting our data rights too, but that ship sailed after we pissed net neutrality away, and that talking point is merely used as wedge between us. All to keep us mad at each other, ineffectual, and unlikely to vote.
For starters, TikTok algorithms are made to downweight any topics relating to subjects censored in China. HERE is a link to a study on the subject from Rutger’s University and nonprofit NCRI. Since NCRI also directly advises Congress, it’s a big part of the information available to legislators making this decision to force TikTok’s sale.
It’s a video covering all sorts of forbidden topics in China and tagged with hashtags like #uyghur and #tiananmensquare but the video showed up on people’s “for you” page and engagement/views was in line with most of his other videos. On the other hand, his videos where he brings up other topics like the CIA get outright censored. He uploaded a video about Palestine and tagged one with tags like #freepalestine and then uploaded the same video again without those hashtags and the one with the hashtags has <70k views versus the >930k views of the video without the hashtags.
So you’re big “Gotcha” moment was to illustrate you didn’t understand the concepts after they were explained to you. That science is wrong because you found a video with views on it?
Reading your other comments, it reminds me of boomers on facebook. Have you ever used instagram? Try reading the comment section of a black guy or a woman or a muslim or worse all combined.
It’s a good start tho. Fuck the CCP.
Banning TikTok and not banning Meta and Google is a stupid idea that will just give more power to the fewer people with less competition. They are all bad of course and they should all be banned, but giving one bad group all the power is worse then letting two bad groups compete for power.
OK, you have this all wrong. Let me explain what the differences is. Tiktok has NO COMPETITION. Tiktok’s ***intent *** is not like the others. The others are competing for ad revenue. Tiktok’s purpose is solely to influence us Americans. Tiktok doesn’t care about your ad revenue or even a sustainable business. They are banked rolled by the CCP.
If META or Google(um…what social media company does google have?) was banked rolled by Russia and had its servers all there and the app was installed on 75% of all Americans, they essentially have eyes and ears on everyone in America. But they are not owned by Russia. Its own by stakeholders who only care about money and how much they will make them.
While I agree that META and Google(really google?) has too much control over our data, at the very least the intent is not to disrupt the American democracy.
I’m sorry, what evidence do you have that they don’t care about ad revenue, or that no other businesses are interested in influencing elections?
They’ll double down on condescension, derision, and dismissiveness in order to maintain a rhetorical higher ground while never doing any work to substantiate their point.
Inevitably, they’ll distort your question to something you’re clearly not saying and answer that. It’s all very predictable and still frustrating. The only thing left for them is to ignore your question because they don’t have answer to it.
They haven’t even bothered to answer lol
Google owns Youtube (and gmail, most popular mail provider). You should think more deeply about what ads are and what are governments motivations. It is both the same thing. Google and META want power, they want money, because money is a voting power for allocation of resources in the society. Chinese governments want power, so they can have more money and more voting power for allocations of their resources.
The nationality of people in these governments doesn’t matter at all to them. Chinese government doesn’t care about regular Chinese citizens no more then US government does about their own. They simply care for their own power/money. And that is their interests.
Google and META work with the governments, they have actual NSA offices and follow any orders from the government, just like TikTok does. The problem here has nothing to do with what country it is in, it is simply that one set of rich folks are bothered that they can’t control something other rich folks are controlling. People, in both cases, suffer and have no power whatsoever in the process.
Meta has zero interest in destabilizing the American democracy. China does. China wants to take over Taiwan. Meta doesn’t.
You see where I’m getting at? It’s in Meta’s best interest to have a vibrant democracy and a strong economy. China does not.
Meta doesn’t give a flying fuck who owns the south China seas. Guess who does and has the tools to influence the people who vote for the politicians that will ignore an invasion to Taiwan?
Sure China probably wants money. But imagine how much money they can have if they influence America not to step into an invasion into Taiwan. 90% of the world’s semiconductors would be under the influence of China.
Meta has a vested interest in making money. This has caused them to force polarizing content onto users pages, even when the information presented is false. They have worsened the political divides in America, and caused a significant number of people to believe lies about their fellow citizens.
The fact is Meta has damaged democracy for it’s own profit.
Mate look at neo-fascist/white supremacist content on Facebook and tell me with a straight face that Facebook isn’t destabilizing American democracy.
Also, fuck their rebranding. It’s always going to be Facebook for me.
Facebook “accidently” created a polarizing bubble for neo fascist. Because they only cared about user engagement, regardless of what kind of engagement they get.
Now imagine an adversary was more intentional with this. Imagine the power they would wield.
Meta has absolutely best interest in removing any democracy in US since it profits from abusing rights of the citizens that would very much like to regulate it. So it is in their interest, like of any company, to strip away it’s workers and customers of any rights it possibly can.
Don’t fall for tricks of politicians when they pretend that they are any better from politicians from another country, they are not, they just have more influence in the media to elevate problems in other countries and minimize the problems in their own.
Abusing rights can still be done without removing democracy. Shit, they are doing that now and making a shit ton of money. Billionaires actually might lose it all under communism. Did know why the CCP came into power, right? The working class got sick of the rich and started a revolution. They drove the KMT into what is now modern Taiwan.
Did you know what happened to Jack Ma? The old CEO/Founder of Alibaba. Dude was the richest person in China. Under China, dude just slightly mentioned something negativity about the CCP and he hasn’t been able to go back to China.
You think Zuck wants to risk communism so he “might” make a few more bucks at the sake of losing all his wealth? Bro. Our adversaries are the only people that wants to end of democracy.
They constantly make such risks when they make anti-consumer policies and somehow it doesn’t seem to hurt them, because they have the power to force the people in a system they don’t want. They can’t abuse rights without removing democracy, US has no democracy since the people don’t support the policies of their governments. They are forced to vote between two worst possible choices and they are brainwashed to think that is somehow a democracy.
I 100% agree with you.
The American political system is not perfect. It has its flaws. But that isn’t what we are talking about, are we?
We are talking about how the CCP has created an app that has the ability to manipulate the US population in their favor. Having the ability to mobilize Americans to vote for politics and politicians that fits in their favor.
The American politics already has a shit ton of problems than to add another one like the CCP/Tiktok.
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They are already infected. Only way to kill a cancer is to nuke it. Ban Tiktok. Fuck the CCP.
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TikTok has no competition? Reels for Instagram, Shorts for Youtube.
They copied TikToks format, because it does that format very well.
TikTok is not competing for your wallet. They are competing for your influence and from the sound of it, it’s working.
You’re just wrong. It’s an app, dude. The most influence it has had on my life is show me things I’m interested in. Get a grip.
I don’t use the app, do you get to pick each video like you do on YouTube or does it automatically find videos for you?
You can do both. I usually just let it show me videos, because they’re usually really interesting. There will always be videos that get through that are like little tests to see if you’ll like the content or not.
For example, I’m more interested in world affairs and technology. I get plenty of videos about those subjects. Then, once in awhile, they’ll throw a car mechanics type of content at me because I thought one video was interesting and liked it (stuff to make sure you keep your car in the best shape it can be, etc.) so it throws those videos at me and sometimes it is hit or miss.
You can always tell when someone has not used the app, because their opinion is always that it must be harvesting SO MUCH DATA! When (on iPhone at least) it asked me for my camera and location once and has not ever asked me since. I denied it of course because fuck that, and I also used Apple’s hide my email feature to create a dummy email for the app because I too used to shit on the TikTok because I too thought it was just a bunch of people doing stupid shit and dancing or whatever. Turns out I was wrong! It’s almost like if you used it, you could form a better opinion than TikTok = China = Bad
Well, China = Bad. No contest there. Uyghurs concentration camps, Tibet, South China sea conflicts, conflict with India, illegal policing in other countries, Taiwan. The list is literally endless.
If TikTok is rolled into that is what we are discussing.
Letting them show you videos they think you want to see is fine. If TikTok was a traditional corp not owned by the CCP.
Now, by default, it seems like they are curating videos to interest you.
WHAT IF the CCP decided to influence your thoughts by giving you a style or tone of a video that starts hinting its OK for China to invade Taiwan. Maybe you like history and they gave you a video showing how sad the CCP when KMT was ruthless animals.
Or you like car videos and they start showing you videos on how Chinese cars are superior to American cars and then conveniently tell you that the US government has a 100% tariff on all foreign electric cars and how you can never drive one unless you vote for X party.
It will seem innocent on the surface, and my example might actually be more intentional than what they will do to the American people.
The thing is, China already weaponized TikTok. A couple of journalists was stalked with data they obtained by TikTok. Why were they monitored? Because these journalists exposed that TikTok was sending data to the CCP. Another example. Tiktok sent a regional notification to users about the upcoming ban and got hundreds of people to call into the representatives, which they did, but without knowing the context. They literally didn’t know why they were calling.
Senator I’m from Singapore
This is how elites can keep bamboozling us. How the fuck our life would improve without tiktok? At least If you ban every personalized social network or add strong regulation to them, but no, just ban tiktok and pretend you are doing something. CCP can eat shit, I’m worried about what is happening around me and not in a country in the other side of the planet.
1
Have you not once considered the NSA or silicon giants a potential adversary?
At least with NSA you could say for the purpose of national security, but Google would happily kill people for money if they figured out a way to not get caught.
No because if these silicon giants want to continue to do business in the USA, they would not try and influence the American people for a foreign adversary.
Tiktok’s intent is not to make money. It’s to influence us and use our data to spy on us. Did we all forget about the Forbes journalist that was tracked on Tiktok?
Yeah, they’ll only have to influence the American people for a domestic adversary
Any examples on how this has taken effect?
Simple. When the bill was first introduced, TikTok blasted a notification telling people to call their congressman to stop them. We then had literal lemmings doing that exact thing without understanding the entire scope of the bill and why it’s being done. Good fucking thing it was mostly younger kids.
Now imagine the same scenario where we have 18 year old voting adults. It can and would be able to sway an election or worse.
You mean like what Uber and Lyft did but nobody is talking about banning them? https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549760/uber-lyft-prop-22-win-vote-app-message-notifications
I completely understand why these companies are assholes, but we ALL understand why they are being assholes. Money. Greed. You gotta keep sqeezing the bottom half of Americans to get that fucking G6.
But Tiktok’s intent is not money. Its power and intel. Power and influence on our American citizens. They don’t care about your money. They want your data and so they can better influence you into thinking how they want you to think.
And what they want you to think directly benefits China. A weaker America is a stronger China. Fuck the CCP.
Uber and Lyft were telling voters to vote against their own interests and it worked. If you think that US companies aren’t using your data to influence how you think then you’re a prime example of their success. It’s not just “innocent” money-making schemes, it includes manufacturing consent for wars.
Again. Asshole move. So they can make more money.
Now, how about the when TikTok influences Americans to vote to politicians that align with China. And let’s just say… China decides to invade Taiwan and America doesn’t step in to stop it. Now they own 90% of advance semiconductors.
How about after China finishes with the south china seas then gets grabby and decide that Korea is now part of China again. Or when they finally invade India.
Imagine if they had a tool that can influence a country that would stop them.
Not to mention common lemmy shills post this garbage up constantly to keep the youngins riled up. All ploys. All benefiting not us.
I would prefer legislation towards protecting our data rights too, but that ship sailed after we pissed net neutrality away, and that talking point is merely used as wedge between us. All to keep us mad at each other, ineffectual, and unlikely to vote.
For starters, TikTok algorithms are made to downweight any topics relating to subjects censored in China. HERE is a link to a study on the subject from Rutger’s University and nonprofit NCRI. Since NCRI also directly advises Congress, it’s a big part of the information available to legislators making this decision to force TikTok’s sale.
Like this video?: https://www.tiktok.com/@cancelthisclothingco/video/7345905852164918570
I’m not going to click that, but idk probably. That’s the point, downweighing can’t be easily observed without a large dataset.
It’s a video covering all sorts of forbidden topics in China and tagged with hashtags like #uyghur and #tiananmensquare but the video showed up on people’s “for you” page and engagement/views was in line with most of his other videos. On the other hand, his videos where he brings up other topics like the CIA get outright censored. He uploaded a video about Palestine and tagged one with tags like #freepalestine and then uploaded the same video again without those hashtags and the one with the hashtags has <70k views versus the >930k views of the video without the hashtags.
So you’re big “Gotcha” moment was to illustrate you didn’t understand the concepts after they were explained to you. That science is wrong because you found a video with views on it?
Reading your other comments, it reminds me of boomers on facebook. Have you ever used instagram? Try reading the comment section of a black guy or a woman or a muslim or worse all combined.