We Need to Talk About Tiktok (Again):
A Thread

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Heat has been building on TikTok since at least last October when senators @chuckschumer & @TomCottonAR called for US intelligence to investigate it for threats to national security.

There was concern over TikTok’s data collection & whether Chinese government has any say in content Americans see.

“We ask the Intelligence Community to assess national security risks posed by TikTok & China-based platforms operating in the US & brief Congress on findings."

Senator @marcorubio requested a formal investigation in October citing TikTok's ban on criticism of China’s socialist system or “criticism/attack of policies, social rules of any country: constitutional monarchy, monarchy, parliament, separation of powers, socialism system, etc”.

Another ban covers “demonisation or distortion of local or other countries’ history such as May 1998 riots of Indonesia, Cambodian genocide, Tiananmen Square incidents”. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing

The US has had issues w/ Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, & Snapchat. Some directly effecting politics & elections & national security.

TikTok is owned by BYCK Dance--the most valuable privately-backed startup worth $75B.

Also happening in October 2019: The NBA proved that China was able to pull general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, to heel over a tweet expressing solidarity with Hong Kong. It said: "Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong."

By the next morning, the tweet was gone. Chinese companies had pulled sponsorships and Morey was nearly fired for it.

Apple removed the Taiwan flag from the emoji keyboard for users in Hong Kong & Macau in the same span of time. Nobody says no to China. https://www.imore.com/taiwan-flag-removed-emoji-keyboard-ios-hong-kong-and-macau-users

As we find ourselves in the midst of a hyper politically-charged era, I keep coming back to TikTok.

No, it's not the sole cause of all our problems, but it absolutely is the catalyst of the slow decay of a few social norms.

The result is honestly horrifying.

Generation Z is a generation that many have tried to understand. Very few truly have.

They're the first generation of kids that do not know a world without smart phones, wi-fi, etc. etc.

You know, all that tech that when you start listing off it makes you feel old as dirt.

But while a lot of millenials had some very questionable unsupervised internet time as teenagers, it was largely on a shared family desktop computer (at least for me) and we weren't getting into TOO much trouble. Unless you count downloading Limewire and ruining the computer.

But Generation Z has grown up with their own private handheld computer pretty much the entire time. They're networking in an entirely different way than anyone before, their internet humor evolves faster than anyone else's, and they're really smart.

Except when they aren't.

Not to dive too deeply into the psyche of it all, but another issue for Gen-Zers that I know at least wasn't as big a problem for my family growing up:

THEIR parents are also social media obsessed, revel in their kid's fame, and often encourage it heavily.

The best example that comes to mind is a 19 year old girl named Addison Rae. She is known for TikTok dances- usually combining the same few different dance moves to different songs while making cute or funny faces.

This girl has 46 MILLION followers.

More than that, her whole family is cashing in on it. Her mom has 7.7M followers and her dad has 2.5M.

Her mom shows up in a lot of her dance videos... for example:

And while there's nothing arguably very wholesome about a 19 year old and her mom dancing to lyrics about "fucking your bitch" or... their mom? but lyrics like that are just not as scandalous as they used to be I guess.

I still remember when the Osbornes were 'obscene.'

I digress... while I find that whole thing bizzare, at least they're doing it together as a family.

The sad truth of Generation Z, though: they seem to be the children of narcissists and absentee parents.

That's where the app gets dangerous.

As both a band geek and a socially-inept teen (yes that's me and my clarinet), I see a lot of the same desperation to fit in at any cost in some of these kids that I had at their age. It's a feeling I honestly didn't fully shake until a few years ago.

I used to be a total SJW through my mid 20's, and about 100lbs heavier than I am now to boot. Some of my old Facebook posts:

(It's okay to roast me for these lmao. I would.)

And that was with loving parents and a supportive household. I went SJW stupid anyways. For a long time.

With the Gen Z kids today on TikTok, they're not just going SJW. They're getting full-on radicalized by some very worrisome outside agents.

Here's a current "sound" that's very popular. I let the sound play normally twice in the video then speed it up and set it to Yakety Sax so you don't go insane.

But every single one of these kids is repeating the same phrase. Again and again.

Even more concerning, these kids are sometimes as young as 16.

They all have Paypals, Venmos, Cashapps, whatever. Open to strangers. Open to anyone.

In one particularly disturbing interaction, I found a girl that can't be older than maybe 13 with this in her bio.

I saw her responding to a guy.. "HafezJafar80" saying long live the revolution.

Between comments people left on HIS videos and his music... I think he's Russian.

On top of the myriad of privacy issues... TikTok is a perfect opportunity to radicalize children without them ever knowing. Or their parents.

And some of them, like this kid... seem to be absolutely psychopathic.

I'm not sure what needs to be done, but this is me officially announcing that I am going to (at least part time) begin pestering the shit out of our elected officials to keep investigating TikTok, and I hope we can follow India's lead and ban it from app stores.

#DeleteTikTok

@threadreaderapp unroll me please