The architecture of the #internet creates risks for #democracy

“During the German federal election in 2025, an algorithmic audit of #X, #TikTok, #Instagram, and #YouTube found that around half of all party-related content that was algorithmically recommended to young users across platforms involved an extreme-right party, doubling its audience share relative to the content’s original upload rate on TikTok. Center-left parties, by contrast, were suppressed.”

#elections

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aei2409

You, the people, and NLnet, have funded a fully open TikTok alternative with web and mobile clients, ActivityPub federation and an opt-out For You feed algorithm that is privacy friendly.

Anyone can start their own Loops community, and we're working on an official hosting service to help fund development.

Join 🚀: https://joinloops.org/join-the-beta

Roadmap ✨: https://joinloops.org/roadmap

Donate 🙏: https://joinloops.org/donate

Source 🤖: http://github.com/joinloops

#Loops #TikTok #ActivityPub

Yesterday, on multiple occasions, I noticed young people filming videos for TikTok, and I'm pretty sure I ended up in the background of a few.

Today, for the very first time, I decided to install the app and search for the location's hashtag. I found way more videos than I expected, though I didn't spot myself.

As I kept scrolling, driven by whatever logic fuels their algorithm, the content started to shift. In no time at all, I was flooded with videos of young girls, not all of them adults, in explicit poses and highly revealing clothes. They were performing (what they clearly thought were) sensual dances, all following the exact same trend and the same background music. Then came the boys, doing something similar but different, flexing and showing off their bodies as if they were standing in front of a mirror.

I kept scrolling without pausing, as none of this holds even the slightest interest for me.

Eventually, I stumbled upon what I assume was some kind of "challenge": young girls simulating sexual acts to entertain their male friends, all synced to the beat of the music. It was quite explicit, even if they weren't actually showing skin. The captions said something along the lines of "Can we still stay best friends?" or something similar.

For a brief moment, I felt like decades of "we are more than just bodies" and hard-fought battles for women's respect had just gone up in smoke - all reduced to cheap sexual innuendos in exchange for a few likes.

Maybe I'm just getting old. But I uninstalled the app without a second thought.

#TikTok #SocialNetworks #Trends

Digital AI Blackface

“Aliyah, a light-skinned Black woman dressed in country-western gear, is struggling to sell metal buckles she handmade on #TikTok.

In a video for the social media platform from March, she cries to the camera and pleads for views: “Even as a black woman, I have more faith that white women will stay 13 seconds [on this video] to save my belt buckle business,” the onscreen text reads.

She wipes a tear off her cheek.

But Aliyah isn’t real…

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/938844/ai-tiktok-shop-blackface-shein-dropshipping

Loops is the privacy focused alternative to TikTok, a fully self-hostable + ActivityPub federated platform.

A few highlights:
- Starter Kits: https://joinloops.org/starter-kits
- Embeds: https://dansup.github.io/loops-embed-demo/
- Atom feeds: https://loops.video/feeds/1.atom

Learn more: https://joinloops.org/why-loops-matters

#Loops #TikTok

Now in College, #LudditeTeens Still Don’t Want Your Likes

Three years after starting a club meant to fight #SocialMedia’s grip on young people, many original members are holding firm and gaining new converts.

By Alex Vadukul
Jan. 30, 2025

"Biruk Watling, a college sophomore wearing a baggy coat and purple fingerless gloves, walked the chilly campus of Temple University in #Philadelphia on a recent afternoon to recruit new members to her club.
She taped a flier to a pole: '#JoinTheLudditeClub For #MeaningfulConnections.' Down the block, she posted another one: 'Do You Desire a Healthier Relationship With Technology, Especially Social Media? The Luddite Club Welcomes You and Your Ideas.'

"When a student approached, Ms. Watling dove into her pitch.

"'Our club promotes #ConsciousConsumption of #technology,' she said. 'We’re for #HumanConnection. I’m one of the first members of the original Luddite Club in #Brooklyn. Now I’m trying to start it in #Philly.

"She pulled out a #FlipPhone, mystifying her recruit.

"'We use these,' she said. 'This has been the most freeing experience of my life.'
If Ms. Watling had a missionary’s zeal, it was because she wasn’t just promoting a student club, but an approach to modern life that profoundly changed her two years ago, when she helped form the Luddite Club as a high school student in New York.

"But that was then, back when things were simpler, before she had embarked on the more independent life of a college student and found herself having to navigate QR codes, two-factor-identification logins, dating apps and other digital staples of campus life.

"The #LudditeClub was the subject of an article I wrote in 2022 — a story that, ironically, went viral. It told of how a group of teenage tech skeptics from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn and a few other schools in the city gathered on weekends in Prospect Park to enjoy some time together away from the machine.

"They #sketched and #painted side by side. They read quietly, favoring works by #Dostoyevsky, #Kerouac and #Vonnegut. They sat on logs and groused about how #TikTok was dumbing down their generation. Their flip phones were decorated with stickers and nail polish.

"Readers inspired by their message responded in hundreds of emails and comments. Reporters from Germany, Brazil, Japan and elsewhere flooded my inbox, asking me how to reach these students who were so hard to track down online. Snarky Reddit threads and think pieces sprouted. #RalphNader endorsed the club in an opinion essay, writing: 'This is a rebellion that needs support and diffusion.'"

Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.html

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/
#SolarPunkSunday #Nature #NeoLuddite #Luddites #LessScreenTime #MoreBoardGames #MoreGreenTime #MoreOutdoorTime #FlipPhones #MoreBooks #ResistTheMachine

The kids are running through Scientology buildings screaming "XENU" to mock them....

...the kids are alright!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_speedrunning

#GenZ #Scientology #TikTok

FYI: TikTok TopReach goes public: one buy for TikTok's two top ad spots: TikTok TopReach enters Q2 open beta combining TopView and TopFeed into one buy, offering 59% incremental reach at 3X lower cost per reach than TopView alone. https://ppc.land/tiktok-topreach-goes-public-one-buy-for-tiktoks-two-top-ad-spots/ #TikTok #TopReach #SocialMediaMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #AdTech

ICYMI: TikTok TopReach goes public: one buy for TikTok's two top ad spots: TikTok TopReach enters Q2 open beta combining TopView and TopFeed into one buy, offering 59% incremental reach at 3X lower cost per reach than TopView alone. https://ppc.land/tiktok-topreach-goes-public-one-buy-for-tiktoks-two-top-ad-spots/ #TikTok #TopReach #DigitalMarketing #AdTech #OnlineAdvertising

Mashable: TikTok tests AI Remix option. What it is, how to opt out. . “With remixes on, any public content can be used by its viewers to create digitally generated images, text-based memes, and more. The reveal and lack of notification stirred widespread concern about privacy and consent. Many wondered where the setting came from — and how to turn it off ASAP.”

The #WikimediaFoundation is signing a disturbing agreement with #Indonesia in order to allow Indonesian access to #Wikipedia.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260425-under-blackout-threat-wikimedia-reaches-compromise-with-indonesia

A provision in the agreement lets the govt "take down content deemed as 'causing public unrest and disturbing public order'."

Indonesia assured WF that the agreement was merely "administrative" and that "there would be no unlawful content takedown orders." But of course the agreement makes harmful takedowns lawful.

"Last October, Indonesia briefly suspended #TikTok's local operating licence after the social media platform refused to share information sought by Jakarta about violent anti-government protests earlier in the year."

#Censorship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA_hmtuAPTY

[copypasta]

Did the Algorithm Change Your Decisions? | How Your Feed Was Engineered

Right now, somewhere on the internet, a video is being uploaded.

Within seconds, a system that no one elected, no one audits, and no one fully understands decides whether anyone else will ever see it.

Sometimes, it decides no one should.

And that’s the end of it.

In this episode of Plain Meaning, we examine how the modern internet quietly transformed from a system designed to deliver information… into one that decides what information exists for you at all.

It didn’t happen all at once.

It happened step by step.

Feed by feed.

Platform by platform.

Until nearly everything you see online is filtered through a machine making decisions on your behalf.

We trace how:

• Social media moved from profile pages to infinite feeds
• Facebook’s News Feed shifted from chronological to algorithmic control
• Advertising—not user experience—drove the need to control timing and visibility
• “EdgeRank” introduced the first large-scale automated editorial system
• By 2016, every major platform—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube—had adopted algorithmic feeds
• Recommendation systems replaced direct navigation across the entire internet

But this isn’t just a story about technology.

It’s a story about incentives.

Because once platforms controlled what you saw, they didn’t just control engagement.

They controlled attention.

And once attention became the product, the system began optimizing for something far more powerful than clicks.

We examine what happened next:

• How foreign influence operations exploited algorithmic feeds during the 2016 election
• The role of Cambridge Analytica and its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories in psychological targeting
• The scale and strategy of Russia’s Internet Research Agency
• How fake local news accounts built trust before deploying disinformation
• Why most influence content wasn’t political—but divisive
• How algorithms amplified all of it without distinction

And then we go further.

Because 2016 wasn’t the end of the story.

It was the beginning.

We look at how:

• Algorithmic systems shape not just what you see—but how you think
• Platforms reward emotional, extreme, and addictive content
• Foreign-owned platforms introduce new geopolitical risks
• Systems like ByteDance’s TikTok operate differently across countries
• The same algorithmic architecture can produce completely different realities depending on its objectives

This episode is not about one platform.

It’s not about one political party.

And it’s not about one country.

It’s about the system itself.

Because the algorithm isn’t just recommending content.

It’s acting as an editor.

And most of the time, you don’t even realize it’s there.

By the end of this video, the next time you open a social media app, you’ll understand:

Why your attention isn’t fully yours.

Why the world you see isn’t necessarily the world that exists.

And how to recognize when a machine—not you—is deciding what matters.

#Algorithm #SocialMedia #DigitalMedia #YouTube #Facebook #Instagram #NewsFeed #TikTok #Twitter

[/copypasta]

Behind TikTok: Zhang Yiming
https://negativepid.blog/behind-tiktok-zhang-yiming/

#tikTok #zhangYiming #byteDance #socialMedia #softwareArchitecture #algorithms #tech #techInventors #techInvestors #techCompanies #bigTech #cyberPsychology #mentalHealth #negativepid

Social media in the world: beyond the US
https://negativepid.blog/social-media-in-the-world-beyond-the-us/

#WeChat #Weibo #zalo #VK #Telegram #kakaoTalk #TikTok #Douyin #QQ #red #Xiaohongshou #kuaishou #bilibili #privacy #surveillance #censorship #compliance #GDPR #PIPEDA #cybersecurity #OSINT #socialMedia #negativepid

ICYMI: TikTok's TopReach merges two premium ad slots - and promises 59% more reach: TikTok's TopReach unites TopView and TopFeed placements into one buy, delivering 59% incremental reach at 3X lower cost per reach than TopView alone. https://ppc.land/tiktoks-topreach-merges-two-premium-ad-slots-and-promises-59-more-reach/ #TikTok #DigitalMarketing #AdTech #Advertising #MarketingStrategy

#TikTok for Business accounts targeted in new #phishing campaign

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/tiktok-for-business-accounts-targeted-in-new-phishing-campaign/

#cybersecurity #SocialMedia

bride

#chatgpt #openai #youtube #microsoft #x #tiktok #reddit #instagram #meta #art #comic #unix_surrealism

Alt...

Gamification of personal interaction degrades human health.

TikTok Reportedly Rejects End-to-End Encryption for DMs, Citing Child Safety

https://www.pcmag.com/news/tiktok-reportedly-rejects-encryption-for-dms-citing-child-safety

#tiktok #tiktoknews #tiktokdms #apps #tech #technews #socialnetworks #socialmedia #encryption #privacy #tiktokrejects

Wow, all of the public #ProxiTok instances seem to be down. :(

https://github.com/pablouser1/ProxiTok/wiki/Public-instances

Fortunately, (a) I rarely need to visit #tiktok urls (ugh), and (b) yt-dlp still works.

It's a bummer, though. People need #privacy-respecting front-ends.

Apple's China App Crackdown Tests Tech Freedom Boundaries

#TikTok #Apple #Tech #USPolicy #AusNews

https://thedailyperspective.org/article/2026-03-06-apples-china-app-crackdown-tests-tech-freedom-boundaries-8743c7ec

#ByteDance said #TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC -- which was finalized in January & is 80% ‌owned by ⁠non-Chinese investors -- would secure #US #user #data, apps & algorithms through data #privacy & #cybersecurity measures. It disclosed few details about the divestiture or the financial arrangements.

#law #Trump #PamBondi

#Trump, Bondi face lawsuit over approval of #ByteDance #TikTok US asset sale

Trump & Attorney General #PamBondi were sued ​Thursday over the US government's approval of a deal by TikTok's Chinese owner ‌ByteDance to establish a majority American-owned joint venture, saying the approval was illegal & did not meet the requirements of a 2024 #law.

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-bondi-face-lawsuit-over-approval-bytedance-tiktok-us-asset-sale-2026-03-05/?utm_source=braze&utm_medium=notifications&utm_campaign=2025_engagement

The lawsuit was filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by ​the Public Integrity Project on behalf of two retail US investors in rival #socialmedia firms. It aims to require a renegotiation of the deal "that doesn't put ⁠administration allies in a position to #censor #political #content on one of the world's most ​popular #media platforms."

#law #Trump #PamBondi #ByteDance #TikTok

The lawsuit does not seek to force a ban on #TikTok, which is used ​by 200 million Americans.

#Congress passed #legislation in April 2024 requiring #ByteDance to sell its US assets by January 2025 or face a ban or potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in fines -- but #Trump opted not ​to enforce the law & #PamBondi told companies they would face no liability for continuing ​to allow TikTok use.

#law

@BBC

#BreakingNews
*Has the General Public finaly awoken to the fact that the point of no return has been reached regarding #AI, at least in the #US?*

(1/n)

👉 Interesting, as it is before the forecast/expected moment of the #ArtificialIntelligence becoming conscious aka "the monster we created" 👈 (or permitted to be created.) - RL humanity, to be fair, is doing a bit better than the fictional counterpart in #Terminator, to be fare. Let's hope it will be enough.

Via #BBCNews #TikTok:

#TikTok won't protect DMs with end-to-end encryption, saying it would put users at risk

#privacy

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o

Alt...

Image of a phone screen filled with multiple apps including TikTok.

"TikTok won't protect DMs with controversial privacy tech, saying it would put users at risk"

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o

#TikTok #Privacy

#TikTok Says End-To-End Encryption Makes Users Less Safe

#Facebook , #Instagram & X have embraced it because they say their priority is maximizing user #privacy. But critics have said #E2EE makes it harder to stop harmful content spreading, because it means tech firms & law enforcement have no way of viewing any material sent in DMs. The situation is made more complex because TikTok has long faced accusations that ties to the #Chinese state may put users' data at risk

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/04/1638248/tiktok-says-end-to-end-encryption-makes-users-less-safe?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption (E2EE) - the controversial privacy feature used by nearly all its rivals - arguing it makes users less safe.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o

#E2EE #privacy #tiktok

Alt...

morty looking annoyed after waking up

TikTok Refuses to Encrypt DMs, Citing Safety Over Privacy

#TikTok #Privacy #Encryption #CyberSecurity #AusNews #DigitalSafety

https://thedailyperspective.org/article/2026-03-04-tiktok-refuses-to-encrypt-dms-citing-safety-over-privacy-9351a190

TikTok says it is not planning to introduce end-to-end encryption for its direct messages, as it attempts to help protect users, particularly young people. Meanwhile, social media bans for under-16s have emerged in several countries as platforms like Instagram and YouTube face a landmark addiction trial, one that TikTok has already settled. Will this controversial decision make the platform safer for young people, or does it risk raising new privacy concerns for everyday users?

https://flip.it/Mg47KB

#Cybersecurity #TechNews #TikTok #SocialMedia

Ofcourse TikTok will not protect DMs, state surveillance must be possible... 😆
"TikTok won't protect DMs with controversial privacy tech, saying it would put users at risk"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss
#tiktok #privacy #security #surveillance #E2EE

TikTok incapable of delivering both user privacy *and* user safety, retains capability to surveil user communications https://alecmuffett.com/article/148043 #EndToEndEncryption #censorship #china #surveillance #tiktok

TikTok incapable of delivering...

TikTok says it won't encrypt DMs claiming it puts users at risk

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o

> TikTok tells the BBC it won't join rival platforms such as WhatsApp and Messenger in using end-to-end encryption.

#TikTok #privacy

Imagine using TikTok.

TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o

They're repackaging the argument governments have long made about E2EE being dangerous to children. What a joke.

#tiktok #privacy

TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly2m5e5ke4o

#HackerNews #TikTok #Privacy #UserSafety #Encryption #News

TikTok Ownership shift. Privacy panic. Misinformation.

In our latest @sharedsecurity podcast episode co-host Kevin Tackett joins me to discuss what really changed (and didn’t) in TikTok’s privacy policy after its U.S. deal and why some users are walking away.

What do you think about the new TikTok ownership? Let me know in the comments!

Watch this episode on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/QqkZjBJlZUQ

Listen and subscribe wherever you like to get your podcasts:
https://sharedsecurity.net/subscribe
https://sharedsecurity.net/2026/02/23/tiktoks-new-u-s-deal-and-privacy-policy-what-users-dont-understand/

#podcast #tiktok #privacy #privacypolicy

Yup. #TikTok is actively surveilling us and remains tangled with a foreign adversary (China). #Anthropic is getting banned by the government for refusing to actively surveil us. That... is disturbing. If you care about #privacy and #freedom, let your favorite politicians know we actually appreciate tech companies that take anti-surveillance stands. #AI #DepartmentOfWar #DoD https://x.com/Scholars_Stage/status/2027529280092074056

Planned to watch ONE TikTok video.

57 minutes later, looked up.

The algorithm knew me better than I knew myself.

This isn't entertainment.
It's surveillance disguised as entertainment.

Full investigation: YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit data collection

https://snugg.social/en/blog/free-doesnt-mean-no-cost

#Privacy #TikTok #Surveillance #DataPrivacy