Americans are joining the Chinese social media app en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.
- American users have flocked to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu in defiance of security warnings.
- Chinese and American users have engaged in surprisingly friendly conversations about each other’s lives.
- The influx of American users could burden Xiaohongshu’s censorship mechanism, experts say.
Just proving US government right tbh.
So, US said: “TikTok is too powerful and has too much influence” and then people continue to be influenced. I kid you not, most trending rednote tiktoks right now are about price comparison between China and US with topics like: “veggies are like 2$ in China when they are 6$ in the US” with absolutely zero awareness of how economies work:
- median hourly salary in the US: 27 USD
- median hourly salary in China: 5 USD
Chinese vegetables are more expensive.
You could attribute this to people just being financially stupid but I think there’s definitely some truth from US government pov that China has a lot of propaganda power over US citizens and I say this as non-american myself as it’s quite apparent as a 3rd party observer.
Personally I still think low level laws that protect privacy of all americans is the way to go but America will never sacrifice free market money like that.
The only video like that ive seen was showing how cheap a day of vacation in china would be.
The app is obvi not a bastion of unbiased free speech. This is reactionary and even if tiktok were banned on the 19th, people would be put off by using an app where you cant understand 80% of the comments and some of the more subtle content. Its a protest.
Man, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts must be really shit if the TikTokers didn’t even consider them for a second lmao
YouTube Shorts are the absolute evil
If you carefully cultivate your subscriptions and watching habits it’s not bad. I get mostly stuff I’m subscribed to, a movie cut into thirty second chunks (right now it’s Braveheart), tv clips with one of three pieces of music overlaid, a mix of benign recommendations that are mostly meh but sometimes funny, and thirst traps. So… it’s not good but I do sometimea see something worth following.
It used to be worse, I think abandoning guntubers was the right call. I used to have Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson pushed at me.
They were just reposted tiktoks, make it make sense.
IG reels are utter garbage for the most part but Youtube Short would actually be good if Youtube had the balls to separate it from Youtube itself as it’s always limited in that regard.
Instagram has a shit algorithm, yt shorts are generally just worse forms of yt or reposts from ticktok/insta. People are willing to tolerate a lot of data selling already, so why should they care that it’s being shared with the CCP?
Not really surprised. Most Tik Tok users are braindead.
as a tiktok user — can confirm.
I’m amazed at all the CCP dick sucking here. It’s like I stumbled into r/Sino
操你中國政府
Yea, I made a post to my people to come to the fediverse. While we have capitalist and communist forums, ultimately the fediverse sits in the anarchist camp.
I like it because I’m suspicious of tankies and hate musk fucks. A nice 3rd option.
Anarchy, because have you met people? Those fuckers can’t be trusted with power
Can’t trust people. People listen to Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. Can’t trust em.
This might have an interesting side effect. Western voices and opinions being shared enmasse with Chinese youths on platforms they’re comfortable with. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese government responds to this
I’m on the app and, honestly, I have been seeing the exact opposite. Loads of American users are seeing, for the first time, that folks in the PRC don’t have it so bad.
Consistent problem with fascists who want you to hate outsiders. When those barriers fall, it turns out that most of the “enemy” are just people who want to live their lives.
This goes both directions.
But the Chinese people were never the enemy. The only ones who push that narrative are people who want to sow division and hatred.
It’s the CCP and US government that are at odds with one another. The issue with TikTok is the CCP has control and influence over content served to Western uses.
This. There is a reason why China has been censoring the internet so much, and why Russia and to a lesser degree Türkiye started doing it as well. And why two of the three most powerful people in the US apart from Trump control like 2/3 of all social media.
Yeah, that’s my point.
Ah, ok. I thought you were saying the other thing.
It will be interesting to see how the
ChineseUS government responds to thisThat’s easy. Some more propaganda about hating the everyday Chinese person (who we have far more in common with) and banning the app.
Everything that comes from this should be interesting.
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That about sums it up [deleted]
They will probably ban the app or make in unavailable in other countries. Typical censorship stuff
So basically taking a page from the US playbook?
That backfired real good, didn’t it?
Good for them. People should be free to live their lives.
Tick tock is cancer though, yt shorts as well
I don’t like it either, but these fuckers clearly do, so at least they’re doing it in a way that isn’t basically a bunch of governments spoon feeding what they want Americans to think to them
The hexies are so excited about this too. They’ve got a thread up (erroneously) hoping that Americans will now stop believing that Chinese people are bad, because they can’t face the truth that Americans (who aren’t magats) only think the Chinese government is an authoritarian shit show and have no problem with regular Chinese citizens.
Solidarity amongst the working class, no matter what imaginary made up boundaries divide us.
Exactly. When workers start talking to each other across borders (national and otherwise) and as equals that’s like one of the crucial steps for positive change. No worker in China ever denied me medicine or raised my rent.
Xenophobia and racism exist in America outside of the trump ultras. Hell, outside of the republican party even
Thank you for vigorously following Hexbear to spread misinformation about it on .world. Defederating really helped clean up the narrative.
It’s really cool. The people are super nice and welcoming. The cities are incredible. Their cost of living is leaps and bounds better than ours. Life is affordable there.
They just got it better. The cold war propaganda we’ve been spoonfed from birth was all lies.
We are the bad place.
Their cost of living is leaps and bounds better than ours.
Crazy how effective this propaganda is. Median Chinese salary is 5 USD/hour. Now 5x every chinese price you see to get really cost and revisit your comment.
Yeah, sure. Just because one team is bad doesn’t mean the other is good. There is a lot of poverty, exploitation and general shit happening “there”.
They’ve eliminated extreme poverty and are on track to eliminate poverty. Given even the poorest citizens don’t worry about rent or medical bills or food costs, their poverty looks incredibly different to that in the US.
Yeah they eliminated poverty the same way they defeated COVID… By just saying they did and people like yourself slurp it up without a second of critical thought.
No, you people choose to be ignorant and believe the US government, instead of visiting China yourself or talking to someone in China or doing any research.
Even the CIA, by the way, has stated China has eliminated extreme poverty in the world Factbook.
I get it, a lot of rich white people paid for you to be the way you are; it’s still your fault to remain ignorant.
How do you know?
I thought the difference in humor would take a while to bridge but it’s very familiar. Day in the life of an american type videos with road rage, burgers, shitcoins, podcasts and pancakes
This is a fine example of how the american government doesn’t care about the interests of americans.
The government only exists to serve the wealthiest among us. Some of those wealthy people are upset that Chinese aristocrats are getting all that money.
This trade war only exists because rich americans want more money for themselves. It has nothing to do with national security and you’re a useful idiot if you think otherwise.
You don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few. And China has increasingly been prosecuting their wealthy.
Which is what they really don’t want us learning to do.
you don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few.
This is false attribution.
There’s no way to verify how other political system would have worked for China. Maybe it would have worked even better? Taiwan for one is richer, stronger and happier than China per capita so does that mean dictatoriship -> democracy is a better system? Do you see the flaw in this attribution logic now? So, unless you have a time machine…Actually it’s very easy to know. By design, capitalism concentrates most of the reward among a small number of privileged few.
And people with good sense judge a country by how well it’s working people are doing- not by how much more wealth a few people have been able to hoard.
You do it by exploiting the billions outside your borders from countries even more poor like mine where they sell their garbage low quality products that cant be repaired or recycled, from shitty earphones to bikes that start breaking down in a year, taking advantage of poor people who cant afford to buy anything of better quality. China isnt better than us when it comes to exploitation and inequality.
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
They are spreading their wealth to those in need. Not exploiting. They value mutually beneficial relationships.
Chinese manufacturers build according to budget. They are perfectly capable of making high quality products, and do. The problem is a lot of companies (looking at you, Walmart) demand their Chinese manufacturers build products for a pittance – the manufacturers won’t say no, but they’ll find a profit for themselves by using lower cost materials. (ETA: also less quality control and cheaper labor)
Ask yourself – if you were a woodworker and someone offered you $250 to build a small stand out of wenge, you’ll probably do a good job of it. If someone offered you $30 to build the same stand, and you really needed that $30, you’d make it with pine and just paint or stain it to look like wenge. Chinese manufacturers are no different.
Bingo.
Bro, there’s ALOT of Chinese capitalists.
Humans are humans.
What do you think “capitalist” means?
I don’t think you know, because by definition there cannot be “alot.” That’s the whole point of capitalism- to concentrate the means of production into the hands of a very few.
Sure buddy, keep that head up your ass.
LoL. You really are just parroting propaganda, without any clue what the words you’re saying actually mean.
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
Chinese brands owned by Chinese capitalists operating with consent from the chinese state.
spreading their wealth to those in need
Using planned obsolescence and taking advantage of poor consumer and environmental protection laws to sell garbage to people trapped in a cycle of poverty isn’t exploitation? Also China ‘invested’ billions here too and we didnt get any hospitals. We got china flooding our markets with its shitty goods and chinese ‘businessmen’ running scam centers.
They value mutually beneficial relationships
they do have a mutually beneficial relationship with our dictators.
I love that capitalists attacking communists always end up accidentally attacking capitalism. Classic.
China is a capitalist country with aspects of socialism. it’s not really communist anymore.
No one here is shitting on communists, were shitting on you for a thinking the Chinese are any different than us.
China is a capitalist shithole but for some reason its biggest defenders are always self proclaimed western communists.
edit: we also have a few militant communists groups that like to blow up chinese nationals working for their govt every now and then.
What exactly do you think “capitalist” means? Because it sounds like you think any participation in markets is capitalism.
What do you think “capitalist” means? It sounds like you think it’s just market participation.
Capitalists use the same exact argument for why outsourcing labor to the poorest countries is actually a good thing. For real, I’ve argued so many right wingers saying “searching for the cheapest labor actually helps the worlds economy because you’re lifting those poor people of _____ out of poverty! It doesn’t matter that it’s only pennies/day, because to them, that’s a lot of money!”
Pretty goddamn gross behavior.
Outsourcing is extracting wealth from another nation. How can you possibly compare that to lifting ones own citizens out of poverty?
You can’t untangle the outsourcing of manufacturing to China from that.
Exchange isn’t extraction. If you’re buying raw materials from Africa, yes. If you’re buying finished goods from China, no.
This is precisely why the US had a sudden about face about China. They were hoping their entryism with capitalist exchange would result in the fall of the communist party, who number one priority is preventing the plundering of resources through unequal exchange.
I wasn’t making a 1:1 comparison. I was saying that “but look how many people have been lifted out of poverty!” argument is a capitalist argument, because it completely ignores the reality of the situation. Have people been lifted out of poverty by outsourcing? Of course. But that doesn’t negate the core problem.
As the other person mentioned, outsourcing manufacturing TO china is largely responsible for the manufacturing boon there. And then rich Chinese capitalists (though they use the cover of not being called capitalists) became rich middlemen between “western” businesses and the cheap Chinese labor. So outsourcing has absolutely contributed to it. You and the American capitalists are looking at the same thing, one is crediting American executive innovation, the other is crediting the CCP.
Yeah you do it with slave labor, genocide, mass aborting baby girls, and IP theft.
Did you lift this straight out of a State Dept press release?
Why would I need to, these things have been known for decades?
Don’t get me wrong, capitalists (ex apple) love to collude, but it doesn’t make china some magical perfect land.
Yes, the intelligence orgs have been spreading lies for decades.
China isn’t perfect, but most of the scandal news we hear about it is fabricated by our government. Even our own government has now admitted they made up the Uyghur genocide claims.
Huh. Care to link the last one?
What they were actually trying to combat was China preventing the US from continuing to radicalize and use the Uyghurs as a front for regime change operations.
It has everything to do with national security, they just don’t consider common people as part of their nation same as slaves weren’t.
Yeah, national security for the rich, they don’t want us plebes getting any ideas about what real justice looks like.
I don’t believe it.
You should, my wife is one of these folks and she’s having a very eye opening time.
About what? Didn’t expect everything to be in Chinese?
Surprised by how much is in English, but also surprised that China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media. It’s middle class people in both countries talking about real things in a completely new way.
One thing that surprised her, everything in China isn’t just cheap crap. It’s american companies that cut corners by ordering crap and shilling it to us and then blaming China for it being cheap. China makes quality products, but the US will never see them, and so we live with the perception that everything from China is crap, but only what we don’t tariff to death makes it through. It’s cool to see her perceptions of the world change.
I’m not some tankie, and I don’t give a shit about tik tok, but there’s a massive cultural exchange happening that’s too huge to filter off the rip, and I feel like folks are realizing there’s a lot more that unites us than divides us. Our billionaires don’t like their billionaires and so we beef? Nah, not my fight
China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media
China has been really showing off hard in the past few years, especially on tiktok. Chinese cars are winning and every single person on Tiktok knows about Chongqing. So I don’t think this is as apt as it used to be.
I’d love more cultural exchange with China but it’s really up to Chinese themselves. Literally all west media and apps are blocked in China. So should we converge on a clear propaganda app which is litterally named after the little red book of communist revolution as our “honest cultural exchange” source? Does anyone seriously think that’s a good idea?
We have Lemmy, Mastodon, the whole Fediverse, bluesky, Telegram, Nostr — the free options exist already, it’s up to Chinese to get some balls to meet us midway.
Americans figuring out that Chinese people are also just people like them is the most hilarious and american thing I read in a while.
I agree, but as an American it also doesn’t surprise me at all. Dehumanizing others is one of the top tactics to make awful conservative policies more palatable.
Considering the distance between LA and NY is roughly the same as Turkiye and Portugal, we do tend to get a little single-minded in the experiences of others. But learning more about the world is never a bad thing. America is cooked
yap dollar
Xiao hong shuuuuuuu
Is it that surprising that your average person in another country is easy to get on with? I’ve been to a fair few different countries and the everyday people you interact with are lovely (except France).
It’s the fucking politicians you’ve got to look out for, and not just the foreign ones.
Lmao “except France”
I’m English, so I’m sure the feeling’s mutual. ;-)
Well I mean obviously.
Are they really that unwelcoming? I’ve heard a bunch about this, fortunately never got to experience it first hand.
Here’s the thing - the french motto is Freedom, Equality, Fraternity
They’re massively into the equality thing. Whether someone’s a waiter, a cleaner, a doctor or a judge, you must treat them with the same amount of respect
The only types of people that I’ve ever seen saying that the french are rude are the types that think cleaners are beneath them, and that everyone speaks English if you say it loud enough
This is kinda of my experience. The type of people that I see getting mistreated are the “I am le touriste, entertain me!” kind.
Americans especially tend to fall into this category a lot, they tend to be loud, brash and self centered, especially towards staff.
Look here you pot of lard, you bought a 2€ croissant, not my fucking soul. You want something, ask nicely and I will gladly help you. Act like you own me, I’m gonna piss on your food.
Admittedly the Brits are just as bad, and think the same way
This is one of the two factors for the bad reputation of France from US, the other one is the cultural shock that French people prefer genuine conversation and hate small talk, they’d find random american’s conversation superficial and faked.
I am neighboring France and we have kinda similar culture, though people here tend to dislike some French people for their lack of patience or accountability and their pride, though it’s a stereotype, as always.
I have only ever had great experiences visiting france, but then again I avoided Paris for the most part
I spent one day in Paris, let me give you the highlights…
- We arrived, left the train station, and were immediately accosted by like 5 people trying to sell us friendship bracelets, or little string bracelets
- We left the area and walked to a local Metro station to get across the city, we wanted to check something, so we went to the nearby information section, where the lady refused to speak any English, despite the signage indicating that English was spoken there
- We figured it out on our own and entered the station, which smelled exactly and completely of piss
- We got off the train and walked along the river for about 10 seconds before being accosted by a conman pretending we’d just dropped some jewelry. Apparently it’s a common con. We ignored him and moved on.
- We had an ok time for the rest of the day trip, until we got back to the original train station, where we sat in a café beside a family who decided to change their kid’s diaper at their table, and then threw the used one to the nearest bin like they were playing cornhole
I’m not in a big rush to go back.
You just described any big city
“I went to Paris, interacted with basically nobody French, hated it and so now I hate the French”
😂
That’s not the only foreign city I’ve ever been to. Paris was the worst one I can think of, or at least top 3.
I’d prefer to go back to any of these:
- Cluj
- Riga
- Prague
- Emden
- Frankfurt
- Brisbane
- Singapore
Paris goes on a list with Jakarta and that’s about it.
It’s funny that I’ve never had bad experiences with the French and most of my visits to France were to Paris.
Then again I do speak French and try and take advantage of being over there to exercise my language knowledge in it as much as I can.
In my experience people almost everywhere (well, not in English-speaking countries, probably because English is the present day lingua franca so it’s kinda expected that you can speak it) generally appreciate you trying to speak their language even if you’re pretty bad at it and just trying to learn the local “good day”, " goodbye" and “thank you” will get you a lot of goodwill.
Except in the Netherlands, where your risk a response of “I’m not your Dutch teacher, we will speak English”. (Actually happened to a former colleague of mine.)
I’ve lived in The Netherlands and they’re “complicated” if you’re used to, for example, English-style of politeness or even Mediterranean-style exuberance.
They tend to be very direct, objective-oriented and seemingly cold/closed towards strangers (they open up more with friends and family), so for example if you’re in a work environment and one person’s trying to do things in broken Dutch is hindering the actual accomplishment of the work objectives (for example, in a work meeting), that will probably be pointed out to them, though I’ve never seen it done so rudelly.
They also tend to be pretty proud of their English-language speaking abilities and when you’re just learning Dutch and try to speak to them in it, often switch to English when they spot (from the accent) that somebody comes from an English-speaking country (so for me, who am Portuguese, they didn’t tend to do it and I could just silently ignore it when they did because they couldn’t be sure I actually knew English, but I had friends and colleagues over there from Britain, US and Australia who constantly got that and for whom it was a lot harder to learn the local language), though I don’t think that applies in your example.
It bet that happenned in a professional environment or some kind of professional situation.
That said, that specific telling off would be considered rude even in Dutch terms: if a person’s attempts at using Dutch are hindering doing the work, one is supposed to tell them that as the reason to switch to English (say, “other people are waiting behind you in the queue” or “we don’t have time to do this meeting in Dutch”, though one will probably not get a “I’m sorry but” or “I’m afraid that” or other such decorations to soften the blow which you would get in most other countries. In that quote of yours the other person making it about themselves “I’m not your Dutch teacher” and just bossing the other person “we will”(!), would be considered rude even by Dutch standards IMHO.
Personally (and note that I lived over 8 years in the Netherlands and do speak the language), had somebody told me off like that my reaction would probably be to not give a shit and carry on speaking Dutch since that person made it about themselves and I’m just as entitled to do it the way I see fit as they are to do it their way and I very much suspect (can’t be totally sure) this reaction comes from that part of me that are the elements of the Dutch mindset I’ve taken in from having lived there so long (certainly the whole “I’m just as entitled to my preferences as you to yours” feels very Dutch).
During the period when I was starting to learn Dutch on various occasions the other person switched to English (probably because my Dutch was really bad or I was having trouble following them) and I just kept on speaking Dutch, and I think I was once or twice told off for trying to say something complex with my really broken Dutch whilst buying something and I was holding the queue, but they simply pointed out I was holding the queue.
By France, do you mean Paris? They’re the worst.
Lyon ain’t much better.
And guess who’s in Paris? People from all over France (and the rest of the world) who came there to work.
Yeah, Paris specifically.
Dumbest shit ever. let me run to the PRC for my entertainment. Like was TikTok really that good? I never used it, other than the time long ago when it was first getting traction and my coworker asked me to get into her 12 yr old daughter’s account (super easy BTW) and see what she was doing on there. surprise! nothing but 30 year old men following her and watching her doing dances. I never touched it since.
what do you expect though the USA is picking groups of people to threaten, the American dream is dead they brag that the economy is doing so good when most peoples lives have gotten worse every second of our lives is being monetized of course the people will look elsewhere
Don’t worry. Once Trump’s back in, the Democrats will suddenly notice we’re in a recession. We’ll start seeing it acknowledged soon.
Dems showed last election they’re not even willing to promise concessions to their voting base, so if you can’t actually do anything to help people afford groceries, how can they use the economy to campaign? Just go “Trump is terrible for the economy! We’re gonna be good for the economy”?
Yep. They really seemed to believe they could gaslight us into thinking the economy is thriving. But you can’t trick people into forgetting that they’re hungry, and food is unaffordable.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Food unaffordable, homeless rate at record highs, a struggling job market, etc. But the Biden team insisted we’ve been doing better than ever.
Did they? I’d love to see a link
He repeated it just this past week.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-says-leaves-economy-stronger-014812694.html
Lulz
Tiktok shows you more of what you engage in and throws some randomness in there so you don’t get stuck in a local minimum. It’s like when YouTube’s algorithm kinda worked and you could see how it’d possibly be better; bytedance actually pulled it off instead of enshittifying.
And it takes time for the algorithm to learn your tastes. If you’re a mouth breather at heart you’re gonna get mouth breather content no matter how much you try and change it. If you’re a perv and linger on thirst traps… You’re going to see more thirst traps.
With your described scenario, that’s not unique to tiktok- that can happen on any platform when the child is unsupervised. It could have been twitch, Roblox, Instagram, Snapchat, it myriad other platforms; the real problem there is inattentive parenting.
I’ve learned about more shitty local government practices from tiktok than any other platform. I’ve been exposed to points of view I’d never otherwise see. Random videos have triggered just as much progress on my mental health as years of therapy. I’ve found people far more articulate than me explaining shit that combats my family’s far right talking points in a way where they actually listen and change their mind, and vice versa.
I’ve also consumed an inordinate amount of white hot memes and mountains of brain rot lol
But yeah. The TT algorithm is a mirror (given time). It reflects your persona back at you with the type of content you see.
So having a coworker break into your child’s account is inattentive parenting?
Tell me you don’t have kids.
No really, please confirm.
I don’t want to see “kids in cages” on the news again.
I have kids. I don’t see how that’s relevant here.
Children shouldn’t have social media accounts in my opinion. Nothing to attack or break into if it doesn’t exist.
A coworker shouldn’t know enough or otherwise have enough access to your child such that they can break into their accounts.
Failing all that, parents need to have frank discussions about the potential dangers of internet fans turning into real life people, and some of the more severe potential consequences.
Even without those three layers of failure, your kids need to know about basic online account security, like using unique strong passwords and two factor authentication.
That all being said- I don’t know the people or the situation. But from your short account of things that’s what I see as wrong with the situation.
In general, the social networks of today are optimized for extracting value and attention from adult brains; an incomplete adolescent brain stands no chance.
Kids can still socialize electronically just fine in group chats with the advent of RCS implementation on both major phone platforms.
Not sure what kids in cages have to do with anything or why they were mentioned.
Kids in cages is mentioned because penetrating your kids’ social media account is a break of trust and privacy, which is a very bad form of parenting, a good parent would have trust relationship and could ask the child to show the weird behavior on their phone
I failed to see the randomness then because it’s way too similar content way too quickly
It does get stuck in a rut sometimes. If you kill the app and come back to it lsome time ater, that signals that they need to shake things up so your “randomness factor” (my term) gets boosted the next time you start scrolling.
nothing but 30 year old men following her and watching her doing dances.
This App is truly a swamp of shit.
Surprise! Pedophiles are everywhere! Even in the Fediverse!
Though that doesn’t excuses anything, though.
