• CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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    15 hours ago

    Wait, people are really just moving from one chinese spyware app designed to sow discord and destabilize western societies to another chinese spyware app designed to sow discord and destabilize western societies?

    • LifeOfChance@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      The US politicians have destabilized the whole country. The apps just gives a place to be vocal. The US uses our data against us we just ignore it because they say they don’t.

      • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 hours ago

        Tell me again how US politicians made a candidate in the romanian election of 2024.

        ”Western societies“ is not only the US, you egocentric yankees.

    • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      You’re out of your mind 🤣. Blaming an app for this countries problems is incredible mental gymnastics.

    • Taalnazi@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Twitter and Facebook would count as destabilising Western society.

      • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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        7 hours ago

        How comes that whenever one criticizes Tiktok there’s always gonna be multiple comments screeching ”BuT fAcEbOoK aNd TwItTeR“ though nobody said they weren’t also garbage? And funnily, if you criticize any of those two, someone comes screeching ”BuT tIkToK“

        FOR FUCKS SAKE STAY ON TOPIC.

        • cuerdo@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          that is the point, they are moving from Chinese app to Chinese app because the alternatoves are equally bad.

          Corporations are good at acquiring users because they invest money, and the greatest tradeoff is social control and manipulation.

          You thought tiktokers would come to Lemmy?

    • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 hours ago

      If sowing discord means posting pictures of food and just generally being nice to one another, I’m not sure the status quo being disturbed is worth protecting.

      Oh no it turns out that Chinese people are friendly and normal this will surely be the downfall of the West.

    • cm0002@lemmy.worldOP
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      15 hours ago

      Well yes and no, people are moving to it, mostly as a form of protest IMO

      I highly doubt it was “designed” for sowing discord and such, RedNote was very much intended to be a local Chinese SM. Most of the app isn’t even in English last I saw, just Chinese and they’re rushing to hire “English-speaking” moderators rn

      • coherent_domain@infosec.pub
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        3 hours ago

        They are very much designed to sowing Chinese discourse and push the capitalist hyper-consumption life style. In fact RedNote is famous for being toxic and anxiety-inducing among Chinese community, partially due to its root in product promotion:

        Xiaohongshu was founded by Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao in 2013 as an online tour guide for Chinese shoppers, providing a platform for users to review products and share their shopping experiences with the community.

        They are also anti-competitive and consumer-hostile:

        Xiaohongshu strictly prevents advertising and linking to external websites or apps. Actions such as sending WeChat contacts in posts or DMs or inquiring about prices of goods can lead to account suspension.

        And most westerners don’t see this side of rednote, because rednote give western users special treatments, i.e. because of western privileges:

        Following the growth in users from the United States, Xiaohongshu was said to be exploring adjusting its content review processes as American influencers began sharing posts.

        On 14 January 2025, Xiaohongshu announced that it would direct users to more “positive” content in line with a November 2024 directive from the Cyberspace Administration of China.

        Quotes are from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaohongshu and there are many Mandarin articles on the toxicity of rednote:

        It is funny to see those so called “communist” rushing to defend the very embodiment of capitalistic hyper-consumption in China, and the only thing shielding them from such toxicity is their own privilege.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Well, people are moving from what they see as an innocent funny video app to a much more obvious chinese controlled app in protest. Basically trying to call out the hypocrisy of the government banning tiktok when all these other apps exist.

      Most people do not realize how much info tiktok gathered from you and which shady state governments it filtered into.

      It’s funny though because the tiktok ban doesn’t target tiktok, it targets any foreign controlled app above a certain number of users. So as soon as red note gains a bunch of users it will be killed as hard as tiktok.

      That’s of course unless both governments don’t enforce the law, like they both have said they aren’t going to do.

      • holo@lemmy.wtf
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        2 hours ago

        Everyone that moved to rednote absolutely knows their data was scrapped by Tiktok, including contacts and general behavior on their phone.

        We’re 30 years past that mattering. Every corporation and thus every government with money knows what you masturbate to and what makes you laugh. They all know where you work and what your net worth is. If they don’t it takes less than a dollar to find out through your advertising id report.

        None of the major data brokers refuse to sell to specific governments.

        • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          13 hours ago

          Yeah and i love laughing at those people cry about it going away like bye

          I’ll stick to my FLOSS stuff like I’ve been doing since 2017. Fuck off corpos

          • holo@lemmy.wtf
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            13 hours ago

            That’s nice that you enjoy a much less expansive library of entertainment and practically no social interaction. Most people think that’s too large of a tradeoff in a world where corpos have all the information about you from birth.

            Hope you trust your VPN provider, that’s the most common single point of failure given your ISP is collecting and selling all of your data.

            • dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              12 hours ago

              I’ve been satisfied with IRC, that was social enough for me as an autistic kid yes. I’ve not had the luxury of developing a high standard of social interaction for my daily life.

              I understand normal people are not willing to give up those unnecessary things like centralized and profiteered software. I think it’s hilarious and laugh at them:) I enjoy the 3 or so friends I text regularly and the people I meet in real life. I understand most people aren’t willing to live within those means, but that doesn’t make it any less funny.

    • knightly the Sneptaur@pawb.social
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      14 hours ago

      As opposed to a spyware app owned by the local government that’s designed to sow discord and destabilize any opposition to the local oligarchs?

      Seems to me that, for most people, there’s more personal risk in being spied on by local cops than foreign ones.

      • ben
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        14 hours ago

        Ah yes, that thing is bad but so is another thing so let’s not fix any of the problems

        • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Banning apps doesn’t fix anything either. You know as well as I do that the solution is robust privacy laws

          • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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            13 hours ago

            Like the ones in the EU that just don’t get enforced?

            Btw, banning a platform can and should be a consequence for not adhering to robust privacy laws (for example after too grave and/or repeated offenses).

            • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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              13 hours ago

              Banning apps as a consequence sure, but we know that this has everything to do with the second cold war and nothing to do with actual privacy concerns.

              • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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                13 hours ago

                Yeah, I know. But again, Tiktok is not only bad for bad privacy (and inb4 the next strawman: no FFS I’m not saying Meta and Twitter are not doing the same shit or that them doing it is fine).

                • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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                  12 hours ago

                  I’m in full agreement that it’s one of the worst offenders in privacy violations. I’m not going to defend the company. I don’t think the app should be banned though, politicians took the easy way out because they don’t understand social media enough to regulate it and saw an opportunity to keep playing the geopolitics game. We need to organize and fight for privacy rights.

                  • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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                    12 hours ago

                    I don’t think the app should be banned though,

                    Why not? Again, privacy is not the only issue here.

                    We need to organize and fight for privacy rights.

                    One doesn’t exclude the other.

        • holo@lemmy.wtf
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          13 hours ago

          Yes, you know the dozen billionaires that will be in the executive branching in 3 days, or the hundred or so billionaires that completely control the US government?

      • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
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        13 hours ago

        Nice strawman you got there. Needs a fitting hat though.

        Edit: Honestly, I don’t get the downvotes. WHERE THE FUCK HAVE I SAID THAT OTHER APPS DOING THE SAME SHIT IS FINE???

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      14 hours ago

      At this point I think the ‘spyware app that sows discord and destabilize western societies’ is built into every corporately owned and controlled social media network.

      It’s not social media any more … it’s just basic ‘spyware to sow discord and destabilize society’

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Hum… The first one doesn’t seem designed for that. It’s just an afterthought use China added after it became popular.

      And the second one is probably designed for apathy and “productivity enabling”. It will certainly get a redesign now.

      Meanwhile, some people seem to not want the apathy and “productivity enabling” apps from the US. Too bad there aren’t many alternatives.