Nepal bans TikTok and says it disrupts social harmony

Why banning it then? Don’t US/EU have power to force educational content and time limits? This “oh, all feeds are bad, we should think of maybe banning them all” will lead nowhere 100% of times. Feels like China absolutely doesn’t even have to do anything bad because the US don’t know what they want.

> The "export" version is literally designed to make you retarded.

Then why does it have so much philosophy content that can reveal the naivete of the many comments like this one reads about "TikTok"?

There is a setting to enable the STEM feed in the export version. Try not to be an ableist.

Why can't we restrict TikTok to the same content only in the west? It's just a matter of regulation, we know it's possible because it's how it's done in China. Now think about it, is it really China here to blame for our regulations?

Not a comfortable disclosure, but it matches your observation. That’s what I expect from a pics and gifs site. Tags allow me to filter out material I find repulsive or boring (specific comic authors, topics, memes, “big …”, onlyfans bs, politics). Serious sites don’t do tag filters, they are either non-profit or all business with ads and tracking. I’d filter 98% of the internet if I could.

I mean even HN employs that pattern (though not necessarily intentionally). Whenever you refresh the page you have a random reward in the form of gain/loss of karma or comment replies.

Should we ban HN?

How is this evolutionarily(?) justified?

Are rewards in nature more valuable if the outcome is not certain? Or is that a trait that stuck to humans because people who try again and again learn better?

On the long term, anthropological warfare is a clever idea... but it's probably a little too optimistic to think you can implement with just one app. The CCP/tiktok hysteria feels overblown to me - public education is what constituents should feel concerned about.

We have heard about it.... you're just not getting your news from sources that mention it. There are multiple things they allow on American TikTok that they do not allow on Chinese TikTok. They allow these things because they know it helps with social decay in America.

Are you joking or are you just completely uneducated on this topic?

There's been several outlets that have dived into the difference between the chinese version of TikTok and the western versions.

Also, they can affect public sentiment with slight nudges and those would be completely undetectable.

I made a new account last week – totally blank, new device everything. The default FYP so far is all anti-Jewish – not anti-Israel, anti-Jewish – and far left-wing anti-American stuff. it intersperse with really low brow celebrity stuff.

Pretty intense stuff. Lots of “Jews run the world, and hate you” stuff that reporting doesn’t seem to work on. Lots of “America is a nightmare place” aimed at teenagers.

Pretty sure thats the CCP whipping up internal unrest here.

Shit I’ve had youtube try to brainwash me. I clicked on one lecture, that I watched and thought was generally good, if not slightly contrarian. Turns out his later work was hugely influencial in the red pill nonsense. Needless to say, just watching this one lecture led my entire feed to be filled with red pill nonsense.

I have no doubt if I had clicked on similar content on tiktok I would have deluged with similar nonsense.

Show the one where the guy gets caught up in an obscure non-state approved religion, falls down on his luck, but the government steps in & sends him to a retreat to get better. Then he enjoys the rest of his life manufacturing goods in a factory as part of his rehabilitation.

They show what they wants to people. Seems extremely scary and suspicious to any parent with half a brain.

How about each public video is accessible but not in the algorithm scroll structure?

It's not banning media from a country though, it's banning an app that is country run and can select specific media to show you.

If you want to avoid a delusional world view, I think targeted social media is probably what you want to avoid.

Maybe if TikTok could only serve content sorted by newest, or if you get a direct link URL from someone else.

> Banning media from certain countries is exactly how you develop a delusional worldview and ironically become more susceptible to propaganda

You think banning propaganda machines from other countries makes you more susceptible to propaganda?

Hinduvta does not exist as a driving political force in Nepal. You are thinking of India. Nepal is secular albeit there is a small faction vying for power based on hindu ideologies but they are a very small portion of nepal politics. Again there is no communal flair that has entered into national discourse like we see in India or some ME countries. Nepal is pretty chill in that regards, surprisingly so given the whole country has multitudes of ethnic groups. There are still caste based incidents in remote areas but not so much in urban cores. Knowing the decisions the nincompoop leaders have done out of whim over the last decade or so I am fairly certain that this decision was also not done with due dilligence.

To be fair I worked for a startup who turned out to be doing exactly that in the UK.

Even Facebook has that vertical short video shit now spread among the other content.

I occasionally see a post from someone I follow. 90% of what’s in my feed is either and ad or “suggested for you”.

I only visit on mobile. I thought the middle film thing icon was to take your own photos/videos - because that’s what the center icon did on the YouTube app; the last time I had the app installed. Never occurred to me it’s a feed. O_o

They're bad Tiktok clones. Which in this case is a good thing - their inferior algorithms make the result less addicting.

You can switch to "Following" on front page and not get any algo recs but I don't think selection sticks.

Algo recs and reels nearly killed IG for me. It desperately tries to become TikTok but that's not why I signed up for IG (which was photos). Photos still exist, but even if you like every photo and "dislike" every reel for months it will still push 99% reel content in your feed--whatever ML they use has been near totally useless.

I don't know if it was that recent? I abandoned the app two years ago because of the introduction of the algorithmic feed ( and the explore page, but at least you had to click on that )

I must have missed it because I don’t follow anyone and just go directly to their pages manually.

You can just switch to “following” mode, but it is an annoying extra step.

None of those things should be regulated by the government. Families/communities should be capable of that.

Use alternative YT front-end like Piped, Newpipe etc.

Do not use their app, then set ad block rules to block whatever you want.

I guess you are talking about mobile. There a several ytshorts blocker extensions for desktop browsers.

I used a Firefox add-on called "Stylus" and wrote a custom css rule to hide the relevant divs/elements. It's not perfect, but it's okay. https://github.com/openstyles/stylus

However, after the recent ad-blocker targeting by Youtube I pretty much just stopped watching Youtube entirely. I added my regular subscriptions to the NewPipe app on my phone and just watch what they put out.

The add-on I mentioned above is super useful to personalize my experience with other websites. Particularly online-shopping and other marketplaces that have huge amounts of whitespace for no reason. You'd be surprised how much nicer the web experience is after you add a few "margin: 0px;" css styles to strategic areas.

If you change /shorts/ in the URL to /watch/, it'll load the same video in the normal YouTube UI. I like that better because it allows for such advanced features as... changing the fucking volume.

(Shorts will keep the volume set as whatever you last changed it to in the normal UI, with no way to change it without going to a different ("normal") video.)

On Android you could patch using Revanced, there's a checkbox for shorts in the feed.

https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager

Maybe some way of making addiction-inducing products less profitable instead of censorship? Or going further, lessening the role of profit in how society is organized?

I'm also heavily leaning towards Libertarian/Anarcho-Capitalist. My thought on the matter is that whatever solution we come up with to resolve this particular issue is the same one we need to do to resolve the greater societal issues we are seeing, because I think the root cause is the same.

Beyond that, part of the Libertarian line of thought is that we have to "let go" and let things fall where they may because we have no moral claim over it. The area of effect we have as individuals is quite small so it makes sense to focus in that direction rather. So that would mean things like family, neighborhood, community, shared culture/religion, and the institutions that build on those.

I myself try to be involved with and sit on the boards of HoAs, to add some sanity and fairness to it. I've also been helping pay for close family friends to go through college. I'm also planning on doing charity work for the groups I feel closest to in my local context (South Africa).

Interesting to watch people confront themselves like this. Everyone's libertarian until they see a real harm that actually upsets them and they can't victim-blame.

Maybe that's a good thing, and would cause the balance / dynamic to be different and thus requiring a rework in some form

Perhaps it costs real money to submit each video to these platforms as a means to offset the moderation and rating efforts. Similar to what others have suggested to reduce spam emails.

Off the top of my head, requiring money to post videos to these platforms would immediately reduce the sheer huge volume of spam and automated/auto-generated videos. It would also reduce spam from LCOL regions that weaponize their low-value of time in order to game the system.

Not only that, but it would solve identity and age verification (as it'd require a credit card).

>have the censor board be several percent of the population

Easy to scale up nannying to infinite proportions with AGI. (We don't have that yet, but it may arrive very soon. Well, we have a shitty approximation right now, but AI != AGI.)

On the other hand, that (coupled with the NSA thing) also makes the "my FBI agent" meme come true. One Federal Agent Per Child.

Not the expansionist imperial power in their backyard.

This is my experience as well (though it is uninstalled as of ~1 year ago).

You get what you look for on Tiktok.

Haha now do YouTube.

Maybe CSAM = 12 year olds posting videos of themselves dancing?

Run by Americans or run by the intelligence and propaganda arm of a govt that is adversarial to America?

What else is it then? An instrument in the hands of a dictatorship.

They are much much different.

TikTok is full of anti America propaganda. It rarely gets removed. Anything anti China doesn’t last long.

Instagram has hardly any anti China or anti America propaganda. And it’s certainly not recommended to you within minutes of using the app for the first time.

Opened TikTok in Taiwan and almost immediately got anti America propaganda. Blaming America for covid.

Adults are not immune.

> TikTok directly fuels violence and low IQ

That isn't a very High IQ statement. Facebook is believed to be responsible for violence in Myanmar and other countries.

That's a incorrect and biased piece of sentence. Over 60 apps were banned initially, some before the skirmishes and some after. Kindly do not spread biased political propaganda.

> Why are all the comments that point out who runs TikTok downvoted?

I downvote them for their potentially misinformative nature, which can lead to delusion and disharmony.

As opposed to the countries spreading democracy? How's that worked out so far? Better yet, who's got more blood on their hands?

That's the crux of the issue, I'd rather actually talk to the people affected instead of reading biased online information. No one, outside of the U.S. thinks China is the scary boogeyman you guys make it out to be.

I dunno… I apply this sentiment to Christian Republicanism and it concerns me greatly. They also have a lot to say about what disrupts social harmony. And of course, it’s what they’ve decided “social harmony” means to them.

> But in say east Asia, extensive social shaming over weight helps people stay slim.

Does it help people stay slim with fewer overall negative effects then if people didn't stay slim? Eating disorders and mental health do come into the equation. There's many ways to keep people slim that doesn't result in a healthier society.

You're generalising that small sample too much. Even their findings suggest healthcare professionals exercise more, and smoke less.

As for "living in a community", I would trust more the kindness and humanity in general, than the same of a select group.

By this I mean, alignment of good behaviour comes naturally from one's experience. And I guess I agree with you to an extent. But, I take the general sentiment of your post as advertising collectivism. Which, from personal experience, has a tendency to be non-inclusive. The worst of it comes in subtle ways. Causing considerable harm to anyone that steers just a little bit from the norm. But, that in no way is a harm to others.

I will join you in being downvoted. Social shaming is necessary. We need to hold each other accountable or future generations wont stand a chance

Also, shame is a language everyone understands. All ages

> People need social support to help them understand what decisions are good, and make good decisions.

you mean to make the decisions you consider good.

TikTok is full of Asian content that it promotes: there is still so much Chinese, Korean, Japanese, even some Indian content on tiktok even in an average westerner's feed. Some of this is straight taken form Douyin (by content creators in those country who want to earn money on tiktok).

The content is ~~designed~~curated to destroy the minds of the consumers. There have been quite a few articles showing how content differs between the West and China.

What was particularly bad about India's situation?

Indeed, as the classical and Christian notions of freedom, as opposed to the liberal variety, entails self-discipline, self-denial, and the restraint, disciplining, and purification of the appetites through things like fasting and abstinence.

Kind of ...

Would a native Hawaiian, consider themselves free, that they live under Western Laws. They have western freedoms, and democracy, and all the shiny trinkets. But now also lack autonomy, and the real control over their native land. Democracy is kind of useless to a Native Hawaiian, when they'll be outvoted by outsiders every time. I think plenty of them would just want their land back. And Westerners can shove it.

I think "contemporary western values" is just a feel good saying, a pretty wrapper, on economic expansionist policy ... globalism.

And there are plenty of taboo topics in the West too, and it's enforced as well. Celebrities have handlers, FBI goes around planting informants and extorting dissenters for political gain. People get canceled, fired from jobs for saying dissenting opinions. And its done in the name of "social harmony" and greater good here as well.

I'd argue only some alcohol control laws exist for religious reasons. Some of those old puritanical laws are still on the books, but stick around today because they are useful for regulatory capture.

A cynic would see Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea as vassal states of the US and as such "Western".

>Japan is not at all Westernized, nor Taiwan, nor South Korea, but they are definitely modern.

Free speech and democracy are Western ideals. I think most people would say that these countries are absolutely westernized.

China, and much of the Arab world, is modern, and largely at odds with Western values. Maybe these are better examples for your comment.

Everybody in the entire world alive today is in the present. Nobody is more modern than anybody else. An Amish farmer is no less of a modern man than a San Francisco web developer. You are crossing your wires, using temporal language to pass subjective judgment against other ways of life. People who don't live live styles similar to your own aren't living in the past, they are in the present with everybody else.

You're essentially calling everybody else backwards. That's judgemental and subjective, not objective. It's a mentality of cultural imperialism, only one step away from calling for people to be "brought up to speed", e.g. forced into your way of life.

The world is being westernized thanks to the influence of western media and culture. So in that sense, it can seem like “westernization” and “modernity” are the same thing. But the Japanese and Taiwanese also wear western-style business suits, wear jeans, drink coffee, etc. We wouldn’t say that jeans are “modern” rather than being a western influence. Moreover, in other parts of the world you have a resurgent, fundamentalist Islam. In the 1950s, Egyptian women didn’t wear headscarves. Today, most do. That’s also “modern.”

Same-sex marriage also isn’t a good example to gauge whether a culture is socially permissive, because sexual orientation is biologically determined. The scientific fact of that has been critical in acceptance of that in the East: http://olivia.thechiongs.com/2015/03/28/a-purely-practical-v.... It’s more of a social accommodation for a biologically defined group, rather than permissiveness as to individual behavior. That makes it quite distinct from western liberal culture, which I think would say that it doesn’t make a difference whether it’s a choice or not.

Is that so? I find a lot of value in certain Fediverse instances. They don't seem contrived, just humane (I know some aren't, I don't intend to go to those).

Unless you come from a very religious background, many Turks don't care if their meat is halal or not.

I live in Turkey actually! It is probably the most heavily and forcefully secularized Muslim country in the world. (Ataturk killed ~half a million people for his secular reforms, Islamic alphabet got abolished, European dress code literally became law, religious clothing got prohibited, religion schools closed, scholars executed & prosecuted and Islamic prayer call Adhan was banned for straight 18 years).

It's free to drink here, but drugs are banned. Only a very small minority drinks alcohol in my region, I have no relatives (including me) I know of that ever drank. Drugs/weed/marijuana are horrible things no one ever wants in my entire social circle, I don't think I have ever seen a user of such substances in my entire life IRL. Western and some coastal cities drink more and there's more drug activity too (they're less religious too).

From here, it’s hilarious to see Westerners thinking prohibition is impossible and preaching against it. Muslims have been very successful in prohibition of all kinds of mind-altering substances since 15 centuries. Compare this with the failed American Prohibition. There are more factors at play than what the law says. What do you believe will happen if you drink alcohol in secret, away from the eyes of the State? Muslims believe this will have consequences in afterlife. Atheists don't. Many Christians believe they'll be saved and forgiven by God as long as they are Christian.

> A 2012 study suggested that belief in hell decreases crime rates, while belief in heaven increases them, and indicated that these correlations were stronger than other correlates like national wealth or income inequality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlates_of_crime

Muslims here do advocate for a ban on harmful technologies including but not limited to TikTok. As an example which made its way into law, pornography websites are banned (at ISP level).

> Greater time spent on social networking websites led to higher psychological distress, an unmet need for mental health support, poor self-rated mental health, and increased suicidal ideation. In conclusion, greater time spent on online social networking promotes self-harm behavior and suicidal ideation in vulnerable adolescents.

The role of online social networking on deliberate self-harm and suicidality in adolescents - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6278213/

> In September 2021, Bytedance announced it was making several changes to its algorithm and user interface in China, limiting children to just 40 minutes a day, introducing a Youth Mode for under 14s, and preventing the app being accessible to children between 10pm and 6am.

https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/game-pedia/how-long-can-k...

The astute reader will note that China has no such concerns for children outside of China, to the contrary, encouraging them to spend as much time on the app as possible.

Did you read the same article?

> The report also concluded that China had been limiting grazing by Nepalese farmers.

> In the same area, it found China was building a fence around a border pillar, and attempting to construct a canal and a road on the Nepalese side of the border.

Buildings were on Chinese side true, but Chinese roads and canals and fences were on the Nepalese side.

> where the border is remains unclear even to people living close to it.

Thats almost every border in this region.

The accusations are only credible if you limit yourself to only looking at stuff on Facebook. If you see posts on Facebook calling for Muslims to be killed and then sometime later you see posts on Facebook of Muslims actually getting killed, you might be forgiven for thinking that the former posts caused the latter posts, and if only Facebook had taken down the former, the latter would never have happened.

But it turns out the posts calling for Muslims to be killed were made by the military's propaganda wing and the killings were perpetrated by the military's armed wing. So the causal chain actually flows through the military, and Facebook was merely a place where you could observe it happen without being there in person.

Blaming Facebook for the genocide seems to be an instance of activists focusing on something they can see and try to influence (Facebook moderation policy) over something they cannot (guys with guns shooting people).

Is your point that it happened, there was widespread outrage, penalties and then changes made to prevent it from happening again?

> Cambridge Analityca.

I'm not sure you are supporting your case as well as you think your are.

Is choosing 1 of 2 parties reaaaally democratic?

“reverting back to prudeness” is a matter of perspective. We’re a species that has domesticated itself for its collective good. Part of making progress towards that was changing our approach to mating from a free-for-all to something strictly regulated by culture. It could be said that we’ve been reverting back to our pre-civilisation free-for-all for the last 60+ years.

Maybe not only prudeness, but the rise of STDs like AIDS.

Prudeness? You have no idea what you're talking about. This accusation of "prudeness" is precisely the kind of insult predatory men hurled at women during the '60s and '70s to try to coerce women into bed. "What are you, a prude? A square?" It is actually libertinism that has bred the widespread sexual dysfunction that we are seeing.

Pornography is utterly deranging, and in such an insidious way, the poor schmuck doesn't even know how damaged and warped he's become, how enslaved. Its production and distribution at the very least should be criminalized, and taboos that shame and stigmatize its consumption should be revived and promoted in the media. Alas, corrupt governments back pornography because of its utility in controlling the populace.

Free speech is just the best thing ever.

Funny how panoramic/horizontal arms race between film producers and TV producers calmed overnight. I was prepared to ask a snarky question about vertical movies going mainstream but apparently there has been already a relevant festival since 2014.

No, it's a woman who uses her sexual allure to attract and extract money from lonely boys.

Freedom of speech exists to defend the speech you don't agree with, not the speech you do.

It wouldn’t matter. The dev office will always exist in China and always be beholden to the CCP.

Love the CCP sympathizers downvoting. Can’t argue with the truth but can downvote.

64% of young Americans would rather give up their right to vote than give up TikTok.

Picture how upset kids get when you take away their favourite video game and apply that to a group of people dozens of times larger than the NRA.

That's a lot of votes to risk.

[1] https://reboot-foundation.org/research/the-tiktok-challenge-...

++ I'd be interested to see this study replicated across the entire adult voter base with breakdowns by region etc, but I'm not aware of one.

Division is everything. It is immeasurably more difficult to control and manipulate a unified mass than it is to manipulate multiple different fragments of said mass. This applies to pretty much everything from flat-pack furniture to society.

It is psy-op 101 to push people to any extreme you can; left, right, up, down, doesn’t matter as long as they’re mad as fuck.

It's pretty telling how effective China thinks it is, given their restrictions on Douyin ("internal Chinese TikTok"). iirc kids can only use it for <1 hour / day.

Yes, until civil war.

I dunno if TikTok should be banned, but Nepal motives are truthful.

Can we please stop pretending China, as a national entity, is doing anything at all with TikTok USA?

It is absurd and not worthy of a board like this. I'm sure many you know people that work at TikTok? This just isn't happening, at all.

The sum total of what China is doing with TikTok is restricting what people in China see, which is what China is worried about.

Let's be real. It's not TikTok, it's social media. Twitter had a reputation as a cesspool where people yell increasingy extreme political opinions at each other long before TikTok was popular. Gamergate was before TikTok.

TikTok is just the most refined version of the same rotten medium.

Obviously they want social chaos in the USA, pitting right against left is one way of doing that, so maybe just have a self adjusting algo that detects which way they lean and then slowly increase the ratio of right to neutral/left ideas(videos). Slowly push the person in that direction a bit at a time over months. I've been thinking about signup up for a mysudo account and playing with the algos to see how long it takes to become a full on Marxist and also a MAGA extremist.

She is now more of the opinion that anti-Asian hate is primarily perpetuated by African Americans, which seems to be a fringe opinion in left-leaning circles. I don't know if it's true overall: she says it's due to seeing a lot of videos of Asians being harassed by African Americans and almost none of harassment by any other group.

Not necessarily. A carefully selected set of facts can tell a very inaccurate story.

No.

Consider this simple example of cherry picking data (with made up numbers):

10 000 people every year suffer severe side-effects from vaccines.

If that's all you know it's logical to conclude that vaccines are dangerous.

But what they dont tell you is that vaccines are distributed to hundreds of millions and save the life of millions.

You need the full picture to be more informed.

No information is better than bad information IMHO.

Like Rashida Tlaib, or Ilhan Omar to further your example

Prohibiting a widely used and addictive product?

"It advances content by interest/topic as opposed to intentional divisiveness..."

Isn't this presuming some insight into their algorithms that we don't have?

That is something for them to decide, not the state.

Phew, luckily the US doesn’t have a corporate monoculture controlling most of these media empires and pushing their own set of values. Oh wait… crap

Look up a map of Asia and you will understand why Nepal is more paranoid about China than the US.

Exactly, it’s just western jingoism to justify more war.