Americans are joining the Chinese social media app en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.
- American users have flocked to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu in defiance of security warnings.
- Chinese and American users have engaged in surprisingly friendly conversations about each other’s lives.
- The influx of American users could burden Xiaohongshu’s censorship mechanism, experts say.
Just proving US government right tbh.
So, US said: “TikTok is too powerful and has too much influence” and then people continue to be influenced. I kid you not, most trending rednote tiktoks right now are about price comparison between China and US with topics like: “veggies are like 2$ in China when they are 6$ in the US” with absolutely zero awareness of how economies work:
- median hourly salary in the US: 27 USD
- median hourly salary in China: 5 USD
Chinese vegetables are more expensive.
You could attribute this to people just being financially stupid but I think there’s definitely some truth from US government pov that China has a lot of propaganda power over US citizens and I say this as non-american myself as it’s quite apparent as a 3rd party observer.
Personally I still think low level laws that protect privacy of all americans is the way to go but America will never sacrifice free market money like that.
The only video like that ive seen was showing how cheap a day of vacation in china would be.
The app is obvi not a bastion of unbiased free speech. This is reactionary and even if tiktok were banned on the 19th, people would be put off by using an app where you cant understand 80% of the comments and some of the more subtle content. Its a protest.
Man, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts must be really shit if the TikTokers didn’t even consider them for a second lmao
YouTube Shorts are the absolute evil
If you carefully cultivate your subscriptions and watching habits it’s not bad. I get mostly stuff I’m subscribed to, a movie cut into thirty second chunks (right now it’s Braveheart), tv clips with one of three pieces of music overlaid, a mix of benign recommendations that are mostly meh but sometimes funny, and thirst traps. So… it’s not good but I do sometimea see something worth following.
It used to be worse, I think abandoning guntubers was the right call. I used to have Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson pushed at me.
They were just reposted tiktoks, make it make sense.
IG reels are utter garbage for the most part but Youtube Short would actually be good if Youtube had the balls to separate it from Youtube itself as it’s always limited in that regard.
Instagram has a shit algorithm, yt shorts are generally just worse forms of yt or reposts from ticktok/insta. People are willing to tolerate a lot of data selling already, so why should they care that it’s being shared with the CCP?
Are they allowed to talk about tiananmen massacre I wonder.
Are they allowed to talk about &%$!@$+×# &%;%$ I wonder.
Whats that?
You know, the LALILULELO!
I’m amazed at all the CCP dick sucking here. It’s like I stumbled into r/Sino
操你中國政府
Yea, I made a post to my people to come to the fediverse. While we have capitalist and communist forums, ultimately the fediverse sits in the anarchist camp.
I like it because I’m suspicious of tankies and hate musk fucks. A nice 3rd option.
Anarchy, because have you met people? Those fuckers can’t be trusted with power
Can’t trust people. People listen to Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. Can’t trust em.
Fuckers, the lot of em
This might have an interesting side effect. Western voices and opinions being shared enmasse with Chinese youths on platforms they’re comfortable with. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese government responds to this
I’m on the app and, honestly, I have been seeing the exact opposite. Loads of American users are seeing, for the first time, that folks in the PRC don’t have it so bad.
Consistent problem with fascists who want you to hate outsiders. When those barriers fall, it turns out that most of the “enemy” are just people who want to live their lives.
This goes both directions.
But the Chinese people were never the enemy. The only ones who push that narrative are people who want to sow division and hatred.
It’s the CCP and US government that are at odds with one another. The issue with TikTok is the CCP has control and influence over content served to Western uses.
This. There is a reason why China has been censoring the internet so much, and why Russia and to a lesser degree Türkiye started doing it as well. And why two of the three most powerful people in the US apart from Trump control like 2/3 of all social media.
Yeah, that’s my point.
Ah, ok. I thought you were saying the other thing.
It will be interesting to see how the
ChineseUS government responds to thisThat’s easy. Some more propaganda about hating the everyday Chinese person (who we have far more in common with) and banning the app.
Everything that comes from this should be interesting.
[Deleted]
[Deleted]
That about sums it up [deleted]
They will probably ban the app or make in unavailable in other countries. Typical censorship stuff
So basically taking a page from the US playbook?
That backfired real good, didn’t it?
Turns out we know we’re all being spyed on constantly and don’t really care what authoritarian shithole (US or China) is creeping on us
We care more about the content of the app.
The hexies are so excited about this too. They’ve got a thread up (erroneously) hoping that Americans will now stop believing that Chinese people are bad, because they can’t face the truth that Americans (who aren’t magats) only think the Chinese government is an authoritarian shit show and have no problem with regular Chinese citizens.
Xenophobia and racism exist in America outside of the trump ultras. Hell, outside of the republican party even
I thought the difference in humor would take a while to bridge but it’s very familiar. Day in the life of an american type videos with road rage, burgers, shitcoins, podcasts and pancakes
This is a fine example of how the american government doesn’t care about the interests of americans.
The government only exists to serve the wealthiest among us. Some of those wealthy people are upset that Chinese aristocrats are getting all that money.
This trade war only exists because rich americans want more money for themselves. It has nothing to do with national security and you’re a useful idiot if you think otherwise.
You don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few. And China has increasingly been prosecuting their wealthy.
Which is what they really don’t want us learning to do.
you don’t lift 800+ million people out of poverty by concentrating all of the profits among a small few.
This is false attribution.
There’s no way to verify how other political system would have worked for China. Maybe it would have worked even better? Taiwan for one is richer, stronger and happier than China per capita so does that mean dictatoriship -> democracy is a better system? Do you see the flaw in this attribution logic now? So, unless you have a time machine…Actually it’s very easy to know. By design, capitalism concentrates most of the reward among a small number of privileged few.
And people with good sense judge a country by how well it’s working people are doing- not by how much more wealth a few people have been able to hoard.
Capitalists use the same exact argument for why outsourcing labor to the poorest countries is actually a good thing. For real, I’ve argued so many right wingers saying “searching for the cheapest labor actually helps the worlds economy because you’re lifting those poor people of _____ out of poverty! It doesn’t matter that it’s only pennies/day, because to them, that’s a lot of money!”
Pretty goddamn gross behavior.
Outsourcing is extracting wealth from another nation. How can you possibly compare that to lifting ones own citizens out of poverty?
You can’t untangle the outsourcing of manufacturing to China from that.
I wasn’t making a 1:1 comparison. I was saying that “but look how many people have been lifted out of poverty!” argument is a capitalist argument, because it completely ignores the reality of the situation. Have people been lifted out of poverty by outsourcing? Of course. But that doesn’t negate the core problem.
As the other person mentioned, outsourcing manufacturing TO china is largely responsible for the manufacturing boon there. And then rich Chinese capitalists (though they use the cover of not being called capitalists) became rich middlemen between “western” businesses and the cheap Chinese labor. So outsourcing has absolutely contributed to it. You and the American capitalists are looking at the same thing, one is crediting American executive innovation, the other is crediting the CCP.
You do it by exploiting the billions outside your borders from countries even more poor like mine where they sell their garbage low quality products that cant be repaired or recycled, from shitty earphones to bikes that start breaking down in a year, taking advantage of poor people who cant afford to buy anything of better quality. China isnt better than us when it comes to exploitation and inequality.
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
They are spreading their wealth to those in need. Not exploiting. They value mutually beneficial relationships.
Chinese manufacturers build according to budget. They are perfectly capable of making high quality products, and do. The problem is a lot of companies (looking at you, Walmart) demand their Chinese manufacturers build products for a pittance – the manufacturers won’t say no, but they’ll find a profit for themselves by using lower cost materials. (ETA: also less quality control and cheaper labor)
Ask yourself – if you were a woodworker and someone offered you $250 to build a small stand out of wenge, you’ll probably do a good job of it. If someone offered you $30 to build the same stand, and you really needed that $30, you’d make it with pine and just paint or stain it to look like wenge. Chinese manufacturers are no different.
Bingo.
Bro, there’s ALOT of Chinese capitalists.
Humans are humans.
They all work for the government.
What do you think “capitalist” means?
I don’t think you know, because by definition there cannot be “alot.” That’s the whole point of capitalism- to concentrate the means of production into the hands of a very few.
Sure buddy, keep that head up your ass.
LoL. You really are just parroting propaganda, without any clue what the words you’re saying actually mean.
I think the Chinese businessmen are exploiting slave laborers to produce cheap goods and export them to most of the world. Would you call that a mutually beneficial relationship?
I wouldn’t. Source?
Hold up. You think the Chinese are the ones deciding to manufacture low quality products, and not the capitalists who are ordering them that way?
Chinese brands owned by Chinese capitalists operating with consent from the chinese state.
spreading their wealth to those in need
Using planned obsolescence and taking advantage of poor consumer and environmental protection laws to sell garbage to people trapped in a cycle of poverty isn’t exploitation? Also China ‘invested’ billions here too and we didnt get any hospitals. We got china flooding our markets with its shitty goods and chinese ‘businessmen’ running scam centers.
They value mutually beneficial relationships
they do have a mutually beneficial relationship with our dictators.
I love that capitalists attacking communists always end up accidentally attacking capitalism. Classic.
China is a capitalist country with aspects of socialism. it’s not really communist anymore.
No one here is shitting on communists, were shitting on you for a thinking the Chinese are any different than us.
China is a capitalist shithole but for some reason its biggest defenders are always self proclaimed western communists.
edit: we also have a few militant communists groups that like to blow up chinese nationals working for their govt every now and then.
What exactly do you think “capitalist” means? Because it sounds like you think any participation in markets is capitalism.
What do you think “capitalist” means? It sounds like you think it’s just market participation.
Yeah you do it with slave labor, genocide, mass aborting baby girls, and IP theft.
Did you lift this straight out of a State Dept press release?
Why would I need to, these things have been known for decades?
Don’t get me wrong, capitalists (ex apple) love to collude, but it doesn’t make china some magical perfect land.
Yes, the intelligence orgs have been spreading lies for decades.
China isn’t perfect, but most of the scandal news we hear about it is fabricated by our government. Even our own government has now admitted they made up the Uyghur genocide claims.
Huh. Care to link the last one?
What they were actually trying to combat was China preventing the US from continuing to radicalize and use the Uyghurs as a front for regime change operations.
It has everything to do with national security, they just don’t consider common people as part of their nation same as slaves weren’t.
I don’t believe it.
You should, my wife is one of these folks and she’s having a very eye opening time.
About what? Didn’t expect everything to be in Chinese?
Surprised by how much is in English, but also surprised that China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media. It’s middle class people in both countries talking about real things in a completely new way.
One thing that surprised her, everything in China isn’t just cheap crap. It’s american companies that cut corners by ordering crap and shilling it to us and then blaming China for it being cheap. China makes quality products, but the US will never see them, and so we live with the perception that everything from China is crap, but only what we don’t tariff to death makes it through. It’s cool to see her perceptions of the world change.
I’m not some tankie, and I don’t give a shit about tik tok, but there’s a massive cultural exchange happening that’s too huge to filter off the rip, and I feel like folks are realizing there’s a lot more that unites us than divides us. Our billionaires don’t like their billionaires and so we beef? Nah, not my fight
China isn’t the hellscape that we’ve been fed through the media
China has been really showing off hard in the past few years, especially on tiktok. Chinese cars are winning and every single person on Tiktok knows about Chongqing. So I don’t think this is as apt as it used to be.
I’d love more cultural exchange with China but it’s really up to Chinese themselves. Literally all west media and apps are blocked in China. So should we converge on a clear propaganda app which is litterally named after the little red book of communist revolution as our “honest cultural exchange” source? Does anyone seriously think that’s a good idea?
We have Lemmy, Mastodon, the whole Fediverse, bluesky, Telegram, Nostr — the free options exist already, it’s up to Chinese to get some balls to meet us midway.
yap dollar
Xiao hong shuuuuuuu
Is it that surprising that your average person in another country is easy to get on with? I’ve been to a fair few different countries and the everyday people you interact with are lovely (except France).
It’s the fucking politicians you’ve got to look out for, and not just the foreign ones.
Lmao “except France”
I’m English, so I’m sure the feeling’s mutual. ;-)
Well I mean obviously.
Are they really that unwelcoming? I’ve heard a bunch about this, fortunately never got to experience it first hand.
Here’s the thing - the french motto is Freedom, Equality, Fraternity
They’re massively into the equality thing. Whether someone’s a waiter, a cleaner, a doctor or a judge, you must treat them with the same amount of respect
The only types of people that I’ve ever seen saying that the french are rude are the types that think cleaners are beneath them, and that everyone speaks English if you say it loud enough
This is kinda of my experience. The type of people that I see getting mistreated are the “I am le touriste, entertain me!” kind.
Americans especially tend to fall into this category a lot, they tend to be loud, brash and self centered, especially towards staff.
Look here you pot of lard, you bought a 2€ croissant, not my fucking soul. You want something, ask nicely and I will gladly help you. Act like you own me, I’m gonna piss on your food.
Admittedly the Brits are just as bad, and think the same way
This is one of the two factors for the bad reputation of France from US, the other one is the cultural shock that French people prefer genuine conversation and hate small talk, they’d find random american’s conversation superficial and faked.
I am neighboring France and we have kinda similar culture, though people here tend to dislike some French people for their lack of patience or accountability and their pride, though it’s a stereotype, as always.
I have only ever had great experiences visiting france, but then again I avoided Paris for the most part
Yes, they are
I spent one day in Paris, let me give you the highlights…
- We arrived, left the train station, and were immediately accosted by like 5 people trying to sell us friendship bracelets, or little string bracelets
- We left the area and walked to a local Metro station to get across the city, we wanted to check something, so we went to the nearby information section, where the lady refused to speak any English, despite the signage indicating that English was spoken there
- We figured it out on our own and entered the station, which smelled exactly and completely of piss
- We got off the train and walked along the river for about 10 seconds before being accosted by a conman pretending we’d just dropped some jewelry. Apparently it’s a common con. We ignored him and moved on.
- We had an ok time for the rest of the day trip, until we got back to the original train station, where we sat in a café beside a family who decided to change their kid’s diaper at their table, and then threw the used one to the nearest bin like they were playing cornhole
I’m not in a big rush to go back.
You just described any big city
That’s not the only foreign city I’ve ever been to. Paris was the worst one I can think of, or at least top 3.
I’d prefer to go back to any of these:
- Cluj
- Riga
- Prague
- Emden
- Frankfurt
- Brisbane
- Singapore
Paris goes on a list with Jakarta and that’s about it.
“I went to Paris, interacted with basically nobody French, hated it and so now I hate the French”
😂
By France, do you mean Paris? They’re the worst.
Lyon ain’t much better.
And guess who’s in Paris? People from all over France (and the rest of the world) who came there to work.
Yeah, Paris specifically.
Remember when it was called musical.ly and everyone thought it was the cringiest thing ever and wished it would die…. Lol
No I remember when it was vine and we all thought it was cringy and dumb
Nah, Vine was top shit.
Can’t top albinoblacksheep if you tried
Fellow connoisseur, did you happen to ever see the vine beginning with “there’s only one race, the human race”?
So TikTok isn’t strictly covers with flying text anymore? Jesus I’m out of the loop on this.
Youtube and Instagram tried for years to lure in Tiktok users, and they failed so badly that even with Tiktok potentially getting banned, people would rather switch to a different potentially sketchy Chinese app.
Sketchy Oligargh Billionaire App VS State-Run-Sketchy Party-Official-Billionaires App…
Idk… Sounds like loose loose…
Party official billionaires are much better than sketchy “self made” billionaires.
Party officials owe their fortune and allegiance to the party, and we’ve seen some high profile cases of billionaires being brought to their heels very quickly.
Capitalist billionaires are the end result of a selection process that chooses the most self serving, greedy, ruthless bastards.
I’ll take #1. Fight me.
It’s the Worker’s Billionaire, you western imperialist dog! Stalin did nothing wrong! Dengism forever! I am very normal!
closes hatch on tank and drives away
Party officials made their fortune first and were then forced to join the party, the party doesn’t make their fortune. They don’t care about people, unless they get either rich or influential, and then uses their red book to reel them in.
China is the most capitalist country on the planet. The only thing they openly worship is money.
Please spend some time there and we talk afterwards, if you stick to your opinion.
China is the most capitalist country on the planet
What the hell did I just read?
You’ve obviously never been there, then. Give it a try and get back to me.
LMAO. I have actually. I even have family from China.
Try again.
Propaganda.
If China were capitalist, they wouldn’t have lifted a record number of people out of poverty, continually be spending on improving public services, and prosecuting their wealthy. Simply participating in markets doesn’t make a country capitalist- it’s how that wealth is distributed or not.
But we’re fed this Sinophobic propaganda in the hopes we won’t notice that China is passing us by, and the average person there is living a far higher quality of life.
I’m not being fed sinophobic propaganda, I lived in China for 7 years, speak Chinese, and an married to a Chinese.
Quality of life is by and large alright, but there’s a huge disparity between the so called middle class and the actual working class that’s in violation of everything Marxist you’ll ever read about.
They absolutely have a lot of room for improvement, and their leadership has openly acknowledged they need reforms to move towards a truer implementation of communism. They’ve already implemented some of those reforms.
But hats off to them for what they’ve accomplished so far. Unrecognizable from the country they were 30 years ago.
China is the most capitalist country on the planet. The only thing they openly worship is money.
I disagree. What matters is power, and money does grant a lot of it, but in China especially this isn’t as direct as it is in the US for example because of party politics.
Party officials made their fortune first and were then forced to join the party, the party doesn’t make their fortune.
That’s a very broad assumption, and in some cases is true, some it is not. China has over 1 000 billionaires, over 100 of them are in the parliament, so it’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing, they go hand in hand because of the power thing.
Please spend some time there and we talk afterwards, if you stick to your opinion.
Yeah walking the streets of Beijing will give me ample opportunity to meet & greet Chinese billionaires and CCCP top brass.
I take almost any Chinese party official over an American Billionaire. Rich people had their chance to prove capitalism works, it didn’t…
China has shown it jails Billionaires, so their Justice system works better than the one in the US.
China has jailed billionaires for going against the communist party’s doctrine and gaining power, not for any actual crimes.
Yes … but they ARE jailed (or worse). And they all know the Party has shit on them and they still chose to rise. That’s their game… what’s the western equivalent? Be born rich, cause literal chemical natural disasters by lobby work and shitty investment decisions and what happens?.. correct… In china they be ded…
Between a choice of “you will never be arrested for anything, ever, no matter how heinous” vs “You can be arrested at any time for any reason or no reason, at the whim of your government” I cannot say with confidence which of those is worse.
Out of my perspective, one system punishes overlords and the other doesn’t. I know what you mean regarding the prohibition on critics of the system / important people / journalism / science … but if we strictly compare the US with China in terms of billionaire punishment, China wins…
And regarding the massive steps the USA takes towards an autocracy, I would say the other aspects of the argument won’t hold up much longer.
It seems like we need to go through this shit to finally get our star trek future.
Well luckily the straw man you’re assigning to China only exists in your head.
I can see the logic. If I used these apps I’d rather have a different sketchy government spying on my than my own.
My understanding is that nobody actually cares about the data collection, its more of a rebellious move to punish the government for, in their opinion, overreaching.
For the record, I don’t agree with that - its just what I’m seeing.
Supposedly they’re doing it on purpose as a protest. Not just one sketchy Chinese app, but any sketchy Chinese app they can find. In the hopes that Meta and Google will miss them, and the federal government will capitulate to stop them using those apps.
Because apparently they haven’t read the bill in question and think banning these apps too will somehow be “unsustainable”.
It’s still an act of protest. Even if it will only last a week.
However, XHS has gone through 3-4 major revisions in the past 4 days, they clearly are anticipating sticking around.
It would be so hilarious to me if they build a VPN directly into the app to sidestep the Great Firewall of America
This is not true at all.
deleted by creator
Ban Instagram, Discord and iOS first, anti-libre software.
They never will. This ban was never to help us.
They do not give a fuck about me or you!
This ban was never to protect user privacy. It is to protect the federal government from what users willingly give away to foreign social media companies (and only those companies that are in the control of US adversaries). It was never about you and if you assumed that based on what the government said, you deserve to be disappointed. They give only fucks about what the average user can do to hurt them.
Because Chinese intelligence doesn’t trawl YouTube, Meta, and X?
Sigh. That’s a whataboutism argument and I’m over it. You do not have to agree.
Not really. It demonstrates that this is useless and probably not the real intent.
And ban smart TVs!
And ban hardware firmware!
And shipping and receiving software!
And proprietary ore mining operation software!
All of it! They don’t give a fuck!
Lmao IOS? Next is Windows then?
Dumbest shit ever. let me run to the PRC for my entertainment. Like was TikTok really that good? I never used it, other than the time long ago when it was first getting traction and my coworker asked me to get into her 12 yr old daughter’s account (super easy BTW) and see what she was doing on there. surprise! nothing but 30 year old men following her and watching her doing dances. I never touched it since.
what do you expect though the USA is picking groups of people to threaten, the American dream is dead they brag that the economy is doing so good when most peoples lives have gotten worse every second of our lives is being monetized of course the people will look elsewhere
Don’t worry. Once Trump’s back in, the Democrats will suddenly notice we’re in a recession. We’ll start seeing it acknowledged soon.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Food unaffordable, homeless rate at record highs, a struggling job market, etc. But the Biden team insisted we’ve been doing better than ever.
Did they? I’d love to see a link
He repeated it just this past week.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-says-leaves-economy-stronger-014812694.html
Lulz
nothing but 30 year old men following her and watching her doing dances.
This App is truly a swamp of shit.
Surprise! Pedophiles are everywhere! Even in the Fediverse!
Though that doesn’t excuses anything, though.
