#tiktok critical

[watcherwingedcat]

Deleting tiktok was one of the best decisions I've ever made. And I think some of you should too. It's such a harmful place, I always see lots of hate no matter the community, and toxicity beyond anything I've ever seen. I'm not just talking about the alterhuman side of the community, but in general. Also, it fucks with our attention span, and I already have enough adhd to add short-form content on top of that.

The communities in there are so freaking toxic, too, and I don't know why. Theriantok in general gets a lot of hate from outsiders, and you'll say: "But Watcher, that happens everywhere!". No, it doesn't. The hate comments I see? I don't see them in tumblr, in youtube, heck, even Instagram is better than tiktok on deleting hateful speech.

I see the harm it brings everywhere, by the way, not just in the therian community. As someone who doesn't have the app, is so easy to see how addicted everyone is to it. I see it when my friends send me tiktok videos that I can't watch because I don't have the app, they send a lot in a single day and it drives me insane. Meanwhile I send them screenshots of stuff, so they don't have to enter the link I send them. I don't believe myself to be better by not having tiktok, by the way. But I see that I'm more grounded to reality, I think.

Before the comments come and hunt me down for this, I know that some people use it as a form of escapism. I know some use it as a form to cope with things. Scroll away and forget everything else, right? But there's other ways to do that! You can draw, you can write, you can go outside. Scrolling through content that is not going to stick in your brain is harmful for your health. Also, nowadays it's considered an addiction anyways, and there are already centers and places for people who are too deep into it to quit.

As an alterhuman, I prefer to spread my content through writing, anyways. I think it spreads more clearly my ideas, and it's easier to understand the point I'm trying to make.

For those doubting if you should delete it or not, I ask you this: What benefits does it give you? Do you find joy watching those videos, that content? Or you just open the app to waste time?

[tinkerbitch69]

Just saw a Tik Tok that played the speech about being a woman from the Barbie movie over screenshots of trump supporter tweets with a description lamenting that ‘every woman saw and loved the Barbie movie* but y’all learned nothing from it :’(’

Woah, you’re shocked the FUCKING Barbie movie of all things didn’t end misogyny for good?!!!

Get fucking REAL omfg. The most milquetoast liberal feminist takes ever, including and almost entirely limited to ‘well shucks being a women sure is not very swell, is it?’ dressed up in corporate propaganda and insipid product placement is not going to do shit in combating reactionary ideology, no matter how many of you absolute chucklefucks have the misconception that it is some radical piece of social commentary. Truly just the most vapid political takes coming out of Tik Tok for real. Tho I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

*press x to doubt

[thewarriorssun]

I watched a YouTube essay today that talked about how Gen Z considers having hobbies and passions as cringe and something to be ashamed of? As someone whose main social media is tumblr, it felt like seeing a parallel universe.

Say what you want about this hellsite, people here will make highly specific fanart over their blorbo and write essays over their favourite shows and share poems they wrote as teens and I don’t understand, how you could not see the joy of this level of sincerity.

[wtchgrrl]

lowkey hate the whole “written by a man vs written by a woman” thing

like, was i written by the average joe schmoe or was i written by john green specifically?

“oh he’s a man who’s written by a woman” was that woman jane austen or vivienne medrano?

[fangirl-nadir]

Tiktok users stop using that stupid sparkle filter challenge

Level: impossible

[hylorien]

.

[vilecemetery]

I truly can’t believe I have to say this but I am so so sick of some people my age (namely those who are tiktok users, and therefore are deeply influenced by “woke” stereotypes about queer people and queer identities that are often perpetrated on that site) telling me that it’s weird to talk about growing up as a female or about experiencing sexism because I’m not a girl? and that it either “makes it seem like I’m not really queer” when I talk about my connection to girlhood or that these things “shouldn’t concern me.” because they very much do and that’s such an ridiculous and inconsiderate thing to say.

I was afab and whether I wanted it or not I was treated like a girl and experienced childhood as a girl. I am not out to many people in my life and in their eyes I am a girl.

as a genderqueer person I still experience and feel very connected to my girlhood and the solidarity that I have among girls and women because of shared experiences despite not often identifying as a girl myself. this is because of many factors including socialization, oppression and personal identity. truly can’t believe most people I know (and quite a lot of people online as well) still don’t understand that the oppression I have experienced as a queer person who was afab and the oppression I have experienced being seen as a girl are interconnected and that we have to address multiple layers of discrimination simultaneously if we want anything to change. this is. not new information. I can’t believe people don’t get this.

[oneshortdamnfuse]

I once got a violation for telling someone in the comments of a video to shut the hell up, but this user regularly posts videos promoting genocide against Palestinians.

I've reported several for violence.

"Status: No violation"

So you cannot be "mean" to other users because that's bullying, but you can wear tactical gear and glorify violence towards people who are being actively killed by your government.

Got it.

[the-siberian-wolf]

Tiktok has a lot of flaws and the content should be more moderated.

However, it's not the "puritan social media" proshippers think it is. In fact, I'd say it's the contrary, everything is sexualised in there (like in every social media), and if they found tiktoks about real puritan people, that's people their algorithm brought them there. And they're the minority in tiktok.

That, or they guide by other people's opinions without verifying it's real or not. Which is worse, actually.

[understandingbimbos]

Through the memeification of "bimbo" and "bimbofication" people have, ironically, started to use "bimbo" as a pejorative again. Which is not only annoying but surely unintentional and counterproductive to the goals of these people who have decided to "reclaim" bimboism.

It makes me want to shoot myself.

Having a bimbo fetish and being into bimbofication used to be easy because actually calling people "bimbos" became so outdated that there was a general understanding that "bimbo" meant porn and "bimbo" meant fetish. But now, because of these memes, because of Chrissy Chalpecka -- "bimbo" means a woman that likes pink now. It means a woman that's attractive. It means infantilizing grown adults who make mistakes and reducing them to helpless "blorbos".

Congratulations, dumbasses! We're officially using "bimbo" as a way to dehumanize real human beings and fictional characters again. Somebody call Jessica Hahn!

You couldn't let us just have our porn, could you? Now its 1987 again. You know how fucking insane it is to call a real live human being a "bimbo" icon to their face because of how they look? Or because they like the color pink? How fucking daft, are you? I've seen people call Dolly Parton a bimbo icon, Dolly Parton, and claim Legally Blonde is a "bimbo movie" because Elle wears pink and like fashion. You know how offensive that is? How besides the point that is? The film's fucking thesis statement is "Elle is not a bimbo". She has a 4.0 GPA before she even decides to go to Harvard, you missed the fucking point. Same goes for "himbo". If you think it's appropriate to call your actual partner you're in a relationship a "himbo", you should be punched in the fucking face. It's not cute, its not endearing, you might as well call them "my little fucking dumbass I think of as (and probably treat like) a pet because I think I'm obviously so much better than them". Get a fucking grip, man.

[tiredwiredanduninspired]

I know it’s been said a lot before and a lot better than how I’ll say it

But, I hate how algorithm based everything is now. Humans are being pushed out of control on every social media platform and the ai’s running it have been so trained to sanitise everything. And now it’s just like so depressing to see

I’ve been using tumblr as my main social media for years, but recently I’ve been avoiding tiktok and instagram (mostly to help me focus on work). However, I had time to kill and wasn’t in the mood for reading so I went on tiktok since it’s been awhile. And a bsd skit account I like came up and I was enjoying it but then they said ‘unalive’ instead of ‘dead’ and it just slapped me in the face beciase I forgot how controlled the language is on that app. I had a Batfam post come up as well and dick graysons name was fucking censored. And it’s so depressing- bc death is a natural part of life but god forbid people acknowledge it

It’s just been irking me recently. Tumblr has its problems but at least we can say dead and fuck and whatever word we bleeding we’ll want to

Sorry for the soapbox rant ✌️

[miniaturecatmentality]

I hate the phrase "bed rotting". Rotting is a crucial part of the cycle of life, the way in which Earth reuses resources and allows the environment to continue. It's a beautiful natural process. You, on the other hand, are just being a couch potato.

[lalondine]

Tried to set up things for a potential TikTok stream just to find out the requirements for streaming directly from webcam on the mobile app (useless for digital content creators :/) vs streaming from any sort of broadcasting application (Like, say, OBS or TikTok’s very own TikTok LIVE Studio) are completely different and I don’t meet the latter. pain nyan

[thewarriorssun]

living in the best and worst times to be a creative person

[apatheticlexicographer]

the genre of instagram reels (presumably also tiktoks but i don't go there) that are just — a clip of the account owner glancing around like 🫢😒🙄😏 for a few seconds, overlaid by a title caption that never progresses to anything, and then the actual content is in the description — are so comical to me. but also so sad.

like... that could have been a text post. that literally WAS a text post, just one that's awkward to read and has a clickbait title card. people DO NOT WANT to just share information through videos and spoken words, but text based social media rn is all either –Bad –niche –your parents are there –also trying to be tiktok (or some combination of the above).

literally THE PEOPLE YEARN FOR THE TEXTPOSTS!!! THEY ARE SO STARVED OF TEXTPOSTS THAT THEY HAVE TO MACGYVER THEM AROUND THE VIDEO-BASED SYSTEMS IN THE JANKIEST WAY POSSIBLE, bc the time constraints of content that loops after a certain time put a physical cap on how much information can be shared in a single post, even if the 'video' is just 5 pixels visible behind a wall of text bubbles.

it's!!! so goofy!!! and even when the content of a video IS spoken out in the video itself, sooo many people (like me bitch) just read the cc. whenever i see a video with speech and no captions there are people in the comments asking about it. like if ur here to post written words and i'm here to read written words then WHAT are we doing with this facetious video nonsense. just type it to me babygirl, i have adequate reading comprehension

[bohba13-writing-den]

To clear things up, this isn't about the spyware. (Though I would LOVE regulation on that) This is about who is using it, how they can use it, and the fact this has been a known vector in the past. (there used to be a blanket ban on media companies operating in the US being foreign owned, the FCC now assesses such purchases on a case-by-case basis)

Several things you need to know first. China is ABSOLUTELY hostile to the US and its allies. There are a myriad of reasons for this that are too numerous to explain in detail, both good and bad. HOWEVER know that China is hostile to the US.

Now, one might think that this isn't an issue. Bytedance is a private company, that China can't force them to do anything.

And to that I say "bless your heart."

Because if you think the US is bad, and it is, China is WORSE!

By law, any "privately" owned business must have 80% of its shares owned by the local "union."

Oh, that's great, the workers have control of the company right?

nope. Unions in the PRC are in fact extensions of the local government, which are in turn beholden to the provincial government, who are then beholden to the national government, who are again, may I remind you, actively hostile to the US and its allies.

Next, there is a law in place in China which basically means the CCP can walk up and demand the info they have on their users, and they must comply. No warrant, no probable cause, nothing. Just, hey we want your data, hand it over.

Now, honestly, this isn't what I'm scared of. It once again goes back to their highly invasive algorithm.

So there are several factors to this. First and foremost is the fact that this algorithm can peg you down very quickly, which is honestly kind of scary. Then, once it finds out what will keep you on the app, instead of feeding that to you constantly, which would result in you eventually putting the app down, which they don't want for many reasons. Instead what they do is they put that at random intervals so that it works like gambling, resulting in you being hooked on the app.

Again, while ethically dubious and should be highly illegal, this is not why the ban has bipartisan support.

This has bipartisan support because all of this put together, results in a social cyberweapon.

Remember how much damage Russian bots were able to do? Now imagine if they had TOTAL CONTROL over a platform that had the popularity and reach as TikTok.

They could use the invasive info gathering to create categories of users with very high specificity, feed them information to do X Y or Z, and have a high likelyhood of those people doing that thing.

They could selectively radicalize users and have them act within their rights that are otherwise potentially damaging to national security.

Now yes. This does sound crazy, especially to someone not familiar with how exactly the CCP oppresses their people. (And no, it's not with social credit, that died in the proposition phase)

China uses the app on their side of the "Great Firewall" to control the flow of information. They use it to push their propaganda and suppress dissenting opinions, factually and/or morally right or wrong.

TikTok goes well beyond any platform in information gathering and invasiveness. Knowing the bodies involved, this is a tool meant for Chinese intelligence to compromise millions of Americans to act in hindrance of US interests, whether those interests be good or bad.

Why do you think it has become such a strong platform for pro-Palestinian information to disseminate? because that information actively undermines the current US position (Which I also do not support because Israel needs to back the fuck off and actually care about civcas.) Why do you think we have heard exactly jack and shit about the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs on TikTok?

It's because at the end of the day, they are completely beholden to the CCP.

A very qualified YouTuber (Even if I disagree with some of his takes when it comes to Gaza and Bushnell) has a video on how easy it is to astroturf political movements and protests merely using the app's advertiser services, and you know that Chinese intelligence has beyond premium service in that reguard.

This shit is fucking bonkers, but as someone who has been paying attention to that side of geopolitics for a long time, this is completely on brand for the CCP.

I hate that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs, but Chinese companies are generally not allowed to operate in the US for exactly this reason. Huawei has installed hardware backdoors in the past for example.

Chinese companies are merely extensions of the state, and are used as such whenever it suits them.

so the house of representatives just passed a bill that will now move to the senate to BAN tik tok completely in the united states and they are expected to argue that “national security risks” outweigh the freedom of speech and first amendment rights. biden has already said that if it gets to him, he will sign it. whether or not you use the app…….this is something to be worried about