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It's going to be banned from US app stores. It's still possible to download it other ways, but it might prevent less tech savvy people from acquiring it. I don't think it will really stop any teenagers.

The #1 issue I see with it and most other social media apps is the prevalence of underage users, particularly when you have minors interacting with adults.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underage-users-ftc.html
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/350683

I remember hearing the "don't talk to strangers" line while growing up, but it seems to me like parents don't understand that children's online interactions aren't necessarily with peers. This has been an ongoing issue dating back to the days of chat rooms, but it seems like that aspect of it has largely been forgotten. It's not limited to social media by any means. Grooming is a big issue in the gaming community. Recently there was a lot of drama in I think the Smash community over multiple grooming incidents that came to light a couple years after the fact.

Social interaction is becoming increasingly digital and children are undoubtedly interacting with strange (in the sense they don't know them) adults to a greater degree. So the question is how does society protect children from predators? And at what cost of personal freedom?

 trexmeyer wrote:
II remember hearing the "don't talk to strangers" line

That are the same people who are just now comfortable enough with how the internet works to share Q Anon and other conspiracy theories on Facebook. The "don't trust strangers on the internet" generation is now blindly trusting strangers on the internet :/

Nothing of value was lost here.

China has been putting out a lot of malicious spyware via TikTok, Epic Games, etc... for a while and they needed to get stopped. At the very least, maybe this will make people more aware of who is behind what social media apps.

I never used TikTok! So I don't care About it.
People are becoming so personal for tiktok. Idk why?

My daughter wanted to install this app because all of her friends had it. I read the TOS and told her no way.
These apps just harvest user data to sell. That’s why it’s free.
So another data harvesting app/plan/scheme gets stopped. Wait a few months and someone will make another TikTok.

I honestly think most social media are a cancer that is best surgically removed from society, but maybe that's just because I don't like people very much and have no tolerance for stupidity or false pretenses, all of which social media is not just rife with but flourishes on.

I don't want to be spied on and have my data harvested by the Chinese, thank you very much.

I prefer to be spied on and have my data harvested by the US government, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

 Ouze wrote:
I don't want to be spied on and have my data harvested by the Chinese, thank you very much.

I prefer to be spied on and have my data harvested by the US government, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

aint that the truth.

My boys are already discussing buying Canadian SIM cards to get around this. (Not sure if that'd work but they're in the TikTok generation).

 whembly wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
I don't want to be spied on and have my data harvested by the Chinese, thank you very much.

I prefer to be spied on and have my data harvested by the US government, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

aint that the truth.

My boys are already discussing buying Canadian SIM cards to get around this. (Not sure if that'd work but they're in the TikTok generation).

TBF, One government is a totalitarian one and one isn't and has atleast (occaisionally) some integrity, and it ain't the chinese.
Needless to say tho, the spying regardless if corporate OR by government, is frankly quite insane.

Tiktok is pretty much full of garbage and borderline cancerous content 90% of the time, they have kids pretending to be Holocaust survivors to get clicks....sooo there's no real merit as a service IMO. It being Chinese spyware just makes it even worse.

 Ouze wrote:
I don't want to be spied on and have my data harvested by the Chinese, thank you very much.

I prefer to be spied on and have my data harvested by the US government, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

A rational polity might determine that what is needed are laws and enforcement governing what companies can actually do with the data they collect (which we could use anyway), but that would be in a world where people think about consequences rather than do whatever sounds cool in the moment.

Oh well.

*preps some bookmarks*

The flames might be cool. I'm betting a bunch of people show up on Monday wondering why the app doesn't work anymore. The rhetoric from China will probably be juciey.

 LordofHats wrote:
A rational polity might determine that what is needed are laws and enforcement governing what companies can actually do with the data they collect (which we could use anyway), but that would be in a world where people think about consequences rather than do whatever sounds cool in the moment.

Good ol' GDPR (the European General Data Protection Regulations) was a step in the right direction. Y'know, that pop-up cropping up on every site now asking if you're ok with specific types of cookies. I make a point of disarming every single possible type of cookie I can, and adblocking whatever I can as well.
I take this approach with everything else I can, too - pretty much the first thing I do with a new phone is turn off location and set app permissions to "always ask", and so on. I also have a separate email account used just for buying things (eg using Amazon or Ebay) and anything that I suspect will generate spam by signing up.

I'm aware that it's still possible for the Government to track my phone, some data is still going to be tied to me, and I'm still going to see adverts. But I'm damned if I'm going to make it easy and I'm damned if I'm going to let adverts in particular get data on what I buy and tie it to other factors about me. While I recognise the value of good advertising, it's gone way, way, way too far to the point where I'll do anything to stymie those who are clearly overstepping boundaries in the name of money.

Banksy said it best (spoilered for large image and a little NFSW language):

 Super Ready wrote:
Good ol' GDPR (the European General Data Protection Regulations) was a step in the right direction. Y'know, that pop-up cropping up on every site now asking if you're ok with specific types of cookies. I make a point of disarming every single possible type of cookie I can, and adblocking whatever I can as well.

I mean, I feel kind of silly because I use stuff like adblocker and ghostery because I find ads annoying more than anything. I want to read the news/look at this product/see this cute cat pic internet website #3145, not hear a video about the latest model Hyundai that takes over the screen, plays loud music, and prevents me from reading the page/seeing cute cat pics. In the past I would have happily turned it off so the site could fund itself if they took some responsibility and policed the ads that appear on their site or engaged the ad company to make the ads not annoying as feth.

But at this point yeah. I'm more than happy to block cookies, trackers, and other annoyances at will because apparently slapping the symptoms of broken systems is how we're just going to keep doing things. Ce la vie. People are apparently content to be spied on by everyone as long as it's not China I guess.

 Grimskul wrote:
Tiktok is pretty much full of garbage and borderline cancerous content 90% of the time, they have kids pretending to be Holocaust survivors to get clicks....sooo there's no real merit as a service IMO. It being Chinese spyware just makes it even worse.

I'm more concerned about things like this then the spyware. Unless you completely unplug your data is being harvested. It's baked into everything now.

The thing is, I don't have anything against general trend data being harvested. That's been a thing since people started conducting surveys.
Where I draw the line is being able to tie data to a particular person - and yet we've gone beyond even that, with targeted advertising.

LordofHats wrote:I mean, I feel kind of silly because I use stuff like adblocker and ghostery because I find ads annoying more than anything. I want to read the news/look at this product/see this cute cat pic internet website #3145, not hear a video about the latest model Hyundai that takes over the screen, plays loud music, and prevents me from reading the page/seeing cute cat pics. In the past I would have happily turned it off so the site could fund itself if they took some responsibility and policed the ads that appear on their site or engaged the ad company to make the ads not annoying as feth.

Right there with you. It's telling that most advertisers' response to adblockers is trying to pull at the heartstrings and use website owners against us, to plea to us so they get their sponsor money... not recognising that they caused this problem and reigning in the ridiculousness.
Oh, and egregious nonsense like "a word from our sponsor" in the middle of a Youtube video. What, like I'm not gonna skip straight past it?

 Super Ready wrote:

Banksy said it best (spoilered for large image and a little NFSW language):

Spoiler:

...this would be coming from the guy who's currently throwing his toys out the cot about the fact that IP laws don't bend to his fetish for anonymity for marketing and sales purposes?

 Super Ready wrote:
Oh, and egregious nonsense like "a word from our sponsor" in the middle of a Youtube video. What, like I'm not gonna skip straight past it?

I'm actually cool with that cause I can skip straight past it and the content creator still gets the money. feth the advertisers! Power to the viewers! XD

 Ketara wrote:
...this would be coming from the guy who's currently throwing his toys out the cot about the fact that IP laws don't bend to his fetish for anonymity for marketing and sales purposes?

Hah! Wasn't aware of that. Still, some hypocrisy on his part doesn't do anything to dissuade me from the original point.

Sponserships are for the end of the video.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Super Ready wrote:
Oh, and egregious nonsense like "a word from our sponsor" in the middle of a Youtube video. What, like I'm not gonna skip straight past it?

I'm actually cool with that cause I can skip straight past it and the content creator still gets the money. feth the advertisers! Power to the viewers! XD

I am perfectly fine with these things too. Even better if the creator gets to do the whole ad for them and then just makes a skit mocking the product the whole time. Advertisements can be funny after all!

ChiNa bAd HURRRR

Basically sums up the entire reasoning for this.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
ChiNa bAd HURRRR

Basically sums up the entire reasoning for this.

China bad + election year.

I'm sure this ban has absolutely no relation at all to the fact that the punking of the trump tulsa rally was orginized over tiktok. Nope not at all.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
ChiNa bAd HURRRR

Basically sums up the entire reasoning for this.

You're not wrong.

At the same time, given that China is essentially re-enacting a weird blend of the rise of Imperial/Nazi Germany, I'm not sure it's the wrong thing to do, whatever the underlying reason. The quicker we separate our economies and selves from it, the better. It's pretty apparent by this stage that interlinking them doesn't mean a damn thing when it comes to preventing human rights abuses or territorial ambitions/aggression.

Guys, most people in america know the real reason tiktok was banned:

You know who had a rally in texas, and a tiktok group ordered a bunch of tickets for it and never showed, leaving you know who facing a rally in which over half the seats were empty, thereby humiliating you know who while the tiktok mob laughed in you know who's face.

Of course there was a huge space outside the building for an imagined mass throng of people to be addressed from a balcony with a PA system by you know who, and that had sucnh a tiny crowd it was cancelled. So maybe tiktok wasn't the only reason you know who's had a small audience. But the media gave tiktok credit and they took it.

The move to ban tiktok was started immediately afterwards.

Also Sarah Cooper.

 Ketara wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
ChiNa bAd HURRRR

Basically sums up the entire reasoning for this.

You're not wrong.

At the same time, given that China is essentially re-enacting a weird blend of the rise of Imperial/Nazi Germany, I'm not sure it's the wrong thing to do, whatever the underlying reason. The quicker we separate our economies and selves from it, the better. It's pretty apparent by this stage that interlinking them doesn't mean a damn thing when it comes to preventing human rights abuses or territorial ambitions/aggression.

I'm personally more worried about the re-enacting a weird blend of the rise of Imperial/Nazi Germany in the US and most of Europe tbh

 Matt Swain wrote:
Guys, most people in america know the real reason tiktok was banned:

You know who had a rally in texas, and a tiktok group ordered a bunch of tickets for it and never showed, leaving you know who facing a rally in which over half the seats were empty, thereby humiliating you know who while the tiktok mob laughed in you know who's face.

Of course there was a huge space outside the building for an imagined mass throng of people to be addressed from a balcony with a PA system by you know who, and that had sucnh a tiny crowd it was cancelled. So maybe tiktok wasn't the only reason you know who's had a small audience. But the media gave tiktok credit and they took it.

The move to ban tiktok was started immediately afterwards.

yeah it's really pretty transparent.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

I'm personally more worried about the re-enacting a weird blend of the rise of Imperial/Nazi Germany in the US and most of Europe tbh

Please, can the hyperbole. When the US pulls a Xinjiang, or when the EU starts aggrandising to claim the entire Mediterreanean Sea as their territorial waters, you might have a point. I know there's a wonderful habit in the Western world of acting as if people like Trump/BoJo/Duda are the be all and end all of facism, tyranny, and oppression; but meanwhile places like Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia do actually exist. When you've seen or lived under real oppression, the watered down lite diet-soda versions that people exaggerate in the West are much less intimidating.

China is going in a seriously negative direction these days, and the less we have to do with them, the better. It's bad enough when the petty dictators and warlords of the world get feted in the West because they steal their people's money and spend it on Ferraris and shopping trips. But that just leads to some moral dilemmas about arms sales and aid at worst.

When people with territorial ambitions and funny ideas about race seize direct control of genuine economic and military juggernauts however, history has shown that things tend to get much much messier surprisingly quickly.

 Ketara wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

I'm personally more worried about the re-enacting a weird blend of the rise of Imperial/Nazi Germany in the US and most of Europe tbh

Please, can the hyperbole. When the US pulls a Xinjiang, or when the EU starts aggrandising to claim the entire Mediterreanean Sea as their territorial waters, you might have a point. I know there's a wonderful habit in the Western world of acting as if people like Trump/BoJo/Duda are the be all and end all of facism, tyranny, and oppression; but meanwhile places like Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia do actually exist. When you've seen or lived under real oppression, the watered down lite diet-soda versions that people exaggerate in the West are much less intimidating.

China is going in a seriously negative direction these days, and the less we have to do with them, the better. It's bad enough when the petty dictators and warlords of the world get feted in the West because they steal their people's money and spend it on Ferraris and shopping trips. But that just leads to some moral dilemmas about arms sales and aid at worst.

When people with territorial ambitions and funny ideas about race seize direct control of genuine economic and military juggernauts however, history has shown that things tend to get much much messier surprisingly quickly.

This. I never get it when people compare the West to China, who is literally enacting genocide ala Holocaust 2: Electric Bugaloo with concentration camps. That and this whole COVID debacle being even worse than it should have been by covering up a worldwide pandemic by paying off WHO and silencing whistleblowers. China has literally shown in their meetings/writings that they still have the Cold War mentality of them vs the world, so the sooner we wise up to them and cut ourselves off economically, the better.