It’s totally insane that China can ban all American social networks on security concerns and ban all kinds of just basic speech on their apps, but banning a Chinese social network is so controversial.
"tit for tat" is a rational act after getting burned for cooperating.
You start open and cooperative, expect reciprocity, and when you don't get it you finally retaliate. A bad faith actor might even accuse you of not living up to your core values in order to persuade you into continuing to play the losing strategy.
The youngest tiktokers weren't even born yet or were just infants/toddlers when Google first got banned there. They may not understand what's going on here because by the time they came of age nearly all major western social media sites were already blocked there and for them it's status quo now. From their point of view the US is being the censor. They are at prime age to go on red book out of spite, but I hope they'll eventually understand.
Sure but what would that have to do with this action here?
TikTok isn’t being banned because of free speech or not but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues. China has recognized this as a threat and as such has banned foreign adversary social media companies from operating within its borders.
Likewise the United States has recognized that this is a serious threat as well and has sought to do the same.
Both countries claim to want to defend their systems of governments so it stands to reason they are just taking reciprocal actions here.
The “free speech” angle is just Chinese propaganda. We stop businesses from operating in the United States all the time and sanction companies and stop them from doing business within our financial network all the time. TikTok is just some random company and we can stop it from doing business here. Free speech isn’t a meaningful discussion point here.
It's freedom of speech until you say bad stuff about Americas 51st state in the middle east that's killing on average 5 children every day with our tax money.
That was not the freedom of speech your supposed to hear on social media. That's why it's a threat. Be like Twitter and ban those accounts instead.
China banned things for entirely different reasons. They want to control the information they don't like. TikTok is banned so that Chinese government can't do the same thing here and influence a very large percentage of the US population. Not saying they're doing it now, but in general I agree that the potential threat is there. You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
> You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
If that is the reason for the ban, namely that American citizens cannot discern propaganda from factual information themselves and as a result must have their information shaped for them to achieve or avoid certain political outcomes, then that is quite literally the same reason China has for controlling the information space
No offense but you did basically just say the same thing twice, just with a bit of a patriot-act touch up. China doesn't just ban things they "don't like". What they don't like is exactly what you just lined out
Arguing for individual humans to have freedom of speech to express their views is one thing, arguing for mega-corporations (look at the valuation estimates for Tiktok) to have freedom of speech for profit is quite another.
Is it really controversial? Maybe there’s just a vocal minority but most people I know simply do not care… granted, I don’t hang out with many young ppl so there’s that..
I dunno, it feels pretty normal to be upset when a government which ostensibly represents me does something that I feel is actively against my interests.
I don't think that you have to decry every horrible thing in the world to be upset when folks do things that you don't like to you.
According to the youth, it's more about a government censoring what speech their citizens can see. The CCP does it, sure. But America doing it feels new.
"It's insane that China can engage in genocide but engaging in genocide ourselves is so controversial"
This isn't really a good argument. Someone else being horrible isn't grounds to be horrible yourself. There are better arguments for banning TikTok, like protecting the youth from having their brains rotted out.
India banned TikTok and a whole host of other Chinese apps and after a few days of moaning they moved completely on. So the evidence indicates that no one will actually care. And TikTok is even less sticky than say Twitter. TikTok isn’t about the relationship graph you painstakingly built. It’s about the algorithm and the FYP it populates. That can be recreated instantly. Moving away from Twitter was hard because one had to painstakingly recreate their followers list. But moving from TikTok is trivial as long as the new alternative provides enough automatically delivered entertainment.
This is scary because it also means that every foreign app can be banned and it will be fine in no time.
Foreign in UK, France etc means Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
The social graph isn’t a big deal if can be forced. People can just find the same people on the new thing. A few days of pain and its all fine, people who get locked out of their accounts or get banned do it all the time.
"Everyone’s joining 小紅書 and getting fully Xi-pilled."
This shows that seo-speedwagon is opposed to mainland China. Writing the name in traditional characters, which are used in Taiwan, is another barb of seo-speedwagon against mainland China and its government.
Because of the horrible UX of opening up this URL and literally the entire screen being covered by pop-ups... What the actual hell... Porn/warez sites in the 00s were better than this...
I'm not sure it's the right thing to ban TikTok, but I'm not surprised people aren't protesting in the streets. My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring. These users have a deep down sense that they'd be better off without these apps. Instagram won't be banned, but if it were I think there might be a similar non-reaction.
That doesn't characterize me or any of the folks I know who use the app.
I know what it feels like to be addicted- I used to drink quite heavily and often.
Why are you theorizing about people you don't know engaging in an activity which is foreign to you?
Can you state some of your media consumption preferences so we can deconstruct them and find their problematic aspects via a struggle session? If you're not up for that, why do you feel like it's okay to try and take that line with other adults?
Not many people would protest a cigarette ban because the effects of smoking are very visible.
Not many people will protest a TikTok ban because it's largely happening to someone else and not very many people care about issues of free speech, as long as it's not happening to them.
>My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring.
What if most people aren't addicted to them, and do simply find them useful and entertaining, and the hyperbole and discourse about how dangerous and addictive social media and "algorithms" are is a means to manufacture consent for the government regulating and controlling free speech?
What if it's a bigger problem that all the government has to do is gesture vaguely in the direction of China and many people will just roll over?
Ever since I started using social media platforms, some 22 years ago, I've been through six platforms. Those platforms were once teeming with life, but eventually got shut down, bought out, or just died a natural death. Every time people were up in arms, but eventually migrated somewhere else.
But just because people migrate somewhere else doesn't mean they don't miss those old platforms. Many of these old platforms had unique aspects that were never quite replicated in later platforms
Member berries when the internet was hip and cool and UUCP was the only game in town, and everyone was a wonderfully insightful ray if sunshine? Yeah, me neither.
I think TikTok is a negative influence on society, but not for any reasons that have to do with China really. I'd be much happier if the gov took strict actions on social media generally.
It doesn't really make much "sense," of course. I'm just day dreaming. I find the USA gov and the Chinese gov to both be pretty evil. The other social media gets to stay, though, because they are all in the USA.
Obviously banning TikTok or other social media gets into free speech violation territory. But if I could just wave my magic wand and make things that I think are bad go away, I'd ban the whole lot
Either it is a guilty pleasure and you are secretly relieved that the temptation is being removed.
Or prolonged use of the service has turned you into an apathetic apolitical blob of mindless jelly with no agency and no energy to effect change on your environment.
Apolitical is an interesting choice of description. My understanding is that the real motivation of banning TikTok is precisely the political influence it wields on the youth’s malleable minds.
It’s in American security interests to limit CCP’s access to American location data and ability to pipe propaganda into our eyeballs.
But setting the ban to go into effect one day before the next President takes office is brazenly political and undermines the actually-important problem that TikTok represents.
When Twitter got weird, Bluesky was ready to come in as a total clone and succeed. I’m sure there are a dozen companies ready to make their case that they should replace TT…it’ll be fine.
The argument to ban TikTok is for trade reciprocity reasons. Reels and Youtube Shorts are banned there, so we should ban TikTok here. Just like how if Germany banned Fords and Chevys from being sold, we should similarly ban VWs and Audis.
That they say this is for "National Security" gives the game away.
> I’ve argued that TikTok’s biggest wounds have been self-inflicted — snooping on journalists, restricting transparency, obscuring its ties to China — and that it developed a trust deficit with U.S. lawmakers that would be hard to overcome. But I don’t think that’s why most American TikTok users aren’t protesting a ban, either.
Guy is ideologically opposed to TikTok and is reasoning backwards. I mean what’s more emblematic of that than writing a thinkpiece on a what-if?
> It’s probably wishful thinking to believe that if the ban takes effect, millions of screen-addicted TikTok users will start reading “Ulysses” and taking long walks in their spare time. But maybe it’s reasonable to see the shrugs surrounding TikTok’s disappearance and wonder if, after years of giving that app our attention, we’re ready to invest it somewhere else.
Buddhist monks of old would apparently position a novice in a cave by themselves, giving them nothing else to do than to meditate. He cannot possibly believe that the modern world minus Tik Tok is conducive to such apparently wholesome habits. There are dozens of alternatives in queue waiting to become the next pseudo-addiction.
It’s totally insane that China can ban all American social networks on security concerns and ban all kinds of just basic speech on their apps, but banning a Chinese social network is so controversial.
China doesn't claim that free speech and personal freedom are part of their core values
"tit for tat" is a rational act after getting burned for cooperating. You start open and cooperative, expect reciprocity, and when you don't get it you finally retaliate. A bad faith actor might even accuse you of not living up to your core values in order to persuade you into continuing to play the losing strategy.
The youngest tiktokers weren't even born yet or were just infants/toddlers when Google first got banned there. They may not understand what's going on here because by the time they came of age nearly all major western social media sites were already blocked there and for them it's status quo now. From their point of view the US is being the censor. They are at prime age to go on red book out of spite, but I hope they'll eventually understand.
Sure but what would that have to do with this action here?
TikTok isn’t being banned because of free speech or not but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues. China has recognized this as a threat and as such has banned foreign adversary social media companies from operating within its borders.
Likewise the United States has recognized that this is a serious threat as well and has sought to do the same.
Both countries claim to want to defend their systems of governments so it stands to reason they are just taking reciprocal actions here.
The “free speech” angle is just Chinese propaganda. We stop businesses from operating in the United States all the time and sanction companies and stop them from doing business within our financial network all the time. TikTok is just some random company and we can stop it from doing business here. Free speech isn’t a meaningful discussion point here.
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This is a trade issue.
If Country A bans imports from Country B, it's entirely reasonable to respond in kind.
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How can speech on TikTok be free if TikTok as a platform is not ?
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And America doesn't claim to uphold the rights of non-americans.
If this was a ban on an American company it would be a different story.
China’s constitution definitely guarantees both, it even says without exception.
It's freedom of speech until you say bad stuff about Americas 51st state in the middle east that's killing on average 5 children every day with our tax money.
That was not the freedom of speech your supposed to hear on social media. That's why it's a threat. Be like Twitter and ban those accounts instead.
There are lots of things that China does that would be controversial in other countries. Why is it totally insane?
China banned things for entirely different reasons. They want to control the information they don't like. TikTok is banned so that Chinese government can't do the same thing here and influence a very large percentage of the US population. Not saying they're doing it now, but in general I agree that the potential threat is there. You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
> You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
If that is the reason for the ban, namely that American citizens cannot discern propaganda from factual information themselves and as a result must have their information shaped for them to achieve or avoid certain political outcomes, then that is quite literally the same reason China has for controlling the information space
No offense but you did basically just say the same thing twice, just with a bit of a patriot-act touch up. China doesn't just ban things they "don't like". What they don't like is exactly what you just lined out
Why is that insane? We should lead by example if we value free speech.
Arguing for individual humans to have freedom of speech to express their views is one thing, arguing for mega-corporations (look at the valuation estimates for Tiktok) to have freedom of speech for profit is quite another.
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So if China would pay $100 a month to every teacher in the US to teach some subversive topic, would that also be ok?
The issue here isn't free speech, but control over what content is promoted, unless you think the CCP has the right to free speech in the US.
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Is it really controversial? Maybe there’s just a vocal minority but most people I know simply do not care… granted, I don’t hang out with many young ppl so there’s that..
I dunno, it feels pretty normal to be upset when a government which ostensibly represents me does something that I feel is actively against my interests.
I don't think that you have to decry every horrible thing in the world to be upset when folks do things that you don't like to you.
According to the youth, it's more about a government censoring what speech their citizens can see. The CCP does it, sure. But America doing it feels new.
Well, not new. But hypocritical, definitely.
In general I don’t think that’s insane at all.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea that something that is normal in an authoritarian society is verboten and sacrilegious in a Democracy.
They don't exactly ban them, it's simply that their law is too stringent and invasive to make it worth the hassle.
Banning a media platform in America used by most Americans is controversial? Say it ain't so!
"It's insane that China can engage in genocide but engaging in genocide ourselves is so controversial"
This isn't really a good argument. Someone else being horrible isn't grounds to be horrible yourself. There are better arguments for banning TikTok, like protecting the youth from having their brains rotted out.
If you brag with freedoms and free speech, you can't really use what china is doing as an excuse to do the same.
Yeah totally insane that our government actually has to be concerned with public opinion.
Is that sarcasm?
India banned TikTok and a whole host of other Chinese apps and after a few days of moaning they moved completely on. So the evidence indicates that no one will actually care. And TikTok is even less sticky than say Twitter. TikTok isn’t about the relationship graph you painstakingly built. It’s about the algorithm and the FYP it populates. That can be recreated instantly. Moving away from Twitter was hard because one had to painstakingly recreate their followers list. But moving from TikTok is trivial as long as the new alternative provides enough automatically delivered entertainment.
This is scary because it also means that every foreign app can be banned and it will be fine in no time.
Foreign in UK, France etc means Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
The social graph isn’t a big deal if can be forced. People can just find the same people on the new thing. A few days of pain and its all fine, people who get locked out of their accounts or get banned do it all the time.
Well looking at India, no one did!
TikTok is old news now. Everyone’s joining 小紅書 and getting fully Xi-pilled.
In not sure if used traditional characters for some kind of ironic effect or not.
why write the name in traditional? if you're going to refer to it in another language, why not just write it as 小红书？
> why not just write it as 小红书？
seo-speedwagon wrote (emphasis mine):
"Everyone’s joining 小紅書 and getting fully Xi-pilled."
This shows that seo-speedwagon is opposed to mainland China. Writing the name in traditional characters, which are used in Taiwan, is another barb of seo-speedwagon against mainland China and its government.
Maybe they use a traditional character keyboard and don't have a simplified character keyboard set up.
Better yet why not transliterate it so the rest of us can read the conversation.
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This isn’t exaggeration btw. Gen Z is basically a cooked generation at this point.
Because we don't like what the US government and their corporate overlords are doing?
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https://archive.is/lODEZ
Because of the horrible UX of opening up this URL and literally the entire screen being covered by pop-ups... What the actual hell... Porn/warez sites in the 00s were better than this...
I'm not sure it's the right thing to ban TikTok, but I'm not surprised people aren't protesting in the streets. My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring. These users have a deep down sense that they'd be better off without these apps. Instagram won't be banned, but if it were I think there might be a similar non-reaction.
That doesn't characterize me or any of the folks I know who use the app.
I know what it feels like to be addicted- I used to drink quite heavily and often.
Why are you theorizing about people you don't know engaging in an activity which is foreign to you?
Can you state some of your media consumption preferences so we can deconstruct them and find their problematic aspects via a struggle session? If you're not up for that, why do you feel like it's okay to try and take that line with other adults?
Exactly. I know people who have TikTok as the lifeline of their business and they're rightfully pissed off that it's taken from them on a whim.
> My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring.
...I find it interesting to think about whether using something due to addiction means you wouldn't protest if it's forcibly taken away.
In other words, I wonder if people would protest if cigarettes were banned.
If anything, I'd expect addicts to fight the hardest when someone takes their "drug" away
Well, the USA did ban alcohol for a few years, and that was a rowdy time.
I think replacing cigarettes with vapes is more topical, at least in America.
Not many people would protest a cigarette ban because the effects of smoking are very visible.
Not many people will protest a TikTok ban because it's largely happening to someone else and not very many people care about issues of free speech, as long as it's not happening to them.
The smokers' rights movement is a thing, and they do protest, yes.
>My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring.
What if most people aren't addicted to them, and do simply find them useful and entertaining, and the hyperbole and discourse about how dangerous and addictive social media and "algorithms" are is a means to manufacture consent for the government regulating and controlling free speech?
What if it's a bigger problem that all the government has to do is gesture vaguely in the direction of China and many people will just roll over?
Ever since I started using social media platforms, some 22 years ago, I've been through six platforms. Those platforms were once teeming with life, but eventually got shut down, bought out, or just died a natural death. Every time people were up in arms, but eventually migrated somewhere else.
People will use something else.
But just because people migrate somewhere else doesn't mean they don't miss those old platforms. Many of these old platforms had unique aspects that were never quite replicated in later platforms
Member berries when the internet was hip and cool and UUCP was the only game in town, and everyone was a wonderfully insightful ray if sunshine? Yeah, me neither.
I will miss it, for sure
For what reason
I think TikTok is a negative influence on society, but not for any reasons that have to do with China really. I'd be much happier if the gov took strict actions on social media generally.
It doesn't really make much "sense," of course. I'm just day dreaming. I find the USA gov and the Chinese gov to both be pretty evil. The other social media gets to stay, though, because they are all in the USA.
Obviously banning TikTok or other social media gets into free speech violation territory. But if I could just wave my magic wand and make things that I think are bad go away, I'd ban the whole lot
> The other social media gets to stay, though, because they are all in the USA.
And for two of the biggest social media companies specifically, they'd get to stay anyway because they're paying off the POTUS.
Creators will miss it ?
Billions of humans have managed to live out their lives without short form video and will be OK
https://www.tiktok.com/@storytimewithpapajake/video/74609880...
This 102 year old American veteran who fought in WW2 sure will miss it.
If TikTok creators can move to any another platforms and make profit at the same level, I am sure no one will miss TikTok.
Is that the case though?
Either it is a guilty pleasure and you are secretly relieved that the temptation is being removed. Or prolonged use of the service has turned you into an apathetic apolitical blob of mindless jelly with no agency and no energy to effect change on your environment.
Apolitical is an interesting choice of description. My understanding is that the real motivation of banning TikTok is precisely the political influence it wields on the youth’s malleable minds.
I think there’s a lot of good reasons to ban TT…
It’s in American security interests to limit CCP’s access to American location data and ability to pipe propaganda into our eyeballs.
But setting the ban to go into effect one day before the next President takes office is brazenly political and undermines the actually-important problem that TikTok represents.
When Twitter got weird, Bluesky was ready to come in as a total clone and succeed. I’m sure there are a dozen companies ready to make their case that they should replace TT…it’ll be fine.
Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are already trying to replace TT and failing. They really are nowhere near as good.
Good at what ?
The argument to ban TikTok is for trade reciprocity reasons. Reels and Youtube Shorts are banned there, so we should ban TikTok here. Just like how if Germany banned Fords and Chevys from being sold, we should similarly ban VWs and Audis.
That they say this is for "National Security" gives the game away.
then limit selling location data.
every car app and toaster sells that stuff in the free market
propaganda is the point- or as importantly, the inability to hush or neuter 'anti-american' viewpoints
US govt has propaganda too: schools are now required to teach that "1,500,000,000 people suffer under communism"
This is the NatSec state hope casting.
No one would miss NYT either, just another newspaper. First they came for TikTok...
NYT isn't the worst of the lot. It is already state propaganda though, they don't need to ban it. I'd keep an eye out for Al Jazeera
> I’ve argued that TikTok’s biggest wounds have been self-inflicted — snooping on journalists, restricting transparency, obscuring its ties to China — and that it developed a trust deficit with U.S. lawmakers that would be hard to overcome. But I don’t think that’s why most American TikTok users aren’t protesting a ban, either.
Guy is ideologically opposed to TikTok and is reasoning backwards. I mean what’s more emblematic of that than writing a thinkpiece on a what-if?
> It’s probably wishful thinking to believe that if the ban takes effect, millions of screen-addicted TikTok users will start reading “Ulysses” and taking long walks in their spare time. But maybe it’s reasonable to see the shrugs surrounding TikTok’s disappearance and wonder if, after years of giving that app our attention, we’re ready to invest it somewhere else.
Buddhist monks of old would apparently position a novice in a cave by themselves, giving them nothing else to do than to meditate. He cannot possibly believe that the modern world minus Tik Tok is conducive to such apparently wholesome habits. There are dozens of alternatives in queue waiting to become the next pseudo-addiction.
I think lots of people will miss TikTok.
I also think not so many people will miss TikTok-ers.
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