Unfortunately it's a LOT easier to vote than it is to force it with violence. If we can't get more than half of Americans to even go to a voting booth what are the chances that they'll be ready to give their life in a revolution? And even if we could what are the chances it would succeed at creating a better government? If we can't get more than a 3rd of this country to vote for something better then a successful revolution is a snowball's chance in hell.
The changes needed to survive the climate crisis are too great to enact within the existing system. Capitalism plays too big a role and money is power and power protects itself. The legal mechanisms powerful enough to overcome that are all controlled by that same money. The system is archaic and bureaucratic and slow to change.
But I agree, many different actors have weakened, divided, misdirected, distracted, confused and incited enough of the rest of us that the type of unification necessary to do anything in time to save the species appears very unlikely.
Their private security will put you down before you have a chance.
We can't beat people with money to literally buy military power. Technology is to advanced unfortunately for us to change anything until it collapses
Cash? My sweet sweet summer child. No.
In a capitalist society, a diversified investment portfolio, coupled with significant equity stakes in startups at various lifecycle stages, all managed through a trust fund of which you are the sole beneficiary, which itself is managed by a complex web of umbrella companies registered across a balanced distribution of tax havens, is king.
Id be willing to help out. Snuff a few of them out under a pillow, push one in front of a jet engine, and one in particular I would lock inside a slowly sinking poorly made EV…
The problem is in order for a revolution to happen, you have to make the money worthless. Way too many people are doing well enough to not want that. It doesn’t mean that the time won’t come when the 1% accumulate so much that the 99% have to revolt. Not anytime soon though.
We desperately need to enter into a phase of society where having that much wealth is a red flag.
And even if it’s not, congrats on your cash, but buy a boat and shut up. You can’t effectively control a world you don’t live in. These people are the ones that need VR and the META world so they take out all their psycho control needs without actually ruining life.
Definitely. Honestly there should be mechanisms in place to keep people from becoming billionaires in the first place. One person with that much power is dangerous.
Because they are allowed so much power and wealth they have a responsibility to bail out the government when necessary. No one should be worried about social security becoming insolvent in the US for example. 😐but what do i know
On the one hand yes. But on the other, publicly traded companies suck to work for, privately owned is so much better and it’s pretty hard for one or two people to privately own a large company without technically being billionaires. I’m not sure how you could make it impossible for people to be billionaires without forcing them to distribute ownership of a company once they get to a certain size.
Money should only give someone purchasing power, not political power. It's the system that's at fault.
Billionaires build businesses that solve problems and limiting wealth just means everyone loses.
The world you describe would require banning lobbyists, banning all corporate dollars from financing politicians, and banning elected representatives from ever working for the companies they used to regulate.
I'd love to live in that world, but it doesn't seem realistic. Although neither does banning billionaires, however we could accomplish that.
We sadly seem headed firmly down the road to a capitalist oligarchy in this country
It seems hard because it is just more work. But shortcuts often lead to disaster.
Billionaires are often people that are very good at solving problems through businesses and that's evident by market rewarding them with a billion dollars. It's kind of a score of how good you are at fulfilling needs/wants of the people (aka the market) and getting rid of that just means not allowing capable people to solve problems and hence we end up with less effective and less efficient problem solving in the end. That only hurts us.
It's like saying an engineer shouldn't be allowed to design more than 15 things in his life. That only limits their very useful capabilities that we can all benefit from.
Look, let's not kid ourselves here. This whole thing has been adulterated into far more than it should have.
That being said, TikTok was definitely sharing shit with the Chinese government. One of the most invasive little applications ever made.
This is it. TikTok does nothing except save China money. They can still buy user data, pay for ads on social media, and pay for bots to create online posts stoking division.
This right here, the only reason the gov cares is because it's chinese controlled. I don't use any of these services (only reddit) but as an american citizen I would much rather have my data being used by the chinese (where I will never visit or live) than the US where I do.
Then you're incredibly ignorant if that's how you feel. China can and is weaponising your data and the data they can scrape through you along with pushing algorithms so worsen misinformation. China is a literal enemy of the West that is attacking Western countries.
Can you cite anything to back up your claims?
Like has there been an instance where the CCP has weaponized data gained from social media against an average everyday American who has no association or interaction with China outside of said platform? This comes across as absolute fear-mongering that you'd hear on Fox News.
And talking about algorithms, you must be really upset about X, right? It's basically a pipeline to right-wing extremism these days via russian bots.
That's why I have neither of those things.
The fact that you fail to see why an adversarial government with that kind of control within our own country is worse than companies within our control is pretty worrisome TBH.
No evidence, you haven't been paying attention, all their apps force them to phone home to China.
This isn't opinion, I work in IT and simply a fact China collects everything, the U.S. government was mad they were stealing all the intel and not them.
You think these "trends" are trends. Haven't you ever asked yourself who starts them and how they get started?
We have strong evidence China is pushing anti social behavior in the algorithms for who knows what reason.
Just being led along, never questioning why its going a certain way and what trends are. Those trends are not real trends, but they are forced onto you by an outside power.
You guys are being manipulated around by an outside power and completely oblivious, especially these violent trends meant to hurt society. We know this because Chinas TikTok is completely different
You are judging without a context. Chinese apps, tech firms and websites started to model and follow their US peers 10-20 years ago. They tend to spin more 100% free services in exchange for harvesting user data - nothing special there. And, such data go back to their servers - since many don’t have US servers, these useless data (speaking from upsell or ads potential) are being sent back to China. As simple as this. You guys are too much into conspiracy theory. After all, who do we think we are, and why our browsing history mean anything at all.
> all their apps force them to phone home to China
Are you surprised that an web app is accessing a server? Facebook also “phone home” to the US, lol.
Also, there was a law that required TikTok to have US servers, and TikTok complied, so it did stop “phoning home” to China
>within our control
What in the last 60 or so years gives you the impression that American corporations are in any way under American government control? I would strongly argue it is 100% the other way around.
To be fair, the Chinese government is probably a less threat than American businesses. I doubt the Chinese government cares whether who gets an abortion, but you can't say the same about AG of some states. The Chinese government isn't really interested in your health either, but American insurance companies would love to get their hands on that kind of data to raise your premiums.
The reality is that for the majority of Americans, we are simply not important enough to any foreign government to care. American businesses on the other hand would love to violate our privacy to sell us more crap. So unless you work for the Pentagon or for Lockheed Martin or something like that, you should be more worried about Kaiser Permanente buying your data from Facebook, than the Chinese government.
The US government doesn't have a social credit system or send you off to reeducation camps.... *yet*.
Yet another shit take from TikTok, let's sign up for Chinese authoritarianism because it different!
Make no mistake, social credit system is a *farcry* from not being able to get a bank loan or a mortgage.
It's about controlling what you can and can't say, restricting your movements, and entrenching power.
> let's sign up for Chinese authoritarianism because it different!
I get OP's statement though, from an American mindset. China can't do shit to me here in the US. I would never set foot in China without massive government reforms around freedom. Ditto Russia, Iran, North Korea and a few others where freedom is an afterthought. China can have a file on me and unless they find a way to kidnap me on the soil of a friendly nation, which they're not going to bother doing because I'm a nobody, then whatever.
Facebook and Google though could, and probably will soon, work with the US government or state governments on hot button issues like abortion. US social media companies have the info to put Americans in jail and lock away the key. Freedom can easily be an afterthought here in the US or some US states. See Project 2025. You think Meta or Google is going to stand up for you if Texas's AG subpoenas them for information about a woman suspected of obtaining an abortion in California? Think again.
I actually feel safer trusting international tech and social media companies right now than US based companies. I'd prefer European with the stronger EU laws on privacy but if it's an unfriendly country I'm not going to anyway then I really have nothing to worry about.
If I were a woman in a conservative state right now who needed info on abortion clinics in California I'd rather use TikTok than Google or Meta. Seriously.
> I'd prefer European with the stronger EU laws on privacy but if it's an unfriendly country I'm not going to anyway then I really have nothing to worry about.
In fact, an unfriendly country is more likely to **not** cooperate with the US government than an European country. Which is more likely? A German or British company ignoring a US request, or a Chinese company ignoring a US request?
You are too important. And Chinese government is so capable that it knows you better than you do.
However, after they got to know you, they deleted all the data. Do you know why?
You…important?
It doesn't, the person you're responding to just made a crazy strawman because I guess they are super emotional about the US government not having total control over every single social media platform in use.
> The US government doesn't have a social credit system or send you off to reeducation camps.... yet.
But it does have a credit system. If you don't have a good enough credit score you are not allowed to do certain things.
We might not call it a social credit system but it does the same thing, punish you if you don't 'fall in line'.
It’s about controlling who’s in the government seats and has the power to influence the USA decisions.
For example, if Trump won, Ukraine would probably be already be conquered by Russia since he wouldn’t have bring aid the way Biden’s cabinet has (in the way of weapons etc). That’s why Putin wanted to put Trump there.
China or Russia don’t care what company is selling more smartphones or who’s the most popular singer.
> That’s why Putin wanted to put Trump there.
You know that the Russians influenced our elections using Facebook, right? And that Facebook is an American company?
It’s one thing to use a platform from the outside than having front row seats to do whatever the hell you want with said platform.
Facebook issues was basically moderating. They had none, were more loose than today’s or the “monster” is just too hard to control.
Firstly, the only example that was given was of Russia using an American social media company. This indicates foreign countries do not need to own a social media company to manipulate our elections. American social media companies will happily go along if you pay them enough.
Secondly, if TikTok was that powerful, won't that mean Facebook and Twitter can manipulate our elections as well? Do you believe that Musk or Zuckerberg are deciding who the next President is? Shouldn't we be passing laws to ban Facebook and Twitter as well?
The point is that if social media companies are that powerful, then we should be banning all of them. American companies are not somehow more "patriotic".
Jesus, this is delusional. Russia and Chona have been actively attacking US infrastructure for 20 years, 6000 cyberattacks a day, this is not even counting the attacks from Moscow's troll farm. They do care and are actively trying to destroy society inside out. Look into the Great Translation movement.
These people are either dumb, or more likely, actually actively on here pumping the normalization of "China is the country that will save the world from the USA" storyline, much like Tiktok aims to do.
The closest thing to real life mind-control was cambridge analytica and that was Facebook an American company. You are simply falling for propaganda and it's sad.
2 signs you're a brainwashed idiot:
-everything you just typed
-calls everyone a bot when they disagree with you
Just take a look at my profile. What bot spends most of their time on nba, video games, personal finance and CS subreddits? Just admit you made a shit point and fell for propaganda.
And social engineering. There’s a reason why USA TikTok is vapid brainrot while Chinese TikTok is heavily moderated to only have insightful and interesting content
This is Chinese TikTok.
https://www.douyin.com/?recommend=1
Please describe how all the content you see on it is "insightful".
Example, the first video I saw: https://v.douyin.com/i2gp1eSk/
The funniest part is that I don't care at all if the CCP has a file on me. I'm never going to China, I'd much rather them have a list of things that put me on their shit list, as opposed to the US gov having the same list - where I live. These people are just having an emotional reaction to team sports and it's showing.
They don't need evidence. Just as long as someone speaking on condition of anonymity told someone at AP/Reuters/AFP who then shared it with the rest of the worlds media, it must be true. That is how almost all global news is disseminated.
Anyone who disputes it is clearly spreading Chinese/Ruusian/Iranian/anywhere else we don't like propaganda
This guys IS a scam artist. Frank McCourt famously bought the Dodgers baseball team with leverage using a parking lot in Boston as collateral. He owned the team for about a decade, the entire time sucking money out of the team to enrich himself and his wife. They’d take out loans against future team revenue streams and use the money to buy houses etc. They ran up huge debts until the team was eventually forced into bankruptcy (because *they missed payroll*) despite being one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world. He had a messy divorce and had to sell the team, but because of his fortunate timing even after all the debts he still made over $1B profit when he sold the team.
Frank went on to buy a storied French soccer team (Marseille) and [started fucking it up too](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/2434108/2021/03/11/why-is-he-here-ex-dodgers-owner-frank-mccourts-marseille-reign-features-a-riot-and-another-mess/). At one point the fans rioted and threw molotovs at the practice facility.
When he sold the Dodgers, he managed to retain a 50% stake in the land surrounding the stadium, which is currently a big sea of parking lots. So now he's in the process of trying to get the city of Los Angeles to let him build a gondola from Union Station into the stadium, with the ultimate goal of developing the parking lot land for a big payday. His plan claims to use no public funds but of course also has no funding mechanism at this time.
Frank McCourt is a huge piece of shit, even relative to other rich assholes.
He’s also no where near rich enough to buy TicTok outright.
Wow. It's like the leveraged buyout strategy of private equity, but applied to a sports franchise. Buy them, load them up with debt, and strip mine them. Then sell the husk for what you can.
His ownership happened to coincide with a period of explosive growth in pro sports franchise values, driven by the lucrative tv rights for live games. As streaming took off, sports became one of the only kinds of tv left that people cared about watching live, so those tv rights became more profitable.
He “paid” (on credit from the previous owner) $430M for the team in 2004, and sold it for $2.15B in 2012, at which point he owed ~$1B in debt on it.
I think there's a fundamental mismatch between what makes a 'good platform' and what makes a platform that will grow and be financially successful. Hence whereas maybe MySpace or some other platforms might have been good or objectively better than Facebook, they didn't use the aggressive socially harmful tactics to grow and monetise and mislead users into using its platform.
I think that's true for most of capitalism actually.
What makes good food? Pure, healthy ingredients.
What's profitable? [Selling the maximum allowed percentage of sawdust](https://time.com/4226321/parmesan-wood-pulp/)
What makes good landlords? Healthy competition
What's profitable? [price fixing](https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/first-settlements-reached-realpage-rental-price-fixing-lawsuits-2024-02-05/)
How can you not give a shit? This title has it all! Billionaire, utopian, Tik Tok. The only way to drive it to the top of Reddit faster is to somehow tie Musk into it.
New title:
*Musk Billionaire Friend Hopes to Turn Tik Tok Into His Utopian Internet Dream*
US government loses its mind because the youth on TikTok don't want the sort of slack jawed, right-wing propaganda that had Facebook alley-ooping the literal presidency to a half-illiterate rapist with zero work experience with the full support of the said government, so they're forcing a sale that may end up going to some billionaire real estate sicko. utopia, baby!!!
It's one thing to ban a social media platform on the premise that they are spying and/or trying to manipulate public opinion. It's quite another to try turn it into a carjacking.
And this is what it was all about. A bunch of rich people leveragaging the government so they could buy Tik Tok. Too lucrative to be kept in foreign hands?
I have a better idea. Get taxed 500% and retire. People dont need another social media platform, they need better long term sustainable policies that the govt can put in place without increasing its debt.
TIKTOK. IS NOT. SELLING. TO YOU. IDIOTS.
Seriously, control over their own platform is obviously worth more than their presence in the entire American market. They are never going to sell and they've confirmed this already.
They'll just leave if they can't win their court case.
There’s pretty much no scenario where China allows the sale of TikTok with the algorithm, either it’s banned and they write off a couple dozen billion in revenue as a loss, or they successfully sue and TikTok remains in place with the algorithm under Chinese control.
Why is anyone paying attention to what Frank McCourt has to say? His credentials as "real estate mogul" are that he bought up parking lots. How he calls himself a "developer" when his development was literally pouring asphalt is beyond me. Then he leveraged them all to buy the Dodgers before jacking up prices on everything to try to make the money back, still failing, putting the team into actual Chapter 11, and being forced to sell the team by the MLB because he couldn't make payroll. He's a billionaire because Magic Johnson & MLB. bailed him out with the forced sale. He should be bankrupt.
Tech billionaires...
We should be thankful our oligarchs are looking out for the working folks. /s
Steve Mnuchin, Keven O'Leary, and this guy would never take advantage of this situation. /s
I'm so glad OUR oligarchs aren't like the Russian Oligarchs. /s
/s - because people are extra obtuse today. /s
It’s way better in my opinion. Their algorithm is like crack, keeps me watching endlessly. Also, the videos load noticeably faster than YT shorts.
Reels is better than Shorts, but the algorithm on reels spits out too many similar videos and you’re basically in a slump, where everything is the same so you stop watching rather quickly.
I am very grateful my ADHD-inattentive type brain rejects the TikTok mechanism. It’s too much of an information overload, with jumbled topics mixed with angertainment and camouflaged clout goblins.
The metrics are suspicious, the algo is a borderline hatefeed if you touch anything political (as I do be doing), and every third or fourth influencer is botting for per-view revenue.
Madness. I don’t understand how my ADHD peers get so addicted to it, but I do understand the appeal.
Not only that, it seems to be rotting away the attention span of people even more that before, the people who are using seem to be incapable of staying focused on something for more than 10 seconds at most..
All the billionaires publicly salivating about what they'll do with a platform unavailable to them are embarassing themselves. Who do they think is the audience for the messaging they're putting out? This is the lamest form of a shakedown.
My utopian internet dream is 100+ services all working together seamlessly with no infighting. It’s an impossible dream I admit but I wish it were possible.
'member when these guys used to invest in hospitals and museums and shit?
Why does the modern equivalent always have to be some insane ant-colony-ass social experiment?
How does he intend to do it?
It’s my understanding that China has given western countries the cancerous brain rot attention grabbing version and have their own version which prioritises “healthy” content and daily usage limits.
Isn’t Bytedance not just another company under the thumb of the Chinese government though? Ie subject to its goals.
I would argue that it’s currently a plague on our youth. I know that sounds boomer and I’m aware other social media is just as bad.
"With roughly half the U.S. population currently using the app, it would indeed be chilling to the speech of millions if TikTok was suddenly taken away."
Well, Elon Musk was allowed to buy Twitter and chill "free speech". Pretty hard to make the case that any social media platforms, especially ones owned by China which is super oppressive and anti-free speech. have any kind of interest in free speech.
This guy ran the Dodgers into the ground, and there are still issues they deal with because of him, like parking.
If he can do that well with TikTok, I say let him have it.
Tiktok is by far the best social media feed right now because it is not under the control of one of these ghouls.
The CCP wants you to get all the best content possible to keep you on the app to get your data rather than advertising.
Have you guys who are commenting read the details of the project? He’s collaborating with the guy who invented the internet to fixed what Facebook and X have exploited in our data. He want to decentralize all of it and make it such that we truly own our data.
China wants trump to win so they alter ticktock to help achieve that goal.
Now American billionaires want to eliminate the middlemen. YEAH this will work out JUST FINE.
Oh, another billionaire is going to tell us how we will socialize for their benefit?
I hope I live long enough to witness the extinction of billionaires
The choice really is in the people's hands. We outnumber them.
They outmoney us though and in a capitalist society, cash is king.
You're right, of course, but a punch in the face costs nothing.
I suspect if you were to actually punch a billionaire in the face you would find that they would make it cost you quite a bit, unfortunately.
I know, but I was using it as a metaphor for someing more, shall we say, widespread.
I'm with you on that. While they hold all the power, it can't be fixed from within the system. Voting and demonstration will never solve this.
Yeah, that’s where riots and revolutions come into play
I wonder what improvements we’ve made to the guillotine.
And that’s where you find out who the cops, security services and military actually work for.
Unfortunately it's a LOT easier to vote than it is to force it with violence. If we can't get more than half of Americans to even go to a voting booth what are the chances that they'll be ready to give their life in a revolution? And even if we could what are the chances it would succeed at creating a better government? If we can't get more than a 3rd of this country to vote for something better then a successful revolution is a snowball's chance in hell.
The changes needed to survive the climate crisis are too great to enact within the existing system. Capitalism plays too big a role and money is power and power protects itself. The legal mechanisms powerful enough to overcome that are all controlled by that same money. The system is archaic and bureaucratic and slow to change. But I agree, many different actors have weakened, divided, misdirected, distracted, confused and incited enough of the rest of us that the type of unification necessary to do anything in time to save the species appears very unlikely.
You’re god damn right
Their private security will put you down before you have a chance. We can't beat people with money to literally buy military power. Technology is to advanced unfortunately for us to change anything until it collapses
They don't out money us - we out money them by a lot
Guillotines aren’t super expensive tbh
No but revolutions are.
door berserk air caption instinctive lavish merciful offbeat worry rude *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In the land of the poor, the half dollar man is king
99% still have more weath combined than the 1%
That’s true but the 1% own >70% of the total wealth
Cash? My sweet sweet summer child. No. In a capitalist society, a diversified investment portfolio, coupled with significant equity stakes in startups at various lifecycle stages, all managed through a trust fund of which you are the sole beneficiary, which itself is managed by a complex web of umbrella companies registered across a balanced distribution of tax havens, is king.
Well, if they keep buying social media platforms and driving them into the ground you just might. Not by death but by devaluation.
Id be willing to help out. Snuff a few of them out under a pillow, push one in front of a jet engine, and one in particular I would lock inside a slowly sinking poorly made EV…
Wait wait don’t tell me! His name is on the tip of my scrotum…
They die off to become trillionaires instead
The problem is in order for a revolution to happen, you have to make the money worthless. Way too many people are doing well enough to not want that. It doesn’t mean that the time won’t come when the 1% accumulate so much that the 99% have to revolt. Not anytime soon though.
Be the change you want to see in the world
I hope I live long enough to witness the extinction of jealousy, or the creation of trillionaires, or both. But that might piss you off royally.
Billionaires being the decision makers for monolithic internet media companies seems to be working well so far... oh wait.
We desperately need to enter into a phase of society where having that much wealth is a red flag. And even if it’s not, congrats on your cash, but buy a boat and shut up. You can’t effectively control a world you don’t live in. These people are the ones that need VR and the META world so they take out all their psycho control needs without actually ruining life.
Definitely. Honestly there should be mechanisms in place to keep people from becoming billionaires in the first place. One person with that much power is dangerous.
Because they are allowed so much power and wealth they have a responsibility to bail out the government when necessary. No one should be worried about social security becoming insolvent in the US for example. 😐but what do i know
On the one hand yes. But on the other, publicly traded companies suck to work for, privately owned is so much better and it’s pretty hard for one or two people to privately own a large company without technically being billionaires. I’m not sure how you could make it impossible for people to be billionaires without forcing them to distribute ownership of a company once they get to a certain size.
That's why we also need to ban large companies.
Money should only give someone purchasing power, not political power. It's the system that's at fault. Billionaires build businesses that solve problems and limiting wealth just means everyone loses.
The world you describe would require banning lobbyists, banning all corporate dollars from financing politicians, and banning elected representatives from ever working for the companies they used to regulate. I'd love to live in that world, but it doesn't seem realistic. Although neither does banning billionaires, however we could accomplish that. We sadly seem headed firmly down the road to a capitalist oligarchy in this country
It seems hard because it is just more work. But shortcuts often lead to disaster. Billionaires are often people that are very good at solving problems through businesses and that's evident by market rewarding them with a billion dollars. It's kind of a score of how good you are at fulfilling needs/wants of the people (aka the market) and getting rid of that just means not allowing capable people to solve problems and hence we end up with less effective and less efficient problem solving in the end. That only hurts us. It's like saying an engineer shouldn't be allowed to design more than 15 things in his life. That only limits their very useful capabilities that we can all benefit from.
The fact mark z makes the gdp of nations is insane
[удалено]
Look, let's not kid ourselves here. This whole thing has been adulterated into far more than it should have. That being said, TikTok was definitely sharing shit with the Chinese government. One of the most invasive little applications ever made.
Thank God, Facebook and Twitter would never do such a thing 😇
Share? No. Sell? That's negotiable.
Not really, they'd 100% do it.
This is it. TikTok does nothing except save China money. They can still buy user data, pay for ads on social media, and pay for bots to create online posts stoking division.
This right here, the only reason the gov cares is because it's chinese controlled. I don't use any of these services (only reddit) but as an american citizen I would much rather have my data being used by the chinese (where I will never visit or live) than the US where I do.
Then you're incredibly ignorant if that's how you feel. China can and is weaponising your data and the data they can scrape through you along with pushing algorithms so worsen misinformation. China is a literal enemy of the West that is attacking Western countries.
Can you cite anything to back up your claims? Like has there been an instance where the CCP has weaponized data gained from social media against an average everyday American who has no association or interaction with China outside of said platform? This comes across as absolute fear-mongering that you'd hear on Fox News. And talking about algorithms, you must be really upset about X, right? It's basically a pipeline to right-wing extremism these days via russian bots.
That's why I have neither of those things. The fact that you fail to see why an adversarial government with that kind of control within our own country is worse than companies within our control is pretty worrisome TBH.
There has been no evidence of this. You believe there was WMD in Iraq?
No evidence, you haven't been paying attention, all their apps force them to phone home to China. This isn't opinion, I work in IT and simply a fact China collects everything, the U.S. government was mad they were stealing all the intel and not them. You think these "trends" are trends. Haven't you ever asked yourself who starts them and how they get started? We have strong evidence China is pushing anti social behavior in the algorithms for who knows what reason. Just being led along, never questioning why its going a certain way and what trends are. Those trends are not real trends, but they are forced onto you by an outside power. You guys are being manipulated around by an outside power and completely oblivious, especially these violent trends meant to hurt society. We know this because Chinas TikTok is completely different
American owned algorithms encouraged Jan 6th.
You are judging without a context. Chinese apps, tech firms and websites started to model and follow their US peers 10-20 years ago. They tend to spin more 100% free services in exchange for harvesting user data - nothing special there. And, such data go back to their servers - since many don’t have US servers, these useless data (speaking from upsell or ads potential) are being sent back to China. As simple as this. You guys are too much into conspiracy theory. After all, who do we think we are, and why our browsing history mean anything at all.
> all their apps force them to phone home to China Are you surprised that an web app is accessing a server? Facebook also “phone home” to the US, lol. Also, there was a law that required TikTok to have US servers, and TikTok complied, so it did stop “phoning home” to China
But not you though! You are smarter than all of us! Wake up sheeple!!!!!
>within our control What in the last 60 or so years gives you the impression that American corporations are in any way under American government control? I would strongly argue it is 100% the other way around.
To be fair, the Chinese government is probably a less threat than American businesses. I doubt the Chinese government cares whether who gets an abortion, but you can't say the same about AG of some states. The Chinese government isn't really interested in your health either, but American insurance companies would love to get their hands on that kind of data to raise your premiums. The reality is that for the majority of Americans, we are simply not important enough to any foreign government to care. American businesses on the other hand would love to violate our privacy to sell us more crap. So unless you work for the Pentagon or for Lockheed Martin or something like that, you should be more worried about Kaiser Permanente buying your data from Facebook, than the Chinese government.
The US government doesn't have a social credit system or send you off to reeducation camps.... *yet*. Yet another shit take from TikTok, let's sign up for Chinese authoritarianism because it different!
No, we just have credit scores.
Make no mistake, social credit system is a *farcry* from not being able to get a bank loan or a mortgage. It's about controlling what you can and can't say, restricting your movements, and entrenching power.
> let's sign up for Chinese authoritarianism because it different! I get OP's statement though, from an American mindset. China can't do shit to me here in the US. I would never set foot in China without massive government reforms around freedom. Ditto Russia, Iran, North Korea and a few others where freedom is an afterthought. China can have a file on me and unless they find a way to kidnap me on the soil of a friendly nation, which they're not going to bother doing because I'm a nobody, then whatever. Facebook and Google though could, and probably will soon, work with the US government or state governments on hot button issues like abortion. US social media companies have the info to put Americans in jail and lock away the key. Freedom can easily be an afterthought here in the US or some US states. See Project 2025. You think Meta or Google is going to stand up for you if Texas's AG subpoenas them for information about a woman suspected of obtaining an abortion in California? Think again. I actually feel safer trusting international tech and social media companies right now than US based companies. I'd prefer European with the stronger EU laws on privacy but if it's an unfriendly country I'm not going to anyway then I really have nothing to worry about. If I were a woman in a conservative state right now who needed info on abortion clinics in California I'd rather use TikTok than Google or Meta. Seriously.
Ding ding ding
> I'd prefer European with the stronger EU laws on privacy but if it's an unfriendly country I'm not going to anyway then I really have nothing to worry about. In fact, an unfriendly country is more likely to **not** cooperate with the US government than an European country. Which is more likely? A German or British company ignoring a US request, or a Chinese company ignoring a US request?
You are too important. And Chinese government is so capable that it knows you better than you do. However, after they got to know you, they deleted all the data. Do you know why? You…important?
> The US government doesn't have a social credit system or send you off to reeducation camps.... yet. What does that have to do with TikTok?
It doesn't, the person you're responding to just made a crazy strawman because I guess they are super emotional about the US government not having total control over every single social media platform in use.
> The US government doesn't have a social credit system or send you off to reeducation camps.... yet. But it does have a credit system. If you don't have a good enough credit score you are not allowed to do certain things. We might not call it a social credit system but it does the same thing, punish you if you don't 'fall in line'.
Can the Chinese government enforce their social credit system in america?
It’s about controlling who’s in the government seats and has the power to influence the USA decisions. For example, if Trump won, Ukraine would probably be already be conquered by Russia since he wouldn’t have bring aid the way Biden’s cabinet has (in the way of weapons etc). That’s why Putin wanted to put Trump there. China or Russia don’t care what company is selling more smartphones or who’s the most popular singer.
> That’s why Putin wanted to put Trump there. You know that the Russians influenced our elections using Facebook, right? And that Facebook is an American company?
It’s one thing to use a platform from the outside than having front row seats to do whatever the hell you want with said platform. Facebook issues was basically moderating. They had none, were more loose than today’s or the “monster” is just too hard to control.
Firstly, the only example that was given was of Russia using an American social media company. This indicates foreign countries do not need to own a social media company to manipulate our elections. American social media companies will happily go along if you pay them enough. Secondly, if TikTok was that powerful, won't that mean Facebook and Twitter can manipulate our elections as well? Do you believe that Musk or Zuckerberg are deciding who the next President is? Shouldn't we be passing laws to ban Facebook and Twitter as well? The point is that if social media companies are that powerful, then we should be banning all of them. American companies are not somehow more "patriotic".
Jesus, this is delusional. Russia and Chona have been actively attacking US infrastructure for 20 years, 6000 cyberattacks a day, this is not even counting the attacks from Moscow's troll farm. They do care and are actively trying to destroy society inside out. Look into the Great Translation movement.
I’m not saying they don’t cyber attack. But how much does the US attack them? Do you think more or less?
Our number one trade partner is our adversary?
Are you completely ignorant? Would you also consider the Saudis (our no 1 source of oil) our best friends? What a dumb statement.
Canada is our no 1 source of oil but I get your point.
These people are either dumb, or more likely, actually actively on here pumping the normalization of "China is the country that will save the world from the USA" storyline, much like Tiktok aims to do.
With China? Probably not.
Which totalitarian regime does Facebook and Twitter have allegiance to?
I don't understand why people think it's just sharing. These apps are the closest thing we have to real life mind-control.
The closest thing to real life mind-control was cambridge analytica and that was Facebook an American company. You are simply falling for propaganda and it's sad.
Yes yes, we know. America Bad.
You're a bot.
>You're a bot. That's the response of someone who knows they're spewing shit but won't admit it 😂 Like I said it's pathetic and sad
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2 signs you're a brainwashed idiot: -everything you just typed -calls everyone a bot when they disagree with you Just take a look at my profile. What bot spends most of their time on nba, video games, personal finance and CS subreddits? Just admit you made a shit point and fell for propaganda.
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You've edited your comment at least 3 times now. You're anxious and sputtering. Wanna try manipulating the narrative again?
And social engineering. There’s a reason why USA TikTok is vapid brainrot while Chinese TikTok is heavily moderated to only have insightful and interesting content
This is Chinese TikTok. https://www.douyin.com/?recommend=1 Please describe how all the content you see on it is "insightful". Example, the first video I saw: https://v.douyin.com/i2gp1eSk/
There has been no evidence of tik tok sharing shit with the Chinese government. Congrats your sprouting billionaire propaganda
The funniest part is that I don't care at all if the CCP has a file on me. I'm never going to China, I'd much rather them have a list of things that put me on their shit list, as opposed to the US gov having the same list - where I live. These people are just having an emotional reaction to team sports and it's showing.
They don't need evidence. Just as long as someone speaking on condition of anonymity told someone at AP/Reuters/AFP who then shared it with the rest of the worlds media, it must be true. That is how almost all global news is disseminated. Anyone who disputes it is clearly spreading Chinese/Ruusian/Iranian/anywhere else we don't like propaganda
How is it more invasive than other social media? Or did you mean the Chinese government might has access to it by 'invasive'
I love how these guys see a golden goose, and think “I should change this into a moose with a duck head”
I'm actually thinking of deleting it from my phone
I have a lot of money and think that says I know better = billionaires
It'll end up being dystopian not utopian I'm sure
Pretty much anything dreamed up by a billionaire will be hell on earth for everyone but billionaires, if allowed to come to full fruition.
Oh no is it the grey shirts dude ?
Utopian only for him and his other billionaire “friends”.
No such thing as a real Utopia.
‘Billionaire real estate mogul’ makes me immediately think *master of the art of scam*.
This guys IS a scam artist. Frank McCourt famously bought the Dodgers baseball team with leverage using a parking lot in Boston as collateral. He owned the team for about a decade, the entire time sucking money out of the team to enrich himself and his wife. They’d take out loans against future team revenue streams and use the money to buy houses etc. They ran up huge debts until the team was eventually forced into bankruptcy (because *they missed payroll*) despite being one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world. He had a messy divorce and had to sell the team, but because of his fortunate timing even after all the debts he still made over $1B profit when he sold the team. Frank went on to buy a storied French soccer team (Marseille) and [started fucking it up too](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/2434108/2021/03/11/why-is-he-here-ex-dodgers-owner-frank-mccourts-marseille-reign-features-a-riot-and-another-mess/). At one point the fans rioted and threw molotovs at the practice facility. When he sold the Dodgers, he managed to retain a 50% stake in the land surrounding the stadium, which is currently a big sea of parking lots. So now he's in the process of trying to get the city of Los Angeles to let him build a gondola from Union Station into the stadium, with the ultimate goal of developing the parking lot land for a big payday. His plan claims to use no public funds but of course also has no funding mechanism at this time. Frank McCourt is a huge piece of shit, even relative to other rich assholes. He’s also no where near rich enough to buy TicTok outright.
I should reiterate that for you. Frank McCourt is a huge piece of shit. Enormous.
Wow. It's like the leveraged buyout strategy of private equity, but applied to a sports franchise. Buy them, load them up with debt, and strip mine them. Then sell the husk for what you can.
His ownership happened to coincide with a period of explosive growth in pro sports franchise values, driven by the lucrative tv rights for live games. As streaming took off, sports became one of the only kinds of tv left that people cared about watching live, so those tv rights became more profitable. He “paid” (on credit from the previous owner) $430M for the team in 2004, and sold it for $2.15B in 2012, at which point he owed ~$1B in debt on it.
His ex-wife was a Trump appointed ambassador to France and Monaco If that confirms that thought.
Social media is a good idea that has always been in the wrong hands.
Tom from MySpace did great
The foresight to cash out right before mingle too much with the fuck-it-all-up billionaires
I think there's a fundamental mismatch between what makes a 'good platform' and what makes a platform that will grow and be financially successful. Hence whereas maybe MySpace or some other platforms might have been good or objectively better than Facebook, they didn't use the aggressive socially harmful tactics to grow and monetise and mislead users into using its platform.
Also I wouldn't praise Tom himself for it as perhaps he just didn't know what those tactics were, but nevertheless that's how things turned out.
I think that's true for most of capitalism actually. What makes good food? Pure, healthy ingredients. What's profitable? [Selling the maximum allowed percentage of sawdust](https://time.com/4226321/parmesan-wood-pulp/) What makes good landlords? Healthy competition What's profitable? [price fixing](https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/first-settlements-reached-realpage-rental-price-fixing-lawsuits-2024-02-05/)
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My favorite part is that the utopian internet dream he has will force me to see Hero Wars ads.
Mediocre Redditor Hopes to Turn Billionaire Real Estate Mogul into a Stew
[Foosa hungry](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/009217b4-674d-421f-9610-cbd71a5c9444)
Look at me over here, not giving a shit 🤗
How can you not give a shit? This title has it all! Billionaire, utopian, Tik Tok. The only way to drive it to the top of Reddit faster is to somehow tie Musk into it. New title: *Musk Billionaire Friend Hopes to Turn Tik Tok Into His Utopian Internet Dream*
*Musk Billionaire Friend Hopes to Turn Tik Tok Into His Libertarian Utopian Internet Dream*
Straight to the front page! Here’s your gold. 🏅
Enough to comment however
"Billionaire Real Estate Mogul" and "utopia" don't belong in the same sentence.
US government loses its mind because the youth on TikTok don't want the sort of slack jawed, right-wing propaganda that had Facebook alley-ooping the literal presidency to a half-illiterate rapist with zero work experience with the full support of the said government, so they're forcing a sale that may end up going to some billionaire real estate sicko. utopia, baby!!!
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The preferred nomenclature is 'degenerate habitation hoarder'.
It's one thing to ban a social media platform on the premise that they are spying and/or trying to manipulate public opinion. It's quite another to try turn it into a carjacking.
And this is what it was all about. A bunch of rich people leveragaging the government so they could buy Tik Tok. Too lucrative to be kept in foreign hands?
I have a better idea. Get taxed 500% and retire. People dont need another social media platform, they need better long term sustainable policies that the govt can put in place without increasing its debt.
He can keep hoping. Tiktok already said they're not gonna sell it.
TIKTOK. IS NOT. SELLING. TO YOU. IDIOTS. Seriously, control over their own platform is obviously worth more than their presence in the entire American market. They are never going to sell and they've confirmed this already. They'll just leave if they can't win their court case.
There’s pretty much no scenario where China allows the sale of TikTok with the algorithm, either it’s banned and they write off a couple dozen billion in revenue as a loss, or they successfully sue and TikTok remains in place with the algorithm under Chinese control.
Eat the rich.
Why is anyone paying attention to what Frank McCourt has to say? His credentials as "real estate mogul" are that he bought up parking lots. How he calls himself a "developer" when his development was literally pouring asphalt is beyond me. Then he leveraged them all to buy the Dodgers before jacking up prices on everything to try to make the money back, still failing, putting the team into actual Chapter 11, and being forced to sell the team by the MLB because he couldn't make payroll. He's a billionaire because Magic Johnson & MLB. bailed him out with the forced sale. He should be bankrupt.
Yeah I don't need another billionaire's idea of utopia in my life.
These billionaires need to fucking stop. The term "open protocol" is basically just buzzspeak at this point.
Love reading dystopian novels. Hate living it
TikTok already is a utopia in the sense that I don't have to hear anything from these assholes.
I don't want to be anywhere near a billionaire's idea of what a utopia is
Billionaire landlords deserve a place in hell
No one should trust any billionaire.
Good luck, Elon.
First Twitter and now TikTok. In a weird way, it might be the weird billionaires that free us all from social media, by tanking all of them.
Now that sounds like utopia!
Tech billionaires... We should be thankful our oligarchs are looking out for the working folks. /s Steve Mnuchin, Keven O'Leary, and this guy would never take advantage of this situation. /s I'm so glad OUR oligarchs aren't like the Russian Oligarchs. /s /s - because people are extra obtuse today. /s
This entire week has been tough. And, no, I'm not throwing a /s on this. I stand by my statement.
Fuck off. I know what billionaires really dream of. It's more money. It's always more money.
ByteDance has already said they are not selling, so this is wishful thinking.
Might want to chat with Musk and Zuck about how that tends to turn out.
I have never used ticktok in my life is it any different than YouTube shorts?
It's the same. TikTok has a better UI though.
Better algorithm too tbh. And not once have I had a day's worth of Charlie Kirk videos shoved down my throat, looking at you, YouTube shorts.
It’s way better in my opinion. Their algorithm is like crack, keeps me watching endlessly. Also, the videos load noticeably faster than YT shorts. Reels is better than Shorts, but the algorithm on reels spits out too many similar videos and you’re basically in a slump, where everything is the same so you stop watching rather quickly.
One of the exact reason as to why I would never use it
I am very grateful my ADHD-inattentive type brain rejects the TikTok mechanism. It’s too much of an information overload, with jumbled topics mixed with angertainment and camouflaged clout goblins. The metrics are suspicious, the algo is a borderline hatefeed if you touch anything political (as I do be doing), and every third or fourth influencer is botting for per-view revenue. Madness. I don’t understand how my ADHD peers get so addicted to it, but I do understand the appeal.
Not only that, it seems to be rotting away the attention span of people even more that before, the people who are using seem to be incapable of staying focused on something for more than 10 seconds at most..
Yeah, it’s highly addictive. I don’t recommend it.
Fuck billionaires
Social media needs to be open sourced. We should be using mastodon
Thanks Poor Elon! Did u see what happened to Twitter?!?
All the billionaires publicly salivating about what they'll do with a platform unavailable to them are embarassing themselves. Who do they think is the audience for the messaging they're putting out? This is the lamest form of a shakedown.
My utopian internet dream is 100+ services all working together seamlessly with no infighting. It’s an impossible dream I admit but I wish it were possible.
uh … what ?
Is this the guy from Don’t Look Up?
So what's the new TikTok going to be? This smells like the Tumblr fiasco all over again.
'member when these guys used to invest in hospitals and museums and shit? Why does the modern equivalent always have to be some insane ant-colony-ass social experiment?
How does he intend to do it? It’s my understanding that China has given western countries the cancerous brain rot attention grabbing version and have their own version which prioritises “healthy” content and daily usage limits.
“China has given” :p. Bytedance has made, yes. TikTok wouldn’t fly in China, which is an authoritarian and more restricted society.
Isn’t Bytedance not just another company under the thumb of the Chinese government though? Ie subject to its goals. I would argue that it’s currently a plague on our youth. I know that sounds boomer and I’m aware other social media is just as bad.
Jfc fuck these billionaires. Are any of them in touch with reality?
"With roughly half the U.S. population currently using the app, it would indeed be chilling to the speech of millions if TikTok was suddenly taken away." Well, Elon Musk was allowed to buy Twitter and chill "free speech". Pretty hard to make the case that any social media platforms, especially ones owned by China which is super oppressive and anti-free speech. have any kind of interest in free speech.
This guy ran the Dodgers into the ground, and there are still issues they deal with because of him, like parking. If he can do that well with TikTok, I say let him have it.
Tiktok is by far the best social media feed right now because it is not under the control of one of these ghouls. The CCP wants you to get all the best content possible to keep you on the app to get your data rather than advertising.
2 very important points - A. Bytedance won't sell B. China won't allow the sale Everything else is irrelevant.
Have you guys who are commenting read the details of the project? He’s collaborating with the guy who invented the internet to fixed what Facebook and X have exploited in our data. He want to decentralize all of it and make it such that we truly own our data.
China wants trump to win so they alter ticktock to help achieve that goal. Now American billionaires want to eliminate the middlemen. YEAH this will work out JUST FINE.
This is why the government wanted to force a sale, put it into domestic hands so that they can be the ones to influence us instead of the CCP
Can he stop the ban? I hope not :P
Yeah morons still think Tik Tok would let their code (the thing actually worth money in that app) to a non Chinese entity.
China won't let Bytedance sell it.
Man all the American drools for TikTok. Them hungry.
I hope it is no more soon
If Biden wins they wont sell, they'll shut it down. If Trump wins who knows.
worked for twitter