TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

The TikTok War

353 pointsby migueldemouraalmost 5 years ago

37 comments

kpennellalmost 5 years ago
I&#x27;m not sure how I got sucked into Tiktok but I was quickly hooked. There&#x27;s something so refreshingly playful, authentic, and raw about so much Tiktok content compared to Instagram. Instagram (explore&#x2F;discovery) is generally pretty people with pretty things in pretty places. That was fun for a while but it&#x27;s just not that interesting after a while. I don&#x27;t need to see more pretty pictures of women doing yoga. I don&#x27;t need to see more pretty mountain bikes I can&#x27;t afford. I don&#x27;t need to see anymore drone shots of Milford Sound in New Zealand.<p>Tiktok, on the other hand, is playful, diverse, and interesting (at least my feed is). Once you start liking content, the feed completely changes from teenage lip sync videos or other teenager-oriented content into such a nice variety of content. I legitimately laugh my ass off or smile happily at so much of it. Other content teaches me about food, gardening, dancing, DIY, media theory, hiking alone, gender bending, etc. etc. The list goes on. Some of the videos delight me and others inform me.<p>Instagram, by contrast, just feels so bland now.
评论 #23832839 未加载
评论 #23832819 未加载
评论 #23833248 未加载
评论 #23832976 未加载
评论 #23832659 未加载
评论 #23834554 未加载
评论 #23832651 未加载
评论 #23834740 未加载
评论 #23837165 未加载
评论 #23833091 未加载
评论 #23833575 未加载
评论 #23832843 未加载
评论 #23833363 未加载
评论 #23832673 未加载
评论 #23834415 未加载
评论 #23833107 未加载
评论 #23833491 未加载
评论 #23832878 未加载
评论 #23832744 未加载
netcanalmost 5 years ago
This tiktok &quot;war&quot; is, ultimately, changing the way people politicians think about media tech.<p>With Twitter or Facebook, it&#x27;s a lot easier to dismiss the magnitude of their influence. After all, they&#x27;re not in business to influence politics. They just want to make tech &amp; sell ads and make money. They don&#x27;t care what becomes news, who wins elections etc. Benign commercial interests, that&#x27;s all<p>With tiktok and the chinese government&#x27;s explicit approach of combining public &amp; commercial interest... That argument falls apart. That and the fact that it is a foreign entity potentially affecting american politics.<p>Ultimately, the argument will swing back to FB &amp; such... hopefully.
评论 #23832745 未加载
评论 #23832679 未加载
评论 #23834952 未加载
评论 #23835180 未加载
jjuelalmost 5 years ago
I recently deleted TikTok from my phone. I didn&#x27;t have it for too long, and until the recent press I had no idea it was a Chinese app. Honestly, I understand companies will mine my data, but I have an issue with those companies being forced to submit my data to the Chinese government on a whim. And it was really all the same thing. People doing the same skits or dances. Most of which were just chicks doing it in bikinis to get more views and likes.
评论 #23833585 未加载
评论 #23833154 未加载
fossuseralmost 5 years ago
There’s a lot of false equivalence in these comments along with a focus on the app itself.<p>My worry is about CCP influence and their ability to both spread misinformation and at the same time suppress stories the party doesn’t like.<p>Easy current examples are the democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the sterilization going on in the Uyghur camps in China.<p>On Twitter you can talk about both things, on TikTok they will be shut down by the CCP and it’s set up in such a way that users wouldn’t even notice.<p>On Twitter you can also be critical of the USG.<p>That’s the risk to me, that the CCP turns down the knobs on speech they dislike and the public is too focused on dance videos to notice.<p>It’s an even greater risk to people like Joshua Wong, not only would his speech be suppressed on TikTok, but the company would also hand over whatever personal or location data they had on him to the government itself. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Joshua_Wong" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Joshua_Wong</a>)<p>The CCP should not be stewards of the services we use.
评论 #23833511 未加载
azatrisalmost 5 years ago
I absolutely love using TikTok, but would give it up in a heartbeat for a Western replacement.<p>It has absolutely brought more positivity into my life. I am specifically feeding the algorithm with this intent and I get what I asked for. It is a psychological tool.
评论 #23832697 未加载
评论 #23832569 未加载
评论 #23832581 未加载
评论 #23833527 未加载
评论 #23832578 未加载
chvidalmost 5 years ago
As an European I am happy that someone is finally breaking the American monopoly on social media.<p>It just feels wrong only being surveilled by the NSA.
评论 #23832747 未加载
评论 #23837170 未加载
评论 #23832759 未加载
eclipsetheworldalmost 5 years ago
Why is TikTok allowed to gain market share in Western countries? China banned Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc. while Chinese companies such as Baidu, Sina Weibo, WeChat were able to capture the entire Chinese market share.<p>It seems that companies not adhering to censorship cannot expand into China, however, Chinese companies adhering to censorship (e.g. TikTok) are able to expand into Western countries. Isn&#x27;t this anti-competitive?
评论 #23833383 未加载
评论 #23833499 未加载
评论 #23833397 未加载
评论 #23836034 未加载
评论 #23835588 未加载
amadeuspagelalmost 5 years ago
Interesting that only India&#x27;s decision to ban TikTok made that possible in the US. Shows how polarized the US is. If one side suggested banning TikTok, the other side would immidiately defend it, but India banning it can bring it into the conversation in a way that doesn&#x27;t force everyone to adopt a view on it reflexively.
Pandabobalmost 5 years ago
I guess the sentiment that TikTok should be sold is gaining ground. It&#x27;s pretty clear from a regulatory perspective that Facebook won&#x27;t be allowed to buy it and probably Google neither.<p>The app also seems to be kind of a wonky fit to Amazons, Microsofts or Apples portfolio (although Amazon does own twitch, so who knows).<p>I can&#x27;t make a solid argument for it, but I wouldn&#x27;t rule out either Netflix or Disney making a bid for TikTok. Both companies are great with video, and I think the current CEO of TikTok is the former COO of Disney. IDK.
评论 #23832680 未加载
评论 #23833272 未加载
russli1993almost 5 years ago
Tiktok&#x27;s parent company, bytedance is incorporated in Cayman islands. It has a Chinese subsidiary operating Douyin in China , and a US subsidiary operating Tiktok in the US. The Chinese national intelligence law is applied to the Chinese subsidiary but not the parent because the parent is not incorporated in China. Hence the US subsidiary is not subjected to Chinese law. If Chinese government demands US data and Bytedance&#x27;s Chinese subsidiary refuses, the government can shut down the Chinese subsidiary, but the Cayman island parent will still operate. Hence Chinese government has no power over the US subsidiary. Author says that Chinese values and American values are absolutely opposing and because of that Tiktok&#x27;s algorithms and product design could undermine American values either consciously or unconsciously. Right now Bytedance&#x27;s US subsidiary is managed by Americans, hires US based engineers, and the content moderation team is staffed with Americans. The goal should be that Tiktok and Douyin will be separate, design, operated and moderated separately. This could be strengthened by having American management at Bytedance parent, and have Bytedance go public and have American board directors. I hope that whatever international fears about Tiktok, the regulatory body&#x2F;government should make list of rules for Tiktok. Tiktok should be given a chance to defend its positions, and ability to comply with the rules. We should not just straight out ban tiktok, like &quot;bam, after today, its removed from app stores everywhere&quot;. that is not in the spirit of rule of law.
评论 #23839816 未加载
评论 #23840389 未加载
评论 #23849386 未加载
评论 #23903989 未加载
rhackeralmost 5 years ago
As the instagram teenagers that made it popular are now 22 - 25, it&#x27;s their turn to see a new generation overtake what is cool. Don&#x27;t worry you guys will see them in 10 years sad-facing when BlopChop is popular with the now 5 year olds...
igammaraysalmost 5 years ago
It&#x27;s interesting that we are beginning to realize the paradoxical nature of &quot;free speech&quot;. It&#x27;s unfortunate that <i>free speech cannibalizes itself</i>. Since there are other powers with significant influence who can enforce their speech protectionism, it necessitates a response of the same kind, or risks collapsing free speech entirely in favor of an opponent. It&#x27;s a power struggle, plain and simple.
caddiealmost 5 years ago
i personally enjoy seeing young teenagers recording dancing videos on the beach while prior to tiktok they used to just seat down, heads down on their phone, absent, non-existent.
评论 #23832605 未加载
kbensonalmost 5 years ago
&gt; I can’t emphasize this point enough: one of the gravest errors made by far too many people in the U.S. is taking an exceptionally self-centered view of U.S.-China relations, where everything is about what the U.S. says and does, while China is treated like an NPC. Indeed, it is quite insulting to China, a great nation with a history far longer than that of the United States.<p>Culturally, China has a very long history. Governmentally, which is what&#x27;s being talked about here because we&#x27;re discussing trade, they&#x27;re less than a century old. We should expect the ruling government of China to behave as they have in the past, not as previous governments have.
codekansasalmost 5 years ago
An under-appreciated aspect of this &quot;war&quot; is how bad US companies have been at building ML-first products. ByteDance in particular is just fantastic at it - their products feels designed with the algorithm in mind, as if everyone involved in the development has some understanding of machine learning. This exposes some weaknesses with existing social media platforms that were built before the deep learning boom, as he says in the article. It is probably worthwhile for American innovators to think about what otherwise-impenetrable areas this could expose.
duxupalmost 5 years ago
The scale of information available to an app is potentially huge.<p>Thus they&#x27;re automatically involved in some sort of information warfare.<p>I guess there&#x27;s two options, either by default the the ecosystem doesn&#x27;t allow for them to have that information ... or they&#x27;re in play for these types of things.<p>I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s any other options...
haecceityalmost 5 years ago
&gt; What is increasingly clear, though, is that China’s insistence that the West ignore the country’s “internal affairs” is a sentiment that is not reciprocated; the list of Western companies bullied by China for Western content is long and growing, the country is flooding Twitter and Facebook with coronavirus propaganda, and is leveraging WeChat to spread misinformation and to surveil the Chinese diaspora.<p>None of those are &quot;internal affairs&quot; to any Western country. Those are international companies that have an interest in not pissing off their cash cow. If they poured money into the Cascadia independence movement then that would America and Canada&#x27;s internal affairs. But the only party doing that is the State Department and NED.<p>There&#x27;s a lot of inaccuracies in this article. He seems to think knowledge in tech translates to knowledge in other things. Pity.
nindalfalmost 5 years ago
&gt; the service censored #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd<p>I feel like this claim isn&#x27;t well substantiated. TikTok claims it was a bug where 2 billion+ views were shown as 0 views. That specific number - the limit on a 32 bit signed integer, makes me think that it was a bug.
pastakingalmost 5 years ago
Maybe a correction: The article mentions that Amazon asked its employees to delete the app. But Amazon later retracted that decision.
评论 #23833999 未加载
here4Ualmost 5 years ago
I wonder how true Thompson&#x27;s assertion about a war of ideology between China and western values is.<p>Are there any examples of TikTok influencing thinking in a pro-Chinese way via algorithm tuning or direct curation?
greyhairalmost 5 years ago
I am just going to repeat the best link here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sinocism.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sinocism.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;engineers-of-the-soul-ideology-in</a><p>Wow.
raphlinusalmost 5 years ago
Relevant to the topic of political propaganda and in particular conspiracy theories, the leftist blogger Digby wrote a good post [1] critical of TikTok even though she was sympathetic to the punking of the Trump rally in Tulsa. In particular, she cites reporting from the Daily Beast that Pizzagate conspiracy theories are circulating widely on the platform. I&#x27;m not endorsing this reporting as fact, but do think it is good food for thought. In any case, the platform seems to be very poorly optimized for critical thinking, which is fine for &quot;laughter and dancing&quot; but less fine in other domains.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digbysblog.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;tiktok-isnt-the-answer-folks&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digbysblog.net&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;tiktok-isnt-the-answer-folks&#x2F;</a>
spinachalmost 5 years ago
It is hardly just Tiktok policing content with an agenda. Twitter, Youtube, Reddit are particularly bad if you are conservative or have gender critical ideas.<p>Reddit recently banned a ton of subreddits that are simply critical of the idea that men can <i>literally</i> become women (they say it&#x27;s to stop hate, but they leave up violent porn subs and other subs that hate women). Even subreddits like PCOS - a very serious condition that only females have - ran into trouble because they aren&#x27;t inclusive enough with their language. Someone got suspended on twitter for saying only females get cervical cancer (this is apparently hate speech), Meghan Murphy got banned from Twitter for using the pronoun &#x27;he&#x27; about Yaniv about a profile of his when he was presenting as a man. People get their videos taken down on youtube for &quot;misgendering&quot; people, or demonetized for not having the correct opinion.<p>American companies are absolutely policing content to their own political agenda.
评论 #23835032 未加载
评论 #23834817 未加载
评论 #23835047 未加载
评论 #23835002 未加载
评论 #23835321 未加载
评论 #23835165 未加载
ausjkealmost 5 years ago
actually not just tiktok, others like wechat, taobao, all the eCommerce, messengers, USA is behind China by a few years these days.<p>in the early days they cloned and studied, now they actually took over and Facebook etc barely can even catch up
babeshalmost 5 years ago
There seems to be a concerted effort from both China and the US to create sides. It feels like a new Cold War is looming.<p>Stratechery is playing on one side. The reality is that US companies are quite willing to censor and manipulate information as well.<p>Facebook and YouTube censored coronavirus information for the US government. Facebook is fine with right wing manipulation. These propaganda efforts by US companies affect people from other countries.<p>Both sides are just trying to amass and maintain power. The CCP needs to control information to maintain power. The US is a consortium of entities amassing money and power and likewise tries to destroy institutions preventing that. I bet if you look inside the CCP, you would likewise see multiple groups vying for power.<p>If you follow Stratechery’s logic, then non US countries should likewise ban Facebook and YouTube.<p>The more ethical solution would be worldwide standards on censorship.
k__almost 5 years ago
I don&#x27;t see the problem.<p>TikTok will be banned. SV will do a US based replacement. All will be good.
ngcc_hkalmost 5 years ago
Tik Tok success as a technology is well argued by the author. That should be copied and cloned and compete as MANY not as one.<p>That is this onesness that I try to argue. This is this oneness that get China and the strategy missing this part of China the problem.<p>Obviously I would be baised in the sense that the author just gave up my whole place and my 2m+ liberty loving followers. U people, HK people, TW people ... is just part of China, we can just dump them (or you can just dump us) because we belong to a &quot;ONE&quot;. The whole idea of human rights are about individual not about the rights of nation over you or us in Hong Kong. If you let the oneness grow and ignore that one is evil, you die with us because the evil will expand. HK is the front of the ideological fight. Not sure why the author not noted that the play against HK is a play against the promise and contract by the less powerful China to the future. Read Deng speech in UN, you can see there is a promising China. But look at today you know nothing in the one is preventing it. The West look otherwise by letting China grow so powerful it is near a stat that cannot fail. The west has to feed the hand that is going to kill them. Just cut the tie is not enough. A more aggressive way of engaging is needed. Otherwise the world is just another South China Seas.<p>China has been asserted itself in Internet (speech by Xin please read), UN, WTO, WHO, ... etc. They have number on their side in the past. Now they have money, they have the language (so many good English speakers in the elite and their children), ... There could be millions inside the west and trillion in the bank. It is like Soviet Union evolve and attack USA soil from underneath.<p>But the analysis is so well that seems ok? That we have to deal with China as one. It is partially yes and partially No. The key problem is what we call one-ness of Chinese thinking. You using that you lost already. What America is great and Europe in a sense has built-in immunity is that there are individual (or even the extreme right has the club concept). You do not analysis a world as a world. A world is nothing but its individual and its links among individual. Now the problem when you think the whole China is a whole you have to fight against then you got yourselves a long term problem.<p>I said long term is from time to time China would group itself together into one big nasty empire. The best is when it is weak (like in Sung Dynasty) when the culture of unity does not break human backs. But once they are big and as oneness is built into the pyshce they just go ahead to transform all barbarians and uncivilised into one of them. There is no stop. Nothing internal to the Chinese philosophy has many in mind. Everyone has to be saved is what they think, and it is what ultimately you got.<p>What you need to do is to ensure the individual spirit and liberty mind to survive inside. So the original promise that a great China contribute as part of many, not force its way as one into the world. Just cut into two would not help. HK, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the whole Asian countries are those many.<p>Not one less! Not just one!<p>:-) ok back to my debugging of the solitaire of C. gdb tracing of pointer structure is hard, isn&#x27;t it. From 6502 (by guessing), 370 (XA to ESA extension and control block) to now; still you always deal with dump. Sigh. Back to my cave even though the world is collapsing, that you can hack as an individual and do what you enjoy is more important. And that is why this all about. We should have more or one TikTok.
Schnitzalmost 5 years ago
&quot;the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished&quot;<p>This is BS, the economic system in China is in no way Marxist, nor is it going in that direction. It&#x27;s worse, lol. This sounds like someone is simply rehashing propaganda he heard somewhere that was intended to either smear Marx or China or both.
评论 #23834705 未加载
norswapalmost 5 years ago
Nitpick, but this man doesn&#x27;t really seem to understand what &quot;Marxism&quot; means.
blackrockalmost 5 years ago
--yawn--<p>Another dude advocating for the suppression of a foreign government. Been there, done that, seen it all, happened before, will happen again.<p>To think that a little app that promotes a bunch of videos of kids acting silly, is a national security threat, is ridiculous.<p>All you need for counter-evidence, is to look at Twitter, Facebook, and all the American news media sites and outlets. They routinely and actively brainwash the population, with the same repeated bombardment of information, even though they claim to be independent reporting agencies.<p>In fact, all the American news agencies, are increasing the aggressiveness of the rhetoric, and appear to be drumming up the mood for war against China.<p>You, as Americans, should be very disturbed by this. Because, if the United States engages into a war with China, then it is you, and your children, that will face the brunt of the violence of war. The American elites, and their children, will be safely kept away from any of that violence; and they will be benefiting financially from it all, while you and your children die in the Pacific Ocean.<p>If you want to ban TikTok, then just ban them. Just say, that you don&#x27;t want any Chinese media presence on American airwaves. Simple as that. Begin your own censoring of the internet.<p>Don&#x27;t bother with making some far-fetched reasoning that some fictitious enemy is out to get you. This is, in fact, what scares Americans the most - the creation of some fictitious bogeyman.
Asad445almost 5 years ago
Tiktok is changing the mindset of our generation
评论 #23832460 未加载
actuatoralmost 5 years ago
Ben is absolutely right and something needs to be done to fight for the values of liberalism, democracy etc we hold dear but I don&#x27;t see how this will happen. The world seems more divided than ever. Just 2-3 countries unilaterally acting on these issues isn&#x27;t going to make a difference, how I wish there were strong leaders in some of the nations who knew how to work well for those ideals in the long term together with others.<p>Also, this is not just about Tiktok as Ben mentioned. When American corporations like NBA start censoring things on their own soil, it is beyond reprehensible.
评论 #23833062 未加载
评论 #23832638 未加载
euixalmost 5 years ago
In the last century the prevailing line the U.S. was that the U.S. would change China through economic engagement, I think what is really going to happen is China is going to change the U.S.<p>Mainly in the sense that in order to adapt to the competitive threat from China the U.S. has to become more state capitalism and industrial policy guided.<p>Using strong government to guide industrial policy, fend off or cripple foreign competitors, enact infrastructure. These are the standard tools in China.<p>As for China, I wonder in the long term if this is not pioneering a completely new mode of the human species. What is the logical end of total surveillance and censorship? Eventually unifying every person into the mind of the state until individualism dissolves and we are all subsumed into a common entity.<p>Maybe I am speculating too far but if you could have everyone carry an implant from birth wired to a single network then you could achieve the common science fiction trope of an unified collective conscious. Maybe even the leading Party theoreticians haven&#x27;t even sought about it this far yet.
mchusmaalmost 5 years ago
Good article, but I do feel disagree strongly with this statement:<p>&quot;while I mourn the end of a free and vibrant Hong Kong that I have had the pleasure of visiting on multiple occasions, I am unmoved by complaints about China’s promised adherence to the Basic Law; that was an agreement imposed on China by a colonial power, and Hong Kong is unquestionably a Chinese city, ultimately subject to Chinese law.&quot;<p>Hong Kong is a unique place, with a unique history, unique government, and more. Yes a Chinese imperial government leased land to British under duress. That imperial government no longer exists, period. The British gave it to a different government under clear terms that were violated. So where does that put Hong Kong? I think you can argue a bunch of different positions, but not that it is unquestionably under authoritarian Chinese communist rule.<p>This is disregarding the liberal traditional opinion in the West (and Locke, etc ) that people have universal rights period, and that governments that violate those rights are not valid governments.<p>I think there are stronger philosophical positions to take, including that Hong Kong should be Independent by right, and that China violated it&#x27;s agreements with the citizens of Hong Kong.
评论 #23838034 未加载
crazygringoalmost 5 years ago
This piece is ridiculous. Mainly:<p>&gt; <i>What matters more in an ideological war, though, is influence, and that is why I do believe that ByteDance’s continued ownership of TikTok is unacceptable.</i><p>What&#x27;s implied but unsaid here is that somehow the CCP is going to fill TikTok with political propaganda that... a bunch of teens are going to somehow become influenced by? Sorry, but that&#x27;s just completely far-fetched. <i>Facebook</i> is something to be concerned about, with people sharing political stories, memes, etc. But <i>TikTok</i>? A bunch of funny videos? There&#x27;s nothing that could be further from ideology.<p>&gt; <i>Perhaps the most powerful argument against taking any sort of action is that we aren’t China, and isn’t blocking TikTok something that China would do?</i><p>Yes, this is precisely why we <i>don&#x27;t</i> need to do this. We&#x27;re better than China. Things like freedom of speech, democracy, and the free market set a moral example to the world. Once we start censoring things, we lose that moral leadership. (And sure you can argue all you want about our declining moral leadership and the state of our democracy, but let&#x27;s not make it <i>even worse</i>, shall we?)<p>&gt; <i>If China is on the offensive against liberalism not only within its borders but within ours, it is in liberalism’s interest to cut off a vector that has taken root precisely because it is so brilliantly engineered to give humans exactly what they want.</i><p>Isn&#x27;t <i>every</i> product trying to be brilliantly engineered to give customers exactly what they want? All this boils down to is, it&#x27;s a good app, so let&#x27;s kill it. Again, totally opposite the American values of competition, the free market, and consumers.<p>Sorry, but there is absolutely zero logic in this analysis.
评论 #23834046 未加载
flattonealmost 5 years ago
Tiktok could offer to pay your mortgage im still confused and disgusted people use it
ngcc_hkalmost 5 years ago
Save yourselves, please!<p><pre><code> A message from Hong Kong.</code></pre>