Because you’re stopping at an arbitrary point to give in to bigots.

Didn’t know they changed owners. That’s unfortunate.

Thanks!!!

Gotcha. Good to know. So it’s like TPB would change domains or hosts every couple months in the old days? Lol

Do you need a seedbox to maintain your ratio? I’ve thought about looking into them but don’t want to pay some monthly fee to get a couple hard to find things, when I could just torrent from my plex box when I need to.

Oh don’t worry, the parts of the government that benefit the rich and corporations I’m sure they will find a way to salvage.

Ya but when it’s posted on a social media they can’t control and you aren’t American, they can’t stop it. It’s why videos of the genocide were all over Tik Tok but not US social media. The US does the same things, but with Instagram and similar (even in your first article it shows they have that capability and worse. Which checks out, I’ve had Instagram and FB make ad suggestions for things I’ve searched on completely different apps or web pages, or sometimes just something I’ve talked about.)

I would argue that Chinese controlled social media is better if you’re trying to get past US censored channels and surveillance and you live in the US. Same if I was in China, I’d be saying the about US social media probably.

Of course fediverse service would be the best case scenario.

The Chinese aren’t the ones firing people for posting pro Palestinian things on social media or attacking protestors on college campuses or protecting white supremacists in Oregon or Washington. That’s our agencies, our cops.

Yay! The megathread is here! And a wiki!

Again, I don’t understand why we have to keep going back to a known problem and try to use it to justify a different concern. The topic is China’s TikTok.

Because the other problem is worse and more of a concern? Because it shows our politicians are either hypocrites, have a different agenda, or both? Because it tricks people into thinking their enemies are abroad rather than the rich at home, preventing international solidarity and underselling the problem of the influence of our own home grown businesses, billionaires, lobbyists? Because it strengthens their power by preventing another alternative avenue of information away from their censorship? Because usually the first solution takes away momentum from the problem, preventing a better solution for a longer period of time?

“They’re teenagers and old people saying they spend their whole day on the app and we can’t take it away.”

But did all those calls actually result in anything? No, Tik Tok is still being banned. Did the things I talk about result in anything, the influence of American companies? Yes, it’s increased and strengthened conservatives, the Citizens United scandal helped lead to Trump the first time, they’ve suppressed dissent against Israel, helping to justify genocide, normalized racist, homophobic, and transphobic rhetoric online in a more mainstream space (X), etc. These are hard facts, not conspiracy theories dreamed up about what China could do.

Not to mention that asking users to save their app is something literally any app run by a business would do. They would do that even if they were owned by an American company and were getting threatened by a ban. Like I said, no worse than the SOPA blackout by companies like Google and Reddit where they asked users to contact representatives. Meanwhile, American companies Uber and Lyft did huge lobbying efforts and spent record breaking amounts of money making life harder for gig workers in California with Prop 22, for example, and did a huge advertising campaign lying about the effects of it.

Let me ask another way: Do you really, in your heart, truly believe that they’re going to circle back to dealing with the privacy of American companies after Tik Tok? Be honest. This conversation will be permanently tabled once these Tik Tok articles are out of the zeitgeist.

TikTok , controlled by China, was easily able to influence their users to take action when the initial talks of banning the app occurred.

Were they? I don’t really recall users doing much to help Tik Tok at all.

And US companies do the same thing but arguably in a way that’s worse for our country. Elon is actively interfering with X/Twitter to make a more conservative user base, and Facebook is famous for giving this influence to other private companies leading to Trump. US companies, and the billionaires who own them, are using their influence to make the country more fascist by actually getting us people like Trump or asking the next President to change out the effective FTC leader or making us give tax money to a foreign power like Israel instead of US citizens. Meanwhile Tik Tok is, so far, just kind of limply asking users to save them when banned (equivalent to Google’s pleas during like the SOPA talks) and it resulting in… not much.

Do I want Chinese companies having my data? No. But I also don’t want US companies having my data, and I’d rank them equally, if not the danger of the latter to my well being actually higher.