my teaching thrives on TikTok
If a teacher mandates students to stream lectures over TikTok, I’m raising a formal complaint. There is at least a dozen better options.
Desperate TikTok lobbying effort backfires on Capitol Hill
Submitted 8 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68517607
Comments
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 8 months ago
TheFriar@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I think they’re using “teaching” here in a way neither you nor I would.
darthskull@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
You know you can follow people on tiktok right? The “following” page only shows peoples videos you follow in the order in which they were uploaded
drislands@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Where are you seeing that? Searching the article isn’t showing that text.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 8 months ago
Sign held by a “protester” in the picture
StarkWolf@kbin.social 8 months ago
Its one of the signs in the picture.
kofe@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I follow mainly therapists and pet behaviorists on TikTok so my take is the teaching thrives through regular user engagement. I can imagine a teacher letting students know they have a page and getting their start that way, too. It has its risks but it’s really helped supplement my education.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
American phones were geolocated and TikTok users were locked out of the platform until they called their members of Congress.
Holy shit. Is that true?
le_saucisson_masquay@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
When contacted about those allegations by the BBC, TikTok provided the statement: “With regards to users being locked out of the app until they called, that is false. All users had two methods for dismissing the notifications.”
Probably the usual hidden grey button “dismiss” over greyish background, just as Google, Microsoft and some other do.
mochisuki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If it were true yeah. In reality they are just shitting themselves because people on TikTok are broadcasting the genocide funded by US tax dollars and literally using American made bombs
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
HUH?
marx2k@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Question…
I don’t use tiktok. I have a Twitter account. Why is tiktok bad while a privately owned social media platform (twitter) that’s partially financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar not bad?
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Twitter / X gets railed on nonstop. Where are you getting the idea that anyone thinks it’s not “bad”?!
marx2k@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Link me to where congress is forwarding a bill to van twitter
lightnegative@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I mean, the US government isn’t unfairly singling it out for one…
Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 8 months ago
To me, that’s the only complaint I have about this, that they’re singling out Tiktok.
But, im not against it because the US has always singled out “the biggest guy” to set a precedent, which then causes all tbe smaller social media platforms to get their shit together. From Microsoft, to Google, to Facebook.
Nima@leminal.space 8 months ago
it’s not. all social media has the same risks but tiktok is obviously the worst because it’s Chinese.
I guess a video platform with content identical to youtube is bad if it’s Chinese.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Well, it is slightly different. The reason TikTok poses a different type of problem with people’s addiction is the tailoring of the content.
All social media uses a basic port for people to come on and find others, but mainly create their own space. And even that was addictive and harmful to mental health. But it also gave people a route to alter their interactions with the app.
TikTok, on the other hand, tailors everything that happens when you open the app. You don’t get to follow people, change the flavor of content you’re seeing. You open the app, and the algorithm is all that dictates what you’re scrolling through.
I don’t know where I stand on this. I think all social media should die out. It’s killing discourse, it’s creating hate, it’s misinforming people like never before. It’s radicalizing people and generally making everyone stupider and less able to conceive of, let alone discuss nuance. And without nuance, we are truly fucking doomed. It’s far too easy to manipulate people with regular social media, and TikTok has turned all of those problems into an art form. It’s literally like a perfect little brainwashing machine. I’ve seen people use it on the train. They’re like…zombies.
On the other, it’s shocking to me to see a representative claim that having their constituents…call their offices and, yknow, participate in the process is portrayed as being “weapon used against America.”
It’s like a rock and a hard place. Firstly, TikTok is poisoning the minds of people. It’s like social media on steroids, and social media was already having a profoundly negative effect. On the other, it’s always dicey when taking things away from people “for the good of America.” Like…where was this attitude when instagram and Facebook were weaponized against the American people? Like, didn’t they prove it was used to sway elections here and in the UK? Why the uneven hand? Because they like demonizing foreigners and they protect white rich people weaponizing their wealth.
So yeah, maybe it’s the right move, but in context, it’s so blatantly favoritism shown to the evil fuckers causing harm for their own ends.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Tik tok spies much more
I forgot the link but I recall in android it shows it can have a shit ton of permissions
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Because China has a long and proven track record of using social media to harm democratic processes.
For example - they just used social media to flood the US government with complaints by people who don’t even understand what they’re complaining about.
isles@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Later Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that the balloon not only did not transmit data back to China – it never collected any.
“We’re aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it was our – and it has been our – assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States,” Ryder said
Maggoty@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s because the next couple balloons were launched by schools in the US and Canada. There was more than one balloon.
marx2k@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Will it, though?
Traister101@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Twitter is also bad
linearchaos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I personally don’t really mind TikTok. But the algorithm is a bit too addictive. The short form 30 second content consumption format is slowly eroding our attention span.
SmilingSolaris@lemmy.world 8 months ago
But that’s not the cause for a ban here.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 8 months ago
my
ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ
thrives on
♪ TikTokMarin_Rider@aussie.zone 8 months ago
that is the most hilarious unorganic protest I think I’ve seen. I hope they at least got paid well
mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They literally had preprinted signs to hand out. Fucking epitome of laziness.
mlg@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not to be that guy but is there even any vertical video social media that currently provides what TikTok does as an exact competitor?
Youtube shorts is so horrendous I have it blocked via revanced.
This seems more like an excuse to get rid of competition than spyware allegations. It’s not like CISA has some big report on TikTok software dump. Everything they do is mirrored by Facebook down to the COPPA violations that congress doesn’t seem to care Zuck is abusing.
Kolrami@lemmy.world 8 months ago
In what ways is YouTube shorts different from tiktok?
GeneralVincent@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There is a huge lack of quality content compared to tiktok. And it’s algorithm is horrendous.
Despite spending months trying to get YouTube to NOT show me far right, conservative, police loving, religious, or bigoted content, I still see it every once in a while. I’ve reported content, downvoted, selected ‘I’m not interested’ and nothing works.
There was a video from a lawyer about a black woman telling her child it’s ok to take the entire Halloween candy bowl and if legally that’s stealing.
Almost every other comment was some form of “well what do you expect from those people” or “it’s always the one you expect the most” or just straight up slurs. So many racist ‘jokes’ and I spent an hour just reporting comments.
Another video of a person driving through protestors blocking the road. Controversial and frustrating, I understand. But almost every comment was “the protestors deserve it” or “I’d drive through them too” and some real sociopathic shit.
And almost all the ads are horrendous. Literally Joe Rogan brain supplements, trashy weight loss, sketchy ai read ‘science’ on what doctors don’t want to to know. I would rather hear about Raid Shadow Legends.
I’ve found a couple gems in the mix, actual content creators that are funny or interesting. But almost all of them are also on TikTok too so there’s no reason to torture myself scrolling through a post apocalyptic wasteland. And there are so many quality creators on TikTok that aren’t on YouTube.
I believe a big part of it is (from what I’ve heard) TikTok has the best creator fund for paying the people who make videos. So without an outright ban, there’s no reason for them to switch. Really, this would be an absolutely huge win for YouTube/Google. And as much as I distrust TikTok, it would be a loss for creators and viewers. At least imo
darthskull@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I can tell you it’s algorithm sucks in comparison for me
littlewonder@lemmy.world 8 months ago
CISA’s director literally just testified to congress about China fucking with shit.
Also, I see Instagram reels as a competitor.
cosmic_slate@dmv.social 8 months ago
The BBC should settle down lol, it didn’t backfire. Some group of aides took 900 calls, probably tallied it up on a few sticky notes, and passed them to a rep who tossed it in a bin.
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it unanimously passed committee (!!!)
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it’s practically certain to pass the house
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it’s practically certain to pass the senate
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it’s guaranteed to be signed by biden
hoot@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Sounds like a backfire to me. Did you read the article? The lobbying was from TikTok to prevent the bill from passing, but it sounds like it just made the reps more committed to passing it.
cosmic_slate@dmv.social 8 months ago
Yeah I completely derped on who this backfired on… That explains my confusion 😂
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clot27@lemm.ee 8 months ago
How dumb you can be protesting for a chinese spyware which is destroying IQ of children, americans.
Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 8 months ago
BLEEP BLOOP you sound programed. The government doesn’t like that there’s a media source that they can’t control.
Eggyhead@kbin.social 8 months ago
I stay largely uninvolved with social media apps outside of this fediverse project, but why is it that bytedance must divest TikTok while meta is free to keep Facebook and Instagram? Aren’t the risks to mental health and security the same?
AMillionMonkeys@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Meta isn’t heavily influenced by a government adversarial to that of the US, so the risks to US security are not the same.
The mental health risk looks pretty similar, though.hark@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I remember two decades ago when the US was screaming about the “great firewall of China” and how they should open up their internet to companies like Google. What made the US change their mind since then?
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 8 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Florida Congressman Neal Dunn’s office told the BBC it has received more than 900 calls from TikTokers, “many of which were vulnerable school-aged children” and some of whose extreme rhetoric had to be flagged for security reasons.
Lawmakers have long accused ByteDance of having links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and have cast the video-sharing app as a potential threat to Americans’ privacy and mental health.
Carlos Gimenez, who sits alongside Mr Dunn on the House committee behind the bill, said he would not be deterred from voting for it “regardless of TikTok’s targeted campaign against members of Congress”.
A spokesperson for New York Democrat Ritchie Torres - a joint leader of the legislation - confirmed that his office too has received “seemingly endless calls” though none were of a threatening nature.
“I am deeply troubled by reports of young people calling Congress, threatening to commit suicide or otherwise harm themselves,” Mr Torres said in a statement to the BBC.
Mr Johnson, a South Dakota Republican, has been outspoken about the national security threat posed by TikTok and is supportive of the proposed bill, “so it’s certainly possible that our office is targeted because of those things”, his spokesperson added.
The original article contains 712 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Skkorm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This shit is annoying, I like Tiktok
umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Can anyone get me up to speed what claims the bill gave to justify TikTok must be either sold or remove from app stores?
7heo@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
AFAIU - but that is a veeeeeery “skimmed” take on the issue, so please check what I wrote before taking it at face value:
There were legitimate concerns about tiktok (hugely popular platform distributed as a “black box”, with very concerning permissions and behaviours, and owned by a foreign actor that demonstrably uses technology in an extremely dystopian way on their own population), so there was quite a lot of public pressure to “do something about it”, and of course politicians jumped on the opportunity to make a (very) broadly fitting legislation on targeting it, coincidentally also having utterly damaging and immensely concerning side-effects for the end users privacy and sovereignty.
Following that, some of the people got (rightly) concerned about the legislation’s effect on their rights and privacy, but the vast majority just saw that their digital crack cocaine was being attacked, and started whining with arguments of varying relevance. At the end of the day, though, a given platform is irrelevant. What is, is the abilities given to the users, and the possibilities that those create. But now, we have a deeply concerning platform, still being immensely popular and uncontrolled; a totally unfitting legislation with incredibly wild “side effects”; and a growing, misguided popular movement to “save tiktok” that will only make a legitimate attempt at mitigating it much harder. Yay.
umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Thanks.
I also had a brief read on the bill you linked and some relavent articles. The bill only cite “national security” yet doesn’t explain what “national security” it causes.
The Bloomberg article states a few reasons, but none satisfied me to justify a ban. For example, reason 1 points out that the algoritm of generating feed is advanced and intoxicating. So they should be punished for a well written and effective algorithms?
Yes, there are and were dumb to harmful contents found on TikTok. However, I think it should be a content moderation issue, not a national security issue. I heard people can find CSAM on Twitter and Discord, harmful and damaging it’s, should it get banned too due to “national security” concerns? It just have a smell of unfair.
Just my two cents.
Disclosure: I don’t use Facebook, Intagram, Twitter, nor TikTok. I do have a Discord account.
QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world 8 months ago
all the US would have to do to completely and entirely nuke an app (or an entire federated platform!) in the US would be to declare any foreign entity (country, state, corporation, person, etc) their “adversary”.
Declaring a foreign country to be adversarial to the U.S. is a huge deal, and I highly doubt they would do so just to ban an app. They would much sooner try to pass an unrelated “special case” legislation, and the success of such a bill would hinge on the persuasiveness of the justification.
I’m fine with the U.S. forcing the sale of TikTok for a different reason, though: internet companies operating in China must be majority-owned and -operated by a Chinese domestic entity, yet the same restriction is not imposed on Chinese investments in U.S. internet companies. Asymmetric markets like this cede a great deal of influence to China, and it just doesn’t sit right with me.
It can often be beneficial to both parties when two countries influence each other, but such influence must be bilateral.
Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 8 months ago
But smoking is ok
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 8 months ago
jaschen@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Be sure to say hi to Pooh bear for me.
execia@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Smoking is great. Tiktok, not so much.
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
cry harder for your spyware, go ahead begin caring about your privacy
Chocrates@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t get why China has anything to do with it. Isn’t it out of Singapore?
GeneralVincent@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The parent company of TikTok is ByteDance which is a company based in China. But TikTok as a company isn’t based in China.
From its Wiki:
Its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is owned by founders and Chinese investors (20%), other global investors (60%), and employees (20%). TikTok Ltd owns four entities that are based respectively in the United States, Australia (which also runs the New Zealand business), United Kingdom (also owns subsidiaries in the European Union), and Singapore (owns operations in Southeast Asia and India).
TikTok says that since 2020, the US based CEO is responsible for making important decisions. However, multiple reports claim that there is little functional separation between TikTok and its Beijing-based executives and software developers. TikTok has been noted for downplaying its connection with ByteDance and for eschewing questions about its relationship with the Chinese government.
Veedem@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The irony of their efforts is that it only proved to show that they could easily begin influencing users which is the key argument being used against them.
I’m still not sure what my feelings on the subject are. I don’t use the app myself, but besides its connection to a company in China and, therefore, the Chinese government, it seems to do the same exact tracking and algorithm manipulating that every other social network does.
birthday_attack@lemm.ee 8 months ago
TikTok has always been on the extreme end of tracking and surveilling its users. For example, research found that the app had the ability to record all keystrokes made by users in the in-app browser (i.e. keylogging). This kind of tracking is way beyond what other social media companies do and borders on malware.That’s one reason why the US, Canada, and others banned the use of TikTok on government devices.
A former TikTok employee also alleges in a sworn statement that TikTok stores its user data in China, that the CCP has full access to this data, and that the CCP used this data to spy on protestors in Hong Kong.
So their tracking goes way beyond what other companies do, and China uses that data for expressly political goals rather than simply selling ads to users.
T156@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Does Facebook not also do that? I remember there being some controversy a few years ago about them logging statuses that were typed out, but ultimately not posted.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You think Meta and Alphabet don’t track your inputs?
Lmao.
SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I definitely see issues with how it targets young people so aggressively and can have a huge negative impact on their mental health. China can essentially use it as a tool to lower the mental health of our youth and spread misinformation on purpose. The fact that the version available in China emphasizes educational content and limits usage per day shows that they know exactly what they are doing with the international versions.
jumjummy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Ties not just to “a company in China”, but directly to the Chinese government.
For better or worse, and how other US platforms operate, Tik Tok is controlled by a hostile (to the US) nation state.
Keep in mind that China also blocks many US company products/platforms for their own reasons, so this is not at all a surprise.