Pakistan bans TikTok over ‘immoral and indecent’ videos
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Belt-and-Road/Squeezed-by-...
Tiktok's international success is basically an accident, not one planned and supported by the government. Bytedance's founder is (or at least, was) even a pro-US guy, having publicly made pro-US statements in China.
China didn't do much after India banned a whole boatload of apps and investors.
The Indian nationalists have been dreaming up such a situation since basically forever (so long as Pakistanis were willing to give up that whole pesky Islam thing), but let's just say that current relations aren't necessarily cozy. How would such a situation change?
> US$300 billion was estimated to have been financed via public and publicly guaranteed debt.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3093218/b...
It would be different if the payments had been conditional on doing whatever the Chinese government wants, but most of the lending up to 2016 was made with little oversight (which is why the sum is so high) and only after several high-profile project failures (e.g. the port of Hambantota, where after a debt-for-equity swap, a Chinese consortium is stuck operating it to try recoup the construction costs), the criteria for issuing new loans were made more strict, similar to those of other institutions like the World Bank.
The bitter lesson for the Chinese development finance industry is that "publicly guaranteed debt" is not very guaranteed when a new government comes to power every few years and wants to renegotiate the terms of agreements made with the previous government.
"Laos set to cede majority control of its national power grid to China to service Belt and Road debts"
https://asiatimes.com/2020/09/laos-the-latest-china-debt-tra...
As an analogy, consider a bank giving someone a loan to build a house. In case of default, they'll repossess the house to recoup some of the amount.
Does this mean it's a good idea for a bank to give huge loans to people who they know won't be able to pay it back, so that they'll get the house? Obviously not! Repossession only avoids losing the full amount of the loan; the bank is still making a loss overall.
Laos ceding majority ownership of the power grid to the Chinese company that built it only means that the infrastructure investment isn't as profitable as expected (otherwise they could just use the profits to service the loan) and they're cutting their losses.
"We're more than happy to provide the necessary grid updates, but we're going to need to see some reciprocation, maybe sign that military base lease we asked for?"
They could've made the exact same demand the first time, but what they actually did was more like
"We're more than happy to provide the necessary grid updates, just pay the money back later, okay?"
And then Laos decided to renegotiate the agreement instead...
In the second situation, they can say no to the money and be no worse off.
This is interesting because Pakistan is very scared of highlighting atrocities on uighur muslims by China, so its now going against their main investor. Following Indias path but for different reasons.
https://m.tiktok.com/v/6880901448872234245.html
Make a video about disaffected military enlistees go viral on an app filled with impressionable young teens and it’ll discourage them enlisting in the future. Then the algorithm drip feeds them more anti-American content until they become more jaded about the country as a whole.
There’s certainly a discussion to be had about the way the U.S. treats its service members, but I just don’t trust TikTok being the impetus of it.
How dare they try and counteract the billions of dollars the US military has spent making sure everyone "supports the troops" and convincing teens enlisting is a heroic act.
Basically every complaint I hear about Tik Took is that it opens a path to oppose the omnipresent US propaganda. While I'd prefer getting rid of the propaganda wholesale, I don't understand the strong objection to a Chinese source while showing no concern for the US source.
It seems you misspelled "ingerence" with a lot of words.
Even for the absurdly autistic anti-US enthusiasts among us, no one in their right mind sides with the Chinese regime on anything at all, specially human rights.
If the Chinese regime has you in their crosshairs, which I remind you is right now engaged in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign, you better believe they do not have your best interests in mind at all.
If we applied that logic to the US we'd ignore everything they have to say about camps in Xinjiang (which Chinese nationals with views that are a mirror image of yours usually do).
They are wrong. It boggles the mind how anyone refused to understand this. Talk about cutting the nose to spite the face.
> we applied that logic to the US (...)
Putting the blatant whataboutism aside, if you were trying to be honest then you'd be complaining that no one had the right to meddle in anyone else's affairs.
But no, to you having a totalitarian and extensively oppressive regime like the Chinese one, which I remind you is right now executing a blatant ethnic cleansing campaign that would impress Nazi germany, is somehow awesome because it's sabotaging the US?
Their target are a people very similar to the Afghanis, which the US has spent twenty years killing far more of then the current Chinese body count. Those Chinese cross hairs don't seem much worse than the US ones.
>you better believe they do not have your best interests in mind at all.
Neither does the US propaganda machine, encouraging me to enlist is far more dangerous to me personally.
There have been few, if any, improvements on the user side of Facebook since inception. All their attention is focused on driving engagement and advertising revenue.
It's easy to find anyone to have any opinion you want.
The issues is the legitimacy of the popularity, targets, the censorship of opposing claims etc. etc..
It's easy to see how many press outlets bend the truth to suit their narrative, now imagine how far that could be bent by a foreign actor.
'Media' in it's classical forms is effectively a protected industry, it's less evident in the US, but it's de-facto true.
TikTok content is all over the place - some of it is surely going to be problematic and those things can spike. Most things that are 'taboo' attract considerable attention, and are likely to be promoted by attention-based algorithms.
In particular, I've seen a lot of young girls advertising their personal porn pages. I don't so much have a problem with that legally ... but I certainly have concerns about normalizing sex work among our 18 year olds. We actually do curate content out of social concerns etc. - it's why you don't see 'porn' on CNN, but if you want to get it, of course you can in a free society.
In fact, it wasn't until a few years ago that I even learned of the 1872 context, thanks to a second-world remake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmilla
Teenagers on TikTok believe that the things are of real people giving real stories, as they likely are. But the sense of popularity and constant repetition gives a false narrative of a vocal minority that likely isn't real, but is impossible to verify, except that the powers that be (being the Chinese government) are allowed to manipulate the recommendations for or against whatever the content is going to be.
Of course I suppose that infringement is sometimes justifiable. Obviously free expression has limits and we do have probably-constitutional laws against foreign propaganda. But the government can't just ban a book because it was by a foreigner, thankfully.
Nietzsche was prescient about the interwebs: "... if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
Detim to vide fit, fit vide to oso. (while you watch the feed, the feed watches you.)
I have mostly seen extremely stupid videos on TikTok and get amazed how people make this stuff.
There’s jokes about there being different TikToks based on this. Like “gay TikTok”, “farmer TikTok”, etc. As a point of reference, TikTok for the occasional time I use it will be a mixture of:
- farming / horses / archery
- construction workers and mechanics either doing really sketchy stuff or providing really useful stuff
- two strippers who tell funny/cringey stories from work (I don’t follow them, they just keep showing up and telling ridiculous stories, which I listen to, which reinforces The Algorithm)
Bonus Scyth: https://d30womf5coomej.cloudfront.net/c/d4/0cb93d1b-dc27-43d... (The bow carrier is a thing because stringing a 25 lb bow from the saddle works, but stringing a recurve is not so trivial. She doesn't have a thumb ring, but I don't know if the artist knows any better than I do by whom and when those were used on the steppe.)
If you make a new profile on tiktok (or just download the app) you will see a few women in borderline pornographic videos. That's all it took for me to remove the app, which means I did not give the app much time to learn about my tastes.
1. bun in a watermelon swing.
2. dogs in headscarves listening to something bollywood-like
3. a train (with unusual horn, or maybe that's just a train-horn sounding soundtrack)
4. someone playing with a horizontally wiping sampler
5. someone pretending to demonstrate internet connectivity in different countries. (if true, albania is worse than turkey?)
of which the only indecency I can think of is "representational art" and I guess people who care about that surf with lynx.
====
At a stretch, the best I can do is view #1 and think "My anaconda don't want none / Unless you've got buns, hun." and even that fails due to the singular, not plural, bun.
Incidentally, was it from HN that I learned about the very small-audience potential nightclub use of the International Code of Signals?
Foxtrot: I am disabled; communicate with me. (aka The Sorority Mating Call, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737386 )
Quebec: My vessel is healthy
Tango: I am engaged in pair trawling
One might even imagine conversations, along the lines of Wuthering Heights by semaphore:
beginning of the evening
A) Yankee, Zulu, Kilo: I am dragging my anchor. I require a tug. I wish to communicate with you.
B) November, Xray: Negative. Stop carrying out your intentions and watch for my signals.
end of the evening
B) Papa: All hands report on board. Putting out to sea.
A) Charlie: Affirmative.
at B's apartment
B) Mike Alfa Bravo: I request you to make rendezvous in position indicated.
A) Alfa: Diver down.
B) Golf: I require a pilot.
A) Charlie: Affirmative.
B) Hotel, Sierra: I have a pilot on board. I am operating astern propulsion.
after the walk of shame
A) India Tango, Alfa November: I am on fire. I need a doctor.
Bonus wooden ships: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24301933
You basically followed the tracks of the thought process of some vatniks here in Russia who believe that there is no censorship in Russia because public TV channels show erotics and gore here. The idea that if somebody has power of censorship they will necessary use it for public good is absurd.
Regardless of "strategy", algorithmic content delivery is going to be used for propaganda, period. What's really fascinating is it kind of happened over night, when Instagram and Twitter were updated to not display content in chronological order. Personally, I took for granted how much bigger than a "UX change" this was.
Shouldn't Tiktok follow the local laws of the user's country? And if so, doesn't that mean that, if we reject censorship on ideological grounds, that Tiktok should allow all content permitted by local laws, rather than a subset of it?
This is the premise of Arthur C. Clarke's short story, "I Remember Babylon" (which was first published in Playboy in 1960).
In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7xo7rtSwwI&t=1615 (warning for the rural US, or for rural PK: female nipples) I don't know much of what the TV commentor is on about with regard to the French Quarter, but I'm pretty sure I heard "exploitation" and "bourgeois" in there.
Thanks for the local colour. Is the Tulane Card still accepted for drive-thru daquiris?
Edit: from wikipedia "Garrison explains that cover stories were circulated in an attempt to blame the killing on the Cubans and the Mafia but he blames the conspiracy to kill the president firmly on the CIA who wanted to continue the Cold War." I don't know about CIA specifically (nor do I know the Mafia be completely distinct from them), but there is the coincidence that Kennedy and Khrushchev, having averted global thermonuclear war together, soon after were both cancelled.
Edit2: as long as I'm already thinking of conspiracy theories, sometime I'll have to rewatch Cool Hand Luke to see if a valid retcon would be that Boss Godfrey doesn't have much to say because his name (in northern italy, where he served under Karl Wolff) was Marco Gottifredi, and he changed it when he escaped down a ratline at the end of the war to the US south. But he's laconic because his english still isn't so good.
I don't remember if the distinction was ever explicitly in there or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if Taunton aims for the Page Three level while Fowler aims for a more ambiguous "Does she... or doesn't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure."
(for Fowler's attributed copy, anyway. We know their whisper campaign material includes dirty limericks: https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1952-06/Galaxy_195... )
I've only used tiktok once for like 10 minutes just to see why everyone was talking about it. I also don't often use facebook, so my experience may be somewhat biased.
I know it's possible to curate the IG feed, but in my experience going on the "search" page (or whatever it's called, the one with the magnifying glass) I'm bombarded with scantly clad women. I don't follow anyone who posts pictures even remotely related to this.
But they still always get the odd "indecent" post.