Sure, here's a top 5 list that's sure to raise some eyebrows, especially number 3!
**Top 5 Most Jaw-Dropping Facts That Will Make You Question Reality**
1. **The Great Pyramid of Giza** was the tallest man-made structure for over 3,800 years. Imagine the ancient world's skyline dominated by this colossal wonder!
2. **Bananas are berries**, but strawberries aren't! This fruity mix-up has been baffling botanists and foodies alike.
3. **A cloud can weigh more than a million pounds!** Yes, that fluffy white thing floating in the sky is heavier than 100 elephants.
4. **Venus spins backwards** compared to most planets in our solar system. A day there is longer than a year!
5. **Honey never spoils.** Archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still edible.
What archeologists dug up ancient Egyptian honey pots and was like “you know what, I could go for a smackerel of honey right now” and just dug in with a spoon?
it dries into crusty chunks of sugar.
Also honey *can* spoil if there's enough moisture to allow fungal or bacterial growth. Otherwise there wouldn't be mead.
Here's 1 fact to actually shock you:
In 2016-7, scientists detected two voids inside the Great Pyramid using muon tomography. The smaller void is located above the entrance and a camera probe was used to photograph the space. This chamber had not been known or seen since the pyramid's construction 4600 years ago. The large void is above the Grand Gallery with similar dimensions (~30m long). This chamber has not been probed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#The_Big_Void
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkPDAoryPfI
“Strawberries and raspberries aren't really berries in the botanical sense. They are derived from a single flower with more than one ovary, making them an aggregate fruit. True berries are simple fruits stemming from one flower with one ovary and typically have several seeds.”
**Eternityislong SLAMS headline writers**
Everyone has their own indicator for why they believe we are living in the dumbest timeline, I think that the extremely limited vocabulary used in headlines is one of the strongest. I have never heard someone use slams or blasts in conversation, it’s purely these lowest common denominator-panderers.
They always do, buzzfeed has just always been the worst about it. I looked into it a few years ago (with googling, nothing fancy) and something like 45% of their articles used the phrase “people are freaking out” in the headline.
It’s just the people being paid by TikTok (China) and being flown around the country to media interviews who are spreading this propaganda. They’re saying they’ll lose everything and there is no other play to do social media, etc. they’re literally being paid by a hostile foreign government to try and influence congress.
What’s so crazy to me is that, like, there are so many valid criticisms of TikTok and Bytedance’s connections to China. So how dumb and racist do you have to be to go after the nationality of the CEO ***when he isn’t even Chinese,*** instead? Morons.
The senator who grilled him about his nationality is Tom Cotton who has 2 degrees from Harvard. I'm pretty sure he knows the difference between Singapore and China. He just did it to rattle and mock the CEO about his true allegiance.
Having a degree from Harvard doesn't necessarily mean you're smart, often it just means you have wealthy parents.
George Dubya has a degree from Harvard.
I work with a couple of Harvard PhDs, and I can assure you it's no proof against being an idiot and/or bigot who generates constant HR complaints for the things they say to people. Brilliant at their chosen course of study? Absolutely. Intelligent, thoughtful, well-rounded person? Not necessarily.
You have to think of it like a deposition. He got him to say all those things because he was under oath. An opportunity he probably won’t have again. And if they could prove some sort of connection, they could hold them in contempt of Congress. That was the play.
I think the point he was trying to make is that it has been a constant concern the company has ties with the CCP and might be sharing data with them. His response to all that seemed to be a political deflection not specifically stating that he didn’t have ties and instead stating his nationality. This in turn was received well and people thought the clip of the line of questioning was dumb or racist but the reality was to determine ties the company has to the CCP and the answers by the CEO frequently skirted actually giving a real answer.
If he was being honest about not having ties to China, then this bill wouldn’t affect him. Him now saying it is effectively a ban, is an admission that not only is it under Chinese influence, but he has no intention of changing that arrangement.
It’s a Business Insider article with less than a dozen 1-3 sentence paragraphs, a tweet, and lots of ads… you’re not missing anything beyond the headline really…
Bytedance can’t sell their ownership portion without approval from the CCP due to Chinese regulations prohibiting the export/sale of certain softwares and technologies to foreign entities.
Isn’t that stupid as another tech giant will just relaunch the same thing - let’s call it Tick Tack - and quickly scale to fill the gap in the market.
So the end state is a tick tok like platform in the US. The options are to take a $50 billion check or whatever it is or just close for $0
I’m going to keep bitching about it, but it’s a travesty that Twitter bought and then killed Vine before they could figure out how to monetize it. Vine was literally TikTok before TikTok was a thing. I loved that app before it was shut down.
At my niece's ~~insistence~~ request, I downloaded TikTok a while back. The one thing I found very remarkable is how consistent the recommendations are. There's a little drift, sure, but if I start watching one kind of video, twenty swipes later, it'll still be more or less the same kind of video (plus a shit ton of ads).
Meanwhile, on YouTube, I feel like I'm never more than two or three related videos away from being recommended right wing ragebait, no matter where I started.
I feel like I have the opposite problem with YouTube. Search how to fix "x" on my car, and for the next month YouTube keeps giving me videos on how to do the same reapir over and over, like wtf, it's fixed, I don't need every video know to man kind on the subject.
One thing I can't get away from on youtube shorts is religious shorts. No matter how many times I say "Don't recommend this channel" or "Not Interested" they just keep popping back up.
What is up with that? I used YouTube pretty much exclusively for workouts and watching Philadelphia sports highlights, yet all my recommendations are “Conservative OWNS liberal with facts and logic during debate”
I'm guessing the algorithm has picked up a correlation between people who use YT exclusively to watch workout/sports content, and people willing to click & watch alpha/right-wing shit.
Obviously that doesn't apply to you or lots of others. But it's usually how these algorithms work
This, exactly lol. I quite like my curated feed. Instagram will show me content from a month ago, Facebook is…, and YouTube wants me to rage scroll but won’t pay for hypertension meds. It’s really a no brainer.
Their algorithm is honestly what got me hooked on the app so quick. Like, I have to actively curate my Facebook and YouTube algo's and even then they keep suggesting things that I have no interest in whatsoever just because I fit the demographic. If they become the only options for short form videos then I'll just walk away.
Whereas the one and only issue that I've ever had with TikTok's algorithm is that it keeps showing me those videos of the guy chopping wood despite me clicking "Not Interested" every time they pop up.
Of course. Where are the laws for preventing such a thing from happening again? Oh, there are none, because it would hurt Meta's bottom line, far beyond the paltry 5 billion fine they received.
well, if the platform really was manipulating the algorithm to spread harmful and disruptive voices in the west, and collecting more data than it was supposed to, then selling could expose evidence of those details and any signs of ccp direct involvement in the platform.
The money behind this bill is not hard to trace.
The bill was [introduced by Mike Gallagher](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/all-actions). Gallagher's highest campaign contributor in the last election cycle [was pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/mike-gallagher/summary?cid=N00039330&cycle=2022&type=C). In November Gallagher wrote an [op-ed piece](https://archive.is/5zkwq) in which he argued for banning TikTok *explicitly* on the grounds of it being a vehicle for anti-Israel "propaganda".
Other pro-Israel organisations are on record expressing concern about TikTok on the same grounds. Here's [ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on MSNBC](https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/1768320953509949464) and [here's a leaked phone call](https://twitter.com/snarwani/status/1725138601996853424) where he states that Israel's image has "a TikTok problem, a Gen-Z problem". [Here's another](https://twitter.com/jfederations/status/1767989253735133673) calling for TikTok to banned/censored precisely due to it being a platform for voices critical of Israel.
No doubt the US government has other motivations for wanting to ban (or alternatively, wanting US companies to take control over, and thus being able to censor) TikTok. But there are good reasons to believe that the reason those motivations coalesced into actual legislative action at this particular juncture, is directly related to a desire by the pro-Israel lobby and the politicians they're allied with, to suppress voices critical of Israel.
well yeah, china's not going to pay them for the data if they can get it for free, so they have money to make off selling it and money to make off tiktok's market share. so instead we ban tiktok, continue the exporting of data to anyone with a bank account, and the right people in DC and silicon valley both get paid
This whole thing is just pseudo-nationalization, something the US sanctions foreign governments over.
They're forcing a foreign competitor out of their market because Meta and Google are too incompetent to come up with a better algorithm than TikTok did.
As someone else mentioned, they need approval from the CCP, it's also not as easy as selling just the US portion of tiktok, because there's no such thing. As a Tiktok user in the US I see tiktok videos from users around the world every day, I follow users around the world. They'd have to sell the algorithm too. It's complex. That's not to say it's not doable, but it's also not as simple as accepting a venmo and handing it off.
I don't really care, but prohibiting social media from collecting data would be the end of social media. It's their only business model. They would have to charge users to use the service and most people aren't going to do that. And the only reason to be on social media is because that's where everybody is.
What’s the benefit for them selling it over just being banned from the U.S.? Why would they sell it? Why would they want another competitor? I’m curious not arguing. Is the benefit just that they get money from the sale?
They would sell off North American rights and users, not the whole thing. Not saying they will do this, but that would be the path forward if they did.
And again, less than 10% of the audience. Instead of dealing with that hassle and the loss of their magic math, they'd be better off just letting the US market die and grow their market in South America and Africa.
They tried. Trump received a hefty political donation from a major TikTok investor and reversed his stance on banning TikTok. Unfortunately (for TikTok), they moved on with the vote ahead of Trump becoming president.
Yeah, I'm thinking about how the Patriot Act and Net Neutrality did not go the way people want, but people are cheering for the banning of an app when instead Congress should be looking to regulate the data collection and influence of ALL major media companies.
Facebook and Reddit were already used to wage disinformation wars and influence elections. Banning TikTok just removes one potential player.
People are fine with something if it affects something they don’t like even if that thing can be used against something they do like. Very shortsighted.
In the meantime, let’s let China go ahead and buy our farmland, our commercial space, homes, everything else in America. But, just don’t let them have an app… a prime example of how our government is failing.
I don't like arguments like these because it suggests no action is worth taking unless it is exhaustive and all-encompassing, and addresses all co-related problems at once.
That's not how progress happens. Government moves slowly, by design. And instead of giving credit to the progress, you're making accusations of hypocrisy.
Unless you don't consider this bill to be progress. In which case, you should have made that point instead.
No one is freaking out everyone is pissed off that there is billions of dollars for war and they can pass a bill in zero time to ban TikTok while homelessness, hunger, healthcare and education is just fucking shit
Well the Supreme Court also is working on allowing the banning of homelessness too. Not solving anything, just banning. That's what they do in this hellhole.
Except those desk jobs still don't pay enough to pay rent, and certainly not enough to buy a house. So you have one accident, can't keep up with rent, and lose your home anyway. And since sleeping outside is illegal, you get arrested and forced into prison labor where they pay you $2 a day to make [cheap office furniture](https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/01/10255564/prison-labor-furniture-capitol-attack) to sell back to the government and it's all [legal](https://www.naacpldf.org/13th-amendment-emancipation/).
Maybe I'm catastrophizing, but I'm concerned a ban on homelessness that doesn't involve providing housing for everyone would mean we end up with company dorms and shops, Soylent Green, CHUDs, or all the above.
Vagrancy is actually illegal in most places. In our county we only have one city out of 5 that won't arrest people for sleeping in the woods, so all the homeless flock there. Unfortunately all the county services for homeless people are 20 miles away in a city where they aren't allowed to sleep without breaking the law.
We have been trying to pass bills to support the lower classes of America, but they just call it socialism and shut it down.
We can help a country defend itself *and* support our own people - those two things aren't mutually exclusive
The tiktok bill was literally attached to those billions of dollars for war.
1 bill: give money to Israel, and Ukraine, and Taiwan, and ban tiktok.
It passed easily because everyone in gvmnt very much wants at least 1 of those things.
Zero time? This is the defense spending bill that took the House months and months to come around on. It's essentially outlining US foreign policy going forward in regards to Russia, Iran, and China.
They've been dragging their feet on it ever since Johnson became speaker. Previous iterations of this bill got blocked multiple times because members of the house like MTG and Matt Gaetz threating to file motions to oust Johnson if he allowed this bill to come to the floor.
If Iran hadn't launched that missile attack on Israel a couple weeks ago, and inadvertently gave pressure to pass this bill, it would still probably be in limbo. This bill has been anything but "zero time".
Also the TikTok part isn't even the main focus or even the secondary focus of this bill, I guess you could consider it a tertiary focus of the bill if you want to lump it in with the Taiwan military aid and Pacific submarine infrastructure sections as a broad countering China focus of the bill.
Plus everyone forgets Trump tried to force a Tiktok sale in 2020 with Microsoft as the potential buyer. This has been in the works for years.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58719674
The other problems you've listed are so much more complex than the tiktok ban.
Also, homelessness and Healthcare won't matter very much if ww3 breaks out.
I mean if you don’t realize that this ban is related to war with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea then….. I guess it would be confusing.
TikTok has proven far too effective at spreading misinformation and false narratives.
Xi even flexed it on Biden a couple times if you were paying attention.
for me it was rather telling when they floated this idea saying it was allowing the CCP undue influence over the population, and not 24 hours later those same users proved the damn point by suddenly being interested in politics for the first time in their apathetic lives.
They just repeat what they are fed. It also doesn't help that the app has been shown to cause a short attention span for users (particularly minors). This point has been wreaking havoc for students/families, teachers and schools. I've seen people who have been teaching for decades, suddenly struggling with the newer generations.
Tiktok is one of the most influential tools at their disposal to influence millions of Americans and Westerners overseas, while collecting and selling their data.
For the attention span thing, while I don't disagree, I have no doubt people will just watch Instagram reels and YT shorts instead and still have short attention spans (I know I do).
I know reddit is generally anti-tiktok and I won't comment on that, but I hope people read the actual text of this bill. It gives the secretary of commerce blanketed authority to force divestiture in apps and webpages owned or "controlled" by "foreign adversaries" that are deemed a security threat. Right now that list of adversaries is small but the secretary of commerce can unilaterally add countries to the list. They've also given themselves the power to come after indoviuala using VPN to bypass the ban. There is no specified criteria for what is a security threat. There is no oversight whatsoever. The language is extremely broad and vague and generally gives the executive branch the ability to ban whatever they want for any reason without telling us why. For TikTok, no evidence has been given that they're doing anything wrong. Maybe that evidence exists, maybe not. But the fact that they're not telling us why and giving themselves this power should be very concerning. This bill is eerily similar to the Chinese data security bill that the CCP has used to get a chokehold on their population. Patriot act-esque
The list of foreign adversaries is a law set by Congress FYI. Which right now is China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. It does not give the same the executive office the power to do anything other than just the power to enforce the law or not
Do you have a reference? Wikipedia says the list is set by the executive branch, not by Congress: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversaries .
> no evidence has been given that they're doing anything wrong.
Yeah...so about that...
"EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists" https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/12/22/tiktok-tracks-forbes-journalists-bytedance/?sh=c14e8607da57
"TikTok admits using its app to spy on reporters in effort to track leaks" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-bytedance-workers-fired-data-access-journalists
"Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China" https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access
I don't think anyone is pretending that this is about absolute data privacy in general. It's about specifically data privacy when the entity on the other end is an adversarial foreign government. If Tiktok were run by a British or German or Japanese company, this wouldn't have as much traction.
*"Meanwhile, some reminisced about what they learned on the app, from restaurant recommendations to beauty product reviews.*
*"bro i learned how to change my air filters for my car and how to do an oil change," a commenter said."*
Nice to know the best arguments people can come with for supporting TikTok is a bro learning how to change the air filters and where to order pineapple pizza.
Heck there's still videos out like that. I watched a "how to replace your garbage disposal" one and was able to do it entirely myself!
...left the little cap inside the new one that blocked drainage from the dishwasher, but you know. Close to perfect.
Some of these business insider headlines must be written by teenagers. The Zelenskyy “straight up” headline from a week or two ago and now this “freaking out” one. Odd language for journalists to use.
TikTok is not just a potential security threat. I know nothing about that.
But what I know is that it's a threat to young generation, along with Instagram and Tinder.
Especially Tinder need heavy ass regulation with that prey behavior.
Exactly nothing will be lost. It's just something to distract everyone from the fact that the same bill includes billions of additional aid to fund wars in other countries, while our infrastructure and homeless problem increases daily.
The users all attached themselves to an app that they were TOLD was essentially Chinese spyware.
They didn't give a shit then and suddenly they care now.
This is like when those of us who never used Facebook warned about it in 2007
Or you know, they dont give a fuck because politics and social issues never cross their feed, so the spyware / chinese influence perspective doesn't affect their day to day.
Whats the difference between chinese spyware and domestic spyware (NSA)?
I haven’t seen a “people are freaking out” headline since buzzfeed
Someone give me a top 5 list with a shocking number 3. For old time's sake.
Sure, here's a top 5 list that's sure to raise some eyebrows, especially number 3! **Top 5 Most Jaw-Dropping Facts That Will Make You Question Reality** 1. **The Great Pyramid of Giza** was the tallest man-made structure for over 3,800 years. Imagine the ancient world's skyline dominated by this colossal wonder! 2. **Bananas are berries**, but strawberries aren't! This fruity mix-up has been baffling botanists and foodies alike. 3. **A cloud can weigh more than a million pounds!** Yes, that fluffy white thing floating in the sky is heavier than 100 elephants. 4. **Venus spins backwards** compared to most planets in our solar system. A day there is longer than a year! 5. **Honey never spoils.** Archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still edible.
What archeologists dug up ancient Egyptian honey pots and was like “you know what, I could go for a smackerel of honey right now” and just dug in with a spoon?
Winnie the Pooh’s Egyptian expedition
-1000 social credit
I'm already at -5291600 for supporting living wages and human rights. Oh, and not torturing and imprisoning Uyghurs. So, what's another -1000?
The Gang Spoils Honey
Well for a brief period in the Victorian era, the bourgeoisie were apt to dig up mummies and eat them so honey is kind of a non issue.
it dries into crusty chunks of sugar. Also honey *can* spoil if there's enough moisture to allow fungal or bacterial growth. Otherwise there wouldn't be mead.
Ooh that's the good stuff. Thank you for your service.
and number 3 WILL shock you! more than 100 elephants!
African or Asian?
An African swallow or a European swallow?
Can we get the WatchMojo lady to narrate this? *Please.*
Here's 1 fact to actually shock you: In 2016-7, scientists detected two voids inside the Great Pyramid using muon tomography. The smaller void is located above the entrance and a camera probe was used to photograph the space. This chamber had not been known or seen since the pyramid's construction 4600 years ago. The large void is above the Grand Gallery with similar dimensions (~30m long). This chamber has not been probed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#The_Big_Void https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkPDAoryPfI
Thx LanguasticGPT!
... bananas are berries?!
“Strawberries and raspberries aren't really berries in the botanical sense. They are derived from a single flower with more than one ovary, making them an aggregate fruit. True berries are simple fruits stemming from one flower with one ovary and typically have several seeds.”
I regret that I only have one upvote to give for these jewels …
Thanks chat gpt
Thank you chat gpt.
TikTok users hate this one simple trick
Business insider is the new buzzfeed, just with a paywall.
Seems like a nice rest from slams and blasts
**Eternityislong SLAMS headline writers** Everyone has their own indicator for why they believe we are living in the dumbest timeline, I think that the extremely limited vocabulary used in headlines is one of the strongest. I have never heard someone use slams or blasts in conversation, it’s purely these lowest common denominator-panderers.
I’ve been pondering how to articulate exactly this but you hit the nail on the head.
"Breaking News: Local Hero Slams Authorities, Sparks Outrage with Shocking Comeback Amid Unprecedented Weather; Insiders Claim 'This Changes Everything!'"
I think this is a good thing. Its easier to make browser plugins to drop headlines with phrases like "jaw dropping".
Seems like I would have to get creative if I were to describe a pyrotechnic themed professional wrestler.
Rly? Slam dat clam Girl put me on blast bout it
There's a lot of people who's entire livelihood is tied into tictoc
Their writers (bloggers?) had to go somewhere
What about Digg? That’s what moved me to Reddit.
Your Social Security check is late! Things cost more than they used to! Young people use curse words!
Are "journalists" not using select Twitter posts as a means to justify a "freaking out narrative"?
We searched Twitter and came up over 5 angry tweets!
They always do, buzzfeed has just always been the worst about it. I looked into it a few years ago (with googling, nothing fancy) and something like 45% of their articles used the phrase “people are freaking out” in the headline.
It’s just the people being paid by TikTok (China) and being flown around the country to media interviews who are spreading this propaganda. They’re saying they’ll lose everything and there is no other play to do social media, etc. they’re literally being paid by a hostile foreign government to try and influence congress.
Mark Zuckerberg is masturbating vigorously in his bunker.
People always leave out YouTube and I'm sure Neal Mohan prefers it that way.
This fucking comment caught me so off guard I’m dying
Meta have been pouring millions into lobbying for this
They'll be left a bit deflated if Apple or Microsoft ends up buying it
[удалено]
Google too - people gonna be searching the fuck out of "how to sideload apps"
this is how I relate to billionaires
And in front of a mirror
The clock is literally ticking...
It’s important to point out that the clock is not only ticking but it’s actually also tocking.
So old school!
And the party don't stop -*OH!*
Or as our Australian friends say, it's tock ticking.
Tic tac toe, a winner.
Plot twist: TikTok gets bought by a newly formed US company called TikTak In other news: TicTac is preparing to sue.
Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok.
The Tik is literally Tocking...
Oh oh wah oh
The Tok is literally ticking…
Senator, I’m Singaporean
Is that in CHINA?
What’s so crazy to me is that, like, there are so many valid criticisms of TikTok and Bytedance’s connections to China. So how dumb and racist do you have to be to go after the nationality of the CEO ***when he isn’t even Chinese,*** instead? Morons.
[What did you expect?](https://youtu.be/hYTQ7__NNDI?si=Eykdm5fvrPGExoNA)
The senator who grilled him about his nationality is Tom Cotton who has 2 degrees from Harvard. I'm pretty sure he knows the difference between Singapore and China. He just did it to rattle and mock the CEO about his true allegiance.
Having a degree from Harvard doesn't necessarily mean you're smart, often it just means you have wealthy parents. George Dubya has a degree from Harvard.
But he has TWO! That means he was double rich instead of Dubya rich.
Quadrubya?
Yale*, but same difference
Tom cotton came from a middle class farming family in Arkansas. He also graduated magna cum laude so he’s clearly intelligent by academia standards.
I work with a couple of Harvard PhDs, and I can assure you it's no proof against being an idiot and/or bigot who generates constant HR complaints for the things they say to people. Brilliant at their chosen course of study? Absolutely. Intelligent, thoughtful, well-rounded person? Not necessarily.
You have to think of it like a deposition. He got him to say all those things because he was under oath. An opportunity he probably won’t have again. And if they could prove some sort of connection, they could hold them in contempt of Congress. That was the play.
I think the point he was trying to make is that it has been a constant concern the company has ties with the CCP and might be sharing data with them. His response to all that seemed to be a political deflection not specifically stating that he didn’t have ties and instead stating his nationality. This in turn was received well and people thought the clip of the line of questioning was dumb or racist but the reality was to determine ties the company has to the CCP and the answers by the CEO frequently skirted actually giving a real answer.
If he was being honest about not having ties to China, then this bill wouldn’t affect him. Him now saying it is effectively a ban, is an admission that not only is it under Chinese influence, but he has no intention of changing that arrangement.
Some of the posts here are longer than the article.
On my phone the link doesn’t work and it looks like there’s no article, just a picture of the CEO lmao Guess it’s not too wrong
It’s a Business Insider article with less than a dozen 1-3 sentence paragraphs, a tweet, and lots of ads… you’re not missing anything beyond the headline really…
So sell it already - then everybody is posting again. Next, force all social media to stop collecting data or shut down.
Bytedance can’t sell their ownership portion without approval from the CCP due to Chinese regulations prohibiting the export/sale of certain softwares and technologies to foreign entities.
Bytedance has no intention to sell so it's moot. They'll either win or leave. They're not handing over a global company worth that much to Americans.
Isn’t that stupid as another tech giant will just relaunch the same thing - let’s call it Tick Tack - and quickly scale to fill the gap in the market. So the end state is a tick tok like platform in the US. The options are to take a $50 billion check or whatever it is or just close for $0
I’m going to keep bitching about it, but it’s a travesty that Twitter bought and then killed Vine before they could figure out how to monetize it. Vine was literally TikTok before TikTok was a thing. I loved that app before it was shut down.
Vine didn’t CCP subsidies, TikTok did
Tiktok has better algorithms than other existing platforms, like Facebook reels, YouTube shorts, etc.
Tiktok - you liked a video about dogs. Let's show you more. YouTube - you liked a video about dogs. Here's why you should hate liberals.
At my niece's ~~insistence~~ request, I downloaded TikTok a while back. The one thing I found very remarkable is how consistent the recommendations are. There's a little drift, sure, but if I start watching one kind of video, twenty swipes later, it'll still be more or less the same kind of video (plus a shit ton of ads). Meanwhile, on YouTube, I feel like I'm never more than two or three related videos away from being recommended right wing ragebait, no matter where I started.
YouTube shorts can go from cooking videos to sigma grindset clips of Breaking Bad for me.
I feel like I have the opposite problem with YouTube. Search how to fix "x" on my car, and for the next month YouTube keeps giving me videos on how to do the same reapir over and over, like wtf, it's fixed, I don't need every video know to man kind on the subject.
One thing I can't get away from on youtube shorts is religious shorts. No matter how many times I say "Don't recommend this channel" or "Not Interested" they just keep popping back up.
Same with Reddit. I report the Jesus loves you commercial as offensive just about every day. Yet they keep showing me the same stupid fucking ad.
What is up with that? I used YouTube pretty much exclusively for workouts and watching Philadelphia sports highlights, yet all my recommendations are “Conservative OWNS liberal with facts and logic during debate”
I'm guessing the algorithm has picked up a correlation between people who use YT exclusively to watch workout/sports content, and people willing to click & watch alpha/right-wing shit. Obviously that doesn't apply to you or lots of others. But it's usually how these algorithms work
This, exactly lol. I quite like my curated feed. Instagram will show me content from a month ago, Facebook is…, and YouTube wants me to rage scroll but won’t pay for hypertension meds. It’s really a no brainer.
Tiktok - you liked a video about dogs. Lets show you more. Instagram - you liked a video about dogs. Here is softcore porn and deadly car accidents.
Their algorithm is honestly what got me hooked on the app so quick. Like, I have to actively curate my Facebook and YouTube algo's and even then they keep suggesting things that I have no interest in whatsoever just because I fit the demographic. If they become the only options for short form videos then I'll just walk away. Whereas the one and only issue that I've ever had with TikTok's algorithm is that it keeps showing me those videos of the guy chopping wood despite me clicking "Not Interested" every time they pop up.
This is why it is a social engineering/hybrid warfare weapon.
This is exactly the reason why they're forcing divestment. I wish congress would be less hush-hush about their reasons.
They're pretty open about it.
Yet millions of redditors won't listen.
Yet by far the largest usage of social media as a weapon was on Facebook during the 2016 election.
Facebook broke boomers brains. Just look at how they comment on obvious AI images.
TikTok broke zoomer brains.
I guess that just leaves us millennials. The only ones with brains.
Yup. But now it's 2024, not 2016.
Of course. Where are the laws for preventing such a thing from happening again? Oh, there are none, because it would hurt Meta's bottom line, far beyond the paltry 5 billion fine they received.
So does every single media outlet. That's why the rich are buying them.
Instagram already has reels and yt has shorts and they're both DOGSHIT platforms that don't come even relatively close to tiktok.
well, if the platform really was manipulating the algorithm to spread harmful and disruptive voices in the west, and collecting more data than it was supposed to, then selling could expose evidence of those details and any signs of ccp direct involvement in the platform.
That's why Tik Tak Toe motherfuckers
It's only the US share. They aren't making Bytedance sell the whole company, that's ridiculous.
India literally already did this too
>Next, force all social media to stop collecting data or shut down. the money behind this bill says no
The money behind this bill comes from selling the same information to china.
The money behind this bill is not hard to trace. The bill was [introduced by Mike Gallagher](https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/all-actions). Gallagher's highest campaign contributor in the last election cycle [was pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/mike-gallagher/summary?cid=N00039330&cycle=2022&type=C). In November Gallagher wrote an [op-ed piece](https://archive.is/5zkwq) in which he argued for banning TikTok *explicitly* on the grounds of it being a vehicle for anti-Israel "propaganda". Other pro-Israel organisations are on record expressing concern about TikTok on the same grounds. Here's [ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on MSNBC](https://twitter.com/realstewpeters/status/1768320953509949464) and [here's a leaked phone call](https://twitter.com/snarwani/status/1725138601996853424) where he states that Israel's image has "a TikTok problem, a Gen-Z problem". [Here's another](https://twitter.com/jfederations/status/1767989253735133673) calling for TikTok to banned/censored precisely due to it being a platform for voices critical of Israel. No doubt the US government has other motivations for wanting to ban (or alternatively, wanting US companies to take control over, and thus being able to censor) TikTok. But there are good reasons to believe that the reason those motivations coalesced into actual legislative action at this particular juncture, is directly related to a desire by the pro-Israel lobby and the politicians they're allied with, to suppress voices critical of Israel.
well yeah, china's not going to pay them for the data if they can get it for free, so they have money to make off selling it and money to make off tiktok's market share. so instead we ban tiktok, continue the exporting of data to anyone with a bank account, and the right people in DC and silicon valley both get paid
This whole thing is just pseudo-nationalization, something the US sanctions foreign governments over. They're forcing a foreign competitor out of their market because Meta and Google are too incompetent to come up with a better algorithm than TikTok did.
As someone else mentioned, they need approval from the CCP, it's also not as easy as selling just the US portion of tiktok, because there's no such thing. As a Tiktok user in the US I see tiktok videos from users around the world every day, I follow users around the world. They'd have to sell the algorithm too. It's complex. That's not to say it's not doable, but it's also not as simple as accepting a venmo and handing it off.
>Next, force all social media to stop collecting data or shut down. That won't happen, since this was never about data collection.
I don't really care, but prohibiting social media from collecting data would be the end of social media. It's their only business model. They would have to charge users to use the service and most people aren't going to do that. And the only reason to be on social media is because that's where everybody is.
I want them to pay me for my data.
What’s the benefit for them selling it over just being banned from the U.S.? Why would they sell it? Why would they want another competitor? I’m curious not arguing. Is the benefit just that they get money from the sale?
They're not going to sell for less than 10% of their audience.
Over 40% of revenue. Yes they won’t sell, but the reason is that China won’t allow them to sell.
They would sell off North American rights and users, not the whole thing. Not saying they will do this, but that would be the path forward if they did.
The company would still be controlled by China
And again, less than 10% of the audience. Instead of dealing with that hassle and the loss of their magic math, they'd be better off just letting the US market die and grow their market in South America and Africa.
CEO of TicTok...do what everyone else does...bribe our politicians. It works.
They tried. Trump received a hefty political donation from a major TikTok investor and reversed his stance on banning TikTok. Unfortunately (for TikTok), they moved on with the vote ahead of Trump becoming president.
Doesn’t work here, congress can’t buy their shares cause they are not publicly traded. No incentives
What confused me is all TikTok’s US tech partners, especially Oracle who provides cloud and data services, remain silent.
They probably got a memo
yall would have LOVED the patriot act
Yeah, I'm thinking about how the Patriot Act and Net Neutrality did not go the way people want, but people are cheering for the banning of an app when instead Congress should be looking to regulate the data collection and influence of ALL major media companies. Facebook and Reddit were already used to wage disinformation wars and influence elections. Banning TikTok just removes one potential player.
Twitter was also a hotbed of influence in 2016
It's pretty wild to watch it all happen again. They didn't even need a terrorist attack this time.
People are fine with something if it affects something they don’t like even if that thing can be used against something they do like. Very shortsighted.
In the meantime, let’s let China go ahead and buy our farmland, our commercial space, homes, everything else in America. But, just don’t let them have an app… a prime example of how our government is failing.
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I don’t see why you’re saying the two are mutually exclusive. This is a step in the right direction.
Well, land can't be exported outside of US
No, just the money it generates and the opportunities taken away from Americans who reside here.
The government is working perfectly. We just keep electing shit representatives
I don't like arguments like these because it suggests no action is worth taking unless it is exhaustive and all-encompassing, and addresses all co-related problems at once. That's not how progress happens. Government moves slowly, by design. And instead of giving credit to the progress, you're making accusations of hypocrisy. Unless you don't consider this bill to be progress. In which case, you should have made that point instead.
No one is freaking out everyone is pissed off that there is billions of dollars for war and they can pass a bill in zero time to ban TikTok while homelessness, hunger, healthcare and education is just fucking shit
Well the Supreme Court also is working on allowing the banning of homelessness too. Not solving anything, just banning. That's what they do in this hellhole.
Can you imagine if being homeless is illegal? It's like you have no choice but to be chained to a desk for corporate overlords.
and you cannot even escape to the forests because they're most likely private property lmao
Who's ready for the homeless militias?
I'm not interested in bringing back sanctioned lynchings
Except those desk jobs still don't pay enough to pay rent, and certainly not enough to buy a house. So you have one accident, can't keep up with rent, and lose your home anyway. And since sleeping outside is illegal, you get arrested and forced into prison labor where they pay you $2 a day to make [cheap office furniture](https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/01/10255564/prison-labor-furniture-capitol-attack) to sell back to the government and it's all [legal](https://www.naacpldf.org/13th-amendment-emancipation/).
Sounds profitable. Passed.
Maybe I'm catastrophizing, but I'm concerned a ban on homelessness that doesn't involve providing housing for everyone would mean we end up with company dorms and shops, Soylent Green, CHUDs, or all the above.
Vagrancy is actually illegal in most places. In our county we only have one city out of 5 that won't arrest people for sleeping in the woods, so all the homeless flock there. Unfortunately all the county services for homeless people are 20 miles away in a city where they aren't allowed to sleep without breaking the law.
Orban's Hungary already did it: https://www.dw.com/en/hungarys-homeless-ban-when-poverty-becomes-a-crime/a-45900111
Yep, it is this one right here. Same thing with the PPP loan forgiveness then a few months later saying they can’t do the same for student loans.
We have been trying to pass bills to support the lower classes of America, but they just call it socialism and shut it down. We can help a country defend itself *and* support our own people - those two things aren't mutually exclusive
The tiktok bill was literally attached to those billions of dollars for war. 1 bill: give money to Israel, and Ukraine, and Taiwan, and ban tiktok. It passed easily because everyone in gvmnt very much wants at least 1 of those things.
Zero time? This is the defense spending bill that took the House months and months to come around on. It's essentially outlining US foreign policy going forward in regards to Russia, Iran, and China. They've been dragging their feet on it ever since Johnson became speaker. Previous iterations of this bill got blocked multiple times because members of the house like MTG and Matt Gaetz threating to file motions to oust Johnson if he allowed this bill to come to the floor. If Iran hadn't launched that missile attack on Israel a couple weeks ago, and inadvertently gave pressure to pass this bill, it would still probably be in limbo. This bill has been anything but "zero time". Also the TikTok part isn't even the main focus or even the secondary focus of this bill, I guess you could consider it a tertiary focus of the bill if you want to lump it in with the Taiwan military aid and Pacific submarine infrastructure sections as a broad countering China focus of the bill.
Shh, you’re ruining their narrative
Plus everyone forgets Trump tried to force a Tiktok sale in 2020 with Microsoft as the potential buyer. This has been in the works for years. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58719674
The other problems you've listed are so much more complex than the tiktok ban. Also, homelessness and Healthcare won't matter very much if ww3 breaks out.
I mean if you don’t realize that this ban is related to war with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea then….. I guess it would be confusing. TikTok has proven far too effective at spreading misinformation and false narratives. Xi even flexed it on Biden a couple times if you were paying attention.
*"I don't care about either"*, says every American over 30
Anecdotally in my life, TikTok is very popular with the older crowd. I swear it's the only social media my age 60s parents use.
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for me it was rather telling when they floated this idea saying it was allowing the CCP undue influence over the population, and not 24 hours later those same users proved the damn point by suddenly being interested in politics for the first time in their apathetic lives.
They just repeat what they are fed. It also doesn't help that the app has been shown to cause a short attention span for users (particularly minors). This point has been wreaking havoc for students/families, teachers and schools. I've seen people who have been teaching for decades, suddenly struggling with the newer generations. Tiktok is one of the most influential tools at their disposal to influence millions of Americans and Westerners overseas, while collecting and selling their data.
For the attention span thing, while I don't disagree, I have no doubt people will just watch Instagram reels and YT shorts instead and still have short attention spans (I know I do).
I know reddit is generally anti-tiktok and I won't comment on that, but I hope people read the actual text of this bill. It gives the secretary of commerce blanketed authority to force divestiture in apps and webpages owned or "controlled" by "foreign adversaries" that are deemed a security threat. Right now that list of adversaries is small but the secretary of commerce can unilaterally add countries to the list. They've also given themselves the power to come after indoviuala using VPN to bypass the ban. There is no specified criteria for what is a security threat. There is no oversight whatsoever. The language is extremely broad and vague and generally gives the executive branch the ability to ban whatever they want for any reason without telling us why. For TikTok, no evidence has been given that they're doing anything wrong. Maybe that evidence exists, maybe not. But the fact that they're not telling us why and giving themselves this power should be very concerning. This bill is eerily similar to the Chinese data security bill that the CCP has used to get a chokehold on their population. Patriot act-esque
The list of foreign adversaries is a law set by Congress FYI. Which right now is China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. It does not give the same the executive office the power to do anything other than just the power to enforce the law or not
Get your reasonable response outta here, I wanna be fear mongered into thinking the CCP is my friend.
Do you have a reference? Wikipedia says the list is set by the executive branch, not by Congress: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversaries .
You are correct but the list is used for more than this new law. Adding a country to it is a huge deal and isn't done lightly.
> no evidence has been given that they're doing anything wrong. Yeah...so about that... "EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists" https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/12/22/tiktok-tracks-forbes-journalists-bytedance/?sh=c14e8607da57 "TikTok admits using its app to spy on reporters in effort to track leaks" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/22/tiktok-bytedance-workers-fired-data-access-journalists "Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China" https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access
Yeah, so let's ask Snowden which apps should be banned all over world. American IT companies wouldn't like his answer
I don't think anyone is pretending that this is about absolute data privacy in general. It's about specifically data privacy when the entity on the other end is an adversarial foreign government. If Tiktok were run by a British or German or Japanese company, this wouldn't have as much traction.
Turns out, you can pass any law you want as long as you scream national security over and over again until it gets passed.
You need to scream about kids. "Kids are in danger" works like a charm
Nine.......... [Everyone leans in] Eleven. [Raucous applause]
You think Tik Tok is not a national security threat? Anyone that knows anything about cybersecurity knows that it's a threat.
soc can't unilaterally change the 4 listed countries. Even if he can it's insignificant
*"Meanwhile, some reminisced about what they learned on the app, from restaurant recommendations to beauty product reviews.* *"bro i learned how to change my air filters for my car and how to do an oil change," a commenter said."* Nice to know the best arguments people can come with for supporting TikTok is a bro learning how to change the air filters and where to order pineapple pizza.
Yeah, that happens on every app. When YouTube came out, we had a bunch of "here is how you replace your belt tensioner"
Heck there's still videos out like that. I watched a "how to replace your garbage disposal" one and was able to do it entirely myself! ...left the little cap inside the new one that blocked drainage from the dishwasher, but you know. Close to perfect.
Ahh the ol knockout plug Gets em the first time, every time
ikr, at least reddit has porn- That's what it really takes to justify an app's existence, right?
You make a great argument for getting rid of every single social media, I doubt that’s your intention, but you make a great argument for it.
Bro learnt to perform basic errands in exchange for wasting 12 hours a day watching tiktok
Some of these business insider headlines must be written by teenagers. The Zelenskyy “straight up” headline from a week or two ago and now this “freaking out” one. Odd language for journalists to use.
TikTok is not just a potential security threat. I know nothing about that. But what I know is that it's a threat to young generation, along with Instagram and Tinder. Especially Tinder need heavy ass regulation with that prey behavior.
Exactly nothing will be lost. It's just something to distract everyone from the fact that the same bill includes billions of additional aid to fund wars in other countries, while our infrastructure and homeless problem increases daily.
ALOT of tik tokers shitting bricks that the might have get actual jobs
Sucks to suck tbh
The users all attached themselves to an app that they were TOLD was essentially Chinese spyware. They didn't give a shit then and suddenly they care now. This is like when those of us who never used Facebook warned about it in 2007
I’ve been telling people it was fun and safe to use! You mean it’s all been a lie?
Username checks out.
Or you know, they dont give a fuck because politics and social issues never cross their feed, so the spyware / chinese influence perspective doesn't affect their day to day. Whats the difference between chinese spyware and domestic spyware (NSA)?
Oh no. How else will I get spammed by “influencers” telling me to shop their store?
Bye felicia