Technology

Never downloaded it...

You can't uninstall that which was never installed.

More enshitification. Whatever the current "administration" touches turns to shit, dies, and rots.

Boycott everything you can that's from the US. Even if you are IN the fucking US. Nazis are not your friends (and if they are, fuck you, you're a Nazi too).

Up 150% sounds crazy... but like, what's the rate of installs vs uninstalls here? How has the rate of installs changed?

at least it won't be zuccerslop

If you are uninstalling, you can try the federated alternative: loops

Should be higher, save your selves

Mildly entertained how fast it went from a bill to give the executive power to designate applications as security threats and ban them to then it being abused. A lot of folks saying the EFF and ACLU were wrong this time and then the EFF and ACLU being right less than 2 years after the bill passing. And it’s not like TikTok has been around all that long. 2021 all the pearl clutching about China’s influence ruining the youth just look at the zoomers entering the workforce - the app was popular for like 2 years at that point. Everyone people were complaining about were raised on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter. Not only that, TikTok was about the only social media platform that leftist were pretty good at compared to right wingers. The ridiculous dichotomy of leftist supporting a bill to ban TikTok while TikTok was core to the lefts grassroots outreach and networking. So now TikTok is right wing owned and Instagram and YouTube are still the same kind of content that people blamed TikTok for and have had for much longer.

That bill in 2024 was a Democratic Party self own especially when the bill wasn’t even TikTok specific. Somehow saw masked plain clothes federal agents kidnapping people in 2020 to pretty much no consequence and decided in 2024, the federal government won’t abuse this bill

Good. Fuck TikTok.

For anyone looking for new alternatives, I'm sure most Lemmy users can suggest more open-source pubfed options, but for anyone trying to generate a bit more presence (not that there's much) I did find a YouTube video highlighting some "indie social media" sites, mostly focusing on nostalgia of simpler versions of the historically popular ones.

Having the whole world operate off of publically-owned shared systems is probably an ideal, but having them at least in tight competition, with easy destinations to abandon off to, is still quite a bit better.

I understand TikTok to be the bastion of communication and community for Gen Z.

But so much of the content is uncreative. The same songs and sound effects to some stupid reaction video.

That said, I do hope TikTok crashes and burns so the new owner loses on their bid. And I do really hope Gen Z can collectively find a new platform to communicate on freely because TikTok has been a force for them just as Twitter and Reddit was for Millenials.

While installs are up by how much?

Ok, but what are the counts for uninstalls generally? 150% sounds like a lot, but if it’s only a thousand uninstalls a week then it’s only jumped to 1,500 uninstalls. When there are millions of users, that’s…not very much.

I’m not arguing against progress. I’m just saying they are making it sound like this big exodus when it might be minimal in reality.

I am classically conditioned to hate autoplay videos from the era of auto play ads on websites.

Careful on your uninstall, once my wife uninstalled from her phone*, all of a sudden her account can't re-connect to delete her data. There's lots of talk about this on the forums. Delete your account and uninstall all at once.

• my brain said the work i was thinking it wasn't

This is now a right wing propaganda machine. I deleted awhile ago.

Several social media posts pointed to language in the new policy that describes the types of data TikTok may collect, including sensitive information such as “your racial or ethnic origin” as well as “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information.”

Despite the social media uproar, that language does not appear to be new. An archived version of the policy from August 2024 includes the same provisions.

Lmao amount of ppl defending TikTok in the comment is funny af

I find it funny that millions of people had no problem with an evil foreign government like the CCP, that's well known for collecting data for military purposes and spending mind boggling amounts on propaganda campaigns, controlling the app, but now draw the line at some Silicon Valley billionaire doing essentially the same thing.

I never liked the short content format so I never had an interest downloading TikTok, but I knew that I would never, ever download it when I learned that this Chinese app is actually banned in China. They a have a separate clone of this app that's exclusive to China that uses a different algorithm that promotes positive and educational content. The fact that billions of people use this shitty weaponized piece of Chinese spyware is depressing, especially when the Fediverse exists.

I hate how percentages from 100% and up are used ambiguously.

e.g. 150% vs +150%

It was an almost perfect medium for sharing cooking videos and recipes, can anyone suggest a replacement?

Don't worry I've already uninstalled it (months ago when Ellison bought a majority stake) but I haven't found a replacement short-form video platform for recipes yet

I feel old every time I share that I’ve never installed TikTok and don’t have an account.

In many ways, I feel a bit like I am still forced to ambiently and peripherally use the app when interacting with the rest of social media and society. Because the damn format, and culture, and way of thinking and producing videos has seeped so deep into all aspects of our lives.

The whole mode of consuming media in an algorithmic flipbook like that weirds me out. I don’t understand how anyone can enjoy being enticed to watch videos in the way TikTok promotes.

I just recently deleted my account and uninstalled the app. I'm not going to lie, it was hard because I had finally curated my algo to some pretty decent content that wasn't just brainrot trash.

But I'd rather be bored than give Oracle anything.

EDIT: Also Loops is neat from a technical standpoint, but it feels like a ghost town coming from TikTok.