#Government ban

[never-quite-buried]

Nope now it’s at the point that i’m shocked that people off tt don’t know what’s going down. I have no reach but i’ll sum it up anyway.

SCOTUS is hearing on the constitutionality of the ban as tiktok and creators are arguing that it is a violation of our first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.

SCOTUS: tiktok bad, big security concern because china bad!

Tiktok lawyers: if china is such a concern why are you singling us out? Why not SHEIN or temu which collect far more information and are less transparent with their users?

SCOTUS (out loud): well you see we don’t like how users are communicating with each other, it’s making them more anti-american and china could disseminate pro china propaganda (get it? They literally said they do not like how we Speak or how we Assemble. Independent journalists reach their audience on tt meaning they have Press they want to suppress)

Tiktok users: this is fucking bullshit i don’t want to lose this community what should we do? We don’t want to go to meta or x because they both lobbied congress to ban tiktok (free market capitalism amirite? Paying off your local congressmen to suppress the competition is totally what the free market is about) but nothing else is like TikTok

A few users: what about xiaohongshu? It’s the Chinese version of tiktok (not quite, douyin is the chinese tiktok but it’s primarily for younger users so xiaohongshu was chosen)

16 hours later:

Tiktok as a community has chosen to collectively migrate TO a chinese owned app that is purely in Chinese out of utter spite and contempt for meta/x and the gov that is backing them.

My fyp is a mix of “i would rather mail memes to my friends than ever return to instagram reels” and “i will xerox my data to xi jinping myself i do not care i share my ss# with 5 other people anyway” and “im just getting ready for my day with my chinese made coffee maker and my Chinese made blowdryer and my chinese made clothing and listening to a podcast on my chinese made phone and get in my car running on chinese manufactured microchips but logging into a chinese social media? Too much for our gov!” etc.

So the government was scared that tiktok was creating a sense of class consciousness and tried to kill it but by doing so they sent us all to xiaohongshu. And now? Oh it’s adorable seeing this gov-manufactured divide be crossed in such a way.

This is adorable and so not what they were expecting. Im sure they were expecting a reluctant return to reels and shorts to fill the void but tiktokers said fuck that, we will forge connections across the world. Who you tell me is my enemy i will make my friend. That’s pretty damn cool.

[troythecatfish]

[stimmingandstruggling]

ok i need people who are happy about the tiktok ban to understand your opinion should actually have nothing to do with the fact that it’s tiktok. like you can hate tiktok. but supporting the ban is supporting censorship, full stop.

like, i fucking hate twitter. it’s a hellhole. would i celebrate if it went bankrupt and shutdown? probably! would i celebrate if the GOVERNMENT BANNED IT? ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT. because the government SHOULD NOT be making decisions about how and what people are allowed to talk about on the internet. ever.

“i don’t like the precedent but im happy if it’s just tiktok” stfu and think for a second if they only ban tiktok and nothing else ever that’s still censorship

[geminisee]

you have more in common with the average citizen in china than any us politician

[luckystarchild]

I've been keeping it off my face as much as I can on video, but I'm livid about the TikTok ban.

I have about 100,000 followers on that app. I joined during the pandemic. I was lucky to find a community full of incredible people, many of whom I now consider lifelong friends. Because of the community I found on that app, I found space to experiment with my gender presentation. I was able to come out as nonbinary (to feel SAFE ENOUGH to come out as nonbinary) because of that app.

I've seen a few Tumblr posts in which people gloat they never got into TikTok. Good for you. You won't suffer emotionally, and that makes you feel superior. But if you have no concept of what that app has meant for more than 170,000,000 Americans (that's half of all Americans!), many of whom do not have access to community in physical spaces, kindly sit down.

The ban constitutes the largest mass layoff in American history. We will lose billions of dollars in our domestic economy. Over 7 million small businesses are impacted because of the ban. You will feel the effect of that whether or not you were on the app. If you can't grasp the significance of that, again: kindly sit down.

The language of the TikTok ban has set a dangerous precedent for the American government to shutter any tech platforms they deem "dangerous" for arbitrary, undisclosed, nebulous reasons. This will affect Americans' ability to organize, spread information, and protest. They have effectively banned our right to assembly in digital spaces. This is the greatest infringement of free speech that has ever occurred in the United States. If you can't grasp the significance of that, either: kindly sit down.

This is bigger than "never falling for the TikTok craze." This is an enormous governmental overreach sanctioned by our own Supreme Court. It's bigger than teens doing silly dances you can sneer at from your smug high horse.

And if you can't grasp that: Kindly. Sit. Down.

[justnownews]

Government Imposes Strict Ban on Social Media Use by Civil Servants

Islamabad: The government has imposed a significant ban on the use of social media by civil servants, prohibiting them from using any media platforms without explicit permission. This new regulation was communicated through an official directive from the Establishment Division, instructing federal secretaries and other relevant authorities to ensure strict compliance.According to the directive,…

[swagst0rm]

What concerns me the most about the tiktok ban is that it’s the US government telling us they can flip a switch and take away sources of information and bring them back, modified to their liking. And they can do it whenever they like. What happens when they target major news sources? The book bans that could very likely go into place? What if they get Tumblr— which I KNOW plenty of us use as a source of political info?

This isn’t just a publicity stunt. It’s the US government directly telling millions of people that yes, they can make sure we remain uneducated. They can keep us blind to whatever the fuck they are doing.

A reminder as said in my previous post, keep your eyes open.

[nando161mando]

Unbelievably dire.. how did we get here

[charmingradiobelle]

I think this TikTok ban is going to be the thing to radicalize me bc wdym the US’s top priority for the last five years has been banning a foreign social media app that doesn’t steal any more of your data than Meta, but not gun control or women’s rights to their bodies or the economy crisis or global warming or homelessness or world hunger or literally any fucking thing that actually matters?

[nwhales]

You know who has unmitigated access to my (and all of federal employee’s) sensitive information?

Here’s a hint: it’s not tiktok!

It’s Musk. It’s Musk and his goons that have taken over the Office of Personnel Management. I’m not kidding they have physically taken over the physical office and the database that stores federal employees’ information like pay scale, social security number, home addresses, etc. and it’s now left unprotected.

This should concern everyone because the federal government is the largest employer in the country and I can guarantee that you, the like 5 people who may read this post, or someone you know is or has been a federal employee. And now that information is in the hands of Elon Musk and we don’t know what he is going to do with that information. No, seriously, officials who once oversaw the database and protected that data have said that “there’s no visibility into what they’re doing with the computer or the data,” and “there’s no oversight.” Because Musk and his private employees have physically moved and locked people out of their offices and have changed it so that the people who previously oversaw and had access can only get to their emails.

Right now we know that right now Musk and “OPM” is using the data to send poorly worded emails to all federal employees that are meant to coerce and scare people into taking a shitty deal and resigning. But then what? This is the tip of the iceberg. They have so much data and information for millions of people that the possibilities are endless.

So check in on your friends and neighbors who are federal employees. We’re scared and uncertain about so many aspects of our jobs and our lives. We have been hit with wave after wave of insulting emails telling us that we’re not good at our jobs and that actually our jobs are worthless. We’re facing so many rumors about who has our personal information and what’s being done with it. We are just so tired. And it’s week two. That’s the point - to exhaust us into submission. To my fellow federal workers, hold the line. We’re stronger together and we will get through this.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/

[doriansredroses]

I don’t often do political posts that’s actually written by me, but I’ve got to say something. The TikTok ban is absolutely terrifying. It’s censorship. I’ve seen people comparing the fall of American TikTok to the death of Vine; they’re not the same. The government didn’t ban Vine. It eventually shut down. We’d be distraught if TikTok did shut down, but it’s not like it’s actually shutting down. It’s a ban! The government is censoring us as citizens and it’s all about control. Twitter is hell and Facebook doesn’t fact check. The. Government. Is. Trying. To. Censor. Us.

I personally didn’t like TikTok much. I never used it but its platform made a huge impact on others. We got YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels because of that. We got access to unbiased news on TikTok because it was the news that was left off (or the true version) of what was on the shady news channels. This ban is dystopian and I truly fear for the country I live in.

[never-quite-buried]

Came Back Wrong: Tiktok Edition

So that was the stupidest display of political theatre i’ve seen in a while. They shut us down in the US 1.5 hours early and popped back up 14 hours later.

US users are now experiencing a completely overhauled algorithm. I first chalked it up to the mass following trend of the last week messing our fyps up a bit.

Nope. The first alarm rung that i heard was from swifttok, where we found out that when we search for the iconic masterpiece that is The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived the search has been manosphered.

Where did our normal searches go for this? It was in the Eras setlist, the searches should be the name of the song and cities it was performed in, that’s what came up before it went dark at least.

Okay that’s just fandom. Surely important topics haven’t been suppressed?

Okay thats weird.

What the fuck this is not what this search looked like a week ago for US users.

I am PISSED. They used this shitshow as smoke and mirrors for rebooting our servers to work in the governments favor. I have faith in the politically minded members of tiktok to find a way to work the algorithm in our favor still but this is disgusting. Openly playing in our faces suppressing free speech. Now canada is floating a “ban”. Or will it just be another server reboot? 🤔

Edit:

Idk if yall saw it but at last night’s rally he thanked Elon for being so good with computers, especially voting systems on computers and thanked him for winning Pennsylvania. I’ve seen dozens of videos talking about this on my fyp but as far as the search function knows there’s nothing to pull.

A core function of tiktok is the fyp > search pipeline. Repeated phrases in comments will highlight blue to send you straight to search or you’ll see something in a video you want to check out more about or the creator will mention a users video you should look up for context. All of that relies on a functional INTUITIVE search function.

[sunnypopoki]

They didn’t even wait until the 19th to ban TikTok. Honestly I hope people realize how big this situation is. TikTok was a news outlet for a lot of Americans who couldn’t get proper news and information (especially when their own news stations are just propaganda and fake news we don’t need to hear), it was also a home to many small businesses and people just trying to make a living. The US government is NOT banning it because of “data” or whatever shit they made up—they are banning it to control the masses and more than just that. This is bullshit.

[politijohn]

Source

Source

Make them pay

[cowgirlkatebishop]

In case y’all who — like me — use TikTok haven’t realized:

The CEO is actively reposting Trump and Charlie Kirk content.

He made a video kowtowing to Trump and his administration.

He’s going to the inauguration with Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg.

Facebook is suddenly, 24 hours before the “ban”, asking you to link your TikTok to it.

Folks, we’ve been sold to the highest bidding fascist.

Someone save America.

[thatvvitch]

Remember when we all thought Tumblr removing porn was the death of this site.? Now we have government censorship and Nazis running almost all social media but our little corner of the Internet lives on in all its glory.

And we don’t have to talk in fucking code.