Technology

They aren’t banning it because China can see what you put on it, they’re banning it because China can control what you see from it.

to suppress video coming from Gaza and Lebanon? just a guess; but I'd imagine that's at least a part of it.

Theater.

Cybersec is hard. There are always more holes. China exports a LOT of stuff with holes. We can do little more than stick our fingers in the dyke. This looks like they're doing something.

What they're not going to expect is how much people hate them for taking their entertainment away.

"We got rid of the brain cancer. Here, have leukemia instead"

The way I see this is that it's not TikTok that's the issue. It's short form videos.

I doubt there's many here that are even interested in that format.

Though they've announced plans to do so, Loops is not yet federated. It's presently still a closed site and not part of the Fediverse.

I'm on the spectrum. I can process reading way, WAY faster than I can process someone just audibly speaking to me. That shit's actually helpful. I admit, it doesn't need to be in the center of the video though.

Actually captions like that can help you read faster. I've seen speed reading training things like that.

Absolutely none of this law was ever about privacy or mental health. No one ever claimed it was. The law is banning tiktok because it is based in China. That is the reason given by the law itself. The possibility that meta or Google or some other American company will buy or replace tiktok and operate the same way is not an unintended outcome. It is literally the whole point of the law to get bytedance to sell tiktok to an American company.

Agree on this except I have doubts that this statement is true

It is insulting that a Chinese run social media platform provides more freedom of speech online than its US competitors.

Until a flood of TikTok users bankrupt them, anyways.

Not entirely sure how you'd make the economics of hosting endless video files work without great big piles of money and some way to get even more big piles of money on a routine basis :/

I stay the f away from it. You haven't spent enough time to properly train it. As you watch, it tracks time spent on each video, interactions, passive and active choices and slowly builds a dossier on you.

As you keep going, it occasionally throws adjacent stuff in. It starts tossing you stuff that other people with your likes watch. If there is content on there that you'll appreciate, it will eventually find it. If there is enough, it'll stream it to you non-stop.

They'll find people who share your political alignment and say precisely what you want to hear. If you like brunettes with flowy blouses or redheads who are gym rats, you'll get them. If you like skeptics or preppers, you'll get them.

My wife gets a lot of her news from it, I find probably 1/3 of it to be suspect and 90% of it biased toward what she wants to hear. Nothing there is telling both sides of any story. (to be clear we have the same political/ethical views, but I'm a touch more skeptical about journalism and random influencers, especially popular influencers)

Even with APK, it wouldn't work if traffic itself is blocked.

Tell basically all young people that.

You not liking it does not mean it doesn't have appeal.