lemm.ee

8 points

4 months ago

I don’t use tiktok, but some people have unusually based tiktok feeds. They can get direct footage from the genocide happening in Gaza, for example. I never get that recommended on YouTube, despite my very obvious socialist leanings, watching pro-Palestine content, etc.

This is the actual reason tiktok is being banned (if they don’t sell) after the election. One of the largest lobbying groups in America, AIPAC, in probably the most well-funded policy categories (pro-Israel policies) backs most of Congress. They’ve determined tiktok has far too much influence on American youth, and has made the Israel/Palestine divide a young/old divide more-so than a left/right divide.

There’s already a strong correlation between political leaning and age, which is problematic for the future of the fascist movement in America, but this issue falls outside the norm. You’ll find a lot of young conservatives calling for an end to the needless killing of civilians. They won’t call it a genocide because admitting Israel is a genocidal apartheid state is too far for them, but they can at least admit killing tens of thousands of children is not the right path here.

That kind of extremism (e.g not greenlighting any amount of culling of “human animals” Israel feels it needs to do) is unacceptable to the pro-Israel lobby, and they’re not used to getting this kind of pushback from the American public.

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Fizz@lemmy.nz

1 point

4 months ago

I completely disagree. I don’t think giving young people short snippets of war footage is a good thing at all. It doesn’t help them understand the conflict and warps their perspective.

They are at their most malleable and being shown extremely emotionally charged content. That’s not a good thing.

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3 points

4 months ago

Yes, genocides are emotional. Watching children being blown up is something that should upset you. That’s actually happening in the real world.

Emotion isn’t the only thing that should inform your decisions, but pretending like you shouldn’t be upset at watching kids being blown up, or begging for their parents, or whatever else have you is just foolish.

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Fizz@lemmy.nz

7 points

4 months ago

I don’t think you understand what I was trying to get at. I don’t mean to say that genocide isn’t emotional and that we shouldn’t be upset by footage.

My response was saying that i think serving that kind of content to younger users who aren’t intentionally seeking it is insane. Tiktok algorithm pushes extreme content to it’s users which partly why I don’t like the app.

I think its fine for people my age to consume that content so my point originally was more that the content is dumb and I couldn’t be with someone who thought it was good content.

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4 points

4 months ago

When we say younger, we might just be talking about different age groups. I imagine 16-30, and in that age range you’re not likely to come away with severe psychological scarring, but you will be deeply upset and that’s a good thing (we shouldn’t ignore genocide, we should be upset by it). Being upset leads to change.

If you’re talking about like 10 year olds watching it, sure I can agree. They can’t really do anything about it. They can’t go out and protest, or advocate for change, or vote, etc. Plus they’re much more likely to have genuine scarring. Issues sleeping, night terrors, trouble concentrating, etc.

As for “that content is dumb”, I assume you’re talking about tiktok in general. And again, for some people it’s definitely not dumb. People get served different things. Tiktok isn’t a platform trying to do good in the world, like any other social media platform it’s trying to drive engagement. However, it’s one of the few social media platforms outside of the U.S media interest groups, and that’s why the U.S is either banning them or forcing them to sell.

The end goal is to censor all of that raw footage of genocide, because it changes views. When you can hide behind rhetoric and not show how horrific the mass bombings are, you get a lot more leeway. That’s good for Israel, and why AIPAC and other Israel lobbies are the main forces behind this push in the U.S. In the end, the ban is bad for humanity (will allow the genocide to escalate without public backlash), but will be good for Israel and U.S elites.

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Fizz@lemmy.nz

0 points

4 months ago

When I say younger I am mostly talking about 12-18 but also certain people in the 18-21 range. I think after that you are emotionally capable of understanding and dealing with the evils of the world.

In response to the dumb content yeah its just content i find dumb from my point of view thats what I rate it as a trivial thing that I would turn down a partner for. Im sure for some people its riveting content but for me its trash and I dont want to be with someone who thinks it isnt.

I do not see “the only non US platform” as a good thing. Considering the country that runs it doesnt allow foreign social media and isnt exactly the bastion of free speech and moral authority. Id rather the devil I know(america) than the one I dont (china).

For the last point I agree that censoring footage of the war benefits isreal and it does sway peoples views. I dont think there is much censorship of the footage its pretty easy to find. From what i’ve seen people post the footage to youtube and then cry censorship when its taken down. But that is clearly against yt TOS and anyone sane would expect that to be taken down. Maybe there are better examples of censorship I havent seen since I dont follow tiktok,facebook,insta,reddit.twitter,mastodon.

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0 points

4 months ago

20 year olds are not generally getting night terrors from watching disturbing content on tiktok. They’re not losing sleep, or coming away with genuine psychological scarring. We don’t need government regulations to control media content for the sake of literal adults. And children in theory should already have their content moderated by the correct degree by parents, not the government.

It’s just content I find dumb

If you watch anything on YouTube that you don’t think is dumb, there is stuff on TikTok you also wouldn’t find dumb. I don’t use TikTok either, but I think you genuinely underestimate how much content there is, and overestimate how uniform that content is.

Considering the country that runs it (…)

ByteDance already stores U.S user data within the U.S, allows third party firms to scrutinize its data privacy policies far more than any other U.S media group, and has come back with a clean bill from groups like Citizen Lab (a Canadian research lab). No U.S userdata goes to the Chinese government.

Government officials know this, they’re just putting on a show. Leaked phone calls have made this clear, the actual issue is the lack of policing around the kinds of content served. ByteDance is not aligned with U.S foreign policy interests like Meta/Google are. They are more than happy to showcase the horrors of the apartheid, genocidal state of Israel, and that’s having a real impact on the literal more than half of Americans that use TikTok.

It’s clearly against the YouTube T.O.S

Videos against YouTube’s T.O.S of the October 7th attacks have been on the platform since October of last year. They’re much more strict about removing videos showcasing the much larger-in-scale violent acts done by Israel than anything done by Hamas. TikTok isn’t. This isn’t a coincidence, and the U.S needs TikTok to fall in line here.

If they don’t young people will continue to hold extreme views, like bombing tens of thousands of children in an open air prison that has been violating the GCIV since 2007 is somehow problematic. They need the American public to have the understanding that Palestinians are simply human animals; they’re savages that need to be put down. Not unlike native americans.

Towards the end of the culling, when enough of the population has died to no longer pose a threat, they’ll give them small territories like the U.S did with native americans and feign sympathy. Imperialism hasn’t changed.

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mitrosus@discuss.tchncs.de

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3 points

4 months ago

Understood. Serving emotional content is the social media stunt to grab attention. News is not The intention. And without enough context, it increases polarity in our society. Tiktok is a master of this tactic.

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