From memory Ross was a pretty annoying character but HOT DAMN does this meme do him dirty, Ross the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram of the Friends group, oof
The funny thing is that the law states “a foreign adversary controlled application” is what is getting banned, e.i. all Chinese apps are being banned. It doesn’t state that it is a TikTok ban. All apps owned by a foreign adversary say all Russian apps or all Iran apps would also be banned under this law. The people that are upset are only looking at one app, it is all of owned not by a US company that are in danger.
Congress is just… an openly fascist body now huh. /gen
Ooh ooh! We should put up a giant firewall next to protect our users from all those adversaries. Call it “Great” after the G in MAGA! That will show those authoritarian fuckers over at CCP! /s
Rip my American friends on Telegram (?)
That’s even worse actually. Putin did exactly that to be the only one who controls the media, and look what it got him
A very long dictatorship and as many boats and bitches as he wants?
For context, this is a Chinese social media platform called “RedNote,” aka Xiaohongshu which literally means “Little Red Book.” Apparently TikTok users have begun to migrate there in protest of the TikTok ban. I’d imagine there are Chinese government astroterfing efforts to boost the campaign (assuming it didn’t start in China).
However, the ban was such a foolish move by Democrats in the first place, that I’d be happy if Xiaoshongshu gains traction. The TikTok ban was one of many out of touch moves by the Democrats that got us a fascist dictatorship. The government will probably use the same law to ban this app too, and for all his support of TikTok now, I doubt Trump will stop that from happening. If populist leftists are smart, they will distance themselves from the ban and the nationalist libs who pushed for it.
As much as TikTok did allow invasive spying and manipulation by China, the billionaires of this country do worse. No need to defend TikTok or China; we just need to refocus the issue as a distraction from the class conflict that centralized social media inherently suppresses. Centralized platforms in China work exactly the same way, so it’s not like Americans being allowed to interact with Chinese citizens is all bad. Maybe Americans will introduce marginal dissent while the government allows us in temporarily (unlikely, but their government isn’t all powerful or anything)
I actually am immediately seeing some significant class consciousness going on over there. Tiktok communities immediately bonded with the Chinese users over their love for Luigi Mangione. Politics discussion is not allowed on the app, but you can see the Chinese users communicate their feelings of the CCP in kind of a wink and nod manner.
Regarding your astroturfing comment… maybe? I think Lemmy forgets that fediverse and Reddit hate Instagram Facebook and Twitter exactly as much as the rest of the English speaking internet does. I would point out that the most astroturf-y thing that’s happened is from the hands of Congress. Americans are pretty much primed for this by the blatant xenophobia showed at those hearings and the phony “concern for user safety” when Meta and X with its demonstrable damages gets a free pass.
As much as TikTok did allow invasive spying and manipulation by China
Except they didn’t, they literally handle US data differently than every other country to keep it on US-based servers and hired a bunch of US spooks. Do you think China wanted Tiktok deranking BLM videos in 2020?
You don’t have to uncritically accept everything the state department tells you.
Like all other social media, they harvest an invasive amount of data. Not more than meta apps or anything, but it is part of standard capitalist practice. They exist, like every mainstream social media platform in China or America, to promote economic interests in a corporate system. It deranked BLM videos because deranking popular dissent is part and parcel with selling to advertisers. China doesn’t even need a backdoor, just the basic understanding of how it’s similar to all their own apps.
China is another capitalist empire under a different flag. They’re neoliberal to the bone, only better at exploiting the system than America in certain ways. They don’t want to undermine the global capitalist order, as they’re quite good at winning in it. They’ve become more nationalistic and hawkish militarily, but that’s a direct result of neoliberalism. It quickly becomes unpopular if there aren’t internal and external scapegoats. The degenerate western influences are scapegoated there, while the degenerate commie immigrants are the enemy here.
All of it serves to protect power. Trump will adopt many strategies from them, because that is what their government exists to do.
harvesting makes it sound like genuine work which i’m not a fan of… - like they are farmers actually harvesting stuff and making use of it (which, sure they make use of it but also eh, i donn wanna put that into the same category as genuine human labour… which i know it is labour, but hmgrrrr idk feels bad.)
Scraping I’d say
Mooching
Smooching :3
rawr can i has ur identifiable personal data? UwU
And they literally did, there were multiple investigations and reports that Chinese admins got access to these US servers
