This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
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 EU seems to be handling it fine, the point is not targeting specific sites but targeting user hostile behaviors against citizens
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.
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.
Citizens United was a death sentence for the ideal of the government representing the will of the people.
Trump's election is the final nail in its coffin. He hasn't even taken office yet and he's already brazenly selling influence
And if he and the oligarchs have their way about it, it won't he long before we won't even be able to say things like that. Not because the oligarchy will do something so doomed to failure as trying to censor it themselves, but because sites that don't "choose" to censor whatever they want censored will be banned.
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.
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.
I disagree, I think this ban sets a bad precedent. What governments should do is pass stricter data protection laws, as well as banning the many addictive design patterns that manipulate people into scrolling for hours and hours. For example infinite scroll. Imagine how much less people would doom scroll if they had to manually click "yes, I want to continue to page 7 of my twitter feed"
Trump may even welcome that, considering that Truth Social is just Mastodon.
isn't it a mastodon fork?
and considering it's probably blocked by like 98% of the fediverse, i don't think he likes it very much
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.
I know! I'm so happy!
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.
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.
why not have better data protection laws instead
Because that would have hurt their donors
Calling it now, the supposed "rumors" of Musk wanting to buy out TikTok are suddenly going to become not-rumors on January 21st.
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.
This is all theater.
trump is going to "save" tik tok after starting the initial push to ban it (for the wrong reasons) to pretend he did something for you. Worst part is that all of the no/low info voters and non voters will eat it up.
It's the equivalent of a person pushing you into the middle of the street and at the very last second, that same person tells the drivers to all stop. "Wow, I owe you my life!"
And now, this adds two layers:
You think trump and the Supreme Court are colluding? now they get to say, nah uh!!!! Even though again, this is all convoluted.
trump gets to look "stronger" than the "highest court in the land" to help delude the next generation of low info tiktok folks.
P.s. The Chinese "protest" apps are going to mine the FUCK out of these millions of phones in the brief window they have them. Also, when the kids inevitably move back to tiktok, majority of them will leave these other apps installed on their phones, dormant and collecting in the background.
Pretty gross being violently ruled by a few fossils in wacky costumes.
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.
Do it. Do a flip!
i don't understand why everyone wants to push trump, who already doesn't care for the constitution, to just unilaterally decide not to obey laws passed by congress? like what are we doing?
As an Indian, welcome to the party.
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.
