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I don’t know. As much as I hate the app it’s built so much for so many communities and economically will ruin a lot of businesses and peoples lives.
The worst part about the tiktok ban is that it is based on a bill written and voted on by Congresspeople who have never understood anything about the app. I've read a variety of things about tiktok and what became clear is that if someone isn't a user they do not understand it.
And that is what scares people. Here's this megapopular app used by young people that older generations have very few points of entry into. It's not Facebook or Instagram or Twitter where the olds can join and connect with people they know and comment "Amen" on pictures of shrimp Jesus. It is beyond their comprehension (our comprehension, really, I include myself) and beyond their control. So they banned it.
bee1000 that is not why, it was banned bc china will not sell it to a US company and divest from being a Chinese company that reports all of its user data to the Chinese governemnt. The US would rather have the user data and the loss of this surveillance opportunity & china's gained surveillance opportunity is unacceptable to them. That's why. It's not about any of these dreamy and vague reasons people are bringing up (no hate!). TikTok is choosing to withdraw support rather than divest from their parent company and move to the US
you forget the community that tiktok creates, you wont find it anywhere else. it allows people to create interactive communities that are non existent on meta, x, or any big future united states based social media sites. the things these companies do is probably 10x worse than tiktok; they produce horrendous algorithms that literally listen to you through your phone. not to mention, the bigotry isnt even combatted on those apps. on the other hand tiktok has blessed my algorithm with a plethora of things i would, otherwise, have a hard time learning about. the media recommendations on there are also phenomenal; some of the best movies and songs i have came across were from tiktok.
soicyboy your algorithm was not blessed or mystical it was machine generated to keep you scrolling on the app seeing ads, responding entirely to the amount of time you spent on each video.
killer that might be the point of algorithms. if im going to waste time on an app id rather it not go to elon.
tiktok was a huge resource for me when i realized i was trans/nonbinary. it was during covid lockdowns when i desperately needed connection and to understand myself so it was something i dont take for granted. that said, i think less addictive algorithms pulling our attention from the real world is kind of a good thing. i do agree with the other comment here about the problem with the govt banning tech. and with net neutrality being at risk, many people wont even have access to get on the internet. more reasons to build and network IRL
you don't have to care about tiktok itself, but it IS important to care that the american government is banning websites at all, which is restricting our freedom of speech and moving us closer to a fascist state. this ban goes way deeper than the app itself. you don't have to like tiktok but you should still care what the ban stands for.
sbonifazi I totally agree. The people who benefit from this ban the most are not the average American because they will, in theory, spend less time scrolling (meta and google have already adopted TikTok’s algorithm ffs), it is the corporations that profit from lobbying against a competitor in their market— and the implications of being successful at that kind of lobbying are pretty bleak.
sbonifazi i feel like there can be a balance bc it’s a complicated situation - like i don’t really care about it personally in that i think it is a terrible app and is negatively impacting society, and i also understand the weight this precedent has on free speech rights and the internet. but i do think the majority of people “sad” about it going away are mostly sad bc they <3 to scroll it and not bc of the broader political implications it has. unfortunately Reels will probably take its place and with meta‘s new fact checking and hate speech policies (or lack thereof) i think meta’s platform will be cemented as an online leviathan worse than tiktok or twitter 😬
marxinista right it’s a terrible precedent to set on the one hand because the US government loves to use national security as a justification for overreact of power but on the other hand… TikTok and its consequences to society…
marxinista it really does seem like part of the tiktok ban is the fact that they don’t control the algorithm. Zuck’s new rules are already a hint at how quickly he’ll roll over that control.
on a similar train of thought: I’ve been leaving Instagram behind for similar reasons. Everything’s an ad, even people’s life, and everything is content. Only a minuscule part of the things that get posted feels genuine. Not to mention the bottomless pit of wasted time that gets spent on it with its addictive features. Im emotionally and spiritually exhausted from it.
literally, by now in 2025 most of the intelligent/cool people who made it really useful have left/branched out anyways whilst the actual app has devolved into a cesspool of consumerism and ignorance
