What if no one misses TikTok?
(nytimes.com)35 points by howard941 9 hours ago
35 points by howard941 9 hours ago
China doesn't claim that free speech and personal freedom are part of their core values
Sure but what would that have to do with this action here?
TikTok isn’t being banned because of free speech or not but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues. China has recognized this as a threat and as such has banned foreign adversary social media companies from operating within its borders.
Likewise the United States has recognized that this is a serious threat as well and has sought to do the same.
Both countries claim to want to defend their systems of governments so it stands to reason they are just taking reciprocal actions here.
The “free speech” angle is just Chinese propaganda. We stop businesses from operating in the United States all the time and sanction companies and stop them from doing business within our financial network all the time. TikTok is just some random company and we can stop it from doing business here. Free speech isn’t a meaningful discussion point here.
> the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues.
Which, if true, means that the US has been influencing the rest of the world for the past 20 years through all the other social networks.
> the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues.
Yes, speech does that. "The algorithm" is curation but the content we are talking about is mostly Americans talking to other Americans. The goal is to control and suppress that communication.
There are perfectly valid arguments to ban TikTok. And hey, there are arguments to be made that free speech shouldn't be absolute. But that doesn't fit into the American self image, so the argument must be obscured to reduce the dissonance. Your argument in particular maps perfectly to "Some kinds of speech are dangerous and people must be protected from them."
My argument (mostly) is that TikTok is just a random company that we permitted to do business in the United States and we can revoke that permission at any time as it suits our needs and laws. TikTok sells advertisements and people talk about those advertisements. That's all it does.
Whether people share memes or communicate American to American isn't material. We know this is true because a company with the same features and products can be shut down if it's discovered that the same company engaged in other illegal activities (let's say money laundering or human trafficking to make it clear) and so someone's First Amendment rights would be abridged by the shut down of the company.
TikTok is just in the same scenario and has now found itself afoul of US laws and regulations and has to adjust by selling itself or it can exit the market.
The other thing here is that you'd have to convincingly argue that people who have never used TikTok (me for example) have now had their First Amendment rights violated, but there has been no change in my First Amendment rights. I can still use my freedom of speech as I could before.
> but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues
Is that the case or is that just assumed what the government means when they say issues of national security? I thought they meant our devices could be hacked by malicious code in TikTok apps.
> TikTok isn’t being banned because of free speech or not but because the usage of their algorithms allows the app to influence how Americans think about different issues. China has recognized this as a threat and as such has banned foreign adversary social media companies from operating within its borders.
The “personal freedom” part would be most immediately salient here.
Free speech wouldn’t apply if the app wasn’t in use already. But so many millions of Americans use the app already that it easily is about free speech as well.
This is a trade issue.
If Country A bans imports from Country B, it's entirely reasonable to respond in kind.
As with trade issue so with this. If Country B bans imports they are actually hurting Country B not Country A.
China infringing on the inalienable rights of Chinese citizens is not a source of strength. It's weakness. It hurts China.
Responding in kind is me responding to my neighbors fire by dousing the living room with gasoline and lighting a match.
Right now the issue is that the US mostly doesn't. The US market is far more open to China than the reverse, everyone knows this.
Free trade should also be fair trade.
Personally I wouldn't really give a shit about TikTok if the Chinese market was actually at all open to US companies for this area (and if there were reasonable protections about personal data in the US overall).
The law regulates TikTok as a business, not their speech.
And America doesn't claim to uphold the rights of non-americans.
If this was a ban on an American company it would be a different story.
China’s constitution definitely guarantees both, it even says without exception.
It's freedom of speech until you say bad stuff about Americas 51st state in the middle east that's killing on average 5 children every day with our tax money.
That was not the freedom of speech your supposed to hear on social media. That's why it's a threat. Be like Twitter and ban those accounts instead.
China banned things for entirely different reasons. They want to control the information they don't like. TikTok is banned so that Chinese government can't do the same thing here and influence a very large percentage of the US population. Not saying they're doing it now, but in general I agree that the potential threat is there. You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
> You can already see how big is the social media influence on people, on their political views etc.
If that is the reason for the ban, namely that American citizens cannot discern propaganda from factual information themselves and as a result must have their information shaped for them to achieve or avoid certain political outcomes, then that is quite literally the same reason China has for controlling the information space
No offense but you did basically just say the same thing twice, just with a bit of a patriot-act touch up. China doesn't just ban things they "don't like". What they don't like is exactly what you just lined out
Arguing for individual humans to have freedom of speech to express their views is one thing, arguing for mega-corporations (look at the valuation estimates for Tiktok) to have freedom of speech for profit is quite another.
They do have freedom of speech—Citizen's United.
The more significant issue is that this is a bill of attainder. The fact that this was prima facia rejected by the courts is an indication that the NatSec state has corroded every branch of government, and we have a zombie government.
So if China would pay $100 a month to every teacher in the US to teach some subversive topic, would that also be ok?
The issue here isn't free speech, but control over what content is promoted, unless you think the CCP has the right to free speech in the US.
I dunno, it feels pretty normal to be upset when a government which ostensibly represents me does something that I feel is actively against my interests.
I don't think that you have to decry every horrible thing in the world to be upset when folks do things that you don't like to you.
"It's insane that China can engage in genocide but engaging in genocide ourselves is so controversial"
This isn't really a good argument. Someone else being horrible isn't grounds to be horrible yourself. There are better arguments for banning TikTok, like protecting the youth from having their brains rotted out.
If you brag with freedoms and free speech, you can't really use what china is doing as an excuse to do the same.
India banned TikTok and a whole host of other Chinese apps and after a few days of moaning they moved completely on. So the evidence indicates that no one will actually care. And TikTok is even less sticky than say Twitter. TikTok isn’t about the relationship graph you painstakingly built. It’s about the algorithm and the FYP it populates. That can be recreated instantly. Moving away from Twitter was hard because one had to painstakingly recreate their followers list. But moving from TikTok is trivial as long as the new alternative provides enough automatically delivered entertainment.
This is scary because it also means that every foreign app can be banned and it will be fine in no time.
Foreign in UK, France etc means Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
The social graph isn’t a big deal if can be forced. People can just find the same people on the new thing. A few days of pain and its all fine, people who get locked out of their accounts or get banned do it all the time.
TikTok is old news now. Everyone’s joining 小紅書 and getting fully Xi-pilled.
In not sure if used traditional characters for some kind of ironic effect or not.
> why not just write it as 小红书？
seo-speedwagon wrote (emphasis mine):
"Everyone’s joining 小紅書 and getting fully Xi-pilled."
This shows that seo-speedwagon is opposed to mainland China. Writing the name in traditional characters, which are used in Taiwan, is another barb of seo-speedwagon against mainland China and its government.
This isn’t exaggeration btw. Gen Z is basically a cooked generation at this point.
Because we don't like what the US government and their corporate overlords are doing?
Imagine thinking the U.S. govt and corporate overlords are terrible because they’re banning TikTok and getting back at them by going to a Chinese app. China, the country which has a literal firewall preventing their people from getting information that isn’t vetted, bans nearly every external app because they don’t have control over it, and most ironically, never allowed TikTok, whose banning you think makes the U.S. govt terrible, in China in the first place.
It’s hilarious that all these Redpillers are going on about how they can now communicate with and learn from the Chinese people they’re meeting on Red Book without ever considering why they couldn’t meet those Chinese people on Tik Tok in the first place and coming to the conclusion that this shows that it was the U.S. govt that was bad…
Yeah, the lack of logical thinking in this one instance and your response to it only adds to the evidence that your generation is cooked.
Because that’s all you know! You are so myopically focused on every shitty thing that the US has ever done that you’ll believe anything that disparages the US, even when it comes from a foreign power trying to undermine you. For instance:
https://x.com/OrganizerMemes/status/1879723864936370347#m Guess what! You also have to pay for an ambulance in China!
https://x.com/Jingjing_Li/status/1880176802993434698#m Wrong. Americans spend about 12% of their income on groceries and work less than the Chinese on average.
You are not immune to propaganda.
Because of the horrible UX of opening up this URL and literally the entire screen being covered by pop-ups... What the actual hell... Porn/warez sites in the 00s were better than this...
I'm not sure it's the right thing to ban TikTok, but I'm not surprised people aren't protesting in the streets. My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring. These users have a deep down sense that they'd be better off without these apps. Instagram won't be banned, but if it were I think there might be a similar non-reaction.
That doesn't characterize me or any of the folks I know who use the app.
I know what it feels like to be addicted- I used to drink quite heavily and often.
Why are you theorizing about people you don't know engaging in an activity which is foreign to you?
Can you state some of your media consumption preferences so we can deconstruct them and find their problematic aspects via a struggle session? If you're not up for that, why do you feel like it's okay to try and take that line with other adults?
Exactly. I know people who have TikTok as the lifeline of their business and they're rightfully pissed off that it's taken from them on a whim.
> My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring.
...I find it interesting to think about whether using something due to addiction means you wouldn't protest if it's forcibly taken away.
In other words, I wonder if people would protest if cigarettes were banned.
Well, the USA did ban alcohol for a few years, and that was a rowdy time.
I think replacing cigarettes with vapes is more topical, at least in America.
Not many people would protest a cigarette ban because the effects of smoking are very visible.
Not many people will protest a TikTok ban because it's largely happening to someone else and not very many people care about issues of free speech, as long as it's not happening to them.
>My feeling is that most people are addicted to these apps, not using them for the utility or pleasure they bring.
What if most people aren't addicted to them, and do simply find them useful and entertaining, and the hyperbole and discourse about how dangerous and addictive social media and "algorithms" are is a means to manufacture consent for the government regulating and controlling free speech?
What if it's a bigger problem that all the government has to do is gesture vaguely in the direction of China and many people will just roll over?
Ever since I started using social media platforms, some 22 years ago, I've been through six platforms. Those platforms were once teeming with life, but eventually got shut down, bought out, or just died a natural death. Every time people were up in arms, but eventually migrated somewhere else.
People will use something else.
I think TikTok is a negative influence on society, but not for any reasons that have to do with China really. I'd be much happier if the gov took strict actions on social media generally.
It doesn't really make much "sense," of course. I'm just day dreaming. I find the USA gov and the Chinese gov to both be pretty evil. The other social media gets to stay, though, because they are all in the USA.
Obviously banning TikTok or other social media gets into free speech violation territory. But if I could just wave my magic wand and make things that I think are bad go away, I'd ban the whole lot
https://www.tiktok.com/@storytimewithpapajake/video/74609880...
This 102 year old American veteran who fought in WW2 sure will miss it.
Either it is a guilty pleasure and you are secretly relieved that the temptation is being removed. Or prolonged use of the service has turned you into an apathetic apolitical blob of mindless jelly with no agency and no energy to effect change on your environment.
Apolitical is an interesting choice of description. My understanding is that the real motivation of banning TikTok is precisely the political influence it wields on the youth’s malleable minds.
I think there’s a lot of good reasons to ban TT…
It’s in American security interests to limit CCP’s access to American location data and ability to pipe propaganda into our eyeballs.
But setting the ban to go into effect one day before the next President takes office is brazenly political and undermines the actually-important problem that TikTok represents.
When Twitter got weird, Bluesky was ready to come in as a total clone and succeed. I’m sure there are a dozen companies ready to make their case that they should replace TT…it’ll be fine.
Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are already trying to replace TT and failing. They really are nowhere near as good.
The argument to ban TikTok is for trade reciprocity reasons. Reels and Youtube Shorts are banned there, so we should ban TikTok here. Just like how if Germany banned Fords and Chevys from being sold, we should similarly ban VWs and Audis.
That they say this is for "National Security" gives the game away.
then limit selling location data.
every car app and toaster sells that stuff in the free market
propaganda is the point- or as importantly, the inability to hush or neuter 'anti-american' viewpoints
US govt has propaganda too: schools are now required to teach that "1,500,000,000 people suffer under communism"
No one would miss NYT either, just another newspaper. First they came for TikTok...
NYT isn't the worst of the lot. It is already state propaganda though, they don't need to ban it. I'd keep an eye out for Al Jazeera
> I’ve argued that TikTok’s biggest wounds have been self-inflicted — snooping on journalists, restricting transparency, obscuring its ties to China — and that it developed a trust deficit with U.S. lawmakers that would be hard to overcome. But I don’t think that’s why most American TikTok users aren’t protesting a ban, either.
Guy is ideologically opposed to TikTok and is reasoning backwards. I mean what’s more emblematic of that than writing a thinkpiece on a what-if?
> It’s probably wishful thinking to believe that if the ban takes effect, millions of screen-addicted TikTok users will start reading “Ulysses” and taking long walks in their spare time. But maybe it’s reasonable to see the shrugs surrounding TikTok’s disappearance and wonder if, after years of giving that app our attention, we’re ready to invest it somewhere else.
Buddhist monks of old would apparently position a novice in a cave by themselves, giving them nothing else to do than to meditate. He cannot possibly believe that the modern world minus Tik Tok is conducive to such apparently wholesome habits. There are dozens of alternatives in queue waiting to become the next pseudo-addiction.
I think lots of people will miss TikTok.
I also think not so many people will miss TikTok-ers.
It’s totally insane that China can ban all American social networks on security concerns and ban all kinds of just basic speech on their apps, but banning a Chinese social network is so controversial.