Like, I know why it’s being banned or has been banned or whatever. I just don’t understand the rage behind to keep this shitty ass social media platform that is essentially Vine 2.0
TikTok has been the detriment to society today as Facebook was and is. People doing stupid challenges. People’s attention span getting lower and lower. People pretending they’re more popular than life itself because of their faux acting and lip-syncing.
Why keep the piece of shit?
It’s the only way to stop my 65+ year old father from listening to it full blast while we’re hanging out.
For me it’s not about TikTok. It’s about using whatever flimsy, poorly worded law they will make to ban a platform I don’t use to open the door for further bans and possible censorship in the future. A platform should be allowed to function if it can. If it’s horribly made, or supremely unprofitable it’ll find its own way out. I don’t use it, I don’t plan on ever using it, and honestly it doesn’t affect my daily life outside of my mother in law thinking that some of the pallet crafts on there are worthwhile and me having to explain that they’ll look good for a moment and then fall apart rather quickly.
A platform should be allowed to function if it can. If it’s horribly made, or supremely unprofitable it’ll find its own way out.
I mean, this doesn’t allow for any form of ethical analysis, though. Should every drug be legalized? How about gambling?
I’m not saying I am for the TikTok ban persay, but if the only conditionals for whether a product or service should exist are “is it ‘well made’ and does it make money,” we are setting ourselves up to achieve a corporate dystopia rather quickly.
They government should consider what parts of TikTok make it not okay, and target those forms and functions with well reasoned laws. Unfortunately, as you said, I suspect they’ll target things that are good and users like, while pretending that the issue is entirely about one small portion of the complete law. Ie, stress that the issue is one of security, and then write a law saying that all social media in the US must be willing to submit it’s data to the American government. (To be clear, I have no idea what the actual law they wrote is, but this is the kind of shit I expect them to get up to )
I know it’s not really the topic you considered… But yes, I do believe every drug should be legalized. If you consider the benefits alone it should be obvious that it is the correct choice.
Drugs made by lisenced people/locations that use safe ingredients and are open to litigation if they end up making a bad batch.
The revenue collected isn’t going to some drug lord overseas, it’s going into the country which you live instead.
Dispensaries can be used secondary as a councelling/rehabilitation center.
The long and the short if it is that if people want them, they will get them. I live in a place that hasn’t legalized weed yet… But if you are around certain neighborhoods at around 9am, it starts to smell very obvious that legality doesn’t matter. While currently that’s not surprising as many states near mine have legalized, we’ll before that happened things were exactly the same.
I don’t want people to be addicted to drugs, but I don’t see why we as a society shouldn’t benefit at all from someone who is.
I’m not talking about weed, though. It’s been traditionally over policed but that doesn’t mean we should stop policing all drugs. There’s hardly any sense in saying that severely addictive drugs with visible negative effects on the human body should be sold for recreational use for profit. The majority of opiods are a good example of this.
But more to the point, giving moral purchase to profit justifies the abuse of the consumer. I can’t say for certain whether the TikTok ban is government overreach, as I’m not knowledgeable enough on the topic to speak with any authority, but “it makes money, so it’s fine” really shouldn’t be the end of the conversation.
Like the other user said, this is clearly a problem if you allow any platform to exist. Let’s take this to an extreme extent. Say a company invents a platform that is 100% addicting, because they’ve figured out how to mind control you. Watching a single video means you will never stop using the platform and you will say whatever the creators want. Clearly that shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Things that social media sites do approximate that. They manipulate users brains into doing things that they normally wouldn’t do. This is why regulation exists. Clearly my example is farcical, but it’s meant to explain why you don’t allow just anything to exist. As a society, certain things are more dangerous than others, and we regulate those things.
Clearly this ban isn’t about that, it’s about a Chinese government doing something that the US government only wants US companies to be able to do.
That’s exactly how I feel… I see my parents being addicted to YouTube shorts/amazon/TEMU… And it makes me really sad to see them in that addiction state :(.
Those things should be illegal…
Clearly this ban isn’t about that, it’s about a Chinese government doing something that the US government only wants US companies to be able to do.
👆
My TikTok feed is rather radical, which is a non+option on all the other corporate platforms.
All the reasons people cite for supporting the ban are problems with other social media platforms.
Also I think it’s pretty dumb to support government censorship over cringe.
Regardless of how we feel about TikTok (I dont like it either for the same reasons)
The ban isn’t about privacy violations by the owning corporation or because of challenges or mental health, but rather that the US government (directly or by proxy through the owning corporation) isnt the one in control of the information collected or the algorithms.
Due to its younger user base and lack of US based corporate interests, things that US corporations would normally block, remove or downplay with their algorithms are allowed. This means the culture and information that would normally dissapear from US media and social media instead on tiktok tends to be much more liberal and available. On the other hand, information critical of china or contrary to their culture may be less visible, and your information is getting tracked by china instead of the us.
This difference was exemplified in the wake of the United Healthcare CEOs assasination. Traditional US media was extremely critical of the shooter, and dropped any presumption of Luigi’s innocence or deniability prior to the conclusion of his court case. Comments and posts were removed for displaying anything other than giving him the death penalty (hyperbole, but). They denied that there was a problem and downplayed peoples concerns with the US healthcare system and billionaires.
TikTok on the other hand (and smaller social media sites like on the fediverse) showed immense support for Luigi, and expressed their disdain for the US healthcare system and the ruling class.
Same for the war in ukraine, especially for the genocide in gaza perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinians.
The government and ruling class is upset that they dont have the personal and tracking information of TikTok users, that they cant control the algorithm, and cant ask the company to stop showing things that make them look bad or could potentially be used to create a movement against them. Its those very trends that travel quickly through tiktok that have the potential to be dangerous to them.
Because it’s clearly being banned, not because of privacy violations, not because of the nefarious impact of a foreign government, but because of the content that is shared on it. It is the only major social media platform with a strong pro-Palestinian viewpoint on it. And the people in Congress have been caught on camera explicitly stating this is why they want to ban it.
I hate Tiktok. I don’t use it. Never have. But I still don’t want to see the US turn its internet into the Great Firewall of China 2.0.
The leaders in Congress cannot stand the idea of there being a social media platform that is popular in the US that isn’t hosted in the US. Why? The answer is simple - control. All the US social media platforms are heavily influenced by the US government. Hell, most of them openly contract with the NSA. Facebook is an NSA contractor. These platforms get a ton of money from the US government. And despite what conservatives bitch at in regards to “being censored,” the real censorship is against anything that doesn’t advance US power and influence. Outside of Tiktok, the major platforms heavily censor pro-Palestinian messages and stories. Go to r/worldnews and post anything other than “Palestinians deserve to be vaporized,” and you’ll be banned within 5 minutes. It’s literally that bad. Even when outright bans aren’t in place, the platforms will severely down shift any pro-Palestinian content and keep it out of peoples’ feeds.
“Beware of he would would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.”
I thought the ban was a threat. What they really want is the success of Tiktok to be owned by the US. That’s why they were happy at one point if Tiktok sold to a US company.
Made in the USA… or taken by force.
Tiktok has been useful for several groups that are normally extremely supressed with other algorithmic social media. Tiktok isn’t geared towards the “what will make you angry therefore keep scrolling” or “what will make you buy more things” motivations that facebook et. al. are geared towards, so it will actually show you things you care about. It also has a tendency to show you opposing viewpoints from time to time, which makes it surprisingly useful for deprogramming people from misinformation.
For people with specific medical disorders or conditions, tiktok was excellent for finding others and sharing information. For people of different minorities that are normally supressed on social media, it was excellent for building community.
So sure, if all you watch on it was dancing teenagers, that’s what you are gonna get: Vine 2.0. If you curate your feed a little then it’d help you branch out from your interests without the primary goal of keeping your eyes peeled to it or grabbing more ad revenue.
if you are part of a group that tiktok was basically the only social media network that had ever been helpful for, it’s a big deal that it’s going away. Its not about the format of the videos, but the algorithm and its focus on your interests rather than making money.
It matters whether the government can do things like this at all, because if they can do it to TikTok, they can do it to anyone and anything else. TikTok may or may not be a good platform, that doesn’t matter at all.
It’s one of the only platforms that doesn’t actively suppress left wing views with its algorithm.
I’d be fine with EU style regulations on social media, or depending on how it’s written, a more broader ban of social media in general. But banning tiktok only will do nothing to address the concerns you raised. Instead it just funnels people into social media ecosystems that greatly favor right wing sentiment and allow easy access for the 3 letter agencies.
It’s about maintaining the ability to manufacturer consent. Tiktok presents a hurdle to that.
TikTok apparently pays creators significantly more than other apps.
It’s about your rights.
I want to decide if tik tok is a horrible thing that I don’t want to use and then choose not to use it. I don’t need the government telling me what is okay and not okay. I’m a grown up and can make that decision for myself.
Cheat sheet: look at all government policies and politicians this way. Regardless if you agree or disagree with the topic/results look at what idea or concept or precedence it sets forth and decide from there. (I personally hate tik tok for many reasons, both socio and political in nature and think it should be burned from he earth - but I don’t support a ban on it) Second cheat sheet: if after that analysis you decide you support an idea, then ask how it gets paid for (whats the soirce of the financing) and who’s in charge of it (how the money gets spent) and what checks and measures are in place to keep it productive (how it gets regulated).
Look, TikTok is trash, but clearly the people championing this ban don’t care at all about data privacy or social media manipulation. Ban none, or ban them all.
The one true way to resolve this issue (IMO) is to pass a digital bill of rights, regulating these social media corporations, and forcing them to make their products safe for all ages.
Banning one of many is pissing in the wind, and I don’t enjoy urine in my face (no judgement if that’s your thing, it’s just not mine).
government bans social media because it makes it too easy to see the devastating results of wars that we profit off of
“Who cares about Tik Tok dances?!?!”
I don’t use it because I learned about it from my boss’s middle school girls soon after it was released when that was the main demographic so I still feel super weird about adults using it.
That said banning a social media platform at the federal level is a super authoritarian move and is rather unprecedented. Federal book banning will be next (oh no a chinese author!).
