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TikTok users posting cat videos do not threaten UK national security, minister
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- chvid 2y ago"Darren Jones defends decision to allow app to continue running in UK as it stops working in US ahead of national ban" Crazy how this half-a-day ban in the US triggers chatter about bans in European countries.
- Etheryte 2y agoThat's not really accurate, please see [0]. Many countries have already either partially or fully banned TikTok, the US is hardly the forerunner here. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoIt would be crazy if the US banned TikTok and similar developed countries didn't consider doing the same. All the reasons the US came to the conclusion they did apply equally well in Europe.
- Neonlicht 2y agoEurope doesn't have a competitor for TikTok. America has Facebook and Instagram that stand to win billions with a ban. I also observe that the US tech bro billionaires have been complaining about how mean Europe is to them.
- sebmellen 2y agoIf anything, Europe is more protectionist about data security, so European nations should have a bigger concern about the claims of ByteDance siphoning user data.
- dv_dt 2y agoEurope already implements consistent data privacy regulations for all apps operating in Europe. No particular inconsistency in singling out TikTok over Meta
- pjc50 2y agoThe whole business plus Microsoft Safe Harbor is starting to raise the question of whether US social media (functioning as spies) should be allowed in the EU either.
- boznz 2y agoBit off-topic but based on the news I see coming out of the UK it feels like it is a total basket case, I wonder if there is a tipping point for a country and at what point the UK is at.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoThe UK has solid corporate governance and the rule of law. It's not perfect but it is far from a basket case. Don't believe everything you read in the media (or even here).
- MattPalmer1086 2y agoI live there and I have no idea what you're talking about.
- declan_roberts 2y agoHow about rapist getting less jail time than people who post Facebook complaints about them?
- gotoeleven 2y ago[flagged]
- pjc50 2y agoIt's.. not great. But still a long way behind the US in terms of chaos.
- zug_zug 2y agoSure, the ones posting cat videos don't. But what are the odds that TikTok would ever let a Taiwan Protest go viral? I wonder if it even lets use use the word Taiwan...
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoI just looked up #Taiwan on TikTok. There are 3.6 million videos.
- zug_zug 2y agoWell, I looked up Taiwan protest and the 4 I looked at were all allegedly Taiwanese protesting against their own independence.... (For context only 10% of Taiwanese support unification with China per a google search) Would love somebody who has an account (and can translate) to do a sanity check here.
- nimbius 2y ago[flagged]
- duskwuff 2y agoA "protest" is implicitly a demonstration by people who are unsatisfied with the status quo. As far as Taiwanese are concerned, Taiwan is already independent, so a protest to support its independence would be a bit redundant - and if there were one, it'd probably be referred to as a parade or a rally, not a protest.
- rKarpinski 2y agoPlenty of topics sensitive topics to the CCP are allowed on TikTok. Being allowed on Douyin is another matter...
- zug_zug 2y agoMy question was whether they are allowed to go viral. Sounds like there's evidence in another thread that they are actively manipulating what goes viral on key current political topics... which seems pretty damning.
- HamsterDan 2y agoLiterally nobody is saying cat videos are the problem with TikTok. What a moron this guy is.
- idunnoman1222 2y ago[flagged]
- daghamm 2y agoI belive there is a linear relation between how big of threat to the nation Toktok is and the amount of money Zuckerberg spends on lobbyists in said nation.
- gazchop 2y agoOur tradition of electing morons into ministerial positions continues unimpeded by rationality, logic or perhaps even competence. I expect to see a resignation at some point in the future. Fortunately their civil service underlings and our judiciary are slightly less incompetent when applied in large numbers.
- pjc50 2y agoPerhaps more to the point: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/10/elon-musk-tweets-probed-uk-counter-extremism-unit/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/10/elon-musk-tweets... And also https://news.sky.com/story/jordan-parlour-facebook-user-jailed-for-riot-related-social-media-posts-13193894 https://news.sky.com/story/jordan-parlour-facebook-user-jail... If you say someone should go commit a violent crime, and they do, then you should expect a visit from the police.
- zjp 2y agoIt’s less the cat videos and more the constant deluge of at best half researched context-free clips about how awful western society is.
- stupidhooper 2y ago[dead]
- remram 2y agoThis is such a textbook strawman that it's not even funny.
- RandomBacon 2y ago> at best half researched context-free clips about how awful western society is. Is reddit next? Although in their case, it's less clips and more pictures and text.
- zjp 2y agoGod I hope so, and twitter next. Set me free, US government.
- throw0101a 2y agoA paper out of Rutger's: > For pop-culture hashtags, the ratio between platforms is consistently range-bound: > Conversely, the ratios we found for topics sensitive to the Chinese Government were completely out-of-bounds. > The data below illustrates that across topics directly sensitive to the Chinese Government, relevant hashtags are dramatically underrepresented on TikTok vs. Instagram. > Given the unanimity of anomalies, we expanded our research to topics relevant to the Chinese Government’s geopolitical interests: 1) Ukraine-Russia War; 2) Kashmir Secessionism; 3) Israel-Hamas War. There too, we found relevant hashtags are dramatically underrepresented on TikTok vs. Instagram. * https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.21.23.pdf https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing... * Via: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/tiktok-is-just-the-beginning https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/tiktok-is-just-the-beginning
- janice1999 2y agoInstagram is hardly a reliable benchmark given that it has been widely criticised for its suppression of Palestinian content. [1] [1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
- fsflover 2y agoWhy is this not reliable for other topics than Palestine?
- janice1999 2y agoIf one topic is being provably artificially suppressed, how is any data reliable? Instagram is not a good baseline -perhaps no large social is.
- zug_zug 2y agoThat's a really weak argument. Let's clarify: 1. An anti-free-speech government that arrests people for discussing certain topics that controls a company that seems not to show certain topics much. 2. The company doesn't make any claim it's not filtering out anti-china topics. 3. We find strong evidence that platforms don't match. 4. You want to throw out all evidence and blindly presume complete innocence because you think 1 of 10 topics on instagram isn't easy to explain? Feels hard to believe you could come to that conclusion in good faith.
- umeshunni 2y agoIt's all cat videos till some Jihadi livestreams bombing a Taylor Swift concert or something.
- drivingmenuts 2y agoThat actually works in the UK government's favor - people would be demanding that the government start more surveillance and crackdowns. If the attack was backed by a government in the Middle-East, they would have near-total immunity due to the politics of oil.
- umeshunni 2y agoDoes the UK government actually care about oil or is the chumminess with Middle Eastern countries due to the levels of investments they have in the UK, particularly London?
- mupuff1234 2y agoThat's exactly what the cats want you to think.
- nokya 2y agoHaving a foreign and hostile both economic and military adversary fully controlling an app that is installed on 18 million smartphones in UK is a national security issue. Not cat videos. Too bad this concept has become too difficult to understand for most European "leaders" (and journalists...).
- GeoAtreides 2y agoMaybe he should get in touch with the Foreign Affairs minister and ask about Romania's latest presidential elections. Or, closer to home, maybe he can check the FYP of all those people that were recently jailed for race rioting. Turns out, it's not all cat videos. Turns out, sometimes is foreign-backed propaganda.
- guilhas 2y agoThey would be more terrified by a company not being regulated by their ever increasing internet surveillance laws, backroom deals, and censorship When I went to UK 2015 there were big billboards in Manchester saying "Be careful who do you speak on the internet, you don't know who is on the other side" with a terrorist in front of a keyboard and monitor
- Over2Chars 2y agoThe surveillance harms/thread of a Chinese state owned app need to be fully explained to really make sense. Unfortunately, going into the minutiae of app based surveillance technology would run head-on into other surveillance based tech from Facebook, Google, and so on. And it would bring up the touchy subject of data privacy. Oh gosh, if Americans had data privacy this would impact a lot of American businesses based on surveillance tech. So let's just accept, on good faith, that what the Democrat's portrayed as Trump's Xenophobia, was OK as a natsec issue when Biden did it (no xeno here, folks!), and now that Trump has his bargaining position it's time for "let's make a deal!" (and that Republican who stalled the initial TikTok ban has probably been a good boy this Christmas, and maybe deserves a quid pro quo gift).