TikTok Is a Symptom of a Larger Problem

March 17, 2023 at 10:30 PM
Category: Internet

I hate TikTok. It's one of the worst platforms to come to the internet in recent years. In its short, yet unrelenting growth spurt, it's rapidly degraded the well-being of countless telephone users, and has inspired numerous acts of robbery and stupidity. Like other platforms before it, TikTok has damaged the youth to an alarming degree.

So it comes as a shock to me that even after all this time, people are still talking about the prospect of it being banned. The U.S. government seems itching to go through with it, while domestic news outlets are sitting there relaying the grave concerns of broken spirits about how TikTok has become such an integral part of American culture or something. One user was so damaged that she blatantly said "I'm 18, let me share my information with China if I want to, I literally could care less".

On one side, yes, I want to see to it that TikTok is wiped out of my country. But have you noticed the rhetoric that's passed around in the news? Nowhere does the news mention the innate flaws of TikTok as a social media platform like any other. It's nothing but China this, China that, because the two countries have a beef with each other. What's going on in the minds of the politicians here? I wonder...

The Domestic Threats

Sure, it's a bad idea to be handing personal data over to another government that tries to tightly control its people and routinely commits human rights violations... but how is it any different to be handing the same data over to an American corporation? The psychological warfare waged by websites like Facebook and Twitter is what naturalized the idea that social media is all the internet should be in the first place.

What TikTok basically did was cash in on the exact same idea that a successful website is one that eats away as much valuable time as possible from users (which they call "ENGAGEMENT") and probes them up the ass to obtain personally identifiable information to sell to advertisers or whoever may be. This isn't a shocking revelation. To most of my people, the problem is that a Chinese company got in on it. (Is that also the real reason why Epic Games, owned by Tencent, got sued bigtime for milking parents' credit cards too much? Shit...)

Domestic companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook no wait I mean Meta are just as much of a threat to Americans as TikTok is. Look at how much Twitter corrupted everyone. It basically allowed itself to become a largely unfiltered political site, thereby sinking people down the wrong path with shit-tier memes and anti-contextual "gotcha" writings concentrated in a single linear feed. And don't get me started on these "viral challenges"...

This kind of bullshit would not have had as much room to grow if communities were not gobbled up by all-encompassing platforms like Twitter and TikTok - in essence, if we were still using smaller forums and creating websites. While I am willing to get behind a ban of TikTok, if the U.S. government is to follow through with it, they better go after domestic platforms next. Unfortunately, I do not think we can count on them for such a task.

Striving for a better internet is ultimately going to start with you. Delete as many social media accounts as you can, and unlearn the propaganda that social media induced. Start finding other ways to share your works online. The internet is not simply a few big websites where everyone goes to litter their wasteful horseshit; it was not meant to be that way. It was designed to put control in your hands, not the other way around!

If you still think I'm not serious about this, I had just initiated the motion to get my Discord account deleted a few days ago. It should be gone in a couple of weeks, and I think I will have plenty more to say about that by then.

Comments

I would not dare touch TikTok even with a 10-foot pole, but unfortunately my parents just would not give up on TikTok

Cirno: The only other attraction that i know that for some reason requires a "smart" phone just for a rubber band is Super Nintendo World

I really hate how phones have become such a mandatory item in today's culture that some services requires a damn phone just to work!

Zdrmonster: Having online friends is a hassle for me and real life friends, while not a lot, are objectively better. Thank you very much for your inquiry!

Flatrule: Makes me wonder if any of the people you talk to on Shitscord are really your friends if they don't follow you to where you go after deleting the account?

Xnmcv: I do not think your works fit into TikTok format anyway...

Xnmcv: Glad you decided not to use TikTok.

I was considering expanding my video-publishing operations to TikTok, but then I thought it would be too difficult to handle the stress there, so I chose to upload my videos to webm.red instead.

> I had just initiated the motion to get my Discord account deleted a few days ago. It should be gone in a couple of weeks
I did not see this coming...

So what are your replacement to keep touch with your fellow friends? I was about to express my viewpoint from someone living in the country benefiting from the bickering of the two big countries instead but I need to finish my homework as soon as possible...

Blue Horizon: Not to mention that the waterpark has some of the dumbest names for attractions that all relate to Internet stuff.

A good start for my mother to follow through with this would be for her to stop sitting in bed all day playing puzzle games so she can get greater exercise more frequently, though she's endured lots of pain for the past 15 years, and she's just about in her 60s now.

The overreliance on smartphones really poisoned the scope of everyday life in that same timespan. Cirno for instance knows of a waterpark where they require you to use such a device for a wristband or something, even having their own crappy app to be mandatory for activities there. All that just to go down waterslides?

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