TikTok = Cultural Degeneration?

[Nachtengel]

Let's talk about TikTok. Some info from Wikipedia:

TikTok is an application which allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. The app is popular in Asia, the United States, and other parts of the world.

In the United States, 52% of TikTok users are iPhone users. While TikTok has a neutral gender-bias format, 44% of TikTok users are female while 56% are male. TikTok's geographical use has shown that 43% of new users are from India. TikTok has proven to attract the younger generation, as 41% of its users are between the ages of 16 and 24. Among these TikTok users, 90% say they use the app on a daily basis. TikTok became the world's most downloaded app on Apple's App Store in the first half of 2018 with an estimated 104 million downloads, surpassing the downloads recorded by PUBG Mobile, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram in the same period.

Similar to other platforms, journalists in several countries have raised privacy concerns about the app, because it is popular with children and has the potential to be used by sexual predators.

Several users have reported endemic cyberbullying on TikTok, including racism. In December 2019, following a report by German digital rights group Netzpolitik.org, TikTok admitted that it had suppressed videos by disabled users as well as LGBTQ users in a purported effort to limit cyberbullying.

TikTok's policies also ban content related to a specific list of foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Mahatma Gandhi.

In addition, some users may find it hard to stop using TikTok. In April 2018, an addiction-reduction feature was added to Douyin. This encouraged users to take a break every 90 minutes. Later in 2018, the feature was rolled out to the TikTok app.

The app has been said to cause cultural degeneration among the youth. In India for example, there have been calls for a ban:

Indian Lawmakers Call for TikTok Ban Due to 'Cultural Degeneration'

There’s pressure building in India to regulate the shortform video app TikTok, with some lawmakers pushing for the platform to be blocked as a vessel for societal decay.

M. Manikandan—the information technology minister of the Indian state Tamil Nadu—said on Monday the state government will recommend the app be banned in Tamil Nadu, according to the Economic Times. The statement was a response to state legislator Thamimun Ansari. The Hindustan Times reports that Ansari said young users get hooked on the app, which is pushing them down “the path of cultural degeneration.” He referenced posts that are sexually explicit, and content that alters people’s faces—seemingly a reference to deepfakes.

https://gizmodo.com/indian-lawmakers...-de-1832591523

Senate bill would ban TikTok on federal employees' work phones

Two Republican senators offered legislation Thursday that would ban federal employees from using the Chinese-owned video app TikTok on government-issued work phones, building on similar prohibitions at the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense and Transportation Security Administration.

Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida, who introduced the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, raised alarm about the national security risks posed by the app’s ties to China. TikTok's owner, ByteDance, “is required by law to share user data with Beijing,” Hawley, an outspoken tech critic and China hawk, said today. “As many of our federal agencies have already recognized, TikTok is a major security risk to the United States, and it has no place on government devices.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...-phones-126727







What do you think? Degeneration? Social decay? Or just another platform for self expression?

[Werwolf.]

What do you think? Degeneration? Social decay? Or just another platform for self expression?

It's a subversive and insidious tool of the Chinese.

They use a mass army of propagandists across the the network whilst having a treasure of information all freely given to them by the users.

[maineiac]

I don't use it but have found that there is NSFW TikTok videos, had no idea.

[isern]

It's a subversive and insidious tool of the Chinese.

They use a mass army of propagandists across the the network whilst having a treasure of information all freely given to them by the users.

None of the degeneration was caused by Chinese people.

The stuff you find on TikTok is nothing new and I guess the reason why people here are surprised is because the average age her is older.

[Chlodovech]

TikTok seems to be infested with normies and 30+ year olds these days. It has become too big for its own good and hence it has become mediocre, aiming for a public of the lowest common denominator - it always be like that with new things.

PJ Watson has an interesting two year old take on TikTok and its intial core, younger membership. He sees it as an outlet for a youth which (subconsciously) knows there's no future anymore - either for themselves or society. Hence they nihilistically parodise the parody that is their lives and modern mass media/culture. It may be the end of the world, but at least we'll go down having fun, using clown world's tools against clown world - there's nothing more we can do.

I don't use it but have found that there is NSFW TikTok videos, had no idea.

Me neither, just discovered that a couple of days ago myself. Some of these videos are moving into Only Fans territory. Take this girl for example, she started out making videos of her and her friends fooling around in their dorm, but then it rapidly evolved into her posting titillating material centered around her bossom. She does accept donations on Venmo.

[Theunissen]

I don't use it but have found that there is NSFW TikTok videos, had no idea.

I found out about it with the Corona-nonsense. I think it was one of those videos the "overworked" staff made dancing in the hospital-aisle. That also shows you the level of intelligence you are dealing with among those people that argue that "the pandemic can't be a swindle, because they are sick (and dying) people in hospital".