I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There's something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it's just not that interesting after a while. I don't need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don't need to see more pretty mountain bikes I can't afford. I don't need to see anymore drone shots of Milford Sound in New Zealand.
Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me.
Something about Tiktok, whether the algorithm or the sheer volume of content, seems to discourage the sort of look-at-me envy-bait narcissistic posturing that is so common on Instagram. To be popular on Tiktok you actually have to do stuff (even it's fairly banal like dancing or telling stories), not just be (or pretend to be) someone.
I found it funny that the author of this post is trying to defend liberal values like the free flow of information on the internet by...making Apple and Google remove Tiktok from people's phones. He's correct that the primary political risk of Tiktok is the recommendation algorithm being manipulated. However, American tech companies manipulate their recommendation algorithms for political reasons (in the loose sense of the word political) all the time and I'm sure not everyone in the world likes that either.
This would have been a good chance to really defend free flow of information on the internet, open and swappable recommendation algorithms, personal data ownership, and so on, but the conclusion is basically "it's bad because a China-affiliated company does it". Generally, everything that Tiktok does that is wrong is also wrong when Facebook does it. The reality is that Tiktok is (for now) a superior product in many ways to anything from American tech companies. Why is this?
That's the kind of content that survives the crucibles of Chinese censorship, "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It's how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics (especially politics) is how toxicity is produced. It's counterproductive to even try. It's why TikTok's content policy is designed to protect the status quo, often misinterpreted as being pro-Beijing when it's broadly pro-establishment. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place. That said, I guess it's possible for TikTok to be weaponized to sow division, but why would they need to when the whole of western media sphere is doing so already.
IMO the style has it's place, whole of China has no choice but to live under it, but in the west, a plurality of content management philosophies calibrated for different audiences is good. There's lessons in managing toxicity to learn from TikTok even if it gets banned.
This is a good point, although I suspect most people don't really want to see the toxicity. People are always complaining that they can't make certain things go away on Facebook even though they're constantly telling it "I don't want this". The one time I can remember where someone got "cancelled" on Tiktok, most of the criticism was carried out on other platforms like Twitter and Youtube ("Nurse Holly" if you're curious). I'd try to see how well Tiktok's recommendations can identify "toxic sectarian flame wars", but I don't want to clutter up my feed (which is 90% not in English anyway).
Enough people LOVE drama and toxicity to perpetuate reality TV and online beef culture. Many of my hobbyist communities have been affect at some point in the last few years. I personally enjoy some of the drama (powerlifting/bodybuilding), but I just don't want them to shit where they eat and keep it off the platforms for their OG non-drama content. It's nice to have moderated space away from all that. I have my private communities, but I think TikTok is attempting to bring that feel to a larger scale. It's problematic if that's all there is like Chinese firewall. But when there's many media options, it's a nice spot of respite.
I see plenty conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and quack medicine on TikTok. Way way way more than on other platforms. Less of traditional politics, blm and similar stuff tho.
Ah, good to know I “misinterpreted [it] as pro-Beijing” when it’s actually just “broadly pro-establishment” and put in place by the establishment in Beijing. Totally different.
"I found it funny that the author of this post is trying to defend liberal values like the free flow of information on the internet by...making Apple and Google remove Tiktok from people's phones."
This is what the posted article is about. I cannot write a rebuttal to this that is better than what Ben Thompson wrote, and I won't. The section "A Reluctant Prescription" section is directly about this.
I can rebut this, however:
"However, American tech companies manipulate their recommendation algorithms for political reasons (in the loose sense of the word political) all the time and I'm sure not everyone in the world likes that either."
I find it very hard to believe they don't promote content intended to elicit an emotional response to drive engagement in China the same way they do everywhere else.
My theoretical answer would be that we can regulate American companies more effectively and have them be held accountable, like when Zuckerberg had to go before Congress. I doubt you'd be able to get the CEO of a large Chinese company to do that.
In reality we don't regulate them nearly as much as we can, so the end result is that FB and Tiktok both invade your privacy.
As a non-American looking on, it seems to me like the US government has failed spectacularly at any kind of regulation, and to the contrary is often actively trying to undermine privacy laws. Zuckerberg in front of congress achieved exactly zero, except provide footage for loads of memes of Zuckerberg as a lizard.
I prefer the idea of a US based social media company to a Chinese one. But only slightly. I would much rather the company be based somewhere with genuine intent to create consumer safety and privacy focused laws.
All Chinese Internet companies are compelled by the country’s National Intelligence Law to turn over any and all data that the government demands, and that power is not limited by China’s borders. Moreover, this requisition of data is not subject to warrants or courts, as is the case with U.S. government requests for data from Facebook or any other entity;
Their privacy policy notes data may be shared as well:
while TikTok claims that it is independent from ByteDance and stores data in the U.S. and Singapore, its privacy policy is clear:
"We may share your information with a parent, subsidiary, or other affiliate of our corporate group."
No, it really isn't even a little bit of a leap. Can't tell if you're trolling or severely misinformed.
>Following the shutdown, ByteDance announced that it would give preference to Chinese Communist Party members in its hiring and increase its censors from 6,000 to 10,000 employees.
it's a "superior" product because it's new and not yet commercialized. once it is, you'll get the same sort of gaming (influencer culture, ad placement, etc) that you see in every other social media
I think it has a lot to do with how TikTok manages the balance between consumption and creation. Only a fraction of viewers on YouTube for example create content where a significant portion (55%) on TikTok both create AND Consume.
This was an analysis on TikTok vs YouTube and focuses on how TikTok leverages mimcry to overcome the initial burden of ideation and yields significant content creation for its platform.
> Something about Tiktok, whether the algorithm or the sheer volume of content, seems to discourage the sort of look-at-me envy-bait narcissistic posturing that is so common on Instagram.
I haven't used Tiktok, but from what I understand you can only post videos taken using the phone's camera and they can only be edited using whatever filters are available within the app, effectively limiting how manipulated or manufactured the content can be. Sort of like a Snapchat for videos (with the caveat that you can save and post videos at a later time in Tiktok, whereas with Snapchat it's "now or never"). Coupled with not having an associated text component where you can easily post testimonials and links to a site where you're selling a self help book, get rich quick scheme, juice cleanse or gym routine, it should limit how easy it is to use it as a promotion platform.
They are comparable in how they work technically and what they do with your data, but this is less true of "which geopolitical overlord are you supporting". I edited my post from "equally wrong when Facebook does it" to "also wrong when Facebook does it" to clarify this. To "see ads targeting you" Facebook has to steal as much of your personal data as is technically possible, map out all your social relationships, and then sell it to hundreds of companies all over the world. In any case, the path from watching Tiktoks to supporting concentration camps is long and thin. Most people are not thinking about this and are just using Tiktok because they like it better than anything else.
Do you agree that all Chinese companies (even foreign ones operating in China), state owned or not, has to do whatever CCP wants?
If you do, you already have the answer.
If you don't, I suggest you get to know a bit more about China before CCP's alternative facts become the facts.
Here in India, TikTok was massively popular in smaller towns and villages. The content was so different than Instagram.
I really thought it was invaluable (TikTok is banned now). For us city dwelling upper middle class people, it gave a rare glimpse into the lives of people less privileged. And it wasn't maudlin or patronizing as a lot of narratives about the poor tend to be. Rather it was fun and authentic.
I remember when the lockdown happened and a lot of migrant workers were left stranded, the news channels were filled with horror stories and heartbreaking videos of poor families walking hundreds of kilometres to their homes. But on TikTok, there were plenty of videos shot by the same migrant workers where they shared their woes, but would sometimes break into a dance or make fun of their situation.
There are a bunch of TikTok clones floating around and they've racked up some users. But I'm not sure if these clones would have the tech to serve the kind of recommendations TikTok did. Some, like "Mitron", are basically pre-made scripts bought online and rebadged [0]. They don't have the tech DNA to get recommendations right - which was one big reason for TikTok's success.
Yes. It's called Chingari. Since the ban, downloads have been shooting up. It's now 2M+ or so downloads while being no where near as polished as TikTok UI
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
>Instagram (explore/discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places.
TikTok actively pressured the moderators to filter out 'ugly, poor or disabled'[1].
I haven't used TikTok, but I think such apps of mass appeal at this age of intense screen time competition will resort activities like this; there is no magical reason for TikTok to be better than other limited attention social networks.
Even though I never thought of using TikTok, now as a disabled person I feel morally obliged to not use it.
What I mentioned was least of TikTok's initial criticism.
It was known to be a safe haven for much worse type of people(X) because the app was predominantly used by teens in Asian countries where child protection online laws are nearly nonexistent.
Apart from turning a blind eye to it, along with moderation principles which made sure X got what they want, TikTok rose to market leader due to sheer number of Asian population.
TikTok (Musically) was an Asian first app unlike Instagram, high Smartphone/Internet penetration acted as a catalyst.
Only when they got prominence in western market, they started regulating the content for vulgarity.
"I'm not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked."
All these apps use behavioral design to get you hooked.
Tiktok is oversocialization on steroids. You have people not only acting out the behavioral scripts embedded and triggered in some meme music or voice you have people mimetically acting out what others are acting out. The psychological manipulation possible though TikTok is immense.
You can phrase it cynically, but that stuff isn't inherently bad. Or at least, it's not worse than anything else people aimlessly browse on the internet. Mostly, it's just fun.
The aimless, constant dopamine hits are incredibly scary. Especially because people who tend towards using it are the ones who need it least. Especially in children.
I guarantee this: children who use TikTok (and YouTube to an extent, etc), will have issues in the future keeping attention on work, and other forms of important and difficult problems and introspection.
Our roommate who used it in our house is a dopamine addict. He never reads, is by far the laziest and sloppiest, he’s also unapologetic about it and unwilling to acknowledge it, sucks at conversation generally because he has nothing to add because all he does is game, YouTube, TikTok and work, and they all feed into each other. And worst - he’s just totally comfortable being the laggard. Everyone else is happier. They contribute more. They clean, they maintain. They do more and have more to talk about because of that.
I fear a generation of children raised on constant dopamine drip. I already see how hard it’s become for me to sit and read or sit and meditate and I try and avoid all that (Twitter is my vice). But I have a friend with a daughter who is addicted to YouTube/TikTok and I fear greatly for a generation raised like that.
Behavioral Psychology really needs to be a general studies topic, introduced to secondary education.
I remember my local high school's motto when I was growing up was something like, "we're not here to teach, we're here to create good, informed consumers".
Never mind the obvious problems with that statement, but just considering it on face-value: how can people become good, informed consumers without having some kind of exposure to the concepts of how easily information can be collected about and used to manipulate people?
I don't expect most high school students to inculcate the full breadth of the topic, just as so few seem to actually learn and retain anything about history, social studies, or even the freaking alphabet (I've met way too many people who think the English alphabet has 25 letters). But currently, the general populace has no idea the extent to which they and their data can be manipulated. It would be enough if all they learned was "you and your data can be manipulated".
>I remember my local high school's motto when I was growing up was something like, "we're not here to teach, we're here to create good, informed consumers".
I don't get it, was this the actual real motto, or something people said tongue in cheek?
That's a great way to put it. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but that's totally what is happening on IG. A lot of DTC brands have basically saturated my feed. I'm not sure how much longer this can continue without losing engagement. Anecdotally my own interest in IG has been waning the past year almost to the point of deletion.
This happens and has been happening all over the Internet. IG won't be the last victim. As soon as corporate America figures out how to sell their Ranch dressing over a platform, the brands start invading and the whole platform turns vanilla and boring.
It will only get worse as they roll out more and more shopping features...but in fairness they are smart and either anticipating the changing social media market (meaning there may be a critical mass of influencers realizing they treat IG like a job except without compensation) or it’s simply a way to test going after Amazon.
That's the kind of content that survives the crucibles of Chinese censorship, "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It's how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics (especially politics) is how toxicity is produced. It's counterproductive to even try. It's why TikTok's content policy is designed to protect the status quo, often misinterpreted as being pro-Beijing when it's broadly pro-establishment. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place.
E: IMO the style has it's place, whole of China has no choice but to live under it, but in the west, a plurality of content management philosophies calibrated for different audiences is good. There's lessons in managing toxicity to learn from TikTok even if it gets banned.
Sorry my original comment didn't cover this. Lots and lots of the content I see in my feed is liberal, left, anti-authoritarian. I get nuanced views about the black lives matter movement, feminism, social media, etc. even blatant critiques about what tiktok is doing to young people (especially young women).
Maybe every 5th video in my feed is extremely political. It's not all just la-di-da dance and cat videos.
West got their regionalized treatment and given more latitude in response to media pieces alleging political censorship last year. I surmise controversial content doesn't get promoted much outside the immediate circles. Main point is the DNA of why TikTok feels the way it does is connected to experiences learned cultivating media platforms behind Chinese firewall. Politics and toxicity exist all over Chinese internet as well, they just get filtered / harmonized over time or never reach many eyes in the first place. My hope is that TikTok sticks around at least long enough to monetize and demonstrate that social media doesn't have to primarily drive conflict to reach eyeballs. Douyin (TikTok parent app) is fairly profitable in China, but it's hard to tell if the model works unless its exported and flourishes under different cultural backgrounds.
I feel the same way about a lot of social media personalities, YouTube ... there's all these youtube-isms that every youtuber eventually adopts. You follow someone, they get popular, then they do some reaction videos, or they decide to evolve into some sort of lifestyle / social media pundit / etc... I really don't care to watch folks react to things or any of that other stuff.
They all encourage a lot of nasty / outrageous content over time as that's what gets eyeballs.
I think much more positive, authentic, curated / focused content would be great. I'm done with filtering twitter, youtube, instagram ... endlessly as content eventually goes sour.
> Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me.
How did you get there? I played with TikTok for a while, but never escaped the "teenagers making videos about other teenagers to pop music" ghetto, and it didn't seem like there was a way for me to tell the algorithm what I wanted without just hoping it surfaced something that I could like.
My TikTok feed is ~70% animal videos and honestly it's the best app for positive content. It starts with way too many young women dancing but you can just mark them as "not interesting" and they will diminish.
Btw IG discovery is mainly based on people you follow and things you like. For example I see more memes and tech stuff on IG than I ever do of yoga pants. If I see something I dont like I mark it as not interested.
I know. I tried that so many times. I think I must have marked 'not interested' on thousands of posts at this point.
For some reason, IG thinks I'm a track athlete (among many other things). Even for stuff I am legitimately into (like mountain biking), my IG explore page mostly serves me up these random accounts called things like 'MTBdaze' or 'bike247' that just seem to repost random pics/memes as a way to grow the follower count.
Oh I see, yeah that doesn't help sadly, for me though the stuff it shows me does not correlate with the people I follow at all. The algorithm must be weird I guess?
I am not a TikTok user but when I first tried TikTok a couple years ago it struck me as extremely well made app geared for creativity.
The traditional social media dominated by US companies is about sharing what you eat what you do where you are who do you sleep with and what you are angry about. People are essentially misbehaving when they post funny videos.
TikTok on the other hand is playful and the encouraged behaviour is to be creative.
When someone misbehaves on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook they would post videos that someone else made and A lot of that content is made on TikTok. The only creative space is in YouTube but it's not because YouTube encourages it but because there are people capable if using it like that.
I am not convinced that the issue with TikTok is a security issue, It's just that SV lost it's edge on culture and technology, and the crusade against TikTok or Huawei is mostly protectionism and this protectionism will eventually lead to Israel, EU, Japan, Korea, UK, Australia to spit domestic and global success stories like China does these days.
If the concerns were about security, there would have been regulations to ensure security(like requiring storing US users data on US soil and so on). USA is not doing that, USA is in war mode.
What even worse? People don't even want to hear it.
I am not the biggest fan of Peter Theil but I think he has a point on the monoculture, group thinking, high rents.
Instagram has other uses as well. I use it mostly to follow artists, so for me it’s primarily the world’s most interesting (constantly) changing exhibition.
I see maybe one selfie a week. I also know people who use it for home workouts. I’m sure there are a bunch of other, non-shallow, non-bland uses I haven’t heard of.
True. I don't make tiktoks and my friends are on IG. It's basically a private friends video journal for that use. My point was more about content discovery.
>Hacker News all look seriously dated in comparison
Yes please make a movie about your next it projekt ;)
I even hate repair-videos on youtube, it's slow and lame, the fix-it manuals are 1000s times better (since i know what a torx is and that most screws open counter-clock-wise)
> I even hate repair-videos on youtube, it's slow and lame,
Here are some TikTok tutorials on light painting [0]. I'm not saying that I like them, or that they are good, but they are incredibly pacey compared with the YouTube equivalents
Those are fascinating, and give me a glimpse into a world I didn't even know I found interesting.
One major difference (that some may care about less than I do) is that the TikTok format is great for seeing a variety of content, but does little to help me create. Admittedly, YouTube is filled with lots of filler information (to please their own algorithms) but I could probably figure out what cameras/lights to use, software settings, how to edit, etc... The best TikTok can do is show me what others are capable of.
These tutorials are about how to set up a still a light painting using a DSLR or mirrorless camera in a long exposure mode. TikTok is just being used to record the movement of the light during the long exposure, not to explain the settings (ISO, shutter speed, aperture, etc) of the still camera that takes the final shot.
If there's something that I really really like YouTube for, it would be the videos showing you how to fix or build things. Good woodworking, metalworking, electronics repair videos are hard to find, but I remember seeing a few that were much better than a manual. The manual typically shows one view of a project or workpiece, but good videos show multiple views, close ups, pictures of different configurations I might expect.
You do typically have to wade through a lot of crappy "Hey Guys Like and Subscribe!" garbage with 30 second title sequences to find the good ones though.
I like stuff like Townsends (cooking and build stuff in the old days) but repair stuff big NO for me, but learn howto solder big YES. It really depends.
EDIT: Wow i clicked on #Coding and it is like i taught about it...pure waste of time with Rainbowhairs and talking needle slim guy's with more grease on top than the hole movie 'Grease'
Interesting observation. I grew up with shitty (but fun!) phpBB forums and the fancier vBulletin, but wouldn't categorize them as 'social media'. The first of those were probably cu2, MySpace, and eventually Facebook/Twitter/etc.
When I think about it, it seems like a somewhat arbitrary distinction to make. I suppose the main difference is that the forums were self-hosted and I could have different identities for each one. And while I generally reused the same username, the fact that it wasn't just a matter of 'clicking on my profile' to see all my activity was something I really liked.
Maybe to me the term "social media" has come to mean "social media /companies/"? That doesn't quite satisfy, but it really does feel like the primary difference is that on these forums I knew that they were generally not run for profit, and the 'gods' were just individuals who volunteered their time to host or moderate. It felt safer, and more personal.
He must be delusional. Tiktok is for dancing videos as far as I can tell. The parent comment and down are taking stances that I would never expect on HN. Something is off, there is nothing ‘refreshing’ about tiktok.
Closest I can get to HN ⋂ dancing is 1:34-1:48 in Virus' "You should ask" (where the video is about the difficulty of source attribution on a LAN, let alone an entire internet)
I think you're underestimating how user-specific the feed is. I recently uninstalled it, but I was getting 5% dancing videos at best (worst?). The vast majority of my feed was animal videos, comedy skits, video games, and anime clips.
this is funny to read as I have five instagram accounts connected,
and the one I have curated the least has TikTok teenage lip sync videos as default.
Its literally Charlie De Malio all over the explore page. And no, this is not based on things I have liked. Its Hype House stuff promoted straight from Bytedance.
Is it manually curated? The article talks about how their algorithms are part of their core success.
TouTiao was about the feed and the algorithm from the beginning. The first time a user opened TouTiao, the news might be rather generic, but every scroll, every linger over a story, every click, was fed into a feedback loop that refined what it was the user saw.
Meanwhile all of that data fed back into TouTiao’s larger machine learning processes, which effectively ran billions of A/B tests a day on content of all types, cross-referenced against all of the user data it could collect. Soon the app was indispensable to its users, able to anticipate the news they cared about with nary a friend recommendation in sight.
I think it's both. In my experience algorithms can do a great job of matching good user generated content to people who will appreciate it, after all the trash has been filtered out. I still haven't seen a viable way to keep good content and remove bad without human reviewers in the loop. Trying to fight bad UGC with algorithms alone appears to be an AI complete problem, because there are humans actively learning and working around your defenses on the other side.
Yes, they get rid of content from "ugly, poor or disabled users" so you have an even "better" experience. So not only is it Chinese spyware, it is an awful company too.
As one of the replies to your comment suggests, I think this is a problem with photo-based and video-based social media in general. In an all-text environment like HN, each participant is nothing more than their words and the name they choose to post under. Consider that (unless you already looked at my profile), you have now read most of my comment without finding out that I'm legally blind. If I had to post this as a video, it would probably be more apparent.
It feels depressingly long ago when "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog" was both funny and true :-/.
Btw, I checked your profile and I was sad to find that your blog doesn't seem to exist anymore. I'd love to read more about accessibility and the particulars of being a blind developer. I can't imagine what that's like, but I have at times wondered how I would approach it. I imagine many of us web developers could benefit from more awareness when it comes to accessibility in general!
That said, your Twitter appears to still be operational and relevant to the topic.
That's not the answer to the question I was asking. I wanted to know how many are watching this content , not if this this content exists . If nobody is watching, then result is the same
I definitely subscribe to some people who could be labelled that way, because I subscribe to interesting content. Most of my favorite YouTubers don't show their face at all, and a few show neither their face nor their voice. But, I am sure you can also find people who discriminate anyway, otherwise we wouldn't need to have conversations about discrimination.
But, there is a very different ethical and practical divide between a company implementing systematic discrimination and discrimination by individual users. This divide is large enough that most western nations have decided to draw their legislative lines there.
Neither are mine . I'm not subscribed to IG account of poor ugly disabled anyone, though. Should I feel like self-CCP to me ? Feel guilty about myself ?
This tiktok "war" is, ultimately, changing the way people politicians think about media tech.
With Twitter or Facebook, it's a lot easier to dismiss the magnitude of their influence. After all, they're not in business to influence politics. They just want to make tech & sell ads and make money. They don't care what becomes news, who wins elections etc. Benign commercial interests, that's all
With tiktok and the chinese government's explicit approach of combining public & commercial interest... That argument falls apart. That and the fact that it is a foreign entity potentially affecting american politics.
Ultimately, the argument will swing back to FB & such... hopefully.
First, I think "benign commercial interests" are not. At least not at that scale. Lobbying proves the point. Tech/media is not even the big example. Military industry, banking, mining and healthcare are all far more intertwined with government. Their most important activity is lobbying. That said, tech lobbying still pretty big and the combination of lobbying and controlling a media powerhouse is worse than just lobbying.
More importantly, Facebook (etc), being a massive media channel has lots of power and influence just by being facebook. Again, commercial interests aren't necessarily benign.
FB might tweak the feed to make sure covid-19 rumour mills or deliberate misinformation campaigns don't get out of hand. That might be a good decision (or not), but it isn't a benign decision. It demonstrates that commercial interests, feeds and such are not neutral. They are deliberate, opinionated and that opinion affects reality.
There are two questions that the tiktok case brings up: "how much power?" and "who's power." Zuck isn't as scary as Xi, hence the different response to tiktok. OTOH, Facebook have the same sort of power as tiktok, just a lot more of it.
This is the sort of thing I meant in my original comment.
"The chinese government use tiktok for propaganda" is an effective call to action. Once you form an opinion on tiktok, the FB equivalents will start to to stand out.
The CCP use tiktok for propaganda. Lobbying firms & individual candidates use FB for campaign. In terms of transparency, manipulativeness, political impact, morals and such... not that different.
Tiktok made sure to suppress HK protests, because they're directly controlled by the ccp. Many US firms (eg NBA) were also influenced by the CCPs desire to suppress support of the HK protest. Tiktok hired and greased many Democratic & Republican "staffers" to lobby for them. They grease pockets. Don't all large companies do that? Tiktok shares your data with the ccp. Facebook sells your data, sometimes to political actors. Meanwhile, the NSA help themselves.
The differences between tiktok and FB may get a ball rolling. ITLT, the similarities will come into play.
I spent a lot of time writing a reply and eventually deleted it. It's not clear from your original post to which I replied that you're being descriptive, not prescriptive, that by pushing the issue of dragging out TikTok's propaganda machine that it opens the door to dragging out Facebook.
It's really hard to tell that you meant, "the public perception of Facebook is..." (that it's not in the business of influencing politics).
That's not really a fair comparison though. If FB was pushing US propaganda in China, there would have been no such hearing in the US. That's more equivalent to what TikTok is doing.
That discounts intent: Facebook's intent is for better or for worse to sell a bunch ads and make profits. That Cambridge Analytica was able to exploit Facebook's social graph for political ends is not conducive to the company's mission.
Presumably the GP is implying that TikTok would be working even closer with groups like CA, to the point with partnering with them instead of kicking them off the platform as Facebook did.
i think if anything tiktok's rise will probably bolster US domestic support for big tech. who wants to be the senator that creates a power vacuum filled by chinese tech?
Tiktok is a potential golden goose for China. They aren't slaughter it just so they can show propaganda for a couple weeks before it inevitably gets shut down. It's the same principle of "don't shit where you eat." If China wants to spread propaganda, they is no shortage of ways to do it on American social media companies.
"With tiktok and the chinese government's explicit approach of combining public & commercial interest..."
You got to be kidding me for blaming the Chinese government for combining public and commercial interest in this context. The amount of hypocrisy is astonishing. The banning of Tiktok, Zoom and Huawei is nothing but a political decision. It's amusing to see someone can blame this on China.
I recently deleted TikTok from my phone. I didn't have it for too long, and until the recent press I had no idea it was a Chinese app. Honestly, I understand companies will mine my data, but I have an issue with those companies being forced to submit my data to the Chinese government on a whim. And it was really all the same thing. People doing the same skits or dances. Most of which were just chicks doing it in bikinis to get more views and likes.
Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle? What do you think they want to do with it? If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means? I ask as I'm genuinely curious. I'm considering install it on my phone to try it out and see how it compares to youtube. I'm not dissatisfied with my youtube feed. Just curious as to how much better TikTok would be based on the descriptions on the article and on this thread.
> Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle?
Both.
> What do you think they want to do with it?
Absolutely no idea. Much like I had no idea what Facebook was doing, or planned to do, with my data back in the 00s. I think we've been down this road enough in the modern era to be distrustful of any entity, especially a government, especially my own government, and especially the Chinese government.
> If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means?
If they really wanted to target me as an individual, I am sure they could dig up $THINGS. That doesn't mean I want to do their job for them.
Your line of questioning here, as I've read it, boils down to: "What are you afraid of if you have nothing to hide?"
Possibly, but it could be just be pragmatic - if I lived in the PRC, I would be very, very nervous about sharing some kind of unfiltered feed of my data with state entities. Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what kind of practical use they'd put that same data to - though that might get more exciting if I traveled to China at some point in the future...
Maybe you're right, but I don't think so. For me, personally, it is kind of personal...
I have visited China multiple times. My wife is Chinese-American. My children are half-Chinese and will, hopefully, be fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese (MIL is Vietnam-born Chinese and a Vietnam War refugee), and English. A lot of our extended family still lives in China, in Hong Kong and the mainland (and even Taiwan). I am critical of China, online and off, and I have been for many, many years.
This isn't even that new to us, specifically. We decided in 2014 that we were not willing to go into the mainland anymore. Most of my wifes paternal family left Hong Kong after the hand-off in 1997 -- the writing was on the wall for anyone willing to pay attention. Given everything that has happened in Hong Kong in the last year or so, I don't think we'll ever visit family there again, either.
More on topic, though... It's bad enough that I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head about what sorts of bullshit the NSA, etc..., (and how they probably share this data freely, if asked, with the FVEY, allied intelligence agencies, etc...) are getting up to with my data, but I've learned how to deal with that without experiencing too much of a chilling effect. I don't have the mental capacity to fight this on yet another front, especially when my own understanding of Chinese state politics is so inadequate. Thankfully, I can easily opt out by simply not installing and/or using TikTok, or any of the other Chinese state-sponsored spyware, on any of our devices.
> Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what kind of practical use they'd put that same data to
Their reach doesn't end at their borders. The same can be said of every modern government / state on the planet today.
If you want a specific example, the Blitzchung controversy is worth understanding. [0] There's a list of censorship-related issues on Wikipedia, too. [1]
Oh yes, I don't think that sounds overly paranoid to me under those circumstances at all. I am sure I am on some lists here in the US for having taken both Mandarin and Arabic as an undergrad (I could only be more evil if I'd added Russian).
There’s a lot of false equivalence in these comments along with a focus on the app itself.
My worry is about CCP influence and their ability to both spread misinformation and at the same time suppress stories the party doesn’t like.
Easy current examples are the democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the sterilization going on in the Uyghur camps in China.
On Twitter you can talk about both things, on TikTok they will be shut down by the CCP and it’s set up in such a way that users wouldn’t even notice.
On Twitter you can also be critical of the USG.
That’s the risk to me, that the CCP turns down the knobs on speech they dislike and the public is too focused on dance videos to notice.
It’s an even greater risk to people like Joshua Wong, not only would his speech be suppressed on TikTok, but the company would also hand over whatever personal or location data they had on him to the government itself. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Wong)
The CCP should not be stewards of the services we use.
I absolutely love using TikTok, but would give it up in a heartbeat for a Western replacement.
It has absolutely brought more positivity into my life. I am specifically feeding the algorithm with this intent and I get what I asked for. It is a psychological tool.
> give it up in a heartbeat for a Western replacement.
It's important to recognized that it's not a coincidence that TikTok exists and is run by a Chinese company.
In the West that replacement would have been immediately purchased by FB or Twitter and then summarily destroyed. This is literally what happened to the closest Western equivalent: Vine.
The Chinese government has many faults, but unlike the US government, the Chinese government still enforces the idea that Chinese companies should operate in the interest of the nation.
Facebook did try to buy Musical.ly, the company that became TikTok, and would have likely destroyed it just like Twitter did Vine.
If the US government was remotely functional it would put a little effort into challenging the ability of near monopolies to simply destroy any competitor through acquisition. I agree that it's not ideal that the Chinese government is tightly connected with TikTok/ByteDance, but the reason there is no Western TikTok is because our governments (particularly the US) are so deeply aligned with the interests of larger corporations that a viable competitor to these cannot exist.
Besides "FB would have bought it," social media doesn't generally do "replacement." Nuanced differences in product lead to different products, because the "social" aspect is made of culture.
Any replacement for tiktok wouldn't be a replacement. It'd be a different product in the social media space. One way or another, a tiktok ban benefits FB, whether they build a competitor, buy it, or their existing products pick up tiktok's market share.
We are totally ill equipped to deal with modern monopolies. We weren't great at dealing with the old, monopolies. Now though, the laws, norms and political MOs are nearly irrelevant.
One trite example is prices. The default way to "prove" the effect of monopolies historically has been price. Prices don't exist in social media.
A deeper difference is the microeconomics. When Bell was being broken up, one big problem was creating viable component companies. If the courts screwed up and created failing child companies then telecommunications would be broken. This is a hard problem for a court, well outside their comfort zone. With social media the microeconomics is totally different. Even if FB disappeared, consumers would not lack for social media. The market is capable of replacing FB easily, all that's needed is for facebook to move aside. Commercial/profitability considerations are barely an issue.
It may be harder to monetize short video content than short text or longer videos (maybe that drives YouTube revenue nudges for longer content?).
But people like short videos, so there's a tension there. If you're in ads, maybe just buy a few short video companies, get their patents to sue their competitors, and shut them down, so no one gets access to the thing that they like but is less lucrative for you.
But maybe you're right and they would have followed an IG model just fine.
How can Twitter destroy the idea of Vine? Twitter can destroy Vine.co, but why is there no competitor with the same idea?
The moment they had shut down vine.co, a new site with the same idea could have gone life and absorbed all the users.
Why does this not happen? There are Facebook user groups, reddits and other social networks, even Twitter itself. A replacement for something that popular should be known instantly and take over without friction. Why does 'The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it' not work here?
>* a new site with the same idea could have gone life and absorbed all the users.*
But that did happen - it was called Musical.ly, which is now known as TikTok (US). I don't think people realize that the US version of TikTok was preceded by an app called Musical.ly, which was also Chinese owned, but failed in China but had massive success in the US.
> the Chinese government still enforces the idea that Chinese companies should operate in the interest of the nation.
In most cases, Chinese companies are basically owned and controlled by the state. This has nothing to do with monopoly or trust issues. Acquiring lines of credit in China after you get to a certain size basically means you're owned or partially owned by the CCP.
All I see is girls putting their phone somewhere, dancing in front of it, then getting back into being absorbed by their phones. Can you describe more specifically what is so positive about it? My kids are about to enter the age at which they get a smartphone and these things make me a bit afraid (like, who's watching? Why do they stare at that app for so long? etc). I don't understand the alure, but I want to keep an open mind and not be that old parent that doesn't understand...
Having used tiktok for a total of 10 hours now, I get programmer humor, car videos and funny animal videos - exactly what I want
That's the whole point - the ability to curate content that you will like is phenomenal, especially given the non-obvious inputs to their model. Like a video? Sure you'll see more of that kind of stuff. You may not think about scrolling up/down to restart the video, watching it multiple times, sharing it, opening/closing the comments (and I'm sure 10,000 other inputs) all feed into it's ability to curate
Once I started marking 'not interested' on the super basic teenager dance videos, I eventually stopped seeing them. Same with a lot of the memey songs that get tiring to hear after a while. I'll try to make a list of people who keep popping up.
You don't need to understand the allure. Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways? What wrong with people smiling, laughing and dancing? I'm an old parent trying to be open minded as well.
>Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways?
Honestly, no, and I feel very disconnected from modern culture as a result. I use my phone like a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy: to have access to everything we know as humans at my fingertips, in my pockets, at all times.
Otherwise, I don't use it. That said, I have nothing against people using their phone for enjoyment, and there's nothing wrong with people smiling, laughing, and dancing. It's just not easy to relate to the obsession with applications like Instagram, Vine, TikTok, and so on.
I'm a fan of the "Digital Wellbeing" features that ship with newer phones.
I have a social media account which I check approximately biweekly and definitely considered myself someone who wasn't falling into the attention trap in my pocket. I only read HN, a few news sites, send texts, and play chess on my phone.
I was amazed to see just how much time I spent doing these things. Even if in some way how I'm using the phone is more virtuous or less problematic ("this hour-long article about the architecture of the classic XBox gratifies my curiosity, is informative and gives me more context with which to understand my field!"), that time and attention sink still comes at the cost of everything else in life.
The parent commenter asked if anyone could describe what is positive about the app. Since they apparently have no first-hand experience with it, and do not understand the allure from what they've heard or seen so far.
You're responding to him or her with "You don't need to understand the allure". And somehow seem offended that he or she doesn't understand what people are laughing about.
Really? Almost the entirety of where I see this is people recording and re-uploading content from tik tok onto Twitter. It’s certainly a distinct communication culture. I mean “Instagram dance” was never a thing the way “Tik tok dance” is a thing.
I guess what I'm saying is just because it's distinct doesn't mean it's alluring. It might be a different form of expression but what is being expressed is that entertaining or different from Instagram. It's just a bit less objectifying than Instagram but still feels lacking.
I think the dances came from musical.ly, which part of Tiktok used to be. Then, it's just people doing what other people are doing, one upping each other, trying to get popular, etc. Same social media stuff and Tiktok's recommendation algorithm is really good, so people get into it really quickly.
Are you not also absorbed by your phone in other ways?
> I would argue it is one thing to be absorbed by reading in your phone HN or other productive sources. Laughing and dancing on the other hand, after a certain period of time not so much useful.
> Yeah, actually I wish HN would make me laugh and dance, this comment makes tiktok sound pretty good!
LOL. I find HN highly entertaining. Well...not to the point of breaking into a dance...but entertaining. Quite often I just jump straight to the comments.
I get mostly cooking, gardening, life hacks, and occasionally political humor. I'm also on gay TikTok so there's some 'fun' content there.
I've learned lots of cool stuff on TikTok - my favorite tip recently has been a trick for partially juicing lemons while leaving them intact; last week I broke my soda habit as a result of easily accessible homemade la croix.
Since the content is curated strongly by your likes and dislikes, I am afraid your children might actually get some nasty stuff there. There's psychotic horror and soft porn. I don't think I'd trust my child with it unless they're older than 14 or so.
The dancing stuff is pretty mild and I'd say even constructive for children.
The allure, is hard to describe. The content I see is very human, people describing their experiences, doing harmless jokes on each other, or teaching something. How it differs from YouTube is that it is much more strongly tailored to your likes, and due to time constraints, skips the chuff and gets to the meat of things quicker.
It seems to create affinity scores based on which videos you complete watching, like or share. Then they also maintain similar affinity scores for every tag on those videos and the creators of those videos. So as you watch stuff, you feed becomes tuned to your preferences without needing an explicit 'follow' step.
Users have little control of what videos they see explicitly, but if you like 5 videos with the same tag, it will present more videos with that tag.
I was a bit critical of my wife using TikTok until I realized that she replaced the negativity of Facebook with something that, in its current form, is pretty harmless. It's replaced rants and frustration with laughter and positivity.
Take any social media app and there is something toxic, mean, snarky about it. Twitter is optimized for snark and shit storms. Facebook has your crazy uncle sharing fake news. Instagram posts are fake and pretentiousness. Reddit has their subreddit drama.
TikTok is just fun. Even wholesome fun.
I tried if I could find one mean tiktok video, but there was not one bullying video. Even if the girl making a dance video was ugly/fat the comments on that were encouraging and positive.
I was wondering awhile ago to what extent the famous saying "the medium is the message" applies here. It's famously easy to misread the intent of text, to see hostility when there is none (and so smiley faces and emojis came into being), it's probably harder to be mean over photos than text (especially a photo of yourself...), and even harder over video.
Not sure if you're aware of the fact of what was going on in Hong Kong and the loss of its autonomous status due to the national security law. Facebook and TikTok are no different to privacy, but TikTok can give all of that data and the CCP can access it. But of course it doesn't matter to you because 'its pretty harmless'.
For Hong Kong citizens, it's much worse. They are being identified and arrested in the hundreds as the Chinese government has access to this data to find anyone insulting or ridiculing them. That's very totalitarian to me.
> But of course it doesn't matter to you because 'its pretty harmless'.
That doesn't seem like a very charitable interpretation of OP's comment.
If a very small fraction of global users may come to harm as a result of (not by) using an app, then that's pretty much the textbook definition of "pretty harmless".
Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting.
No, but then again I’m equally opposed to much of contemporary US politics and the long history of US meddling in foreign countries affairs to obtain anti-democratic results that happen to favour US goals (broadly, Latin American 20th century history), so again, this “TikTok’s data gathering is an existential threat to freedom but please pay Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google et al no mind” framing is... unconvincing to say the least.
No doubt spyware is bad from either country, but TikTok was caught trying to suppress content from "ugly, poor, or disabled" users. Do you still support the app knowing that?
I merely said I don’t see how it’s worse than the major US social networks. Like say Facebook, which has been caught multiple times allowing employers and housing advertisers to illegally exclude groups like Black people, from seeing job postings and apartment listings.
Again, I don’t know that what TikTok has been shown to be doing is any worse.
Look at Hong Kong where China just yesterday told the political parties that holding any pre-election for Hong Kong's parliament is an aggressive act against China.
Or look at the Uyghur internment camps. Or the one child policy that effectively turned some communitys 80% male.
There is no opposition in China that can speak up against this.
> Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country.
I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. The US isn't intractably opposed to liberal democracy, but the CCP is:
From the OP:
> To that end, this long history looms large in how China thinks about its relationship to the U.S. specifically, and the West generally. China is driven to reverse its “century of humiliation”, and to retake what it sees as its rightful place as a dominant force in the world. What few in the West seem to realize, though, is that the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished, and that Western liberal values are actively hostile to that goal. Tanner Greer wrote in Tablet:
> ...
> This understanding of China’s belief that it is fighting an ideological war explains why the severe curtailing of freedom that happened in Hong Kong this month was inevitable; if the Party’s ideology is ultimately opposed to liberalism anywhere, “one country-two systems” were always empty words in service of China’s rejuvenation, and Marxism’s triumph. To see that reality, though, means taking China seriously, and believing what they say.
> I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US.
I don’t know that I’m particularly enthused about either country’s ideology, hence my more skeptical view of the idea that any of the major US social media networks are “better”.
> I don’t know that I’m particularly enthused about either country’s ideology, hence my more skeptical view of the idea that any of the major US social media networks are “better”.
Could you go into more detail about your thoughts on "[each] country’s ideology" and why you think that makes their social networks (which IMHO are a form of media) roughly equivalently desirable?
IMHO, the US does have faults and does do bad things, but those bad things are usually domestically controversial (to some degree). Since it's a liberal democracy, that controversy is tolerated, which means there's a path to something better. China's government, on the other hand, is pretty unrepentant about the bad things it does, and explicitly rejects and suppresses the mechanisms that could lead positive change in those areas. If the OP is correct and China's government sees itself in an ideological war with the West and its ideas of liberal democracy, then I'd expect that Chinese social networks will be drafted to serve in that war, either now or in the future.
If I dislike beef, I might not be enthusiastic about eating a steak, but I'd still prefer that to some chicken cooked in motor oil.
> IMHO, the US does have faults and does do bad things, but those bad things are usually domestically controversial (to some degree). Since it's a liberal democracy, that controversy is tolerated, which means there's a path to something better
From the outside, I think Americans generally over-estimate the degree to which modern America is actually a liberal democracy. The tolerated range of speech seems to in reality run a perilously narrow gamut from "neo-conservative" to "arch-neo-conservative", with anything left of the former routinely subject to exercises of state force to attack and undermine that dissent in practice (declarations of turning the nebulous self-applied label of "Antifascist" into a "terror organization", COINTELPRO, etc, etc), regardless of what freedoms are claimed to be enshrined in the US constitution.
And this is merely its internal opposition to liberal democracy; again, even a cursory glance at modern Latin American history demonstrates that the US happily prefers right-wing dictators to democratically elected leftists, if the latter is at all detrimental to the US government's interests.
Don't need to be enthused to acknowledge one is better than the other. At the end of the day the NSA/facebook is far less likely to use my information to hurt me than the CCP. The only difference is I live in the US, so the CCP doesn't really care and can't really reach me without committing a potential act of war anyway. If I moved to China and maintained my same social media habits I'd be disappeared rather quickly, and possibly organ harvested.
Consider that if you use TikTok anything you post will show up in your dossier should you ever visit China, even as a tourist. And you're giving that info freely, better hope the CCP doesn't decide to use it against you while you're there to make a political statement. They've done and are doing far worse over less.
> At the end of the day the NSA/facebook is far less likely to use my information to hurt me than the CCP.
Again, I do not reside in the US and do not imagine that the NSA is on "my side", so obviously I'm going to take a more jaundiced view of surveillance apps of US origin.
> Consider that if you use TikTok anything you post will show up in your dossier should you ever visit China, even as a tourist.
Yes. This is equally true of the US. You are ordered to disclose all social media accounts at the border, and can and will be denied entry to the country if your social media posts contain political statements (or even apolitical statements) that the interviewing officer objects to, whether posted by you or merely sent to you: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/border-deny-entry-united-s..., https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16810312, etc
No, but people who post the same logical fallacies again and again (almost like they're getting them off a list somewhere) and never address the actual argument probably are.
It's like pointing out that POC living at higher latitudes likely need Vitamin D supplements because the sunlight isn't intense enough for darker skin to produce enough Vitamin D naturally, because that's how melanin works. Then someone jumps in, down-votes you, calls you racist, and points out that white people need vitamin D supplements too. The rules of logic say those are bad/non-arguments, not me. Once or twice is an unintelligent person. A consistent long-term pattern makes it likely some variety of shill/troll/plant, or Chinese intelligence in the case of China-related articles.
Nah, I think you're being too paranoid. I see plenty of less-China-critical (not even pro-China) comments get downvoted, and China-critical comments upvoted.
Also, CCP shills are a nice myth but they don't operate overseas. The real shills serve a very different purpose: they are hired by local governments to cheat the central government into giving them promotions, by showing the central government comments from "happy citizens".
Oh I'm sure they operate in even greater numbers internally, but I'm equally sure China puts out as much foreign propaganda as they think they can get away with. "Sinophobia" in response to criticism of verified CCP actions in particular seems an attempt to weaponize the current cancel culture in the west.
Hell China did likewise to the Mongol tribes for centuries until Genghis Khan came along. It's not like sowing discord among one's rivals is a new or novel strategy, and while Hacker News might be intelligent enough on average to see through it the bulk of the internet lacks that sort of scrutiny. Suggesting China and America are moral equals might not carry much weight in America, maybe even Western Europe, but Africa? The Middle East? South America? China has certainly tried more radical operations in the past, posting a swarm of "nudge" posts on social media to try and inch world opinion its way seems like an easy call if I were the Chinese propaganda ministry.
I think it is quite ironic that on the one hand you completely dismiss sinophobia as a concept, and on the other hand you cite pre-Ghenis Khan times as the reason for being wary of 21st century China.
Once again withe the non-arguments and strawmen. These exchanges do nothing but prove my point.
Criticizing the CCP's actions in Hong Kong, for example, is not sinophobic. Criticizing their treatment of the Uighurs is not sinophobic, and criticizing their attempts at intelligence collection and propaganda is not sinophobic. Yet all have been called such at some point in Hacker News comments in recent posts.
And my point was that the strategy of sowing discord among one's rivals is thousands of years old and been proven effective. Would you prefer the example of the British in the Middle East? To suggest that the current CCP is unaware of or uninterested in promoting such a strategy is laughable.
> Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon.
Perhaps I simply don’t consider the Hispanic concentration camps, private credit scores that still gate hiring, access to healthcare (via hiring) and renting and apartment, and surveillance panopticon powered by Google, better?
I guess we’ll see how well the detainees in those ICE camps fare in the face of an out of control COVID outbreak.
I wouldn’t care to try to parse any moral superiority between how apologists want to characterize the ICE camps and how Chinese apologists want to characterize the Uighur camps, myself. Neither strikes me as terribly deserving of our defense.
Can you explain the threat model you're using here to assess Facebook vs TikTok? This sounds like just emotional language as I could call most of the modern web spyware and not be too far off the mark
It's less about threat model than willingness to use it.
If the US government were using Facebook to censor and disseminate propaganda, we'd likely eventually hear about it.
In contrast, the Chinese government is certainly using TikTok to censor and quite likely to disseminate propaganda. Critics of that policy will be imprisoned.
Since the copy/paste exploit was addressed (in ios) I'm not sure what useful information "chinese spyware" can gather from this app. As long as it's being used for goofy dance and lip sync videos, I don't see the harm.
I see the risk being less about spyware, and more about giving CCP the ability to push its agenda at the flick of an algorithm tweak.
A lot of people in comments are talking about how great the feed algorithm is out weeding out teenage dance videos and showing interesting content.
You can easily imagine a scenario where CCP tweaks its algorithms to favor content relating to one party or candidate vs. the other.
The scary part is that I think it wouldn't be obvious to know whether China is exploiting TikTok's American audience via algorithms driving a certain agenda since it can be done very subtly in non-obvious ways.
It's a private company, it's very unlikely for them to outright push government propaganda. They'll probably just censor "political activism" on the platform altogether and someday if government establishes tighter control of the platform they might be forced not to censor some of it, like things that undermine the US government.
Large "private" companies in China are not private as you would think of them in the West. The Chinese government or the CCP will own outright or through holding companies shares in a company. So even at the most benign the government or CCP will have influence in a company's governance. Executives and upper management will always be outwardly enthusiastic about all Chinese government/CCP talking points and decisions.
Due to China's "security" laws security and intelligence agencies have essentially full access to large companies' data. There's no real due process so a "private" company's data is essentially government data. There's also the overt and covert censorship and propaganda imposed by the government.
Company executives serve at the pleasure of the government. Anyone not towing the party line or acting with too much independence will get caught up in "anti-corruption" investigations or just be arrested for crimes they may or may not have actually committed.
Realistically it's better to just assume a priori that a Chinese social media company is pushing propaganda and building dossiers of users. It's certainly safer to assume that.
It takes a lot to produce and push government propaganda. It would require a tech company to essentially turn into a government run news organization if they were to do it. Which kind of defeats the purpose of even having different businesses, rather than all of them being propaganda producing news outlets.
China's already got multiple overt state-run "news" organizations. So it's not like there's some dearth of China-friendly content readily available. Propaganda also isn't necessarily just content produced by some Ministry of Truth. Simply censoring or "discouraging" negative coverage of China/CCP in state influenced media can be/is propaganda.
That's just "official" propaganda. The CCP's various astroturfing brigades are well documented (see "50 cent army" and "internet navy"). They show up in public forums of all stripes.
TikTok doesn't allow discussion of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Falun Gong, Free Tibet, or anything other topics the CCP deems inappropriate. That censorship is propaganda by omission. Content users see being primary algorithmic makes it trivial to add in pro-CCP or just anti-West content into people's feeds.
My personal feeling is that Tiktok is better then most other social media for the end users emotional state, at least based on my wife's usage.
From a spying perspective, I tend to agree with you as well.
That said - China doesn't let FB or Twitter in their country, why the hell should the US let them in ours? To me it is akin to letting them buy the NY Times or CNN. They may be benign now, but if tensions were to continue mounting, they could greatly influence the content a significant portion of people in the US are receiving. I see 0 reason to trust them with that power.
Is there any reason to think that positivity will continue to hold? Or is TikTok just getting its grace period before griefers, trolls, and paranoiacs move in?
If the Chinese government is going to aggressively moderate TikTok to keep that out... uh, cool, I guess. I'd be happy to see some popular entertainment that doesn't devolve into a screaming match. But it's a lot of work, and reduces audience (i.e. revenue).
Which does an excellent job helping to stimulate thought of just what the power and purpose of these types of apps as well other structures (alphabet) are able to do...
I find it funny how the US is freaking out that they don't own it. Now you know what it feels like when the US owns all the large social media networks and you have to deal with their politics and censorship.
Why is TikTok allowed to gain market share in Western countries? China banned Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. while Chinese companies such as Baidu, Sina Weibo, WeChat were able to capture the entire Chinese market share.
It seems that companies not adhering to censorship cannot expand into China, however, Chinese companies adhering to censorship (e.g. TikTok) are able to expand into Western countries. Isn't this anti-competitive?
Good question. If you want to get into the Chinese market, you must comply with its laws and not get in the way of angering the CCP. China is one of Apple's largest markets due to its access to over 1B+ people and it now has its hands tied and anything the CCP wants removed, Apple will do it. [0][1][2]
Like you just said, TikTok already compiles with this security law and censors/bans whatever the CCP requests. By moving outside of China it can either lose access to the Chinese market and get banned by China or still comply with its laws and get banned by the US.
The thing is, TikTok has offices out side of China due to the Musical.ly acquisition (Located in the US) so can still operate there whilst Bytedance being headquartered in Beijing.
A takedown request can be made to the App Store owner. Apple and Google.
> or still comply with its laws and get banned by the US.
How does complying with China's laws in China will get you banned from the US? The US has all the right to establish the laws for products distributed on its own territory, as China does for its own.
Restrictions on foreign-owned companies operating domestically in China applies to many industries -- this is not something unique to TikTok, information companies, or even tech companies. This is something that is often discussed in regards to trade negotiations.
Interesting that only India's decision to ban TikTok made that possible in the US. Shows how polarized the US is. If one side suggested banning TikTok, the other side would immidiately defend it, but India banning it can bring it into the conversation in a way that doesn't force everyone to adopt a view on it reflexively.
I guess the sentiment that TikTok should be sold is gaining ground. It's pretty clear from a regulatory perspective that Facebook won't be allowed to buy it and probably Google neither.
The app also seems to be kind of a wonky fit to Amazons, Microsofts or Apples portfolio (although Amazon does own twitch, so who knows).
I can't make a solid argument for it, but I wouldn't rule out either Netflix or Disney making a bid for TikTok. Both companies are great with video, and I think the current CEO of TikTok is the former COO of Disney. IDK.
If TikTok were to be sold, the new company would still have a EULA clause stating they'll share data with partners. One partner will be ByteDance or a wholly owned subsidiary. So the same information will flow into the CCP panopticon.
The only way that wouldn't happen is if the new TikTok owner incorporated in a jurisdiction that forbid such a relationship. That seems unlikely since ByeDance could pay the spun off TikTok dump trucks full of money for the data.
Tiktok's parent company, bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a Chinese subsidiary operating Douyin in China , and a US subsidiary operating Tiktok in the US. The Chinese national intelligence law is applied to the Chinese subsidiary but not the parent because the parent is not incorporated in China. Hence the US subsidiary is not subjected to Chinese law. If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary. Author says that Chinese values and American values are absolutely opposing and because of that Tiktok's algorithms and product design could undermine American values either consciously or unconsciously. Right now Bytedance's US subsidiary is managed by Americans, hires US based engineers, and the content moderation team is staffed with Americans. The goal should be that Tiktok and Douyin will be separate, design, operated and moderated separately. This could be strengthened by having American management at Bytedance parent, and have Bytedance go public and have American board directors. I hope that whatever international fears about Tiktok, the regulatory body/government should make list of rules for Tiktok. Tiktok should be given a chance to defend its positions, and ability to comply with the rules. We should not just straight out ban tiktok, like "bam, after today, its removed from app stores everywhere". that is not in the spirit of rule of law.
"If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance's Chinese subsidiary refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary."
The issue is the Chinese government can compel it's citizens to do whatever they want. Having non-Chinese in the management of Bytedance could help but I can't imagine they could have a truly independent board if Bytedance is majority owned by Chinese citizens.
Zhang Yiming, ByteDance's owner, is a Chinese citizen who lives in Beijing. The real problem is the latter part, in that PRC can do whatever physical enforcement on him. While I don't doubt his intention to keep TikTok separate from international politics as far as possible, but I am 100% sure that if CCP doesn't like Zhang's "lack of patriotism", it will teach him a lesson even if it's a unlawful way. They did it to Jack Ma, so the same thing can happen to Zhang.
Your assertion that "Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary" is incomplete. Tiktok's policy of sharing user data allows the Chinese government all of the power they need, at least in terms of data collection.
Re: the influence argument your points are stronger, I think. Thompson's article felt a bit like scaremongering there.
As the instagram teenagers that made it popular are now 22 - 25, it's their turn to see a new generation overtake what is cool. Don't worry you guys will see them in 10 years sad-facing when BlopChop is popular with the now 5 year olds...
It's interesting that we are beginning to realize the paradoxical nature of "free speech". It's unfortunate that free speech cannibalizes itself. Since there are other powers with significant influence who can enforce their speech protectionism, it necessitates a response of the same kind, or risks collapsing free speech entirely in favor of an opponent. It's a power struggle, plain and simple.
i personally enjoy seeing young teenagers recording dancing videos on the beach while prior to tiktok they used to just seat down, heads down on their phone, absent, non-existent.
> I can’t emphasize this point enough: one of the gravest errors made by far too many people in the U.S. is taking an exceptionally self-centered view of U.S.-China relations, where everything is about what the U.S. says and does, while China is treated like an NPC. Indeed, it is quite insulting to China, a great nation with a history far longer than that of the United States.
Culturally, China has a very long history. Governmentally, which is what's being talked about here because we're discussing trade, they're less than a century old. We should expect the ruling government of China to behave as they have in the past, not as previous governments have.
An under-appreciated aspect of this "war" is how bad US companies have been at building ML-first products. ByteDance in particular is just fantastic at it - their products feels designed with the algorithm in mind, as if everyone involved in the development has some understanding of machine learning. This exposes some weaknesses with existing social media platforms that were built before the deep learning boom, as he says in the article. It is probably worthwhile for American innovators to think about what otherwise-impenetrable areas this could expose.
The scale of information available to an app is potentially huge.
Thus they're automatically involved in some sort of information warfare.
I guess there's two options, either by default the the ecosystem doesn't allow for them to have that information ... or they're in play for these types of things.
> What is increasingly clear, though, is that China’s insistence that the West ignore the country’s “internal affairs” is a sentiment that is not reciprocated; the list of Western companies bullied by China for Western content is long and growing, the country is flooding Twitter and Facebook with coronavirus propaganda, and is leveraging WeChat to spread misinformation and to surveil the Chinese diaspora.
None of those are "internal affairs" to any Western country. Those are international companies that have an interest in not pissing off their cash cow. If they poured money into the Cascadia independence movement then that would America and Canada's internal affairs. But the only party doing that is the State Department and NED.
There's a lot of inaccuracies in this article. He seems to think knowledge in tech translates to knowledge in other things. Pity.
> the service censored #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd
I feel like this claim isn't well substantiated. TikTok claims it was a bug where 2 billion+ views were shown as 0 views. That specific number - the limit on a 32 bit signed integer, makes me think that it was a bug.
Relevant to the topic of political propaganda and in particular conspiracy theories, the leftist blogger Digby wrote a good post [1] critical of TikTok even though she was sympathetic to the punking of the Trump rally in Tulsa. In particular, she cites reporting from the Daily Beast that Pizzagate conspiracy theories are circulating widely on the platform. I'm not endorsing this reporting as fact, but do think it is good food for thought. In any case, the platform seems to be very poorly optimized for critical thinking, which is fine for "laughter and dancing" but less fine in other domains.
It is hardly just Tiktok policing content with an agenda. Twitter, Youtube, Reddit are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas.
Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the idea that men can literally become women (they say it's to stop hate, but they leave up violent porn subs and other subs that hate women). Even subreddits like PCOS - a very serious condition that only females have - ran into trouble because they aren't inclusive enough with their language. Someone got suspended on twitter for saying only females get cervical cancer (this is apparently hate speech), Meghan Murphy got banned from Twitter for using the pronoun 'he' about Yaniv about a profile of his when he was presenting as a man. People get their videos taken down on youtube for "misgendering" people, or demonetized for not having the correct opinion.
American companies are absolutely policing content to their own political agenda.
> are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas
I downvoted you because this is not true. Watch YT logged out and you will discover it quickly starts recommending far right videos, recommending more extreme videos as you watch them.
As for "gender critical" and your following paragraph, people aren't being banned for simply misgendering people. It's intentional misgendering from hateful people, often as a final straw after many similar hateful actions.
That’s not true about YT wormholes pushing viewers into far right content.
And yes people are being banned for innocuous misgendering. And for saying only biological women are women. It’s not hate speech to say that.
Declaring things as true don’t make them true. Let’s try reasoning from first principles and acknowledging that principles actually exist. Amorphous relativism is a destructive force in society.
I don't love fighting over these sorts of things, especially on Hacker News. So I am not trying to fight at all. But I am genuinely and honestly asking, where do I find research to say that not "only women have cervices"?
After Googling for a few minutes I have found quite a bit of research on how cervical health of a female sexual partner can affect the male partner. I have found how male sexual partner health related to HPV can effect the female cervix. I have found information on how trans-men need to continue to have their cervix tested for medical issues. I haven't found any information on if chromosomal issues can cause cervices to be present in men.
Or is your point that trans-men have cervices and so not "only women have cervices"? If that is the argument you are making, that is fine. Though then I am not sure what you are arguing. But I will just accept your opinion if that is what it is.
You know, I'm trying to steer this towards a conversation. I guess I missed the mark. But I am undeterred. I will still try to pull something educational out for myself.
According to the knowledge I have humans born with two X chromosomes have a cervix unless they have a generic abnormality or have a surgical procedure to remove the cervix. Humans born with an X and Y chromosome do not have a cervix. There may be humans born with different chromosome arrangements that do have a cervix, but I can't find a lot of, or any, medical research on such. If there is, I would like to read about it. That's what I'm asking.
Again, according to my knowledge, humans can designate themselves with whatever noun (woman, man) and pronoun (he, she, it, etc) they wish. That means that humans who designate themselves as man can have a cervix because they picked the designation and that designation does not designate a set of reproductive organs.
Education is not obtuse. Language had become complicated. Social norms have become complicated. I'm trying to actually get an understanding from various sources.
Doing what you suggest has an immense issue of selection bias. You go into youtube trying to see if it recommends right wing videos, and you're going to be a lot more likely to click on right wing videos. Which then informs the algorithm that you're interested in right wing videos. The correct way to test this is to write a program, not to just watch youtube while logged off.
I used selenium to do exactly this. Start at a video, and do a breadth based search based on recommendations. No such preference for far right videos exist. It's frequently get into a hole of certain topics (e.g. first recommendation is on knitting, subsequent recommendations have a higher chance of being about knitting, and so on), but there was no substantial representation of right wing content. And it's not just me with a selenium driver. Other researchers have examined youtube and reached the same conclusion: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.11211.pdf
Yes although I’m more concerned about the CCP policing western discourse and influencing it based on the moderation policies and algorithm choices they make.
You already see organizations like the NBA, Disney, etc. self censoring to preserve their market in China so to assume a Chinese based company won’t do the same is a bit of a stretch.
> Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the idea that men can literally become women
This is a deeply misleading way of understanding this controversy. You can be "simply critical" of the way we define gender or of reddit's policies without being an asshole. "Inclusive" behavior consists, essentially, of just not being an asshole.
If someone tells you they're a woman and you don't agree, that's fine. Let them be them and you be you. Complain if you're actually harmed, or if you think someone needs to be defended. If you start a subreddit dedicated to the notion that trans women aren't "really women" and share a bunch of memes making fun of them, that's crossing the line. That's who got banned.
... Edit ...
Good grief. I started looking up the rest of your evidence (I only knew the trans hate subreddits thing a priori), and it's all equivalently spun. You're are NOT arguing in good faith here:
1. Hammer_Of_Glass was not "banned" from twitter. The account was locked for a few hours, then released when reviewed. It was clearly a mistake.
2. /r/PCOS went through a mod shakeup due to anti-trans comments getting out of hand on a forum that was supposed to be about medical issues and social support for sufferers. The community as a whole seems to be entirely behind the new focus.
3. Meghan Murphy was banned from twitter after a long history of anti-trans activism (including two instances of doxxing otherwise-anonymous trans twitter users), not one tweet and certainly not one pronoun.
4. I don't know what you're talking about with Youtube. The amount of anti-trans hate on that site is staggering.
Making fun of people is crossing the line? This seems like a dangerous slippery slope to say the least. Suppose I make an entire career out of making fun of (say) Irish people. Jokes and stereotypes like "they drink a lot" and "they get into bar fights" and "they're dumb potato farmers" are my bread and butter. Most people would probably agree that this kind of speech should be protected.
However, because trans rights, LGBT, race, etc. has been so profusely politicized, it's become a third rail. Making fun of a trans person and an Irish person are, for whatever reason, not on the same playing field any more. I'm not sure what the solution is, but let's not pretend there's no problem.
> However, because trans rights, LGBT, race, etc. has been so profusely politicized, it's become a third rail. Making fun of a trans person and an Irish person are, for whatever reason, not on the same playing field any more. I'm not sure what the solution is, but let's not pretend there's no problem.
No, you're right, they're not on the same playing field, though saying that they are because one issue is "politicized" is, apologies, somewhat laughable. Do you know many people (and for clarification, this is from an American perspective) who have, in recent history, been assaulted out of the blue, pushed out of their homes or jobs, or bullied to the point of self-harm because they're of Irish ancestry? How long ago was it that being of Irish ancestry meant that your employer could come out and say "sorry, no fucken micks in my shop, gtfo" or that the state could deny you basic rights afforded to most citizens with the full force of the law on their side, and how long ago was that the case for the LGBTQ community?
These things are different playing fields because they're literally different playing fields: the actual broader issues at hand, in the present, are very different. Losing sight of history isn't the goal here--it's stupid and dangerous to ignore history, full stop--but it's doubly stupid to blind oneself to present.
This is a silly argument, because it runs into a wall via a very simple reductio ad absurdum: it's the year 2000, and I made my career making fun of Muslims.. they wear funny things on their heads, do a weird carpet prayer, etc. Uh-oh, now it's 2002. Muslims are being persecuted again in some Southern states because of 9/11. Now, two years later, according to your very own present-day-contextualized-moral-joke-compass, you can't joke about Muslims anymore. When can I resume my comedy career joking about Muslims? 2005? 2006? Before or after Charlie Hebdo?
The Holocaust was a pretty big deal, can we joke about Jews yet? Or does comedy have a cooldown period?
Are you Muslim? When you, or your hypothetical strawman comic make fun of them, are you punching up or down?
To not mince words here, if your comedy career was wholly dependent on making fun of Muslim cultural practices that have existed for millennia before you were born, in America, a country that totally had no relationship with the Middle East or history of anti-Muslim bigotry prior to 9/11, and you further cannot possibly even conceive of continuing it with some other variety of humor, it probably shouldn't resume. Quit that particular hobby and pick up a history book.
> Are you Muslim? When you, or your hypothetical strawman comic make fun of them, are you punching up or down?
I'm not sure why this matters at all. In fact, it's just another red herring, as you provide no counter-arguments. I think that the case for free speech (my God, especially in comedy) is pretty strong, whether you're a Muslim comic making fun of Muslims or an Asian comic making fun of Muslims.
This isn't a strawman, this is the entire argument: is it okay to make fun of people? I contend that it is.
There is a difference in the standing of the groups. Nowadays, even anti-Irish prejudice is probably not that common anymore in the anglosphere, and anti-Irish violence or laws are even less of a problem. That doesn't mean that there isn't an ugly history around that, and doesn't make all jokes ok, but it is a difference from groups where the topic is more sensitive.
And given the prevalence of e.g. anti-trans sentiments, it's also more likely that "memes making fun of them" actually has a side-note of "memes suggesting they are mentally ill", "memes suggesting violence against them is ok", ..., which is not justified against any group.
This is a bad argument for a few reasons, but I'll cover my main gripe: the sorites wormhole.
Is making fun of white straight men OK? Ok good. What about white women? What about white gay women? Black republican gay men? Mexican scientologists? What group takes precedence? Your race? Your religion? Your sexual orientation? Your eye color? Your hair color? It's probably OK to make fun of Christians in the US, but it's not OK to make fun of them in China, right? They're still being persecuted over there, so that makes it not OK. What about content that's shared all over the internet? What about a persecuted Chinese Christian that reads /r/atheism?
Your "group standing" theory is clearly not tractable, as you are now stuck in an N-dimensional sorites paradox[1].
You seem to be under the impression that there has to be a simple "situation in, binary judgement out" function that always works. I don't think that exists, as for pretty much any large-scale social problem, especially if you expand it globally, and I don't think my comment suggested that. Doesn't mean it isn't a useful heuristic to suggest why people (in the anglospehere, nowadays) are generally less worried about "just jokes" about Irish people than about trans people.
> You seem to be under the impression that there has to be a simple "situation in, binary judgement out" function that always works.
There's a huge range between the ad hoc and the binary. For example, I think Mill's Harm Principle is a good place to start.
> Doesn't mean it isn't a useful heuristic...
I guess that's my point: I don't think it's a useful heuristic at all. Imo, the great majority of people worried about trans jokes and not Irish jokes are primarily on the political left, which makes it a political issue. But it should be (and in fact is) a moral issue: is X being harmed by Y? If so, we ought to punish Y.
"Weaker" groups are also "weaker" because the harm likely is larger, because of larger existing prejudice being more likely to be strengthened, and having real-life consequences (e.g. on public opinion influencing law-making). The "politicized" is pretty fundamentally connected to that.
You picked Irish men (note your stereotypes: all male) because they're reasonably elite in modern US society and so this seems harmless. Repeat the analysis with jokes about women ("so emotional"), blacks ("criminal"), mexicans ("rapists" -- I think someone tried this once, even), arabs ("rag heads"), republicans ("nazis"), etc... Tell me you want all that stuff on your website.
But because you and your Irish buddies feel immune, everyone else needs thicker skin?
I mean, this really should be morally obvious. Laughing with someone (which is how you imagine those Irish drinking jokes) is having fun. Laughing at someone (needless to say there were no welcomed trans users on those banned subreddits) is being an asshole. Reddit banned a bunch of assholes.
> You picked Irish men (note your stereotypes: all male)
You're obviously not arguing in good faith, as I am quite careful with my words and specifically mentioned people. But I do agree that thick skin is a requirement of a free and open society (this is where I'd usually cite J.S. Mill's On Liberty). Finally, I just want to add that your conclusion is off-base: anti-Irish sentiment (known as Hibernophobia) has a long and storied history.
There are times when a rationalist approach to societal and cultural issues (and political issues, as they bleed into that) may be more or less acceptable to the public, and I think we are unfortunately at a time where those approaches don't work very well, and indeed are seen as attacks themselves.
I have all sorts of poorly founded ideas on why that might be so, which themselves might be more symptoms than causes, but the bottom line is the same; It's very hard to have a rational discussion between two parties with different points of view these days. I find that one or both will usually have underlying beliefs based on dogma that they refuse to entertain any discussion on, which makes discussing views founded on those beliefs extremely hard to do constructively, if not impossible.
Reddit banned a bunch of hate subreddits. Full stop. I don't care what you think about trans men and women but this is not a case of people being overly sensitive. "Gender Critical" is the spiritual equivalent of "Race Realists" and their subreddits were nothing other than a safe space for them to express their overt hate. This was not a place "simply" for people with an opinion.
You don't understand hate speech. Misgendering a trans person isn't hate unless you do it with the intent to hurt them. Saying that only women get cervical cancer or that that shit that JK spouts about menstruation is literally no issue except for the fact that it's said to purposely be mean and exclusive.
Like FFS, I'm glad we're finally at the point where this bullshit "I'm speaking in coded language and therefore technically not being a hateful pos despite everyone and especially my followers know exactly what I mean" is being called out for what it is an not tolerated anymore.
For what it’s worth, I came across Gender Critical a couple of months back, as a confused neutral trying to understand what everybody was talking about. My impression was of a community uniting around a common anger at new trans-rights encroaching on hard-fought womens’ rights. I didn’t see much hate, and indeed many posters took pains to call out their support for trans-rights in principle. I think the anger was real though, and maybe was mistaken for hate by whoever decided to ban them.
Yep, that's pretty much what their community says on the tin. If that was what they actually were in practice I don't think it would have even been an issue. Sure, the trans community would have probably still disliked them, but like it's not like trans people are some big cultural powerhouse. There have been old-school well-respected academics that held similar opinions since the dawn of second-wave feminism. And don't get me wrong, there has always been plenty of infighting among feminists along this line -- many impassioned conferences, books, articles written about it. And it's from these people that GC takes their heritage and has used it for years to "legitimize" their hate. It's what allowed them to survive online as long as they did because they knew how to fly just under the radar.
Then, like a lot of subreddits, GC got bigger and the new influx of people weren't uhh... so subtle and more and more of the content became insulting, shaming, and "cringe" directed at specific trans people.
> anger at new trans-rights encroaching on hard-fought womens’ rights
How is this a thing though?
I won't deny that confusion and fear are very real feelings people have when confronted with something that challenges their existing beliefs, regardless of what those are. We have a right to express those feelings; doing so is an important part of grappling with them and growing our understanding of the world.
However, there's a segment of those that seemingly become consumed and blinded by those feelings, then join communities whose express purpose is to stoke them further ("no, we ARE right, those who espouse the challenging ideas are WRONG and they are OUT TO GET US"), and often aren't entirely sincere with their statements that they're really not against the challenging ideas, that they just have ~* concerns *~
Giving them the furthest benefit of the doubt, they're at least confining themselves to communities that largely share their viewpoint, consist of people that don't aren't those bringing the issue to light (how many trans people do you see welcomed and able to express their side in "gender critical" communities? not many? could it be because those communities exist expressly to exclude (from all society, not simply the community itself) and deride them? gee, idunno, hard to say), and are at least populated with some people that are wholly insincere with their "just raising concerns here!" rhetoric and are aiming more to further radicalize whatever subsection of the community is more on the fence.
We would be remiss to also ignore that there's fairly clear historical, if recent evidence that allowing these sorts of communities to persist mostly serves as a means to drive people away from any acceptance of the challenging ideas and further cements them in their existing beliefs. /pol/ isn't exactly as a poster child for such communities about-facing and saying "ah, we were wrong, turns out racism IS bad". There may be outliers, but on the whole, these places are poison, and I commend the services in question for finally taking a "you know, perhaps we /should/ have some level of moderation say and tell these communities 'sorry, but you're not really a fit for the broader community we want to have here'" stance. Are there problems with the specifics of the implementation, and is the process imperfect? Sure, most things are, and it cuts both ways--but strangely, I find fewer people coming out of the woodwork in these sorts of discussions to complain about, say, deplatforming of LGBTQ content on Twitter or Youtube because advertisers are leery about their brands sitting in front of content about gender issues that differs from the norm. That happens too, but doesn't seem to trigger the same "ah! the death of free speech has arrived!" outcry that seems to pop up from the other side--those communities do still complain, but marginalization and bigotry are things they're more accustomed to and live with daily; some are sadly resigned to it.
Where do you draw the line? Scott Adams put up a photo of his wedding on Twitter yesterday and people made mean comments about his sexual preference and choice to marry a woman 30 years younger than him. Should twitter classify that as ageism?
This is "no true Scotsman" in its full glory, but I'll bite. Even if we agree that "Gender Critical" was hateful, in no way would the sub be "hate speech" as it would need to (by your own definition) target specific people with the intent to hurt them (which was explicitly against the sub's rules).
I really don't think you get the kind of content that got GC in trouble. The subreddit followed the "name and shame" formula (that's way too common on Reddit) of posting "cringe" pictures/articles/screengrabs of trans men and women and then then insulting, shaming, misgendering, and otherwise making fun of them.
GC wasn't some Socratic circle discussing the intricate nuances of sex and gender and happened to hold the "wrong" opinion. It was a group of bullies who had it out for trans men and women.
> It was a group of bullies who had it out for trans men and women.
I can concede this point without really hurting my argument. Bullies are no fun, and they're mean, and they're hurtful and (usually) wrong. We must still cross the Rubicon, however, until we get to (even your own definition) of "hate speech."
I modded a humble mid-sized subreddit, which was not an LGBT sub, but one where LGBT people occasionally asked LGBT-specific questions. My view of the situation initially was that conservative-minded peolle didn't really hate trans people and they were mostly frustrated by being forced to swallow an idea and being censored if they so much as asked an innocent question and that this is what was making them so upset. So I took a soft line.
It was a mistake out of touch with reality. The first thing I found is yes a fair amount of users really did just dislike transgender people. Second, a pattern I consistently saw was trans people making earnest honest sincere posts about real questions and EVERY thread somebody derailed the thread and made it into some culture wars BS. Upon getting their posts removed for derailing threads and starting shit they would proceed to start abusing the mods. Whereas the LGBT users would get upset over the former being tolerated yet were consistently polite, respectful, and their main way of protest was leaving the sub.
As time went on I realised that a lot of sentiment about "SJW bullies" was projection and that many anti-trans users were pathological in their harassment. That people don't really see how bad the problem is because the worst harassment gets removed and hidden from the regular userbase. The LGBT users were a minority largely trying to politely persuade the mods to make the sub better for people they cared about. Whereas the anti-trans users were entitled, attention-seeking, and self-victimizising. Sure there were some users with conservative views which were not like that. These people could be reasoned with if you simply explained the need for anti-harassment rules. Whereas taking a soft line ALWAYS meant people doing nothing wrong getting harassed for the benefit of mostly bad faith users.
Similar experience. I am a reddit mod for a quite large community, and the ugly truth is that a lot of bad-faith arguments are being used to provide cover for simple bullying.
This a reality that is deeply uncomfortable for people who share political views with the bullies, but it is the reality on the ground.
Believe me. I have to live with the fact that I tolerated this behavior and enabled a ton of harassment for way too long when I had the ability to stop it. Making a post like this in hackernews I guess is my way of trying to make things right.
So many people told me I had it wrong and I didn't listen.
Looking at the positives here though: it's a sign of progress and maturity that you recognize you made mistakes that unintentionally aided bullies, and that you're trying to help others not make those same mistakes. So few people are willing to admit things like this.
It's Popper's classic Paradox of Tolerance: to maintain a tolerant society, we have to be intolerant of intolerance.
That's not exclusive to any particular politics, it's just selection effects. The bullies who agree with you politically are off terrorizing somebody else who doesn't.
From my understanding, most subreddits that are banned generally are breaking wider rules, which often consists of hate spilling outside of the subreddit itself
From my experience, reddit is actually pretty hands off as long as what you do is contained to your sub, but brigading is a very common occurrence in these more "heated" subreddits, intentional or not.
Well, you're making great progress understanding another people thoughts /s
Your answer is filled with so much more hate than the one you're replying to
There seems to be a concerted effort from both China and the US to create sides. It feels like a new Cold War is looming.
Stratechery is playing on one side. The reality is that US companies are quite willing to censor and manipulate information as well.
Facebook and YouTube censored coronavirus information for the US government. Facebook is fine with right wing manipulation. These propaganda efforts by US companies affect people from other countries.
Both sides are just trying to amass and maintain power. The CCP needs to control information to maintain power. The US is a consortium of entities amassing money and power and likewise tries to destroy institutions preventing that. I bet if you look inside the CCP, you would likewise see multiple groups vying for power.
If you follow Stratechery’s logic, then non US countries should likewise ban Facebook and YouTube.
The more ethical solution would be worldwide standards on censorship.
Tik Tok success as a technology is well argued by the author. That should be copied and cloned and compete as MANY not as one.
That is this onesness that I try to argue. This is this oneness that get China and the strategy missing this part of China the problem.
Obviously I would be baised in the sense that the author just gave up my whole place and my 2m+ liberty loving followers. U people, HK people, TW people ... is just part of China, we can just dump them (or you can just dump us) because we belong to a "ONE". The whole idea of human rights are about individual not about the rights of nation over you or us in Hong Kong. If you let the oneness grow and ignore that one is evil, you die with us because the evil will expand. HK is the front of the ideological fight. Not sure why the author not noted that the play against HK is a play against the promise and contract by the less powerful China to the future. Read Deng speech in UN, you can see there is a promising China. But look at today you know nothing in the one is preventing it. The West look otherwise by letting China grow so powerful it is near a stat that cannot fail. The west has to feed the hand that is going to kill them. Just cut the tie is not enough. A more aggressive way of engaging is needed. Otherwise the world is just another South China Seas.
China has been asserted itself in Internet (speech by Xin please read), UN, WTO, WHO, ... etc. They have number on their side in the past. Now they have money, they have the language (so many good English speakers in the elite and their children), ... There could be millions inside the west and trillion in the bank. It is like Soviet Union evolve and attack USA soil from underneath.
But the analysis is so well that seems ok? That we have to deal with China as one. It is partially yes and partially No. The key problem is what we call one-ness of Chinese thinking. You using that you lost already. What America is great and Europe in a sense has built-in immunity is that there are individual (or even the extreme right has the club concept). You do not analysis a world as a world. A world is nothing but its individual and its links among individual. Now the problem when you think the whole China is a whole you have to fight against then you got yourselves a long term problem.
I said long term is from time to time China would group itself together into one big nasty empire. The best is when it is weak (like in Sung Dynasty) when the culture of unity does not break human backs. But once they are big and as oneness is built into the pyshce they just go ahead to transform all barbarians and uncivilised into one of them. There is no stop. Nothing internal to the Chinese philosophy has many in mind. Everyone has to be saved is what they think, and it is what ultimately you got.
What you need to do is to ensure the individual spirit and liberty mind to survive inside. So the original promise that a great China contribute as part of many, not force its way as one into the world. Just cut into two would not help. HK, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the whole Asian countries are those many.
Not one less! Not just one!
:-) ok back to my debugging of the solitaire of C. gdb tracing of pointer structure is hard, isn't it. From 6502 (by guessing), 370 (XA to ESA extension and control block) to now; still you always deal with dump. Sigh. Back to my cave even though the world is collapsing, that you can hack as an individual and do what you enjoy is more important. And that is why this all about. We should have more or one TikTok.
"the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished"
This is BS, the economic system in China is in no way Marxist, nor is it going in that direction. It's worse, lol. This sounds like someone is simply rehashing propaganda he heard somewhere that was intended to either smear Marx or China or both.
It's unfortunate that you were downvoted for this; you're absolutely correct. No one in China gives a fuck about Marxism, and the CCP certainly isn't trying to wage some ideological war to establish some sort of Marxist utopia. To think so is to completely misunderstand the CCP's motivation, which is a dangerous thing when the tensions are escalating and war could be the result.
While China has certainly strayed pretty far from its state-controlled economy in recent years, it also seems pretty clear that Xi is more ideologically "hardcore" than his predecessors.
Another dude advocating for the suppression of a foreign government. Been there, done that, seen it all, happened before, will happen again.
To think that a little app that promotes a bunch of videos of kids acting silly, is a national security threat, is ridiculous.
All you need for counter-evidence, is to look at Twitter, Facebook, and all the American news media sites and outlets. They routinely and actively brainwash the population, with the same repeated bombardment of information, even though they claim to be independent reporting agencies.
In fact, all the American news agencies, are increasing the aggressiveness of the rhetoric, and appear to be drumming up the mood for war against China.
You, as Americans, should be very disturbed by this. Because, if the United States engages into a war with China, then it is you, and your children, that will face the brunt of the violence of war. The American elites, and their children, will be safely kept away from any of that violence; and they will be benefiting financially from it all, while you and your children die in the Pacific Ocean.
If you want to ban TikTok, then just ban them. Just say, that you don't want any Chinese media presence on American airwaves. Simple as that. Begin your own censoring of the internet.
Don't bother with making some far-fetched reasoning that some fictitious enemy is out to get you. This is, in fact, what scares Americans the most - the creation of some fictitious bogeyman.
I don't think it is a racist view. It is more of an anti-communist view. Americans were not a big fan white communists in Hungary, Poland, Russia, etc when the Soviet Union was a thing.
By creating artificial barriers against countries, the US is only strengthening totalitarian regimes. The US is doing a disservice to everyone with its crazy persecution to Russia, Iran and China.
There are a plethora of reasons to be concerned and wary about Chinese companies that have nothing to do with race or nationality. There is an intense ideological divide and, as the article mentions, the Chinese government freely uses every power available to them to both suppress the influence of liberal democracies in their own country as well as propagate their own ideology to the rest of the world.
To quote from the article,
> A leaked internal party directive from 2013 describes “the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out westernization” within China. The directive describes the [Chinese Communist] party as being in the midst of an “intense, ideological struggle” for survival. According to the directive, the ideas that threaten China with “major disorder” include concepts such as “separation of powers,” “independent judiciaries,” “universal human rights,” “Western freedom,” “civil society,” “economic liberalism,” “total privatization,” “freedom of the press,” and “free flow of information on the internet.”
It has nothing to do with race. China is bad because of the CCP. And the Chinese people suffer the most because of it. Remember in 1968 when the CCP encouraged the cultural revolution that lead to the death of millions of Chinese at the hands of the Red Guard? Or when the Red Guard literally cannibalized their fellow citizens as an ideological purity test? Same party is still in charge with similar goals, just a different leader.
No, Chinese people will suffer if the US continue to inflame the tensions of cold war for its only financial benefit. The Chinese people would be far better in a world where they are viewed as equal, and freedom will spread when the US respects freedom of every people to participate of the global world. You cannot say that you defend freedom by creating barriers and inflaming wars across the world.
It is up to the Chinese people to do this. If a foreign country overthrows the Chinese government this is nothing more than an international crime against their sovereignty.
Racism may play a part, but it has way more to do with a legitimate concern: the Chinese government's eagerness to exercise control over our cultural output. If it were Russia, the response would be the same.
If the Chinese government wants to censor media in their own country, fine. Obviously I don't support it on a personal level, but they can run their country how they see fit. But when a foreign entity tries to steer our artistic output, alter our films (e.g. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), or just remove some of our silly videos on a social video platform, it's absolutely reprehensible.
By that argument we should block all non-national apps or services and create national networks instead, since you are assuming everybody is fine with the US as a country imposing their views and values to every country.
I can see Middle Eastern countries getting offended by several things we are used to. In short, anything that is not Western would be difficult in that sense, but even among Western democracies, there are taxation issues for these services and different views on privacy.
Current young person here (entering college this fall). I can't think of a single way it's changed "the mindset of our generation", and it seems it's used very heavily by a specific type of person but not by others (as opposed to other social media which is more widely used). How is it changing anything?
"The kids doing suicides" is a common trope dragged out anytime the establishment wants to put something down. Come up with evidence that TikTok is causing more suicidal ideation than people typically experience, and then we might have a conversation. Until then, this is just fearmongering, and a lazy form of it at that.
Ben is absolutely right and something needs to be done to fight for the values of liberalism, democracy etc we hold dear but I don't see how this will happen. The world seems more divided than ever. Just 2-3 countries unilaterally acting on these issues isn't going to make a difference, how I wish there were strong leaders in some of the nations who knew how to work well for those ideals in the long term together with others.
Also, this is not just about Tiktok as Ben mentioned. When American corporations like NBA start censoring things on their own soil, it is beyond reprehensible.
Everyone forgets that Tiktok bought Musical.ly which was an American product to get the market traction they have. The issue that seems more real than political speech is that US social media / internet companies are denied access to the Chinese market while we allow Chinese owned companies complete access to the US market. Seems like that is unjust.
The current Facebook situation is a bit of a different beast. Most of those advertisers were already cutting their marketing spend because Covid, and are using the current cause to still get attention while reducing direct spend (though I'm sure they'd like Facebook to be a bit heavier on the censorship all the same).
Facebook is likely doing the math now on what makes sense in terms of keeping advertisers happy while resisting temporary market pressure. The answer will probably be a discount on ads, not actually changing content policies, which is what the advertisers are likely gunning for anyways.
Facebook ads are sold as an auction so the discount on ads is already happening. It also tends to produce the type of tempting situation which makes it impossible for brands to resist going back in if they can sneak an advantage in over their competitors.
In the last century the prevailing line the U.S. was that the U.S. would change China through economic engagement, I think what is really going to happen is China is going to change the U.S.
Mainly in the sense that in order to adapt to the competitive threat from China the U.S. has to become more state capitalism and industrial policy guided.
Using strong government to guide industrial policy, fend off or cripple foreign competitors, enact infrastructure. These are the standard tools in China.
As for China, I wonder in the long term if this is not pioneering a completely new mode of the human species. What is the logical end of total surveillance and censorship? Eventually unifying every person into the mind of the state until individualism dissolves and we are all subsumed into a common entity.
Maybe I am speculating too far but if you could have everyone carry an implant from birth wired to a single network then you could achieve the common science fiction trope of an unified collective conscious. Maybe even the leading Party theoreticians haven't even sought about it this far yet.
Good article, but I do feel disagree strongly with this statement:
"while I mourn the end of a free and vibrant Hong Kong that I have had the pleasure of visiting on multiple occasions, I am unmoved by complaints about China’s promised adherence to the Basic Law; that was an agreement imposed on China by a colonial power, and Hong Kong is unquestionably a Chinese city, ultimately subject to Chinese law."
Hong Kong is a unique place, with a unique history, unique government, and more. Yes a Chinese imperial government leased land to British under duress. That imperial government no longer exists, period. The British gave it to a different government under clear terms that were violated. So where does that put Hong Kong? I think you can argue a bunch of different positions, but not that it is unquestionably under authoritarian Chinese communist rule.
This is disregarding the liberal traditional opinion in the West (and Locke, etc ) that people have universal rights period, and that governments that violate those rights are not valid governments.
I think there are stronger philosophical positions to take, including that Hong Kong should be Independent by right, and that China violated it's agreements with the citizens of Hong Kong.
Hey, I see you've struck a nerve with some people - even talking about the idea of an independent Hong Kong will send your comment to the absolute bottom.
> What matters more in an ideological war, though, is influence, and that is why I do believe that ByteDance’s continued ownership of TikTok is unacceptable.
What's implied but unsaid here is that somehow the CCP is going to fill TikTok with political propaganda that... a bunch of teens are going to somehow become influenced by? Sorry, but that's just completely far-fetched. Facebook is something to be concerned about, with people sharing political stories, memes, etc. But TikTok? A bunch of funny videos? There's nothing that could be further from ideology.
> Perhaps the most powerful argument against taking any sort of action is that we aren’t China, and isn’t blocking TikTok something that China would do?
Yes, this is precisely why we don't need to do this. We're better than China. Things like freedom of speech, democracy, and the free market set a moral example to the world. Once we start censoring things, we lose that moral leadership. (And sure you can argue all you want about our declining moral leadership and the state of our democracy, but let's not make it even worse, shall we?)
> If China is on the offensive against liberalism not only within its borders but within ours, it is in liberalism’s interest to cut off a vector that has taken root precisely because it is so brilliantly engineered to give humans exactly what they want.
Isn't every product trying to be brilliantly engineered to give customers exactly what they want? All this boils down to is, it's a good app, so let's kill it. Again, totally opposite the American values of competition, the free market, and consumers.
Sorry, but there is absolutely zero logic in this analysis.
The plausible deniability is easy. No one will ever find out if it was specially promoted. They could just throw up their hands and say that it all happened all by itself. The algorithm is a mystery and a trade secret!
U.S Teens are making "I Love China" videos on TikTok.
The algorithm could interfere to remove any pro-Trump or anti-China TikToks and noone would be the wiser. There is zero transparency.
The Chinese government can lend these institutions billions forever and undercut rivals and overpay programmers if it buys them political influence.
Speaking of a free market in ideas. 90% of the U.S media is owned by 5 companies. I think a good idea would be to reverse the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which allowed for massive TV and Radio consolidation. Local radio was actually good in the late 80s and early 90s and new music styles were discovered and promoted by disk jockeys on local stations. After 96, the conglomerates bought up all the radio stations and IMHO, popular music more or less froze in place with just the names of the bands rotating.
And all sorts of nonsense happens on Facebook. But TikTok is almost infinitely less political than Facebook.
The Trump rally thing was a prank that was widely publicized on the internet. And the "I love China" videos seem to be a joke too.
You're going to find a little bit of everything on every platform. The idea that TikTok is somehow pushing Chinese ideology remains completely unfounded and baseless. It's pure imagination and conjecture.
If it ever does, it will be obvious and action can be taken then. But until it does, banning something like TikTok is simply blatantly anticompetitive and stooping to China's types of censorship. Again, we're better than that.
Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me.
Instagram, by contrast, just feels so bland now.