TikTok will completely shut down app in US on Sunday as ban looms
TikTok is reportedly planning a total shutdown of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app when the law requiring a ban or sale of the app takes effect on Sunday.
The roughly 170 million US users who try to access the app will be greeted with a pop-up message directing them to a website with details about the ban, according to the Information.
Users will also be given the option of downloading their data from the app, sources familiar with the plan told the outlet.
52 replies
Are American iPhone users going to rediscover web browsing? https://www.tiktok.com/explore
Are American Android users going to discover sideloading? https://lifehacker.com/tech/how-to-use-tiktok-if-its-banned-in-the-us
A "complete shutdown" as the article describes it makes it sound like neither of those two things will help.
Very Possibly No workaround
Clever
VPN
VPN?
VPNw
It's a little known FOSS project, it piggybacks on TOR network and several other VPNs. The "W" stands for wank, as unfortunately VPNw only allows porn through to the user's device, if a non-smut site is accessed VPNw injects millisecond flashes of tiddies n cacks full screen every 45 seconds. Highly recommended, can't ever be too safe out there on the digital seas....
Ok. Thx.
👍 any time bud
Viral Film Displayer
Kind of funny that this kicks in the day before an inauguration.
Conveniently just in time for Trump to blame it on the Democrats even though he started the process during his previous term.
Not funny, a deliberate decision by the legislature in order to safeguard it from whoever was going to win the election (since it was set before the election).
There goes my plan to sell jailbroken iPhones to zoomers.
Could you not access with a VPN?
Access what? There is nothing to access.
That’s nice of them. I bet Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t do that.
Pretty sure they're both required to do that by law. I've downloaded all my Facebook data a few times
True, but I doubt they’d put the effort into making it easy for someone to download it in the message.
I don't know about twitter, but its very easy to download all of your data from Facebook. I did it yesterday in preparation for closing my account. Account->Settings&Privacy->Your Information->Download Your Information.
That is a bit harder than “click here to download” on the front page.
You are the best kind of correct.
Can we ban nypost please?
Maybe I should get on tiktok. A social media app with Americans sounds wonderful
without*?
Also I think this only affects one country in America?
Yes, my bad. Without.
What exactly does that mean? I dont use tiktok, but I imagine it will still work if I already have it installed? Or is this a geoip restriction that doesn't affect Tor users? Or is it just not in the app stores?
Since it's not active, it looks to just be geo based as changing my VPN location makes it work.... This was my first time visiting the website and it was showing someone opening an egg he boiled for 2 hours... 💀
This logic doesn't follow. What does forcing a sale have to do with being "socialist like" ? TikTok has been diluted into a sales platform anyway.
Sauce
This is the funniest thing about it all. ByteDance is mostly an American company with American & Singaporean executives, and the service is run on Oracle cloud services within the United States.
Socialist? Lol wut
Good we should be more invested in better apps like redNOTE.
RedNote is just another corporate social media platform, so I won’t gush over it. But it is exposing Burgerstanis to regular people in China, which is a positive. I have no idea how the RedNote’s owners are going to respond to this. For instance, how are they going to monetize an American audience? Or at least recoup the costs? I doubt they had a plan for this, because I don’t think anyone could have predicted it.
The US government will likely censor this app as well. I think this falls under the same law that TikTok does.
It's like trying to stop piracy. No matter how many app the government try to ban, new ones will appear
There does come a point where the inconvenience slowly moves the masses to other platforms. It's not that difficult to access the full internet in China with any data-only esim being unrestricted by default and many VPNs working just fine. But it's just difficult enough to do this that the masses don't. Piracy functions the same way, if piracy were truly broad in scale then it would be taken much more seriously.
I wouldn't be surprised if China locked out US users before the US even banned it. Chinese are already telling US users that they are saying things that DEFINITELY should not be said on the app.
Here's a little Nostradamus... "I had the most best chat with Xi. He told me that Americans are superior to the Chinese, so they don't want to see us on RedNote anymore. But don't worry, I told you I would save Tiktok... introducing Trump Talk"
A torrent of Western chauvinist trolls does seem inevitable, if my experience as an Lemmy mod is any indication.
Personally, I suspect the bigger problem for their platform will be handling the contrasting values of Western social media norms against their own.
Even sinophobic reactionaries have been pointing out for years that "[Douyin] Chinese TikTok is Wholesome, American TikTok is Corrupting our Youths!" with product influencers/grifters, rampant sexualization up to and including pornography, etc., albeit the reactionaries are interpreting the difference from a conspiratorial moral-panic viewpoint claiming it's weaponization by The Chinese Government to corrode Western society, rather than the difference being that the US TikTok is social media with liberalist freedoms combined with the capitalist pursuit of profit above society, and is in line with the content on Xitter, reddit and other familiar social media.
The point being, that people rise to the top of TikTok through sexual suggestion, flashing symbols of wealth and other normalized habits which I've heard are banned on Lil'RedBook (which sounds like a great decision!).
I think it's even better to not use these kind of 'social media' apps.
But what do all these TikTok users need to do suddenly? Talk to each other face to face? Doing something useful in live? Help?
You are typing on a computer / phone right now on another social media platform, probably not the time to feel superior.
Social media's quality and harm lie on a spectrum, it's not just black and white. Text discussion on a forum is way different from the average TikTok experience.
Books are ruining the youth - 1700s
it's that damn opera.
Algorithm driven social media is different, it just is. There's a boy who cried wolf element here which is unfortunate, but that doesn't mean wolves don't exist.
I agree, but the OP referenced none of that.
What is the point of this reply
But the fediverse is better right ;)? They can't even ban it haha
Youre on lemmy, specifically a small community within a small community. Can't you see the irony?
I did forget to add /s
Na, Instagram and YouTube have short form videos now.