Comment by TSiege | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TSiege | Hacker News Reader

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[Sort of off topic] While I don't like that Tiktok has close ties to the CCP and I can see the see the potential security threat it poses with manipulated social media trends and spying on it's users. I'm starting to second guess the idea of banning it. At least without a viable replacement.

My stance is this, most of the big names coming out for a ban are either conservative leaning institutions or just plain conservative. FBI and Marco Rubio. (I'm old enough to remember a rogue FBI branch pressuring the FBI director to release a scathing report on Hilary Clinton just before the election)

I think TikTok is filling a void for Democrat messaging that Republicans/Conservatives have ie: Fox, conservative youtubers, breitbart, etc. The left is doesn't have this and TikTok has been useful for sharing concise information in a repetitive and engaging fashion. I have a hunch it's a large reason why we had such big youth turnout this midterm election cycle.

TL;DR: Ban TikTok when there's a good home grown replacement. Or Nationalize it's US/Western wing and spin it off as a separate entity

PREFACE: I am politically neutral. You can all fight it out for yourselves, it's fun to watch.

> I think TikTok is filling a void for Democrat messaging that Republicans/Conservatives have ie: Fox, conservative youtubers, breitbart, etc. The left is doesn't have this

Fox/Breitbart -> The left has plenty of media outlets that pitch their side, like CNN.

Conservative Youtubers -> There's not a single liberal/democrat Youtuber? weird...

Not to mention that, up until it started imploding, Twitter (and Facebook to an extent) were both considered heavily left-leaning if not outright liberal. Saying that "the left doesn't have a way to get their message out" just feels outright dishonest to say.

*EDIT:* I had a long conversation with a good friend of mine about the distinctions between "liberal" and "left" here. I acknowledge that I was make an incorrect (and commonly dangerous) equivalence between the two of them, which makes the claim of "left" not having as much media outlet more true (though I would still argue that it's certainly not to the extreme extent suggested by the parent).

Cnn is not "the left", and if you identify as being right of it, then it might be time to abandon your claims at political neutrality.

It only takes a few seconds of googling to see all kinds of studies that cnn is consumed by Democrats more often than Republicans, and one does not have to be a Republican to understand that, contrary to what you seem to be implying.

Would you support banning it if it primarily was helping your political opponents?

I like how the story always comes down to private-government collusion in other countries bad.

While in the US policy has for decades been intentionally designed to stifle worker gains[0], tacitly a re-education program to rebuild the “essential worker base” of our society, to remember we best keep propping up our civic traditions never mind they’re as sacrosanct in any real terms as religious catechism and routines of worship; not at all.

There are other geometric patterns human agency could conceptually “draw upon the globe”. But the agency wealth creation hive mind is familiar with are to be taken as immutable.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...

MSN Messenger was my true first client. ICQ, YIM, AIM and the likes for those. My prediction of things for next generational of things:

    Skype turned into Teams
 
    MSN Messenger turned to Skype, 

    Discord will turn in to MSN

    Ventrilo/Mumble morphed in to Discord.

    TikTok will turn in to Discord

    ???? turns in to TikTok

>threat it poses with manipulated social media trends

;)

Imagine, for the sake of argument, that TikTok was a Russian app, banned by Russia in Russia, and was very popular with republicans.

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