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"I would literally write my social security number on a sticky note and stick it to Xi Jinping's forehead than go back to using Instagram Reels" I saw this yes

• dartos 2y ago
  > TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness Yknow creators get paid _by tiktok_ to do natural ad placement in their videos? It’s just as fake as everything else, if not more so.
• pjc50 2y ago
  Funnily enough, the lawyer who quit Meta has resorted to doomposting on .. Linkedin. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/meta-lawyer-lemley-quits-ai-case-citing-zuckerberg-descent https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/meta-lawyer-lemley-quit...
• cvoss 2y ago
  The US gov's intention was not at all to shut down TikTok. It was to force ByteDance to sell it. The fact that ByteDance is opting for a shutdown instead is a huge PR stunt, and their unwillingness to sell under the circumstances kinda proves their whole First Amendment claims are made in bad faith. Something deeper is going on, and it's not about your social security number.
  • whimsicalism 2y ago
    i think there are obvious reasons why bytedance would not want to spawn a US-based competitor and why a US only social media network would be ineffective. this is exactly the same as what China does with their gfw, they allow american apps to divest and be owned by a chinese company.
    • suraci 2y ago
      Wrong 1. China asked American SNS companys to 'obey Chinese laws', which mostly refer to content control and data ownership, these companys refused, China didn'tforced them to sell 2. Are you sure to play the 'same as what China does'? hey, we are a totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial regime, are we same? think twice
      • whimsicalism 2y ago
        1. Yes, China forced the sale of Uber China to Didi - this is well documented. 2. Did I say that? No. I am opposed to the tiktok ban
        • suraci 2y ago
          China forced the sale of Uber China to Didi - this is well documented really? > https://www.bbc.com/news/36938812 https://www.bbc.com/news/36938812 > https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/uber-forced-out-china https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/... Let me tell you a cruel fact - Uber is completely unable to compete with Didi. You have no idea how fierce the competition in this industry in China is. Uber died before it grew up in China
          • whimsicalism 2y ago
            Uber got 33%+ market share. From your article: > If Uber had become a commercial success in China, Chinese authorities ultimately would have clamped down to protect their domestic competitors. > firms that do occasionally find success often face headwinds from Chinese regulators who limit their access to the domestic market. > Didi naturally had state-backed funding, receiving a significant cash infusion from China's large sovereign-wealth fund. > "Uber China" sought local investors. The hope was that, with local investors, the Chinese operation would be spared some of the hamstringing restrictions typically imposed on foreign businesses. China is well-known to have intense domestic favoritism. Not sure where the profit is in denying that, given your own sources seem to clearly state it and even name a number of channels through which the state puts their thumb on the scale, not just regulatory but also through financing.
  • lelandfe 2y ago
    If you feel that the national security angle is a farce, do you similarly feel that the DoD banning TikTok on government systems was just for show? https://defensescoop.com/2023/06/02/pentagon-proposes-rule-to-ban-tiktok-on-all-dod-connected-devices-including-for-contractors/ https://defensescoop.com/2023/06/02/pentagon-proposes-rule-t...
    • kome 2y ago
      well, probably yes
    • mmmpetrichor 2y ago
      The DoD banning an app on their network is a lot different than banning it competely in the US. I would think DoD should ban most apps connecting to their networks that aren't work related. I feel this whole effort is either in bad faith or isn't being transparently communicated to the public.
      • kjkjadksj 2y ago
        They famously failed to ban strava and some military assets were unintentionally disclosed on the strava heatmap by soldiers logging their cardio jogs through facility hallways.
      • IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Except there was never a discussion of banning TikTok the app. Which is why a sale of the app was always an option.
    • RestlessMind 2y ago
      NatSec should not even be needed. A simpler reason could be that China bans foreign social media apps from operating in China, so Chinese apps should be treated as such.
      • bb123 2y ago
        Reciprocity is not a good idea. Why would we want to copy every bad foreign law?
  • s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Social media is the front line of an ongoing cyber war. It is a matter of propaganda and social engineering. Imagine if Japan owned all the newspapers in the run-up to WWII. That's not to say China is the only one with propaganda.
    • crystal_revenge 2y ago
      It's unfortunate that this comment is buried so deep and that generally this topic is under discussed. Media has always been a force for controlling popular opinion, but in the age of social media it's going to new extremes. There are forces that try to control how you see the world on all social media platforms and do so to attempt to shape your opinions of the world and modify your actions. You can visibly see Reddit has been completely taken over by bot, shills, and other controlled accounts. There is no sincere, real human opinion posted on the front page. Even HN is not immune. "Bad news" has long been forbidden here, and there is a range of topics that, even when heavily upvoted by the community, tend to disappear within minutes.
      • ByThyGrace 2y ago
        > there is a range of topics that, even when heavily upvoted by the community, tend to disappear within minutes. Such as? Disappear as in getting flagged?
        • whycome 2y ago
          Luigi
          • s1artibartfast 2y ago
            Massively controversial on HN, leading to lots of flagged posts (due to a mix of legitimate flame bait and emotional kneejerk).
        • myvoiceismypass 2y ago
          Large portions of the things posted to the Oakland subreddit get flagged and removed. Almost anything mentioning the city in a negative light gets flagged. Crime reports / trends, anything. Sarcastically chuckling about the state of the city as a long time resident gets the ban hammer. It is really quite something.
  • crimsoneer 2y ago
    I mean, the Chinese government was never going to let the US just take their company at bargain basement prices.
    • redactd 2y ago
      Do you think that ByteDance is primarily concerned with the economic considerations for TikTok, or do you think that it is something else? Do you think that there is a price at which they would be willing to sell it?
    • cg5280 2y ago
      Didn't something similar happen with Grindr? It was Chinese owned and sold without nearly as much excitement. Given the inevitable bidding war from multiple interested parties I would be surprised if they couldn't get a fair price for TikTok
      • kridsdale1 2y ago
        China didn’t need to fight to keep Grindr because all the value from the acquisition was realized as soon as they ran a database query to compile a list of closeted Republican senators. No need to hold on once you got the spy treasure.
        • lupire 2y ago
          What about future senators?
          • patmcc 2y ago
            Senators have to be at minimum 30, more commonly 50+. Anyone that's going to be a senator in the next 12 years (at minimum) is already on Grindr if they were ever going to be.
    • moduspol 2y ago
      It wouldn't have been at a bargain basement price if they started trying to sell it when the law passed. It could have been the highest market price they could get from the US's largest buyers. Obviously they don't have the same leverage when they're otherwise going to be shut off in a few days.
  • wyldberry 2y ago
    This isn't rocket science. What's going on is having the keys to the kingdom with regards to serving videos to influence the mind of a user with extremely precise targeting. China doesn't want USA doing that, and banned their social media. USA doesn't want China doing it because they've been doing it all over the world to everybody since Radio Free Europe, and likely before. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Radio-Free-Europe https://www.britannica.com/topic/Radio-Free-Europe
    • drawkward 2y ago
      ...except that the "extremely precise targeting" is a new thing.
      • kranke155 2y ago
        microtargeting specific to individual psychological metrics is indeed a new thing.
    • georgeecollins 2y ago
      Lots of countries have made it illegal to listen things like Radio Free Europe. I'm guessing you can't in North Korea. On the other hand, a US citizen that wants to get the Chinese perspective on anything has lots of ways to legally find that and repeat it. I am not saying a lot of people in the US are interested in a foreign point of view, or that the US doesn't have tons of propaganda. But I don't think you can convince anyone that the two countries treat speech the same way.
      • motorest 2y ago
        > On the other hand, a US citizen that wants to get the Chinese perspective on anything has lots of ways to legally find that and repeat it. What do you mean by "Chinese perspective"? Do you mean people's genuine opinion or the official government talking points?
        • tremon 2y ago
  • somenameforme 2y ago
    I don't see how people don't see what is their most likely rationale - the ban will be temporary. Trump's already come out against it and is going to work to reverse it once in office. If it can't be done directly, it'll be done like usual - as an addon to some must-pass bill. I think they would probably refuse to sell in a situation where they had reason to expect the ban to persist (for different reasons), but in this case they probably didn't even consider selling when there's a high probability they'll be back legally operating in the US within a year.
    • TeaBrain 2y ago
      Acts of congress can only be blocked by the supreme court's power of judicial review. The supreme court held a 2.5 hour hearing this past week and the only two justices who voiced skepticism of the law were Gorsuch and Thomas.
      • somenameforme 2y ago
        Or another act of Congress! But given that the Supreme Court is waiting to the last second to issue their ruling, I don't think it's all quite as clear behind doors as you seem to believe it was in front of them. The nuance of claiming that constitutional rights do not apply to a company legally operating within the country, because of its nationality, has extremely broad implications as a precedent - well beyond corporations alone, even for a judge who might be more than okay with the ban in and of itself. Beyond this, there's the matter of enforcement and implementation. The former is discretionary and the latter is not specified by the bill. An effective ban would effectively require the creation of a Great Firewall of China type mechanism to effectively implement (which is what I thought this law was always a sort of 'trojan horse' for). Otherwise the "ban" will be trivially sidestepped by using a web app, downloading an APK from their site/mirrors instead of the marketplace, etc. Let alone things like VPNs! As Chinese companies are increasingly banned from the US, we're likely to see more adversarial setups where these companies will make no effort to prevent US customers no matter how much the US government madly gesticulates, though again with the current administration said gesticulation will not even happen in the first place.
  • the_gipsy 2y ago
    What, they should just shut up and sell? They're getting extorted.
  • hbosch 2y ago
    >The fact that ByteDance is opting for a shutdown instead is a huge PR stunt Um, what? There is zero chance that ByteDance could get a fair price for TikTok. VC calculations can be disregarded, TikTok as a platform is more valuable than Facebook. How much money would it take for Zuckerberg to sell FB to a Chinese company?
  • patmcc 2y ago
    I think this is untrue. The government wanted to shut down TikTok, but it can't just outright ban it because that's a clear violation of the first amendment, so it came up with a way to ban it indirectly. That was their intention all along.
  • esafak 2y ago
    It reminds me of Google's decision to pull out of China instead of censor their results.
  • barfingclouds 2y ago
    Yeah it’s about that algorithms could radicalize the population or turn them against each other
• _fat_santa 2y ago
  > TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect I feel like this is what so many people (including myself) are missing about TikTok.I'll be honest I saw TikTok largely as an "extension" of Reels and vice-versa where folks with a following on one will post to the other because they are so similar and that would increase their reach.
• iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago
  The comment and quote is telling of the zeitgeist. I would be more aghast by it, but then I remember that my SSN has been a subject to multiple data breach notices in past year.. so.. what is one more bad actor at this point?
  • hxegon 2y ago
    Exactly. They keep fear mongering about China stealing our data but when these companies leak every single piece of sensitive data about hundreds of millions of americans they get a slap on the wrist. Tells you exactly where their priorities are.
    • mns 2y ago
      What I don't understand is what's with all the China apologists around here, it's absolutely insane to me to see how even here, but also on reddit, for example, there is this wave of praising everything that a dictatorship does, do people really believe that what China does is ok and something to follow, or is it just propaganda? And no, I'm not ignoring all the bad stuff in the west, but I'm a bit afraid of the Chinese model appreciation.
      • hxegon 2y ago
        Honestly I don't see a lot of people praising China who are against the tiktok ban. It's not just that our opinion of China is high, it's that our opinion of the US government is very low and they are our government, so why be worried about a foreign power when you feel like your own government is actively setting you up to fail, lying to your face and doing horrible shit. I'll definitely admit that China is doing some horrible shit. I'm not the most educated on all of their issues but from what I've seen it's not great. But I'm also not convinced that TikTok is as much of a critical intelligence/espionage tool as much as the government claims it is, and I've seen a very real positive influence on people's connection with each other, and a frankly insane amount of mutual aid content on tiktok. I am seeing a lot of people talking about how they have discovered that Chinese people are very welcoming and polite when you talk to them online. IDK, maybe I'm just missing the pro-chinese government stuff you are.
• jjulius 2y ago
  >TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness... LMAO
  • xxr 2y ago
    "At this point, we have to accept that younger generations—precisely the people who have been raised on quantified audience feedback for their every creative gesture—have an unrecognizable conception of authenticity."[0] [0]https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbeast https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/in-the-belly-of-the-mrbea...
    • spacechild1 2y ago
      Thanks for that link! Really interesting.
      • xxr 2y ago
        You're welcome--this was on the HN front page earlier this week, so my taste here is crowdsourced.
• MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
  YouTube Shorts doesn't even get a mention?
• leptons 2y ago
  Is it actually Instagram Reels that is inauthentic, or is it the content that people post there? The Instagram Reels service is just that - a service people can use to post videos, same as TikTok. It's the people who choose to use the service that cause it to seem inauthentic, not the service itself. If everyone migrated from TikTok to Reels overnight, then wouldn't Reels become more "authentic"?
  • lupire 2y ago
    The content doesn't matter. There's more than a lifetime supply of I'll relevant kinds of content on both platforms. The algorithm for curating your feed matters.
    • leptons 2y ago
      "The algorithm" doesn't matter as much as you think it does. If all the videos have metadata, it's quite simple to suggest another video to someone if they just watched a similar video. I watch how my wife uses TikTok, and "the algorithm" is hit or miss. Most of the time it's a hit, but that's because the metadata from the preceding videos (and how long she watched them, or didn't) makes it easy to figure out what she'll most likely want to watch next. Without metadata, there is no "algorithm", and with metadata, it's trivially easy for anyone to produce "an algorithm" that does the same thing, maybe even better than TikTok does it now. I mean, if you do a search about how to put on makeup, then the next 10 videos you see are going to be about how to put on makeup - that isn't exactly an irreplaceable algorithm.
• lenerdenator 2y ago
  It's more like telling people that they're gonna have to visit a mobile site instead of use a mobile app.
• bearjaws 2y ago
  > TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness I must live in another universe because it all feels fake.
  • martythemaniak 2y ago
    You're both right! There was a good article/discussion on on this yesterday, but tldr: They are authentically fake! As in, the creators are not putting up a show with a 'real' person behind the persona, the algorithms have remade whatever person there use to be such that their 'authentic' self has become the persona. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42696691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42696691
    • j_bum 2y ago
      Interpellation [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation_(philosophy) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpellation_(philosophy)
    • niobe 2y ago
      Go outside, everyone's real .. at least for the time being!
      • fullshark 2y ago
        They are boring though
        • recursive 2y ago
          Only seems that way until you come down off the hyperstimulation.
  • thorum 2y ago
    Your perception of TikTok likely depends on your TikTok for you page. If you spend time cultivating it, the algorithm will learn you like authenticity and show you more of it. This seems to be less true on YouTube and Reels unfortunately.
• bongodongobob 2y ago
  A glaring example of the fakeness of insta reels I saw yesterday was comments regarding the LA fires. On multiple reels, I saw the exact same back and forth exchanges between a handful of accounts. I thought maybe it was some kind of caching issue but there were different accounts commenting on in the fake threads across reels. Good way to boost engagement for the bot accounts.
• nonethewiser 2y ago
  > I saw this yesterday and it's hilarious but this is the feeling right now. TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness Exhibit A for banning tiktok right here
• qoez 2y ago
  Just break the addiction to both apps. It's not good for you anyway
• kpennell 2y ago
  My tiktok feed was night and day better compared to IG reels. IG reels is simply attrocious memes. Like the same recycled crap over and over again. Where my tiktok feed always felt fresh. Makes me embarrassed that Zuck and co can't make the feed better. I thought this was America!
• m3kw9 2y ago
  Link in bio is literally killing instagram, it’s so anti user for the sake of $$ so people don’t link out easily
• GuB-42 2y ago
  > I would literally write my social security number on a sticky note and stick it to Xi Jinping's forehead Somewhat paradoxically, I am actually more comfortable giving out private data to foreign countries than my own. I mean, what is Xi Jinping going to do with a US social security number? If I am in the US, it will be hard for bad people in China to reach me, because there is a border between the two countries, in every sense of the word. There is no such protection if me and my data are both in the same country. Xi Jinping can have my social security number, in fact, he can have my whole life, it is not like he is going to do anything to an random guy who lives in a foreign country. I will definitely won't give these data to a neighbor I barely know because my neighbor can do something I don't want him to do with it and may find some motivation to do so.
  • munificent 2y ago
    Are you aware that almost all of the scam calls, phishing emails, and other attempts to separate you from the currency in your bank account arise from outside of the US? Economic globalization means there are no borders and it's up to corporations to protect the sovereignty of their users. You can imagine how well they are up to that task.
    • culi 2y ago
      it's still much harder for overseas scams to succeed against someone who's tech savvy vs domestic identity fraud. There's simply a lot more barriers to moving money outside of the country > Economic globalization means there are no borders and it's up to corporations to protect the sovereignty of their users Historically speaking this is actually the opposite. Many critics of globalization have pointed out that you can directly track trade deals to massive spikes in border funding, much stronger enforcement of intellectual property laws, etc. Research actually shows a huge decrease in the dissemination of ideas, language, etc across borders where trade deals have been enacted. Paradoxically, globalization has made us more siloed off from each other
  • pixl97 2y ago
    This is a rather poor take. Individually it's "probably" not much, but when you start putting the data together in bulk you have a social network graph of huge parts of an entire country. That and everything they like and probably work on. If you can get things like location data, then you can figure out what entire companies are doing. You can get insight into secret projects. You can figure out what small companies/contractors to install moles in. It is literally the biggest spy data gold mine on earth.
• crystal_revenge 2y ago
  > TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness I'm shocked how easily manipulated people are by social media. The vast majority of TikTok content is very intentionally produced, largely to attempt to generate revenue or, at the very least, to feed ones ego. The "real" people you see on there are all, to different degrees of success, actors. Nearly all of the spontaneous/I can't believe this happened!/caught on camera style content is entirely staged. Likewise all of the "freedom of speech must be protected" posts are laughable. Everything on TikTok is ultimately created for and prompoted to ultimately drive profit. This movement to 小红书 is also, surprise surprise, not some spontaneous movement. The people at 小红书 have intentionally be working on becoming a TikTok replacement for awhile now. Virtually all media you see is very heavily filtered and manipulated to ensure you're getting the right message.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    It's the same kind of mentality that thinks "reality TV" is about real people and not intentionally produced performances.
  • hxegon 2y ago
    > This movement to 小红书 is also, surprise surprise, not some spontaneous movement. The people at 小红书 have intentionally be working on becoming a TikTok replacement for awhile now. Provide literally one source for this. literally any source.
    • crystal_revenge 2y ago
      They completely revamped the UX from being essentially an instagram clone focusing on pictures and written content, to increasingly a tiktok clone focusing on browseable short form video? Are you going to need similar evidence if I claim that YouTube has been working on being a TikTok replacement as well? It's pretty clear that YouTube created the "shorts" feature as an attempt to allow TikTok creators to trivially repost content.
      • mangolychee 2y ago
• esotericsean 2y ago
  Very interesting. To me TikTok is nothing but memes and useless stuff. Whereas Instagram has been an amazing community for many of my passions. And now Threads is gaining in popularity as well (it really feels like hope scrolling in comparison to X's doom scrolling). I wish it wasn't owned by Meta, but if TikTok actually gets banned I would say good riddance. Something about Instagram/Threads is just perfect to me.
• favacctontiktok 2y ago
  The best account on TikTok is that old man who champions his cause of stopping circumcision. One must ask oneself why it's not considered on the same plane as genital mutilation in our so called modern civilized society.
• spare_farts 2y ago
  [dead]
• satvikpendem 2y ago
  Strange, I found Instagram Reels' algorithm to be much better suited to my interests than TikTok's, and I've tried both multiple times, deleting them multiple times and seeing if it would improve, but TikTok's never did.
• lostlogin 2y ago
  I wonder what would happen if we shut down all the socials. HN excluded of course.
  • nunodonato 2y ago
    that would be an extremely interesting experiment. Young people would probably feel completely lost, unsure of where to get "news" from. Actually having to go websites and search for stuff :)
• IAmGraydon 2y ago
  >TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness Probably the most bizarre thing I've read on here in the last few days. You actually believe that what you're seeing on TikTok is real? It's literally the antithesis of base reality. It's a living, breathing delusion.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• madeofpalk 2y ago
  > TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect They're very different, and I understand what you're getting at comparing it to the hyper-manufactured perfectly glossy Instagram culture, but I wouldn't call TikTok 'authentic'. Of course, Tiktok is large and there's many different subcultures there, but overall I think TikTok is heavily drenched in Irony. It's a stark difference to the very fake Instagram, but that doesn't make it authentic. Are tiktok dances 'authentic'? They might have started as just innocent kids doing a fun little dance, but the moment anything turns into a trend I think it loses authenticity. The whole NPC live streaming trend[1] from a few years ago was anything but authentic. TikTok 'suffers' from the exact same paid 'influencers' promoting whatever garbage of the day, and even has its own version of affiliate marking spam with 'TikTok shop' junk. [1]: https://theconversation.com/people-are-pretending-to-be-npcs-on-tiktok-and-its-not-just-weird-its-also-lucrative-210795 https://theconversation.com/people-are-pretending-to-be-npcs...
  • aimanbenbaha 2y ago
    You said a lot of words that are a litmus test proving you almost never use TikTok nowadays. First of all this is not 2020 anymore, you're 5 years late if you think TikTok is still filled with "dances". "Paid influencers" mean nothing in TikTok since everyone has an equal voice and equal shot at virality, see you're still seeing it from the lens of Instagram here. The NPC live streaming is weird yeah but you cherry picked a trend and then make it about all TikTok. Literally hundreds of trends spawn up in TikTok every month and some of them are damn more authentic than whatever happens in IG reels. Some of the successful original trends even pick up in Instagram or YouTube.
    • madeofpalk 2y ago
      I use tiktok every day. Maybe I don't know what 'authentic' means, but I don't think most content on tiktok is authentic. I think it is a particular type of fitting to an ideal or trend.
    • gardenhedge 2y ago
      > Equal shot at virality What makes you think that? The process is not open and fully controlled by the company running the show
• misja111 2y ago
  TikTok has simply beaten FB and YouTube, its algorithm is much better. That's why it has to be killed now in the US, big tech needs to be protected.
• garydevenay 2y ago
  The fact people are using either is mind numbing. Such a waste of life.
• dinozarw 2y ago
  > TikTok has such a culture of authenticity Oh wait, you're serious? Let me laugh even louder!
• solumunus 2y ago
  Imagine outing yourself as someone who uses these mind numbing apps.
• bayouborne 2y ago
  "“I would rather stare at a language I can't understand than to ever use a social media [platform] that Mark Zuckerberg owns,” said one user in a video posted to Xiaohongshu on Sunday." https://www.wired.com/story/red-note-tiktok-xiaohongshu/ https://www.wired.com/story/red-note-tiktok-xiaohongshu/
• changadera 2y ago
  How do I downvote this.
• silexia 2y ago
  Reddit is absolutely terrible, it has an extreme far left bias and banned anyone with a different opinion.