• khaleer
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    4 minutes ago

    Yeah, so prepare for battle between people who want to tell you that their empire is better.

  • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 hours ago

    Tiktok got banned not for peddling “chinese propaganda” but instead not peddling the US one.

    All the major tech companies in the US take measures to ensure content deemed unworthy by the government never become mainstream or viral.

    This is done under the pretense of stopping “hate speech” or “terroristic propaganda” but often include things like pro-palestinian content or class struggle content (like luigi mangione stuff).

    Tiktok was bold enough to not do that by default, cuz they wanted someone to ask them to do this and then it would become a huge scandal about how the US suppresses free speech. And US gov don’t want to do that for this exact reason as well. So they decided to ban it.

    Remember talks for this “law” were initiated when all of a sudden tiktok became a host for pro-palestinian voices. We should ask ourselves, how is it that 60% of americans want the government to stop arms sales to israel but this 60% never shows up on the big social media platforms. But on other platforms like here in lemmy and tiktok, pro-palestinians is the majority.

    For further reading, listen to employees fired from big US tech companies for voicing their concerns over the palestine issue, or read Meta’s new terms and conditions specially the section on “dangerous organizations and individuals”.

    • ConnecticutKen@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      They track the location of people in the US and gather large amounts of data. They didn’t get banned for refusing to spread US propaganda.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      You’re on the Fediverse. Most of the people here are already actively avoiding Facebook and Xitter. Unfortunately, getting the US, EU, etc. to ban American propaspyware companies is, uh, extremely unlikely. China, however, has banned them long ago, which is why I don’t see why people think it’s hypocritical of the US government to ban Chinese social media.

      • Zement@feddit.nl
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        2 hours ago

        Try saying negative stuff about China on .ml I doubt that they are not completely undermined by the Chinese intelligence. (They delete every post critical about china).

        So being vigilant is the only way to avoid getting manipulated.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          2 hours ago

          .ml might just be useful idiots tbh. But I remember speedrunning an /r/sino ban and that took me all of 1 minute, with a comment that wasn’t even critical about China. It was a thread about how it’s awesome that the west can’t live without China for 5G connectivity and I said that “maybe it isn’t all that great that an entire industry has been entirely centralized to one country” just to see if an absolutely lukewarm take would get banned. It did.

          • Zement@feddit.nl
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            2 hours ago

            Yeah, it’s strange. Like even slight criticism. I mean that’s okay, but what about actual constructive discussions? None!

            If you are not allowed to criticize a system, that system is inheritly flawed. But that’s my personal take on this.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Except they’ve banned 1 source for appeasement rather than enact a strong law or policy for long-term safety.

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 hours ago

    I’m not a fan of government banning stuff, but like… if they are gonna do it, ban Wechat too. My parent’s be so deep in the Wechat propaganda, I wonder what they do without Wechat.

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 hours ago

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

        TLDR: Chinese “Facebook” (actually its more like Facebook+Instagram+Twitter+ every social media combined into one + Googlepay/Applepay + A lot of government censorship)

        Its app only, no webpage or computers, requires a smartphone, requires a phone number. How much censorship and survelliance depends on what phone number you use. Accounts with Mainland Chinese number will have a much stricter censorship and more data collected. Accounts with a western number will have less strict censorshop and less data collected (probably about the same amount of data collected by western corporate social medias).

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 hours ago

      What? Wechat is a thing here? I have literally never heard about Wechat like anywhere, pretty sure more people know about Lemmy in the US than Wechat lmao

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 hours ago

        WeChat is very common amongst the Chinese diaspora worldwide. Everyone in China uses WeChat. Its like China’s Facebook. Its either that, or just sms, which lack many features like, group chats, or some weird Lunar New Year gifs, stuff like that. So if you want to communicates with relatives that are still in China, or with other first-generation immigrants, WeChat is just the default method. But that’s only for first-generation immigrants tho. People born ouside of China, Taiwan, or any Chinese-speaking areas would probably not use WeChat. I arrived in the US at before I was 10, I hate the idea of having any corporate apps on my phone, regardless of nationality. Many Chinese Americans born in the US just use the typical Instagram, Snapchat and stuff like that (and yes, some use TikTok as well, but that just a “kids these days” thing, nothing to do with ancestry)

  • vga
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    3 hours ago

    Lol @ america being the only non-chinese country in the world

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      My wife quit it and was back on it a week later. Apparently it’s very addictive. As someone who is on Lemmy a thousand times per day, I guess I can understand. I don’t consider it quite the same though since we actually talk here, and discuss things beyond pressing like buttons on glorified commercials.

    • kworpy@lemm.ee
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      4 hours ago

      if Vine was still here (let alone brought back) it would become just as bad as TikTok. Social medias can have their golden age but they will inevitably turn into shit, vine was simply shut down before its golden age came to an end

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        2 hours ago

        I always thought Vine was so stupid and pointless, but I thought the same thing about Twitter and it sold for $44 billion dollars, so what do I know? I miss the old Internet when content was more than a blurb, and conversations were deep and meaningful.

  • jaschen@lemm.ee
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    9 hours ago

    They should force TikTok to be sold to the Taiwan government.

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    9 hours ago

    Blah blah blah “we built our own great firewall and painted it red white and blue, and even banned the use of vpns to get to foreign sites which even China doesn’t do. We’re totally the good guys BTW.”

    Americans are so fucking stupid, oh my god.

    • FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 hours ago

      as an American yeah, seeing this post is just depressing. like people are actively cheering a loss of internet freedom. the government doesn’t care about bytedance or else capcut would have to go too. they care about controlling information, tiktok has been essential in issues like Palestine, even if I don’t like the platform itself I can admit that.

      • spireghost@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        Also 100% clear that facebook, google, twitter… are all doing the same but for US intelligence

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      6 hours ago

      banned the use of vpns to get to foreign sites which even China doesn’t do

      What are you talking about? The GFC tries its absolute best to block VPNs and other circumvention methods.

    • Rooty@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      “Freedom is when you let foreign governments spy on your citizens”

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      8 hours ago

      What do you suggest? Allow a foreign nation to destroy you from within?

      • Koarnine@pawb.social
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        8 hours ago

        Actually fight against that rather than pretending too, Israel and Russia have destroyed the US from within far more than China… Maybe tackle the active objective threats rather than potential ones

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      6 hours ago

      And one naturally says the reason why we are in such a mess is not simply that we have wrong systems for doing things—whether they be technological, political, or religious—but we have the wrong people. The systems may be alright, but they are in the wrong hands, because we are all in various ways self-seeking, lacking in wisdom, lacking in courage, afraid of death, afraid of pain, unwilling really to cooperate with others, unwilling to be open to others.

      —Alan Watts, Mind Over Mind

    • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      We were trailblazers for a time. Other than that, we were always kind of fucked as a democratic system.

      • vga
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        Probably no nation ever should last for more than 100 years. That seems to be about the time it takes for things to go bad, even if they were good to start with.

        And of course there are countries like modern Russia that should have lasted for about 5 years.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          Late 18th century. The chaos of the French Revolution arguably diluted its viability as an example to other countries, despite the structure of democratic government being objectively better, so you can argue that we were still on the cutting-edge through the 19th century, even, when most countries were still autocracies or constitutional monarchies with extremely questionable de jure voting systems.

          I would argue as late as the 1950s, our democratic structure was closer to average than below-average, but by the 1970s, what gave the US more in-common with other developed democracies was that we had extensive practice with our democratic system; by then our structure was not just hopelessly outdated, but a structure that no one in their right mind would take seriously as a foundation for a new government. Come the fall of most of the single-party Soviet-backed regimes of the 1990s, and the only countries we actually beat out for being a ‘good democracy’ are ones that… well, are only questionably democracies to begin with. And even then, most of them have structures that are superior to our’s; only a tradition of civic participation has led us to hobble on as long as we have without becoming an outright authoritarian state.

          Though this might be the last month I can say that, which says a lot about the failures of our shitshow of an attempt at implementing democracy.

          • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            Late 18th century

            The majority of the population could not vote, either due to their skin color, sex, or degree of property ownership (colony by colony/state by state as I recall).

            • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              The majority of the population could not vote, either due to their skin color, sex, or degree of property ownership (colony by colony/state by state as I recall).

              Yeah, you should look into other governments of the period.

              • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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                9 hours ago

                Just to be specific, your argument is that the United States of the late 18th century can be considered a “trail blazer” in terms of democratic achievement. You are agreeing to my assertion that the franchise can be used as a measure of democracy, and you are asserting that the United States was uniquely forward in this area. This follow up statement is limiting this to a comparison of similar governments of the 18th century?

                • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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                  8 hours ago

                  Late 18th century, yes. And if I hear pop history myths about the Iroquois, I will be irritated.

        • Bacano@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          Before any of us were alive. Some would say before centralized banking in the early 20th

  • De_Narm@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    The last panel applies to every other social media, just replace the spying country.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      14 hours ago

      That last part is becoming less and less relevant … someone is spying but it isn’t for the benefit or under the control of a country. More and more, the spying is meant more for the purposes of commerce and finance, for money and control. For business interests which is what major governments mainly represent.

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        13 hours ago

        At this point, the line between business and government in the US is almost non-existent, so definitely still a government using your data for the propaganda machine.

        • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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          11 hours ago

          Reminds of my favourite description of the US …

          “The US isn’t a country, it’s a corporation with a military”

    • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Yes, and that’s why US companies aren’t banned by the US. The foreign power having so much propaganda power was the danger.

      • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        If I wanna get my propaganda from more than one world power, that’s my right under the first amendment. Or it was.

      • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
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        So if an American company collects user data and sells it on the open market to a hostile foreign nation, and accepts money to run propaganda, that’s A-OK?

        • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          That capitalism baby! I suppose Congress can at least control who Facebook et al. are selling to through sanctions and such.

      • De_Narm@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        There are multiple instances pushing propaganda and most data can just be scraped by bots. It may be harder, but capitalism finds a way.

      • vga
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        3 hours ago

        Jokes on you, I use lemmy

        Literally made by communists

          • vga
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            I’m impervious to communism, comrade.

            edit fuck!

          • Bacano@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            The people that countries pay to pretend to be normal everyday users in order to spread state propaganda?

            Edit: in this case ‘both’ refers to the image particularly portraying two countries

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    11 hours ago

    Ho hum. TikTok ain’t going anywhere.

    It will be banned for a short while, long enough for Trump to enforce sale to Meta in exchange for their absolute hard turn top to bottom in everything they do to help spread misinformation and keep the plebs angry.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      That assumes ByteDance and TikTok approve a sale… They’ve been very adamant they will not.