Submitted 2 months ago by tonytins@pawb.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/trump-says-tiktok-should-be-tweaked-to-become-100-maga/
TikTok was never good. Have at it.
Though, he is always free to start his own MAGA-themed video service, much like he did with Truth Social. I think the problem is — and if he doesn’t know it, he’s been advised, with crayons and hand puppets — that running a server serving video is orders of magnitude more expensive than running a server hosting a text-based social network.
i really think you are minimizing how bad this is. This is the government weaponizing social media, much like elon musk weaponized twitter. Only this time, the social media is directly own by a fascist government regime. This is a massive massive conflict of interest which is going to 100% turn tik tok into a propaganda machine.
TikTok was run by a fascist regime: China. It’s just, most Americans are not of much interest to Beijing. Their intelligence probably wants to know what is trendy in America so it can better appeal to us and influence our elections to serve their interests, but Beijing is probably not concerned at all with you or I as individuals. But if they can get us to vote for a candidate they support by showing us the parts of that candidate that we agree with, we can be used as a tool by Beijing. Now Washington wants that power.
I don’t like it either way.
TikTok and Instagram were never good, but they provided a platform for people on the streets to provide real time updates on current events that countered the state narrative/propaganda on main stream media.
TikTok and Instagram exposed the truth about the American empire to a significant portion of the population. They want to make sure it’s all controlled state approved content, they want to eliminate our ability to reach eyes and ears.
So sure, have at the Chinese propaganda platform, but not without an alternative that allows us to reach wide audiences… And we don’t have an alternative… Not enough people are on the fediverse and the learning curve is pretty massive.
they’ve made protest illegal by classifying antifa as terrorist, now they’re coming after social media to make sure there is no outlet for protest online either. I don’t think people are making a big enough deal about this. This is extremely bad.
Eh, I’ll “have at” TikTok for being shit because historically, it has been. It’s driven by memes and trash.
That said, over the past couple years I’ve heard lots of good things. “BookTok” and other -Tok’s being communities within the service — I admit I don’t know how it is because I’ve never used it — but also, the rapid decline of YouTube has made me seriously consider getting on TikTok just to have something different. My resolve to be anti-TikTok has greatly reduced over the last couple years, as an “old guy” who does not like “social media”.
So yeah, credit where it’s due.
I’d love for the Fediverse to have a strong alternative, but again, the costs of running a video server that is anywhere close to being “widely used”…
Fuck you orange cunt
He lacks the warmth and depth
I said something similar on Reddit and got permanently banned lol! America stands by watching as this clown turns his country into a dictatorship. Worst neighbors ever!
It’s already shite, but why stop there!
If that’s what it takes for people to stop using that stupid a** social media, I’m all for it.
glad you bend over so easily. Saves whoever the cost of lube even.
Bend over for what? We need to fight for the braindead app for idiots.
I’m sure it really depends on where you live, but here in East Europe I’ve noticed tiktokkers slowly turning into Z’ers who start accepting Russian disinfo as facts. Meaning, it’s already pro-MAGA
Kill it kill it!
I already moved to redgifs. Goodbye Tik Tok.
Tiktok was China’s soft propaganda because they suppressed unfavorable content rather then promote favorable content. Trump going full MAGA with it would kill the platform because people use tiktok to stop thinking about distressing things. Not be exposed to more of it.
What would he care if it kills a lot of use. Some will stay, even if it becomes just an echo chamber, there will be users who don’t leave and slowly get fed more and more content that changes their bias.
A propaganda machine does have to reach 100% of the population, it just needs to pluck small percentages that were on the outskirts and hold the current believers in a situation where they believe this is better than whatever bologna scenario they make up would happen if they weren’t doing this. America is MUCH safer place to live today than it was when I was born back in 89’.
Yet a large portion of the population does not believe that, because they throw murders in people’s faces through every facet of our lives to make people feel afraid and use security as an excuse to gain further control over people’s rights.
Anyone who thinks “I could leave my doors unlocked back in the 1990s and I can’t today” has been fooled.
Anyone who thinks subways, trains, or public transit isn’t multiple times safer than getting into a car and driving to work, has been fooled.
And social media as well as news stations want us to be angry and scared, because it gets people engaged. Engagement makes them money. Happy people who feel safe go outside and go to the beach, play sports, go hiking, go to movies, join a book club, have a hobby of some sort. None of those things make news outlets money. Social media could, because they could sell ad slots to people who sell products for those hobbies… but I guess it doesn’t make as much.
Good thing they don’t have the skills to do it and make it attractive to the currect users. I’m fine with Larry Ellison’s losing billions in the process.
They literally did that with Facebook. Yeah, plenty of people left, but it worked.
Yeah, facebook didn’t do that. Facebook is “popular” with the old 50+ and force use in developing countries. The more right FB goes, the more they lose younger people. It’s the snake eating it’s own tail.
As with all social media, as soon as grandma and grandpa get on, it all goes down hill.
It’s gone full circle. Grandparents are the only reason I even have a Facebook account anymore.
Genuinely, how would it be any different to Twitter and Truth Social then? I’ve not used any of them so maybe I don’t understand the distinction between each
A much bigger young audience?
TikTok is a short video social platform. People post only videos. The two you mentioned are short public messaging social platforms, with the capability to post/include videos.
That’s not really what this is about, though. TikTok was not under their control, so they’re trying to take control and follow their script of media and social control.
Ah, got you, apologies - I thought they were all capae go sharing a video
Short video format focus?
MegaloMANIAC just wants to take over the world
MAGAniac
Brain rot only for the right… 28 TikToks Later…
One more step towards the US becoming an NK clone.
No, not North Korea clone but a Nazi Germany clone.
Nazi Germany unraveled itself by attacking its neighbors. Do you think thats ever going to happen?
Man these people are so un American.
I dont think your definition of “American” matches with the rest of the world if this is “un-american” for you.
Nah, as a European this is pretty un-American
Their propaganda is usually much more subtle
And renamed to Hate Tok
When Xi is the only way to save the US.
Another interesting news! I’m blessed! Like they already do missinformation.
Trump is fucking delusional
Also a fucking idiot…
The perfect way to kill a platform
To be fair, I don’t think Xitter is really dead? It certainly took a hit though 🤷
yeah, because it’s bankrolled by one billionaire now, so it doesn’t matter how badly he runs it, as long as he decides to keep it up. it could never make a single dime ever again, and he could run it for as long as he wanted because he makes vastly more than twitter costs.
back when it was public, if it had lost this many advertisers when it wasn’t profitable to start with, it might have been a very different situation for them. they had to convince investors to keep giving them money back then.
Twitter is 5% nutjobs, 95% bots. You really need a mental illness to be able to browse Twitter unironically.
As if we didn’t already know he was thinkjng that?
He isn’t even trying to be an American president. Only to his lie-loving MAGA.
Democrats just wanted to ban it for going against their narrative. Fick the two party system.
I’m not quite following you. First, I never heard about Democrats wanting to ban it for their narrative; I only know about the bipartisan ban. Is that what you mean? Second, what are you talking about with the thanking the DNC thing? What does that have to do with this?
Lastly, I strongly disagree that we deserve Trump. Nobody deserves right wing lunacy, especially not a large society that did not uniformly support his candidacy in any way. Do you think Germany deserved Hitler?
There seems to be some correlation between lemmy.ml and shit takes. So strange…🤔
Isn’t tiktok a chinese asset? And hasn’t china famously refused to dance to Trump’s discordant tune?
Trump is forcing them to sell their American operations to American owners or be blocked from operating in the US.
Missed the news, eh?
Lol, xenophobia and ignorance: the classic Westerner combination
They were forced to sell to a us based group.
Nah, cut the middleman and work on brains directly by using an ancient technique called lobotomy
Loops.video
Maga should totally mess around with social media censorship, worked out great in Indonesia
Even better in Nepal.
Siegehammer85@lemmy.world 1 month ago
MAGA youth recruitment and education platform