I’m not really one for Tik Tok, but I went on REDNote to see what it was about and it was incredibly wholesome seeing American and Chinese people getting to interact as normal human beings and understand each other without it being filtered through our governments. Even if they don’t shut down Tik Tok, they’re gonna have to shut that shit down. Can’t have future soldiers seeing their “enemies” as humans.
I wonder if they’re actually chinese troll farms
Insane to me that people can be this xenophobic. Wholesome Chinese people? No internet troll farm.
China paying entire offices of people to be friendly, entertaining, and educational to foreigners online would be cool actually.
For those unfamiliar:
The 50 Cent Party, also known as the 50 Cent Army or wumao, are Internet commentators who are paid by the authorities of the People’s Republic of China to spread the propaganda of the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The program was created during the early phases of the Internet’s rollout to the wider public in China.
In a way I would feel more comfortable with china having my shit posting data than an American company. At least if china has it, there is slightly less of a chance of them selling the data to a data set deanonymizing company who in turn sells my data linked to me to like an insurance company who jacks my rates because I said their CEO should get Luigi’d. What is china gonna do to me if I never go to China and exist largely outside of their sphere of influence?
Yeah, China doesn’t have jurisdiction over me. I don’t have to worry about the CCP showing up at my door to harass me for what I post. But it’s a very real threat from the US feds.
I mean you do, that’s what the Chinese police operating in the United States thing is about.
No, it’s sinophobic propaganda.
No that actually happened boss.
It isn’t about you. China doesn’t care about you. If they have a computer tracking cell network info of groups of soldiers, they can glean actionable information about US military posture. They can do large-scale data analysis on the information they have and get a startling amount of information. They can also use it as a vector for injecting their favorite form of aggression against the US, soft power. They can’t defeat the US in a fight, but economic and cultural warfare is a vulnerability in the US where the battleground is far more level. The incoming administration has indicated it plans to further increase the US’s military strength, which is functionally untouchable as it stands and is more than ready for the fight nobody plans to bring against it, while weakening the actual fight we are seeing. The US is objectively safer, however little, against the machinations of the CCP with tiktok gone, but it is a band-aid on a firehose. Also, the CCP is clearly ready for that move given the move to Redbook, likely stoked by CCP operators under the guise of “haha let’s go to another Chinese app, that’ll show 'em!” because Americans are very easy to predict and manipulate…they are born and raised to be manipulated. It’s rough, but quite interesting to see play out.
But that’s my point. china doesn’t care about me. American data gobblers care very much about me because I exist as a consumer in their sphere of influence and am far more likely to be exploited by said data.
Do they actually? I mean why can’t I sell my days. If I quit the big tech companies and paid for the equivalent services, could I sell that data at a auction? Not having a go at you, just wondering how much our individual data is actually worth.
Could you sell your own personal data at auction? Maybe. It depends on who is buying the info and what they stand to gain or mitigate their risk if you want it in corpo speak.
Car insurance already does this by giving discounts for having a gps tracker connected to your car. These things give data like location, speed and g forces. If you drive outside of their parameters your rates go up. So your driving data is worth whatever the discount they give and that’s just a fraction of your data.
China would have more of an investment in the information on people they DO care to get than the US would have on any information scraps it could collect from tiktok that it doesn’t already have from hundreds of other sources.
Sounds like a problem for the TRILLION dollar military industrial complex. I’m sure they can spare a few bucks to solve that issue.
To be honest if I had a choice between if America was allowed to spy on me or China was allowed to spy on me, at this point I really don’t care. In the past I would have said America spying on me is better than China spying on me if only because fuck China because they have an iron grip on the video game industry. But since I hate short form videos, fuck all of them.
My assumption is everything everywhere on the internet is already assumed to be fair game for spying, scraping, training, whatever.
At this point the interests seem more about serving than gathering information - hence the political games to control specific platforms now.
If you are on TikTok then both can spy on you. Before your traffic can go to china it has to go through the US.
This is the third story I’ve seen today that was basically “Tiktok users flee service to other chinese service app you’ve never heard of”
So basically the usa banned tiktok, and now there’s 3 other tiktoks, all connecting the same amount of data for china, just through 3 different services instead of 1.
Sounds about right, From my understanding, they singled out TikTok instead of addressing the actual problem they claim to care about.
[Edit, another comment says its any app with 1million users. So now there’s just going to be a hundred TikTok clones all under the same umbrella just different names.]
If they addressed the general problem it would also affect US social media platforms and they want to continue doing that when American companies do it.
Due to the network effect, having a hundred apps instead of one is a big negative.
To be fair, the law is broad enough that it could target these other services as well pretty easily.
The law is broad enough they could target Discord.
That seems like a bit of a stretch since it’s US based company. I guess some of its investors could be based in China though.
Russia is on the list too. But that’s the point. They can declare that an owner is compromised, no matter what citizenship they hold.
your edit sounds like the fediverse model
I suppose. I was thinking more of 1 Chinese company just spinning up a hundred copy/paste apps.
XiaoHongShu is much older than tiktok, it started shortly after facebook, though resembles more a mix of Twitter and Instagram.
XiaoHongShu was founded in 2013, Facebook was founded in 2004…
Your sense of time is a bit warped…
Honestly, I don’t even believe these articles. At some point it just starts to sound like they are making things up.
I mean, this is real easy to fact check. Open whichever playstore you prefer and sort by most downloaded. Red note and 8 will be up there.
Meet the new app, same as the old app.
Rednote is very cool. Very nice people and no ads. It’s almost weird that I haven’t seen any ads, even for Chinese products.
Starting to notice all these American apps are full of trolls, racists, and ads. So many people parroting shit they read on Faux News about China bad and about safeguarding their data. There is no threat.
The oligarchy is the same in China and the US. Corporate powers and billionaires running everything. The moment we as people realize that borders are made up and governments are meant to divide us the better we’ll be as a planet. Might even learn something from each other.
Anecdotally my daughter is learning mandarin in school and I’m taking this opportunity to learn some and bond with her over it. Very cool.
fucking idiots
Why? Cuz Chinese bad? Stolen data bad? I think you don’t understand that there is no safe data. It doesn’t matter who is taking it but your data is owned by someone. If not the Chinese it’s the US government. If not them then you’re phone provider. If you purchase ANYTHING, that store is collecting your data.
Not Chinese bad, Chinese government bad. because the Chinese government has so much control, Chinese companies can’t be trusted. yes, stolen data is bad. I know that data is being stolen anyway, but tiktok has historically been very bad about it. however, i was reffering to them moving from one shitty Chinese platform to another even more shitty and even more Chinese (as in controlled more by the Chinese government) one, when there are platforms that are from places that do not have an authoritarian government able to control any company if they so choose. of course something like instagram (reels) or youtube shorts isn’t much better in terms of data theft, but who has the data does matter no matter how hard you’re coping.
You are just parroting shit you read on the internet and I feel bad for you. You literally have no idea how fucked we all are in terms of our data being stolen. I guess you want to be the one who determine who fucks you. Well TikTok users are doing the same
You are essentially virtue signaling that you are so much more security minded than everyone because you “safeguard your data”. I’m sorry to burst your bubble but our oligarch owns our data and is selling it to the highest bidder. The fact that you own a phone/computer means your data has already been bought and sold.
I don’t get it, are they going to steal my bank login? Like what’s so bad about knowing I liked a fried meme?
It’s more than just what you do in the app though. Check out some of the data any random website can find out about you here: privacy.net/analyzer/
Expand that into an app, given lots of permissions, that is tied to your phone number and email account. Given enough time and logging, it knows where you live and work, when you commute and sleep, every WiFi or mobile network you connect to and where they are located. This metadata is linked to your account and in-app activity. They have this data for you, your friends, colleagues, that weird guy you see on the bus every day… Right now, the app just uses all this to influence “your algorithm” (side note: this is also why people think some apps are actively ‘listening’ to conversations). But imagine a case where the govt owner of the app wants to start pushing a specific narrative, gradually swaying opinions or sowing the seeds of discourse, reinforcing it with the artificial echo chamber that is your new algorithm. /TedTalkThey are stealing data that can be (and is, often) used to track you across the entire internet. many social media platforms (again, especially tiktok) use this data to straight up manipulate people into spending more time on their platform and having views that align with the interests of the company. this is especially bad if the interests of the company are really the interests of an authoritarian government that is blatantly hostile to other countries unprovoked.
Your statement applies whether we’re talking about American or Chinese companies. One of these countries has affordable groceries, the other has school shootings.
But yeah yeah “what about Tianeman Square, and Taiwan?” OK sure, fine. What about police brutality and the ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST?
People keep making this argument comparing TikTok to American social media companies when talking about data.
What is hard to understand? Americans are fine with other Americans or American companies having their data. Americans are not fine with China having their data.
It is pretty simple.
I’d rather the Chinese government have my data than the US government. The US government has a lot more power over me.
This sentiment will be the downfall of America. Maybe that’s what you want. Not me.
It isn’t just about data, but influence.
Okay so China bad, America good?
That’s one way to look at it, not my intent but if that’s how you took it, enjoy.
More like, foreign control of my mental state is bad.
It really just sounds like unintentional racism to me. A vague dislike and distrust of foreigners. Nobody able to prove the Chinese intentions are any worse than the American gov’s intentions.
I agree mas data collection is wrong, but if we’re gonna be upset, it’s gotta cover the whole topic, not just china
What if that’s what they were talking about? That’s it’s idiotic to ban it given everything you just said.
I don’t want to rain on everyone’s parade but I think the law bans all apps with over 1 million users that are based in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea (“foreign adversary controlled applications”) where you can make a profile and share content. WeChat would definitely count. So, Red Note is probably/possibly going away soon too. I guess VKontakte is Russian and still in the app stores.
The media is focused on creators and TikTok, obviously. But a WeChat ban would probably suck for people with grandparents in China since that’s the “everything app” there. (I don’t know what China bans but even if there’s other messaging apps allowed in China, teaching your elderly Chinese grandma to use a different app on a ~12h time zone difference is probably not a fun activity.)
Russia is no longer an adversary with the incoming administration, Putin owns Trump and their interests are now are own.
Their interests are his interests, not ours.
No sarcasm, I’m happy that you agree. But we have no power to stop whatever the fuck he’s going to do, so we’re just talking semantics.
It’s any app they can point to as being controlled. It does not matter where it is based. As an example they could allege that one of the owners of Discord has Russian contacts and is therefore controlled by a foreign adversary. (He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine; where contact between Russians and Ukrainians wasn’t uncommon before the current war.)
Congress can request a briefing but if they want to prevent a fire sale they have to pass an entirely new bill amending the law.
And this article is so transparently an ad for Red Note it’s ridiculous.
Reject modernity, everyone go back to
forum boardsusenet lolThe number of people in the comments celebrating censorship by our own government while also claiming China is authoritarian is insane.
Both can be true. I’m against banning TikTok, but I also think TikTok is absolutely terrible and nobody should use it. China is authoritarian, and this ban by the US is wrong. I say this as an American.
Why is it terrible? Have you ever even been on it? Most people I’ve encountered that say it’s terrible or it’s brain rot or something along those lines have never even been on it, they’re simply parroting what they’ve heard other people say
How do you know heroin is bad for you? Have you tried it? You can’t say it’s bad unless you’ve tried it.
I’ve seen people scrolling on it their whole time on public transportations on materials worse than the worst of TV commercials, like they were in a trance. I know people who using it for at lease an hour every day before bed, and admitting they don’t know what they get from it, just boredom. From what I know, it’s like brainwashing for people who don’t know what to do with their lives.
They could listen to a Joe Rogan podcast the exact same way. They’re on public transport, what the fuck else are they going to do but look at their phone or listen to something with headphones?
I have to admit, you are right. If there is nothing been stuffed into their minds, most people really don’t know what to do with themselves, just like Montag’s wife from Fahrenheit 451. But there are differences between actively seek something you interested in than going blank and let the algorithms do the job for you. I thought people in Fediserse mostly against the idea of the latter. Otherwise, you will go to Tiktok or something.
Once you’ve spent some time the algorithm learns what you like. For example my feed is a lot of indie music, civil rights, and table top role-playing stuff. Once it gets enough information on the stuff you like you don’t really need to do more than swipe past the ads.
So you have your nose so far up in their business you know exactly what app they’re watching and what type of materials they’re consuming? I’m going to wager none of the things that you just claimed you’ve ever witnessed
I know that advertisers love that TikTok knows when a user desires your product. I wonder why they can target you so well? All state sponsored social media, X and Meta and company as well as TikTok, should be avoided if you don’t want corporations and capitalists and authoritarians having that much information about you. If you hate corporations trying to sell you things, maybe don’t use a dopamine and social habit tracking app that’s designed to sell ads to play on your fears
I have never received targeted advertising on tiktok. I can’t remember the last time I had seen an ad on there.
oh bless your heart 😌
Apologies for the southern passive aggressiveness, but I believe you may not notice how much content is an ad
Why, don’t you know there’s a thing called observation?
There’s also this thing called making the shit up
Looks like where your heart truly belong is Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia. You’ve commented quite a lot of things.
Where do I begin:
- China has more-or-less direct control over the app, and China is an enemy of the US
- extensive tracking
- it’s designed specifically to be addictive instead of beneficial
Other SM apps do 2 and 3, but that doesn’t mean TikTok is okay, it means those other apps are also terrible.
Where’s the evidence then?
I’m guessing you’re talking about the first point, so I looked into it and it seems China only owns a “golden share” (1%?), which doesn’t seem big enough to really cause problems. That said, I don’t know much about Chinese business, so maybe there’s still something there. But that’s just speculation, not evidence.
That said, that doesn’t change my opinion of it being terrible, because the last two points still stand. They also apply to domestic social media apps as well.
I’ll repeat it again, I don’t think it should be banned, but I also don’t think anyone should use it.
That’s the thing, the last time the government did something this sweeping without showing it’s evidence, me and a few hundred thousand of my best buddies got sent to Iraq.
Banning a SM app is nothing like declaring a War on Terror. For the record, I opposed both, as well as the War in Afghanistan. I’m sorry you were sent to fight in a pointless war.
censorship??? there are a ton of other apps that do the same. China censors people and created a credit # for them to punish them if they dont act they way the gov wants you to act. What are u on about?
An app has been shut down on the unsubstantiated claims that it was a tool of foreign influence but on the apparent reasoning that it was facilitating conversations that western social media is hostile to such as the Israeli extermination of Palestinians.
Palestine and Gaza were specifically cited by congresspeople as an inspiration and justification for the ban. It is plainly censorship. That’s not really debatable.
Whether or not you believe that the censorship was reasonable or if there is sufficient evidence of subversive foreign influence using the platform is possibly debatable, but the fact that it is censorship is not.
Says the person that is clueless on the Chinese credit system
Tell me how great tik tok is and how great the chinese credit system is…. Pls
It’s no one’s job but your own to filter through propaganda. And everything you’ve claimed is propaganda.
Bye tik tok
It’s not going anywhere
You must have a lot invested in that particular shitposting app.
You don’t have to attach yourself to everything you enjoy. It’s okay to leave yourself some wiggle rook to learn and grow.
Tiktok = brain rot
People aren’t as principled as they like to think they are.
Aww man, the government here won’t let me use the reeducation of undesirables as a smokescreen to produce fast fashion in my chattel-slavery styled sweat-shops :(
Wah wahh
Why try to hype this as a trend?
because “red note” paid them to?
From the frying pan into the fire. Well done.
They don’t view it as a fire or frying pan, obviously
Those users:
I will always upvote Kung Pow!
Good ole wimp lo.
We trained him wrong. As a joke.
“Hold on. Stand still as I do a back flip over your shoulders so I can kick you in the face bro.”
“Ok bro”I do recommend the movie, if you haven’t seen it!
Oh, yep, I love Kung Pow! It was one of the more memorable ones growing up. It’s tupid fun watching it every time.
Meanwhile the mainstream will probably just focus on Instagram and its reels feature as pretty much all bigger creators crosspost everything there as well.
Not with a ten meter cattle prod for me, anyone willing to indulge Zuck’s midlife Nazi crisis deserves him.
Not with a ten meter cattle prod for me
I’m waiting for by Loops verification mail but I’d say the average Lemmy user has not that much in common with the average TikTok/IG user.
the average Lemmy user has not that much in common with the average TikTok/IG user
The fact that they managed to clone the most idiotic and brainwashing platform on the internet proves that they are pretty average.
The instagram reels and YouTube shorts algorithms are utter shit. I’ve tried, but holy shit there’s some crap in there.
In all likelihood, Red Note will be banned banned, probably before the Red Note devs add a built-in translate function.
“I would rather stare at a language I can’t understand than to ever use a social media [platform] that Mark Zuckerberg owns,” said one user in a video posted to Xiaohongshu on Sunday.
but uh, why tf did they use tiktok in the first place
Meanwhile the mainstream would probably just download whatever VPNs they can.
Way to much credit for the average user.
I am saying this because I saw this happen. Whenever I accidentally peek into a random’s phone on a bus, chances are the homescreen has a VPN app. The blocked social media did have a bit of a decline, but remain very popular, especially Youtube, which was likely the biggest drive for people to bypass the blocks. The lack of credit is more about them often choosing shady VPN services.
You can still connect to it, the app store has to take it down and it can’t be hosted in the u.s. assuming your ISP allows it, you can still access the TikTok servers outside of the u.s. but that’s going to cause a lot of traffic and ISPs will throttle it or block it completely.
You can still side load the app, not sure how iOS users are going to do that and that’s going to be the majority of people.
So you may or may not still be able to use the current app without a VPN until TikTok updates it or the OEMs push an update that bricks it.
Connecting to it isn’t hard, But they won’t be able to pay people, so the US content will just get starved out.
We have a similar situation on Youtube - the site itself doesn’t pay the creators anymore. But everyone who had Youtube as a profession is still there. Some depend on a Patreon-like service, some on their own sponsorships.
Youtube has backed down a lot, but they’re still paying their golden geese.
Spiffing britt has let a new recent video payouts out of the bag, a good multi-million hit view video still nets him around 20k.
I meant because of sanctions they don’t receive anything from Youtube itself. Yet they go on.
Ahh, well, we’ll see I suppose.
I’m not actually seeing anything preventing creators from being paid, they’re just going to lose the majority of their u.s. audience on the platform.
They won’t freeze the assets until the company is officially barred from working here. They won’t just fuck around and blindly try to figure out what they’re doing, once they command Apple and Google to remove it from the App store, they’ll start freezing assets and stopping financial transactions. It’s just the nature of the beast.
I wonder if Tiktok would respond by making their mobile webapp better in this case.
By the way, if the traffic is throttled and not outright blocked - that would mean things like GoodbyeDPI would be likely possible instead of VPNs!
Wow. They really went with Xiao hong shu?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_Tse-tung
I knew Xiao Hong shu translated to little red book, but I didn’t put two and two together until now. That’s freaking hilarious
I thought it was hilarious for the same reason, but I don’t think anyone in Chinese refers to that book as 小红书. It’s the 红宝书. I’ve never been to China and perhaps google/Baidu/Pleco isn’t going to perhaps pick up that kind of usage, but I think it is more of a cross cultural accident.
It’s an obvious cultural reference.
https://collection.sina.cn/yejie/2015-01-21/detail-ichmifpx5063889.d.html
The article is about a bookstore in Manhattan, called “Little Red Books” though. Your link is an abbreviated translation of this article, which you might notice from the link at the bottom. I don’t know if that serves as the kind of linguistic evidence that’s called for here.
You are correct - I had forgotten (been quite a while). I still think it’s funny but thanks for pointing this out.
But 宝 (Bǎo) means “precious” or “treasured” and 红宝书 probably only gets translated as little red book because it sounds better in English.
