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So the reason why Tik Tok was not allowed to run as a Chinese company, was not to prevent Chinese propaganda but to allow for US propaganda
Yes, that is literally the point.
Same reason grok is allowed to generate CSAM but not unflattering images of Trump.
It’s better if one of donnie’s buttboys/buttgals run every aspect of major media outlets in this country. And if they are not run directly by someone that is ideologically devoted to the felon in chief, they should at least bend the knee every once in a while and pay him tribute for their “crimes” of accurate reporting.
What do you think the other social networks are for?
Oh, the moment that fucking congress was involved, I knew they were all upset that millions of people were using a communication platform that they had zero eyeballs on. Worse yet, the only party that did was a foreign superpower. All of that is very bad news for entrenched politics, with people able to collectively invent a different mindset and/or get swayed by outside interests. The only way to fix this was ban it or own it somehow: the very two options floated at the time.
Meanwhile we narrowly avoided a precedent for a great firewall of our own.
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Unfortunately everyone else also reaps in this case.
With that mindset, we are all doomed. I get the desire to shit on them, just like the people who haven’t left X. But for every person who knows about the manipulation and censorship, I guarantee there’s another who’s ignorant of it, and will be shaped by it unwittingly. This is not a good thing and having that mindset only serves to allow others to get away with this.
Tell people. Save this article and share it. Remind people of the fuckery behind the scenes whenever you get an opportunity. Be annoying about it. The people who are tuned out are the ones who need to hear it the most. Tell anyone you know using tik tok. Try convincing someone you know to quit the app. It’s better than telling them to reap what they sow. because we all lose when anyone is convinced the propaganda is real
Trump’s whole thing is making his own reality. If you don’t challenge that reality every time he tries to lie or cheat, then it will only get worse and worse.
But for every person who knows about the manipulation and censorship, I guarantee there’s another who’s ignorant of it
I wish it were 1:1. Probably more like 1:20.
Tell people. Save this article and share it. Remind people of the fuckery behind the scenes whenever you get an opportunity.
The idea is sound until you consider that people get into their own bubbles. People who avoided tiktok because they saw the imminent danger are NOT in the same space as people who are all-in. So telling the people around you is great, but 9 times out of 10 you’re going to be preaching to the choir. The vast majority who need to know will never hear, and even if they do, it will immediately be met with a response ranging from “ok boomer” to “leave me alone.”
This is legitimately a HUGE problem, and we’re seeing lots of protests NOW because of the young people who grew up in a media environment that drove home how important values, respect, and human decency were, but given 10 or 20 years, the children who grow up in this new media landscape are going to be VERY different.
I’m a consequentialist, fuck those people.
TikTok was the big left-liberal influence platform in a sea of neoliberal, conservative, and outright fascist platforms.
But one too many Tokkers posted bad things about Israel and/or good things about Iran, Venezuela, and our immortal enemy China. So President Brandon had to shut that shit down.
Now the US branch of the platform is back in line with the rest of US media
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I mean, tell it to the folks watching CBS Evening News. Or reading the New York Post.
For some reason, its only the newer forms of media that ever take flak as “brain rot”. As though the style carries more weight than the substance.
With all due respect, I think the problem is essentially two wrongs don’t make a right. Can we have media that doesn’t suck and enough proles consume it willingly? Idk. I had hope once upon a time, but we’ve sold it hard to kids that it’s uncool to care about anything for more than 5 seconds, and the absolute coolest to fry your brain and consume only impulsive fantasy bs. Beyond that, earlier generations convinced themselves that you don’t have to think critically or feel bad about stepping on others as long as it’s what your in-group is doing. So idk what the answer is, all I’m saying is all those media options suck ass.
Can we have media that doesn’t suck and enough proles consume it willingly?
Definitely. The things that “suck” in media are profit engines that can only exist in parallel with the things that proles benefit by consuming. If you have a channel that’s “Oops, all ads!” your user base shrivels up into a tiny nugget of Home Shopping Channel die-hards. But if you have a channel that’s purely public services, it relies on public sponsorship (either directly through membership or indirectly through state aid). It can’t operate at a large profit or justify outside private investment to rapidly expand.
There’s always a balancing act between content that benefits the audience and content that benefits the broadcaster.
Beyond that, earlier generations convinced themselves that you don’t have to think critically or feel bad about stepping on others as long as it’s what your in-group is doing.
That’s not true. That’s never been true. This isn’t an issue of generational divide. This is an issue of local communities partitioned by their access to modes of communication and the regional influence of the neighborhood’s industrial powerhouse.
One of the most reliable indicators of a voting district’s partisan affiliation is the presence of Oil & Natural Gas industrial activity. Like, if you want to talk about why the Gulf Coast states, Ohio, and central Pennsylvania are bleeding red, it centers heavily on their enormous concentration of O&G facilities and staff. Energy sector workers are uniformly predisposed to the party that supports expanding O&G exploration, exploitation, refinement, and export.
These people aren’t above “thinking critically”. They just see where their bread is buttered (red state plutocracy generally benefits from Oil-Friendly Republican administrations) and vote accordingly. It’s the grim math of “Do I want a five/six figure bonus at the end of the year?” which party organizers and their business allies in the state make abundantly clear during election season.
Your problem isn’t that people don’t think critically, its that they do and the conclusions they reach aren’t favorable to your partisan allies.
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While I do think everyone should avoid short-form video because it’s junk food for the mind, non-users have to care about it because enough people use it that it steers public opinion.
My girlfriend used to be on TikTok a lot. Her page was mostly trans news and gloom. It used to be a pretty far left platform like lemmy, but it’s corpo owned, so now we’re here.
Should have removed Tik Tok the moment you downloaded it.
or never download it in the first place…
I confess, i did download and install tik tok 2 times in the last few years.
But i uninstalled it again, right after a quick look around.
How is this NOT government censorship? How is this NOT a direct violation of everyone’s freedom of speech rights???
edit: yes I Know tikkk tokkk is a private company, but they are doing the censorship at the direction of, and for the benefit of the white house.
I would argue it wouldn’t be a violation normally, but since the government forced the sale I’d say it is. If they can just force any platform that doesn’t play along to sell to someone who will, that’s not a free market.
That’s the neat part, it is, but nothing matters if it isn’t enforced, and Nazis own everything
Who saw that coming
I have had every single comment of these two photos removed and threatened with a ban. They are actively trying to suppress this.
Jesus H. Christ!
Also pro Palestine stuff is blocked
Ironic considering Israel was behind Epstein and Ghisline . Must be a coincidence
On the positive side, the fediverse has just been given a new use case for a lot of disaffected TikTok users.
On the negative side…
People who have lived half a decade on algorithm-fed short-form video feeds are not looking to replace it with text message boards and still image memes.
They’re going to stay exactly where they are and just have the nutrient mix of the IV adjusted.
Each batch of crazy at Twitter moved people off Twitter and to Mastodon and Bluesky. Loops won’t catch them all but it’ll get some.
i just tried to sign back into loops, app’s too old, went to run the update, doesn’t support my 2024 samsung phone.
edit: I figured it out!
so the installer error pointed out that the package was unparsable, leading me to believe it was 32 bit or a different flavor of arm.
I had to install through ADB to get the real error. Existing version is newer the package. Which was wrong, but to play the game, I uninstalled first and got the same error, then I realized I had loops also installed in the knox partition. Went into secure folder, uninstalled loops, installed package, (no error) and it works fine.
I seriously doubt this will help anyone here, but there it is.
I feel like the big tech push to apps so folks can have data harvested better has become a surprising hurdle for the fediverse. Because I’ve found the web UI for most of the fediverse great, and the apps to be harder for devs to maintain.
I literally just use Lemmy on Firefox on my phone, runs a lot smoother than reddit did on any app. Has some weirdness on occasions but still better than reddit crashing for no reason.
I definitely like Lemmy/piefed webUI a lot. Pixelfed is adequate, loops is kinda rough Mastodon is okish; discovery on it is a PITA.
On lemmy, you can find a bunch of communities and subscribe, easily build up a feed. Mastodon having servers as communities is rough, then trying to find creators you like via hashtags, I won’t say that platform needs a complex algorithm, but it could stand to have some simple you followed this person, people who followed this person also like that person.
Tiktok alternatives can be developed too. The one and only issue is always just network effects.
Loops: am I a joke to you?
No algorithm, they’ll just go hang out on Bluesky. They don’t want to follow people or communities, they want to be delivered vibes from an engine that ‘gets’ them.
I’m not blaming them, algo’s are like crack. you just get what you want in exchange for a little time on your eyes for something you might want to buy.
and you think those TucTuc users with an attention span of 15 seconds will be able to figure out how to get the best out of the plethora the decentralized Fediverse has to offer?
fuck, for most beginners learning what instances federate with which other ones is a tough learning curve.
I’d trust Redditurds more, until they can’t find the same subreddits because no-one has created them yet and no one seems to want to be a mod for free (well except them).
at least here most mods get recognition and aren’t tied to a corporate platform.
and do we even want TucTuckers here?
Why would you need to know who federated where? Are you expecting that they have communities and instances they want to make sure they can view from just one account before they even switch?
Just pick an instance, live the life, and create another account if you want one. All you really need is instance-wide blocking and the rest doesn’t really matter.
Yes I do. And I like TikTok. I just view this as a ripe opportunity for the Fediverse.
Yeah the damage has been done. Half these kids lives have been spent on short form brain rot. There is no going back. Its a generation of idiots.
Well, like in any generation, there is a certain percentage of highly motivated, cream of the crop kids who will rise above it and succeed at becoming well-informed despite everything.
The real danger is the AVERAGE capability of those who DON’T seek better will crater, and in a democratic system, the capability of your system isn’t based on your top geniuses, it’s based on your average citizen. We’re going to have the most brilliant, capable generation of top minds the world has ever seen at the mercy of completely irrational fools ruled by dopamine and novelty.
…so in that sense, I guess it’s not really all that different from now.
Same as it ever was!
Newest inductee to the Dead App Club.
The fascists will descend upon it. It will turn to garbage. The only value in staying will be to study what incels are like close up.
As an older millennial who was around when all this social media bullshit started, I’ve accepted that attending app funerals is a normal part of life and there’s always a new app to move on to. Not a big deal.
It is a big deal that 99.9% of idiots won’t leave the platform and instead will be getting all kinds of propaganda.
This isn’t like Digg -> Reddit. This is something else.
Indeed: a LOT of people are still on Twitter/X.
Including millions and millions that really should know better, but can’t be assed to be the slightest bit inconvenienced.
100% of TikTok users since the moment it launched are idiots
And they’re already leaving the platform.
.1% are leaving
I spit on TikToks grave. It lived as a weapon and will die as one, rightfully so it should die young.
Like twitter and Reddit? Are there others?
Friendster lol
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Grace!
Grace!
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I downloaded tiktok when it first came out scrolled through it for a while. Realized there was no porn on it and then uninstalled it.
Porn is life and life is porn. Seriously. Your conception was an act of pornography and some people find giving birth to be a turn on.
🤣🤣🤣
It is also ironic or coincidental. Not entirely sure but I’m getting married this weekend. So my porn consumption is at an all-time low! 🤷
Edit: I just realized that that sounds like a humble brag…
“But I can search Tiananmen Square again, checkmate commies!”
—Man with pit vipers live-streaming from inside his F-150
Larry Ellison will lose billions on this. TikTok will go the way of MySpace.
It seems like a no-lose for aspiring oligarchs, buying a social media platform with a large enough left and/or youth user base:
- muck with the algorithm until what remains is a new right-wing echo chamber; or
- accidentally sink the whole platform, but at least you wrecked a popular place for left-wing messaging; or
- somehow not meaningfully change the status quo, and end up with loads of user data and ad revenue.
Yup. It’s hard to look at this and not imagine de-platforming the left sphere as deliberate.
It was my first thought when Elon was circling Twitter, pre-purchase.
Yeah, that move was far more conventional though. “Big industry fat-cat buys major newspaper” is right out of the 19th century cartoon villain playbook, which seems to be Elon’s whole bag.
One can hope… but Twitter still exists and people were saying the same thing about that when Elmo bought it.
Ya. But he made it the new hate speech network. Anyone still there is very wrong for not leaving.
The only people on Twitter now are hateful right winged morons and crypto bros. Which also happen to not be mutually exclusive.
One can only hope.
I have a feeling they’re trying to see how much they can get away with before changing course.
Larry Ellison will lose billions on this.
So what? He can generate more. Money has gravity. So does influence.
Nah bro. Ellison money is tied up in stock price of a company that has terrible products. It will collapse after the ai bubble pops.
I yearn for the days when Tiktok was still Chinese spyware, instead of US/Israeli spyware. Leftist agitprop really popped of there for a while.
I yearn for the days when people didn’t willingly install Spyware at all.
You yearn for the days before Microsoft Windows?
Do you think Trump is guilty? LOL I hate this country.
Remember when Google had the same “glitch” right after the inauguration?
The only way this happens is if there’s custom handling for these queries, and ask why there would be custom handling for things anti Trump?
Yeah I remember when TikTok praised our glorious leader.
If I remember correctly, BEFORE he was even inaugurated
