Could they please pull from Europe, too?
There will be a rush of US startups to replace it, and they will all be stage 1 enshittification, so they might actually be good for a while, like TikTok once was.
Or people will just migrate to the YouTube and Insta clones.
YouTube shorts is such a hellhole that tiktokers migrating to it might improve things.
snapchats spotlight will do the best probably in terms of memes
Still better than the Chinese propaganda machine
Awesome, do META next please!
Never happen, why would the government shut down one of its favorite surveillance tools.
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Before X?
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Boy I’d love it if that were really true.
Way way way way too many idiots still going there.
But how does that help capitalists make more money by eliminating their competition?
If the Chinese government is behind this, it’s a great play. Having Joe Biden be “the guy who banned tik tok” would severely undermine his election chances.
14 year olds don’t vote
Guess we’ll find out whether TikTok or reproductive freedom is more important…
TikTok or reproductive freedom
Both of those bans have happened during the Biden administration
Yes, we all know Biden was super excited about Dobs. -_-
Abortion ban happened because of Trump’s corrupt judges in the supreme court, yeah
They were 14 four years ago
14 year olds aren’t the only people who use Tik Tok
Lemmy really seems to generally think that TikTok isn’t massively overall popular. Lemmy would have someone thinking it’s a niche app only being used by teenagers.
Why would China want Biden to lose?
Because Trump is equivalent to self destruction.
Even better
Good 1 less spyware app
It’s Vine time! What? Just… just bring it back. Call it “Kudzu” or some crap if Elon Musk owns the rights to Vine.
I do wonder if this is america being anti communist as history has shown before. Not to say China is actually communist but the economic system is hybrid socialist/capitalist and China is catching up or surpassing america so with this said what’s to say america starts using this tactic against more of chinas Chinese owned exports?
Beyond that america has meta which has done much the same as tiktok, targeting youth, furthering mental health issue, spying, anti trust and coverups yet they get a slap on the wrists.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/tiktok-bill-foreign-influence/677806/
It’s less about communism and more about authoritarianism. Even historically, communism was (IMO) just the trigger word associated with a slide into authoritarianism … which is what seemingly happened in countries that had a communist uprising to overthrow the government and broader “owning class.”
China seemed like they were on course to be a friendly communist country at one point, but they’ve slid back into authoritarianism under Xi.
I fully expect more hostility towards Chinese exports. Part of the reason for that is going to be that China is happy to use government money to subsidize certain industries to help gain dominance (Sherrod Brown - D Ohio) was recently speaking out about the risk Chinese subsidized EVs pose to the US auto industry domestically and internationally.
communism is not innately authoritarian same with libertarianism and capitalism instead its bad actors that make it so and once bad actors get involved then communism is not meeting its definition. china is a weird one where its communist in name alone with its hybrid economic system and repressive regime which goes against core principles of socialism/communism. i think the death of the USSR which had lead the revolution, as well as the many western embargoes on socialist countries have soured relations.
if your interested in podcasts id like to recommend you listen to blowback as it follows US hostilities against socialism/communism. i believe its on several platforms
A part of me genuinely would like to see communism work.
Another part of my looks at the past century and sees the same pattern of well meaning revolution to communism, that results in a corrupt government that owns and controls everything.
I don’t think the Russian people that got the ball rolling for the USSR were stupid or evil, but I also don’t think it worked out like they wanted… and I think that’s true of every other case of communism that’s been tried in practice.
Part of the problem is without ownership, you don’t own the situation. Which house is taken better care of, the one that’s rented or the one that’s owned?
Another social mind game, are you better off getting into an accident with 1 person around to call for help or 20? It’s been shown that when people can put off responsibility/assume someone else is going to “own” the situation, they do.
I think capitalism with regulation to keep money out of politics, mixed with more social programs (particularly socializing the insurance industry) makes the most sense.
personally, communism in a capitalistic world is very hard.
Cuba wanted to break away from American capitalists and gangsters using Cuba to store money and exploit the Cubans for sugar plantations then the US sets embargoes, Cuba maintains its independence and manages to get its literacy level up to 1953—56% 1970—88% 1986—nearly 100% implemented free social health care with newly built hospitals and students had to work in small towns and villages for part of they’re doctorate. but American meddling was constant with the Cuban missile crises which laughable America clutched they’re purls whilst having setup nukes on the USSR’s doorstep as if that wasn’t threatening.
Cuba has sadly remained under the sanctions and is struggling to stay afloat.
its important to view economics outside of our place of living, while western life is so so although homelessness is forever on the rise but outside of these countries life is different and the people are very much exploited by capitalism whether through ford or amazon, this is why we live the way we do.
Anti communist? With everything else we buy from China, this is the tipping point to be anti-communist? How about all the US social media platforms that China won’t let in? Is that “anti-capitalist?”
Um yeah this is cold war type shit. It’s not a “tipping point”, just part of that broader context.
socialism has always been anti capitalism. socialism is based on principles like international revolution and a highly configured economic structures whereas capitalism is extraction of capital which western countries have been doing in china as much as china will allow but this isn’t what i am arguing.
something to keep in mind is that we don’t buy tiktok, similarly to meta and alphabet (google).
brief easy to read history of cold war activity.
Cuba and North Korea (the forgotten war) are both good to look in to. i hope the history can bring context to my previous statement as geopolitics is never as it seems.
While I appreciate the additional info, that really doesn’t add to the conversation about what the tipping point is for the parent comment.
Google knew youtube shorts didn’t stand a chance in a fair market.
Okay bye Felicia
If money wasn’t the point, then influence was. Congress is right to shut them down.
Foreign owned, FARA-unregistered influence operations have never been a facet of “free speech” in the USA.
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Money is still the point. There’s an entire world outside the US.
Call their bluff
It’s probably not a bluff. They’ve pretty much saturated the U.S. market; there’s not much room left to grow here. It would make more sense to focus their efforts on growing in other regions where they have plenty of headroom to increase their userbase and monetization. Depending on how things play out, they could match their current revenue in a matter of years and still have room left to grow. There’s also the potential to re-enter the U.S. market down the line. Why would they throw that all away and essentially create their own competitor by selling their core technology and diluting/confusing their brand with whatever U.S. company they sell to?
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I love how the media has thrown around the word algorithm. They don’t need to sell their algorithm for a competitor to compete. An algorithm produces some result output. So you could easily clone an algorithm without knowing its exact implementation.
Maybe I know quicksort, but you know mergesort. The customer doesn’t give a fuck which algorithm was used, so long as it’s sorted.
This is a bad take. Yes, “algorithm” is a vague term, but it’s incorrect to suggest that they’re easily cloned. These algorithms are what makes social media companies. Without them, they wouldn’t have the same kind of user engagement. It’s why, outside of the fediverse, social media companies try to hide or demote linear timelines. It’s why they pour most of the R&D money into the recommendation algorithms.
But that’s not really an algorithm.
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That was my original point. The media and hence business / management use this term (incorrectly)
They could just say IP, or platform, or service, or implementation. But I guess saying algorithm makes everyone sound smart.
US should call their bluff. If Tiktok gets banned, people will complain for a little bit until people forget and move on to what’s next. Why doesn’t an American company make something that’s practically identical? People will be all desperate for their 5 second dopamine rush that they will download anything.
They can’t, the algorithm is the best part about tiktok and none of the competitors come close.
That’s interesting, what’s so clever or original about its algorithm?
If I remember correctly from my rabbit hole, it tracks your viewing habits by a far wider list of variables and on a micromanaged scale. It can be annoying if you have someone sending you content you don’t like because viewing them will slot them into your feed immediately, but it’s just as quick to discard those things. I found it very easy to train for my interests in cooking, goblincore, and irrational humor.
Meanwhile, YT Shorts sees me watch one video then gives me nothing but that.
Personally I’ve not tried shorts, I don’t have any issues with it but I’ve only ever used YouTube for long form educational videos or horror fiction so it never has anything to offer me.
Y’all are dumb as hell for supporting this bill. It doesn’t just ban tiktok, it applies to any app with 20% or more ownership by any person/entity from a country that is a “foreign adversary”.
A lot of the users here are just butthurt anti social media people, not actually principled free speech or rule of law advocates. This ban is arguably unconstitutional and TikTok is being targeted for purely political reasons, not because of any credible threat to “national security.” This is some Patriot Act level overreach bullshit, but the clueless mainstream just clamors for it because CNN/Fox spends hours of airtime decrying the dangers of TikTok, and a fraction doing the same for Meta/X/Reddit.
TikTok is literally controlled directly by the Chinese government, which is officially considered a foreign adversary (for a good reason)
Source?
There are more than enough sources, just google “TikTok Chinese government influence”. Just a few examples:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2023/07/26/tiktok-chinese-propaganda-ads-europe/
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/11/tiktok-china-us-elections-influence
Also, just think about it: The CCP loves spreading propaganda. There’s a massive social media platform controlled by China, which is used by young people in foreign adversary nations. Why wouldn’t they leverage this platform to spread their lies and influence people? It’s literally the perfect opportunity.
Wow. How predictable. Nothing you posted has anything to do with the Chinese government “literally directly controlling” TikTok, despite those being the exact words you chose and used.
Instead, you posted one story about TikTok in Europe running ads by the CCP, and two about the CCP using accounts on TikTok.
It’s a well known fact that the CCP runs accounts on Reddit and other socials. TikTok accepting and running ads from the CCP in Europe is a European problem. Could be addressed by updated regulations around ads, idk, I’m not European. Meta could run ads from the CCP or Russia in Europe, perhaps? Or maybe TikTok broke European advertising regulations. Still, has nothing to do with the USA.
So again, you people are repeating US intelligence propaganda about the Chinese government “owning and controlling” TikTok and then posting “proof” that proves nothing.
Try again?
That’s all platform agnostic. You think they didn’t have accounts and ads on every major service?
Not sure if you’ve been paying attention but citizens have no say over stuff like this. 99% of the politicians in office were placed there by rich people - they have the only true votes. The bill included money to Ukraine (great), and Israel (WTF), and Taiwan, and TikTok. It shouldn’t be legal to package all that stuff together, but it’s pretty standard. Anyway not sure who you’re talking to - there are like a few hundred politicians who supported this bill, most of them probably for other reasons, and none of them are on Lemmy.
China does the same.
So we should do whatever China does??? Are you ready for the firewall? lmfao
Im not making a stance on it but I read more to it.
It seems very focused on “social media” as in software that is about users sharing their own content with other users with 1,000,000 monthly active users.
Those that support it on tiktok likely would for other similar services.
The part that stands out to me is it mentions real time communication. So Telegram probably counts.
It lists the foreign adversaries, they aren’t just made up on a whim. Iran, N. Korea, China, Russia.
Where is WhatsApp based?
WhatsApp is American owned. You may be thinking of WeChat?
Nice hope they won’t budge.