[HN Gopher] TikTok users posting cat videos do not threaten UK n...
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TikTok users posting cat videos do not threaten UK national
security, minister
Author : pseudolus
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-01-19 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| chvid wrote:
| "Darren Jones defends decision to allow app to continue running
| in UK as it stops working in US ahead of national ban"
|
| Crazy how this half-a-day ban in the US triggers chatter about
| bans in European countries.
| Etheryte wrote:
| That's not really accurate, please see [0]. Many countries have
| already either partially or fully banned TikTok, the US is
| hardly the forerunner here.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It would be crazy if the US banned TikTok and similar developed
| countries didn't consider doing the same. All the reasons the
| US came to the conclusion they did apply equally well in
| Europe.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| Europe doesn't have a competitor for TikTok. America has
| Facebook and Instagram that stand to win billions with a ban.
|
| I also observe that the US tech bro billionaires have been
| complaining about how mean Europe is to them.
| sebmellen wrote:
| If anything, Europe is more protectionist about data
| security, so European nations should have a bigger concern
| about the claims of ByteDance siphoning user data.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Europe already implements consistent data privacy
| regulations for all apps operating in Europe. No
| particular inconsistency in singling out TikTok over Meta
| pjc50 wrote:
| The whole business plus Microsoft Safe Harbor is starting to
| raise the question of whether US social media (functioning as
| spies) should be allowed in the EU either.
| boznz wrote:
| Bit off-topic but based on the news I see coming out of the UK it
| feels like it is a total basket case, I wonder if there is a
| tipping point for a country and at what point the UK is at.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The UK has solid corporate governance and the rule of law. It's
| not perfect but it is far from a basket case. Don't believe
| everything you read in the media (or even here).
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I live there and I have no idea what you're talking about.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| How about rapist getting less jail time than people who post
| Facebook complaints about them?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| The judges wear the wigs because they are clowns.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's.. not great. But still a long way behind the US in terms
| of chaos.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Sure, the ones posting cat videos don't. But what are the odds
| that TikTok would ever let a Taiwan Protest go viral?
|
| I wonder if it even lets use use the word Taiwan...
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I just looked up #Taiwan on TikTok. There are 3.6 million
| videos.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Well, I looked up Taiwan protest and the 4 I looked at were
| all allegedly Taiwanese protesting _against_ their own
| independence.... (For context only 10% of Taiwanese support
| unification with China per a google search)
|
| Would love somebody who has an account (and can translate) to
| do a sanity check here.
| duskwuff wrote:
| A "protest" is implicitly a demonstration by people who are
| unsatisfied with the status quo. As far as Taiwanese are
| concerned, Taiwan is already independent, so a protest to
| support its independence would be a bit redundant - and if
| there were one, it'd probably be referred to as a parade or
| a rally, not a protest.
| rKarpinski wrote:
| Plenty of topics sensitive topics to the CCP are allowed on
| TikTok. Being allowed on Douyin is another matter...
| zug_zug wrote:
| My question was whether they are allowed to go viral.
|
| Sounds like there's evidence in another thread that they are
| actively manipulating what goes viral on key current
| political topics... which seems pretty damning.
| HamsterDan wrote:
| Literally nobody is saying cat videos are the problem with
| TikTok. What a moron this guy is.
| daghamm wrote:
| I belive there is a linear relation between how big of threat to
| the nation Toktok is and the amount of money Zuckerberg spends on
| lobbyists in said nation.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Perhaps more to the point:
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/10/elon-musk-tweets...
|
| And also https://news.sky.com/story/jordan-parlour-facebook-user-
| jail...
|
| If you say someone should go commit a violent crime, and they do,
| then you should expect a visit from the police.
| gazchop wrote:
| Our tradition of electing morons into ministerial positions
| continues unimpeded by rationality, logic or perhaps even
| competence. I expect to see a resignation at some point in the
| future.
|
| Fortunately their civil service underlings and our judiciary are
| slightly less incompetent when applied in large numbers.
| zjp wrote:
| It's less the cat videos and more the constant deluge of at best
| half researched context-free clips about how awful western
| society is.
| remram wrote:
| This is such a textbook strawman that it's not even funny.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| > at best half researched context-free clips about how awful
| western society is.
|
| Is reddit next? Although in their case, it's less clips and
| more pictures and text.
| zjp wrote:
| God I hope so, and twitter next. Set me free, US government.
| throw0101a wrote:
| A paper out of Rutger's:
|
| > _For pop-culture hashtags, the ratio between platforms is
| consistently range-bound:_
|
| > _Conversely, the ratios we found for topics sensitive to the
| Chinese Government were completely out-of-bounds._
|
| > _The data below illustrates that across topics directly
| sensitive to the Chinese Government, relevant hashtags are
| dramatically underrepresented on TikTok vs. Instagram._
|
| > _Given the unanimity of anomalies, we expanded our research to
| topics relevant to the Chinese Government's geopolitical
| interests: 1) Ukraine-Russia War; 2) Kashmir Secessionism; 3)
| Israel-Hamas War. There too, we found relevant hashtags are
| dramatically underrepresented on TikTok vs. Instagram._
|
| * https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-Tok-ing...
|
| * Via: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/tiktok-is-just-the-beginning
| janice1999 wrote:
| Instagram is hardly a reliable benchmark given that it has been
| widely criticised for its suppression of Palestinian content.
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-
| promises/...
| fsflover wrote:
| Why is this not reliable for other topics than Palestine?
| janice1999 wrote:
| If one topic is being provably artificially suppressed, how
| is any data reliable? Instagram is not a good baseline
| -perhaps no large social is.
| redeux wrote:
| So what does that say when they're even more underrepresented
| on TikTok as GP showed?
| noworriesnate wrote:
| That's not what the paper is saying. Hashtags like
| #PrayForIsrael or #IsraelUnderAttack are way lower on
| Tiktok than on Instagram[1]. They aren't talking about
| anti-genocide or pro-Palestinian hashtags.
|
| Basically, Instagram is way more pro-Israel than Tiktok.
|
| Many people think that that is why Tiktok is coming under
| fire. Because China is ambivalent towards the Israel/Hamas
| conflict whereas many power structures in the U.S. are very
| pro-Israel.
|
| [1] https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/A-Tik-
| Tok-ing... page 14
| zug_zug wrote:
| This feels pretty convincing to me.
|
| It also feels to me like we shouldn't _have_ to reverse-
| engineer platforms to deduce whether they are pushing an
| agenda... If they aren 't doing any interfering then they
| should simply put out an official statement clarifying that.
| umeshunni wrote:
| It's all cat videos till some Jihadi livestreams bombing a Taylor
| Swift concert or something.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| That's exactly what the cats want you to think.
| nokya wrote:
| Having a foreign and hostile both economic and military adversary
| fully controlling an app that is installed on 18 million
| smartphones in UK is a national security issue. Not cat videos.
| Too bad this concept has become too difficult to understand for
| most European "leaders" (and journalists...).
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(page generated 2025-01-19 23:02 UTC)