TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

I have been coming around to the idea that we should ban all* algorithmic content surfacing.

It's taken a while, but the longer we go down this path, the more clear it seems that it is impossible to design a content algorithm that does not have significant negative cultural side effects. This is not to say that content algorithms don't have benefits; they do. It's just that they can't be useful (i.e., designed to optimize for some profitable metric) without causing harm.

I think something like asbestos is a good metaphor: Extremely useful, but the long-term risks outweigh any possible gains.

You strained to look past the parent’s point, nowhere did they excuse the private institutions for their part in this; just that a totally unaccountable foreign power having this capability is not ideal.

I guess the counterpoint here is that we have lots of data how external actors (e.g. Russia) is influencing large parts of the political landscape in Europe right now.

> having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us

Dogs kill more Americans than lions, but that doesn't mean that we should be letting people have lions as pets.

I'd personally be happy to see something like Australia's recent restriction of teen use of social media in the US, but bringing that up now is just a whataboutism.

Social media is having an incredibly negative impact on people no doubt about it. That doesn't really have anything to do with the discussion at hand and demanding that we replace our alleged "autocratic private institutions" with the Chinese Communist Party is absolutely unhinged.

> I think you've been propagandized because having autocratic private institutions having undue cultural power is proving to be worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us.

That's pure, shameless whataboutism, and one that desperately tries to hide the fact that totalitarian regimes are using social media service as a tool to control you and your opinions.

You can bring up any bogeyman you'd like, but you are failing to address the fact that these totalitarian regimes clearly are manipulating you to act against your own best interests.

uh... "... worse for our culture than anything a foreign country has done to us"... yet. this is only true because we find ourselves in an unprecedented situation-- up to now, the U.S. has had a monopoloy on social media giants and the like. it is absolutely not guaranteed that this will hold true, and there are many reasons to suspect that it won't be true. given how china views about U.S. sovereignty when it comes to setting up their own (secret) de facto government, police state, etc. on U.S. soil, it would be shocking if they didn't put their thumb on the scale.

and none of that is to say that i agree with the ban-- i think the mere fact of how unamerican, frankly, taking possession of foreign assets for american gain at others' expense is as blatant a signal as possible that we shouldn't be doing it. if we are trying to protect america, western values, etc., if we don't act in accordance with those values, what are we even protecting? the way to protect the american way of life is not through becoming more "unamerican".

in my personal opinion, the so-called "decline of western values", or whatever, has nothing to do with imperialism, nor to do with those values being short-sighted or wrong. it is because of our collective crisis of confidence in these values because of the (many) mistakes we have made along the way. the moral compass still points essentially in the same direction; it's just that for whatever reason we seem to have convinced ourselves that we don't want to go North after all, and instead prefer to just wander around the map aimlessly (all the while shitting on how the compass isn't taking us where we want to go). and so now we have people who unironically defend organizations like Hamas at the expense of the United States as though believing in universal freedom and equality of opportunity is merely a "cultural" value, rather than an absolute one. and, more insanely, that these values are somehow subordinate to the political issue du jour. these values don't give anyone carte blanche to coerce others who don't share them, but the idea that they are somehow subjective or relative-- that they are negotiable-- is the height of insanity.

Agreed; let's ban social media.

The type of power China has is very different than Zuck's. You aren't going to get taken to a black site for talking about Tianamen Square on Facebook. (or something like the Tusla Race Massacre may be a better example, since that is embarrassing to the US similarly to Tianamen Square in China)

> A foreign enemy keeps us from focusing on our own domestic policies.

The nice thing about fiction is that you can make anything sound plausible. Ironically, what people consider the most prosperous time of America happened to be the time when America was opposing a vague foreign adversary. If anything, it's this recent wave of nihilism that created a void in government that megacorporations and malicious actors are happy to fill in.

China didn’t ban U.S. apps. it maintains a policy that sets a high bar for foreign operators, such as requiring domestic servers, domestic partners legally responsible for operations, content access and moderation to meet local standards, etc.

U.S. apps and websites simply choose not to operate there due to these requirements.

The U.S. has been complaining about this for years, advocating for a free internet without censorship in the Chinese market. But now that Chinese apps have access to American data, we’ve begun implementing the same measures.

I think the OP is saying that both nations are banning software because of the risks of the software/data collection posing risks to the political stability of each nation. You can obviously say "our reason is better because X", but the outcomes being the same means that there is justification.

Both sides say it's worth banning "Tiktok/Google for granting the CCP/USA the ability to algorithmically influence the views of Chinese/Americans".

Data sovereignty — the idea that every country should protect and prevent its citizens’ data from foreign entities.

We never discussed this seriously before because we held a monopoly on it. For decades, other countries provided us with a direct feed of their data. Only recently have they begun to grasp the ramifications of that.

China never bought into that narrative. They have consistently upheld their data sovereignty policy, requiring foreign entities to host servers within their borders to operate, and that looks like the direction the rest of the world is heading.

I wish for an open world where data & communication flows freely, but it's unclear who can be trusted to wield that power.

The US government has never provided any direct evidence of their claims of CCP puppet-mastery, the whole thing is generally some combination of "Trust me bro" and "Well obviously China's government is gonna control a Chinese company."

Meanwhile China's reasoning for blocking US companies has been eerily similar arguments the entire time. Hard to prove them wrong when we have the major aristocrats of US tech companies completely prostrating themselves at Mar-a-Lago, offering bribes (er, sorry, the going term is "funding inauguration parties") to the incoming administration in broad daylight, staffing themselves with party officials, etc.

Arguably both are right, and it's a shame because the general working class people of both nations have more in common with each other than they do with their ruling classes. I think the thing that terrifies those in authority the most is the idea that the citizenry might realize this if there's enough communication.

Just yesterday the US Senate was holding confirmations for Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. For the last 10 years he's been a co-host on a Fox News show.

I suggest making a substantive argument instead of just posting snark.

What are the driving platforms behind the American right wing?

Fox News viewers watched 14 hours/week in 2022. The average US Tikok user spends 10.5 hours/week in the app.

Are you implying that this was a deliberate attempt by an agent to create tourettes-like tics? Are you also asserting that this hypothetical boogieman can do similar attacks on demand because of their understanding of social contagion [1]?

The idea of social networking (or other broadcast or widely disseminated media) being able to influence beliefs or behavior is kind of inarguable. In specific cases there might be causal confusion - whether the media was effective because of existing trends or piggybacked on other phenomena vs. creating the effect directly. But this is a far cry from claiming that it can be deliberately weaponized, or that it is more effective for this purpose than other means of information dissemination.

[1] Social contagion, a phenomenon that long predates the internet

You fundamentally misunderstand the rights American citizens have that are being violated. The government doesn't get to decide where it's citizens get their information from. We're supposed to be free to come to our own conclusions even if presented with propaganda and disinformation.

Once the government decides it has the right to curate what media it's citizens are exposed to you are living in a n authoritarian state.

These actions make me more hostile to my country.

Maoism-Bainism with Stanford characteristics

Reality is stranger than fiction. That’s the reason I would expect to be reported by The Onion aha

> I would guess that the association to Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong was intentional but he just said that for plausible deniability.

Yeah, I mean "Every Chinese citizen has a Little Red Book in their pocket!" is pretty compelling for a social media app.

It's not necessarily political beyond that, but the connection is obviously there.

Chinese in general love the color red, and the number 8. Luck, wealth, love connotations.

Antiestablishment-types supporting an ideology like Maoism is at least something I can understand. Antiestablishment-types expressing their loyalty to the establishment of a foreign adversary is significantly more concerning.

it probably isnt, and is just a random name, but it feels like the name is a joke about the red scare

> The way people are talking about the name of the app feels very stupid to me, in a way I can't put my finger on. I guess it smacks of more Red Scare paranoia.

Is it paranoia if Mao Zedong is still revered? If the government is the communist party? I realize the CCP is not perfectly communist in many ways but they are unapologetic about communism and their roots.

It is a coincidence that the original work did not mean little red book. But thats how it was translated, and the translation of the app is correct. So obviously now when you have the same name coming from a country that doesn't denounce communism I think it's fair to be concerned about communist influence.

Well technically I am in high school and Neither have you used ever instagram (okay maybe for that one time , I wanted to propose to my crush , (turns out she didn't have insta , so I had to talk to her friend asking her on my behalf where they said no [aww man])

and I live in India , so tiktok's banned. There are many indian alternatives to tiktok's that I have seen , But rednote being chinese just makes me wonder if its gonna survive.

Y'know things are just different yet so the same. The same fomo happened during the facebook time is now happening with red note.

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” as Mark Twain is often reputed to have said. (I’ve found no compelling evidence that he ever uttered that nifty aphorism. No matter — the line is too good to resist.) (source https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/)

That's surprising to me. I'm 23 and Reels is, as far as I was aware, a big complimentary app to TikTok in my generation. To frame it as a Reel I saw;

"TikTok is vape and Reels are cigarettes".

TikTok's algorithm is _super_ curated and targeted, like a Mr. Beast video. Instagram's is pretty good but if you can get your algorithm to the brainrot cluster with everyone else then you'll get a lot of out-of-left-field, grungier content you might not find on TikTok.

I think once RedNote gets banned or the meme fades people will mainly flock to IG. There's still a void of creator based features that IG can't fill, so maybe a competitor will pop up if IG can't replicate the environment well enough.

Pretty much Insta/X is for genx and millennials, Facebook is for the boomer gen. Tiktok was for zoomers, when i was a teen till like 23 i hated being on the same cringe ass social media platform as my mom. Another teen trait is rebellion.

I use none of these things and that still hurts more than it should.

> and they're confused how anyone got "Red Note" out of it

"Little Red Book" is the literal translation of the original name but that's not the only way companies approach global markets, especially with longer to say names. It looks like they sometimes use "REDNote" (as it appears in App Stores), "RedNote", and sometimes just "RED" depending on the context (e.g. their advertisement/promotional email address is red.ad@xiaohongshu.com).

As to how they got there with it? "Little Red Book" is just an awkward mouthful to refer to compared to the alternative forms they used.

What law is that exactly?

"Protecting Americans’ Data From Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024"

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520...

https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr7520/BILLS-118hr7520eh....

One could argue, and I think with a strong case that if this law applies to TikTok, it would also apply to Twitter (Saudi investment) and Snapchat (also Saudi investment).

> > In English, it seems to be called rednote.

> I know someone who speaks Chinese and uses that app. The name in Chinese Xiaohongshu clearly translates to "Little Red Book," and they're confused how anyone got "Red Note" out of it.

I'll tell you a funny one like that in another language:

Instagram reels are well... short-form videos usually with music/audio and effects.

It's pronounced something like "real" but longer.

Anyway, in French that word "reel" is printed the same but since most people don't practice spoken English it's read and pronounced "réel". Something like ray-hell (notice the é). And it annoys me to no eeeend :D.

So, among French-speaking community management crews and social network teams you hear "réel"/ray-hell all the time instead of "reel".

And how do you translate "réel" into English ? You guessed it: it's "real".

> and they're confused how anyone got "Red Note" out of it.

It's actually just what it's called in the US app stores: "REDnote—小红书国际版"

> If that happens, Little Red Book will trigger exactly the same law that's banning TikTok.

We will see, but I would think if they gain 2-5 Million Users, it wouldn't but of much concern for the feds. Unless they gain access to a specific vulnerable group.

Little red book means something different in 1970s China. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_T...

People are trying to do away with that association, but it still boggles my mind why the app is called LRB in the first place.

Yeah but "little red book" (xiaohongshu) in mandarin is not actually how the original Mao Little Red Book is called in Mandarin, either formally or informally. Informally in mandarin it's called hongbaoshu (literally "red cover book" and formally, as you can imagine, is like Quotes from Chairman Mao).

So this is a case of translators with an agenda translating two phrases with different original mandarin renditions (hongbaoshu and xiaohongshu), and picking and choosing the style of translation (base on usage vs based on character) to get the English translation to merge both of them as "Little Red Book".

Because the posts are called notes and the book is a notebook, capiche?

It's also TIGHTLY controlled, with people complaining on Twitter and elsewhere that their posts are under 48 hour review before posting. The rules are also quite strict around LGBT issues etc, and not in favor.

Most of all though it's just a very silly protest, given that the "tiktok ban bill" is really a "hostile foreign-power controlled platform divestment bill" so Xiaohongshu will just be next on the block in the unlikely event that it becomes popular.

His accent is fascinating. It's like he learned English as a second language in Rural Georgia.

XHS is for cool GenZ, bias female, urban, has money / disposable income, think coastal elite. I guess more lifestyle/gram, pushes beauty, fashion, wellness, food, luxury goods etc. Douyin (TikTok) is for masses... "less cultured" audience, more working class / hillbilly, pushes some of the above occasionally but also everything else from cheap widgets to industrial equipment.

For more down to earth contents I heard that Kuaishou (They made KLING AI video maker) is more suitable.

well-traveled kids from well-connected families

Not disagreeing with you as TikTok obviously works for a lot of people, but its recommendation algorithm never came anywhere near working for me after several attempts at it over fairly long periods of time.

I can't say I like YouTube shorts a lot, but there's often some I find interesting in a long enough window of time — the problem there is more the signal to noise ratio than the volume of the signal. TikTok just feels like my personal signal is just nonexistent.

Sometimes I wish I knew what was going on under the hood. There's such a huge difference between how much people like TikTok and how I feel about the content, and I don't understand why TikTok would have such a hard time with me in particular.

In general I'm kind of souring on algorithmic-driven social media, or at least short format (video or text). I don't have anything against it in principle, I just find I enjoy longer format posts and articles more in experience.

Same with Instagram Reels. Occasionally I'd be scrolling going "man my Tiktok feed is bad today", and then I realise it's IG.

5-10mins seems like a perfect algorithm to me.

If you have more time, then you can watch normal youtube videos or TV shows...

there are so many low quality shorts, really makes it feel like a waste of time. never had that feeling on tiktok

It doesn't need to be better than TikTok though, just better than xiaohongshu

Main reason besides the algorithm is in my opinion that TikTok has wide but hard boundaries when it comes to content. This leads to diverse but relatively safe content.

It is not 4chan where you think twice before clicking a link to avoid emotional damage. It is also not Reddit or Youtube where you do not bother to go because you permanently encounter stuff that is inconsequentially blocked and you are still not safe from trauma. I think most platforms other than TikTok try to be too strict, fail to enforce their unrealistic rules in any comprehensible form and therefore suck for most intellectually curious users.

reels cannot seem to give me anything other than America’s funniest home videos style content and thirst traps, while on tiktok I get critical analysis of todays events, planet money-esque content, discussion of analytic philosophers i’m interested in, etc. it’s truly no contest.

Reels just wants to basically treat me as a generic male with some bias towards what my social graph likes. I also hate that my likes are public on reels.

e: not sure why this is downvoted, just trying to provide color to an earnest question

Rednote and TikTok has 'novelty' content type that originally cultivated in mainland China. The memes, reactions pic, etc don't really exist on reels/shorts.

I've never saw Luigi or Aaron Bushnell suggested to me by YouTube, unless I search them

I think that's why, just saying

I'm skeptical that the algorithm is actually "better" and it's not just that the end users have fed TikTok a ton more data points about their personal likes and dislikes.

Of course an app you have used for thousands of hours is going to know you better than the one you tried for half an hour

I suspect that the algorithm is taking in inputs that maybe we don’t consider. Not just swipes or likes, but maybe even how still the phone is while you watch it or if you blink less, signs you’re more focused on the video. Maybe they don’t have access to that telemetry but I think that’s kind of the vein of how they measure attention more than just touchscreen actions

If it feels the same, you're not familiar enough with either app to make that judgement.

Yes, although Capcut is a separate piece of software. You can in theory make content with it for any app. In practice, Tiktok is so dominant that a lot of popular Reels content has Tiktok watermarks on it.

It’s not why they use TikTok but it’s why they don’t use other social media apps. Once an app becomes too popular with older people the quality and vibes decrease, plus everyone feels awkward about posting.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about outside of generational gaps, new social media apps are fun because you add all the people you’re comfortable with. After some years you now have a ton of connections from past stages of life, and start feeling restricted again in your personal expression.

Plus there’s the dual use issue – IG is too commonly shared now so I have current and former coworkers there plus everyone I’ve ever been interested in as friends or more at a party. So it’s not the place I’d want to feel free and creative.

IG tries to solve some of this with Close Friends and other lists but people don’t really want to spend their time constantly organizing a list of friends.

No, but rebellion definitely has to do with why there is a shift towards Xiaohongshu, which is obviously even more Chinese than TikTok ever was.

No one is one discord because its UI is impenetrable. Amazing VOIP though.

tiktok easily lets you reset your algo, not sure if reels does the same

If it's for spying on Chinese people inside Chinese territory, there wouldn't be any need to hide it.

> To what extent can a backdoor escape Android/iOS sandboxing?

Chances of that happening are close to 0.

> No, the law doesn't give a users threshold

It does have a threshold:

> (ii) has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users with respect to at least 2 of the 3 months preceding the date on which a relevant determination of the President is made pursuant to paragraph (3)(B);

So if it stays unpopular, it's protected from this law.

> but RedNote is owned by a different company that would have to be targeted separately under this law.

I think that's a foregone conclusion if it actually gets popular with Americans.

The algorithm will spoonfeed you content that you perceive a certain way, whether that's true or not is a different story. Unfortunately for most people, all those hilarious situations that are not-so-obviously staged just fly over their heads as genuine. My wife is smart and well educated, but I even had to keep correcting her when she showed me videos that she believed were genuine.

Interpellation [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation_(philosophy)

...except that the "extremely precise targeting" is a new thing.

The DoD banning an app on their network is a lot different than banning it competely in the US. I would think DoD should ban most apps connecting to their networks that aren't work related. I feel this whole effort is either in bad faith or isn't being transparently communicated to the public.

It was not for show. It acknowledged its success and was to limit its success. Then limit it as a "potential" vector for intrusion. Kaspersky was removed from the US on the same basis.

NatSec should not even be needed. A simpler reason could be that China bans foreign social media apps from operating in China, so Chinese apps should be treated as such.

well, probably yes

Wrong

1. China asked American SNS companys to 'obey Chinese laws', which mostly refer to content control and data ownership, these companys refused, China didn'tforced them to sell 2. Are you sure to play the 'same as what China does'? hey, we are a totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial regime, are we same? think twice

Didn't something similar happen with Grindr? It was Chinese owned and sold without nearly as much excitement. Given the inevitable bidding war from multiple interested parties I would be surprised if they couldn't get a fair price for TikTok

It wouldn't have been at a bargain basement price if they started trying to sell it when the law passed. It could have been the highest market price they could get from the US's largest buyers.

Obviously they don't have the same leverage when they're otherwise going to be shut off in a few days.

Do you think that ByteDance is primarily concerned with the economic considerations for TikTok, or do you think that it is something else?

Do you think that there is a price at which they would be willing to sell it?

Thanks for that link! Really interesting.

Here's my big concern: If every big social media provider has to bake American policy position into its algorithm, what's going to happen to approaches like Bluesky or Mastodon/ActivityPub which allow users to choose their own algorithm?

Speaking anecdotally, this doesn't really ring true for me. I see lots of pro-Palestinian content on Facebook and Instagram, ranging from the sincere to clear disinformation/propaganda. I have friends who post frequently in support of Palestine with zero repercussions.

Attempting to reconcile that with HRW's article: on the one hand I think HRW might be unrealistic about what FB should be expected to tolerate (for instance, they criticize FB for taking down posts praising designated terrorist organizations); on the other, Meta's approach to content moderation - which combines automated systems with overworked and underpaid humans exposed non-stop to awful content - is notoriously fickle and subject to abuse (including, perhaps, by state actors).

Beyond Israel/Palestine, I regularly encounter content on Facebook that the Powers That Be would censor if "the pro-Western censorship regime on FB [were] extremely strong". I think I subscribe to only one political (left-leaning) group (along with a bunch of local and meme pages), but nevertheless my feed is full of tankies demanding we bring back the guillotine and install full communism.

annoying AIPAC is the quickest way to find out how 'flexible' the US is regarding it's 'freedoms'. Free speech on campuses are squelched, all to support a genocide.

No, no, you can't do that. Than they'll come after you and claim how you're not free, you don't support free market and whatnot. Banning is tool for them, but not for you.

The US didn’t “ban” anything. If the EU required Meta to divest I imagine they would do that rather than shut down and lose billions.

This ban only applies to foreign adversaries (e.g. China, Iran, and Russia).

Hum... Brazil already demanded explanations about the new Meta moderation rules. I remember reading the same about the UK, but I'm not sure.

Musk making threats against the UK government has gone down badly: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/politics/government/uk-counter-ext...

we should probably start banning books from China too, for the same reason

>Speaking of foreign propaganda, does anyone remember when one of the most destructive advocacy organizations in the US was found to be heavily influenced by Russian spies?

"heavily influenced by Russian spies" seems like a stretch. The BBC article you linked basically says she attended some NRA conventions/events, and got some NRA officials to travel to Russia. There's no indication those activities actually changed anything.

> one of the most destructive advocacy organizations in the US was found to be heavily influenced by Russian spies

Your links do not back up this claim. Both indicate that Butina was likely a Russian spy and desired to influence the National Rifle Association (NRA). However, neither article gives any example of successful influence, however minor.

> Literally same arguments used by Iran.

All governments/nations have some level of self-interest. That doesn't mean they are all equal in their motivations or approaches.

China is literally controlling the narrative through TikTok. Why shouldn't the US respond to that?

Where's the evidence that TikTok is being used by China to spew propaganda?

Conversely there's a mountain of evidence which strongly suggests that US officials are going after TikTok specifically because they're not in control of the truthful narratives that paint the US in a bad light.

> Please talk when China/Russia opens up.

Careful with this sort of rhetoric. China's constitution enshrines freedom of speech as a constitutional right, just like the US, but they're both taking this freedom away by invoking "national security".

Why would we wait until we're as oppressed as the people of China before we speak up? By then it's going to be too late.

You know the whole idea of “oh, all of our problems are actually because X, Y, Z boogeyman!” thing? Yeah that. Watching from outside, it feels like political landscape of the US knows that they have lost the global competition and scrambling to get back on its feet. Everyone just keeps yelling “no, no, don’t look what’s happening inside, because everything is so much worse in other countries, they’re about to completely fall down! Those europoors with no ACs, China is about to collapse for the 50th time in the last 10 years, Japan is basically dead etc etc.”.

The propaganda on TikTok comes disguised as Americans sharing points of view that just happen to serve CCP interests. Often the creators are expressing a genuine (but rare) viewpoint that China just needs to amplify. This isn't about keeping Americans from reading Pravda.

It's not hard to imagine the messages China will be pushing to weaken support for assisting Taiwan in a conflict. "Don't waste money propping up the corrupt Taiwanese government, spend it on health care /tax cuts at home!"

Then China gains control over TSMC without a fight and much of the American economy is at their mercy.

We haven't allowed a foreign adversary to own a media company since 1934.

This is just updating the standard. TikTok is clearly a massive threat, how is that not obvious?

https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli....

What? Bush Sr. or Bill Clinton would never have allowed a hostile foreign government to own a major communications platform.

To be clear, Russia pays those right wing trolls a fat chunk of change

I mean, if you want to ignore the fact that the JB was Joe Biden and he was quite literally President of the United States when that was a trend, sure.

Same with MAGA after January 6th.

Is it censored, or do most people just not talk about it on Facebook?

It's interesting how incredibly supportive of human rights that a platform in bed with the CCP became, no? Do you think that China's human rights bugaboos are often discussed on their internal social networks?

It's amplified.

tiktok is extremely censored re: genocide in xinjiang. facebook is not.

Trump won, the Russian misinformation campaign is over now. You can stop making stuff up about Jews now.

Sure. I just noted the irony that the US discourse has sounded a lot like "we are better than China, we are more free" for decades.

I mean, let's be clear: Facebook and Google are very much banned in Mainland China.

> 99% of the imported products from China are not getting blocked

because it's impossible.

the US offloaded low-added-value manufacturing to China, exchanging paper dollars for cheap industrial goods. When China tries to upgrade to high-added-value industries, like chips, guess what? National security risks!

just enjoy cheap goods and nature resources from 3rd world...

> I think you are proposing a much more extreme conspiracy

I am not proposing a conspiracy, I am merely noting some irony in the fact that the US are doing protectionism here.

> No doubt historically the US has gotten companies to put in backdoors or other mechanisms

Well, most of the Western Internet goes through the US, and we know for a fact that the US try to extract as much as they can from whatever they can (remember Snowden?). Also the US are very fine with US companies owning all the data of a big part of the world, and they would be really pissed if some country started banning them "for national security reasons".

> but when you have drones being used to survey the electric grid or other major pieces of infrastructure

You don't need to connect the drone to the Internet. Technical solutions would most definitely exist, I am convinced of that. The reason DJI is being banned is because DJI is 7 years ahead of anyone else, and the gap is getting bigger every year. It really, really sounds like the US drone companies have been lobbying a ton because they just can't compete.

Read some of the many stories out there about the NSA, please. They have backdoors into internet infrastructure. If any country is a threat to information security, it’s the USA.

It was with the 2020 version of the algorithm till they changed things see https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

> we would be talking about banning Facebook and X for manipulating Americans vote

in fact, there is alot of talk about this. wasn't that the main reason Musk bought Twitter?

American corporations have free speech rights. Chinese corporations do not.

They're strictly not equivalent—yours believes the US has a substantial amount of control over Facebook, mine does not. I can't change your belief, but I can draw a distinction between our beliefs.

In the free market the monopoly buys out the competitors. No need for banning. Shareholders, the embodiment of greed, will just follow the money.

If you know the words “yandex” and “adblocker” you are already 90th percentile ability to pirate content

Netflix is absolutely easier to use than any form of pirating for the vast majority of their userbase.

Everyone in this thread talking about how people will “just get a VPN” to use TikTok have zero concept of the technical abilities of TikTok’s user base

I wouldn't mind paying if it wasn't setup in a way like "oh want to watch that movie? subscribe to this service" at one point I was paying for maybe 5 different providers eg. Apple TV, Netflix, Disney+, HBOMax, etc...

I wonder how many Android users would actually sideload it. Same happened with Fortnite for a few years, and idk how many people did that.

you won’t

Part of it is almost certainly due to the FCC controlling licenses for what is broadcast over the air.

> foreign ownership alone isn't a sound reason for a ban

You're right -- but foreign ownership by a repressive regime with undemocratic ideals certainly is. For example, I don't think anyone would be too concerned if a European country was the one that founded & owned TikTok.

US citizens elected representatives to make laws for them. Even more so, this is a bipartisan law.

Tiktok US users of voting age are already accounted for in that process, they don't get extra sway just because they use the app.

It's like the non-addicts banning heroin. You don't have to be a Tik Tok user to understand that it's bad for it to be PRC-controlled!

You're getting it. It is like vegans banning steak!

> "lower primate improv troupe"

> "No one who actually uses it or understands it wants this."

"Everyone's generalizations are stupid, except mine."

> it's about banning dissent

On the contrary, I think it is about banning a propaganda and social engineering vector that is under the thumb of an adversarial foreign government. That, for me, is enough of a reason to ban it and justify it under our constitution.

The fact that I am in favor of banning all social media should tell you that it is not ideological, but rather that I think social media is extremely addictive, and has huge negative externalities.

Well let's not talk in abstract phrases, who did YOU vote for, and did you not find it probable that they would support such actions?

How many of those people voted? The young people who don't vote don't want this and the old people who do vote do want this. The outcome is predictable.

Go try to assemble on the White House lawn without an invitation; I'm sure it will work very well for you.

This is completely untrue, there are unlimited examples of speech that exists out there that you have absolutely no inherent right to hear, and in fact many existing laws explicitly support restrictions on your ability to hear the speech. Just a few examples off the top of my head; do I have the right to hear:

* A comedian at a paid event when I haven't paid

* Private conversations between you and your significant other

* DMs between other people on social media

* Podcasts published exclusively on Spotify when I don't have a membership

* Speech in walled gardens (FB, Insta, X, etc) where I don't have an account

I agree, though not when broadcast by a foreign adversary (per the 1934 law).

Forcing a sale to a US company also enables that to continue. Additionally, it does not protect the right for users to receive/hear speech from EVERY outlet, this same speech is permissible on any other platform - simply not one mediated by an adversary.

So just go hear it from somewhere else. There is no content on tiktok that can't be recorded and posted on instagram reels.

> There was nothing on vine that was addicting

Well that sounds like a selling point to me.

vine could only do 7 second videos which hurts long-term

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/28/extreme...

>huge percentage of the population

I happen to have just looked into this, and it turns out this percentage peaks at 1 (for Sean Hannity, apparently?), but typically is around 0.5%. Less huge than you may be imagining

It's not being thrown away, it will work as normal in every other country except the United States.

> Getting congress to reverse something seems much harder,

The GOP is absolutely flip flopping on this issue since Trump has also reversed on the ban idea. That's why the TikTok lawyers' arguments to SCOTUS were to just delay the ban until after Jan 20 so the incoming administration could weigh in on the matter.

> in that they also have to get someone to introduce the bill, get it through a committee, get it scheduled for a vote, etc, in both houses.

I think you are forgetting that the GOP just took control of both houses. It will not be that difficult for them is that's what the orange man says he wants.

The threat of losing something vs actually losing something is not the same though. If TikTok did something with all of the tracking data they did for each user so they could show the contact information for their Rep and Senators to make it easy for everyone with clickable links directly to phone numbers/emails would increase that engagement. It would also just show how creepy AF their tracking is. So maybe just a screen like PH does that refuses access to their content with a screen that says talk to your reps.

People in the US have the right to petition the Government, regardless of their eligibility to vote.

I know of many instances in which Meta suppressed specific opinions, but I don't know any of TikTok doing the same thing. Examples are welcome, if you have any.

Or is this just about Tiktok not being owned by a billionaire who will use censorship to keep the USA government happy?

Control can be separated from who is owed what share of economic profits. For example, some Alphabet and Meta shares having more voting power than others.

On a more pragmatic level, even in the US "own" means what society will defend for you. However, the US (and other western countries) are presumed to have courts that have a higher probability of defending claims of ownership assuming you have the right paperwork. Whereas in places like China, it is presumed that your paperwork is less likely to entitle you to a defense.

That makes sense, but means that banning it from making money through (a) and (b) would be sufficient to kill it quickly (if it's a legitimate business, as you said), without directly taking it away from users and causing so much political uproar.

I don't really see your point. Tiktok is a video library. With the exception of private videos, anything hosted on the app can be viewed by anyone. Whether or not the app provides a personalized algorithmic selection of videos does not have any bearing on the more fundamental question of whether American's have the right to access foreign media.

You might be missing the fact that there is a significant amount of bots on Reddit pushing certain agendas giving the impression they're foreign sponsored.

I'd vouch for fake-ness of political Reddit as well

it's easier to see phrasing and logical inconsistencies when you don't share the opinion that gets forced, sadly

>For the entire 90s, the internet population was something ridiculous like 95% american.

Do you have a source for this claim? It doesn't sound realistic to me.

That shrinks by the minute, thanks to AI-assisted translators.

I had a long-distance relationship with someone when I was in my very early 20s who does not speak English nor my first language. I do not think language barrier is a difficult obstacle to overcome today if it was not much of an issue 10 years ago.

Typical pathetic response from a silly political activist. There are tons of american companies operating in china. I listed few of the biggest. Google used to operate in china. But when china tighten their laws, google chose not to follow them and left. Probably because google, like facebook, are state sponsored propaganda outfits. Unlike tiktok...

They did, largely what China did is make any companies that want to do business in China partner with a local company. From there what happened in many cases is the foreign company had their IP stolen and then shut out of the market.

China doesn't want western companies operating in China, they want western IP owned by Chinese companies operating there. That's why so many companies have pulled out of that market.

true decentralization means it will be rife with bad actors taking over the network in decentralized methods. it won't work and will be ultimately result for illegal activities.

decentralization != morally beneficial for the masses.

I'd like to offer an alternative perspective: TikTok's main revenue comes from China. Succumbing to the US gov would challenge the domestic nationalism, thereby causing more losses.

Is this a common issue? I deleted mine around the same time. I recently moved to a small town where many of the restaurants and businesses use Facebook which kind of forced me back on. When I tried creating a new one the same thing happened, and there was no way of reversing this decision.

If you deleted an account, how are they sending you emails? Are you in the EU?

Honestly this is probably the most realistic solution. The only reason all the shit ragebait addictive content is so bad is because it drives ad revenue.

I do think there's one exception/problem: youtube. While there's a lot of pregnant spiderman-elsa crap on it, there's also tons of historical, educational, investigative journalism, etc etc etc content there that strikes me as distinctly more valuable than literally anything that's ever existed on facebook, tiktok or even twitter.

And in addition to the backlog, there's an economics problem. Having good, free, easy, available video hosting is a huge good. It's also ridiculously expensive (videos are big, and you have to render multiple qualities of them, and store them forever) and a hard engineering (network and software) problem (what tiny % of video upload constitutes 90% of the actual network traffic? but you also have to brace for videos from nobodies going viral and needing to be served to the entire globe).

So how do you fund something like this? Normally I'd say, well, damn, this sounds like a utility. But given the political climate we're going into for the next 4 years, and the fact that even healthcare is privatized (well, the part of it that can generate a profit... unprofitable customers are of course pushed to the taxpayer)...

if the problem is advertising and data monetization, why am I so addicted to /this/ website?

I have had a much harder time quitting Hacker News than I ever did quitting Facebook. I've been off Facebook for ten years yet I keep logging in to leave stupid comments here.

Is that because of advertising and data monetization?

> Require human moderation. That naturally limits scale.

Does it? Does a human need to examine everything posted? You can certainly send letters without them going through a human moderator. Only what is flagged by a scanner? What if nothing is flagged? What should be flagged?

It raises the cost of the service therefore the need of user data monetization, I feel like this would backfire. I’d limit the revenue via bans on ads and data monetization.

great way to burn out people and scar them for life, look at all the stories of facebook moderators etc.

Facebook groups is also a decent way to build communities.

Honestly, Facebook without the push for reels / videos isn't that bad. (now you can crucify me)

People say that, but I've long since abandoned my FB account and sinkhole facebook domains. I miss CragisList for that. Used it a lot a decade ago.

>FB Marketplace is definitely the best way to buy and sell anything locally

I really wish they had some kind of auction component to deal with multiple interested parties / reduce flakers, but I imagine eBay has some crappy software patent that they wield with an iron fist.

FB Marketplace is the best way to buy stolen goods cheaply - not sure about authentic goods.

A restaurant can become big. Say you have a food critic showcase your restaurant and hundreds of people show up. How could we possibly deal with this problem without the aid of the smartest, most amazing, totally really smart, awesome at leet code, software engineers?

"Eternal September" was a more serious problem than we knew.

Ahahah I believe you! Some forums were really bad. :)

It's simply a better model to connected online. I use present tense because the "better times" didn't really go away: it becomes Discord servers.

The bad part, of course, is that Discord is owned by one single entity and not indexed like the open web is.

I did, and it truly was better. Threaded forums are far better at facilitating complex discussions, organizing information, and making the information accessible. Today, most communication is happening inside the walled gardens of Facebook, Discord, etc. That information is effectively being lost rather than being neatly organized and easily searchable.

Kind of, yeah.

IRC, simple php forums, no TLS, easy stuff. Nowadays we're full of technology and very poor content. In no way can mastodon (mentioning because it's the defacto decentralized social media) solve that problem. It's really easy to post stuff that shouldn't be posted.

On the other hand, crappy looking forums, slow internet connection, you really had to take the time to think about what to say and mainly why say it in the first place. It was more about the content than about quantity.

Doesn't China's national TikTok equivalent do that?

I'm fine with going back to 100% chronological feeds. Show events as they happen and don't put a hand on the scale.

That's how social networks usually build their base then they switch to an algorithmic feed to satisfy advertisers once their user base is big enough.

“We will teach you to be free”

Ah so that's why he's sucking up to trump now.

This is not an actual argument because you can make it about anything.

Like to ski? Your injuries have a societal cost.

Like to cook? Your inefficient use of energy costs society.

If you can use an argument for anything it’s not a very convincing argument.

Won't someone think of the Children!!!?

Social media is just the demon of the day. In the 80s it was that damn rock music ruining our kids and in the 90s it was violent video games and rap.

Every generation has their "this thing is corrupting the youth" moment.

Almost any form of media can be addicting. Kids these days might watch TikTok, but my worst addiction since young age has been reading online news.

Once I got diagnosed with ADHD and tried stimulant medicine, I noticed that the time I spend reading news, social media and playing games dropped dramatically. So, effectively all these activities have been nothing more than drugs for my dysfunctional brain. When my brain isn't deficient in dopamine, I seem to automatically spend most of my time on something more useful. Probably wouldn't be writing this if my meds weren't wearing off at this time of day.

Speak for yourself. I've been using hacker news since high school, 10+ years ago and haven't been able to stop.

HN is the most addictive social media I've ever used.

speak for yourself

every generation thinks they’re the first to argue that there are negative effects of free expression.

I recall similar arguments about the printing press.

“But the masses will be able to access the scripture without guidance! Society will crumble!”

TBO, TikTok and Twitter are far more diverse than HN, which is merely an echo chamber, only slightly better than a subreddit.

Although I like HN more than TikTok, it's so funny

but HN is centralized, so you agree if HN exceeds some arbitrary amount of users it should be banned? how ridiculous. tiktok is not any better or worse than facebook, youtube, or the mainstream media.

Assuming that social media is an evolution of traditional media.

The traditional media loves to chase negative news (If it bleeds, it leads) and we let that happen (muh free speech!). So it is logical that social media amplified the negativity of society, coupled with algorithms evolution and instant broadcasting the impact is amplified.

Fck around and find out I guess.

Yup, I absolutely don't understand how they're able to get away with choosing material to promote and then not call themselves publishers.

They're acting as editors for a publication. Hold them accountable like the publication companies they are.

Want to continue getting safe-harbor exemptions for user submitted content? No fucking algorithmically chosen feeds.

I distinctly remember when the chronological timeline was done away with, people were extremely pissed.

You just say "bingo"

> It's right on the tin, "Feed"

+5 Insightful

Might as well ban electricity in case the Chinese manage to use it to do bad things, same (insane) logic applies.

Devil's advocate: Can this not also happen on literally any other social network? Can this kind of shit not also be initiated by domestic agents, or agents of allied nations, or even just some bored haxor group with a penchant for chaos?

If what you said is the primary reason for banning TikTok (bad actors can do bad things), it's also a valid reason to ban literally every social network, or possibly even all user-generated content on the internet.

While your scenario might make for an interesting Tom Clancy novel there's no evidence any of that is happening and no one involved in this ban with any authority is arguing that this is something they're worried about.

You might want to get your paranoia checked out. I'm not even going to bother asking for the many sources that support your overwhelming reason.

And it would be better if "the algorithm" were under control of some unelected managers in a billion dollar company owned by finance capital?

I keep seeing this stated as a reason for banning tt but I've yet to see any evidence. During the supreme courts oral argument last week they referred to a sealed appendix with more info, when they were passing the legislation they also referred to secret evidence that Americans can't see. I don't want to give in to conspiratorial thinking but if its as bad as they claim then we as the public have a right to see the evidence and decide for ourselves.

Should I feel better or worse about it being the CCP instead of a tiny group of billionaires? From where I'm standing the cabal of tech billionaires appear to be a bigger threat to me as a normal american. Do you think this is naive?

> What in the law, exactly, would prevent the things you discussed from being spoken about on another online platform?

Let me expand this: what in the law prevents someone from going to TikTok.com and seeing the same content?

The ban is on (a) apps in the app stores and (b) hosting by American companies. It’s not sanctioning TikTok à la Huawei.

Until two police officers come and frogmarch you to the back of a car when you are saying something the government doesn't like there is free speech.

Most people are just annoyed their social media addiction is being interrupted when they moan about account bans, or app bans in this case.

This isn't banning dubious information. I only have to look at what my mom sends me videos about from Facebook.

To the post indicating shouting fire is legal - I believe the parent’s intent is to indicate there are consequences to it. From the article —

>> The act of shouting "fire" when there are no reasonable grounds for believing one exists is not in itself a crime, and nor would it be rendered a crime merely by having been carried out inside a theatre, crowded or otherwise. However, if it causes a stampede and someone is killed as a result, then the act could amount to a crime, such as involuntary manslaughter, assuming the other elements of that crime are made out.

It is actually legal to yell “fire” in a crowded theater.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_t...

https://www.whalenlawoffice.com/blog/legal-mythbusting-serie...

Posting like this will get you banned here.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: I took a quick look at your recent comment history and it seems just fine (other than https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42713605, also in this thread). If you'd please post like that and not like this, that would be good.

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I was bullied in high school because I was so different.

I was also a new kid so it was hard to join an existing clique in a small town.

Online groups saved me. It not only let me stay in contact with my old friends, but also let me meet new people with similar interest so I didn't feel so alone.

Connect in person as a teen when everything is designed around cars and stuff a lot more expensive. Where cops arrested for you for loitering. Where people see kids going home from school as 'they're up to no good'. A lot of the past locations are gone and no longer accessible for todays youth. Even fast food places want you gone as fast as possible.

> social media is now about driving engagement with people who pay these companies to get eyeballs

That's what it is, but that's not how teenagers perceive it, I think.

I see it like this: if all your friends watch the news everyday and spend a lot of time talking about it, you will end up watching the news as well. To connect.

If all your friends watch a lot of sport and meet for that, you may well end up learning to enjoy sport as well.

If all your friends know the trends on TikTok and talk about it...

I went to a school with over 1,200 students and still had no friends. Kids can be extremely cruel to their neurodivergent peers. I wasn’t able to learn social skills until university .

Things would have been a lot different if I had access to the internet.

> No one need tiktok.

And we should not underestimate teenagers: if they have something better to do than swiping on TikTok, they do it. Parents must help them have better things to do.

But still, if all their friends know and talk about the TikTok trends, they will feel disconnected if they have no clue. That's how I meant that they "need" it. They need to "connect" as in having the same references as their friends.

> They have more than enough social contacts when they go to school.

If you ever found yourself being the "weird kid" in a small town high school, you might see it different.

yea I don't think people are grasping how different places like Myspace or forums or online games are compared to modern social media.

I didn't want to imply that those things are the pinnacle of connection.

I rather wanted to say that it's easier said than done. You can't just tell teenagers "stop using social media, it's bad for you". Because if their peers use social media, then they need to use social media as well.

I'm all for removing social media altogether.

The comment they are replying to suggests taking down all the major social media networks by government force ("Just get rid of all of them").

Arguably, even if you are not prohibiting the content itself, if you take away the means for your content to spread far & wide, that's the same as censorship.

I find this quite disturbing.

> she's not an expert on mental health. She might be right, she might be wrong, but she isn't a source of truth.

It's FB but for the purpose of studying effects of social media on mental health it should suffice:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-tox...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-internal-report-sho...

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/how-social-medias-toxic-conten...

Suicides were higher in the 1980s than now. I’m pretty sure we didn’t have any apps back then.

And correlation is not causation. If you disagree with her interpretation (it's mostly just presentation, really) of the data, feel free to be specific. Attacking the person is, as always, bad form and lame.

The moral panic is social media being the reason for the suicides going up, not the fact that suicides are going up in itself.

Right, but correlation does not equal causation. Kids are also increasingly aware that they live in a neoliberal hellworld, and their chances of maintaining the lifestyles their parents and grandparents had are slim to none.

From that point of view, the press and journalism should not exist.

“Sociologist” is more of an anti-qualification. In any case let’s not rely on appeals to authority. I think we are intelligent enough to judge the evidence ourselves.

No, but she doesn't have to be in this context. She's a very capable critical thinker who knows how to do very thorough research, which is all someone has to be to determine that there is, in fact, no data to support the claims.

Actually getting kids tested for them.

Are children actually experiencing mental health disorders at a higher rate, or are we just classifying pre-existing variations in personality as behavior as mental health disorders at a higher rate?

In 1990 there were zero identified exoplants. Now there are 4000+. It isn't that there is the creation of lots of new planets, but that we started looking for them in earnest, and had the means to identify them.

Being diagnosed is the likely reason there is an explosion in mental health disorders. We go to lengths to apply a diagnostic label on every child. The massive variation in humans means that a huge portion are going to fall to the sides of the curve on all sorts of gradients. Older HNers will remember having a wide variety of kids among their cohorts, with "nerds", depressives, the hyperactive, the super driven and focused, and the manic depressives, etc, but likely zero were actually diagnosed in any way. Now you could apply a diagnoses on literally all of them.

This isn't judgmental, and it's good to know what people are dealing with, and to offer treatment or medication where possible.

Other children.

The parents.

"communist country"

I didn't realize China had eliminated class and that companies were worker owned.

>more pervasive

US spectrum export controls have been every bit as pervasive as PRC ones, pretending muh "rule of law" is a distinction without difference at this point. It's functionally the same.

>forced to divest

If US law is forced divestiture, then Bytedance is "force" to leave, because having US nationalize a PRC company is obviously a nonstarter except for the terminally stupid like noahopinion. Unlike Google + western platforms who "chose" (read: not banned) to leave because they "chose" not to comply with PRC laws that applies to all companies, including domestic PRC ones. The difference is US has no equitable law, i.e. some sort of data privacy law, that enables Bytedance to operate in US... while following the same laws that US companies do, as if Bytedance wasn't already bending backwards following additional requirements that US platforms do not have to follow (i.e. functionally Oracle JV).

Like fine, Bytedance needs to follow US laws, except US laws is designed specifically to prevent PRC companies from operating, vs PRC laws is designed to allow everyone to operate, just said operation is onerous - see retarded reciprocal argument that US companies should operate in PRC without abiding by PRC censorship laws that domestic platforms has to abide by. There's a reason FB and Google had internal programs to re-enter PRC market compliant with PRC laws (before being axed by internal dissent), because it's still feasble for US platforms to operate in PRC while being US (or at least JV) owned. So let's not pretend what US is doing is the same thing - PRC is more rule of law, US rule by law in this comparison. But again, functionally that hardly matters.

Whose buying? For how much. But maybe for the same reason Meta alleges it doesn't sell user data, because there's 7 billion other potential users who wouldn't look fondly at it. Counter productive as long as there's other routes for growth.

TikTok has entire RoW (excluding India) market. Assuming US only bans in US... which TBH we don't know. There's no comparison because TikTok is still massively profitable without US, whereas US Steel is still a mess without JP.

This is silly, the US is only 15% of Tiktok users.

The two cases are just very different, why are you even comparing the case of an investment company buying a stake in an existing app with the original creator being banned from owning what they created?

It's not about getting our data. The TikTok algorithm is already being used to sow discord by showing stuff the PRC wants impressionable Americans to see. This ability of an adversarial foreign nation to surgically push individualized propaganda to consumers in another country is pretty unparalleled in human history. TikTok is the ultimate propaganda machine.

They do just buy it. The opinion mentions that. It turns out they want even more data and also do things like hacking to steal it.

> The PRC’s methods for collecting data include using “its relationships with Chinese companies,” making “strategic investments in foreign companies,” and “purchasing large data sets.” For example [...]

In fact it treats the Chinese investment into TikTok as basically a form of "just buying it" with regards to the information gathering justification for banning it.

The usual story, it is OK for the Americans to have military bases all around the world, much less so when it comes to any other countries.

Well the alternative, in realpolitik terms, is having everything owned by Chinese companies.

I suppose they're free to pick.

So it's several things. Bear with me because finding news reports that I remember is difficult now because search results are flooded with stuff about the ban so I can't find what I'm looking for.

One concern is a general one that the Chinese government is directing the recommendation algorithms to act as propaganda. So subtly shifting user's opinions in favor of things that suit it and away from things that don't.

https://archive.is/tCVmR

Another is that it is using TikTok to surveil journalists, emigres, and other persons of interest who are using TikTok. My understanding is there are credible reports of journalists being targeted by the Chinese government, where they used TikTok to find their personal details, location, etc.

There's also been increasing reports of the Chinese government operating detention centers in the US and other countries, where they bring kidnapped Chinese nationals. Basically arresting nationals on foreign soil. In some of these cases at least TikTok has been implicated as the method of locating them etc.

https://theweek.com/speedreads/764194/intelligence-officials...

Discussion of this has all been out there over the years, but the way it's been covered has admittedly been weird. Maybe this is yet another sign of a fractured media landscape, but I think some of it has to do with the US not doing a great job of publicizing some things, possibly because it involves intelligence services.

I'm generally very in favor of unfettered freedom of speech, but have mixed feelings about this case. I guess I still side on that, and am skeptical about a ban, but this is getting into different territory and also don't feel strongly about it. I think the effects of foreign (and domestic) propaganda in social networks are very real, and although I generally think censorship is a very bad idea, I'm not sure I can blame a country for wanting an app banned if there's solid information that another country is using it in this way; it seems to be in this gray area of espionage versus free speech which is kind of an unusual territory to be in. Also, I'm fully aware that the US probably does similar things, but two wrongs don't really make a right to me, and if China produced solid evidence of the US doing something similar I wouldn't blame them for banning something either on similar grounds.

To me this all just maybe speaks to the need for a shift to open decentralized social network platforms. I realize that's easier said than done, but there's so many examples in the last few years of problems with control of centralized platforms (by private, government, or private-government combinations) leading to huge problems, either in reality or in appearance (which can sometimes be almost as equally concerning).

Oh, you could probably make some effective arguments that they're using it to influence American thought in a way that's designed to diminish the US as a world power through internal strife.

Israel/Hamas would probably be an example.

Social disruption. That's plainly clear given that Douyin is prevented from having the destructive content that proliferates on TikTok. Keep your competition mired in anti-inellectualism for a generation and it accelerates the rot.

It's taken for granted that the shifty [any] government is up to something because they always are, 100% of the time. Why would you expect the evil overlords to not be up to something with the big evil brainwashing program that has access to almost everyone on earth?

It's not a coincidence that this comes along with similar cybersecurity/anticompetitive pushes against Chinese routers, drones, and EVs.

The push for the TikTok ban only went bipartisan after October 7. It was stalled out before that.

The sudden resurgence of the years-dormant campaign to ban TikTok, and its rapid legislative success this time around, were directly because of Israel and Gaza. From the mouths of senators: "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down (potentially) TikTok...if you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts, so I know that's of real interest..." (https://x.com/wideofthepost/status/1787104142982283587)

  Jacob Helberg, a member of a congressional research and advisory panel called the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, has been working on building a bipartisan, bicoastal alliance of China hawks, united in part by their desire to ban TikTok. Over the past year, he says, he has met with more than 100 members of Congress, and brought up TikTok with all of them.
  
  [...]
  
  It was slow going until Oct. 7. The attack that day in Israel by Hamas and the ensuing conflict in Gaza became a turning point in the push against TikTok, Helberg said. People who historically hadn’t taken a position on TikTok became concerned with how Israel was portrayed in the videos and what they saw as an increase in antisemitic content posted to the app.

RedNote don't have english user interface, and it have worse censorship compare to tiktok or facebook.

Unless you want to learn Chinese and/or spend time to navigate around the content modulation system (not very hard, it just different), the experience ain't great.

Rednote is a popular meme at the moment for obvious reasons. But TikTok has around 170 Million users in the USA. What you see at the moment is a loud minority checking out the app and creating content. This is something happening all the time with Social Media and especially TikTok, loud minorities doing something, and people hard overrating the numbers. There is simply no way that with Rednotes state at the moment, we will see a significant number of users switching from TikTok to it. Maybe at the end we will see some millions switching.

Search "小红书 毛語錄" in Google. You can see it is referenced in both way.

The name 红宝书 is popular in mainland China. Chinese from Taiwan or other se asian community just call it 小红书 or 毛語錄

Anecdotally, I can confirm.

In general the algorithm seems flexible to me; on TikTok I find it easy to scroll away or flag unwanted content as "do not show again"; and in my experience the algorithm adjusts well to that.