• @[email protected]
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    1240 minutes ago

    There is sooooo much weird conspiracy shit in these comments. The government is banning TikTok becuase they collect too much data and the Chinese government could eaisly get access to all of it. The correct thing to do would be to regulate data collection but that would be problematic for Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple…etc etc… so instead they just ban TikTok. All this TikTok tefusing to spread deep state US govt propaganda horse shit is a bit past nuts.

  • @[email protected]
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    352 minutes ago

    Since this is the place for the most serious discussion:

    If US lawmakers focused on protecting American’s privacy with some sensible privacy laws coughGDPR equivalent cough, we could avoid pulling out the ban hammer to play whack-a-mole on these companies.

    Companies would simply be punished by the law for being malicious or irresponsible with your data, forcing industries to take privacy seriously and make investments in protecting and not leaking it.

  • @[email protected]
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    Fuck you. I’m going to RedNote. Purely out of spite. Because I’d rather dropship my DNA to the Communist Party of China HQ than give my data to Zucc or Elon.

  • @[email protected]
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    465 hours ago

    Oh yeah, I forgot the other social media apps don’t collect data and spew propaganda. Oh wait… They do.

    • 🦄🦄🦄
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      Yeah but only for the benevolent western ultra rich oligarchs, so it’s gucci.

  • beefbot
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    FTFY

    edit : ooooh the wee St Petersburg trollies are tryin’ ta tryin’ ta ain’tcha!

    News flash, responder-guys: if you’re even humans & not the AI bots who took most of your colleagues’ jobs, you’re still always be undervalued by your bosses. They’ll never, ever save you: they’ll save their Teslas and stock portfolios instead. Your life kinda sucks and there’s nothing you can do about it AND YOU CHOSE THIS LIFE, DIDNT YOU. Free yourself. Quit this shit job and go back to school before it’s too late.

  • @[email protected]
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    4410 hours ago

    Tiktok got banned not for peddling “chinese propaganda” but instead not peddling the US one.

    All the major tech companies in the US take measures to ensure content deemed unworthy by the government never become mainstream or viral.

    This is done under the pretense of stopping “hate speech” or “terroristic propaganda” but often include things like pro-palestinian content or class struggle content (like luigi mangione stuff).

    Tiktok was bold enough to not do that by default, cuz they wanted someone to ask them to do this and then it would become a huge scandal about how the US suppresses free speech. And US gov don’t want to do that for this exact reason as well. So they decided to ban it.

    Remember talks for this “law” were initiated when all of a sudden tiktok became a host for pro-palestinian voices. We should ask ourselves, how is it that 60% of americans want the government to stop arms sales to israel but this 60% never shows up on the big social media platforms. But on other platforms like here in lemmy and tiktok, pro-palestinians is the majority.

    For further reading, listen to employees fired from big US tech companies for voicing their concerns over the palestine issue, or read Meta’s new terms and conditions specially the section on “dangerous organizations and individuals”.

    • @[email protected]
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      13 hours ago

      It’s outright shadowbanned at best and straight up banned at the isp level at worst.

      That’s why tik tok is getting banned, because US spooks can’t control it.

    • @[email protected]
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      56 hours ago

      Ah yes, TikTok, the land free of censorship. Where you can’t say “gay” and must insert a stupid little asterisk.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 hours ago

        I didn’t say tiktok is the bastion of free speech. They only do this in the Palestinian case because it does not serve them anything to be against palestine. We can criticise one party without making the other one some kind of “moral hero” of a story.

    • @[email protected]
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      110 hours ago

      They track the location of people in the US and gather large amounts of data. They didn’t get banned for refusing to spread US propaganda.

      • @[email protected]
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        These are very loose terms. Pretty much every major website saves IP addresses when you create an account (to prevent abuse/spam detection). And you can get location info from the IP address. Hence the first condition would be true for all of those websites.

        Next, any website/app that builds a recommendation system will save user interactions to build the “algorithm”. So every social media with an algorithm will fall into this category.

        With enough bending of terminology, we might be able to prove that the lemmy also collects user data (although it will be really hard cuz the algo here is based on upvotes and time posted iirc). And “large amount” part is just legal filler words.

      • @[email protected]
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        23 hours ago

        As does all the American owned networks. That’s not the reason. Not pushing American propaganda is the reason.

      • @[email protected]
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        86 hours ago

        False dichotomy. They could’ve been banned on legitimate pretenses AND other reasons threatening power.

        If they were legitimately only banned for “tracking the location in the US and gathering large amounts of data”, then just about every single social media service would be under investigation for the same reason. But do we currently see that happening?

        • @[email protected]
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          If they were legitimately only banned for “tracking the location in the US and gathering large amounts of data”, then just about every single social media service would be under investigation for the same reason.

          We aren’t talking about TikTok simply gathering the information though, are we?

          But yes, absolutely. Let’s do it. And we know that: just because the other companies aren’t being investigated/regulated in the same way, does not mean that it shouldn’t happen at all. That’s not how it works.

          Also, you are making a fallacious argument yourself… If we were talking about banning US social media sites in China, then the comparison holds (and even then, it’s not 1:1 given the political structure of the CCP vs. that of the US). Otherwise, TikTok is clearly unique among them in that the Chinese Government ostensibly has access to any and all information that is being collected.

          There is a reason China made their own version Facebook. Because they don’t want us to have all that information on their citizens.

        • Schadrach
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          05 hours ago

          Of all the social media popular in the US, only one of them is doing that tracking and is under the thumb of a foreign adversary. That is specifically the line drawn in the law. I’m actually curious if WeChat shouldn’t fall under it too?

      • Anas
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        289 hours ago

        Not to defend tiktok (to this day I have not ever used it), but if the issue is the tracking and data collection, you could ban/regulate that specifically instead of singling out the app.

        • @[email protected]
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          It is obvious that they want the other (US-based) companies to be able to continue collecting that data so they can gain access to it if they want/need it. It’s bullshit, but it’s clearly what they want.

          But that being bullshit does not mean that they are wrong in not wanting the one that is under the control of a foreign adversary having access to that data. Two separate things.

      • @[email protected]
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        89 hours ago

        So does facebook, twitter, google, microsoft, and pretty much every mobile app development shop.

          • @[email protected]
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            Facebook does the same tracking and data harvesting. Is Facebook up to be banned? It isn’t the tracking and data harvesting.

            Person 1: I think it’s because the tracking and data harvesting

            Person 2: that’s an obvious lie (see above)

            You: I think aliens did it

    • @[email protected]
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      Thank god for bold platforms like TikTok that refuse to push US propaganda. Really smart of them to not censor valuable information as a way of fooling the US government into exposing its evil censorship ways. TikTok’s fate in the US was never a topic before the current wave of pro-Palestinian activism started. It certainly wasn’t one of Trump’s main talking points ten years ago. Good thing he changed his mind after getting his hands on some Chinese money lucrative investmenet from Chinese citizens that are not at all connected to Tencent.

      None of this discourse on combatting foreign information manipulation started over a decade ago, its all about censoring pro-Palestine voices here and now. TikTok and China in general are known for their calm, collected attitudes toward Muslims. They certainly would never weaponize a contentious topic every which way imaginable in pursuit of financial and geopolitical goals. We need more of these open and bold platforms.

      • @[email protected]
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        66 hours ago

        I wasn’t sure this was an actual a tankie rant or sarcasm until the

        TikTok and China in general are known for their calm, collected attitudes toward Muslims

        • beefbot
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          14 hours ago

          Know what the other “tell” is? They write a wall of text. Big thick paragraphs. It’s a thing, start looking for it.

        • beefbot
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          06 hours ago

          Yuppp. Newsflash, Chinese government is committing a genocide against the Uighur peoples

    • @[email protected]
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      -66 hours ago

      Funny how the Chinese are using Palestinians to try to further their own geopolitical position. It’s almost like the October 7th attack as engineered by Israel AND Iran. You know who Irans allies are… Right?

        • @[email protected]
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          -22 hours ago

          Bibi did. The guy who would be in prison for corruption charges without Hamas being retards. HURRDURR

          • @[email protected]
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            That is quite the logic. That it is the fault of the militarized resistance against a colonial state (just a political party really, but putting that aside) that the colonial state’s prime minister is using genocide against their people to hold onto power.

            At some point you have to actually ask yourself, am I apply equal standards for assigning blame across the spectrum?

    • @[email protected]
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      06 hours ago

      Obviously the US. China imports and exports everything through the oceans. Have fun with Russian potatoes dumb dumb CCP members xD

    • @[email protected]
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      You’re on the Fediverse. Most of the people here are already actively avoiding Facebook and Xitter. Unfortunately, getting the US, EU, etc. to ban American propaspyware companies is, uh, extremely unlikely. China, however, has banned them long ago, which is why I don’t see why people think it’s hypocritical of the US government to ban Chinese social media.

      • @[email protected]
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        77 hours ago

        But they claim that China banning the apps is authoritarian. The hypocrisy isnt in banning the app, it’s in their claims about motivation to do so.

        • @[email protected]
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          17 hours ago

          Yea but we’re not getting anywhere with “tolerance 100%”

          The Chinese government is a tyrannical undemocratic dictatorship and I’m OK with not tolerating them or their propaganda wing.

          • @[email protected]
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            The Chinese American government is a tyrannical undemocratic dictatorship and I’m OK with not tolerating them or their propaganda wing.

            Fixed that for you.

          • @[email protected]
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            66 hours ago

            Have you tried actually comparing the content on Tiktok vs other social networks? Or are you just regurgitating some talking point?

            From the few years I’ve been on Tiktok, it is by far the least toxic and bigoted social network I’ve seen, Lemmy included.
            I’m no fan of China, but if we’re considering “being less bigoted” to be commie propaganda, then we need to take a look in the mirror. Absolutely throwing the baby out with the bath water here

      • beefbot
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        06 hours ago

        Not sure that it’s “most” anymore. Propaganda huffers realized there was more new land to destroy / minds to influence & they had to come settle here too

      • Zement
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        711 hours ago

        Try saying negative stuff about China on .ml I doubt that they are not completely undermined by the Chinese intelligence. (They delete every post critical about china).

        So being vigilant is the only way to avoid getting manipulated.

        • @[email protected]
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          811 hours ago

          .ml might just be useful idiots tbh. But I remember speedrunning an /r/sino ban and that took me all of 1 minute, with a comment that wasn’t even critical about China. It was a thread about how it’s awesome that the west can’t live without China for 5G connectivity and I said that “maybe it isn’t all that great that an entire industry has been entirely centralized to one country” just to see if an absolutely lukewarm take would get banned. It did.

          • Zement
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            1110 hours ago

            Yeah, it’s strange. Like even slight criticism. I mean that’s okay, but what about actual constructive discussions? None!

            If you are not allowed to criticize a system, that system is inheritly flawed. But that’s my personal take on this.

  • Dr. Moose
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    1712 hours ago

    Except they’ve banned 1 source for appeasement rather than enact a strong law or policy for long-term safety.

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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    3314 hours ago

    I’m not a fan of government banning stuff, but like… if they are gonna do it, ban Wechat too. My parent’s be so deep in the Wechat propaganda, I wonder what they do without Wechat.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      613 hours ago

      What? Wechat is a thing here? I have literally never heard about Wechat like anywhere, pretty sure more people know about Lemmy in the US than Wechat lmao

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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        WeChat is very common amongst the Chinese diaspora worldwide. Everyone in China uses WeChat. Its like China’s Facebook. Its either that, or just sms, which lack many features like, group chats, or some weird Lunar New Year gifs, stuff like that. So if you want to communicates with relatives that are still in China, or with other first-generation immigrants, WeChat is just the default method. But that’s only for first-generation immigrants tho. People born ouside of China, Taiwan, or any Chinese-speaking areas would probably not use WeChat. I arrived in the US at before I was 10, I hate the idea of having any corporate apps on my phone, regardless of nationality. Many Chinese Americans born in the US just use the typical Instagram, Snapchat and stuff like that (and yes, some use TikTok as well, but that just a “kids these days” thing, nothing to do with ancestry)

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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        1310 hours ago

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

        TLDR: Chinese “Facebook” (actually its more like Facebook+Instagram+Twitter+ every social media combined into one + Googlepay/Applepay + A lot of government censorship)

        Its app only, no webpage or computers, requires a smartphone, requires a phone number. How much censorship and survelliance depends on what phone number you use. Accounts with Mainland Chinese number will have a much stricter censorship and more data collected. Accounts with a western number will have less strict censorshop and less data collected (probably about the same amount of data collected by western corporate social medias).

  • @[email protected]
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    1415 hours ago

    As someone who dropped TikTok around 3 years ago, the next month or two are going to be very amusing.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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      911 hours ago

      My wife quit it and was back on it a week later. Apparently it’s very addictive. As someone who is on Lemmy a thousand times per day, I guess I can understand. I don’t consider it quite the same though since we actually talk here, and discuss things beyond pressing like buttons on glorified commercials.

      • @[email protected]
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        27 hours ago

        Tiktoks have a comment section, and people can reply to comments.
        There is a char limit, and while that makes nuance difficult, it also inhibits unhinged rants

    • @[email protected]
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      715 hours ago

      And one naturally says the reason why we are in such a mess is not simply that we have wrong systems for doing things—whether they be technological, political, or religious—but we have the wrong people. The systems may be alright, but they are in the wrong hands, because we are all in various ways self-seeking, lacking in wisdom, lacking in courage, afraid of death, afraid of pain, unwilling really to cooperate with others, unwilling to be open to others.

      —Alan Watts, Mind Over Mind

    • @[email protected]
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      2620 hours ago

      We were trailblazers for a time. Other than that, we were always kind of fucked as a democratic system.

      • @[email protected]
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        Probably no nation ever should last for more than 100 years. That seems to be about the time it takes for things to go bad, even if they were good to start with.

        And of course there are countries like modern Russia that should have lasted for about 5 years.

        • @[email protected]
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          3519 hours ago

          Late 18th century. The chaos of the French Revolution arguably diluted its viability as an example to other countries, despite the structure of democratic government being objectively better, so you can argue that we were still on the cutting-edge through the 19th century, even, when most countries were still autocracies or constitutional monarchies with extremely questionable de jure voting systems.

          I would argue as late as the 1950s, our democratic structure was closer to average than below-average, but by the 1970s, what gave the US more in-common with other developed democracies was that we had extensive practice with our democratic system; by then our structure was not just hopelessly outdated, but a structure that no one in their right mind would take seriously as a foundation for a new government. Come the fall of most of the single-party Soviet-backed regimes of the 1990s, and the only countries we actually beat out for being a ‘good democracy’ are ones that… well, are only questionably democracies to begin with. And even then, most of them have structures that are superior to our’s; only a tradition of civic participation has led us to hobble on as long as we have without becoming an outright authoritarian state.

          Though this might be the last month I can say that, which says a lot about the failures of our shitshow of an attempt at implementing democracy.

          • @[email protected]
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            717 hours ago

            Late 18th century

            The majority of the population could not vote, either due to their skin color, sex, or degree of property ownership (colony by colony/state by state as I recall).

            • @[email protected]
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              1217 hours ago

              The majority of the population could not vote, either due to their skin color, sex, or degree of property ownership (colony by colony/state by state as I recall).

              Yeah, you should look into other governments of the period.

              • @[email protected]
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                Just to be specific, your argument is that the United States of the late 18th century can be considered a “trail blazer” in terms of democratic achievement. You are agreeing to my assertion that the franchise can be used as a measure of democracy, and you are asserting that the United States was uniquely forward in this area. This follow up statement is limiting this to a comparison of similar governments of the 18th century?

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 hour ago

                  Which is a comparison that makes complete sense. When you say that someone is leading the way, you are clearly referring to them being at the forefront at the time when they were leading the way. Any system that was a trail blazer 100+ years ago should be outdated by now, unless progress stopped or went backwards in the meantime.

                • @[email protected]
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                  1017 hours ago

                  Late 18th century, yes. And if I hear pop history myths about the Iroquois, I will be irritated.

    • d00phy
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      718 hours ago

      I think “For a minute or two” is a more apt answer.

    • atro_city
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      -320 hours ago

      Do hollywood next (aka the propaganda machine of the US).

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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        814 hours ago

        A republic you say?

        Republic just means a country without monarchy.

        China is a Republic

        North Korea is a Republic

        The US is a Democratic Republic

        Where do you think the name of the political party “Democratic-Republicans” come from?

          • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed
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            38 hours ago

            xD

            Technically true. But instead of two-party system, they get one-party system. Decision is overrated anyways!

            Hail the the supreme leader 🫡 /s

            • @[email protected]
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              38 hours ago

              Hey now! The US is much more democratic, because we get to choose between two hand picked selections from our oligarchs.

              • @[email protected]
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                47 hours ago

                I mean yeah the US absolutely is much more democratic than North Korea, but it’s the lowest of bars

          • @[email protected]
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            814 hours ago

            Because democracy is an abstract name for a system and republic is the more concrete result of that system

            In other words, a republic is a kind of democracy.

        • @[email protected]
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          39 hours ago

          The senate, and SCOTUS are verrrry democratic.

          Not having primaries for either of the two available parties is very democratic.

          The electoral college is the most democratic way to make sure the minority voice maintains a dictatorship.

          • @[email protected]
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            If he meant “this system isn’t democratic enough”, hard agree. It sounded like the “the founders wanted a republic and we should stop trying to be a democracy” you hear from MAGAs.

            • @[email protected]
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              When a person says the US is a republic, not a democracy, I take it as them defining “democracy” as a “pure democracy” only, despite the fact that there are other kinds, such as republics. Kinda like saying “that’s not a dog, it’s a Labrador.”

            • @[email protected]
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              14 hours ago

              Well, the founders wanted an oligarchy, and we have an oligarchy…

              The first step to fixing the problem, is admitting we have a problem: The US was never intended to be a democracy for anyone except oligarchs, and it’s still not a democracy for anyone but oligarchs.

              • @[email protected]
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                120 minutes ago

                On paper, it was a rejection of monarchism, so a step away from centralized control - but, in the same sort of way as the Magna Carta, where they didn’t make the leap all the way to popular democracy, and instead sought to partially democratize power only among the ruling class. More democratic features have been added since then (suffrage, equal protection clause, etc.), though not nearly enough. IMO we do need to completely throw the system out and start over, only carrying over things for the sake of streamlining/continuity.

  • Count Regal Inkwell
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    Blah blah blah “we built our own great firewall and painted it red white and blue, and even banned the use of vpns to get to foreign sites which even China doesn’t do. We’re totally the good guys BTW.”

    Americans are so fucking stupid, oh my god.

    @EDIT: So it turns out the RESTRICT Act, that I was thinking of, and which banned VPNs, was shot down. And the current and approved Tiktok ban law doesn’t do that. So. My b. This one is on me. I stand by “Americans are so fucking stupid oh my god”, though, because you’re still cheering for loss of net liberty.

    • @[email protected]
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      25 hours ago

      Americans are so fucking stupid oh my god

      Coming from someone who confidently believed a law that didn’t exist was in effect, these words are a bit flat.

      Better words would be “people in general are so fucking stupid”, and you are not immune to that.

      • Count Regal Inkwell
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        I did, but then I realised I’m wrong about the VPN thing.

        I was thinking of the RESTRICT act from 2023, which did ban the usage of VPNs (and was the “Original” Tiktok ban law)

        Apparently in the year and change I spent not really caring (look, this is an American problem, y’all slam your metaphorical penises in the car door at least three times a day. And I have my own country’s dick-slammings to care about. I only hear about it when it’s particularly egregious or when I see a meme like this that is cheering for the dick-slamming) the RESTRICT act got shot down, and another one was quickly drafted.

        The one that was approved does not ban VPNs. So. That’s on me. My b.

        Anyway, given y’all are under Trump’s thumb now, I give it eeeeh six months before RESTRICT 2: Censorship Boogaloo starts making the rounds.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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      611 hours ago

      and even banned the use of vpns to get to foreign sites

      Who is “we” in this context? VPNs are certainly not banned in the United States.

    • @[email protected]
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      1714 hours ago

      as an American yeah, seeing this post is just depressing. like people are actively cheering a loss of internet freedom. the government doesn’t care about bytedance or else capcut would have to go too. they care about controlling information, tiktok has been essential in issues like Palestine, even if I don’t like the platform itself I can admit that.

      • @[email protected]
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        1012 hours ago

        Also 100% clear that facebook, google, twitter… are all doing the same but for US intelligence

    • @[email protected]
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      1515 hours ago

      banned the use of vpns to get to foreign sites which even China doesn’t do

      What are you talking about? The GFC tries its absolute best to block VPNs and other circumvention methods.

      • Count Regal Inkwell
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        27 hours ago

        Actual regulations on data privacy and algorithmic manipulation. It’s not that complicated. The EU figured it out. Fuck me, my own country, Brazil, a third world hellhole, figured it out. We have very strict rules on data protection.

        Ofc, this would never happen because 1. Big corpos own the US government and actual regulation on privacy would hurt THEM, and 2. The US Government actually WANTS algorithmic manipulation to happen, except they want THEIR algorithmic manipulation and not anyone else’s.

      • @[email protected]
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        39 hours ago

        The US is doing it just fine on our own.

        Hell, an election here just voted in fascism like its the 1920s again.

      • @[email protected]
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        1917 hours ago

        Actually fight against that rather than pretending too, Israel and Russia have destroyed the US from within far more than China… Maybe tackle the active objective threats rather than potential ones

        • Count Regal Inkwell
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          27 hours ago

          Russia is a menace to US’s peasantry, as they might drag the US to a(nother) proxy war.

          Whereas China is a menace to the US’s aristocracy, in the sense that China is currently richer than the US of A, and despite thousands of articles about how “CHINA’S ECONOMY WILL COLLAPSE TOMORROW!” for the past 15 years, it has yet to happen.

          Ergo, the US government won’t do shit about Russia, but will bend over backwards for anything related to China.

      • @[email protected]
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        417 hours ago

        Non Americans do that all the time, exceept we have at least one more choice than americans.