Has anyone actually looked at their network traffic whilst TikTok is running? I’ve already isolated my partners phone because it’s so bad.
I am against blocking shit online but since it’s being done against my will at least it’s that shit hole.
I’ve worked in mobile development before. We hide the traffic by batching it, sending it through i.e. Google Play Services (so it looks like Google traffic), or simply sending it all to a relay server so it doesn’t look diverse. In any case, all your apps are doing this, and the ones that want to hide it, can.
first they came for the tiktok but only the person closest to me in the world used it so fuck it
Tik Tok likely isn’t going anywhere, they’ll sell to someone able to keep it up and running. The Tik Tok allowed in China isn’t the same one, so they don’t have to worry about data being pulled from their citizens.
TikTok is a weaponized social media platform.
Why do you think that? That’s an aggressive claim. I don’t use it, but thats because it isn’t my idea of fun, obviously many like it. Data collection happens everywhere, are you referring to kids eating tide pods or something?
What is the traffic? How did you look at it?
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.
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.
The fuck is the point of banning tiktok if the Chinese government already hacked our entire communication network lol
Theater.
Cybersec is hard. There are always more holes. China exports a LOT of stuff with holes. We can do little more than stick our fingers in the dyke. This looks like they’re doing something.
What they’re not going to expect is how much people hate them for taking their entertainment away.
China already doesn’t control US TikTok servers.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/
Could I interest you in a bridge?
What are you suggesting? That Congress didn’t force TikTok to hand over control is US servers years ago? You didn’t see it in the news at the time, or you just don’t believe it?
Or do you think China has been censoring on behalf of the state dept?
I think they still get all the data of what goes off the servers, and I think that the Chinese side of the company still has ultimate control over what gets displayed.
The servers being in the US means that the Chinese government doesn’t have to have access to the servers but it doesn’t mean that they still don’t have the equivalent situation silently going on.
I really don’t care if China gets my data. They don’t have any jurisdiction over me. I’m concerned about domestic surveillance.
to suppress video coming from Gaza and Lebanon? just a guess; but I’d imagine that’s at least a part of it.
That and labor organizing, environmental awareness, and many other things where the absence helps the rich get wealthier .
It’s also just a blatant theft; there is a lot of money to be made here however it goes down , and that money goes to connected arseholes
It also broadcasts propaganda disproportionately highly and harmful ideologies as much as that little list of yours.
On its face the platform itself is neither good nor bad, but the massive theft of identifying information, photos, and personal conversations leading to increasingly common hacking and theft from Chinese sources tips the scales a bit.
Because when US politicians advocate for a single, global market, and a single, global internet, it is with the understanding that US firms and allied parties will dominate the space anyway. When that is no longer the case they get about as nervous as the Chinese got when they went and built the Great Firewall and made a clone of every popular western platform. Now that US/Western dominance is seriously challenged, we are seeing more and more signs of protectionism.
Because it’s bad if China has the information. It’s fine if “US entity” had the information. The ban is ultimately fake. No one banning the app cares about TikTok, they just hate that China is getting the information they want. What will happen is some US based company, Oracle last time, but someone like that will buy a sufficient enough stake in the company and the ban will not happen. It will be declared “safe” and the data will go to a US controlled entity, but also still secretly to China. (The later will be revealed years later, to the shock of no one.)
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.
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.
Yeah tiktok is the reason we have words like unalive, I wouldnt call it freedom of speech just incompetent moderation.
Isn’t this the one where people started saying “g*y” because there’s only one sexuality and Taiwan doesn’t exist?
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.
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
Because the end result of this line of thinking is every country having siloed social media and not being able to communicate.
You mean like how the entire western internet is banned in China?
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.
You think the communist party of China will allow western billionaires to buy one of their asymmetrical psyops weapon systems? Ha!
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.
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?
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.
Fighting tryanny with tryanny isn’t the answer.
It’s been the answer in international trade for the last 1000 years.
Sign up for https://loops.video — the fediverse alternative
Though they’ve announced plans to do so, Loops is not yet federated. It’s presently still a closed site and not part of the Fediverse.
“We got rid of the brain cancer. Here, have leukemia instead”
The way I see this is that it’s not TikTok that’s the issue. It’s short form videos.
Short-form vertical video social platforms are here to stay.
We are not going to turn back the clock. I say this as someone who doesn’t use TikTok.
The only semi-realistic (and I use this term very casually) option would be some sort of radical, never-seen-before change in our global societal and socioeconomic models. The dynamics of short form video social media will be the least of our concerns in such a scenario.
The real issue is that these companies are purely for profit and couldn’t give a flying fuck about any negative social implications of their product. Every Le bad thing about any service is just down streamed from this reality of society.
How much more ADHD can I really get at this point ?
My kids have to be forced to watch anything longer than about 10 minutes. Movie night! one and a half hours? that soooo lonnnng.
I doubt there’s many here that are even interested in that format.
or vice versa
Without the super addictive algorithm, it won’t draw the Tiktokers. It’ll take a serious marketing department to make it even start to compete. TT and Insta have spent an assload of money to make their algo addictive. FB and YT shorts took years of paid content injection at enormous scales to even become interesting.
Loops feels like that website that showed you YouTube videos with 0 views.
Ha, eat that China! Now you need to pay millions to American oligarchs for all our user data!
USA!
Honestly, I don’t see any downsides to this. Tiktok and Instagram are horrible platforms that are actively hurting, and in some cases killing, young teens. Sure, they did it for propaganda reasons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a net positive.
For me the downside is the precedent it sets. Yes, most of us agree getting rid of TikTok is a good thing, but how long until they start banning other sites “for the children”? How long until they target federated sites they can’t control “for the children”?
To top it off, it doesn’t solve the data harvesting problem their so scared of with TikTok. They only care about that one because the data is going to China. Instagram and others can stay because they are American companies spying on citizens.
This is a slippery slope argument.
The “problem” re TikTok is that they are a Chinese company with ties to the Chinese government who have managed to get a closed source black box app on millions of Americans phones that servers as about the most perfect avenue for social/political manipulation as any adversary could dream of.
The solution to that problem that was offered to TikTok more than a year ago was to simply sell to an American company (and thus a company that could in theory be held somewhat accountable, but probably not if we’re being honest) for doing bad things here in the USA. ByteDance would have made billions of dollars selling the American version of TikTok, but they knowingly chose the other option, which was to face a ban at the end of this year.
FWIW, American companies cannot operator or sell product in China without going through a Chinese company, and social media platforms like Facebook are banned in China, so in my opinion some degree of reciprocity here is at least warranted.
I don’t see a problem with a slippery slope here though. Given how many people would have a strong motivation to evade said censorship, they would likely use it as an excuse to improve their censorship infrastructure.
I understand your argument, and I don’t disagree with it. Nor do I agree with the absolutely ridiculous reasons the government has given for the ban. It’s the end result that doesn’t bother me.
As for federated sites, they aren’t as threatened as you might think. Sure, the government could shut some of them down if they tried. But that’s only true for those that are hosted and ran by people in jurisdictions that the US government can affect. That’s the strength of federation. Not only can platforms like Lemmy not turn out like Twitter, since you can defederate from instances that allow things like white supremacy, effectively purging those types of people from the fediverse at large, the decentralized nature of the system means that there’s no practical way for any one government to take down the entire ecosystem. A good example of governments trying to take down something they collectively hate, is piracy. Even united behind the cause of capitalism, and with the billions of dollars of the recording and motion picture industries behind them, nations across the world have not had great success in stopping piracy of any kind, mostly due to the patchwork nature of takedowns. I don’t have any fear that the US government would be any more effective in tackling federated platforms.
I would go so far as to say that federated sites are the only social media people should be using, because it’s much easier to control things like disinformation, since the power in adjusting the flow of information isn’t centralized to one group with one agenda. Some would say that just creates an echo chamber, and for some instances that’s true. But unless those admins defederate from everyone, their users are going to be exposed to viewpoints that disturb that echo chamber, from places they don’t have power to control.
Source of brain rot
I hope that Europe will follow soon.
Yeah, normally I would say fuck the government, but in this case it’s exactly the same as the people who got pissy about Juul getting in trouble for targeting children. I’m all for “freedom to choose”, as long as whatever it is you’re choosing isn’t directly targeting kids with something that has an actively detrimental effect on their health, and that’s being tracked as an emergent medical problem by psychiatrists around the world.
the law doesn’t protect kids tho, everybody who supports this law has to rant about how bad social media is but at the end of the day the law is only about foreign companies. It just says instagram has the right to do all the same shit as tiktok and the only problem the gov has with tiktok is its not US owned.
News Flash: If you gotta lie about what the law is for to justify it, you’re part of the misinformation problem.
It’s a step in the right direction and it can certainly inspire future laws.
People want to get everything all at once when that rarely happens, especially with governments. So much impatience in this world.
I didn’t lie, I specifically stated they weren’t doing it for altruistic reasons. But the why isn’t what’s important to me. If them being shitty is a net positive, then I don’t really give a shit.
You don’t see any downside to the government banning a platform people use for communication? That doesn’t sound like a problem of overreach at all?
Also, you know other platforms are just gonna take its place. Reels and Shorts will still exist. Depending on how the sell goes, it’s possible TikTok itself won’t go away and might be unchanged as far as users are concerned.
I don’t get why people like you are being dishonest. Just admit you like TikTok and don’t want it to go. You don’t need to frame it as a supposed free speech issue, I would respect your option more if you were honest.
Either way, I don’t feel like hearing more about your body, so I’m blocking you too.
Why the fuck would you tell me to respond in a specific way and also say you’re blocking me? So dramatic.
Yes, I like TikTok. Even if I hated it it wouldn’t change my opinion on this. I use pretty much all popular social media from time to time except for Snapchat and Instagram. I’m not being dishonest. I was never hiding anything.
You’re entire position is that this is okay because social media is bad, but that had zero impact on Congress’s decision. It’s like the government bulldozing your neighbor’s house for a road and saying “That person was annoying, this is a good thing.”
Please enlighten me to how Tiktok is killing teens.
Eating tide pods? Stealing Kia cars? Other silly trends that are deadly too
Tide pod trend was long before TikTok, these types of trends have existed for decades now.
Yeah a lot that the media have been blaming TikTok for for years, they’ve wanted it shut down from day one.
Sure thing, although I’m guessing Amnesty International will be dismissed as evil Western imperialist propaganda or something:
If you are actually serious about asking, then I’m sure you can find no shortage of articles interviewing doctors regarding the perils of social media on young minds, or news reports linking dozens of teen suicides to the network. That’s a rabbit hole that’s deep enough that some psychologists have dedicated their entire careers to studying it. The problem isn’t unique to TikTok, it just happens to be one of the worst offenders, considering how popular the short video format is, compared to something like Twitter.
I feel like, judging from the tone of your comment, that you’re not really interested in knowing, so I’m not going to bother linking you anything.
News reports and interviews aren’t exactly peer reviewed science?
Listen, we both know your mind is made up. You’re not actually interested in the science. Let’s not pretend you are, or that you’re open to changing your mind on the matter.
Now, I’m not saying you have to admit you just desperately want TikTok to keep being a thing. I’m not saying that, because I don’t have the patience to sit here and waste time arguing with you, so I’m going to block you immediately after writing this. That way, I don’t have to listen to you move the goalposts, and you can get back to doomscrolling through dance videos. We both save time.
Don’t bother replying.
Ok tldr please
My eyes rolled out of my head reading this. Take a massive chill pill. Holy shit.
You commented on a thread you weren’t a part of, just to tell me you rolled your eyes.
Thanks for that valuable contribution, but you don’t need to let me know when your body does something.
I am rubbing my nipples in anticipation of the FLOOD of pissed off teenagers who don’t know how to human without sharing their dances now.
…can someone explain the point of overlaying closed captions over the center of the video, but one word at a time fast paced?
I’m on the spectrum. I can process reading way, WAY faster than I can process someone just audibly speaking to me. That shit’s actually helpful. I admit, it doesn’t need to be in the center of the video though.
It also shouldn’t be one word at a time imo
Actually captions like that can help you read faster. I’ve seen speed reading training things like that.
Ok, but how is it helpful for the general population?
They’re not the target audience.
So who is it for? This is everywhere. It’s in YT shorts, Instagram posts, etc. As a style, it’s getting pretty ubiquitous, and I don’t understand the reason for it. At best it’s annoying because if I look away for a split second, I’ll miss a couple words and it won’t make sense anymore.
Well. A good assumption in life is if something is popular, and you don’t get it, it’s not for you so don’t worry.
People like weird shit.
I personally find that words on screen keeps my attention. But it annoys me if the thing I’m watching isn’t worth my attention. So it’s 50/50.
So you can doom scroll faster… duh!
I don’t understand it either but it’s a product of how people consume the videos in their upright depression rectangles in public places with no volume I’d imagine.
Yeah, removing the headphone jack and jacking up the price for Bluetooth headphones will do that…
OK boomer.
Short videos are dumb. Are people really that addicted? I have it and go on it sometimes. And by sometimes I mean like 10 minutes per week. The videos are OK at best, but half of them are ads or live weird shit and the search function for relevant topics are trash.
I stay the f away from it. You haven’t spent enough time to properly train it. As you watch, it tracks time spent on each video, interactions, passive and active choices and slowly builds a dossier on you.
As you keep going, it occasionally throws adjacent stuff in. It starts tossing you stuff that other people with your likes watch. If there is content on there that you’ll appreciate, it will eventually find it. If there is enough, it’ll stream it to you non-stop.
They’ll find people who share your political alignment and say precisely what you want to hear. If you like brunettes with flowy blouses or redheads who are gym rats, you’ll get them. If you like skeptics or preppers, you’ll get them.
My wife gets a lot of her news from it, I find probably 1/3 of it to be suspect and 90% of it biased toward what she wants to hear. Nothing there is telling both sides of any story. (to be clear we have the same political/ethical views, but I’m a touch more skeptical about journalism and random influencers, especially popular influencers)
My wife gets a lot of her news
Wow, that’s scary. I’m guessing a surprising number of people do this as well.
For my wife, it never occurred to her that she could trust tiktok influencers far less than even corporate journalists. They have to ethical requirements on tiktok, no verified sources or corrections or redactions, or any accountability at all.
I had to point that out over multiple videos, although to be fair some of the people on there do put up a front like they are legit to trick people into taking them seriously.
The same nonsense happens on YouTube and Instagram. Just look at the motivations, these “content creators” get paid via ads (so views) and corporate sponsors, so they don’t get rewarded for truth, they get rewarded for saying things their spomsors and viewers like.
I’m not saying they’re intentionally misleading people, but journalism is hard and clickbait and copycat “journalism” is easy, so they’ll tend to do more of the latter.
I think its the mentality in america of, “whatever I need to do to get ‘mine’ is good”.
Theres a reason people ask “was it worth it” about nearly everything here. I dont know how to convince people theyd be happier if greed didnt drive their values.
Why is it shocking that people hear about topics through social media? Seriously? Why? I heard about the UHC shooter through TikTok. And it’s not necessarily just memes, there are “real” news accounts on TikTok. The same way I hear about new on Lemmy because people post links to stories. Like the literal platform and thread we are currently discussing.
It’s not shocking that they hear about news through social media, it’s shocking that people trust it anywhere near as much as traditional journalism.
There’s no incentive for someone on social media to fact check or tell any more of the story than will get them views.
Did you fact check this article?
Not personally, but it’s from a media org I trust, and they generally do a good job citing sources.
If the BBC got caught lying, it would be big news. If a random influencer got caught lying, people would shrug and say, “that tracks.”
So how is it different if someone sees a news story from BBC’s TikTok account? https://www.tiktok.com/@bbcnews
For all its bullshit, YouTube is the same. I’ve found myself on it more lately precisely because of the reasons you’re saying. It’s amazing how much niche content there is for any taste, even ones you don’t yet realize you have.
Youtube at least realizes when its suggestions are in a rut and gives you that little popup offering to show you stuff slightly outside of your current echo chamber. Just how different it actually is I can’t really prove.
It’s about xpntrolling the narrative. Tiktok is one of the few (if not the only one) popular social media apps that doesn’t censor everything that the US government decides. Just look at how much Palestine stuff goea around there compared to anywhere else.
I actually really like short-format videos for recipes so you don’t have to watch somebody chopping onions for ten minutes. Also, Ronaldo highlights set to Brazilian phonk are kinda cool. Other than that, the format seems pretty worthless.
Most videos on my feed are 3 - 10 minutes, they are ttending less short.
I like tiktok, it’s the only “social media” I use other than Lemmy. I normally hate finding video content, YouTube sucks, and their shorts are even worse. But on Tiktok I get served all sorts of interesting videos, I will stumble upon some cool topic that has been chopped up into five 10 minute videos and then find the video or a similar video on YouTube or something.
It’s an excellent way to discover things fast. You just can’t use it as a good source, need to do external research.
My biggest gripe is as you said, they have really seemed to amp up the ads and stupid live crap.
I’m guilty of using tiktok half the people on here have never used it. But you’re exactly right a few years ago it was actually not too bad, but these days every other video is an advert for some AliExpress level shit.
Ive tried to use it, my wife is on it a lot. I can get through a few videos before the constant changing bothers me and I physically feel a need to get away from it. Its to quick, too short, too shallow. My brain is wired nearly the opposite.
Framing this as people being pouty because their favorite social media is being banned is a shit tier take. This is a problem of censorship and government overreach.
I was on tiktok and even created for it for a bit, but it did get exhausting quickly after getting flooded with a painful amount of ads. I do like short form content though, I’ve been enjoying Loops!
As someone who never uses this platform, this comment made me chuckle.
Yes with the attention span of a ground squirrel.
Why do you think they all talk vast with stupid ADHD inducing shit on one side. (Minecraft parkour, GTA V driving or subway surfers)
Because people will scroll away if you don’t jingle keys in front of them
It never had appeal in the first place…
Tell basically all young people that.
You not liking it does not mean it doesn’t have appeal.
I was being facetious
Cool, but the rhetoric on Lemmy around non-federated social media being stupid indicates that many others here aren’t.
easiest way to lose is to never try
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.
…the same shit is on Facebook.
The same exact mindless drivel bullshit.
They don’t care what the content or format is, just who owns it, and where the data is flowing. They want the data flowing into the U.S. and sold out. Rather than into China and sold out. That’s all it is.
already banned, but thanks
