As an Indian, welcome to the party.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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The only thing I really feel bad for from this is the small town food banks/animal welfare societies/sanctuaries that were able to find alternative sources of incomes through Tiktok via their partner programs and through a wider audience. Apparently Instagram doesn't pay as well, and Youtube shorts are abysmal for discovery.
I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, and my city dropped funding for them in 2023. Tiktok donations helped a lot more than you'd think. Highly encouraged people reading this to drop some food/donations off at your shelter of choice if you have any to spare.
That's interesting, last I had heard TikTok was morally abysmal when it came to paying creators. Unless that changed in the last few months then any Tiktok creator would make more money on YouTube even with a smaller audience.
For normal Tiktok creators, I'm not sure. But from what I remember, our TikTok revenue (combined creator fund payout + donations) outperformed every other source of revenue on a month-to-month basis EXCEPT the large local fundraising drives (which we only had quarterly).
The secret hack to the internet has always been animal content, lol. Animal videos performed very well, especially if you got into the creator fund. Youtube shorts only performed well for us when we had long form content the short could lead into. Before then we had 0 visibility on the YT algo.
Finally, Tiktok has better integration different payment methods through fundraising platforms (GoFundMe, Kickstarter, etc) than Youtube (or any Meta app tbh), or at least from what I understood from our accountants (I never bought anything off of Tiktok).
Again, this is only from my experience, and some other small animal rescues that we worked with. That's why I express sympathy for these organizations. I don't really care what happens to the drop shipping influencers or whatever.
Ah, i see. Thats really interesting, thanks for your insight.
TikTok being banned is good. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter should be banned as well. Closed, source, manipulative and harmful algorithms should be banned and these apps all use dark patterns in their design.
The fediverse and open social networks where the algorithms are open source and well understood and the user is allowed to choose their own algorithms is the only safe way to use social media.
Trump may even welcome that, considering that Truth Social is just Mastodon.
Honestly I think it's a terrible precedent to set. Now the government can just say they don't like XYZ website and are banning it. That wasn't really something they did 10 years ago. Unless of course it was illegal activity. But I don't think this is a net win for the internet. Regardless of what decision has been made, freedoms were removed and citizens' rights were sidestepped for political means. I think it shouldn't be the government's job to protect us from ourselves.
I was totally onboard with banning tiktok on government computers and I was completely on board with the government publicly expressing concerns over the motives of tiktok as a business. That's where I personally believe this should have stopped. Inform the people of the danger and then let them decide what to do with that information.
The problem with that idea though, is that nation-wide, citizens' trust in the government is at an all-time low. So even if the government said tiktok is bad and you shouldn't use it, people already don't trust the government. Maybe they should work on regaining the trust their people had for them 65 years ago before it tries to get people to behave how they think we should.
A government that can ban social media sites is going to base their choices of which ones to ban on their preferences - not yours.
The problem is not the government got to choose - in a functioning democracy, the government would represent the will of the people.
The problem is this democracy is fucked.
The EU seems to be handling it fine, the point is not targeting specific sites but targeting user hostile behaviors against citizens
Governments can place qualifiers based on hostile behaviours but then still selectively enforce said restrictions on the platforms they want to target.
Such as with tiktok they specially worded the laws so that it only affected tiktok and not the others.
That is the thing that fear mongering against the Government always fails to address.
Yes, banning one thing out of ten that all do the same thing is wrong. Yes, we do not want to give the Government the ability to ban specific sites because history.
But banning or regulating algorithms, which are the actual problem, does not stop social media sites from existing. It just stops them from being able to manipulate massive groups of people by hiding/pushing the information the company wants one to see.
Unfortunately, the majority doesn't see algorithmic social media as a bad thing because they really do like echo chambers, and politicians don't ever seem to understand what a "root issue" is.
I still consider us in something like the teenage years as a society, just discovery something big like the Internet and social media and we're going to handle it poorly until we learn to handle it responsibly.
Heads or tails whether we make it to adulthood before the powers that be manage to wrangle things in their favor first. Signs point in a bad direction, but there's no saying that the tools that worked on society before won't break when the next thing comes along. Maybe ai will take a form that liberates, or hits the powerful far more negatively than it hits the masses.
Well it's a good thing they banned TikTok because it has "Closed, source, manipulative and harmful algorithms" and not for some other reason
Inb4 Lemmy ban
If we left it up to our government, that’d probably be what happens
No no no my friend. You misunderstand USAing. You sweet sweet summer child.
Non-American here. This actually goes a long way in helping me to avoid US-centric news and content for the next 4 years. So, there’s that.
That's an interesting perspective. Please enjoy having our stupid bullshit slightly further away from your face for a while! My only option is sticking my head in this hole in the ground.
enjoy not having FREEDOM though /s
I know! I'm so happy!
Calling it now, the supposed "rumors" of Musk wanting to buy out TikTok are suddenly going to become not-rumors on January 21st.
Calling it now, it's not gonna happen. And I'll be back in this threat when dust settles
They're not selling
Don't need to. The government can seize the brand and US infrastructure.
I'm no lawyer but I don't even think it's that complex.
The law as written states "...However, the prohibition does not apply to a covered application that executes a qualified divestiture as determined by the President."
It goes on the clarify in a little more detail what a " qualified divestiture" is, but ultimately the determination seems to be by the President.
Trump can "make a deal" that he considers a "qualified divestiture" and allow the app again. For example ByteDance can sell TikTok to AmericaDance, a new company that just so happens to work for and does everything ByteDance does.
Now this wouldn't hold up in any real court, but that would take A LONG time to resolve at which point Trump declares a win and likely everyone just moves on. Bonus during the 2028 election Vance or whomever can say that Democrats want to ban TikTok.
I'm really surprised they're not pushing the web version, which can operate in a way not covered by this ban.
It also can't track the users nearly as well.
No, but I imagine they can still run profitable ads, and probably more effectively than most websites.
Sure, but profit may not be the most important factor for Bytedance here. They say they're more willing to shut down than negotiate divestment.
Pretty gross being violently ruled by a few fossils in wacky costumes.
It's not even a running consistent with their own dogma. They've gone completely rogue.
The law allowing this happen was already passed, by a democratically* elected government. All the court is saying is that the law isn't unconstitutional. They don't decide what laws are "right" or "wrong", merely that it doesn't (in their opinion) contradict the constitution.
*how democratic it is is debatable, but still... an election did take place that put congress (and the president) in power
TikTok’s fate in the U.S. now lies in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who originally favored a TikTok ban during his first administration
...
Trump began to speak more favorably of TikTok after he met in February with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass. Yass is a major ByteDance investor who also owns a stake in the owner of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform.
Stop the ban or we'll burn your own platform to the ground.
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I know lots of people are mad, but I just see TikTok as another centralized platform that capitulates to special interests (read: money). I think the ban is a net positive, and I wouldn't lose any sleep if they banned other centralized social media platforms.
It never feels good to have the rug pulled out from under you, but people will find better ways to communicate. Humans are nothing if not creative problem solvers.
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