TikTok goes dark in the US
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/18/tiktok-goes-dark-in-the-u-s/TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users after Trump comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759336 - Jan 2025 (22 comments)
This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone conflict is, what it looks like, or why it matters. Geopolitic strategies are increasingly executed as grey zone warfare, and some hybrid warfare, because the costs and risks of traditional overt warfare have become unacceptably high.
"Manipulation Playbook: The 20 Indicators of Reality Control"
Libgen domains are "seized", and tiktok "goes dark", but of course other countries "censor" porn or news outlets.
There is a passage in the book Life of Pi, where Pi's family is gathered and ready to leave India for Canada. And his mother does something out of the ordinary:
> The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, "Should we get a pack or two?"
> Father replied, "They have tobacco in Canada. And why do you want to buy cigarettes? We don't smoke."
> Yes, they have tobacco in Canada-but do they have Gold Flake cigarettes? Do they have Arun ice cream? Are the bicycles Heroes? Are the televisions Onidas? Are the cars Ambassadors? Are the bookshops Higginbothams'? Such, I suspect, were the questions that swirled in Mother's mind as she contemplated buying cigarettes.
Do I use TikTok? No, I've always advocated against it. Will I use it if it is reinstated? Probably not. But I downloaded it anyway the same way Mrs Gita Patel wanted to buy cigarettes. It wasn’t about need or use. It was about the loss.
I would stand behind a tiktok ban if it was for the right reasons. But this ban is only because it failed to conform to manufactured consent.
The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
[1] https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.c...
I understand that people spend a lot of time doomscrolling on it, but even with millions of daily users the optimistic side of me really wants to believe that it won't affect anyone's mental health in any measurable way.
What is freedom, anyway? Surely it can’t include allowing a foreign adversary access to a knob to twist on an important demographic of society. A foreign adversary who is actively compromising the network infrastructure of that society [1] but definitely wouldn’t touch infrastructure around an app owned by a Chinese company.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. One person's portal to a better world is a state's vehicle to shaping it in the state's interests.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/united-states-china-hacking-espio...
There were vibrant communities, subcultures.
Real issues were aired there. Real people connected. From the early days of Covid it provided a window into a broader world.
Information is the gold of the 21st century. Whoever controls the flow of information has all the wealth and all the power. Therefore, data is the greatest currency in the world.
This outcome was never intended to happen, but ByteDance is taking a chance that the American government will relent. We’ll see in a few months who wins the stalemate.
TikTok has an immense amount of cultural power. The concentration of power scares me, no matter who holds it. But China ultimately having that power scares me more than an American company having it.
Again, this outcome was preventable, but ByteDance is hoping Americans let them continue with the status-quo. We didn’t and we shouldn’t.
> U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that TikTok threatens national security because the Chinese government could use it as a vehicle to spy on Americans or covertly influence the U.S. public by amplifying or suppressing certain content.
In other words, US officials are scared that China is going to do what the USA has been doing with American social media apps in various countries
I personally know musicians, actors, and artists that got a lot of work through TikTok. People who actually create things, and people who just used the app to make ends meet who probably aren't going to make ends meet this month
Look at how the US internet fuelled the fires of the Arab Spring / HK protests / Jan 6th / Any number of colour revolutions in Europe. Even today, we see X being used as a platform to encourage protests against governments in UK and Germany. National sovereignty is contingent on digital sovereignty - everyone is going to need a firewall.
It seems to me the only recourse the US would have is building The Great Firewall of America.
https://time.com/7208112/what-happened-when-india-banned-tik...
The public discourse in the US appears very distorted. The rececently elected legislative heavily tampers with the executive/judicative and somehow this is stil democratic?
IMO the tiktok ban is only about media control, no morale or legality, just political power and somehow there is still free speech for all?
All this is so bizare to me. I dont expect reasonable answers.
Anecdote says the app is currently having network trouble, so I expect there's some devops minions having a sweaty moment, but the ban is (to be) postponed (and in the meanwhile not enforced).
About availability of TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps in the United States - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42754130 - Jan 2025 (80 comments)
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tiktok-us...
Has anyone suspected foreign interference in our social media during the height of the culture wars in the last decade? We had people encouraging civil unrest on the Left (whenever there was some police shooting or event where racism was suspected), and we had people encouraging civil unrest on the right (an immigrant committed a crime, or similar). We had puppet trolls in Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc.
Russia and the United States have been doing this to each other - stirring civil unrest with propaganda - since the 1950s. It's an old war.
Does that not merit consideration in this conversation?
And what exactly is preventing China to launch a new app withjin hours (that is the point of cloud infras right?) under a new company using tiktok source code and allow easy importation of dumps from tiktok to facilitate their migration and get a head start?
Not impressed whatsoever with this.
This is not what the internet is all about.
Anyone who uses TikTok, knows China can’t really gin up any propaganda through it.
Propaganda only works if it seduces, not if it bludgeons and China as a country never seems to be able to seduce. It’s Hollywood that gets exported to China, Xi Jinpings daughter studied at Harvard, not the other way around. China is a fashion victim of US propaganda if anything. The worst China could do, was artificially boost “how cool China is” TikTok’s, crudely ban TianMen Square TikTok’s and this does not convince anyone. It only encourages even more subversive TikTok’s, weakening its power further.
In fact I would claim, China not only has no power over those that use TikTok, but in its current regime, it has no pathway to ever influence those that use TikTok, even in the future. The Chinese regime is practically capable but culturally uncool. All that the American Regime has succeeded in banning TikTok, is embarrass the American Regime and reveal itself to be equally uncool in the eyes of Gen Z. If you browsed TikTok recently, you have seen probably all the ironic TikTok’s of Americans saluting the Chinese National Anthem. This irony from the younger generation, itself shows how uncool Congress has become. A culturally dominant regime, would have no reason to worry about enemy’s propaganda, and America didn’t realize it but it was very culturally dominant, now however it’s own insecurity has harmed its prestige significantly.
US is a hypocrite. How about Meta and other US companies? Those companies does the same if not worse damage to your citizen.
Truly bleak.
No one reads the actual law, everyone is taking the bait.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521
This isn't about data that people agreed to allow ByteDance to scrape. It's about ByteDance going beyond that and scraping contact information of NON-TikTok users, which could be used for blackmail or in other illegal and adversarial ways.
Everyone knows U.S. companies gather user data. Oracle had been doing it for decades. This is not the issue and not at all why TikTok has been banned.
The difference is that ByteDance was blatantly going after data that was legally not within their rights to grab; NON-TikTok user data on TikTok user's devices.
In addition, there are hints in the decision that the FBI provided evidence that China was using this information for adversarial purposes.
The decision very clearly walks through the First Amendment issues in relation to foreign adversaries and explicitly states that this is a singular decision.
It would have been VERY EASY for ByteDance to stop scraping data or to find a U.S. partner to host the data of U.S. Citizens. I've worked at global consulting firms and Germany requires this. All German citizen data must be hosted in their country. This isn't anything new. Companies make these kinds of compromises all the time and have for decades. Some companies explicitly state their data has to be on-prem or not in AWS. As an enterprise architect, I make these kinds of design decisions all the time. (Scenario: If customer is located in XYZ country, where do we store their data?)
ByteDance simply refused because even though they claim they are not handing data over to the Chinese Intelligence Service, they ACT LIKE THEY ARE.
None of this will matter in a few months. There are active projects to build Instagram and TikTok clones on the atProto network (Bluesky) which will serve the same content without advertising and without an algorithm. There will be Feeds for cat videos, pirate dress up videos, and APT dance videos and I'm 100% sure all the users that join that service will completely forget about TikTok. And the moderation will be given to the users so they can decide what to see.
Ie through state sanctioned ddos and bot swarms
I can only expect the bar to geopartition Internet services due to financial, political, and militarian whims to go lower and lower until eventually there's no global internet left.
In any case, I'm glad I could see the 90's.
Amazing that Congress will see bipartisan action on this issue before any of the other much more important issues.
It absolutely destroys criticisms of China banning Facebook, etc.
1. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-ru...
Every politician flip-flops, but Trump is something else.
Shirtless pics
LGBTQ posts
My Hero Academia
The funny thing is, I saw videos from Chinese users that specifically mentioned not to post these things. I had to look up why the anime, and apparently the creator made choices that directly poked at old WW2 tensions between Japan and China.
Why does it seem that there's no non-Chinese alternative to TikTok popular enough to warrant any mention?
There’s a world in which they could have migrated services to an off-shore cloud and continued to serve the existing users who already had the app installed (with the disadvantage that they would be unable to evolve the app itself, since no updates). It would have bought them time to figure out a long-term, legal fix.
…But instead they chose to just block all users with US-based accounts.
Someone made the calculation that failing the app loudly for US users was the better strategy.
Books are being banned, the defunding of the department of education is an explicit goal at the incoming administration.
The fact that Americans may or may not be incredibly susceptible to propaganda is a direct consequence of national public policy over the last few generations at least, and it's going to get much worse
We need a distributed social platform. Distributed currency system. Distributed personal information privacy. Distributed AI. Where’s the tech YC?
In this particular case I don't care. But it fits in with the Nordstream sabotage, the attempts to control Arctic sea routes via Greenland, the attempted control of the Panama canal and the attempts in the Caspian sea region via Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine.
Going by the comments, it seems a lot of people here actually believe this whole thing is about “China”
“China” is the new “communism”. It’s just the phantom enemy to scare everyone
Without a real disclosure about the real reasons for the TT ban, we will never really know what is going on behind the scenes
Maybe we’ll have to wait a few decades to get some unclassified docs
When the US government asks China to censor TikTok, that's a good thing.
Make it make sense.
the realization is that this is a binary choice, either we ban it or we don't. but we shouldn't be in this position in the first place. neither choice is the right answer. i don't want any of the outcomes. i don't want a chinese facebook. i don't want a us controlled facebook. i don't want a facebook controlled facebook.
you want to know how to keep giant governments out of your shit (us and china and russia, etc.)? how to keep giant corporations out of your knickers? if you favor economic protectionism, how to keep other countries from undermining your industries? how to keep giant corporations (us or chinese) from exploiting their monopolies to wreck our culture just so they can serve more advertisements?
everyone on this forum, especially if you decry this ban, needs to stop defending, accepting, and allowing closed monopolistic computing and networking. app-store monopolies, for instance, secure-boot, device-non-ownership. we've given these companies persistent 100% control over our own devices and we (as surprised as you are) got monopolies. now we have to argue about which flavor of monopoly we want.
the minute, via app store policy or via crypto/secure boot, you allow a company to select what i am or am not allowed to do, see, or buy on my own devices - this is what we are doomed to deal with as a result.
Six years ago, The Onion mocked the idea of TikTok being dangerous to the US as a paranoid fantasy.[0] Now, that position is bipartisan consensus. China hysteria appears to have no limits.
That was quicker than I had expected, though I thought they'd probably find a way to avert even a temporary shutdown to begin with.
Dunno, I'm wayyyy out of the loop on all of this.
The "learn more" link tells you that you can still download your data. I'm not sure how. Website maybe? Because the app only has "learn more" and "close app" as options. Interestingly the fyp still loads and you see a video in the background.
I do think it'll come back this week but it's not clear what the legal mechanism is. Since the ban has gone into effect the extension in the law doesn't seem to apply anymore. This would then seem to require Congressional action and there doesn't seem to be much appetite for that but maybe that's because Republicans in Congress want to give credit for saving Tiktok to Trump when he becomes president on Monday.
Another option being talked about is nonenforcement by the Department of Justice. Some dismiss this by saying "the DoJ can change their mind" but that's not strictly true. Defendants in a case can rely on statements by prosecutors. It's a valid defense. If the Attorney-General makes an official statement saying "we will not prosecute Amazon or Google or Tiktok for 90 days (or whatever) while we work this out", that's absolutely a legal defense should the DoJ ever change their mind.
Basically, this is now a shakedown as some Trump allies will seek forcibly buy Tiktok or at least a large stake in it as a price for its continued operation in the US. It's unclear if Tiktok will acquiesce to this.
Remember though, Bytedance has significant US investors so there are conflicting forces at play here.
Would Bytedance still own shares in the resulting US entity? Shares they could sell or get paid with via dividends, just no control over operations?
The entire situation hinges on TikTok’s ownership. They could sell themselves to any organization based outside China and have been given multiple opportunities to do so and they’ve refused.
That tells you all you need to know about the priorities of ByteDance, considering the U.S. was their biggest market since they’re banned in both China and India, the only other countries larger than the U.S.
Though it's hardly unique in that regard. That's modern social media now.
And Democrats just sucked at messaging. Its not a "TikTok ban". The message should have been about data protection.
And yes, it would be far better to pass something like the GDPR. But I guess, with the power of the US media companies, the TikTok law was a compromise.
As far as what's next, it's up to the Biden and Trump admins to see what happens next. If deadlines are extended, what does a good divestiture settlement mean for TikTok? Can the executive department get away with not enforcing this law? And of course, the question that really lies ahead of us: what does this mean for other social media based outside of the US like Telegram, Line, and KakaoTalk?
They had the chance to divest TikToc and chose not to.
TikTok got banned for one and only one reason: to silence the narrative around a 70 year old war.
Sources:
- ADL: "we have a major major major generational problem" ... "we have a tiktok problem" http://web.archive.org/web/20231116180709/https://media.mehr...
- US Representative (MIT alum): everyone in the U.S. Congress "has an AIPAC person" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2reaGhLnYI
False claims for the reason for the ban:
- Tiktok has great content and a great algorithm to help you find it (that's a good thing)
- Tiktok spies and collects data, such as scraping your clipboard, network (Apple iOS sandboxing prevents any app from doing so without explicit user permission - technical audience here shouldn't fall for this one easily)
- Tiktok collects face recognition data on citizens worldwide (anyone scraping Instagram can do that - technical audience here shouldn't fall for this one easily)
- Tiktok is addictive, and designed to be (so is Instagram, and?)
- Tiktok is cultural expression, and contributes to people's feeling of identity (good; the more diverse cultural expressions the better)
- Tiktok provides a platform for critical thinking and debate (not really a bad thing if you think about it)
- Tiktok contributed to Brexit, and similar political crises in the EU (so does X)
- Tiktok is part of the Chinese 100 year marathon strategy (vague scare tactic)
Trying to copy TikTok is probably the worst thing Instagram has done. Their “suggested reels” are a cancer.
>TikTok, however, suggested this was not enough assurance for “critical service providers” to continue listing or hosting the app in the United States unless the Biden administration...
This would be a joke statement 20 years ago.
- Tiktok has great content and a great algorithm to help you find it
- Tiktok advances Chinese interests
- Tiktok spies and collects data, such as scraping your clipboard, network
- Tiktok collects face recognition data on citizens worldwide
- Tiktok is addictive, and designed to be
- Tiktok is cultural expression, and contributes to people's feeling of identity
- Tiktok provides a platform for critical thinking and debate
- Trump wants to control it for his own profit motive, not because it's what's best for the US
- Tiktok contributed to Brexit, and similar political crises in the EU
- Tiktok is part of the Chinese 100 year marathon strategy
and so on...
I see nothing redeeming in these addictive slop factories. They create nothing and the content on them is trash. All they do is hack your dopamine system to shovel in ads, empty filler, or worse hate and fear porn.
There’s nothing they do that can’t better be done by forums, chat, the web, even AI agents, without the destruction of attention span and brain rot.
What this temporary outage might do is have the opposite effect TikTok expects - to show people they need a break from such an addictive app.
Stranger things have happened on the internet. The longer before Trump "cuts a deal" the more I expect people to press the question - why allow China access to this market if China is shut to our social media apps ?
Then, when the civilians are tired of this bullshit and the dust settles, we emerge with truly decentralized social networks.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-wont-enforce-tik...
Will they also ban TikTok as a security threat? If not, will they issue a statement contradicting US actions?
If they do, what about US owned platforms that have been known to e.g., interefere with European elections (Facebook / Cambridge Analytica) and (at least) one of the owners openly supports certain type of party across the continent?
What a grotesque theater. How much more hypocricy can the political classes that enabled the wholesale enshittificarion of our digital lives get away with?
Speaking of which, how does this work with the GDPR? Does TikTok abide by the GDPR in Europe or are they just not able to sanction them for violating it?
It becomes more and more clear that the people supporting this app don't use the app, making it easy to imagine the worst. The reality of this situation seems very obvious to me: Meta sees the future, and knows that they have lost the next generation to tiktok and social media platforms that are authentic. FB is doomed, Instagram is all ads and manicured posts, and the Metaverse is perpetually 10 years ahead of the tech. They wanted to do what they did last time they needed to stay relevant: buy a relevant company (Instagram). Tiktok wasnt interested. So since they cant compete they spend a fraftion of the money they would need to compete fairly to simply bribe the government to ban the app. Its a "security risk"! And look, they are saying all these bad things about Israel, your AIPAC bribers hate the app too! Its definitely not that Israel is a pariah state that the entire world except for the US (where bribery is legal and encouraged) despises because of their crimes against humanity, its the Chinese government controlling the app! And you have no way of forcing them to censor the news like you can on Meta and MSM! Sprinkle some red scare in the pot, talk ominously about China, and now all the representatives (avg age 63 btw) are scared about the chinese controlled brain control app that all their grandkids love.
Anytime something remotely political comes up on HN I'm reminded that the people that tend to be very matter of fact and well informed on the intricacies of tech are no more immune to tribalism and groupthink than anyone else. No ciritical thought when the government says something they agree with, no matter how nebulous and manufactured it is. And yes, I include myself in that group. Reminds me to take everything I read on here with a healthy grain of salt because this same tribalist-bias exists in seemingly objective tech discussion.
I would have thought that indeed, they have looked at it already carefully.
This is the most unusual endorsement I've seen, admittedly of a most unusual President.
If that message and it's implications are flying over your head, please look up.
China does play a real threat to American and other western interests and has done so for many years. If you have evidence that ByteDance is not controlled by the CCP or that the CCP has not very openly played many games both economically, politically and socially I would be happy to see that evidence.
“The kids are watching communist propaganda from the CCP!”
Americans on TikTok watch content from other Americans. I know a big complaint the government had was the overflow of support for the Palestinian people compared to Israel.
Are you guys sure you’ve even used the app before? I used it some time ago and it was just other Americans doing dumb stuff or making political videos.
People really just believe the first thing their government tells them and believes it so strictly? “They said it is a national security concern so I believe them and must spread their message!”
Seems to me that TikTok had Americans on there sharing anti-Israel and anti-America content on there with other Americans. Didn’t Ted Cruz bring that up specifically to the CEO of TikTok as a problem?
- Users tend to use the same passwords across apps. It would be trivial for TikTok to provide an email + password combo to CCP.
- Until 2020, the tiktok iOS app was accessing the system clipboard at all times that TikTok was running (even in the background) https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/26/21304228/tiktok-security-...
- A sort of vague concern that because CCP can easily compel Chinese companies, it could easily compel TikTok to show / not-show various content to American users. (this could stir political tensions, misinformation etc).
- TikTok (and by extension CPP) could access any content/messages that the app has access to. E.g. Phone contacts (if permission given), private messages sent on TikTok app (possibly even if just typed but not sent).
What else?
I open up tiktok: I see cute dog videos.
I open up Twitter: Immediately get pushed white nationalist great replacement was Hitler actually bad? posts.
Incredible.
It's funny that Trump started this ban attempt, and now people look forward for him to undo the ban. Lord and Saviour...
I already foresee a Mueller investigation part #2 “Trump is a Chinese puppet” stories.
But in terms of TikTok, I don't care. Burn it down. If Trump uses his first 100 days to pressure his 3 vote majority in the House to vote to overturn something they passed overwhelmingly it's a pretty startling indication of his priorities and loyalties in his second term. His crypto-scam this weekend is only the prologue.
Dont think this will affect foreign influence by china much.
Yes it is a joke. But whether it is outsized influence of foreign power or uber rich nutter, what's the difference...
- Trump schemes to get TikTok blocked in the US
- He waits till he is in charge
- Presents himself as White Knight (or rather Orange Knight?)
- Gets TikTok unbanned
- Popularity with the younger generation rises
- ...profit?
1. Background on TikTok: - Launched in 2017, TikTok has over 170 million U.S. users and 1 billion worldwide - Users create, publish, view, share and interact with short videos with audio and text - Features a personalized "For You" page using a proprietary algorithm - Operated in the U.S. by TikTok Inc. (California-based company) - Ultimate parent company is ByteDance Ltd., a private Chinese company that: - Owns TikTok's algorithm (developed/maintained in China) - Develops portions of TikTok's source code - Is subject to Chinese laws requiring cooperation with intelligence work and government data access
2. Arguments by Petitioners (TikTok & Users): - First Amendment violations due to: - Burden on content moderation and content generation - Restricting access to a distinct medium of expression - Limiting association with preferred speakers/editors - Restricting receipt of information and ideas - Argued the Act should face strict scrutiny as content-based regulation - Claimed divestiture within 270 days is commercially infeasible, making it an effective ban - Argued alternative measures could address security concerns without banning TikTok
3. Arguments by Respondents (Government): - Primary justification: Preventing China from collecting vast amounts of sensitive data from 170M U.S. users - Secondary justification: Preventing foreign adversary control over the recommendation algorithm - Argued for intermediate scrutiny as content-neutral regulation - Cited national security concerns and Chinese laws requiring data sharing - Pointed to failed negotiations with ByteDance for alternative security measures
4. Main Opinion: The Court affirmed the D.C. Circuit's ruling that the Act does not violate the First Amendment, finding: - Applied intermediate scrutiny as the Act is content-neutral - Found compelling government interest in preventing Chinese data collection - Determined the Act is sufficiently tailored to address security concerns - Notable quote: "Data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age. But TikTok's scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects, justify differential treatment to address the Government's national security concerns."
5. Concurring Opinions: Justice Sotomayor: - Agreed with outcome but argued First Amendment clearly applies - Cited TikTok's expressive activity in "compiling and curating" material
Justice Gorsuch: - Expressed concerns about rushed timeline (14 days to resolve) - Praised Court for not considering classified evidence hidden from petitioners - Questioned whether law is truly "content neutral" - Agreed government has compelling interest in preventing data harvesting - Found law appropriately tailored after other solutions proved inadequate
6. Dissenting Opinions: None filed.
7. Other Relevant Details: - The Court emphasized the narrow scope of its ruling given the novel technology issues - Showed substantial deference to Congress's national security judgments - The Act was passed with strong bipartisan support (352-65 in House, 79-18 in Senate) - The Court noted but did not rely on classified evidence in reaching its decision
The Supreme Court's ruling allows the Act to take effect, requiring TikTok to either complete a qualified divestiture from Chinese ownership or cease U.S. operations, marking a significant development in the intersection of national security, technology regulation, and First Amendment rights.
The ban – which is an incredible overreach – was a bipartisan effort by congress. Sticking it to Biden seems very, very off.
Biden explicitly left the decision if and how it is enforced to Trump. ⇒ No reason to go dark now to have a huge: “Thank you, tangerine tyrant, that you are willing to maybe save us!”
I do enjoy Tik Tok a lot, but is it unanimously good or even only unproblematic? Hell, no. It is an indoctrination machine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/18/tiktok-..."
I am actively anti-social media myself, it's a hard stance I have and I have had to effectively "die on that hill".
The amount of time our social media team has had serious issues with me refusing to comply with their requests to be involved with their current tiktok trend, arguing about "but you need to be relevant to the modern generation" when my argument is exactly the thing Tiktok was banned for, I want to be in control of who has my data. That is bad enough already but to freely just give my likeness to a chinese owned company to sell adverts however they like?
It's got nothing to do with "relevance" its a moral standing. And no I don't think tiktok is the only guilty platform but it's a step in the right direction concidering how absolutely mindless and time consuming the content is.
And no matter how strongly you believe you have free will and freedom of thought, you are a reflection of the people you surround yourself with and I would make the argument the media you consume.
And tiktok specifically is significantly more addictive than other media, sure the same argument can be made for youtube shorts and IG reels and whatever else which is the current short form content, and the biggest issue there is: there's no way to justify your stance, to bring evidence to back your case.
All that there is is the ability to state your point and the majority of users will follow if you state it compellingly enough. It's mass propaganda taken to the extreme.
I strongly believe YouTube shorts etc should follow the same fate as tiktok has. It should be regulated as strongly as Narcotics because it is equally as addictive and imho has a similar effect on society.
Sorry for the rant but as I said, I have a moral stance on this topic and for some reason society in general decided it needs to be faught with the zeal of the crusades.
Why is all of our media bombarded with the ban when it has been signed into law and backed by the relevant countries highest powers.
If it was a unanimous vote in government and held up by the supreme court why is media against it? They are scared the next step is them.
This isn't the media holding government accountable, this is media swaying the general public's opinion. This[1] comment on HN just proves that. They had no interest in tiktok, if media let it just go quietly into the night they would still have no interest but now that the fact that its disappearance has been shouted from every rooftop to every single human being the addiction crysis has spread to them. "Fear of missing out" strikes again.
Media is designed to control and the first punch thrown against it is being countered, who will win in the end?
Hopefully this movement will continue on other social media. Though unfortunately none are quite as light on censorship as TikTok is for feminist voices, often unfairly framing these as "hate".
We see a celebration of this kind of thinking here. People want to be kept ignorant of the outside world and to keep others ignorant as well. It's a natural way to think, in the context of the road the US has been heading down for decades.
People here are excited the US will be censoring seditious content just like China does. It reminds me less of China and more of post-1905, pre-1914 Russia and the ministry of internal affairs Bureau of Censorship.
Not that it's the only factor, but I watch the US Congress sanctioning the UN and International Criminal Court for investigating the genocide in Gaza, and how many expressed their unhappiness about how Tiktok was a fissure in the US media bubble regarding that. Now Americans can be in their bubble a little longer, unaware of what the rest of the world thinks.
The ban will be repealed on Monday and it will be sold to US tech lords by month’s end. The damn hysteria is embarrassing
It is also a test for "Rednote" and if they grow extremely fast in the next 90 days then that will be another ban target. But this is all temporary and they will run back to TikTok again.
But again 170 million users just had their crack / cocaine supply cut off. Now is the time for them to reflect and cure their addiction.