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Support for U.S. TikTok ban continues to decline

43 pointsposted 2 days ago

68 Comments

gman83

2 days ago

Where I'm at in Europe, the app is rife with anti-American & pro-Chinese & Russian propaganda. I think that even if the Americans ban the app, it's too late, the entire world is now addicted to this app and it'll have negative consequences for the U.S. for many years to come.

ziggyzecat

2 days ago

German here: plenty of pro America, anti Chinese and pro Ukraine propaganda in my feeds. Lot's of it full of AI bits, mixed videos with AI and real footage, partially from other wars and or years old mixed into current, potentially staged bits (it's mostly clusters of facial expressions and gestures that make me doubt but also environment, intensity and location of sweat and dirt and positioning of items and vehicles and stuff, in 'artificial(learned actually, semi-professional) relation' to buildings). It's horrible.

bilbo0s

2 days ago

Meh.

Probably the reality is that the internet is filled with propaganda. Every site. Every forum. Even HN is filled with anti-(put pretty much anything here) propaganda.

Try to ignore the noise and tune in more of the signal. That's about all you can do really.

I'm not sure banning websites will do much for you, as you two are rightfully pointing out. You ban a website in Brazil? Well, OK. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in Brazil, but the rest of the world keeps getting the anti-Brazil propaganda. You ban a website in China? Well, OK. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in China, but the rest of the world keeps getting plenty of anti-Chinese propaganda. You ban a website in the US? Same thing. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in the US, but the rest of the world keeps getting plenty of anti-US propaganda.

keiferski

2 days ago

The word propaganda itself has been a bit bent out of shape in the last century. It just means to spread information. Information itself is more-or-less inherently biased (as in, not objectively neutral in an omniscient way) and so everything is basically propaganda, although not in the scary obvious way that word usually implies.

roenxi

2 days ago

The problem with banning things is actually a bit more subtle than just that. Propaganda in isolation isn't necessarily a good or a bad thing. If Big Vegetable embarks on a multi-billion dollar campaign to push pro-vegetable propaganda, that is probably a win for the rest of us. But if Big Tobacco does something similar it is more of a loss.

So we need a mechanism to decide if a specific type of propaganda is acceptable or not. And, if governments get involved, typically they will start restricting propaganda that is truthful but threatening to their chances of holding power (ie, people pointing out the flawed nature of the powers that be). It is better force people to fight propaganda with counter-propaganda and let individuals make their own mistakes.

ziggyzecat

2 days ago

> It is better force people to fight propaganda with counter-propaganda and let individuals make their own mistakes

The problem is information flow. Propaganda vs propaganda, nowadays, is in-group information and desires fighting against other in-group information and desires.

The lack and importance of truth, facts, the bread and butter of journalists, investigators and scientist, gets out of focus because of governments and other actors blocking access to data, events, locations, partially because often enough, people asking for access tamper with the evidence or start to run all kinds of narratives that would impede an investigation and results that could be 'useful'. There is, of course, much more to all that.

red-iron-pine

2 days ago

Dead Internet Theory in action. Bots spamming garbage to other bots, mostly, with the goal of squeezing into the cracks to hit a tiny handful of vaguely receptive users.

BLKNSLVR

2 days ago

But it was really too late when nothing was done about Facebook or any of the other US malvertising companies.

blitzar

2 days ago

The tiktok algorithm famously feeds people what they want and what they most engage with.

If all you are seeing anti-American & pro-Chinese & Russian propaganda, it is on you. If all you are seeing is teenage girls doing provocative dances, it is on you.

Rinzler89

2 days ago

>it's too late, the entire world is now addicted

Just like how the world is also addicted to Instagram and Facebook before that?

clbrmbr

2 days ago

That’s a problem for Europe but not so much the USA. We should not have a Chinese company controlling our information infrastructure to this degree.

It’s divestiture or ban, not just a ban.

blitzar

2 days ago

We should not have a US company controlling our information infrastructure

fsflover

2 days ago

Indeed, PeerTube is preferable.

j_maffe

2 days ago

To be fair the world is still as addicted to IG and FB as before, it's just been normalized at this point and FB is having an aging demographic.

thomassmith65

2 days ago

Yes, it's wise to be aware of how fickle the public's attention can be. TikTok will not be around forever, and likely won't be prominent enough to bother discussing a decade from now.

The parent comment also has a point, though, because stale trends generally manage to limp along around 60 years or so. Ideas tend really to win out conclusively once the opposing side has died off.

So the "culture" that, at Facebook's height of popularity, Facebook fostered, in fact will live on in a certain generation.

And all the nonsense that TikTok seems to foster today will, sadly, affect the world for decades after TikTok turns into a nonentity.

blitzar

2 days ago

Don't forget MySpace, people loved that site.

CalRobert

2 days ago

It looks like a clone of it is doing all right

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41422311

raxxorraxor

2 days ago

I think the popularity of TikTok is already declining and I always question the effectiveness of such propaganda attempts. Investing in education is the best antidote in my opinion, state level blocking of services just opens a few cans of worms.

To make TikTok unpopular more quickly, governments should probably mandate that parents make an account too.

hypeatei

2 days ago

> mandate that parents make an account too.

Guarantee higher monthly active users and the chance they get addicted too. Nice. I don't know why everyone thinks that:

1) parents are infallible

2) the problem is individuals/families and not the thing itself (infinite scroll feeds)

raxxorraxor

2 days ago

It was a joke suggesting that young people tend to think a platform becomes less cool if their parents are on it too. Not that parents can stalk the online life of their kids or other things that actually do make them uncool.

another2another

2 days ago

>To make TikTok unpopular more quickly, governments should probably mandate that parents make an account too.

Nice. It definitely worked for FB :)

But then I noticed all of the insane stuff that they started reposting and wondered if I ever really knew these people at all?

ripply

2 days ago

Popularity will definitely wane, the social media rise and fall cycle will repeat

torginus

2 days ago

Do we know what comes after Tiktok?

Loughla

2 days ago

No, the teens/college kids are still all over tiktok. It's not dying yet

candiddevmike

2 days ago

Ow! My balls!

cma

2 days ago

A constant AI generated feed, in and out of fully immersive, no swiping, just eye tracking (incl. pupil dilation) and face tracking to guide. Though some in congress who promoted the ban thought it already worked kind like that.

nope1000

2 days ago

For me it's videos about working out and climbing. You can train the algorithm pretty well what you don't want to see.

slightwinder

2 days ago

That's more likely just your algorithm, personalized to whatever TikTok considers the best for engagement-farming from you.

dqv

2 days ago

Like what? What are some examples of things you've heard from these propaganda videos?

gman83

2 days ago

One example is loads of videos from John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs about how what's happening in Ukraine is really NATO's fault. I don't get why these rather niche academics are all over. Also loads of videos about how democracy in general is just really inefficient and we'd be better of copying China's model. Things like that. I never engage with such videos, actively click things like "don't show me content like this" but it's never ending.

dqv

2 days ago

Oh. I thought it would be more like the Chinese or Russian version of these US military edits which are widely popular:

Pretty surprising to have so much content like this and it not be suppressed with TikTok being so anti-US and all.

Garvi

2 days ago

That's just a glimpse of reality you're witnessing for the first time. It can be quite disorienting after decades of indoctrination on US social media. I'm just so sick of all the pro-war propaganda we're getting here in the EU from the US.

boffinAudio

2 days ago

>anti-American

Where there's smoke, there's fire. If the USA wasn't participating in heinous crimes against humanity, there wouldn't be that much coherence in the agitprop - but the fact is, there is much to criticize about how the USA is conducting itself these days. China and Russia too - but to a far lesser extent in terms of the magnitude of the crimes.

computerfriend

2 days ago

There is indeed plenty to criticise the USA for. But there's a genocide in Xinjiang and a war in Ukraine. Neither of these things seem like far lesser magnitude crimes to me.

boffinAudio

a day ago

Perhaps you are ignorant of what is happening in Gaza? In Somalia? In Syria?

The fact that the USA murdered 5% of Iraqs population on the basis of outright lies? More than a million people murdered.

You might also want to try to look at life through the eyes of an Iraqi, Afghani, Somalian, Libyan, Syrian. Palestinian.

Without American bombs, Gaza would be a better place to live.

WitCanStain

2 days ago

I think turning a fledgling democracy into a kleptocratic dictatorship and starting an unjust war that has caused 500k casualties is at least on par with the worst the US has done in recent history like Iraq.

blitzar

2 days ago

The United States and its allies have dropped at least 326,000 bombs and missiles on countries in the greater Middle East/ North Africa region since 2001.

People 30 and under in the region have barely known a day when the US were not bombing them or their neighbouring countries - that is bound to have a pretty strong effect on how you view a country.

mopsi

2 days ago

326 000 is 5 days' worth in terms of Russian invasion of Ukraine at its peak intensity. Those who are 30 and under have seen only a one year when Russia has not been at war - during the economic crisis that followed Asian financial crisis of 1997. But this does not get even remotely as much attention as wars involving the US, because there are no paid shills flooding every imaginable place with stale copypastas about foreign wars, skewing people's sense of proportion.

blitzar

2 days ago

> there are no paid shills flooding every imaginable place with stale copypastas about foreign wars

This is not true. All sides have literal "paid shills" producing propaganda online, on our (and their) TVs and in the Cinemas. If you are unaware of this, or truly believe "only the other side does that" then the propaganda has worked extremely well.

aguaviva

2 days ago

The West also has paid shills promoting is propaganda - this is very true of course.

But it's usually either comparatively benign (promoting fluff films like Top Gun), or quite transparent (like RFE/RL which makes no effort to hide the fact that it is government supported). And it usually doesn't lie outright, but prefers to use much more subtle forms of manipulation (e.g. "nation-building" and all that).[0]

Russian/Chinese propaganda meanwhile is incredibly blatant, and has no compunction at all against straight up lying, or saying the sky is blue when it's actually orange. Or in Russia's case, that a war of naked aggression that was very much optional for them is really a defensive war that was forced on them, and so forth.

The point is here is not that one side is "good" and the other is "bad". But to suggest (as you seem to be doing) that there's some kind of basic equivalence at play, in terms of the scale and kinds of propaganda used by the respective parties is very naive.

[0] The insane lies and other propaganda used to promote the 2003 Iraq war were a major exception to this general tendency, of course. In that sense, they were much closer in spirit to Russian/Chinese-style propaganda.

vrc

2 days ago

And I don’t think Ukrainians have fond feelings about Russia either.. Both things can be objectively bad for the people being bombed.

boffinAudio

a day ago

There is an unheard population of Ukrainians who want the war to stop and for there to be peace with their Russian cousins.

It is the Western powers who are sacrificing Ukraine in order to put Western weapons systems on Russias borders. Not the Ukrainian people.

And, in the context of what was done to Iraq (5% of its population murdered for the purposes of the USA's racist, elitist ruling classes), it is no wonder that this silence is perpetuated.

aguaviva

a day ago

There is an unheard population of Ukrainians who want the war to stop and for there to be peace with their Russian cousins.

Actually, they are very much heard from, and their views are carefully studied by public opinion researchers.

However (1) they are a minority and (2) you are definitely misrepresenting their views to suggest that favoring an early ceasefire means "wanting peace with their Russian cousins", per your disingenuous choice of phrasing there.

It is the Western powers who are sacrificing Ukraine in order to put Western weapons systems on Russias borders. Not the Ukrainian people.

As if the solid majority in Ukraine who wishes to continue the fight (along with all of those who foolishly sign up to go the front) were just puppets, with no idea as to why the fight was really being waged, and no ability to see through this gigantic sham that has been foisted upon them, which should be as plainly obvious to them as it is to you.

That's some deep insight you have, there.

boffinAudio

10 hours ago

>Actually, they are very much heard from, and their views are carefully studied by public opinion researchers.

Western public opinion researchers == propagandists for the military industrial complex.

>As if the solid majority in Ukraine who wishes to continue the fight (along with all of those who foolishly sign up to go the front) were just puppets, with no idea as to why the fight was really being waged, and no ability to see through this gigantic sham that has been foisted upon them, which should be as plainly obvious to them as it is to you.

Solid majority? Post your sources.

Meanwhile, Western powers, who have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity every twenty minutes for the last twenty years, in one illegal war after the other, strive to push us closer than ever to nuclear war.

This war is good only for weapons manufacturers. Its not good for the people of Ukraine or the rest of Europe.

aguaviva

4 hours ago

Western public opinion researchers == propagandists for the military industrial complex.

No one said they were "Western" in this case. Strange that you jump to that assumption.

Solid majority? Post your sources

The research is very easily findable. The numbers also resonate with my own impressions from countless discussions with actual, real Ukrainians, both in and outside the country.

Normally I'm happy to provide sources asked, but from the tone and content of your responses on this and related threads, I don't think you actually care.

From what you just said, above, whoever is doing the research -- if their data doesn't support your highly jaundiced and moralistic worldview, you've already decided that must be because they're propagandists for the military industrial complex, end of story.

user

2 days ago

[deleted]

sethammons

2 days ago

I have learned a lot, like, a lot a lot, from tiktok. I devolve to simple fun, but some stuff sticks. I've also learned about political corruption and breaking news. I think that lots of people find similar value in addition to cat videos and dance offs.

bilsbie

2 days ago

I don’t know how I feel. It’s probably 90% complete waste of my life, 5% educational, and 5% completely life changing.

Overall worth it but kind of like panning for gold I guess. Maybe that’s why it’s addictive.

sseagull

2 days ago

It’s a well-known part of psychology/operant conditioning and almost certainly done on purpose (to keep you addicted).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Intermittent_r...

roncesvalles

2 days ago

It's akin to slot-machine gambling. Once in a while you strike gold (a genuinely useful or entertaining post), so you keep pulling the lever, over and over.

bbconn

2 days ago

Care to share some life changing Tiktok videos?

bilsbie

2 days ago

It’s hard to remember here are a few off the top of my head:

Pete Holmes God is nothing. Supposed to be comedy but really clicked for me.

A couple series where people just strike up conversations with strangers. It started to feel normalized after a while and I started doing it in my own life.

Maybe not life changing but a pickleball tip on something I’d been struggling with that finally made it click. (Judging which balls are going out)

There are lots of other things but those jump out at me.

spiderfarmer

2 days ago

With hundreds of videos watched per month and 5% of them being life changing, your life would change an awful lot.

sethammons

2 days ago

I wont quote the 5% number, but I have changed multiple ways of doing things in my (daily!) life from tiktok: how i tie my shoes and a bunch of other knots, how I prepare some of my daily food like eggs and potatoes has changed, how I interact with my phone (unknown shortcuts and features). I literally can't enumerate all the things I have learned and used. Two weeks ago, I had to pull a t-post out of the ground and I used a technique I saw a week or two earlier and it made it so damn easy.

slightwinder

2 days ago

Now the question is, how much of that what you learned is actually true.. Do you check back with reliable sources from outside TikTok?

phito

2 days ago

> I've also learned about political corruption and breaking news

I uh... don't think that's a great place to get that kind of information

sethammons

2 days ago

Why? A city council member was removed for good reason. A get updates from a congressman on tiktok, even though he voted for the ban. I first learned of the attempted Trump assassination on tiktok, way before it was anywhere on any news site.

I have also heard propaganda. I try to look into things as it makes sense. Someone says something odd or enough videos come my way that I look more into something.

What I absolutely do not trust is any single source, especially any single big publication. Gell-Manning effect.

subroutine

2 days ago

My problem with TikTok is not that it's a Chinese company per se, but that China won't allow an equivalent US (or EU) company to operate in China. TikTok itself is even banned in China.

thefz

2 days ago

This should give you a sense of the importance of this psyop-in-disguise applicaiton.

blitzar

2 days ago

They are an evil authoritarian state - proven by them banning this app in their country.

We should ban this app in our country - it will prove that we are NOT an evil authoritarian state.

jajko

2 days ago

Why isn't the discussion more about general ban of cancerous social medias for people who are not yet mentally developed and fall ridiculously easily into proper addiction for it? It would be wonderful if state/society protected vulnerable, but when thats not the case its each parent's responsibility.

The hell will freeze sooner than I will allow any form of this for my kids below maybe 15 years old. Its so sad to see rather small kids glued to screens, parents by their negligence and laziness fucking up their most important people in their lives, for life.

Where is the threshold just that they can get a bit more time off from parental duties to slouch on couch, meth or crack? Or course I don't expect miracles from adults who are themselves deep in addictive behaviors themselves, then its just a sad story all the way down the line.

Children need tons of time off any screen for proper development, not just early years. Social skills, anxiety, self worth, mental stability and resilience. None of this happens in front of screen, in contrary a lot of harm in not only these areas are very frequent. Very happy to be part of society (Switzerland) where similar values are shared by most peers around us and also whole public education system.

TheAceOfHearts

2 days ago

Maybe it's just my TikTok feed being in a bubble, but my impression is that there's not nearly as much content being produced for the platform anymore because of the poor monetization strategy. There was a time where it could keep showing you new content regardless of how long you were swiping, but now it has started to show me posts that are often multiple months old. Sometimes I'll watch a handful of videos and the timeline just loops back to showing me stuff it has already shown me previously.

Their monetization strategies also just kinda suck in general. You can either make an ad demonstrating some product which you sell on their shop, or you're part of the revenue-share program which doesn't pay out much and which includes a limitation on how frequently you can participate before getting capped.

It definitely feels like we're past "peak" TikTok.

Honestly... As I was writing this post I started to think more critically about the kind of content I'm being shown and it definitely seems like propaganda when scrutinized more closely. I don't really get any obvious anti-American content, but they sneak in an awful lot of pro-Chinese cooking videos.

Edit: thinking more about anti-American propaganda, I do get recommended a decent number of Trump parodies... And as for anti-UK propaganda, it has also shown me lots of videos of people taking down ULEZ camera poles. Admittedly, I hadn't really connected the dots until writing this, but I definitely feel like I was slowly being brainwashed and nudged without realizing. So as of writing this update I'm deleting TikTok and shifting my position against the platform.

sp0rk

2 days ago

I witnessed a pretty alarming situation on TikTok surrounding the story about the Dalai Lama asking a young boy to "suck his tongue." Traditional news outlets ran the initial story, and then followed up shortly after to provide important cultural context, as well as the Dalai Lama's apology.

My girlfriend's TikTok For You Page, on the other hand, only showed her stuff about the initial story and then she never heard anything else about it. We both walked away from this news story with completely different views of reality.

Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.

alephnerd

2 days ago

> Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.

My SO who is of Vietnamese origin noticed a similar issue.

VN and China have a very acrimonious relationship, and there definitely is a push in Vietnamese language TikTok to both rehabilitate China's image which has been perilously bad since the 2014 standoff [0], as well as to rehabilitate Trump's image.

It's hard to ascertain how much of it is manipulated via the algorithm, but either way there is a lot of content that is generated and posted on TikTok with a pro-Russia or pro-China slant and to a level incomparable to other platforms.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hai_Yang_Shi_You_981_standoff

When Amazon stops paying for Twitch losses, they will move to Youtube same with ticktok

FollowingTheDao

2 days ago

[flagged]