this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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Youtube and Instagram tried for years to lure in Tiktok users, and they failed so badly that even with Tiktok potentially getting banned, people would rather switch to a different potentially sketchy Chinese app.
Sketchy Oligargh Billionaire App VS State-Run-Sketchy Party-Official-Billionaires App...
Idk... Sounds like loose loose...
Party official billionaires are much better than sketchy "self made" billionaires.
Party officials owe their fortune and allegiance to the party, and we've seen some high profile cases of billionaires being brought to their heels very quickly.
Capitalist billionaires are the end result of a selection process that chooses the most self serving, greedy, ruthless bastards.
I'll take #1. Fight me.
I take almost any Chinese party official over an American Billionaire. Rich people had their chance to prove capitalism works, it didn't....
China has shown it jails Billionaires, so their Justice system works better than the one in the US.
China has jailed billionaires for going against the communist party's doctrine and gaining power, not for any actual crimes.
Yes ... but they ARE jailed (or worse). And they all know the Party has shit on them and they still chose to rise. That's their game.... what's the western equivalent? Be born rich, cause literal chemical natural disasters by lobby work and shitty investment decisions and what happens?..... correct... In china they be ded...
Between a choice of "you will never be arrested for anything, ever, no matter how heinous" vs "You can be arrested at any time for any reason or no reason, at the whim of your government" I cannot say with confidence which of those is worse.
Party officials made their fortune first and were then forced to join the party, the party doesn't make their fortune. They don't care about people, unless they get either rich or influential, and then uses their red book to reel them in.
China is the most capitalist country on the planet. The only thing they openly worship is money.
Please spend some time there and we talk afterwards, if you stick to your opinion.
What the hell did I just read?
Propaganda.
If China were capitalist, they wouldn’t have lifted a record number of people out of poverty, continually be spending on improving public services, and prosecuting their wealthy. Simply participating in markets doesn’t make a country capitalist- it’s how that wealth is distributed or not.
But we’re fed this Sinophobic propaganda in the hopes we won’t notice that China is passing us by, and the average person there is living a far higher quality of life.
I'm not being fed sinophobic propaganda, I lived in China for 7 years, speak Chinese, and an married to a Chinese.
Quality of life is by and large alright, but there's a huge disparity between the so called middle class and the actual working class that's in violation of everything Marxist you'll ever read about.
They absolutely have a lot of room for improvement, and their leadership has openly acknowledged they need reforms to move towards a truer implementation of communism. They’ve already implemented some of those reforms.
But hats off to them for what they’ve accomplished so far. Unrecognizable from the country they were 30 years ago.
You've obviously never been there, then. Give it a try and get back to me.
I disagree. What matters is power, and money does grant a lot of it, but in China especially this isn't as direct as it is in the US for example because of party politics.
That's a very broad assumption, and in some cases is true, some it is not. China has over 1 000 billionaires, over 100 of them are in the parliament, so it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, they go hand in hand because of the power thing.
Yeah walking the streets of Beijing will give me ample opportunity to meet & greet Chinese billionaires and CCCP top brass.
I can see the logic. If I used these apps I'd rather have a different sketchy government spying on my than my own.
My understanding is that nobody actually cares about the data collection, its more of a rebellious move to punish the government for, in their opinion, overreaching.
For the record, I don't agree with that - its just what I'm seeing.
That they specifically went to another sketchy app is what gets me the most.
I could name tons of social network alternatives that are decentralized, give users control but for some reason those are sidelined as everyone suddenly wants an account on app they never heard off a few weeks ago and its main selling feature is that is at least as insecure and censored as tiktok..
Name them!
Your catching me off guard but uh sure
loops is a new tiktok like app for the fediverse. And probably most relevant. I say probable because i am still uncomfortable with this type of social media so i dont know what people expect or want from it.
odysee. Similar algorithm based video scrolling but have not tried it.
lemmy, bet you heard of this one before.
mastodon, a similar trend of today. People left twittercorp shithole. Had to make a choice between established actual alternative or brand new and empty twittercorp shithole 2.0
If these event thoughts me something its that people actually have no problem changing platforms and websites. Which i previously thought was the case. Its just seems unpredictable what actual sets a digital migration in motion and to where people will flock.
Odysee is more of an replacement for YouTube than TikTok, it has more wider videos, usually more than a minute.
They're looking for a "fuck you" to the US government more than they're looking for a new social media. Maybe it will stick as a popular platform, but I suspect it was chosen more for its name and ties to the CCP than any actual features.
It's genuinely superior to tiktok though, the algo rewards like 1% of the ragebait, uncredited reposts, and deceptive posts that tiktok does. If they reverse the ban, I'm not going back.
Supposedly they're doing it on purpose as a protest. Not just one sketchy Chinese app, but any sketchy Chinese app they can find. In the hopes that Meta and Google will miss them, and the federal government will capitulate to stop them using those apps.
Because apparently they haven't read the bill in question and think banning these apps too will somehow be "unsustainable".
It's still an act of protest. Even if it will only last a week.
However, XHS has gone through 3-4 major revisions in the past 4 days, they clearly are anticipating sticking around.
It would be so hilarious to me if they build a VPN directly into the app to sidestep the Great Firewall of America
https://lemmy.world/comment/14481177
This is not true at all.
Prove that. https://time.com/7207351/tiktok-refugees-us-red-note/
https://www.deccanherald.com/world/us-tiktok-refugees-are-fleeing-to-chinese-app-rednote-its-a-new-phase-of-digital-cold-war-3358036
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonsnyder/2025/01/14/tiktok-and-rednoteconsent-without-transparency-isnt-freedom-its-control/
Ban Instagram, Discord and iOS first, anti-libre software.
They never will. This ban was never to help us.
They do not give a fuck about me or you!
Lmao IOS? Next is Windows then?
This ban was never to protect user privacy. It is to protect the federal government from what users willingly give away to foreign social media companies (and only those companies that are in the control of US adversaries). It was never about you and if you assumed that based on what the government said, you deserve to be disappointed. They give only fucks about what the average user can do to hurt them.
Because Chinese intelligence doesn't trawl YouTube, Meta, and X?
And ban smart TVs!
And ban hardware firmware!
And shipping and receiving software!
And proprietary ore mining operation software!
All of it! They don't give a fuck!