- algo is a black box, and uncalibrated youtube makes my eyes bleed;
- own by the biggest spy on the planet, google, known for manipulating information, monopolistic behavior, participation in the worst gov programs (e.g: PRISM);
- impose American censorship rules to the entire world, and makes creators do inane cuts to fit some terrible metrics
Besides, the typical Tik Tok customer doesn't give a damn about those things. They didn't on facebook, insta, whatsapp, or whatever. They don't even know it's an issue, "have nothing to hide", don't care about privacy, power centralization, citizen spying and so on.
I see where you're coming from, but Youtube isn't nearly as opaque as Tiktok. You can actually search for videos on youtube, typically content is longer and has a higher production quality which reduces probability of doom-scrolling. As someone else mentioned, TikTok is intentionally designed to be addictive and gamified, much more so that youtube or facebook.
And, objectively speaking, the US government is far preferable to the CCP. The US has it's issues and has made mistakes in the past, the CCP is still putting Muslims in concentration camps and exercises regular authoritarian controll over it's citizens. Militarily, the US is allied with most EU powers (including France) and generally has good intentions for it's allies. China, on the other hand, finds itself on the outside of most alliances, and considering that even their own people are treated poorly, I can only imagine that their intentions for others are not positive.
American tech companies take your data and sell it to advertisers, I don't like it, but they do. The US government only accesses it if they have a reason to do so and subpoena the specific information needed. The Chinese government? I have no doubt that they're collecting data for much more nefarious purposes. Intelligence indicates that they've been improving their military forces massively in the last several decades. It wouldn't be hard for them to subtly start slipping in propaganda into the tiktok feeds of countries they intend to invade, and then they'll have local-national support.
I think it's easy to look at this and say objectively that it's worse. If Youtube or Facebook were owned by France or Germany I would hold the same belief that tiktok is worse. It's not fear of some mysterious "other", but fear of a proven enemy to freedom and human rights, China.
> The US government only accesses it if they have a reason to do so and subpoena the specific information needed
As Snowden revelations have shown, this is not the case.
> It wouldn't be hard for them to subtly start slipping in propaganda into the tiktok feeds of countries they intend to invade
Last time I checked, the USA were the number one warmonger in the world, sometimes by lying about WMD and going against the vote of the UN.
I'm not defending China, I do think Tiktok is a dictatorship honeypot, but the USA is only good to the USA. A cancer is worst than diabetes, but I still don't think diabetes is a good thing.
And google is only good to google.
I'm in the good graces of neither, being in Europe, and consider both as services that will try to get as much of me as possible when I use them. And the minute our interest are not aligned with theirs, they will bite us.
Fun fact, if you are not a US citizen, you have no 4th amendment rights against seizure of your data. No judge or legal process necessary beyond a blanket executive order.
> Militarily, the US is allied with most EU powers (including France)
Wouldn’t this be an argument for preferring TikTok over YouTube?
There is literally nothing China can do to me as long as I stay firmly in the West. On the other hand, I could very well be sold out by Google to the US government, which could easily have me extradited from the EU.
I mean if you want to foster anti-america content all you really need to do is leave TikTok alone. It’s my generation’s version of Tumblr only on a bigger scale. You don’t really need manipulation when the user-base skews young, activist, and unironically anti-capitalist.
Which I think is awesome personally but I get how some people will see all of that as huge red flags.
I mean the trope of colleges turning people into leftist hippie communists is older than my parents.
But K-12 in the US tries to hammer so much “so misleading it might as well be false” pro-America propaganda during exactly the age that kids are generally rebelling against anything authority tells them that’s it’s not all that surprising that during a major economic downturn that’s only benefiting those with capital that people would start to have a distaste for the system that produced this mess.
There’s something wild about being so liberal that people assume you’re conservative. I’m very much vaccinated and also upset that our government left the out most vulnerable people with $1400 and a thumbs up, fucked over out healthcare workers, pushed people back to work rather than give any meaningful assistance and put everyone at risk, did basically nothing to control housing costs all while the stock market posted record returns for already wealthy capital holders.
I just think it’s weird to attribute the things you are complaining about to ‘capitalism’, and that if you are going to make such broad statements, then it’s weird to claim there are no benefits to those ‘without capital’ when there plainly are.
I happen to also be critical of most of the things you are criticizing. Blaming ‘capitalism’ doesn’t seem to offer anything. The word has become interchangeable with ‘the bogeyman’.
In a lot of ways I don’t think that’s a totally unfair assessment. But “fuck capitalism” has become somewhat of a rallying phrase for people who are upset at a number of economic problems and their non-solutions that are largely underpinned by the mostly individualistic but fundamentally capitalist way of thinking that is both wildly held in the US in general but specifically held among those in power who are personally unaffected by the systems they create.
> underpinned by the mostly individualistic but fundamentally capitalist way of thinking that is both wildly held in the US in general but specifically held among those in power who are personally unaffected by the systems they create
I largely disagree with the first half of this, and agree with the second half. I think ‘individualism’ is a chimera and not a cause.
I do agree that Americans are generally more suspicious of the state than people in most other countries, but that’s to be expected given both the founding and history of the country, and the experiences of minorities.
On the other hand, the disconnectedness of those in power and the lack of solutions is definitely evident.
My dislike of ‘anti-capitalism’ is that is just a complaint, but without any solutions.
> There is literally nothing China can do to me as long as I stay firmly in the West.
There are numerous Uyghurs in the West who would disagree with your assessment given the harassments they have had to endure. This will only become worse as China continues to become more powerful.
Explaining these to the average person makes you seem like a conspiracy nut case.
No of some of the same people will go on about the illuminati controlling everything. But you talk specific companies or policies and you get an eye roll.
- algo is a black box, and uncalibrated youtube makes my eyes bleed;
- own by the biggest spy on the planet, google, known for manipulating information, monopolistic behavior, participation in the worst gov programs (e.g: PRISM);
- impose American censorship rules to the entire world, and makes creators do inane cuts to fit some terrible metrics
Besides, the typical Tik Tok customer doesn't give a damn about those things. They didn't on facebook, insta, whatsapp, or whatever. They don't even know it's an issue, "have nothing to hide", don't care about privacy, power centralization, citizen spying and so on.
So Tik Tok or something else doesn't matter.