This was absolutely happening in 2020. That was a long time ago and the App is practically unrecognizable from its 2020 state.

To address some specific points:

What I would like to see personally is these users, and internet users in general, take their personal internet data privacy and security seriously (regardless of whether it’s against apps like tik tok that are foreign, or meta/Google etc all which are domestic).

Absolutely agreed. But as you also discuss, there’s only so much individuals can do so long as the US lacks real privacy laws. Even those of us who do our best to de-google and make our online lives as private as possible can not truly avoid the surveilance state- just make it less easy for the surviellance state to gather info about us.

Leveraging this ban against the federal government to sue for the right to data privacy would be a good idea as well. The argument probably should be that this bill foments the idea that this scale of internet/app data collection is harmful, and if it’s harmful in the hands of a foreign adversary it’s just as harmful in the hands of the federal government who have countless times leaked the sensitive information of citizens.

Good news! This is the core of TikTok’s legal argument in front of the supreme court right now. And I’m sure that people with the funds and connections are planning on pursuing this strategy in the future, too, but these kinds of legal solutions take time.

Leaving Tik Tok hurts Tik Tok more than it helps them, yes, even as a form of protest.

They aren’t leaving tiktok. They’re in both places.

Some Tik Tok users have already been banned from rednote for the content they post and comments they make.

That’s fine, people aren’t jumping to rednote to actually move their content there for the long haul. No one is legitimately thinking this is where everyone will move and they’ll pick back up as if nothing had happened. It’s simply a method of civil disobedience that has an added benefit of cultural exchange.

I’m not downplaying the users, their number, or that they are trying to protest by taking these steps. I’m pointing out that the apparatus to thwart what they’re doing is basically already in place

Everyone jumping into Rednote is aware of this.

Hell, if creators got together and put in a bid to buy Tik Tok, that would be a better protest because at least then they’d be collectively attempting to save it.

It would certinally be neat, but there’s no way the userbase could do this. Even if enough people got together to put up the capital, there’s a whole suite of regulations and funding nonsense that would get in the way. The law text gives the president a lot of leeway in how the sale is handled, so even if the people put up the money the president could just say “nah” and ban it anyway. This also requires ByteDance to even agree to the sale, too. So far, all indications are that ByteDance is planning on just letting things shut down according to the law (which also bans any US companies from hosting or providing services to a company that has been banned) It’s clear that the ideal resolution that congress wanted was for tiktok to either go away (as it is now) or be purchased by someone who could add it to the toolbelt of corporate america and bring it under the thumb of the surviellance state. A group of citizens purchasing the app to preserve it is not one of these outcomes that congress is expecting nor would tolerate long-run.

I think you are fixating on Rednote here rather than seeing Rednote as a component of the efforts at hand. It’s a minor item, it may be short lived, and it’s absolutely not the thing anyone is viewing as the stone that will break the back of the ban law. It’s not easy to know for sure how many are making accounts, but it’s most likely less than 1 million so far, which is obviously a drop in the bucket of the tiktok user base. MOST of the organizing on TikTok is not focused on Rednote, and instead of trying to ensure there are lines of communication for people to find each other elsewhere once the ban hits, because nothing else could be done in such a short span of time once it became clear the ban was actually going to happen.

For now, the secondary goals are focused on trying to ensure Meta doesn’t gain as a result of this, especially since it bankrolled the lobbying efforts for this ban, congress members have invested in Meta in anticipation of the ban, and because Meta is worse with data collection (and sells the data to china anyway). We’ll see if that happens, but between Bluesky, the account closures as a result of Meta’s awful moderation rollbacks, and the long-held distaste for Meta by TikTok users, it’s certinally possible.

I know you’ve drawn some comparisons to reddit, but it’s really not the same. Reddit didn’t go away by government action, and it acted on it’s own to disgruntle it’s user base, and even then, it wasn’t the entire user base. It is absolutely not the same. I know we all love to view the lemmy migration as a big deal here, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t change anything for reddit as a corporate entity and there was little fuel for continuing the conversation. We moved. We set up something that works for some, doesn’t for others. The same is true of the multiple Twitter -> Mastodon+ migrations. Enough people moved over to the fediverse to establish a much more sustainable userbase and allow for more innovation, but no one in social media is looking at the ~11 million Mastodon users and thinking “wow, we gotta win them back”. The fediverse is a long-term game when it comes to the future of social media and in it’s present state, it may not even be that future. But it might (along with BlueSky, assuming it doesn’t enshittify too) inspire the next-gen solution that does pull people off of centralized social media.

Successful acts of protest and change require a multi-pronged effort. Some efforts fail. Others are successful. Many efforts seem like failures until the downstream effects become more apparent years later. Some of the most successful acts of protest during the civil rights era were viewed at the time as silly and counter-productive, but now we view many of those things as instrumental in bringing about change.

I think a lot of people in the TikTok world who are organizing around this situation would agree with your broader points. Tiktok, after all, was a haven for organizing on behalf of progressive efforts in human rights, privacy, and other areas. I certinally agree with your sentiment and concerns as well.

Disabled, black, queer, ugly (which is subjective but whatever) seemed quite unsuppressed on tiktok to my perception and the perceptions of many in those spaces… I’m sure there are exceptions due to the large sample size.

I fit several of those categories and have been immersed in those spaces on tiktok for a long time and the opinion has always trended to it being far superior for discussing and being in those groups than Instagram or YouTube. Especially for disabled and queer groups, tiktok was always the bigger audience.

defending it on the grounds that people will have to advertise somewhere else really isn’t.

Shop is a lot more than advertising. Much closer to pre-enshittified etsy, and there’s a reason a lot of small businesses formed around it instead of instagram. Tiktok would actually allow those products to be shown to people rather than supressed in favor of corporations.

Wild to me how much people here are celebrating the App ban.

I get that this is the fediverse and the goal is decentralized social media, but this ban also means thousands of small businesses will lose a primary or secondary source of income that they can’t just replacewuickly, tons of people will lose access to methods of communication that would otherwise be censored on US platforms, and it eliminates a platform that has excelled at breaking down governments placed barriers of communication between different groups (which is something the fediverse does well, too)

Celebrating this is rather selfish and anti-free speech.

(Edit 2: read the bill, it also bans American companies from offering hosting services to a company that is banned through the law https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text)

Arguably, if the app isn’t easy to obtain then the cost of all the US-based servers would become an enormous expense. All US customer data is on its own US-based infra hosted by Oracle. Migrating all the US data elsewhere would also be an enormous expense. Server infa for 170 million Americans on an App is not gonna be cheap to keep running, esp since even if tiktok tried, the best they could do is get apk’s to android users. iOS users are SOL.

Given how iOS dominates the US still and only a small portion of android users are comfortable manually installing apps from non-store locations, why would they go through the effort to stay around for a fraction of the previous user base.

Its a perfectly uneerstsndable business decision, and its one they may be making on the hopes thay the ban will get reversed shortly after its put in place. Its also perfectly understandable to not want to sell the US-based component of the App when they still operate in plenty of other countries, including China, and the sale would devalue what they retained.

(Edit: and while their web offering has improved over the years, they probably are assuming a similar drop of userbase since only so many would be willing to move their usage to a web app that is not super easy to use for capturing video or handling notifications)

Like I said, we will see if it ends up having an effect. In the absence of other valid options, becoming ungovernable is the only reasonable option. Perhaps you have better ideas? I don’t know if it’s going to make a difference, but I’m not about to pretend I’m any better equipped to plan action to fight the constitutional abuses of the US government with a loosely organized group of social media users.

The “tik tok” ban already has the terminology built into the relevant clauses to ban any app beholden to a hostile foreign power that is a threat to national security with a certain number of users. They’ll just add this to the list.

Tiktok users are aware of this, especially the ones participating in this.

It’s not just about rednote, either. The other compinent is boycotting Meta products. There is also a simultaneous effort to push people to follow tiktok creators on YouTube or bluesky, and not on facebook/threads/Instagram. There is also a mass understanding that this is all interim and not long term.

Moving to something like Loops would absolutely be a better option, both because of it being part of the fediverse and therefore not controlled directly by any government, and because it’s not likely to get banned.

Loops is 0% ready for people. I’m on loops. I hope it’ll be viable in the future. It’s taken loops months to send out beta access invites. How in the world could it handle several thousand up to 150 million users RIGHT NOW.

The fediverse isn’t viable yet for the vast majority of people, especially creatoes with big followings. It can’t even keep up in moderating for its existing user base, it doesnt have rhe tools that people with thens of thousands of followers would need to sort through their interactions, and it couldn’t handle a mass influx of millions. Especially loops. Even Mastadon would cumble if its userbase went up by 50 million right now.

The fediverse is absolutely a long term solution and I’m hopeful for it, but there are some major gaps in onboarding, moderation, and scaling that prevent it from being a viable option rn. As it grows stronger it’ll be able to serve that need.

The fact that rednote will absolutely get banned once it reaches the threshold of users is not going to endear anyone who doesn’t use tik tok to the movement. You don’t explain what they’re organizing or how the move to rednote makes the government look bad. If people don’t care about tik tok they aren’t going to care about rednote or the government banning it as well.

There are up to 150 million Americans on tiktok, and basically any creators of significance are widely talking about this there. You could go see yourself. If only 1/6 of the user base sees the information that means the average American is 6 degrees or less of separation from someone who does care. Its got a wider reach than you think. Just because you don’t understand the method of organizing doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Plenty of discussion happening on tiktok about the reasons and methodology for this, which is where it’s being organized from.

Keep in mind that mass adoption of rednote will force the US to ban it as well, which provides another opportunity in the future to bring more visibility to the authoritarianism by which the US government is operating this ban. It also sets a precedent for any other things the US government might target. There’s a lot of speculation that other games and apps owned partially or majority by ByteDance will be next, like Epic games, League of Legends, etc. If the rednote jump proves to be a successful method for continuing the conversation, then gamers and users of other services that are banned in the future could see that as a blueprint for their own acts of civil disobedience.

We will see what happens, but if every time the US government bans an app or platform, the people just move onto something even worse for the US governments desires (and especially if we move to something that won’t give profits to US companies), then it becomes a tactic the US government will have to abandon. So, more accurately, this is a large act of civil disobedience. Wanna ban tiktok? Great, we’ll just go to an actual Chinese-influenced place that actually has Chinese government surveillance

It isn’t as good as blocking city infrastructure, no, but it’s certainly going to make a lot of shareholders of Meta and other US social media angry that people aren’t flocking back to their apps. It also stands a chance of ensuring US officials who signed the tiktok ban and then bought Meta stock won’t see a profit from their actions.

A protest on the streets isn’t likely going to move the needle on tiktok. The only successful street protests (and barely successful at that) on a national level in recent times have been the BLM protests. The Free Palestine protests haven’t been unsuccessful, but they also haven’t really moved the needle either. Protesting on the streets runs an ever increasing risk of police violence and retribution by the surveillance state. And with the trump administration signaling it plans to green light further police violence against protesters, up to bringing in the military, that may not even be viable in the future.

Protests are about bringing visibility about an issue to a wider audience right?

Tons of news coverage, anyone on the app store or play store are seeing the App at the top of the charts, sounds like visibility to me!

Also a note that captial one has a similar service for their own credit cards. Def not as good as privacy.com, but still useful.

You can apply arkenfox or Betterfox to fennec in some somewhat hacky ways via adb (or less hacky if rooted)

The rednote move is mostly a form of protest. People are fully aware its a dumb idea for privacy.

It still has a real impact on the people being harmed. I dont know if bullies getting social consequences for their actions outweighs the pain they have already inflicted.

That said, hopefully better information dissemination will help anyone being targeted to find better places where bullies are defederated/moderated for being shitty humans rather than based on shareholder value and kissing the ring of a dictator.

Its less censorship AND an allowance of actual hate speech.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/metas-new-content-policy-will-harm-vulnerable-users-if-it-really-valued-free

You can hide your number on Signal so people can’t start conversations with you unless they have your QR code/link.

But even if you leave it visible… it’s really not that big a deal. Tbh, thats a good feature if you want to use Signal as a way for people you don’t often interact with to securely communicate if they have your phone number but can’t utilize encrypted RCS. Once Apple gets on board with encryption then it’s less important for Signal to fill that gap for casual conversation.

Signal may not be perfect for all use cases. But it’s pretty easy to navigate for the normies and its got most of the features people would miss from whatsapp/facebook messenger. I got my family converted to Signal this week from facebook messenger and it went rather smoothly. Plus, Signal has been around for a long time. Even some among my less tech-literate family had already used it in the past, but everyone had heard of it so it was an easy sell.

The reality of communication nowadays is that there is no one size fits all solution. Signal, XMPP, Matrix, whatever else all have their pros/cons.

I know there’s been a lot more discussion around SimpleX lately, but tbh, the sudden noise about it + the VC backing just feels more like a coordinated advertising campaign and that makes me less interested in it.

I’ve used linux on my laptops and non-gaming devices for a long time, but it took me a long time to switch my gaming desktop over. I’ve felt i could use linux full time most of the last 8 years (and especially for games since 2020 as i rarely play anything with anti-cheat anyway), but i only went linux on all devices as of 2 years ago when i built a new gaming PC so it required starting from scratch anyway, and aside from a few components i intended to retain for the new one, i could easily drop back to play a game if i ran into problems.

They won’t do it, whether they just fear change or think it’ll break stuff or they can’t bother

Not everyone has the time nor feels the need to just rip and replace on a dime. Not everyone has the luxury of multiple devices to gain confidence. Some people only have a handful of hours a week to play games, so switching OS isnt going to be an immediate priority sven if its their desire.

And I’m not going to lie, I don’t hate them or debate with them for it, I just hate the bold lies they tell just to get with the crowd

The world already has enough things to tear us all down, why flip a table and possibly be unable to game for a time just because doing it right away, according to you, is the only way to be honest or whatever. A vocal desire to dump windows doesnt equate to lying. Let people be excited about linux even if they dont make the switch themselves. Maybe their excitement inspires someone else to take the plunge who wouldn’t have done so otherwise.

Also, if you felt the need to write this rant, seems like you do kinda hate them.

At least don’t lie that you’ll move to Linux at a goal post that you’ll just move whenever you get close, maybe say that you’ll move to Linux when you finally get a new pc with a new disk or something?

even tho i knew i was “done” with the windows since like 2018, I just simply waited until it was convenient to switch. Should i have qualified every conversation where i discussed linux gaming with this? Idk, maybe just let people be excited about something, even if it takes them a long time to get to it.

Maybe they will, due in fucking 2028 or something when they invent a really easy way to use built in Linux tools to move your files from NTFS to Linux and then when you launch steam you have a perfect library of Linux compatible games that are as good or better than windows

Uh… This has existed a long time. Mounting ntfs on linux is rather easy. Even a windows boot disk. Just point steam at the library folder. In fact, my steam library is installed on ntfs in case i ended up dual booting or using gpu passthrough to a windows vm for a few items. If you’re gonna sit here and virtue signal about who is a real linux gamer or not maybe you’d at least know something as basic as mounting ntfs in linux…