so basically, if tiktok prevails, they were able to bribe uncle tom & co enough to outbid their competition. if not, the competition outbid tiktok.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
198 points (98.5% liked)
News
23784 readers
3265 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Good.
Fit society or be ousted.
replace "data" with "ads/propaganda/right-wing content".
Sorry about the bad quality, i've resent this picture so many times now that there's barely any pixels left.
Meanwhile, FB and Google which are courting Trump, and Elon courting both Trump and Nazis, are perfectly fine.
Why do people.keep saying this? It's obviously not fine.
These guys get dragged in front of Congress all the time. The US has the right to take measures against a business they feel they can't control, doing things they consider detrimental to it's people. Ideally that would occur in a more balanced method than now, and it would be nice if Nazi's weren't also American citizens with 1st amendment rights, but here we are.
There are many Chinese based companies that do business on American soil with no issues. This isn't even really Chinese based, but has a major Chinese stakeholder. For some reason, this company, over many others, was believed to be a threat. It may not be the weird racism you're being led to believe. What if it actually is a very credible threat from an outside actor? Is there a world where that's possible and acceptable to you?
Just curious because I feel like there's some strange zeoltry for TikTok that I haven't seen so much with other media corporations lately, that aren't actively pumping out propaganda. FOX News being the obvious example.
It's gonna happen on the 19th because otherwise TikTok could just pay Donald Trump to make it go away.
Stricter laws restricting data collection would actually solve the problem but that will hurt the American propaganda machine just as much. China will diffuse it's propaganda through our own social media like they clearly already do. They can literally buy the data from our own data brokers, it won't even stop them from being effective.
It's not simply about collecting data. That's only part of the problem.
Why do people keep repeating this like it's the only thing.
Tiktok controls the algorithm controlling which clips get shown. Combined with the data, this means they can propaganda individuals so hard it will make your head spin.
this means they can propaganda individuals so hard it will make your head spin.
Until you have an open source algorithm then any organization controlling a social media site can push propaganda. Just like they do here in the US.
The reason that Tiktok is being banned has nothing to do with data. We know this because you can just buy data about Americans legally from data brokers. This isn't about Chinese propaganda either. The real reason is that Tiktok is not easily put on a leash by the federal government. The real reason is that Tiktok has a large amount of popular leftist and anti-establishment voices. The real reason is that the US wants to funnel people into the social media sites that jump when the government tells them to.
The propaganda here is being pushed generate profit.
In China it's being pushed for political power.
There is a difference.
The propaganda here is being pushed generate profit.
when large tech companies invest and support specific political candidates and take certain politically minded moves- it's for profit.
but if i'm acting in a political manner for profit versus i'm acting in a profitable manner for politics - what is the functional difference?
there is less difference between the chinese system and the US system than many would like to think. the main difference is where the source of the power lies. in the US it's corporate - in China it's the state. but what we have been seeing in the last couple decades is both of them are experiencing a convergent evolution into a merging of corporate and state power. coincidentally it's what many scholars identify as one of the major tenants of fascism in Germany & Italy
The functional difference is the desired outcome.
China wants to control citizens even more than the US government does, by a massive margin.
Just look at the censorship China already has in place, the actual genocide of minorities, and look at what they'd love to be doing to Taiwan (and what they already did to Hong Kong)
Despite what the Cheeto says, the US isn't going to be invading anywhere to expand the US.
neither US and China need to aggressively invade countries to expand and maintain their power base. modern imperialism is propagated economically, through proxy wars, and fought in the ideological space. all things the US and China both work very hard to accomplish
but we are talking about the economic systems of both countries. the fact that large corporations are becoming increasingly chummy with the state. we are starting to look more like China as China has liberalized and looks more like us
Not leftist; pro-China. There's some pretty clear indications that TikTok suppresses posts critical of China and China's interests--despite those topics generating high engagement--while not suppressing information, say, critical of the US. They're clearly acting as an agent of the Chinese gov't.
That's the thing about state media from China & Russia & Iran. Yes, they are censored in the sense they aren't going to be critical of their host country.
However they are also a means by which certain anti-establishment voices from the West are able to get a platform. For example RT will historically interview people like Chomsky. It's not because Chomsky ideologically aligns with Russia. It's because "enemy of my enemy is my friend". So just because something is censored in one direction, it does not mean everything else on the platform is false.
So if we go to TikTok, China is perfectly fine with certain leftist anti-establishment media whereas it would be algorithm'd away on the other major social media sites.
Again, it has nothing to do with TikTok being pro China. It has everything to do with the US government not being able to control what is on the platform for their own interests. TikTok does not have to answer to the US, and instead of us being OK with that because we're a free country- we're cracking down on dissent because we are becoming increasingly authoritarian.
Yeah! Only Facebook can propagandize my sweet ass!
The only thing Facebook cares about is pushing propaganda for is profit.
China has a far more nefarious goal.
This is not an argument against banning TikTok. This is an argument for banning Facebook (and all other centralized social media) right along with it.
No shit. Who cares about TikTok?
Being consistent is considered a good thing. Ban one, ban none.
Yeah, Chinese leadership was complaining about the mass migration from Twitter to Bluesky because it rendered their bit accounts useless, so it's not like it's a secret or anything.
This has always been about how TikTok can't be bought out as a propaganda machine by American billionaires.
"It's to protect our citizens from China!"
"Are we going to have stronger data protection laws across all 50 states and the federal government to help protect our citizens?"
"That sounds like a terrorist wanting privacy to hide form Facebook and Google's data to the NSA!"
Facebook first.
Why is everything so glacially slow anymore. Fucking do something! I've been hearing about the demise of TiKTok for like three YEARS. Die already. Or don't, I'm just sick of hearing about how it "might close" any fucking day now.
The 19th is the legal deadline.
This article from 2024 gives a pretty good rundown as to why using this reasoning to ban Tiktok will set a very bad precedent:
If the govt cared about your data privacy, they would create data collection regulations that they could then use to ban tiktok if/when they violate them.
Tell that to the Leopards Eating My Face voters here advocating for censorship and government overreach.
People really cheering this? I don't like TikTok because I don't much care for that style of short form video - but let's not act like it would be better under US tech giant control. Worse, I'd say.
Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok's U.S. patrons
Oooooh scaaaaary. I'd feel much safer having it under the control of a government who actually affects my life. 🙄
Red scare 2.0 bullshit
I am conditioned to be revolted by autoplay videos. Even here, when I opened this post on the mobile web version, a video autoplayed at the top and I immediately stopped it.
Nothing of value will be lost.
Idk, I think all these governments having trade and tech wars is bad for our freedom. But on the other hand, TikTok is pure misinformation slop.
load more comments
(19 replies)
Best possible outcome.
The best possible outcome would have been a digital bill of rights that applies to all social media. Please step outside the Amazon box youre thinking out of.
No no I said possible outcome.
view more: next ›