TikTok faces calls for ban amid claims of anti-Israel ‘indoctrination’

Wanderer@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 164 points –
TikTok faces calls for ban amid claims of anti-Israel ‘indoctrination’
aljazeera.com
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Wild that the answer to young people being exposed to literal genocide and having an opinion about it, isn't to try and do something about the genocide, but to call it indoctrination and try to ban it.

Make it make sense.

They ban it because TikTok won't do western propaganda exclusively. You can't even say in the media that Israel is wrong, even if you use 100% documented sources.

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Well, if you inherit a sum of money and just eat through it, it only lasts for so long.

If you inherit institutions and just expect them to be there, they only last for so long.

Life is violent and there's no end of history.

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I genuinely dislike TikTok (might be just old-man-shaking-his-fists-at-the-sky syndrome), but a complete ban on an app like that seems uninformed and quite the overreach. I think banning it on government devices is a good move, and I also think having everyone make informed decisions on who they give their personal information to is paramount (in this case, tin foil hat or no, you’re likely giving it to the CCP), but this seems like a clear case of a bunch of old timers making a pretty uninformed decision based on knee-jerk reactions to public opinion.

I kind of agree.

There should be ways to sign up without the huge over reach of data. Education is also a must.

But then after that the Internet should be free, it shouldn't be controlled by big daddy government just because someone says something they don't like.

This old man is now into TikTok. It's much better than when it was music.ly

Absolutely not saying you're right or wrong at all. But I'm curious, does you're opinion change at all considering that the majority of users on tik tok are under the age of 18?

This just simply isn't true.

Granted, this is some random bullshit website, but they do list their sources, and they claim

"1 in 4 TikTok users are under 20 years old"

https://explodingtopics.com/blog/tiktok-demographics

25% is hugely different than *the majority of users."

Tiktok isn't a kid's app, has never been a kid's app, and while it's popular with kids if you are an adult with normal adult patterns you aren't going to get served minor accounts to follow unless you are actively seeking that or have interests or hobbies with an big younger skewing (such as if you follow the #minecraft hashtag, I would imagine).

You're totally right. I misspoke. I should have said the largest demographic I suppose. I meant that users under the age of like 21 are by far the biggest "piece of the pie" of users.

I'd push back a little that it's not a kids app tho. I think they are targeting teens and young adults as the primary demographic but I could definitely be persuaded out of that. But having worked in a high school for the last 4 years, I can at least say that tik tok is those kids LIFE lol. It is all they think about. Eat sleep and dream tik tok with like YouTube and Instagram in the background.

Also I didn't mean at all that the app was pushing "minor" content or fetishizing young kids or anything in any way. That's my mistake if it came off like that. I more meant to ask if the user was okay with users giving their data away even if they were a teenager as they would obviously be either much less "informed" or just don't care about where their personal data is sent or why.

But I guess it doesn't matter. This is like the tenth time I've asked an honest question just got down voted a ton and not even answered lol I guess the lesson is to just not ask questions idk my bad

Heaven forbid the kids should be against the outright mass murder of unarmed men, women, and (mostly) children, the targeted killing of journalists, doctors, and destruction of all hospitals, the blocking of aid, forced starvation, and targeted killing of people in designated “safe zones”.

Where has their sense of bloodthirsty genocide and outright cruelty gone?

Losing the ability to Censor pro Palestinian content on social media has severely changed the views of our younger Generation.

This is what was on TikTok while Twitter was full with #istandwithisrael: https://www.tiktok.com/@rathbonemakesmusic/video/7289906736847129902

Its clear that this is about the control of "freedom of speech". Ironic that we are now censoring the CCP

Social media are inherently about censorship being a coherent policy and not a personal choice of every single webmaster.

TikTok is something "good" only in this particular case (Palestine).

That's true but it is a sign that the speech we believe is so free is actually not free whatsoever.

When a platform doesn't censor, or censors different things than we want them to censor, they get banned.

Trump tried to ban Tiktok because it was Chinese owned and it got rejected. But now it's getting banned, why?

Is it actually because it is showing bad things Israel has done or has something else happened? I'm genuinely out of the loop and confused.

  • it's not owned and controlled by Americans. This makes American billionaires unhappy, and the liked of Zuckerberg would be very happy for the removal of comepetiton.
  • America has a sinophobia problem, I know a lot of Americans here don't see it, and get mad if you bring it up, but from the outside looking in, it's very obvious.
  • Policy makers in America seem scared of young people being politically motivated, and a lot of that is happening via tiktok. It stopped the red wave, it's now impacting democratic polling, they're losing control.

These points are all absolutely correct, and generally follow a trend of protectionism sweeping across the globe, but there’s also a genuine concern about how Tiktok shapes public POV based on CCP decisions(for example, suppressing content about the excessive Covid lockdown, the Uyghur and Tibetan genocide, and suppression of Hui Muslims, Hong Kong and other minorities in China).

And now it will only be US state department approved propaganda from now on. Losing TikTok isn’t going to be a win I think many people think it will be. It could be, but the policies that will enable it are made with bad intentions in mind so it won’t be.

That content doesn't seem suppressed, I've seen most of those things on TikTok. Some people were actively trying to see if that was true, and while it's hard to know if it's being penalised by the algorithm or not, it seemed fine.

If anything I report stuff all the time and it's just like Facebook and other social media, the reports basically go to /dev/null. Like, legitimate banworthy content like Elon Musk crypto scams and porn, both examples of things to report when you go to the reporting page.

Occupy Wall Street and Opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) genuinely scared the shit out of them.

I had so much hope for the Internet at that time. But since then it's turned to horseshit.

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Trump was right, people just didn't want to admit it.

Right because its chinese owned? What is wrong with that? Or is it only okay when a white western dude owns the company?

It's because the app is controlled by a foreign adversary. If there was a Russian social media app that collected obscene amounts of user data, people would be rightly calling for that to be banned too.

But thats such a dumb reason considering the shit that facebook collects and instagram etc. Over the years it has come out that they collect so much damn data. They even did psychological experiments on teenagers by fucking with their timeline and see if they can change how they feel.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds

They are tracking so much stuff inside peoples phones. They track everything they do and sell it for money.

And don't even get me started on google.

You and congress are all up in arms when china or russia does it but are happy happy joy joy when american government or corporations do it themselves.

A couple of corporations own most of the media/news in america and that is all completely fine. Congress doesn't give a single fuck about any of that.

Its the hypocrisy that pisses me off. No corporations or government should have all this data and manipulate users. But its not a problem at all unless a foreign corporation does it.

And to then ban it in the name of privacy. "Only we can abuse americans! 😠". Its ridiculous.

I agree with a lot of what you said. I think we need a digital bill of rights to protect things like online privacy and personal data.

There's two reasons TikTok is different:

  1. Being controlled by a foreign adversary is not comparable to a corporation trying to make money. They will use the data they collect to weaken American interests and push their own.

  2. As I understand it, the data collected by TikTok is so excessive it makes Facebook look mild.

  1. China isn't an adversary. It's a competitor to America. You aren't at war with China, and both China and America heavily depend on each other and are strong trading partners. This is your propaganda talking.

  2. Lol no, Facebook and Google collect orders of magnitude more data about you, your life, your job, your friends and colleagues, your medical status, everything.

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They should have banned it years ago when the thought of data security came into question. Tik Tok is brain poison, more than regular internet dosage. It's cocomelon for adolescents.

I have never used TikTok and I never will but I still don't think it's the government's job to decide which apps people are allowed to use and which ones not.

As if we were so much more refined back when we were giving each other links to the goatse pic and writing Livejournals.

Americans will silence anyone talking about Israeli war crimes.

Thank God the US doesn't have any social media/propaganda distribution sites of their own to worry about, I can't imagine there being more than just the Chinese owned one to deal with.

Yeah, but money can't control CCP like it controls the narrative here. That's not acceptable... /s