This morning I felt the urge to download TikTok for the first time. I did, but I didn't bother creating an account.
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.
There is a statement from India’s information technology ministry, after 20 Indian soldiers died during border skirmish with China. When India banned TikTok in 2020 [0]
> Chinese mobile apps were stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data.
> The compilation of such data, and its mining and profiling by elements hostile to India is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures
If they were really concerned about privacy, they would strengthen privacy laws. Adopt a GDPR like framework with opt-in consent and force platforms to implement a GrapheneOS like model with mock permissions and scoped consent. Banning apps is just a veiled attempt to appease other interests.
DPDP is a watered down version of GDPR and is not as broad with its definition of personal data. Also for a privacy act, it does not have any directives on pseudonymization. But the worst part of DPDP is it makes it illegal for users to provide false information irrespective whether there is an intent to commit fraud. The jury is out whether one can be prosecuted for using an alias online or providing a fake ___location to an app.
India is also an authoritarian government, is that something to celebrate? Also it is hilarious that they complain about TikTok but when you live in India, you realize that half their mobile phones themselves are from Chinese manufacturers. Some of them have Indian manufacturing units but it doesn’t take much scrutiny to realize that this is all political theater.
huge false equivalency. true India is maybe not a model image of a democracy but they are way more free than China. take a look at the freedom house reports for more details.
> Do I use TikTok? No, I've always advocated against it.
This, to me, is a weird stance. On what grounds did you advocate against it?
I just had to create a new account tonight after the ban[0] to keep using it. When you first start TikTok you might be presented with a wave of seemingly crap, bizarre or boring videos, but after several minutes of liking and watching the good stuff the algorithm very quickly starts serving you some excellent content.
There is some really, really great, really smart content on TikTok. I have always advocated for TikTok on those grounds.
[0] my accounts are all on USA servers and you can't log into them even through a VPN
It is incredibly addictive inducing drug like state:
> You’ll just be in this pleasurable dopamine state, carried away. It’s almost hypnotic, you’ll keep watching and watching. - Dr. Julie Albright
> You keep scrolling, she says, because sometimes you see something you like, and sometimes you don’t. And that differentiation — very similar to a slot machine in Vegas — is key.
I detest slot machines, so many lives wasted away, and I feel like we already spend too much time on computers to the detriment of both ourselves and society, let alone giving the CCP a hand to manipulate people on top of everything else
I find the hard core defenders of tiktok, such as yourself, weird. I know for a fact you get propaganda videos shoved in between your feed of 'good stuff' that you enjoy watching, but I know you wont admit that, or downplay it or say you can scroll past it. It doesn't change the fact the platform is used by the CCP to push a narrative, and while it might not work on you, there's some 120m users in America on TT. That's an awful lot of people who are being fed bullshit and lies.
> I know for a fact you get propaganda videos shoved in between your feed of 'good stuff' that you enjoy watching
No idea how you could know this. I have never seen any concrete evidence that there are propaganda videos interlaced into people’s feeds. Everything I have heard is hypothetical. “China could” do this or that. If there were anything more than conjecture it would be huge news.
Casey Newton said on Hard Fork that he started a new account recently as an experiment and didn’t mention anything about China propaganda videos.
Here in my country, Chinese propaganda is vast in TikTok because of the disputes in the South China Sea, Scarborough Shoal and others. Maybe your feed is different since you aren't neighbors with China.
I don't use the app personally but I have friends who use TikTok and sometimes they would just casually tell me "oh yeah sometimes it shows me weird stuff like nazi videos, I just scroll past them"
The app's design is to get you to mindlessly doomscroll and not really think too hard about what it's showing you. If it shows you something insane occasionally it's no big deal, it's just the algorithm trying something new right?
It's very difficult to show any concrete evidence for how a secretive algorithm controlled by an adversary behaves. In an ideal world the burden should be on the platforms to prove that their algorithms are fair and not biasing towards certain viewpoints, but that might never happen.
You don’t need to know how the algorithm works you just need to demonstrate an effect it has. As of yet I have not seen that, and I am sure many journalists would love to prove it does.
I've been using TikTok for four years and never once seen anything resembling Nazi content.
I opened a new account in Canada last night due to the ban. I saw a lot of Canadian memes, and a ton of wildly incomprehensible foreign material from every corner of the globe as the algo tried to figure me out. But none of it looked remotely political or ideological in any way.
If there is propaganda it is very covert. Compared with X where my feed is maybe 80% overt propaganda, including from the owner of the platform himself.
I mean, if that's the standard, I've also unfortunately been exposed to more Nazi content than I'd like on Twitter/Reddit/etc. Should they be banned as well?
Usually it is about behavior shifts and/or emotions. E.g. if I’d be watching videos with cute penguins and then seen a politician „adopting” penguins at zoo, that’d be a political propaganda.
Political ads have to be marked clearly but if politician is sympathetic to the platform and platform owner has a stake in keeping good relations then it’s just another penguins video, right?
And it’s omnipresent, so you stop paying attention. It’s not only China who is doing that. That’s why Paris Syndrome exists, car manufacturers don’t allow game makers to show their models in a destroyed form or why actresses don’t like to show their nostrils.
The problem with China (as far as I understand) is lack of the symmetry. They will sell you everything, but refuse to let your merchants in.
And I’d describe message shown to American users as a propaganda.
> I know for a fact you get propaganda videos shoved in between your feed of 'good stuff' that you enjoy watching,
I have been using TikTok for months and I didn't see any propaganda at all. I only get content about my interests (3d printing, game dev, tech stuff). Sometimes it shows random stuff like animals and camping and funny videos or something but nothing like heavy politics at all.
I guess if I started engaging with "slightly political stuff" and started searching for it, it may be possible to get that kind of content, but yeah it's definitely not shown to me.
I expect that to stay unless I start to show intentions to the algorithm that I care about that kind of content.
So, when my feed dipped into politics, it was all anti-trump (though I'm traditionally conservative) and if it were my only news, I would have been flabbergasted by the Trump win. But apparently the app was pushing Trumps victory?
Yes, there is high quality long form content on TikTok, but most people just mindlessly consume the short form garbage, wasting their time and destroying their attention span. Everytime I watch teenagers or kids use TikTok I am genuinely horrified. It is clear that the platform does not optimize for thoughtful content, on the contrary! I certainly wouldn't advocate for it.
To me it is a time-sink that drowns our brains in a perpetual state of climax. Every video is designed to bring you to climax, and before it is done, the next video is loaded only to do the same. It is addictive and breeds impatience.
The medium is the message. I treat YouTube shorts and reels the same way. I'm sure there is smart content, but I'd rather take the time to research a subject rather wait for it to be randomly fed to me in the most exaggerated manner.
Not OP, but the users of it I know my person seem hypermobilized by what I consider brainrot ideologies amd generally seem to have highly destabilized psychologies.
> But this ban is only because it failed to conform to manufactured consent.
Are you saying that TikTok was banned because the company would not generate specific content? That's not at all how the app works, so maybe I am misunderstanding what your claim here is.
Not at all, the same way the US government does not ask Facebook or other media to produce specific content. However they still send take down requests and guidelines.
TikTok being a foreign entity was under no obligation to conform to the US government, well at least not until now. With the exception to illegal content.
If you're on iPhone that might make sense but on Android there is no need, lots of ways to get access to it after you moved to Canada, if you ever want to pick up smoking.
Is this supposed to be China only or should the rest of the world also be suspicious and ban e.g. Meta services especially since they don't have any competing service that is popular in the US?
Stop. This is stupid. People are allowed to have opinions on politics in other countries. Every other country in the world sure as hell isn’t shy about opining on US elections. Then you want to act all indignant if the US opines on your elections? Fuck off.
The thing is that Elon Musk is not just some guy with an opinion. He's some guy who has an opinion and owns a major social media platform where he tweaks the algorithm to serve his own purposes, similar to what TikTok is being accused of.
In democracies the power of government and media are supposed to be different branches of the system. When this is violated it's considered a threat to democracy. Like in Italy Berlusconi's media empire, etc.
This is an odd statement. GOP was in power from 2016-2020. People confuse entertainment and social media with news sources. Nearly anyone can pay to advertise with traditional or social media.
I think you're trying to describe Twitter and the other "conservative" media sources? These are for entertainment, but traditionally would advertise whoever paid them. Now the companies have been purchased or created to spread misinformation.
Non allied nations should absolutely ban US apps. Additionally, all government devices should have strict security features. It would be wise to also protect certain places from all electronic monitoring.
Excuse me, what? They do it all the time. Vaccines and Israel's genocide are just the tip of the iceberg of the propaganda machine broadcast through Meta's services. Make no mistake, this is not about China.
TikTok had a huge negative impact on special interest groups that want to continue to allow the holocaust of our days to continue happening and the genocidal state to continue to behave with impunity.
The U.S. is already infiltrated by people working for foreign interests. The thing is, it's not infiltrated by China's or Russia's operatives.
Are you saying the United States is a bastion of democracy? It's not even classified as a full democracy. The list of full democracies are Canada, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, and Mauritius.
United States is classified as a flawed democracy. Partly because sweeping decisions like this one are made by Supreme Court Justices who nobody voted for and who hold their position for life.
Or maybe that's what you meant and you were being sarcastic with the quotation marks around "bastion of democracy"?
I am not making a statement, mostly portraying the official stance from the USA government that has just had their decision to ban TikTok come into effect.
As in, due to their official stance, we should not expect reciprocity at all.
But you did pique my curiosity, where did you get that list of "full democracies"?
In almost every country, the President or the Parliament selects Supreme Court Justices. In some countries, the President picks x, and the Parliament picks y. They don't have terms. Direct democracy does not make sense when selecting justices.
Said 'bastion of democracy' is a flawd democracy [1] who voted in a president who allegedly (facepalm) initiated a coup and got away with it. Also, a convicted criminal.
You could say it is a bastion of liberty but I'm from Europe and women here have reasonable abortion and sexuality rights.
I wouldn't refer to USA as very democratic or China as a center of human rights violation.
If there is no blanket ban, there would have to be many laws, rules, regulations and restrictions prohibiting the software from government buildings, etc.
In addition to the data points: contacts, ___location, audio, video, etc, malicious actors can learn a lot through deduction. That's before any sort of manipulation.
>If Chinese apps are allowed, then China has a big advantage over USA
Historically speaking the biggest threat by far to the lives and livelihood of US citizens is the US government and corporate elite. Giving them more power to control what information the population can access is much more dangerous to the average American than giving the Chinese government some data.
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.