cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59392382
TikTok wants users to believe that errors blocking uploads of anti-ICE videos or direct messages mentioning Jeffrey Epstein are due to technical errors—not the platform seemingly shifting to censor content critical of Donald Trump after he hand-picked the US owners who took over the app last week.
However, experts say that TikTok users’ censorship fears are justified, whether the bugs are to blame or not.
Ioana Literat, an associate professor of technology, media, and learning at Teachers College, Columbia University, has studied TikTok’s politics since the app first shot to popularity in the US in 2018. She told Ars that “users’ fears are absolutely justified” and explained why the “bugs” explanation is “insufficient.”
Sure. “Bug”. It’s just a way of them begging people to come back to their Zionist spyware bullshit.
Find. Another. Service.
TikTok is dead — just like Twitter. I don’t understand people who cling to these services. Might as well post on MySpace while you’re at it.
It’s probably either sunk-cost fallacy or outright denial
If you are uninstalling, you can try the federated alternative: loops
shortform content, is addictive to people.
What? MySpace never tried to topple a democracy.
Try UpScrolled. It ranks higher than TicToc and claims to be politically neutral.
Or Loops? The federated, no special interests version of TikTok. You’re already on lemmy, why advocate for yet another corporate social media company?
I like the idea of a federated version of that, but there are many problems:
- When people scroll, they need an algorithm to choose content for them.
- 99% of average TikTok content is low quality shit and it’s the algorithm to find and promote what works
- All that 99% of shit is occupying exabytes on bytedance servers. Users are uploading terabytes of shit every hour, it’s impossibile for a federated instance to keep all this shit on disk. Look how Lemmy is designed for example. I upload an image and then it’s stored forever in hundreds of instances. For videos is untenable. Only companies that are profiting from this (for example using such videos for training ai models, or using this videos to hook people and serve them highly personalized ads) can host a TikTok clone
Ironic that an app monitored and controlled by the Chinese communist party allowed more freedom of speech for Americans. How the turn tables.
Okay good so they’re going to fix it then?
“Oopsies, come back guys!”
Weird timing these bugs seem to have, eh?
Wow, a bug that specifically automatically chose keywords like “ICE”, and “epstein”, then blocked them from appearing, while leaving literally all other content unharmed??? How conveniently specific and well-timed! /s
Like someone else said, it might legitimately have been a bug: maybe they didn’t mean for the censorship to be visible to the person using those keywords, and it’d just be everyone else who can’t see them. That way you’d think everything is fine but mysteriously your Epstein / ICE content just doesn’t get any views
What a big oopsies, y’all found out about our behind the scenes Zionist propaganda. You weren’t suppose to see that. Pretend you ever say anything.
Yeah. Right.
“If you get caught, call it a bug.” seems to happen a lot this administration.
My bet is they tweak the backend instead to derank content they don’t like softly next.
Lol, that’s not how it fucking works.
Key words like that don’t just accidentally get filtered out with a “bug”.
Maybe—and I’m going out on a limb here—just maybe, using centralized media to document State-sponsored domestic terrorism is a fucking stupid idea. Especially since the very same platform is co-owned by the State.
Y’all, we already went through this with Xitter. Sorry you fell for it again, but this won’t be the last time if you continue to cling to platforms owned by the very people who want to censor you.
We’re not the ones who need to hear it, though.
Every time. Facebook said the same thing when things that upset the powers got hidden or deleted.
