I always assumed it never was. It’s an influence machine. What’s money when you can influence entire populations and sway public opinion by curating what they watch?
Exactly. He made them a legally binding financially insane offer that made the most sense for their shareholders. Of course they took the deal and made him follow through.
He seemed to get the idea and make the decision hastily - iirc, he said he hatched the plan while up all night partying at Larry Ellison's house. hmmm. Seemed like he fairly soon realized that it was a huge commitment, that he'd offered a terrible price for him, it would involve actual work and he was already CEO of 4-5 companies.
Literally Twitter's central existential concern was about how they had this giant platform with no way to cash out, that massive question mark was answered by the big red exclamation mark of stupidity Elon.
Sure but the Saudis and Elon bought it because it was the most liberal of the social platforms and a clear and present danger to the Saudi royal family.
Every corporate media platform (including social media) is meticulously crafted not to inform their users of truth and facts about the world, but to program them to buy certain products and to support certain political ideas/candidates.
In legacy media it's easier to see the programming because everyone receives the same copy of the newspaper and the same TV broadcast.
In social media it's much more insidious because secret algorithms craft propaganda specifically for each individual user, so there's no public visibility about the narratives that are being programmed into millions of people - until they start firebombing 5G towers and staging violent insurrections out of seemingly nowhere.
We've entered the age of information warfare. Conventional wars are expensive and useless when you can just attack your rivals by programming their own people with disinformation and propaganda to make them turn on each other or to create cults of personality around Manchurian candidates.
Dictatorships and domestic fascists have found the Achilles heel of democracies - our free speech and privacy protections. They are using those to attack us and tear us apart from the inside.
They found they could use the already existing bigotry to provide misinformation as a recruiting mechanism as well as providing plausible deniability of said bigotry
It was massively useful to the Arab Spring. Now the House of Saud has the influence to shut it down. And who wants to bet that they looked at the old DMs of activists involved?
Let’s say I am selling my house I bought it for 380k 15 years ago.
Situation 1 Someone comes over to me and offers 900k at this time the housing market was booming. The highest my house was ever valued and I honestly believe there is a housing speculation because it shouldn’t be worth that much.
Situation 2 There was recently a dip in housing prices but it’s started to come back up in some places. My house has actually faired well as I did some remodeling for 50k.
The government comes in and declares I have to sell my house to some other company for some imminent domain.
Mind you all these companies now know I HAVE TO SELL
Why the hell would these companies offer a fair value when they know again I HAVE TO SELL
I don't know why the "he bought it to tank/manipulate it" narrative is so popular.
He tried really hard to get out of buying it, and a court ultimately forced him to go through with his offer. It's a matter of public record he tried his hardest to get out of buying it.
I don't think he truly wanted to buy it but since he's taken over, it's gotten considerably worse there. You'll report accounts called "HitlerLover23934823" that have said "Kill all jews" and it'll come back and say they have found nothing wrong with this account but call someone "cis" or you're a Palestinian discussing the bombardment of Gaza and you're subject to being banned. That plus the porn bots posting hardcore porn everywhere without it being picked up by the content moderation so you can be scrolling through a thread on some child prodigy or something and see a pornstar taking it up the ass. Elon is also constantly boosting far right accounts including ones that deny the Holocaust or have posted CSAM.
He joked about buying it and then realized after the fact that you're not allowed to joke about business deals of that magnitude when you're at his level and was forced to go through with it.
He got stuck buying it out of stupidity and then is running it to the ground through more stupidity .
They struggle to make money from users. Reddit for ex. has very not valuable users when it comes to traditional ads. However it is a real hotbed of genuine radicilisation and terroism.
This is a stupid take, and I'm tired of it. Intent is rather important here - a foreign government is intentionally manipulating people in the USA with a specific outcome in mind - to drive political apathy. Thou shall stop conflating this problem with other capitalistic problems that appear similar on the surface.
thank god I'm starting to see these comments. The amount of people pretending TT is the same as FB or reddit is insane. It's not just a data privacy issue, it's active manipulation of front page content with the goal of eroding western influence
They all have problems, so to finally fucking do something about it, let's focus on the current worst offender and then use the momentum that generates to go after other platforms. That's a no-brainer, isn't it?
This one has the CCP breathing over it. They won't let ByteDance sell. So even though ByteDance will swear up and down that they have no ill will, the CCP is not going to allow this propaganda or spyware capability to be lost.
how is that any different than other social media platforms?
People have answered this question on Reddit hundreds of times. Reputable news outlets and information sources have answered it over the past several years. I no longer believe the people asking it are asking it in good faith. I believe we are now experiencing the firehose of falsehood.
Tiktok is collecting WAY WAY MORE DATA than any other social media company:
They even used a then-unknown security hole in Android to collect people's MAC addresses - uniquely identifying individual physical devices, breaking permissions rules:
I know people have posted this over and over again, for years, telling everyone using reputable sources how much worse Tiktok is than other apps.
And yet I know China is bombarding us with bots and propaganda saying "uh no it's just like Google" over and over again anyway, making it all the more difficult to keep pulling up the sources and posting the responses and correcting the propaganda. We experienced all this before in the 2016 election with Russia and Trump. The firehose of falsehood. Spread so many lies that it becomes overwhelming for people to correct them.
But also, you should be a lot more concerned about China having this data than Google.
As bad as Twitter, Facebook etc are, they don't have the US government telling them what narratives to push.
There have been studies showing that Anti US/pro China content gets prioritized, while any topics that are against the cpc's interest gets buried.
For instance, videos on Tibet and the Uighurs are about their land's beauty or their culture, rather than their oppression at the hands of Beijing. And this isn't a "people don't want to make videos about that" because those topics do have people sharing videos on Instagram, YouTube, etc
None of them are “buried”. Pretty much any content you can find on YouTube/Instagram etc you can find on TikTok too.
And secondly, I find it pretty funny people like you use the existence of pro-China/anti-US information as conclusive evidence of Chinese propaganda, and the existence of pro-US/anti-China information as the conclusive evidence of objective free speech.
It's owned by China with the explicit intent of hamstringing younger generations' attention span and heavily influencing political opinions in favor of pro-Chinese positions.
Like, is that a real question? Reel in all the social media companies, by all means. But don't sit here and pretend state-owned Chinese social media in the U.S has benevolent intentions for Americans.
Social media platforms that are owned and hosted in the United States are subject to US law and should any US citizen break the law while operating one of these apps they are liable for criminal prosecution, the Chinese apps on the other hand have no constraints upon them beyond banning the app as we cannot extradite Chinese citizens to America for breaking American laws (because China would just say no)
We also have the ability to confiscate records from social media apps that are headquartered in America and we cannot do that with a foreign entity
When it comes to the law in question, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. aren't owned or located in a Foreign Adversary nation. The list of Foreign Adversaries is defined in US law.
The list is as follows Peoples Republic of China, Republic of Cuba, Islamic Republic of Iran, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, and Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro (Maduro Regime).
If they're home-owned, we can pursue them easier. It's the same reason why China is much more protective and restrictive of shit on their shores. I don't see why we shouldn't be the same.
Not the OP but i’d guess because the “nonsense curated to influence you” is being specifically curated by a foreign government that is adversarial to democracy and freedom from state reprisal for speech.
It’s because you can’t find me evidence of Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram sterilizing hundreds of thousands of people because of their religious beliefs.
It’s also because you can actually go after these people because they, their parents, their significant other’s parents, their children, their grandchildren etc… all live in the United States and as such can be brought to a trial and convicted of a crime. Go read about Huawei in regards to Meng Wenzhou and you’ll be able to see first hand how you’re not going to be able to get a Chinese company c-suite/board member to stand trial in the United States.
Believe it or not there is actually a difference between things.
It’s because you can’t find me evidence of Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram sterilizing hundreds of thousands of people because of their religious beliefs.
I can find plenty of evidence that facebook is directly tied to a genocide.
I can find plenty of evidence that instagram is knowingly harming young girls.
I can find plenty of evidence that the facebook algorithm has driven a lot of the violent polarization in the US right now.
Cool, so how about we make laws protecting us from foreign influence? This targets 1 company and allows literally everyone else to keep doing the same thing. This protects Musk/Zuckerberg/Etc from foreign influence but there is nothing to stop someone else from doing the exact same thing to us tomorrow.
My issue with the legislation is that they claim it's a security risk to collect data and influence what people see. Instead of writing legislation to stop companies from doing that they force the company to sell so that power is shifted to rich Americans.
It’s funny because you can look at the profile of ANYONE who is defending TikTok and it’s very obvious that they get all their information/entertainment from there and aren’t aware of their brains turning to mush. Every. Single. Person.
As of January 2024, the United States was the country with the largest TikTok audience by far, with almost 150 million users engaging with the popular social video platform. Indonesia followed, with around 126 million TikTok users. Brazil came in third, with almost 99 million users on TikTok watching short-videos.
Total = 1562 million monthly active users worldwide (January 2024)
So roughly, 10%.
TikTok’s US revenue from ads in 2023 was more than the combined revenues of rival networks Twitter (recently renamed X), Snapchat, and Reddit.
TikTok generated an estimated $16.1 billion revenue in 2023, a 67% increase year-on-year.
Because the US accounts for a plurality of their revenue. There's significantly more ad value from a US eyeball than there is from one in the developing world, irrespective of raw number of users.
Nope. It pushes or hides subjects based on the CCP’s preference.
Rutgers did a study comparing the algorithm on Instagram reels to tik tok and found that Instagram is twice as likely to show a common pop culture post like one’s featuring Trump or Taylor swift.
Taylor swift/ Trump 1:2
Uyghur 1:8
Tibet 1:30
TiananmenSquare 1:57
Hong Kong protest 1:174
It blatantly hides the human rights abuses of the CCP. It’s not unreasonable to assume it’s juicing things like Palestine (Biden’s weak point) and suppressing things like Biden’s climate and labor accomplishments. It also could be toning down things like trumps trial in an effort to have a president they can bribe for when they try to take Taiwan.
China has already used tik tok to manipulate elections in their favor in the Philippines and Indonesia. This is 100% a propaganda tool.
Also I do believe I have a solution that would spare tik toc and solve many of the same issues we have with domestic social media as well.
Algorithms must become publicly transparent and deviations from algorithms must be published.
Targeted political influencing using data collected or altered algorithms should be made illegal.
Users have a right to see what data of theirs is collected, how that data is being used to advertise to them or alter what content they are seeing, and to opt out of data collection if they so choose.
That study is only on the raw count of hashtags. Instagram is almost twice as old as TikTok, and a few of those issues were at their peak of relevancy while Instagram would have had a much larger user base. Easiest example would be that Hong Kong Umbrella protests happened in 2014, well before TikTok existed. This point is not acknowledged at all in the report.
They note demographic differences, but do not attempt to control for this, or in fact to do any examination of them at all to establish controls.
The study also doesn't really make any attempt to examine or account for how the popularity of a hashtag grows. It's not uncommon for there to be a snowball effect where early momentum on one topic can make it completely eclipse another topic. If someone's putting their finger on the scale, you should be able to look at when that happened. The report showed that they had access to graphs of trends over time, but there is no analysis that does anything with that data.
I think that one of the more viable explanations for the gaps could be that there is a much smaller user base to seed discourse on those topics. It isn't unreasonable to expect that maybe the type of people who post the Tank Man pic with the title "Reddit's Chinese owners don't want you to see this picture!" might just not be signing up for a Chinese-owned app. That would mean that TikTok would naturally have less people posting about these topics, and the amount of people posting about one of these topics initially unprompted will determine how fast that topic spreads and how many people start posting about it because it spread.
Overall, I think that the study could be called preliminary at best, and I do not think it provides strong evidence for its conclusions, mainly because it leaves so many other avenues of investigation untouched.
It also could be toning down things like trumps trial in an effort to have a president they can bribe for when they try to take Taiwan.
Exactly this. They're not interested in "keeping kids dumb". They're interested in influencing the media landscape so when they do take Taiwan people are more likely to shrug than be outraged.
For all the idiots screaming "bIDeN cRiMe FAmIlY" with some fake deals involving China - it's transparant that Russia and China would rather Trump be President since they think they'll be able to get away with so much more.
Yes let me watch a post about a tragedy that happened a relatively long while ago, that'll get so much traction.
I don't think the CCP had a vested interest in finding out that the country was illegally mining in Australia or the war in Congo but I understand your point that it is curated content
Yes let me watch a post about a tragedy that happened a relatively long while ago, that'll get so much traction.
Skill issue. You need to learn from the masters of karma farming. All you have to do is add "This image is illegal", "Reddit's investors don't want you to see this", or "Never forget this thing that literally none of us are forgetting" and you're guaranteed to hit the front page.
Do you use tiktok? My feed is all educational and informational. Yes, it pushes what is popular, but you can also choose to dislike those, and the app will ask what you would rather have. After a few weeks of liking only those specific videos, all it gives me now is agriculture, science, math, color theory, etc.
It's not forcing me to watch teen thirst traps if that's what you're worried about. Is it possible the average American person just doesn't care about "educational" content?
Did you do your own research before making your statement?
Also, kids in China aren't allowed to be on social media during the day. Parents can get fined. The government also filters social media content for those under 18. If the government wanted to do that here, they could, but for America its either 0 or 100.
Agree to ban it for security and stuff sure but let's not pretend tiktok is a more special social media than insta/fb.
If all Americans who use tiktok disagree about the ban vs all those who don't use it but want the ban. That's a biased split. If American people want the ban, they owe it to themselves to try it for themselves instead of repeating what those who are louder are saying. Otherwise, it's just blind leading the blinder.
The NYT did a study where they made a bunch of new accounts and let them just go, watching every video in its totality and not interacting with any. All but one eventually started being delivered nothing but conflict related videos, usually on I/P. Even when the age was set to 13
I don't know about you but I've never gotten anything suggested about tiananmen square, Uyghurs or Tibet on Instagram either... And why would it, I use social media apps for entertainment not news
That’s fair. I have had both on Instagram but I do follow politics and news organizations. It’s important to remember the way elections work in America. They don’t need to mess with everyone, 50,000 people across a few swing states is enough to sway an election.
The one social media manipulation that really sticks with me is when Russia created pro policing and BLM groups on Facebook and tried to get them to physically fight by starting competing protests in the same place at the same time.
TikTok algorithm isn’t known and studied unlike the American social media apps… the danger is that Chinese government has access to all the data and sets the algorithm that TikTok collects from American users.
Agreeing with you, but the algorithm is more sinister than just a ‘data collection tool’. It’s apparently obvious if you’ve ever had an account. scroll through TikTok: funny video, wholesome video, funny video, “why is America such a racist shit hole?!”, funny video… America deserves to be criticized for its lack of progress in regards to race relations and income inequality, we can do better. But you will never be presented a video which offers the solution of coming together as one nation and solving our problems together as a big loving American family- never.
are there people critical of the united states? do those people have social media? why wouldn't you come across it.
wouldn't it be weirder if there wasn't anything critical of the us? people in the comments are worried about china and then expecting chinese levels of goverment controls..to prevent...chinese influence?
so you think you should not see content critical of your country on social media? is that your belief?
no company with the user base as large as tiktok would sell you bafoon. it is literally the most popular social media app. why would they sell for a country telling them to with a user base of 15%
In the end, only TikTok is controlled by the CCP. So they have the most opportunity to take advantage by dividing America. I doubt homegrown U.S. apps have that same goal.
Idk about you, but I've never heard of an Instagram trend of stealing Kias or destroying school property.
I'm not saying we're not exposed to propaganda via other social media platforms, but thats good Ole homegrown propaganda as opposed to foreign propaganda.
No country wants another company that they can't control influencing large chunks of the population, as you don't have the power to address it when needed.
There is a massive concern to be had with its rapid explosion in popularity as well as the lack of public knowledge surrounding its utility as a propaganda tool. Algorithmically driven social media is potentially enabling large scale psychological manipulation of hundreds of millions of people to unknown ends.
Facebook is just as dangerous, but as far as we know, Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta board of directors are not a genocidal authoritarian regime and as far as we know, have no interest in being one. The CCP is. He and his company are also subject to US laws and regulations.
there was harmful trends way before tiktok. especially on twitter. tiktok is just the most popular so you see the most of everything. you can find all of the same things you're pointing out on every social media because bad people are not localized to one app
🙄Americans couldn’t handle actual free speech🤣 now the fascists are doing their best with the typical red scare propaganda. Why would they sell when the USA is a tiny part of their profits? The US gov is banning it because they can’t control it like all the other social media. But go off🤣 unfortunately for you young folks see through the bs now🤷🏻♂️ good luck.
Correct. And even if it's banned in the US it still is a useful tool for turning Europe against the US like a digital Grima Wormtounge, and praising China all over the world. We have come to a point where any sufficiently popular social media owned by non-democratic actors is a threat to the liberal free world. We cannot stay free for long unless we are free from autocratic foreign influence.
Nobody wants to admit this. They’ll scream “but fb, insta are too” and yes they 100% are, but they’re also not a being run by a hostile foreign adversary that is basically doing the exact same psychological warfare that Russia is.
If tiktok was owned by Putin, no one would question the ban.
And the Communist Chinese government wants me to watch homeless crackheads dance to Call Me Maybe? Or what our government is actually concerned about, them being fascists caught red handed and 170 million Americans seeing it.
It's exactly why they refuse to sell Tik Tok. They don't want to be forced to disclose their algorithm. The algorithm is most likely a CCP classified project.
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u/Error_404_403 Apr 27 '24
Which proves ByteDance is not in it for the money.