this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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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.
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[–] john89@lemmy.ca 11 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

It has everything to do with national security, they just don't consider common people as part of their nation same as slaves weren't.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago

So one Chinese spying platform is worse than other Chinese spying platforms.

I mean, it's interesting in the sense of something big being really honestly banned in USA.

That seems to have been a part of Russian, Iranian, Turkish etc Internet experience.

But I still want back the days where we'd talk about programs and services, not platforms.

There's a program you can use to communicate to other people, it, of course, communicates to a service, but the protocol is small and already reverse-engineered, and you can use a hex editor to change the hostname or addresses it communicates with, even if hardcoded. Nostalgic ICQ sounds.

Or - there's a service you can use to find pages and files. There are hundreds of such, you can host one yourself. You'll have to dig through a lot of things you don't need and build your queries carefully, but there's no platform playing with your life. Just the Internet, and one of thousands of machines scraping it. Yep, it's big and most things there you don't need.

Or - there's a program you can use to have nice online communities. I didn't even know that Hotline and KDX existed when I was a kid. But if I knew, I would be even happier than it was in fact. No platform. Someone hosts a Hotline server.

There was also such a program that allowed you to navigate hypertext pages leading to other pages leading to other. And there were services which would serve such pages over the Internet to you and many others, and accept changes. People who think today's Web is in anything nicer than that Web - they simply don't remember how it was then. It can't be really felt by looking at archives of old personal pages and such, of course those look weak, they are a specter of the past. You need to go over web rings and read recent updates, by real people for real people, visit guest books and web chats and forums, see that world alive. Unfortunately I also remember how I wanted to be able to make that even more alive - via technical means. Like trying to live in a video game. That was a mistake many people made, apparently, and ruined the real miracle by pursuing that dream.

[–] Dancermouse@lemmy.world 11 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Remember when it was called musical.ly and everyone thought it was the cringiest thing ever and wished it would die…. Lol

[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 1 points 26 minutes ago

So TikTok isn't strictly covers with flying text anymore? Jesus I'm out of the loop on this.

[–] shiroininja@lemmy.world 11 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] VintageGenious@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

I failed to see the randomness then because it's way too similar content way too quickly

[–] Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

nothing but 30 year old men following her and watching her doing dances.

This App is truly a swamp of shit.

[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 43 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

Is it that surprising that your average person in another country is easy to get on with? I've been to a fair few different countries and the everyday people you interact with are lovely (except France).

It's the fucking politicians you've got to look out for, and not just the foreign ones.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It's funny that I've never had bad experiences with the French and most of my visits to France were to Paris.

Then again I do speak French and try and take advantage of being over there to exercise my language knowledge in it as much as I can.

In my experience people almost everywhere (well, not in English-speaking countries, probably because English is the present day lingua franca so it's kinda expected that you can speak it) generally appreciate you trying to speak their language even if you're pretty bad at it and just trying to learn the local "good day", " goodbye" and "thank you" will get you a lot of goodwill.

[–] Fiona@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Except in the Netherlands, where your risk a response of “I’m not your Dutch teacher, we will speak English”. (Actually happened to a former colleague of mine.)

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I've lived in The Netherlands and they're "complicated" if you're used to, for example, English-style of politeness or even Mediterranean-style exuberance.

They tend to be very direct, objective-oriented and seemingly cold/closed towards strangers (they open up more with friends and family), so for example if you're in a work environment and one person's trying to do things in broken Dutch is hindering the actual accomplishment of the work objectives (for example, in a work meeting), that will probably be pointed out to them, though I've never seen it done so rudelly.

They also tend to be pretty proud of their English-language speaking abilities and when you're just learning Dutch and try to speak to them in it, often switch to English when they spot (from the accent) that somebody comes from an English-speaking country (so for me, who am Portuguese, they didn't tend to do it and I could just silently ignore it when they did because they couldn't be sure I actually knew English, but I had friends and colleagues over there from Britain, US and Australia who constantly got that and for whom it was a lot harder to learn the local language), though I don't think that applies in your example.

It bet that happenned in a professional environment or some kind of professional situation.

That said, that specific telling off would be considered rude even in Dutch terms: if a person's attempts at using Dutch are hindering doing the work, one is supposed to tell them that as the reason to switch to English (say, "other people are waiting behind you in the queue" or "we don't have time to do this meeting in Dutch", though one will probably not get a "I'm sorry but" or "I'm afraid that" or other such decorations to soften the blow which you would get in most other countries. In that quote of yours the other person making it about themselves "I'm not your Dutch teacher" and just bossing the other person "we will"(!), would be considered rude even by Dutch standards IMHO.

Personally (and note that I lived over 8 years in the Netherlands and do speak the language), had somebody told me off like that my reaction would probably be to not give a shit and carry on speaking Dutch since that person made it about themselves and I'm just as entitled to do it the way I see fit as they are to do it their way and I very much suspect (can't be totally sure) this reaction comes from that part of me that are the elements of the Dutch mindset I've taken in from having lived there so long (certainly the whole "I'm just as entitled to my preferences as you to yours" feels very Dutch).

During the period when I was starting to learn Dutch on various occasions the other person switched to English (probably because my Dutch was really bad or I was having trouble following them) and I just kept on speaking Dutch, and I think I was once or twice told off for trying to say something complex with my really broken Dutch whilst buying something and I was holding the queue, but they simply pointed out I was holding the queue.

[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

By France, do you mean Paris? They're the worst.

Lyon ain't much better.

[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

Yeah, Paris specifically.

[–] hydroxycotton@lemmy.world 23 points 12 hours ago (12 children)
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