this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 74 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Both are bad, one is worse.

[–] MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I hope you mean Google, they track you all over the web whether you want to be tracked or not just because lazy web developers can't be bothered to host their own fonts (and other ways but that's just one example). You have to deliberately download or use TikTok for them to get your data.

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[–] FrankFrankson@lemmy.world 73 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

There is sooooo much weird conspiracy shit in these comments. The government is banning TikTok becuase they collect too much data and the Chinese government could eaisly get access to all of it. The correct thing to do would be to regulate data collection but that would be problematic for Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple..etc etc... so instead they just ban TikTok. All this TikTok refusing to spread deep state US govt propaganda horse shit is a bit past nuts.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 16 points 1 week ago (11 children)

This is a pretty sane explanation.

I'm also at least partially convinced that it's motivated by our social media giants' interest to "think of the children" their competition away.

Seeing as the order was basically "Get bought by an American corpo or get banned." They either plunder the competitor's insane data collection, userbase, and profits, or kick them off their corner.

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 67 points 1 week ago (20 children)

Imagine cheering that your government decided witch social media are you allowed to use.

[–] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Well yeah, but it's the US government which hasn't ever done anything problematic before. I'm sure it's for everyone's best interest. /S

Which if that were true, still wouldn't matter.

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[–] SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

This meme brought to you by some poor CIA agent

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[–] Filthmontane@lemmy.world 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, I forgot the other social media apps don't collect data and spew propaganda. Oh wait... They do.

[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 30 points 1 week ago

Yeah but only for the benevolent western ultra rich oligarchs, so it's gucci.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Can someone explain to me how it's worse for a foreign government to have your information than your own government having that same information? Your own government is far more likely to actually be able to do something about you.

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It probably won't make a difference for you, but if you worked in a government facility and they're spying on you, obtaining credentials, obtaining information on infrastructure in the energy sector, government facilities, etc., getting network credentials, getting floorplans, getting times where a changing of the guard occurs, etc. - any foreign entity can use that info to tear a country down from the inside and kick off a full scale war.

Local government isn't going to self-saborage with that information. Yeah, spying on the citizens is awful and we should avoid any apps/devices that do that too, but that's not as bad as war unless it gets so bad that it gets to a point of civil war which seems unlikely.

inb4 tankies claim "conspiracy":
China hacked US Telecom Infrastructure
China hacking US Treasury
Two recent events I was able to dig up fairly quickly. Wouldn't be surprised if there's more. Apparently they tapped Trump's phone too, but not sure how credible the article/source is.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

That's true but it doesn't apply to the vast majority of people. People who work in the government should be more aware of these things and I believe the tiktok ban started as only on government devices which is a lot more reasonable than a blanket ban.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Foreign governments are supposed to buy information from American social media companies. Tik Tok cut out the middleman so they're getting banned.

[–] frayedpickles@lemmy.cafe 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Not a foreign gov. China.

This is analogous to the diff between Ireland having nukes and Russia having nukes.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Okay, what is China going to do about me calling their president winnie the pooh or bringing up tiananmen square or whatever?

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[–] beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

FTFY

edit : ooooh the wee St Petersburg trollies are tryin’ ta tryin’ ta ain’tcha!

News flash, responder-guys: if you’re even humans & not the AI bots who took most of your colleagues’ jobs, you’re still always be undervalued by your bosses. They’ll never, ever save you: they’ll save their Teslas and stock portfolios instead. Your life kinda sucks and there’s nothing you can do about it AND YOU CHOSE THIS LIFE, DIDNT YOU. Free yourself. Quit this shit job and go back to school before it’s too late.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

whataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhatabout tho?

(For anyone reading this in the future: they made that edit addressing "responder-guys" when the comment had only one reply lol 🤡)

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[–] De_Narm@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago (13 children)

The last panel applies to every other social media, just replace the spying country.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 week ago (4 children)

That last part is becoming less and less relevant .... someone is spying but it isn't for the benefit or under the control of a country. More and more, the spying is meant more for the purposes of commerce and finance, for money and control. For business interests which is what major governments mainly represent.

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[–] just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 1 week ago (32 children)

Tiktok got banned not for peddling "chinese propaganda" but instead not peddling the US one.

All the major tech companies in the US take measures to ensure content deemed unworthy by the government never become mainstream or viral.

This is done under the pretense of stopping "hate speech" or "terroristic propaganda" but often include things like pro-palestinian content or class struggle content (like luigi mangione stuff).

Tiktok was bold enough to not do that by default, cuz they wanted someone to ask them to do this and then it would become a huge scandal about how the US suppresses free speech. And US gov don't want to do that for this exact reason as well. So they decided to ban it.

Remember talks for this "law" were initiated when all of a sudden tiktok became a host for pro-palestinian voices. We should ask ourselves, how is it that 60% of americans want the government to stop arms sales to israel but this 60% never shows up on the big social media platforms. But on other platforms like here in lemmy and tiktok, pro-palestinians is the majority.

For further reading, listen to employees fired from big US tech companies for voicing their concerns over the palestine issue, or read Meta's new terms and conditions specially the section on "dangerous organizations and individuals".

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[–] chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 27 points 1 week ago (11 children)
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[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Since this is the place for the most serious discussion:

If US lawmakers focused on protecting American's privacy with some sensible privacy laws coughGDPR equivalent cough, we could avoid pulling out the ban hammer to play whack-a-mole on these companies.

Companies would simply be punished by the law for being malicious or irresponsible with your data, forcing industries to take privacy seriously and make investments in protecting and not leaking it.

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[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 20 points 1 week ago (29 children)
[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (13 children)

We were trailblazers for a time. Other than that, we were always kind of fucked as a democratic system.

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[–] alekwithak@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago
[–] MetalMachine@feddit.nl 19 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Yeah but not Facebook and Twitter and other American ones. Right?

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[–] Shortstack@reddthat.com 14 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Those are valid criticisms, but can equally be applied to all of the rest of our main social media platforms.

I’m not seeing a big difference here between TikTok and YouTube except that one is not able to be influenced or backdoored by the US government and the other is.

In essence the optics here look an awful lot like the US simply doesn’t like other nations mining their citizens data that they want for themselves, and having foreign control of the type of news being fed by their algorithm.

Just remember that before Snowden dropped a dime on the NSA, similar suspicions sounded pretty wacky too

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[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Yeah, only AMIERICAN companies can spy on our citizens and flood them with propaganda!

USA! USA! USA!

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[–] Sorgan71@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (9 children)

I think tiktok should be banned for its addictive algorithm. It is far worse than any other social media for that reason.

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[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (18 children)

Blah blah blah "we built our own great firewall and painted it red white and blue, and even banned the use of vpns to get to foreign sites which even China doesn't do. We're totally the good guys BTW."

Americans are so fucking stupid, oh my god.

@EDIT: So it turns out the RESTRICT Act, that I was thinking of, and which banned VPNs, was shot down. And the current and approved Tiktok ban law doesn't do that. So. My b. This one is on me. I stand by "Americans are so fucking stupid oh my god", though, because you're still cheering for loss of net liberty.

[–] FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

as an American yeah, seeing this post is just depressing. like people are actively cheering a loss of internet freedom. the government doesn't care about bytedance or else capcut would have to go too. they care about controlling information, tiktok has been essential in issues like Palestine, even if I don't like the platform itself I can admit that.

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[–] respectmahauthoritybrah@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I might be killed, but seeing the comments i feel like lemmy is getting too into the zone of umm like judging the action based on the person instead of judging the action/statement itself, yeah the US gov is a piece of shit, and also they probably don't have the peoples best interest in mind, but the act of banning tiktok, according to me, is a right move, i can see nd myself have felt the humongous mental impact it has on teens (like me) basically killing their attention span, and making them feel like they need to pick up their phone, heck kids cant read 10pages from their physics book, infact reading a page only thoroughly is a tough task for most of them, and i m not talking abt a few select cases, i can see this in 95% of kids (this is anecdotal tho), ever since i stopped using reels/tiktoks/shorts, i can feel my mind improving

Also the whole slew of misinformation and propaganda tiktok is, is another issue

Again I agree with ppl that the US doesn’t hv the ppls best interest, but i do feel this might help atleast some ppl break their addiction, so many I know are aware they r addicted but can’t stop, banning the app altogether might help

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[–] RangerJosie@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Fuck you. I'm going to RedNote. Purely out of spite. Because I'd rather dropship my DNA to the Communist Party of China HQ than give my data to Zucc or Elon.

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[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm not a fan of government banning stuff, but like... if they are gonna do it, ban Wechat too. My parent's be so deep in the Wechat propaganda, I wonder what they do without Wechat.

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Except they've banned 1 source for appeasement rather than enact a strong law or policy for long-term safety.

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