memes

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

And the very next day:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

USA! USA! USA!

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

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

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

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

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

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

FTFY

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

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

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

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

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

Americans are so fucking stupid, oh my god.

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

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

"It's okay that the CCP pushes propaganda because billionaires do it too" - Tiktok defenders

In this house, we only like propaganda that's covering up genocide. /s

i like my all-american freedom and liberty data collection and propaganda

Since this is the place for the most serious discussion:

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

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

They should force TikTok to be sold to the Taiwan government.

Ho hum. TikTok ain’t going anywhere.

It will be banned for a short while, long enough for Trump to enforce sale to Meta in exchange for their absolute hard turn top to bottom in everything they do to help spread misinformation and keep the plebs angry.

Maybe bring back Vine or something.

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

Americans complaining about other countries meddling in their affairs is such a hilarious hypocrisy. You guys have been the worst for ruining other countries around the world.

L take.

As someone who dropped TikTok around 3 years ago, the next month or two are going to be very amusing.

I found it interesting that this Tiktok regulation talk hit peak fervor around the time that youths were using tiktok to fully grasp the severity of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Meanwhile mainstream corporate media was painting a very different and dishonest story of the genocide.

We need broad regulation for social media in the US, not cherry picked fervor for political reasons.