What will happen to all the USA TikTok creators once the ban on TikTok takes effect?

A Cool Dude@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 129 points –
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There won't be a ban. TikTok will probably end up making a U.S. only version that will satisfy congress.

The data will be sold to a 3rd party broker who will then keep sending it to China, so nothing will change in the end.

I don't think this is correct.

They wont reveal their code and leaders in the US are too uncomfortable. With a conservative court, a ban will be not found unconstitutional.

I'm usually all for fediverse folks shitting on big corporate social media platforms, they definitely all deserve it. But unless I'm mistaken, and I very well might be, TT seems like it gets wayyyy more vitriol than the other big bads. Hopefully that's not for "old man yells at cloud" type reasons.

Anyway, definitely looking forward to Loops when it's ready!!

It gets more hate because it's owned by a Chinese company that more than likely shares data with the CCP. I assume you live in a western nation, so it's basically the result of propaganda. Perhaps it's warranted, perhaps not, but that's why.

It's ironic because everyone flips out that China is vacuuming up information, as if the US government isn't doing the same thing. If you think the US govt snoops that data only to keep you safe, I have a bridge to sell you.

Guess the issue is that us big bads are blocked in china. So while ccp can leverage social media to monitor western countries. Western goverments can not leverage western social media to do the same in china.

Considering our data is being bought and sold by US companies to whoever I don't think this is going to help with that. Tbh, I'm more scared of the US having our data than China. The US can use it to find people seeking abortions, or to track protestors trying to get human rights, or things like that. Not China. I'd rather they make a general law to preserve privacy, but this half-assed measure to preserve US monopolies.

As an Australian I could not care wjaty the CCP knows about me, happy to send them as many butthole or dick pics photos as they want.

What concerns me is the invasiness of my own national government and its asshole FiveEyes conspirators. They can take my liberty. Those bastards I trust not one inch.

As a proud patriot I only want my data sold to American big business interests! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

It gets more hate because it is actually worse. They try to exploit the phone as much as possible even more so than the American social media spyware companies. There was a security researcher redditor post somewhere I forgot what it was, but they basically went over how much more shit tik tok was able to harvest.

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I don't know why everyone stopped talking about how TT it's spyware, security researchers were out of their mind few years ago

I'm with you, it's kind of annoying to see just how much people seethe over a platform. It looks exactly like what redditors did with IG, or TT, or emojis. I understand people's frustrations with TT, but as someone who's made content for both TT and YT shorts, engagement for small guys absolutely sucks on shorts and when TT is banned, there's basically no real alternative. Not only that, but I'm also very concerned about the precedent that's set by effectively censoring parts of the internet for Americans.

That being said I am also super pumped for Loops, I hope there's more updates soon because I've been keeping an eye on that for a while!

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The same as what happened when vine shut down.

Take their follows as best as they can to another platform. Continue on.

Other platforms exist. I'm sure they'll be fine.

I was under the impression that the TT creator fund was very minimal anyway. Or at least it was gutted recently and used to be somewhat okay.

A lot of people exclusively use TT for business, via the TT store, which isn't implemented in other platforms (many of which users don't trust). They'll have a rough go of it if they don't diversify.

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I thought they mostly made money through sponsorships rather than direct payments.

They often do. Merchandise too, if they are big.

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1000000378

Nobody in Lemmy cares until they come for Lemmy I guess

Um, actually that's one perk of federation. It's much harder to take down networks that are run on dozens or hundreds of servers across the globe... In other words, we already solved this problem, at least in large part.

If you base your livelihood on a platform owned by a private company, you're not really justified if you complain about it being changed or blocked.

Lemmy users aren't making money from it, so your argument is irrelevant.

Probably move on to YouTube Shorts or Instagram reels. I don't have Instagram but the YT Shorts are basically just TikTok crossposts anyway.

Ideally Pixelfed would win but that's very hopeful, a lot of the creators are expecting to be paid.

There's too much money to be made with the format for it to die yet.

YT Shorts are basically just TikTok crossposts anyway

Hey that's not true! Some of them a small clips from longer main videos.

And in a fucked up vertical crop, for some reason!

Probably move on to YouTube Shorts or Instagram reels.

Likely YouTube. While neither are great, between Google and Meta, Google's got the better reputation. YouTube also has a larger audience, because it includes a ton of users who wouldn't fall under traditional social media usage. Reels might be used as a periphery platform to drive more people to their main channel on YouTube.

Any TikTok creator who moves to Instagram full-time is either shooting themselves in the foot, or got a good contract from Meta.

I do like the YouTube integration. A good chunk of them have a link to a main long form video which is nice when you don't want to watch a video in 50 parts. You can scroll and be like, that's a cool project let me watch the full 30 mins video.

Are YouTube shorts still 1 minute maximum? Until that changes, I don't think they'll be a viable replacement since content longer than a minute seems to be the sweet spot for a sizeable amount of Tiktok's user base. Especially when it comes to informative or political content.

Switch to ig reels or yt shorts

Probably become nordVPN subscribers.

I was going to ask this... doesn't vpn work? Is VPN being bamed too?

I don’t know the specifics behind it, but even if VPN does work, or accessing TT through a web app instead of an app, that’s still 1-2 hurdles for the average user to jump through for their fix.

Some people will just not bother and then peace out to instagram reels or YT shorts or just drop off that kind of social media.

It fully depends on how many users are “savvy” enough to navigate those hurdles and how badly they want to navigate those hurdles.

In my experience when you’re working with a dedicated user base and you make a significant change, you can expect to lose around half your audience. Barriers to entry are probably going to increase that number, but obviously this is anecdotal evidence for future events.

Better question: Will the world rejoice in having a social media network without Americans?

It’s already banned in Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Taiwan, Denmark, European Union, France, India, Indonesia, Netherlands, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Somalia, and United Kingdom.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/these-countries-have-already-banned-tiktok

A lot of these are partial bans. Canada for example only bans it for government issued phones which makes sense, there shouldn't be any apps let alone social media apps on those devices.

Same with Australia. Seems a bit disingenuous to say it's banned, it's a government worker policy.

And it’s also only banned on work devices. There’s no ban on government employees having TikTok on their personal phones, although I personally don’t.

That's very inaccurate information.

It's basically only the government officials who can't have the app installed on their phones, for security reasons.

That's it.

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They’ll just move on to the next available platform.

Same thing that happened to the Chinese creators on Youtube despite it being banned in China, I presume.

Think of all the Russian jobs spreading misinformation on Tik Tok that will be lost!

I imagine all the clocks in their houses will just stop. Stop tick. Stop tock.

Albeit I don't know what the duck TikTok is. Just guessing.

In case you're serious, a video-centric social media. It focuses on short vertical videos. Naturally, they're generally too short to have much useful information, so it's mostly dumb addictive content, or straight up misinformation. It's meant to feel like you're not wasting time while you definitely are. "I am not spending 15 minutes to watch a normal video, I just watched a few (maybe 50) short (around 1 minute) videos."

It's like YouTube shorts.

I don't know why Amazon hasn't bought TikTok yet.

Lots of data, access to the Chinese market, a social media app under their wing, and an aligned work culture. Alongside the gains for ads, moving their shit to AWS, and retail gains, it seems like a better idea than throwing money into the AI fire.

Because its not for sale

Wouldn't be surprised if there was an exceptionally well funded US startup that makes a debut before TikTok is blocked if they don't sell. TikTok has to weigh the possibility that they can't compete if they don't exist.

I doubt it. USA is just one one country, although large. Tik Tok will do fine without it.

Everything is for sale when you are a $1T+ company. That's why Amazon has the likes of Blink, Ring, Alexa, Anthropic, etc.

Not when there are national politics involved

That's...exactly why you would get involved?

TikTok might lose out on revenue. Why not sell your US arm for lots of money?

This is literally one of the most widely talked-about options regarding the ban of TikTok...

They refused to entertain offers. 1T dollars seems mighty, but TikTok is a multi-year if not multi-decade data collection hub. That data is on the youth of America and their trajectories.

That’s priceless to the power hungry. It’s not just money, it’s control.

That’s priceless to the power hungry. It’s not just money, it’s control.

that's why their banning it; they can't control it in the way they want

They'll live happily ever after in their TikTok houses.

Government censorship will cause TikTok's services in the US to shut down, which will result in most users moving to another social media platform.

I think most people already use multiple platforms, so the only difference will be the time they put into their new main social media.

Nothing. The law is unconstitutional.

How is the law unconstitutional?

I could try to summarize it, but if you just do a web search for EFF and TikTok, you will come across a good explanation.

Of course we don't know how the courts will rule. My belief is that the odds are in favor of TikTok and of TikTok users, but we'll have to wait and find out.

I think the argument would be that if money is freedom of speech then so should surveillance capitalism

Restrict first amendment rights.

The right for a business to operate is not protected by the first amendment, though.

I could use that argument to stop the government from closing/dismantling any physical space because I might use their walls to express my first amendment rights. But the argument just doesn't hold up.

It's not the right of the business, it's the right of US citizens to consume media and information from any source they please. The Govt has no right to say "You can't read that newspaper" or "You can't listen to that speaker", so they have no right to say "You can't get information through this app". The first amendment isn't just about the right to speak, it's also about the right to listen and research especially the stuff the government doesn't want you to know about.

1A protects us against censorship, and this law is precisely that. If I have TikTok and I use it to communicate, the government is censoring my speech by taking it down. There is a lot of case law on when the government can legally censor speech, and I'm not going to repeat it here, but the government's lawyers have a massive hill to climb on this one. Maybe they can succeed, maybe not.

There's other precedent about "making a specific business illegal". Essentially, legislatures can make conduct illegal, but courts don't like it when they make businesses illegal, because it's a violation of due process. But this is complicated and detail-specific.

Anyway, there's a lot of great information online about these two legal arguments. I encourage you to look it up.

But again, you can make that argument about any platform or medium where speech can be posted or displayed. If the department of public health condemns a local movie theater where I host indie movie screenings, that is not a violation of my first amendment rights because they are not prohibiting my ability to make or share content, they are simply removing the space it is currently shared. If that comes out to the same effect for some people who are all-in on TikTok to the exclusion of any other short-form video sharing service, sure, maybe there are grievances. But that still ends up being a self-imposition made by the individual at the end of the day.

Not to mention, the US government is not trying to close down TikTok. They are prohibiting the owners of TikTok from doing business in the US. The company itself would be the one to make the decision to close the service rather than sell it off, so unless the fed is going to force a private business to keep itself open to placate the masses, it's a decision made by a private company outside of any constitutional law.

Exactly. All censorship could be a violation of 1A. The bar is high on this one. The government has to jump through difficult hoops to legally suppress most speech. The courts have long since ruled against the “but they have other channels” argument that you propose.

As for the latter point, again you miss the legal argument. The government is targeting a company, and not conduct. That could easily be a Due Process violation.

Of course we don’t know. The courts will rule. But what you wrote ignores basic legal precedent.