this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
321 points (96.5% liked)
Technology
60506 readers
4294 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Reminder: TikTok is not actually important. Everyone can live their lives without TikTok, YouTube, etc. There's an infinite amount of ways to entertain ourselves and there's a lot of competing apps.
This isn't the government abusing its power to shut down some small business/upstart. It's shutting down a serious national security threat and a monopoly. TikTok has abused their position many times in many ways, refused to cooperate, and has reached the, "find out" phase.
National security threat?
So how come Twitter ain't shut down then?
This is absurd. Facebook was literally used to sow division and help elect a fascist who constantly says he wants to rule for life and wants to imprison his enemies. Facebook and instagram is wayyyyy more of a national security threat.
A congressman explicitly stated tiktok videos are swaying the opinion of people against israel and america’s genocide in palestine and now its being shut down. This is an abuse of power and its laughable you dont care because “china bad”
If its not censorship because theres alternative ways to communicate than nothing is censorship other than being killed
I don’t entirely agree. TikTok isn’t just silly dances, thirst traps, and trends—it has played a significant role in community organizing and coalition-building across social movements. Consider the university Pro-Palestine encampments or mainstream news reporting on social media reaction to the United Healthcare CEO’s killing. Neither is solely attributable to TikTok, but the scale and nature of discussion on the platform have demonstrably influenced real-world conversation and activism. Another example is Keith Lee’s viral restaurant reviews transforming the viability of small mom and pop businesses overnight.
What sets TikTok apart isn’t just its massive reach (150 million monthly active users, nearly half the US population) but also its algorithm and features that enable collaborative, asynchronous discussion. Unlike YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, where content is mostly one-off entertainment with fleeting comment sections, TikTok fosters actual conversations. Features like stitching allow users to directly respond to others, creating an evolving discourse where users can trace context. At times, entire feeds become dominated by discussion of a single topic—sometimes celebrity gossip, but often major events like October 7 or the United Healthcare CEO killing. This level of organic, large-scale discourse doesn’t happen the same way on other platforms. A great example of this dynamic was when TikTok users collectively decided to migrate to the actually Chinese app XiaoHongShu specifically to spite the US government. That didn’t just happen—it was discussed and coordinated.
In my view, TikTok is a national security threat not because of unproven claims about data leaks or state-authored propaganda, but because it provides an already restless and dissatisfied population with a real platform to discuss issues and organize. If a decentralized, open-source alternative existed at scale, TikTok itself wouldn’t be necessary. I acknowledge that TikTok—like any centralized platform—has real issues, particularly around privacy and censorship. But until such a decentralized alternative gains traction, TikTok remains important. And even then, I doubt the US government would be any more comfortable with a decentralized version, since it still wouldn’t give them control over what discussions take place.
There is a false dichotomy on Lemmy, that the government should shut down Meta due to security threats too because of this. They can both be bad.
Yeah, they should shut down both. Honestly, X should be on the chopping block even faster that Meta, but Zuck seems committed to racing Musk to the bottom.
I finally drew the line last week and deleted my Meta accounts.
ok, i'm for that, when do we start
I was an adult before YT and I don't want to go back to a time before it existed. It's just too damn useful as a self education tool. Need to learn how to DIY a plumbing problem? Youtube. Need to learn how to subnet a network? Youtube. Interested in the History of Moldova? Youtube.
I finished my basement by watching youtube videos and learning how to do everything from framing to electrical to drywall to finishing work. There isn't anywhere else you can freely get the same breadth of knowledge on-demand.
Wait until you learn about "libraries."
They're what we used before everyone had the worlds store of knowledge in their pocket.
Yeah, lemme just put on a coat and walk an hour and a half in winter weather to my local library to find a book to tell me how to replace my car's starter motor.
I still remember the smell of Card Catalogs; a nice mix of old paper and even older wood. Video instructions are often faster and easier to understand. They're also more accessible.
Can't get ahold of your friend in Europe and you're from the US? Just wait until you learn about "handwriting a letter and waiting weeks/months for it to get to them and having to wait even longer for a reply"
It's what we used to do before everyone found a much faster and more convenient way of doing something through modern technology.
And I'm not sure the instant communication has been a benefit for us.
edit: especially when it becomes more and more misinformation and AI slop day by day
Libraries are good, and a great community resource that should be treasured. However, no library can have the sheer volume of information available that YouTube and the Internet do. There is also the benefit of having more kinds of content, plus the ease of putting information out there.
For example, say I want to learn about the specifics of the defense economics of the war in Ukraine. Sure, I could wait 15 years for books to be published about it, hope my local library buys it, and then go and read it. Or I could log on to YouTube right now and go watch the latest Perun video on it which is also more entertaining. This also is an example of speed of new information being available on current events.
Both of these things have their strengths and weaknesses but it is simply a fact that YouTube has changed the availability of information to quite a high degree.
Reminder: there’s an ongoing trade war between US and China and this is likely just a part of it.
I've never even looked at it. Vine was pretty cool but then it died, Periscope was neat, but I dunno, something about Tiktok feels predatory, how addictive it is (from what I've seen of others using it).
Plus while they're all as bad as each other, I still trust China less than Microsoft with my stuff, so yeah. I'm just not interested in it and don't really see the appeal for myself. But I see why it's popular and it's not like, terrible, as a concept.
I'm bothered that the app is 2gb.
why?
Spyware takes up space, comrade.
Why can't more of that be patched out via ReVanced or similar? Or is it so integral to the platform itself?