TikTok is reportedly planning a total shutdown of the Chinese-owned video-sharing app when the law requiring a ban or sale of the app takes effect on Sunday.

The roughly 170 million US users who try to access the app will be greeted with a pop-up message directing them to a website with details about the ban, according to the Information.

Users will also be given the option of downloading their data from the app, sources familiar with the plan told the outlet.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      2 days ago

      Not funny, a deliberate decision by the legislature in order to safeguard it from whoever was going to win the election (since it was set before the election).

    • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      Conveniently just in time for Trump to blame it on the Democrats even though he started the process during his previous term.

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    2 days ago

    Users will also be given the option of downloading their data from the app, sources familiar with the plan told the outlet.

    That’s nice of them. I bet Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t do that.

  • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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    1 day ago

    What exactly does that mean? I dont use tiktok, but I imagine it will still work if I already have it installed? Or is this a geoip restriction that doesn’t affect Tor users? Or is it just not in the app stores?

  • rob200@endlesstalk.org
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    2 days ago

    “They” say they are banning it over national security concerns I think it’s deeper then that. They can’t have a socialist like platform having an audience. Which in my opinion is why they wanted to force a sell or just ban Tiktok.

    I don’t think, that they will go after Rednote if it doesn’t gain popularity the way that Tiktok did.

    • bl4kers@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      socialist like platform having an audience. Which in my opinion is why they wanted to force a sell or just ban Tiktok.

      This logic doesn’t follow. What does forcing a sale have to do with being “socialist like” ? TikTok has been diluted into a sales platform anyway.

      • rob200@endlesstalk.org
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        1 day ago

        If they sell the platform to an American company, it wouldn’t be Chinese owned. and CHina is (currently) a socialist leaning country, once sold to an American company, it’s gonna be more capitalist focused then it already was. idk why people miss that.

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          ByteDance is a privately-held global company, roughly 60 percent owned by global institutional investors (such as Blackrock, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group), 20 percent owned by the company’s founders, and 20 percent owned by its employees—including over 7,000 U.S.-based employees.

          Sauce

          • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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            1 day ago

            This is the funniest thing about it all. ByteDance is mostly an American company with American & Singaporean executives, and the service is run on Oracle cloud services within the United States.

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    2 days ago

    But what do all these TikTok users need to do suddenly? Talk to each other face to face? Doing something useful in live? Help?

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      2 days ago

      RedNote is just another corporate social media platform, so I won’t gush over it. But it is exposing Burgerstanis to regular people in China, which is a positive. I have no idea how the RedNote’s owners are going to respond to this. For instance, how are they going to monetize an American audience? Or at least recoup the costs? I doubt they had a plan for this, because I don’t think anyone could have predicted it.

      The US government will likely censor this app as well. I think this falls under the same law that TikTok does.

      • small44@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        It’s like trying to stop piracy. No matter how many app the government try to ban, new ones will appear

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          There does come a point where the inconvenience slowly moves the masses to other platforms. It’s not that difficult to access the full internet in China with any data-only esim being unrestricted by default and many VPNs working just fine. But it’s just difficult enough to do this that the masses don’t. Piracy functions the same way, if piracy were truly broad in scale then it would be taken much more seriously.

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        2 days ago

        I wouldn’t be surprised if China locked out US users before the US even banned it. Chinese are already telling US users that they are saying things that DEFINITELY should not be said on the app.

        Here’s a little Nostradamus… “I had the most best chat with Xi. He told me that Americans are superior to the Chinese, so they don’t want to see us on RedNote anymore. But don’t worry, I told you I would save Tiktok… introducing Trump Talk”

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          A torrent of Western chauvinist trolls does seem inevitable, if my experience as an Lemmy mod is any indication.

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            22 hours ago

            Personally, I suspect the bigger problem for their platform will be handling the contrasting values of Western social media norms against their own.

            Even sinophobic reactionaries have been pointing out for years that “[Douyin] Chinese TikTok is Wholesome, American TikTok is Corrupting our Youths!” with product influencers/grifters, rampant sexualization up to and including pornography, etc., albeit the reactionaries are interpreting the difference from a conspiratorial moral-panic viewpoint claiming it’s weaponization by The Chinese Government to corrode Western society, rather than the difference being that the US TikTok is social media with liberalist freedoms combined with the capitalist pursuit of profit above society, and is in line with the content on Xitter, reddit and other familiar social media.

            The point being, that people rise to the top of TikTok through sexual suggestion, flashing symbols of wealth and other normalized habits which I’ve heard are banned on Lil’RedBook (which sounds like a great decision!).