Americans are joining the Chinese social media app en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.
- American users have flocked to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu in defiance of security warnings.
- Chinese and American users have engaged in surprisingly friendly conversations about each other’s lives.
- The influx of American users could burden Xiaohongshu’s censorship mechanism, experts say.
Just proving US government right tbh.
So, US said: “TikTok is too powerful and has too much influence” and then people continue to be influenced. I kid you not, most trending rednote tiktoks right now are about price comparison between China and US with topics like: “veggies are like 2$ in China when they are 6$ in the US” with absolutely zero awareness of how economies work:
- median hourly salary in the US: 27 USD
- median hourly salary in China: 5 USD
Chinese vegetables are more expensive.
You could attribute this to people just being financially stupid but I think there’s definitely some truth from US government pov that China has a lot of propaganda power over US citizens and I say this as non-american myself as it’s quite apparent as a 3rd party observer.
Personally I still think low level laws that protect privacy of all americans is the way to go but America will never sacrifice free market money like that.
The only video like that ive seen was showing how cheap a day of vacation in china would be.
The app is obvi not a bastion of unbiased free speech. This is reactionary and even if tiktok were banned on the 19th, people would be put off by using an app where you cant understand 80% of the comments and some of the more subtle content. Its a protest.
Not really surprised. Most Tik Tok users are braindead.
Are they allowed to talk about tiananmen massacre I wonder.
Are they allowed to talk about &%$!@$+×# &%;%$ I wonder.
Whats that?
You know, the LALILULELO!
I’m amazed at all the CCP dick sucking here. It’s like I stumbled into r/Sino
操你中國政府
Yea, I made a post to my people to come to the fediverse. While we have capitalist and communist forums, ultimately the fediverse sits in the anarchist camp.
I like it because I’m suspicious of tankies and hate musk fucks. A nice 3rd option.
Anarchy, because have you met people? Those fuckers can’t be trusted with power
Can’t trust people. People listen to Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. Can’t trust em.
Fuckers, the lot of em
This is a fine example of how the american government doesn’t care about the interests of americans.
The government only exists to serve the wealthiest among us. Some of those wealthy people are upset that Chinese aristocrats are getting all that money.
This trade war only exists because rich americans want more money for themselves. It has nothing to do with national security and you’re a useful idiot if you think otherwise.
You don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few. And China has increasingly been prosecuting their wealthy.
Which is what they really don’t want us learning to do.
Yeah you do it with slave labor, genocide, mass aborting baby girls, and IP theft.
Did you lift this straight out of a State Dept press release?
Why would I need to, these things have been known for decades?
Don’t get me wrong, capitalists (ex apple) love to collude, but it doesn’t make china some magical perfect land.
Yes, the intelligence orgs have been spreading lies for decades.
China isn’t perfect, but most of the scandal news we hear about it is fabricated by our government. Even our own government has now admitted they made up the Uyghur genocide claims.
Huh. Care to link the last one?
What they were actually trying to combat was China preventing the US from continuing to radicalize and use the Uyghurs as a front for regime change operations.
you don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few.
This is false attribution.
There’s no way to verify how other political system would have worked for China. Maybe it would have worked even better? Taiwan for one is richer, stronger and happier than China per capita so does that mean dictatoriship -> democracy is a better system? Do you see the flaw in this attribution logic now? So, unless you have a time machine…Taiwan for one is richer, stronger and happier than China per capita so does that mean dictatoriship -> democracy is a better system
Everything in that sentence is factually untrue, I need to get some of the stuff you’re smoking because it must be crazy strong.
There’s no way to verify how other political system would have worked for China
It’s very easy to know. India and China have similar landmass, population, and got their independence at around the same time.
The difference between the two is that China’s people democracy is an objectively superior system to bourgeois dictatorships they have in India and Taiwan.
It’s ridiculous to compare mainland China with Taiwan, as that island is incredibly small and therefore much, much faster to develop, and it received a lot in investments from the USA as they need a strong ally at the PRC’s borders to support their hegemony. Look at south Korea for another example.
- Taiwan GDP per capita: 36,000 USD > 12,500 USD of China
- World Happiness Report Taiwan places 27th > 64th of China
Do you want me to keep going?
The difference between the two is that China’s people democracy is an objectively superior system to bourgeois dictatorships they have in India and Taiwan.
And how do you determine that? By feeling the vibes? There are way to many variables to attribute all success to a single one. It’s just not scientifically testable. I’d like to point you to this brilliant economic nobel prize award of this year that did use science to prove the effectiveness of political systems in a way. This is sort of scientific proof we need to really understand the value of these political systems but until we have evidence like that or a time machine we might as well be yelling at clouds here.
Actually it’s very easy to know. By design, capitalism concentrates most of the reward among a small number of privileged few.
And people with good sense judge a country by how well it’s working people are doing- not by how much more wealth a few people have been able to hoard.
You do it by exploiting the billions outside your borders from countries even more poor like mine where they sell their garbage low quality products that cant be repaired or recycled, from shitty earphones to bikes that start breaking down in a year, taking advantage of poor people who cant afford to buy anything of better quality. China isnt better than us when it comes to exploitation and inequality.
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
They are spreading their wealth to those in need. Not exploiting. They value mutually beneficial relationships.
Chinese manufacturers build according to budget. They are perfectly capable of making high quality products, and do. The problem is a lot of companies (looking at you, Walmart) demand their Chinese manufacturers build products for a pittance – the manufacturers won’t say no, but they’ll find a profit for themselves by using lower cost materials. (ETA: also less quality control and cheaper labor)
Ask yourself – if you were a woodworker and someone offered you $250 to build a small stand out of wenge, you’ll probably do a good job of it. If someone offered you $30 to build the same stand, and you really needed that $30, you’d make it with pine and just paint or stain it to look like wenge. Chinese manufacturers are no different.
Bingo.
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
Chinese brands owned by Chinese capitalists operating with consent from the chinese state.
spreading their wealth to those in need
Using planned obsolescence and taking advantage of poor consumer and environmental protection laws to sell garbage to people trapped in a cycle of poverty isn’t exploitation? Also China ‘invested’ billions here too and we didnt get any hospitals. We got china flooding our markets with its shitty goods and chinese ‘businessmen’ running scam centers.
They value mutually beneficial relationships
they do have a mutually beneficial relationship with our dictators.
I love that capitalists attacking communists always end up accidentally attacking capitalism. Classic.
China is a capitalist country with aspects of socialism. it’s not really communist anymore.
No one here is shitting on communists, were shitting on you for a thinking the Chinese are any different than us.
What do you think “capitalist” means? It sounds like you think it’s just market participation.
China is a capitalist shithole but for some reason its biggest defenders are always self proclaimed western communists.
edit: we also have a few militant communists groups that like to blow up chinese nationals working for their govt every now and then.
What exactly do you think “capitalist” means? Because it sounds like you think any participation in markets is capitalism.
Bro, there’s ALOT of Chinese capitalists.
Humans are humans.
They all work for the government.
What do you think “capitalist” means?
I don’t think you know, because by definition there cannot be “alot.” That’s the whole point of capitalism- to concentrate the means of production into the hands of a very few.
Sure buddy, keep that head up your ass.
LoL. You really are just parroting propaganda, without any clue what the words you’re saying actually mean.
I think the Chinese businessmen are exploiting slave laborers to produce cheap goods and export them to most of the world. Would you call that a mutually beneficial relationship?
I wouldn’t. Source?
Capitalists use the same exact argument for why outsourcing labor to the poorest countries is actually a good thing. For real, I’ve argued so many right wingers saying “searching for the cheapest labor actually helps the worlds economy because you’re lifting those poor people of _____ out of poverty! It doesn’t matter that it’s only pennies/day, because to them, that’s a lot of money!”
Pretty goddamn gross behavior.
Outsourcing is extracting wealth from another nation. How can you possibly compare that to lifting ones own citizens out of poverty?
Man, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts must be really shit if the TikTokers didn’t even consider them for a second lmao
IG reels are utter garbage for the most part but Youtube Short would actually be good if Youtube had the balls to separate it from Youtube itself as it’s always limited in that regard.
Instagram has a shit algorithm, yt shorts are generally just worse forms of yt or reposts from ticktok/insta. People are willing to tolerate a lot of data selling already, so why should they care that it’s being shared with the CCP?
They were just reposted tiktoks, make it make sense.
I don’t believe it.
You should, my wife is one of these folks and she’s having a very eye opening time.
About what? Didn’t expect everything to be in Chinese?
Surprised by how much is in English, but also surprised that China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media. It’s middle class people in both countries talking about real things in a completely new way.
One thing that surprised her, everything in China isn’t just cheap crap. It’s american companies that cut corners by ordering crap and shilling it to us and then blaming China for it being cheap. China makes quality products, but the US will never see them, and so we live with the perception that everything from China is crap, but only what we don’t tariff to death makes it through. It’s cool to see her perceptions of the world change.
I’m not some tankie, and I don’t give a shit about tik tok, but there’s a massive cultural exchange happening that’s too huge to filter off the rip, and I feel like folks are realizing there’s a lot more that unites us than divides us. Our billionaires don’t like their billionaires and so we beef? Nah, not my fight
China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media
China has been really showing off hard in the past few years, especially on tiktok. Chinese cars are winning and every single person on Tiktok knows about Chongqing. So I don’t think this is as apt as it used to be.
I’d love more cultural exchange with China but it’s really up to Chinese themselves. Literally all west media and apps are blocked in China. So should we converge on a clear propaganda app which is litterally named after the little red book of communist revolution as our “honest cultural exchange” source? Does anyone seriously think that’s a good idea?
We have Lemmy, Mastodon, the whole Fediverse, bluesky, Telegram, Nostr — the free options exist already, it’s up to Chinese to get some balls to meet us midway.
This might have an interesting side effect. Western voices and opinions being shared enmasse with Chinese youths on platforms they’re comfortable with. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese government responds to this
It will be interesting to see how the
ChineseUS government responds to thisThat’s easy. Some more propaganda about hating the everyday Chinese person (who we have far more in common with) and banning the app.
I’m on the app and, honestly, I have been seeing the exact opposite. Loads of American users are seeing, for the first time, that folks in the PRC don’t have it so bad.
Consistent problem with fascists who want you to hate outsiders. When those barriers fall, it turns out that most of the “enemy” are just people who want to live their lives.
This goes both directions.
But the Chinese people were never the enemy. The only ones who push that narrative are people who want to sow division and hatred.
It’s the CCP and US government that are at odds with one another. The issue with TikTok is the CCP has control and influence over content served to Western uses.
This. There is a reason why China has been censoring the internet so much, and why Russia and to a lesser degree Türkiye started doing it as well. And why two of the three most powerful people in the US apart from Trump control like 2/3 of all social media.
Good for them. People should be free to live their lives.
Tick tock is cancer though, yt shorts as well
I don’t like it either, but these fuckers clearly do, so at least they’re doing it in a way that isn’t basically a bunch of governments spoon feeding what they want Americans to think to them
Literally no difference between that and Lemmy.
It’s all social media and all has the same effect on us
You can’t really infinite scroll on Lemmy for hours watching content specific to your tastes.
You might get five minutes per day of mildly interesting content on Lemmy
Lemmy kind of sucks, that’s why I like it. Reddit to me was like beer and Lemmy is like non alcoholic beer. If stop drinking a non alcoholic beer is fine, but I don’t really need one every day.
yeah that is definitely part of the appeal!
another part is that the self selected crowd is a bit… cooler
It’s really cool. The people are super nice and welcoming. The cities are incredible. Their cost of living is leaps and bounds better than ours. Life is affordable there.
They just got it better. The cold war propaganda we’ve been spoonfed from birth was all lies.
We are the bad place.
Their cost of living is leaps and bounds better than ours.
Crazy how effective this propaganda is. Median Chinese salary is 5 USD/hour. Now 5x every chinese price you see to get really cost and revisit your comment.
China is a gigantic country, larger than the USA, that was still aggrarian just 50 years ago. They are still developing and there is a large disparity in earning between the developed coastal areas in the east, and the undeveloped west. The prices you see on the app a from the coastal areas where salaries are similar to western Europe.
No it’s not and it’s incredibly easy to verify so I don’t understand why would you just lie. US salaries are incredibly high so very few countries can actually compare and coast China definitely doesn’t.
I can speak from experience in tech sector how incredibly tiny Shenzen salaries are even today compared to everything else as I get recruitment offers almost every week. 60k/year is basically peak salary you can get as a senior software dev compared to 100-300k in US.
Here one source says avg annual income in Shenzen is 24,000 USD vs for example Denver of 94,157 USD — 4 times higher and that’s Denver not San Francisco which would be the mirror of Shenzen.
I’m not an american or chinese but I know how to read data and it’s pretty fucking clear here.
The hexies are so excited about this too. They’ve got a thread up (erroneously) hoping that Americans will now stop believing that Chinese people are bad, because they can’t face the truth that Americans (who aren’t magats) only think the Chinese government is an authoritarian shit show and have no problem with regular Chinese citizens.
Solidarity amongst the working class, no matter what imaginary made up boundaries divide us.
Thank you for vigorously following Hexbear to spread misinformation about it on .world. Defederating really helped clean up the narrative.
Remember when it was called musical.ly and everyone thought it was the cringiest thing ever and wished it would die…. Lol
No I remember when it was vine and we all thought it was cringy and dumb
Dumbest shit ever. let me run to the PRC for my entertainment. Like was TikTok really that good? I never used it, other than the time long ago when it was first getting traction and my coworker asked me to get into her 12 yr old daughter’s account (super easy BTW) and see what she was doing on there. surprise! nothing but 30 year old men following her and watching her doing dances. I never touched it since.
what do you expect though the USA is picking groups of people to threaten, the American dream is dead they brag that the economy is doing so good when most peoples lives have gotten worse every second of our lives is being monetized of course the people will look elsewhere
Don’t worry. Once Trump’s back in, the Democrats will suddenly notice we’re in a recession. We’ll start seeing it acknowledged soon.
Dems showed last election they’re not even willing to promise concessions to their voting base, so if you can’t actually do anything to help people afford groceries, how can they use the economy to campaign? Just go “Trump is terrible for the economy! We’re gonna be good for the economy”?
Tiktok shows you more of what you engage in and throws some randomness in there so you don’t get stuck in a local minimum. It’s like when YouTube’s algorithm kinda worked and you could see how it’d possibly be better; bytedance actually pulled it off instead of enshittifying.
And it takes time for the algorithm to learn your tastes. If you’re a mouth breather at heart you’re gonna get mouth breather content no matter how much you try and change it. If you’re a perv and linger on thirst traps… You’re going to see more thirst traps.
With your described scenario, that’s not unique to tiktok- that can happen on any platform when the child is unsupervised. It could have been twitch, Roblox, Instagram, Snapchat, it myriad other platforms; the real problem there is inattentive parenting.
I’ve learned about more shitty local government practices from tiktok than any other platform. I’ve been exposed to points of view I’d never otherwise see. Random videos have triggered just as much progress on my mental health as years of therapy. I’ve found people far more articulate than me explaining shit that combats my family’s far right talking points in a way where they actually listen and change their mind, and vice versa.
I’ve also consumed an inordinate amount of white hot memes and mountains of brain rot lol
But yeah. The TT algorithm is a mirror (given time). It reflects your persona back at you with the type of content you see.
Replacing one Chinese Spyware app with another. Lmao, it’s just so funny to me.
Because an American Spyware app is much better?
It’s actually worse because the American spyware apps give our data to the government to prosecute us for abortions etc.
That’s always been my point. China can do less with my data than the UK or America.
Both seem shit to me
You confused us by saying a race, like you’re spreading excuses for anti-libre software.
‘Replacing one spyware for another’ is clear.
I said a what now?!
A race, like ethnicity, which reduced the clarity of your initial comment.
‘Replacing one spyware for another’ is more clear.
What does race have to do with anything?!
Throwing in the race card is something that wumao are instructed to do regularly.
The fact that, like you pointed out, you hadn’t said a single thing about race is a strong indicator that the person you’re replying to is a paid troll.
Btw “wumao” is literally “five dimes”, which refers to the “50 cent party” who are paid internet commentators with the goal to push CCP propaganda. The “50 cent” part refers to how much they get paid per comment.
Now I’m not saying this person definitely is a wumao, but my guess is that they are.
Exactly, the meaning is much more clear without it.
😳😳😳 Westerners not voluntarily giving personal information to the Chinese government for 5 seconds [Challenge Impossible (They caught us)] 😵😵💫😧
They already bought all our info from Facebook and Google so why not?
Besides, what are they going to do with it that’s worse than what an American company will?
Seriously, why should I give a shit about that at this point? Any information I put into this app they could easily get from Google.
When they own the platform they can use it to serve you catered disinformation.
They can have your data but unless they can also decide what you see as a result, it’s not the same thing.
That’s the difference.
So like Facebook and YouTube serve and spread far-right disinformation catered to manipulate you?
Facebook and YouTube’s algorithms decide what you see and Facebook will even decide what’s “true” for you.
I asked what they can do that’s worse, not the same.
If it’s domestic, there’s at least some recourse available. Facebook was fined $5 billion for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
