Shit site, but not a legal precedent we want to be setting.
The biggest problem is them doing illegal shit like scanning all your photos instead of just what you pick
Fuck tik tok though. CCP propaganda
Yup, I only want to see American social media! Because it has no propaganda!
It’s less about that and more about stopping an extremely powerful attack vector currently active in your own country.
Literally the biggest reason why the western world is in such a giant political crisis is the weaponization of social media.
100%
Social media 15 years ago: cat pics and friends.
Social media today: shit you didn’t subscribe to, but shows up anyway to push wedge issues in to things you enjoy.
had youtube open in a new private window on a vpn connection the other day after clicking a link to a video about the new raspberry pi compute module
was scrolling down thru one of the top comment threads and noticed, sandwiched between relevant tech videos on the right? some talking head, designed to enrage (as opposed to inform) fox news video about nothing related.
I think Im just done with youtube for the forseeable future. if your profit model requires inducing engagement like that, your product isnt good enough to stand on its own, and/or you’re ok with being shitty to make more money. either way, I want nothing to do with you at that point.
Yeah, kinda miss that era. Luckily Lemmy emulates kinda well, just wish that there were more proper old school forums for nich but large communities like NCD or Rimworld.
Until a flood of TikTok users bankrupt them, anyways.
Not entirely sure how you’d make the economics of hosting endless video files work without great big piles of money and some way to get even more big piles of money on a routine basis :/
Yeah, video hosting is notoriously expensive. It’s why there’s still not a real competitor to YouTube, because nobody else but Google could afford to run the platform at a net loss for the amount of time required to build a profitable user base.
If even a tiny percentage of TikTok’s US user base decided to move to Loops, that may be enough traffic to not only completely disable Loops, but would probably impact the rest of the Fediverse at large, too.
The millions of free porn sites would beg to differ…
Free? They are ad-ridden and unlike YouTube, porn videos are removed from the site all the time.
Yet none of them really paywall you for using an adblocker.
Actually come to think of it, porn sites are the only place I allow ads (obv blocking the pop ups and other dark pattern fuckery)… probablys because I learned to ignore them entirely as a teen before ad blockers existed.
Short videos do not need to be long lived (they could be deleted after 3 days) And some peer to peer could work really good for “viral” videos.
Interaction with the fediverse is very limited atm
Edit: and by that I mean non-existent. It’s still very early in development.
Companies or creators can run their own instance can’t they?
AFAIK, it’s still not had the code released, so at the moment there’s just the one site and you can’t host your own.
They can. And if at any point it becomes untenable, you can just archive whatever you host, shut down your instance, and put the videos up for download somewhere.
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Could you explain that idea in more detail? I’m not really sure I understand how that would work in practice.
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Gotcha.
The idea of a large public instance rubs me the wrong way, since it leads to behavior like that.
If a company is going bankrupt as a result of hosting a video service, they’re not going to be able to afford to archive and make it available for download either.
Archive storage is relatively cheap. It’s the bandwidth and compute required to serve video that is expensive
Not entirely sure how you’d make the economics of hosting endless video files work without great big piles of money
You’re absolutely right, which is why BitTorrent never managed to take off. Totally unviable, doesn’t work at all, and definitely isn’t the technology underpinning federated video services like PeerTube.
Edit: WTF? Why are you people denying the reality in front of your face? BitTorrent works and distributing video peer-to-peer is a solved problem. I do not understand this defeatist religious insistence that Video Must Cost Money.
At one point BitTorrent/P2P was responsible for something like 30-40% of all global internet traffic.
The thing is the protocol never really developed beyond some useful, but minor evolutionary updates.
You say “never really developed beyond” as if that isn’t a synonym for “finished and working fine.”
already banned, but thanks
I cannot decide what to support here. On one hand, Tiktok is a blight and a cancer upon the whole world. But on the other hand, I’m kind of a libertarian, anyone should be able to do what they like.
so America bans tiktok for the same reason china bans Facebook
Just wait 'til truth.social and xitter run the country. Wouldn’t be surprised if TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, MySpace, WeChat, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pinterest, Discord and Tumblr all get banned.
Actually tiktok is not just china, its the soviet union too, used by putin’s services…
Incorrect. Control of US TikTok servers was handed over years ago. The State Department has been actively censoring content on the platform, but I guess they’re having trouble keeping up.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/
Yeah, handed over formally 😉
I honestly cannot tell if this is parody.
Free links to American spying devices:
The difference is that those make you stupid and depressed as a side effect of making money. In tiktok it’s the main goal.
I wish those would be banned too.
I know you’re trying to whataboutism it but they’re all terrible and should go away.
Not meant to be whataboutism, just awareness… ism.
This is only great news if you are Mark Zuckerberg and you want a near-monopoly on social media.
TikTok could have sold to an American company (read: a company that we can hold legally accountable for bad things that their product does) and made billions of dollars in the process. They chose not to, for some reason, and thus knowingly opted to face a ban in the United States. Those were the options and they knew it.
As I understand it American companies doing business in China almost always have to go through a Chinese company in order to operate legally and make products available to the Chinese market. Platforms like Facebook are already banned in China and must be accessed through a VPN because they don’t play ball with the Chinese regime, so why should it not be reciprocal?
Until TikTok is being managed and operated by a company that can be held legally accountable here in America, they are nothing but a security threat and a backdoor for the Chinese government into every cell phone of every person who is dumb enough to install that shit. Is that what the people want to hear? Probably not, but it’s the truth.
I wouldn’t install TikTok on my phone any sooner than I’d install RedStarOS on my PC, because the implications of using a proprietary, closed source application with ties to the Chinese regime should be fucking obvious to anyone with bare minimum technical knowledge. Likewise, I wouldn’t blame a Chinese person for being skeptical of Microsoft Windows or X.com for their close relationship with the American government. To think otherwise is just not smart.
You are aware that no western social media is allowed in China, are you not?
Fighting tryanny with tryanny isn’t the answer.
It’s been the answer in international trade for the last 1000 years.
Are you implying we should firewall free internet like china?
No. I’m implying that in general, international trade works by shared openness or shared closeness. If one country or economic region puts an import tax on something, the reciprocal thing is likely to be taxed by the opposite partner.
I was responding to someone saying “oh this just creates a monopoly for Zucks” when in fact the Chinese social companies have a monopoly in China (an ENORMOUS market) because our products are blocked over there.
So what we are doing is in line with the norm in international trade.
Is anyone else besides China doing this? Cannot really call it international norm if 1 country is doing this.
I don’t think I’ve explained my point very well, or you’ve misunderstood what I’ve said.
My point is all international relationship is tit for tat. Since China chose to block western social media, it’s not unreasonable for the west to block Chinese social media.
Now the horses are completely out of the stables, we close the door before the cows get any ideas
ITT: Braindeads defending government censorship of the internet as if Zuckerberg won’t immediately replace the void with his own platform or by buying out TikTok in a bid.
Banning one platform would not magically get rid of short attention span and brainrot you fools. Every social media company already copied or utilizes the same techniques as TikTok, which is already a massive platform because they don’t spam ban or regulate content as hard as Facebook and YouTube do.
It is insulting that a Chinese run social media platform provides more freedom of speech online than its US competitors.
They’re banning it to remove competition, congress does not care about its effects on privacy or health, otherwise they’d have done something about Faceebook, Insta, Twiiter, and YouTube decades ago. They pulled their usual committee shenanigans to pretend to care by calling in CEOs to testify, and then promptly accepting a shitload of lobbying money.
Absolutely none of this law was ever about privacy or mental health. No one ever claimed it was. The law is banning tiktok because it is based in China. That is the reason given by the law itself. The possibility that meta or Google or some other American company will buy or replace tiktok and operate the same way is not an unintended outcome. It is literally the whole point of the law to get bytedance to sell tiktok to an American company.
Hence them saying it’s braindead to say otherwise.
What would be interesting to see is if other countries ban Facebook because it’s a “national security risk” lol.
From China’s perspective, Facebook probably IS a “national security risk”, which is why it is already banned over there.
For American to do business and sell products in China, they almost always have to go through a Chinese company. I’m sure that’s part capitalism and part accountability theater, but it’s just a fact. So why is it such an outrage for America to ask TikTok to do the same?
Google is even banned in China. Most Western social media and tech platforms are banned there, and have been for decades.
Because the end result of this line of thinking is every country having siloed social media and not being able to communicate.
Throw in that Tik Tok is banned in China, so it won’t be a national security risk for them to sell it, just profit and then have to invest that money into other forms
You mean like how the entire western internet is banned in China?
Banning one platform would not magically get rid of short attention span and brainrot you fools.
Ah yes, the old “Taking this action won’t solve all of the problems therefore we should do nothing” argument.
Agree on this except I have doubts that this statement is true
It is insulting that a Chinese run social media platform provides more freedom of speech online than its US competitors.
Isn’t this the one where people started saying “g*y” because there’s only one sexuality and Taiwan doesn’t exist?
Yeah tiktok is the reason we have words like unalive, I wouldnt call it freedom of speech just incompetent moderation.
Words like “unalive” are a form of doublespeak just to get around the restrictions, it’s silly.
I have to admit, it’s a bit bizarre seeing so many comments holding up TikTok as if it’s a free speech bastion away from western-run social media companies.
You think the communist party of China will allow western billionaires to buy one of their asymmetrical psyops weapon systems? Ha!
Competitor lobbying doesn’t even enter into it, I’d guess.
The US State Department won’t tolerate Americans being exposed to media that doesn’t adhere to its view of the world. What large groups of Americans think - and vitally, the bounds of what they are permitted to think - is a national security ‘issue’ in the eyes of the state. No such problem exists with Facebook, cable news, the establishment newspapers, etc. As Chomsky teaches, propaganda is equally about what isn’t in the news.
In other news you can’t shit in the street anymore either.
That implies that social media is going to be banned; it isn’t. The only thing this ban does is punish Tiktok for allowing content that revealed Israel’s genocide.
The thing about freedom of speech is that we are only allowed speech that doesn’t threaten the interests of the oligarchs. If any speech creates a real movement that threatens the oligarchy then the government takes swift action against it (hence outlawing socialism during the red scare)
Ha, eat that China! Now you need to pay millions to American oligarchs for all our user data!
USA!
Don’t worry musk will buy it…
TikTok has said multiple times they will not sell. They will just exit the US market.
we’ll see, we’ll see
How nice must it be to be able to force your biggest competitor to sell their business off. You either get it on the cheap, or get to make the replacement product.
stupid rule that helped cost Harris the election. Fuck every moron that voted for it.
Trump said he’ll unban it, if he does that’ll be the one brightside of the new admin
Your instance is the same kind of malignant cancer as TikTok.
^ Imagine being this mad about TikTok. This is another reason why libs lost the election.
Ugh wah wah wah
The security and privacy of hundreds of millions of people being penetrated to the benefit of a massive hostile dictatorship!
I’m so angwy! How dare an actual militaristic attack on the USA be allowed?! RRRrrgh!
ugh liberals are insufferable.
A bit of a self-report to note the opponents to the platform hold a stance of personal liberties and freedoms, which you oppose as a user of said platform.
I didn’t say you were wrong, I said you’re insufferable.
Ah, fair enough
I don’t see it as a bright side, but I also think it should be unbanned. Don’t get me wrong, I think TikTok is cancer and nobody should use it, but I also don’t think the government should decide what propaganda I get to consume.
The government should absolutely do a public campaign against it and keep a close eye on it, but don’t ban it.
In the meantime, we should look into passing laws to solve the underlying problems, which would impact Meta and other big social media orgs as well. Or maybe fund independent social media alternatives that are FOSS.
But don’t ban speech. Banning TikTok feels a little too close to banning books…
I think TikTok appeased the right by changing their algorithm. Charlie Kirk is apparently doing extremely well on the platform now.
