18 ms·

TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues

• anthem2025 9mo ago
  [dead]
• empath75 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • JKCalhoun 9mo ago
    I see one perhaps every 2 or 3 days.
  • aswegs8 9mo ago
    I only browse top page. There is anti-ICE on here all the time.
  • zzleeper 9mo ago
    Don't worry once Central Time wakes up and gets their coffee, this will get <flagged>
  • Aurornis 9mo ago
    A lot of HN users flag any stories about politics. Given the low quality of a lot of comments under this story and the hyperbolic fighting going on, I don’t exactly blame them. Stories like this are very important and interesting but 75% of the comment section is a dumpster fire. Comment sections that attract certain comment and downvote patterns can trigger the flame war filter which drops their rank. It’s not a moderator coming in and hiding things. It’s the users flagging it and/or triggering the flame war filter. Even with that, there are anti-ICE stories all over the front page every day.
• kotaKat 9mo ago
  well… i submitted it as https://lite.cnn.com/2026/01/26/tech/tiktok-ice-censorship-glitch-cec https://lite.cnn.com/2026/01/26/tech/tiktok-ice-censorship-g... but i guess HN drops the lite off of it? le sigh, here’s hoping someone can frontpage one of these tiktok censorship stories today…?
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • JKCalhoun 9mo ago
    Looks like this one made it to the front page. Interesting times… My mother was born just after WWII—died a few years ago. As sad as I have been (still am) when I watch the world fall apart around me I am thankful that she at least lived through perhaps the best stretch American history—does not have to see the shit I am seeing daily (she was the type that would have been unconsolably anxious about it). I feel badly, so far, for my daughters born roughly in the period around September 11, 2001. Still, I'm hopeful they might yet see even a brighter future than I had growing up in the 70's…
    • pjmlp 9mo ago
      I am the first generation after the fall of Salazar's dictorship, so naturally I belong to those that had the opportunity to grow in freedom while hearing the stories from everyone that suffered from it, the dead and crippled from colonial wars, many sent as punishment for their political views and so on. Never I though that I would still see the return to such politics in my lifetime, even in Europe it is getting harder to push back on them.
    • criddell 9mo ago
      Based on this comment, I think we are around the same age. I'm 55 and have two kids born in the early 2000's. I was born in Canada in 1970 to loving and extraordinarily supportive parents and moved to the US in the mid 90's. I can't imagine a better time or place to have been born. I have kids around the same age as yours and their lives are so much more difficult even though they are smarter and harder working than I ever was.
    • BeetleB 9mo ago
      > I am thankful that she at least lived through perhaps the best stretch American history—does not have to see the shit I am seeing daily I think the Vietnam War was much worse than what you are seeing daily...
  • 9mo ago
• mark_l_watson 9mo ago
  The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to.
  • kspacewalk2 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • direwolf20 9mo ago
      The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is about stealing China's cyberweapon so our own elites can use it.
    • aprentic 9mo ago
      We have Trump's word on that. mark_l_watson has the more believable take.
    • jfengel 9mo ago
      What kind of cyber warfare? Just knowing what kidz today are into? Or is it an actual malware? Is it targeting certain people? I'm sure it leaks privacy like crazy, just like any other social app. I'm just still unclear on just how useful it would be, and whether that really merited intervention at the very highest levels.
      • kspacewalk2 9mo ago
        Something along the lines of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywxENdhYoXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywxENdhYoXw
  • gruez 9mo ago
    >is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to. Are we talking about the Trump administration or the Biden administration? The current ban was passed under Biden with supermajorities in both houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_ban_TikTok_in_the_United_States#Biden_administration_(2021%E2%80%932025) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_ban_TikTok_in_the_U... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Foreign_Adversary_Controlled_Applications_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...
• mschuster91 9mo ago
  On Twitter, there's a bunch of reports that TikTok suddenly prevents people from sending the word "Epstein" in DMs [1]. I had expected an Orbanisation (aka, what happened to the media sphere in Hungary after Orban took over and his cronies bought up almost all media) of Tiktok, but not that fast, it's like less than a week after the deal [2]. Scary shit if you ask me, and it's made scarier by the fact that Tiktok has already been changing the way our youth speaks due to evading censorship (e.g. "graped" instead of "raped", "unalived" instead of kill/murder/execute/suicide). [1] https://x.com/krassenstein/status/2015911471507530219 https://x.com/krassenstein/status/2015911471507530219 [2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/23/heres-whats-you-should-know-about-the-us-tiktok-deal/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/23/heres-whats-you-should-kno...
  • inetknght 9mo ago
    > but not that fast Why not? All the tech was already put in place by China. All that the U.S. had to do was change the filtered words.
    • mschuster91 9mo ago
      I had expected a longer "cooldown" time so that people don't immediately jump to the conclusion that the forced TikTok sale was to suppress discussion of the Epstein files.
      • pjc50 9mo ago
        No, the forced bipartisan support TikTok sale was to suppress discussion of Palestine.
      • afpx 9mo ago
        It’s so blatant, it’s more like trolling at this point.
    • sosomoxie 9mo ago
      What words were China filtering? I've never seen reports of censorship like this on TikTok before Ellison bought it.
• nomilk 9mo ago
  I hope for the good of mankind, all sides of politics unite against deplatforming and oppressing opposing viewpoints. It's sad that certain topics (anti-ICE, Epstein) neutered on a social media platform, but this went on for years when the politics were reversed. Let everyone have their say, I say.
  • felixgallo 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • NickC25 9mo ago
      [flagged]
    • nomdep 9mo ago
      "it became clear that there was no conspiratorial algorithmic suppression". Yes, the Twitter files showed that the suppression was done mostly by humans.
      • felixgallo 9mo ago
        the twitter files, what a laugh. Can you point to a particular part of the twitter files that was not obviously overblown, wrong, or subsequently thoroughly discredited that supports your claim of conspiratorial right wing suppression? Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files
  • direwolf20 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • nomilk 9mo ago
      More nuanced laws can prevent such behaviour without impacting free expression. For example, Public Nuisance laws. That way the content itself isn't legislated again, just the appropriateness of the time and place, and the society isn't prevented from having fictional works, history texts, art containing the banned topic.
• Havoc 9mo ago
  Definitely not censorship
  • tartoran 9mo ago
    /sarcasm
• malfist 9mo ago
  Is it a technical glitch that prevents the uploads? Or is it a technical glitch that let's people know that that content is being censored
  • jimmydoe 9mo ago
    They have to block upload bluntly as they are still figuring out the algorithm how to shadow ban them.
  • smashah 9mo ago
    They consider free people sharing information with each other against the consent and interests of MEGAPEDOELLISON Cabal in power a "technical glitch" that they're trying hard to "patch" by slaughtering the First Amendment.
• infecto 9mo ago
  Anecdotal to myself. I shamefully sometimes use TikTok, I particularly like recipe clips and even I noticed something in the last week, most noticeably around this weekend where the algorithm for recommendations changed. It’s like they completely wiped my preferences. I try not to watch anything political so I cannot say much about censorship of content but something was noticeable in the last week.
  • torben-friis 9mo ago
    Have you been using it for long? I no longer use TikTok, but I was pretty hooked for a while, and I felt those “waves” every now and then. It was pretty noticeable because each time I started getting extreme right political content from my country, and I neither consume anything local nor right wing content.
    • infecto 9mo ago
      Yes I have and this reset was very different than anything I have experienced. I would like a specific recipe and then they the feed would show me someone else’s attempt of that recipe. I haves used the app for years off and on.
  • davidmurdoch 9mo ago
    It does this all the time. I think it is called "exploration injection". It increases engagement by trying to prevent boredom.
    • infecto 9mo ago
      It’s amazes how confident people will describe your lived experiences and say you are wrong. No this was entirely different and coincided in time with the complaints of censorship.
      • davidmurdoch 9mo ago
        I said you were right. You might need to go touch grass man. [Edit]: I shouldn't have made the "touch grass" comment. Sorry.
• kenjackson 9mo ago
  It’s crazy to think that Instagram Reels, owned by Meta, is preferable to TikTok now. At least Reels now is at least competitive in terms of content - unlike two years ago when people were worried about TikTok being banned and Reels was not a good alternative.
  • logicchains 9mo ago
    Isn't Reels content more right-wing, while TikTok has lots of both left-leaning and right-leaning content.
    • kortilla 9mo ago
      Reels skews older in the user-base, which skews the average to the right.
    • kenjackson 9mo ago
      TikTok historically has, but if this is truly the new owners trying to block content then that can change rapidly.
    • qingcharles 9mo ago
      Sample of one, but I scroll Reels at least 30 mins a day and I've never seen any right-wing content on my feed.
  • Tiktaalik 9mo ago
    Reels is just AI and engagement slop
• hiprob 9mo ago
  Is Instagram better at this? Since their racist content is so unfiltered nowadays, surely they would allow this at least?
  • jmyeet 9mo ago
    Heh, no [1][2][3][4]. Meta and Google (including Youtube) kowtow to the administration in what speech they promote and suppress in the exact way the administration (both parties) says China might theoretically do in the future. [1]: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palestine-censorship-sjp/ https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti... [2]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/metas-israel-policy-chief-pushed-removal-pro-palestinian-instagram-posts-report https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/metas-israel-policy-chief... [3]: https://www.972mag.com/social-media-ukraine-palestinians-meta/ https://www.972mag.com/social-media-ukraine-palestinians-met... [4]: 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/...
• seanieb 9mo ago
  Anecdotal: uploading a video of original songs with political/protest lyrics will have random background noises added to the audio track, making the songs audio seem amateurish. Edit: here’s a link to an example https://bsky.app/profile/seaniebyrne.bsky.social/post/3mby7j2tslc27 https://bsky.app/profile/seaniebyrne.bsky.social/post/3mby7j...
  • duskdozer 9mo ago
    >This author has chosen to make their posts visible only to people who are signed in. Welp, guess I didn't want to learn about that anyway
    • seanieb 9mo ago
      Sorry. Thats fixed now.
      • duskdozer 9mo ago
        The audio is really strange, have people tested it with similar sounding videos without ungoodthink?
  • prodigycorp 9mo ago
    can you relax the restrictions on your link or share a direct link to the video, i dont have a bluesky account
    • seanieb 9mo ago
      Yes. Sorry I’d no idea/forgotten it worked that way. Thank you for pointing it out. I’ve updated my settings.
    • nerdsniper 9mo ago
      https://www.bskydownloader.com/ https://www.bskydownloader.com/
  • aendruk 9mo ago
• derbOac 9mo ago
  Honestly I'm surprised people don't jump ship more often with social media platforms. With TikTok this is kind of new news, but there have been related problems with it that have been pretty obvious for some time. The same with X and, before that, Facebook. TikTok has never worked for me though so maybe there's no real equivalent alternative. Maybe time to make one if not? To me it says something about the public, but I'm not sure what. I'm tempted to attribute it to indifference or complacency but I'm aware of network effects and the reality of alternatives. Sometimes I feel like education and theory about security practices needs to extend beyond micro-level phenomena like passwords, to things like administrative conflicts of interest and strength in decentralization and competition. Private monopolies and quasi-monopolies aren't just economically bad, they're bad for privacy and security, and make the public vulnerable through lack of choice. In important ways it doesn't matter if it's the government or a private company; whenever power concentrates it is easier to align and abuse.
  • Aurornis 9mo ago
    > Honestly I'm surprised people don't jump ship more often with social media platforms. Most people don’t pick one social media platform and use it for 100% of everything. They’ll switch between TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and others during the day. It’s not hard to see when one of those platforms is missing discussion of current events.
  • duskdozer 9mo ago
    Are you really surprised? I find the interest entirely unrelatable, but I'm not surprised. They tune these platforms for addiction. I mean, I don't even use them but I still immediately recognize their branding video-end sounds just from random exposure here or there. (I hate it)
    • derbOac 9mo ago
      I'm surprised in the sense that it seems a few times we've been exposed to various problems arising from social media manipulation or censorship — of the right and left variety actually — so I'd think people might be more sensitive to it at this point. Part of it too I guess is my personal experience with people I know who will complain about a platform repeatedly (in terms of algorithmic political manipulation) and then turn around and continue to use it voluminously, sending links to stuff on the platform over and over again, etc. (not speaking just about TikTok in particular, with a few sites). It has this feeling similar to if they complained about how awful a food item tastes, and expressed concerns about it being poison, but then continued to binge eat it daily. Maybe they figure it's just inevitable or something, or maybe you're right about reinforcement contingencies. Maybe it's as simple as that.
• PurpleRamen 9mo ago
  They are in transition, so for the moment I believe them to have technical problems, because it also matches my experience. Yesterday I encountered problems with several videos, which are working today. And not all of them were political. Going by the comments, people on TikTok seem very fast in seeing conspiracies, when many problems can be simply explained with normal problems or human failings. And it's good to be critical and aware of dangers, but I fear if they are so easy to call out problems, it will wear of fast, and people will start to ignore real problems again, like they used to be.
  • whatwhaaaaat 9mo ago
    Just technical problems in their “banned topic” identification models. No need to be concerned.
    • PurpleRamen 9mo ago
      The point is that people are more aware of problems happening with that topic, but ignore whether it also happens with other topics. So at the moment it's a very skewed view.
  • HelloMcFly 9mo ago
    The presumption of good faith has been justifiably obliterated when it comes to Topics Such As These with our right-wing extremist political and media leadership.
    • PurpleRamen 9mo ago
      Especially with extremists, you should have a solid foundation of argumentation, because they will not ignore even little fails and weaponize everything against you if necessary.
      • HelloMcFly 9mo ago
        Especially with extremists, a solid foundation of argumentation will do you no good because the facts are beside the point.
• hathym 9mo ago
  freedom of speech my a*
  • lingrush4 9mo ago
    Freedom of speech has literally never prevented a private company from controlling the content on its platform.
    • mothballed 9mo ago
      It did before the internet. See Marsh v. Alabama where publicly accessible ( private sidewalk) on private property was ruled the people there still could exercise 1A rights and could not be trespassed for doing so even if the owners forbid it.
      • voidUpdate 9mo ago
        How does freedom of speech allow you to walk somewhere you have been forbidden from walking? Does that mean you can just go into any building you want and use your 1A rights to not be arrested?
        • mothballed 9mo ago
          You can read the case. Basically it was a privately owned public space that they could have been otherwise trespassed from, but not for the reason of their speech. Since the reason for the trespass was their speech, it was prohibited. They were not otherwise "forbidden" from walking there were it not they expressed something that was disapproved of. A weak analogy (I know analogy are never allowed here because "they're not the same") is that you can fire someone at will. Unless it turns out you fired them because they are black (yes I know being black is much different than expressing an opinion). It didn't mean you can't fire them at will, just that you couldn't for that specific protected reason. Although at this point we're well well past the goalpost of "Freedom of speech has literally never prevented a private company from controlling the content on its platform" and down into the weeds of how it happened. The case clearly prevented the company from fully controlling the content of its sidewalk platform.
• alex1138 9mo ago
  It's kind of amazing that all the companies act in lockstep. Apple, Google, TikTok remove anti-ICE stuff, rightly or wrongly (I'll go with 'wrongly' because of freedom of speech/freedom of app choice, among other things) They ALL do incredibly corrupt things
• jokoon 9mo ago
  it's obvious that tiktok is doing this intentionally, pretending it's a technical issue, so that people can blame the US government for forcing the sale of tiktok it's just retaliation and obviously, trump will play into this
  • estearum 9mo ago
    Or the right wing ideologues who now allegedly control (components of) TikTok are as dumb and ideological as they appear. Note: They also are having "technical difficulties" transmitting DMs with the string "epstein" in them.
    • webdoodle 9mo ago
      If you care to fight them directly, upload them using "Ellistein" or "Epsteen". But really you should delete the app, and find an alternative. Vote with your attention/wallet.
      • estearum 9mo ago
        Yeah, agreed. I'm not a TikTok user but good advice in general
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• cbeach 9mo ago
  There have been a number of fake AI-generated videos of police confronting ICE officers lately: https://gothamist.com/news/ai-videos-of-fake-nypdice-clashes-spread-in-a-perfect-storm-for-propaganda https://gothamist.com/news/ai-videos-of-fake-nypdice-clashes... I suspect these are some of those that have been banned from TikTok, and there's probably heightened moderation around this content at the moment since people are sharing AI-generated propaganda and riling others into violent confrontation with ICE.
  • estearum 9mo ago
    TikTok: Notoriously tough on bullshit ragebait
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• nixass 9mo ago
  Some guys from the other French thread will tell me that government should legislate social networks.. yeah, sure bud.
• mekdoonggi 9mo ago
  Anecdotally my feed dramatically shifted. My politics are very leftwing, and prior to the transfer virtually every video was discourse on ICE. Following the transfer, I get content that is all over the place. At one point, I got 8-9 tiktoks in a row of obviously bot-created rightwing text. At least on the surface level, I could believe this is just a full algorithm reset and they are having problems with it. But even after other algorithm resets that I believe I've experienced, Tiktok figured it out extremely quickly. If this continues, I will believe in the heavyhanded censorship theory.
  • telotortium 9mo ago
    As a former employee in TikTok US Data Services, the division that was stated working to separate the US TikTok service and infrastructure, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the algorithm reset theory, because the reset this time is qualitatively unlike the others. Since 2020, when the first Trump administration attempted to ban TikTok, work has been ongoing to separate out the TikTok US business in all aspects from the parent company Bytedance. Setting up dedicated infrastructure for US users was already accomplished by 2023 for the most part, and this included the restriction that US user data couldn’t be used to train or otherwise influence non-US user operations. However, there were a few major caveats. First, all the actual videos, at least if they’re public, were considered to be Bytedance data, even those created by US users (although the actual user intent signals - likes, watch behavior, and the like, were considered to be US user data). This allowed them to be used to train the main Bytedance-owned algorithm. Second, the Bytedance-trained algorithm continued to form the basis of the algorithm to serve US users. At least when I was there, US user data was used to tune the algorithm for US users, but the algorithm was not necessarily trained from scratch only on US user data in practice. One of Bytedance’s main conditions for the TikTok US sale has always been that they own the algorithm (both the code and the models) and would not transfer it to the US, so this was definitely a foreseeable issue. With the chaos of the TikTok Us divestment between the Biden and Trump administrations, though, I suspect that it was hard to hire and retain ML engineers that could build a proper replacement for the algorithm in time for the divestment, let alone build one that matches the behavior of the previous algorithm. If the algorithm is separated between US and non-US as strictly as the TikTok US Data Services mission always aimed for, then TikTok for US users is in many respects a new service entirely that shares the same UI and features. I also don’t know how US users get trained on non-US content, or if they’re even exposed, nor if any other countries use the US algorithm. So this change in content may last at least into the medium term, if not permanently. The question will be if you start seeing more left-wing anti-ICE content in the coming weeks or months.
• iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
  Allow me to offer some words of wisdom. If you help building weapons to be used against $currently_designated_bad_people, you can rest assured that given enough time, those weapons will be used against you. I am watching all this with a mild sense of bemusement.
  • mekdoonggi 9mo ago
    A NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie suggested (in jest) that the next Democrat administration send armed IRS agents to gated communities in Florida, to "investigate tax fraud". But this is exactly why all citizens should be concerned about the infringement of rights happening in Minnesota. If it is allowed without prosecution, you are next.
    • iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
      Zero disagreement. Rules of engagement should be clear to everyone. How can you possibly play the game if the rules keep changing based on political expediency. And we all know.. that that kind of a game is rigged from the start. That said, I was thinking more about people all of us building tools that got us into the situation we are in now.
      • hsuduebc2 9mo ago
        People rarely recognize that force can be turned on them until it happens. If one side uses force and the other refuses to, you cannot expect the first to grasp that force is always a two way street, because for them it is not real until they feel it.
        • deleted 9mo ago
          [deleted]
        • tom_808 9mo ago
          First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
• xve 9mo ago
  It looks like some are moving over to upscroll, anyone know anything about upscroll? what other apps are you using? I remember when everyone migrated from MySpace to Facebook and I assumed everyone was going to just keep moving over to the next big thing every few years but that actually didn't happen. Facebook became an institution.
  • LightBug1 9mo ago
    Thanks for the heads up ... we're really entering some shitty internet times
    • xve 9mo ago
      Yeah, but there might be some kind of opportunity arising too, I try to focus on that.
  • lingrush4 9mo ago
    Nothing. These apps are mental poison. They're designed to be addictive. Healthy adults don't use TikTok or any equivalent.
    • xve 9mo ago
      I would agree with you, but its pretty disturbing that the general public doesn't have a good outlet, especially to discuss unconstitutional ICE actions. It’s unfortunately very convenient that at a time when the pros outweigh the cons (open discussion vs. addiction) that some might stay offline. I would encourage you to overlook the mental poison and continue to support open communication. That's more important right now.
    • wvenable 9mo ago
      What do you suggest then to stay informed for those without televisions?
      • lawn 9mo ago
        Regular news sites?
• js8 9mo ago
  When I was 11, on 17th Nov 1989, in Czechoslovakia, my father was watching the evening news on our (black and white) TV, as usual. There was a protest and the state media was reporting on it. When the reporter said, "our camera broke down and we can only show black and white pictures", my father IMMEDIATELY jumped up and angrily said, "that's bs, you don't want to show how they [the protesting students] got beaten up [by the police]!" This was an interesting life lesson. So yeah, sure, technical difficulties..
  • culi 9mo ago
    I think history has shown that this is a fruitful intuition to have
    • stronglikedan 9mo ago
      As always, it depends. More often than not, the opposite is true, hence the existence of Occam's razor.
      • bigbadfeline 9mo ago
        > More often than not, the opposite is true, Interestingly enough, it doesn't matter in the slightest if some times the excuse is actually true. The intuition is good to have at all times, as Intel's founder Andy Grove used to say - "Only the paranoid survive". > hence the existence of Occam's razor. Occam's razor has nothing to do with the topic at hand, you're probably thinking of Hanlon's razor which is a dumb idea 99% of the time, regardless of what actually produced it - stupidity or malice.
        • xerox13ster 9mo ago
          I find more and more that those who wave around Hanlon’s razor are doing so to keep something from being looked upon too closely. As if to say, “look any closer and you’ll be cut”. Be it flying monkeys, boot lickers, or the abuser themselves. It’s a thought terminating cliche that's designed to stop to critical thinking and minimize the act and reduce the response, making it seem though it were a forgivable mistake instead of a deliberate action. Because as you said: regardless of malice or stupidity, the harm is real.
• MattDaEskimo 9mo ago
  It feels like federated networks with open-sourced feed algorithms are the best path forward. If AI removes any technical limitations, and automates content management, what's stopping a content creator from owning what they create and distributing it themselves? How can centralization continue to survive?
  • pjc50 9mo ago
    The magic lies in the two-sided coin of promotion vs. spam filtering. The web started off as a pretty peer to peer system, but almost immediately people built directories and link farms as means to find things. You can make a system as distributed as you want, but that only works for content which people know to find. Which is great for piracy, as e.g. movies and TV shows are advertised everywhere else and can be found by title. For social media, the recommendation engine is a critical part of the appeal to users.
    • causalscience 9mo ago
      The distinction between promotion and spam is solely that the promotion side can be entertaining enough that the users will willingly chase it.
  • AlienRobot 9mo ago
    Do you actually believe anything you just wrote? If TikTok falls TikTokers will just use another centralized app. Content creators don't have peertube instances for a reason.
  • jmyeet 9mo ago
    Why do so many tech people push this "federation is a panacea" idea despite all evidence to the contrary? I don't get it. First, the obvious: if federation was clearly superior, it would've won. No medium since email has been federated and even that's dominated by a handful of players. Running your own email server is... nontrivial. Second, users don't care abou tthis. Like at all. Third, supposedly tech-savvy people don't seem willing or able to merely scratch the surface of what that looks like and how it would work. Fourth, there's a lot of infrastructure you need such as moderation and safety that would need to be replicated for each federated provider. Lastly, zero consideration is given to the problems this actually creates. Look at POTS. We have spam and providers that are bad actors and effectively launder spam calls and texts. You need some way to manage that.
• hsuduebc2 9mo ago
  Surprisingly convenient accident that happened miraculously just a few days after ownership transfer to the US owners.
• josefritzishere 9mo ago
  State-owned social media?
  • SV_BubbleTime 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • diggyhole 9mo ago
      The what?
      • SV_BubbleTime 9mo ago
        Biden Admin pressured social media companies to remove otherwise legal content that was critical of Covid response. It was a direct 1A violation. And cowards here pretend like it didn’t happen “for the greater good” or something.
    • catlover76 9mo ago
      [dead]
    • buellerbueller 9mo ago
      You mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files These twitter files: "After the first set of files was published, various technology and media journalists said that the reported evidence demonstrated little more than Twitter's policy team struggling with difficult decisions, but resolving such matters swiftly. Some conservatives said that the documents demonstrated what they called Twitter's liberal bias... In June 2023, lawyers working for Twitter contested many of the claims made in the Twitter Files in court. According to CNN, 'the filing by Musk's own corporate lawyers represents a step-by-step refutation of some of the most explosive claims to come out of the Twitter Files and that in some cases have been promoted by Musk himself.' " The nothingburger Twitter Files?
• abraxas 9mo ago
  You elected yourself oligarchy. Good luck getting rid of it now.
• jmyeet 9mo ago
  I predict a future showdown over Section 230 because "algorithms" are used to cheat on the safe harbor protections. Let me explain. The general principle of Section 230 is that a platform provider isn't generally liable for user generated content. This was a key piece of legislation that enabled forums, Reddit and ultimately social media. The platform provider does have responsibilities like moderating illegal content and responding to legal takedowns, etc. Alternatively if you produce and publish your own content you are legally liable. You can be sued for defamation, etc in a way that you can't if you simply host user generated content (unless you fail to adequately moderate). REcommendation algorithms (including news feeds) effectively allow a platform provider to select what content gets distributed and what doesn't. All algorithms express biases and goals of humans who create those algorithms. It's not a black box. It is a reflection of the company's goals. So if you wanted to produce content that's, for example, only flattering to the administration even if you outright lie, you can be sued. But what if your users produce any content you want but you only distribute content that is favorable to the administration? At the same time, you suppress anti-administration content and content creators. It's the same end result but the latter has Section 230 protections. And it really shouldn't. This isn't hypothetical. The Biden administration revived the dead Trump 1 Tiktok ban to suppress anti-Israel content [1][2][3]. What I find most funny about all this is that the American administration--both parties--are doing the exact thing they accuse China is possibly doing in the future. [1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/tiktok-faces-renewed-calls-for-a-ban-amid-pro-hamas-anti-israel-claims https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/tiktok-faces-renew... [2]: https://www.internetgovernance.org/2024/03/18/yes-its-a-ban-the-real-story-behind-the-new-tiktok-law/ https://www.internetgovernance.org/2024/03/18/yes-its-a-ban-... [3]: https://x.com/snarwani/status/1725138601996853424 https://x.com/snarwani/status/1725138601996853424
• therobots927 9mo ago
  And HN users can’t upload anti-ICE articles or discuss politics without getting flagged and downvoted. So I guess HN was just ahead of the curve.
  • _vqpz 9mo ago
    >Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html This has not changed in over ten years https://web.archive.org/web/20140702092610/https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://web.archive.org/web/20140702092610/https://news.ycom...
    • therobots927 9mo ago
      Like I said. Ahead of the curve.
      • _vqpz 9mo ago
        Sure, if you want to compare unexplained censorship to established guidelines. Whatever helps you feel superior
    • devsda 9mo ago
      It may have not changed over ten years but its enforcement I believe has been lacking over the past 1-2 years.
• leke 9mo ago
  So it went from being a social manipulation tool of one county to another and ownership changed hands.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• pickleglitch 9mo ago
  Dupe of another post that was mysteriously flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777652
• drcongo 9mo ago
  Why on earth are grownups using TikTok anyway?
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • _vqpz 9mo ago
    Because it has content that's enjoyable for them and they like to interact with the community. Same reason you're on hackernews.
  • adi_kurian 9mo ago
    Hopefully people will start seeing social media as what it is: a cheap, shitty, and extremely addictive drug. I am confident that in time, the opposite opinion will be viewed as insane.
    • superkuh 9mo ago
      As much as I dislike TikTok, I dislike this dangerous mischaracterization even more. If you start propagating the meme that screens are like chemically addictive drugs the governments of the world will feel emboldened to use violence force to 'regulate' them. Screens are not drugs. They do not directly manipulate the biochemistry of incentive salience regardless of valence of perceived stimuli. They just provide enjoyable stimuli. It is VASTLY different. Conflating them is playing in to the hands of the authoritarians.
      • drcongo 9mo ago
        I'm sorry, but "playing in to the hands of the authoritarians" is using shite like TikTok, generating revenue for the authoritarian billionaires who are currently destroying the world.
        • superkuh 9mo ago
          We are not disagreeing. Definitely do not use TikTok for those and many other reasons. But calling an audio visual stimuli an addictive drug is just as wrong and dangerous. That will lead to those same authoritarians controlling screens with use of force justified by the false metaphor.
• rcpt 9mo ago
  Nuts that the whole company is in on it. Missing such a huge story is something that rank and file engineers would notice. But nobody is saying anything. Perhaps on the tiktok Blind?
  • megolodan 9mo ago
    I used to think that most engineers had strong ethics, but It seems thats not the case. I wonder if it is widespread knowledge internally or if just the select few know.
    • spacechild1 9mo ago
      > I used to think that most engineers had strong ethics Civil engineers maybe. Software "engineers" were never known for their strong sense of ethics.
    • pickleRick243 9mo ago
      Why would you think that engineers have stronger ethics than the population at large? Following this logically, some profession would have to have lower than average ethics or perhaps only the unemployed do? I don't think that one's personal moral compass and one's profession have much correlation at all. Otherwise, moral philosophy professors would be near saints. Moreover the moral philosophers at Harvard would be more ethical than those at Ohio State.
  • philipwhiuk 9mo ago
    You need remarkably few engineers in the loop to actually pull a thing like this off (if it is/was true).
    • rcpt 9mo ago
      Implement the filter? Yeah that's like one guy. But then all the internal dashboards and experiments have this big obvious miss that everyone sees
  • intermerda 9mo ago
• SilverElfin 9mo ago
  Not just anti ICE videos - you can’t even mention Epstein https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-censorship-ice-b2908309.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-cens...
  • actionfromafar 9mo ago
    Thankfully, I learned from our leaders that was just a hoax!
  • timpera 9mo ago
    It's also blocking the word "test": https://www.theverge.com/news/868362/tiktok-epstein-ban-hoax-rumor-not-true-stop-it https://www.theverge.com/news/868362/tiktok-epstein-ban-hoax... Looks like it's just a bug.
• throwaw12 9mo ago
  I will save this for the future, when people complain about Chinese open models and tell me: But this Chinese LLM doesn't respond to question about Tianmen square.
  • ndkap 9mo ago
    Currently, Tiktok US is owned by US Companies
    • throwaw12 9mo ago
      that's exactly why I said, I am going to save this. Then I will ask: what about TikTok US owned by US companies censoring anti-ICE and anti-Israel narrative, do they have freedom of speech?
      • hnfong 9mo ago
        [Let's simulate the discussion for old times sake.] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
    • hnfong 9mo ago
      That's the GP's point. At this stage it's the kettle calling the pot black.
• philipwhiuk 9mo ago
  Glowing endorsement for the Oracle investment
• FAFOAlex 9mo ago
  [dead]
• jnovacho 9mo ago
  How is TikTok able to screen this en masse? Are they going after tags? Political issues aside, I am really interested in the technical background in this.
  • financetechbro 9mo ago
    The only thing I could come up with, assuming this isn’t a technical glitch, is that TikTok already had the infra to silence anything they want on the platform and as soon as the keys were handed over they turned that filter up to 100%
    • jnovacho 9mo ago
      Sure, but are they running audio recognition and image recognition models on each upload just to classify it?
      • testing22321 9mo ago
        Surely they do that to filter out Tiannamen Square content already…. Now they’re good to go for any authoritarian gov who wants to restrict what their citizens can see their own government doing.
      • sudosysgen 9mo ago
        Social media platforms have been doing that for years to keep advertisers happy, so yes.
    • mkmk 9mo ago
      How would you distinguish this from the case where they turned the 'magnify dissent' filter down from 200%?
  • sudosysgen 9mo ago
    Every large social network has fairly advanced mass screening setups for advertiser-sensitive topics. They just need to change the configs. On YouTube for example they will transcribe audio and run OCR on text to flag sensitive topics using MLP in order to flag certain topics (ex: Palestine/Israel), and prevent most ads from being shown (and demonetize and down rank). Basically every large advertiser requires this so it's pretty trivial to turn on.
• tomaskafka 9mo ago
  So, US has their own Tiananmen Square. How the turntables.
• ndkap 9mo ago
  TikTok easily bends over backwards authoritarian government. In Nepal, during the GenZ protest, TikTok disabled the search for "NepoBabies" which is the term people used for the affluent lifestyle of leaders' children and which was why the GenZ protest happened. Every other social media was banned but not TikTok because they happily censor whatever the government tells them to
• b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
  even setting aside the particulars of a US-controlled tik-tok, that our entire view of the world is through these narrow balistraria controlled by a few platforms is extremely detrimental to a free society, especially one so dependent on the flow of information. You could leave tik-tok but that's where folks are at and the average tik-tok viewer is unlikely to leave their dank maymays just because of some "alleged" (and I use that term lightly) censorship
• jacquesm 9mo ago
  This is building an interesting case for those that say that the rest of the world can not build successful competitors to US entities: they can, but then they get taken away. I wouldn't use TikTok, but I find the whole situation a bit strange, ostensibly the rest of the world has a capability problem, but then when they are successful that can't left to stand.
• letmetweakit 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came stays relevant
  • hammock 9mo ago
    Someone I know told me they think about this when they see the people who voted for gun bans talk now about how they need guns to defend against unlawful ICE folks
    • mvdtnz 9mo ago
      But not a single person has actually done so. Until it can be shown that armed citizens are making a genuine difference against government agents it's still just bluster.
      • quailfarmer 9mo ago
        Disagree. The most valuable feature of a fraction of people having guns is that the risk of someone having a gun discourages the most extreme harassment, even if no gun is ever fired.
        • misnome 9mo ago
          If only there was an extremely high profile example of how this isn’t at all true in the past several days!
        • GrinningFool 9mo ago
          Yes, just like government operators were recently discouraged from escalating with that one protestor who had a legal gun that he wasn't using.
          • hammock 9mo ago
            Statistically, private CCL holders are more law-abiding than even police
• jmorenoamor 9mo ago
  Classic big. You just have to set the MANIPULATE env var to false in the container. It's true by default.
• phendrenad2 9mo ago
  If there's a flash of light and a town in North Korea suddenly vanishes and becomes a giant crater, and the North Korean government claims it was a natural disaster, I'm going to guess they accidentally nuked themselves. If TikTok suddenly blocks videos on a topic, and they say it was "technical issues", I'm going to guess the new US overlords accidentally pressed the wrong button. Wonder how long before that button comes for HN. If Dang starts talking like ChatGPT we'll all know.
• Rastonbury 9mo ago
  This was quick, it was never about the money, who needs Truth Social and Twitter when you have tiktok. Best of luck America
• btown 9mo ago
  See also re: censorship of messages containing the word Epstein: https://xcancel.com/krassenstein/status/2015911471507530219 https://xcancel.com/krassenstein/status/2015911471507530219 Per https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-direct-messages https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-... : > "We don't have rules against sharing the name 'Epstein' in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues," a spokesman for TikTok's U.S. operation told NPR in a statement. But the evidence in that Twitter thread should be weighed against the spokesperson's statement.
• BatteryMountain 9mo ago
  I wonder when Americans will wake up and see their system for what it is. It is almost too late to fix it. What comes next is going to change the rest of our lives (everyone, the whole world).
  • kayodelycaon 9mo ago
    A large number of people don’t want the existing system. They want Jesus on the throne, enforcing morality and making sure the poor people to work instead of being lazy grifters that take good people’s hard-earned money. This isn’t a hot take. I’m a Christian who grew up that community. :( It’s everywhere. And I hate what they are doing to my LGBTQ friends.
• NewUser76312 9mo ago
  Meta comment: it seems like you can only voice a particular direction on the politic topic of immigration enforcement on this thread without getting downvoted. The opinion is obvious because everyone automatically jumps to malice as opposed to incompetence as the prevailing theory for the article's claim. I had a condescending response from a HN mod the other day telling me that HN isn't all that left wing, just a 'slight skew'. Well OK buddy, exhibit A, read through the diversity of opinions that aren't flagged in this thread. I'd go as far to say that HN is basically like Reddit, except more of you happen to have computer science degrees. And that's fine, it is what it is, but let's not pretend this website doesn't have a heavy bias in a particular direction.
  • Almad 9mo ago
    From what I know, politologists are analyzing the situation in US from a perspective of "mid intensity civil war". So what you're writing is aligned with tactics you'd expect...?
  • ImPostingOnHN 9mo ago
    immigration enforcement has existed for as long as HN has existed, yet there was never this much attention paid to it. Even under the same president during the previous term. So simply supporting or opposing "immigration enforcement" must not be it. Something must be different about this situation. I encourage you to dig deeper, or actually ask those who disagree with you, what that difference might be. And beware of falling victim to the easy dismissal of 'more people are less rational and/or less informed than before', a variant of 'this person who doesn't agree with me must be less rational and/or less informed than me'.
    • NewUser76312 9mo ago
      Here's what's actually different: - This admin is deporting less than Obama was during his first year in office despite promises to the contrary, - There is now organized harassment and resistance stopping federal agents from removing illegals that are also criminals from our country. Ironically, you need to take your own advice. One side is crazier, and it's not mine.
• vfclists 9mo ago
  What happens if the creators load the video first with a different title and different contextual information, then if the video gets loaded, they change the title and the content afterwards?
• areoform 9mo ago
  Ladies and gentlemen, the frog has been boiled.
  • jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
    My bet is that too many frogs are gonna leap, that this is far too shitty a situation right now. They are gonna work extra overtime to cool it down some for now, collect & put some frogs back in the pot. And then slowly turn up the heat again. I also do believe this is an incredibly hard technical moment. Elli-Tok has nearly no chance of suceeding in building their own algorithm, from square 1, since they don't have access to the ByteDance algorithms. I don't know what access they have to international content and internstional viewing habits, don't know if US content flows to TikTok actual and if they get any algorithmic help from that. This feels like a suicidal business, buying a brand name but lacking any and all of the means to maintain product quality. There probably are real technical problems here. And feed preferences are probably just gone, while Elli-Tok rebuilds its own perhaps isolated perhaps loosely connected fork, while as said above probably lacking the content and viewer data to work from. But just as Ellison's bought CBS then let it be overrun & destroyed by the hollow Free Press propogandists (pretending to be neutral, I say as my eyes roll out of my head), I also tend to think they thought they could get away with doing what they want. Maybe they will get away with this project. Maybe it is all isolated US only content, maybe it is swamped with right wing agitprop from here on out. Maybe half those viewers here keep scrolling forever and that's good enough to make the incredibly fantastically rich happy with their US government facilitated acquisition, that sundering an interesting diverse well tuned network is maybe or maybe not a delight but a necessary thing to claw under for this desired class propoganda. But I tend to think they're alas probably smart enough to learn quickly this is not how you boil a frog, and tend to think Elli-Tok is going to (suck for a long while either way, but work to) dial down the right wingism & divisionism a lot, then slowly work it back up. (But man, watching these buffons mishandle CBS, watching ridiculous bald faced "salute to Mark Rubio" sure makes it hard to believe they have any competence at all.) Different topic but the extremely critical TikTok v. Garland and the First Amendment Anticanon by Evelyn Douek skewering the unanimous Supreme Court decision that ok'ed this absurd international media property theft is amazing to read. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6118706 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6118706
• naikrovek 9mo ago
  what a bunch of enormous pussies ICE are, to have tiktok do this... lol, they're children, man. children with guns.
• nashashmi 9mo ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/01/26/tiktok-competitor-upscrolled-surges-on-app-store-amid-allegations-tiktok-suppresses-anti-ice-videos/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/01/26/tiktok-c... Upscrolled looks like a promising alternative.
• eunos 9mo ago
  Lmao, I know that 2020 Trump was the first to brought up banning TikTok but it was Biden and Democrat who were vigorous in "controlling" TikTok. Worthy for fell for it again award.
• gcanyon 9mo ago
  I'm not seeing this. I uploaded a video earlier today comparing sending in Tom Homan to replace Greg Bongino to sending in Ghostface to replace Jason Voorhees -- both still murderers. Unless they're lying to me about the view count and fabricating comments, something like 400 people have seen it and a dozen have commented -- most calling me an idiot, but whatever.
• AlexC04 9mo ago
  it seems like our software engineers included `censorship=true` in the latest build when someone filed a JIRA ticket that said "censor stuff" we're going to class this one as low priority / won't fix.
• th0ma5 9mo ago
  [dead]
• JohnTHaller 9mo ago
  Sure, 'technical issues'. Just like the filtering around epstein, mussad, etc. Right-wing billionaires like to ensure the speech matches their preferences.
• tastyface 9mo ago
  Just say no to any/all forms of corporate owned social media. They are toxic and antithetical to freedom of speech and true community building. Inevitably, all of them will eventually be used to disseminate propaganda.
  • wswope 9mo ago
    Just throwing these out there for people looking for options: Check out Piefed for a Reddit-like, and lobste.rs for an HN-like. The fediverse might not be booming with activity to the same degree as the big names, but there’s plenty out there and it has a pleasant small-forum vibe that went extinct on the bigger sites a long time ago.
• cdrnsf 9mo ago
  They weren't concerned about privacy of US citizens so much as they were about their ability to directly influence the platform.
• EngineerUSA 9mo ago
  The purchase of TikTok is interesting. Ellison is first and foremost pro Trump, and pro-Israel. TikTok was one of the few companies that allowed videos against the status quo (the propaganda our media pushes), which has only grown more biased now that Bari Weiss (again, a Pro Trump, pro Israel shill) is heading a large media organization. Censorship and controlling the media is one of the first tenets of bad actors. By controlling the flow of information, the truth can be obfuscated (that is why for instance, Israel has a total ban on covering Ghaza for western media. So that war crimes can go unnoticed, and thereby, it is as if they never occured). If we do not share anti-Ice videos, then they simply do not occur. For is the truth really factual, if it is left in darkness. A war on facts is concerning. I see videos of Mr Preti in drag on my feeds, clearly generated by AI, and shared by boomers. Disparaging the dead and the war on facts is highly concerning. That is why Noem does not release body cam footage of the ICE execution of Good and Preti. The only comfort I can find is that Noem and Ellison, and the Trump admin and Israel, are just plain bad at their job. Many years ago, Ellison was well known in SV circles to badly desire to be called like Jobs, in an almost comical way, like a kid asking his parents whether he is like that wrestler he saw on TV when he imitated one of his moves (he used to dress like him, and ask anyone around at his parties about the similarities between the two). They still miserably fail at controlling public sentiment, which is only growing against them day by day, as it rightfully should. Whether or not that leads to a tangible action against these bad actors is to be waited for. Rarely does anything happen though. The war criminals that lied and killed civilians in Vietnam and Iraq enjoyed their ranches. Netanyahu and trump will someday retire and enjoy their old days, after wrecking havoc on the innocent.
• notepad0x90 9mo ago
  Where is that HN thread where everyone was saying how bad it would be for Biden to ban Tiktok? Let's see how it can be used to manipulate the upcoming elections in the US this year. Except now they can't be banned, they're American!
• onetimeusename 9mo ago
  TikTok said in a statement that glitches on the app were due to a power outage at a US data center. As a result, a spokesperson for TikTok US Joint Venture told CNN, it’s taking longer for videos to be uploaded and recommended to other users. The tech issues were “unrelated to last week’s news,” TikTok said. There was a major storm over the weekend. I think the issues have been resolved. Is it still the case anti ICE videos can't be uploaded? Seems easy to test.
  • brailsafe 9mo ago
    It seems to me that the hard part to test would be whether or not videos are allowed to circulate in the same way they would be if they were of a different subject. Upload status seems like red herring Much like how even relatively innocuous comments on many subreddits will just be shadow-deleted.
  • throwaway5752 9mo ago
    If someone demonstrates they are liars, there is a reasonable default reaction. Most people can ignore what they say, because liars made the conscious decision not to be credible. It is an incredible time-saving productivity hack to disregard what habitual liars say.
    • latency-guy2 9mo ago
      This is a reaction to reputation, which is sometimes reasonable. But reasonable people also confirm their suspicions with evidence regardless of the situation. Go ahead and save your time, but remember your reputation is at risk as well, and I would consider you unreasonable.
      • RealityVoid 9mo ago
        Sadly, there are not enough minutes in a day to verify all information thrown at me. So taking shortcuts feels necessary to me. Sure, this should be contingent on new information and developments.
• Animats 9mo ago
  Can't mention "Epstein", either.[1] It was better when TikTok reported to the Third Department of the People's Liberation Army. They don't censor outside China. [1] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-direct-messages https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-...
  • Animats 9mo ago
    And now you can't mention "ICE Watch" on Meta's sites. It's getting to be like China's censorship.
• rsolva 9mo ago
  Do not expect your rights to be honored on large platforms. They are fenced gardens regularly weeded, using algorithms with very specific preferences. The only information outlet where we can have a reasonable expectation of freedom is the web itself, a good old websites on your own domain. Could be a txt file if you want to keep it simple ;)
• mandeepj 9mo ago
  Well, besides that TikTok is censoring “Epstein” now. Is that a tech issue as well? If you can upload any video but ICE brutality then I want to conduct system design session with their architect, tech lead, and CTO!
• _Donny 9mo ago
  A few weeks ago, I reported a compilation video of ICE officers beating people. The description included the phrase "The deportations will continue :)". I reported it for promoting violence, but TikTok found no violation of its guidelines. It probably didn't help that the video was posted by the official White House TikTok account..
  • ineedaj0b 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    • nozzlegear 9mo ago
      I looked through their comment history but didn't find any indication that the person you're replying to is RFK.
      • ineedaj0b 9mo ago
        [flagged]
• jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
  I really want to know which directions data is flowing. How much of an island is Elli-Tok? Do videos from the US appear internationally? International to US? ByteDance famously isn't giving up the algorithm, but what user data does Elli-Tok get and what do they send, or does Elli-Tok have to totally rebuild the algorithm from scratch using only US viewers? This whole thing is such a shit show. The US government right now looks like a total ass of all asses on the world stage, but this TikTok business of the US demanding our country get to take over a social network preceeds this era of major fuckery by a good tick. And is just so stupid, so not what governments should do. Even if we hadn't had Trump just hand it over to his preferred "buyers" the Ellison's, it's just a grade a fuckup, absolute bedlam to do this, completely delegitmizes the US. TikTok v. Garland and the First Amendment Anticanon paper by Evelyn Douek just came out, talking to what a first class First Amendment fuck up the unanimous Supreme Court decision was. Excellent read. Just could not have done a worst job, unbelievable nonsense that let this madness just persist & amplify. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6118706 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6118706
• Spooky23 9mo ago
  We didn’t go after TikTok because of PRC propaganda. We wanted a platform for US propaganda.
• EchoReflection 9mo ago
  [flagged]
• bradgessler 9mo ago
  Remember all the grievances about the previous executive administration's "Twitter Files" censorship? Rules for thee, but not for me. To be clear, I think both censorship regimes are not good, but I can't say I'm surprised.
  • barbacoa 9mo ago
    The pendulum is in full swing. Soon it will be ban worthy offense to suggest there are more than two genders. Though I am morbidly enjoying the irony of seeing those on the left suddenly discover an interest in free speech, and those on the right discover their love for campaigning to get people deplatformed.
    • bradgessler 9mo ago
      I'm beginning to put together that party-lines are strictly about gaining and holding power at all costs. Irony disappears through that lens and the way people act makes much more sense.
    • N_Lens 9mo ago
      I think there's a stark difference between government control of free speech and authoritarianism (Right wing) and activists using social clout or 'mob justice' to deplatform people (Left wing). Both aren't good, but there's a huge difference.
      • missinglugnut 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        • estearum 9mo ago
          All of which are private institutions and therefore are valid expressions of free speech in and of themselves, even if you found it corrosive. The idea the government needs to step in to tell HR departments what mixture of ideas they’re allowed to hire and reward is ridiculous. That is an actual affront to free speech. If you don’t like woketard social dynamics, make your own HR department that lacks them, duh.
• johnsimer 9mo ago
  for what it's worth many solopreneurs on the X/twitter solopreneur committee were reporting their uploads to TikTok were failing, and I saw at least one conservative complaining that their (conservative political) videos were not uploading to TikTok either
• raydev 9mo ago
  At least within Canada I'm continuing to get anti-ICE content from various creators.
  • throwaway87543 9mo ago
    TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is only within the US (controlled by Larry Ellison). You still get ByteDance.
• wtcactus 9mo ago
  I believe everyone here realizes there are several highly used media platforms (some bigger than TikTok, like Instagram), that are posting the videos without any issues. You also realize that there are US TV stations playing those videos almost non-stop, right? People laugh at MAGA conspiration theories backed by Fox News, but their conpiration theories - backed by CNN - sound just as insane for anyone that didn't buy into any of the 2 extremes...
• OpFour 9mo ago
  A riff on "The Revolution Won't Be Televised"... the revolution won't be televised because the bastards who own the networks won't let you see it and you probably wouldn't watch it anyway— you're too busy with your beer and your phone and your comfortable numbness. the revolution won't be televised because it's not entertainment, not something you can half-watch while you're scratching your ass and wondering what to eat for dinner. you can't consume revolution like you consume everything else— passive, bored, already thinking about the next thing. the revolution won't be televised because it happens in the place you're most afraid to look: inside your own goddamn skull. it starts when you stop lying to yourself, stop swallowing their garbage, stop pretending this is fine. it's not on TV. it's not coming to save you. it's just you and the choice to keep sleeping or finally wake the hell up. nobody's going to film that.
• siliconc0w 9mo ago
  You also can't talk about Epstein apparently.
• robflynn 9mo ago
  The new TOS also says it tracks: immigration status, political affiliation, whether you identify as non-binary or transgender, religion, activist content you consume, etc.
• JohnMakin 9mo ago
  What's disappointing is that this precise thing was happening during people trying to report on Gaza issues, and were encountering ghost "technical issues" and shadow bannings/outright bannings, but any such discussion about it here seemed to be getting flagged.
• tsoukase 9mo ago
  CEOs and boards of directors treat the regular public as either slaves or stupid. I don't know if they believe that or pretend to believe.
• dmix 9mo ago
  I'm happy anti-censorship is becoming more popular generally. Tiktok blanket banning terms and aggressive moderation of political topics didn't start here, but if it gets people talking...
• vpcexpress 9mo ago
  [dead]
• rustymonday 9mo ago
  So this was uploaded only 6 hours ago and has over 1,000 points and is at the very bottom of the front page (#28 right now).
  • jjice 9mo ago
    Comments like this appear on every single post like this. Hacker New's algorithm lowers posts that have too much engagement too fast as a way to prevent flame wars. Is it perfect? No. But I highly doubt this is HN demoting this on purpose. From the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html > The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way. > Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action. This could very well be marked as an overheated discussion. This comes up on HN constantly. The reason I feel confident that this is actually the case and not selective moderating is that these same exact comments pop up across posts from the entire political spectrum.
    • TheAlchemist 9mo ago
      I believe the reasons for this system where initially good - don't want too many political discussions, keep it on tech only. The issue is, that the tech is not a niche thing anymore - the biggest companies on earth are all tech now, and they played a very major role in installing the current US government. This topic is a great example too. Any current or future authoritarian state will be a very heavy user of technology, so it may very well be worth it debating these things here on HN.
      • nxobject 9mo ago
        > keep it on tech only. I don't think that was ever completely true - it was always "things hackers found interesting". But what was "interesting" then was a product of the much calmer times back then – talking about Blub and build-your-own Lisps, hikes across Japan, etc. Unfortunately, "interesting" is polarizing – and that is by design by the politicians iin power instigating this.
• pessimizer 9mo ago
  When you force the sale of a company in order to control the political messages that its users post, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that comes when that power is exercised is entirely performative. Weren't anti-ICE people just calling it "freeze peach" a minute ago? This is what that looks like. This is the group that repeated "nothingburger" over and over again when you said that government directly and publicly threatening private businesses if they didn't censor individuals was bad. This is political. The Democrats began their open hatred of the left in the 90s when the Democrats cracked down on free speech during the anti-globalization protests (the introduction of fenced-in "free speech zones"), the party went all in on Iraq against the wishes of all people who were paying attention, Hillary Clinton mocked the left for objecting to a wall between Mexico and the United States, and Rahm Emanuel described people who wanted single-payer as "fucking retards." Now the bizarre group of media-addicted partisans that now calls themselves the "left" fight for free trade and imported slave labor. They remind you that there are jobs that are too awful for Americans that are totally appropriate for Mexicans. That manufacturing is actually worthless, and we should import everything because as a reserve currency there's no need to produce anything. Trade deficits can be infinite, and America is meant to be a black hole, sucking in the worlds production and handing it to the rich. But the rich are bad, although we're giving them every single thing they want. Their politics judged on policy are to the right of Nixon. The only illegal immigrants they know are their employees. They've left behind Floyd, Illegal is the new Black. Now, on HN, this isn't politics. This is something else. Only black people and women are politics. The creation of a masked, militarized federal police force filled with morons to enforce federal immigration law because Democratic cities and states are refusing to enforce it themselves? Not politics. The performance of Trump's street roundups to rally his base (and the working people in this country that are undercut by illegal labor, and the racists who think every Mexican is a rapist) while ignoring and writing exceptions for the corporations that employ illegal labor? Not politics. Sorry, I meant something something something Russia, China, Iran, Nazis. And some specious, offensive comparison of people who just got here in order to make money to Black Americans enslaved and segregated over centuries.
  • afpx 9mo ago
    I became entralled and hypnotised by 90s liberalism. Convinced that their ‘change’ would actually happen, I backed their candidates and media for 30 years waiting for a solution to even the lowest hanging fruit. Instead of getting any solution at all, I watched them rope in more rubes for ‘bigger and better issues’. The self-righteous, like the younger me, are so easily redirected.
• sys32768 9mo ago
  Glitch or not, anything that helps get people off TikTok and hopefully off their phones is a good thing.
• fudged71 9mo ago
  It's insane right now browsing tiktok and seeing every 3rd or 4th video on my feed have consistent glitches (in the same places of a video, as if my internet was slow which it isn't), on only the videos mentioning resistance topics from the US. Very black mirror. Feels like it's meant more to send a message that your content is flagged, and to watch what you say and do. Otherwise they would just block it or hide it from your feed.
  • changadera 9mo ago
    Did the consensus shift about TikTok? I thought it was a given that as tech/IT people TikTok isn’t an app worth having on your phone due to spyware/attention brute forcing/curated propaganda by Chinese government.
    • Tadpole9181 9mo ago
      There are people with a wide variety of opinions here. TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms, so naturally a lot of folk here will use it too. And a thread about something on TikTok will naturally select participation from people who have first hand experience or care about it.
    • Grimblewald 9mo ago
      Well, I had it _becuase_ it was non-us propaganda. Otherwise all I have is US propaganda. If i must be manipulated, then let folks with competing objectives have an equal shot, hopefully they cancel each other out. Now though? Tiktok isn't worth having, it is same old.
• loudmax 9mo ago
  Under the current administration, the US is in the process of throttling long term economic growth, cutting itself off from its traditional allies, and pulling back as a global power. China's Communist Party has the most to gain from the end of American greatness.
• pbiggar 9mo ago
  Meanwhile, UpScrolled was #1 in social media App Store charts in the US, and #2 overall.
• atoav 9mo ago
  The free speech crowd who demanded to stop censorship of vile racism and bigotry (while pretending to not believe in it themselves) are awefully silent when actual state censorship happens.
• gigatexal 9mo ago
  Oh man. The fix is in. This is becoming more and more like 1984 every day.
• ldng 9mo ago
  Freedom of speech, right ? ... My god, the US are so fucked up.
• 3acctforcom 9mo ago
  It's really nice that I can still post here anonymously. I really only come here for tech news, but I doubt ICE cares.
• hysan 9mo ago
  I’m guessing this is related to and corroborates this early flagged article? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777652
• resters 9mo ago
  This is the first political story that HN hasn't killed in a while. Well done! Time to wake up to what is happening.
• insane_dreamer 9mo ago
  At this rate the US will soon have its own Tank Man image censored from mainstream social media.
• deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
• mayo369 9mo ago
  “Oracle admits it broke TikTok.Without explaining why its cloud status page doesn’t list any outages” https://www.theverge.com/news/869037/oracle-admits-it-broke-tiktok https://www.theverge.com/news/869037/oracle-admits-it-broke-...
• mattmaroon 9mo ago
  It’s crazy to me how people on the left react hysterically to what people on the right dealt with for years. Remember when the story about Hunter Biden’s Laptop got banned from all major media? A story that could have been confirmed true by just emailing the subjects and asking them if the emails were real? Remember when Google admitted to being pressured (and caving into said pressure) to censor conservative voices? When we learned that Twitter allowed the US Military to run influence campaigns at people in the Middle East? This isn’t new, we just don’t like when our weapon gets turned on us. Free speech absolutism is the only sensible option.
• wolfi1 9mo ago
  <airquote> tech issues </airquote>
• topmax 9mo ago
  Most Americans lack long-term thinking and fail to recognize that a purely foreign social media platform could be beneficial to them.
• freakynit 9mo ago
  I summarized all comments using LLM for better reading: https://hn-discussions.top/tiktok-ice-censorship/ https://hn-discussions.top/tiktok-ice-censorship/
  • ndsipa_pomu 9mo ago
    Please stop
• yanhangyhy 9mo ago
  no suprise at all... isn't this the whole point for USA to control Tiktok? 'free world' or `democracy` countries love to control the media
• theyneverlear 9mo ago
  [flagged]
• kwuj 9mo ago
  [dead]
• another_twist 9mo ago
  Not sure if douyin is available in the states.
• Nihilartikel 9mo ago
  While I can TOTALLY believe that TikTok might be doing classification and censoring of uploads - tech issues that happen during notable events will INEVITABLY be interpreted as partisan censorship. A personal brush with this was with Scientology Protests around 2008 if I recall - I was at YouTube and there was a great kerfuffle among many of the top personalities who uploaded videos siding against Scientology. Their videos were not making it into the top rankings or getting the expected visibility. To them the obvious answer is that they were being deliberately suppressed - after all Scientology was a paying advertiser and brand on YT. The reality was that the entire viewcount pipeline, and downstream aggregations were busted for about a day. Nobody was getting their full views counted in a timely way for that time.
• gcanyon 9mo ago
  I ran an experiment this morning. N=1 but: I created two videos that contained nearly the same content. I recorded both by hand in one take, so they're not identical, obviously. Each talked about this issue. One used the term "Frozen Water," the other used "ICE". After eight hours: The "ICE" video has 5 views The "Frozen Water" video has 419 views Again, N=1, and of course the "Frozen Water" video is more appealing to conspiracy theorists. FWIW
• Sugimot0 9mo ago
  Honestly I've noticed this with political content on Instagram. Random bugs occur where I can't post, or can't comment or repost, and it's usually posts that aren't in line with US foreign policy on Gaza, Lebanon, Venezuela, etc. I'll go about fine looking at normal stuff, memes, etc but whenever some big geopolitical event occurs is usually when I hit those bugs on IG. I probably experienced more bugs post 10/7 then my entire history using the app prior. Also had lots of posts removed that I contested and won later but it doesn't matter if the moments already passed and that wave of information was repressed on the algorithm.