For me it’s the potential china influence. Reels and Shorts is at least American and I already have established relations with both companies.

Are we for sure the TikTok algorithm doesn’t bump towards or away from certain issues? The data on the cultural zeitgeist? The ability to promote political messaging?

Brainrot the same. Intentions, maybe not.

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jerojero 4 days ago | parent [-]

People keep saying this but shouldn't it be kinda trivially easy to check?

Start new accounts, swipe through the content and establish what kind of algorithm it is. The few attempts I've seen on youtube seem to indicate it's heavily based on your geographical area. They don't really care that much which side the apple falls onto.

I do acknowledge that there's a latent threat that could be activated. And I can see an argument being made on that front, I mean, China doesn't allow access to a lot of American social media for that reason. But I don't really buy the argument right now as I haven't seen a lot of evidence of Tiktok doing things that Meta/Google haven't done.

	▲	saulpw 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's delightfully naive to think that a new account is 'fresh' and can't be associated with previous usage.
	▲	pests 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Like you say, they could target different messages for different geographical areas. Similar to how in the election last year Dearborn, MI (highly middle eastern) got different messaging from both Trump and Kamala wrt Isreal/Palistine compared to the rest of the country on traditional ads. They can target any age range or demographics, any interests. We had Uber hiding things from LEO almost a decade ago via geofencing and other tricks, I’m sure it’s a bit more sophisticated now. You keep bringing Meta/Google into this. I don’t care if they do the same things. I mean, I wouldn’t like it either, but we have solutions available to us. We can pass laws or go to court and handle it internally. A foreign nation is not bound by that.