Bonum Certa Men Certa

TikTok Still Encouraging and Rewarding Deadly Behaviour, But Beware the Straw Men



FACT FOCUS: A Story About a Deadly TikTok Boat-Jumping Challenge Went Viral. Then It Fell Apart
Just because it's false doesn't mean TikTok never promotes harming oneself and one's surroundings.



Summary: The media continues to shill or promote TikTok; the problem is, some of the criticisms are phony and this serves to distract from what TikTok truly is

THE weekly articles about TikTok focus on some of the things that aren't in Daily Links but still merit a mention. Social control media is, in general, a bad thing. Linus Torvalds called it a "disease" about a decade ago and his remarked aged fairly well (albeit he too had used Google+ until the platform died).

There are already reports that the "FOMO" effect at Facebook's 'Twitter killer' is dying down. Facebook's founder said it best; don't be his "dumb fucks"...

"More than enough harm has been done already; those platforms aren't tools for activism but for "herding" populations in a top-down fashion."But what about TikTok? This platform is exceptionally bad for reasons that we covered before. Its more political aspects are explored in [1-2], the "useful idiots" are noted in [3-4] (guess who funds this lawsuit), TikTok still promotes harm [5-7] and worse are the straw men (misinformation [8-9]), which 'addicts' are still in denial about [10], with some attempting to copy/replicate [11] this "success".

The problem isn't misinformation about TikTok but misinformation being promoted and spread widely by TikTok. And sure, TikTok isn't alone in doing that. But what makes TikTok unique isn't its nationality but the controlling entity, ByteDance.

Society ought to collectively reject such platforms (bans and boycotts can become obsolete if people just choose anything else). More than enough harm has been done already; those platforms aren't tools for activism but for "herding" populations in a top-down fashion. They lessen society's ability to think freely and organise.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. 2023-07-14 From TikTok to Taking on the CIA: The Resurgence of Cutting Political Comedy with James Rehwald


  2. 2023-07-13 Influencer Arrested Over TikTok Video Satirizing Wealthy Emiratis in Dubai Shows Limits on Freedoms


  3. 2023-07-13 New Lawsuit Claims Texas TikTok Ban Violates First Amendment
  4. 2023-07-13 University professors in Texas are suing the state over ‘unconstitutional’ TikTok ban


  5. 2023-07-13 Doctor Who Livestreamed Surgeries on TikTok Has License Yanked, Thank God


  6. 2023-07-12 Plastic Surgeon Who Livestreamed Procedures on TikTok Banned From Practicing Medicine in Ohio
  7. 2023-07-13 Soldiers torture shepherds in Diyarbakır, share video on TikTok


  8. 2023-07-12 FACT FOCUS: A Story About a Deadly TikTok Boat-Jumping Challenge Went Viral. Then It Fell Apart
  9. 2023-07-11 Fans roast Kylie Jenner for using TikTok’s viral aging filter: ‘You can afford to fix it’


  10. 2023-07-10 People who don't use TikTok think it's a national security threat
  11. 2023-07-10 Tumblr's building a TikTok inspired feed in bid to grow its user base


Recent Techrights' Posts

Recruiters Don't Use Microsoft LinkedIn, Spammers Use LinkedIn
One of my best friends, a university professor, lost all of his life's savings due to Microsoft LinkedIn
You've Only Wasted Your Life in Social Control Networks
In a sense, social control media is a giant delusion
2025 Was a Very Bad Year for Social Control Media
statCounter sees a gradual demise in Social Control Media access
Don't "Go Paperless", Go Paperful [sic] (for What Really Matters)
Why should we favour paper use sometimes? Well, many reasons.
The Slop Industry is Failing So Badly (Mountains of Debt, Losses) That It's Merging With the SPAM Industry
we reckon that Google will eventually delist all slopfarms, recognising they're just a form of SPAM
IBM Starts 2026 a Much Smaller Company (Not Homage to Gerstner)
People who get bluewashed out of their job (or bluewashed into unemployment) are gagged by NDAs
Microsoft XBox Having a "Dog Ate My Homework" Moment: No New Console Until 3 Years From Now... Because "RAM Prices"
Who will ever remember this in 2028? Nobody.
Gemini End of Year Capsules Tally (Based on Lupa) Shows About 10% Growth
What a difference a year makes
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why Chatbots Became Dishonesty on Top of Dishonesty (Hiding Usage of Dishonest Salads of Words)
new article from CyberShow
 
Only Hours Into the New Year People Already Discuss the Next Round of Layoffs at Red Hat/IBM
2026 will be another tough year for Red Hat and IBM
EPO People Power - Part XXI - Europe's Second-Largest Institution Became a Corrupt For-Profit Company Run by Drug Addicts
it'll be the demise of the Rule of Law in Europe and maybe a death blow to the EU (eventually), not just the EPO
Another Very Productive Year Commences
"a total of over 17,000 pages in a year"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 31, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Fiji: GNU/Linux Has Risen From Almost Nothing to Almost 5% in Recent Years
It's not as small as people are led to believe
Gemini Links 31/12/2025: Blogosphere is Growing and New Year Begins
Links for the day
Complexity Considered Harmful: We Used to Run an Operating System on 64KB of RAM, Not 64GB of RAM (a Million Times More)
"Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory"
Links 31/12/2025: Cheeto Pushing for More Wars, ‘Security is a Shared Responsibility’
Links for the day
Enshittification of Postal Services Isn't Technological Advancement
Societies that say the aim is to "go digital" and eliminate paper trail aren't advanced; they're moving backwards
XBox is Likely Dead Already, But the Threat It Posed to Us All for Two Decades Isn't Over
"the Xbox was never about gaming and merely served as a test bed for DRM in commodity systems."
Ahead of 2026 Mass Layoffs at Microsoft the Tree Gets Shaken to See Who 'Falls' (Resigns/Retires)
"We had a quiet meeting last week about budget realignment. No one said layoffs, but it’s clear where the focus is shifting."
Almost 6,5000 Pages in 2025, Aiming Higher in 2026
if we can keep focused, then quantity will increase
Gemini Links 31/12/2025: New Resolution, Reverse Hexdump, and Programming Languages
Links for the day
Links 31/12/2025: Nvidia Faces Bubble-Bursting Moment, Saudi Oil Money Pumped Into Chatbots to Keep the Energy Waste Going (Circular Financing Again)
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's First Talk in a U.S. College Since 2018
Greetings from Georgia Tech!
EPO People Power - Part XX - Why António Campinos Chose to Put His Cokehead Friend on 'Sick Leave'
EPO Cocainegate will be covered for months to come
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Gemini Links 30/12/2025: FreeBSD, Gemlogs, and Xobaque
Links for the day
Get Ready for Gigantic XBox Layoffs at Microsoft (Much Bigger Than in 2025)
he unionisation drive is a sign workers already expect this
Concern Trolls: Stop Criticising Poor Gerstner Because Now He's Dead. Reality Check: Gerstner Has Found a Trick for Dodging Tax on His Hundreds of Millions in Wealth.
Maybe even billions in wealth
Samoa: GNU/Linux and ChromeOS Rose to Around 11%
based on Web access data from Samoa
DnD: Debian and Drugs
There will soon be some interesting new information about Debian
A Conundrum of Privacy/Surveillance: Will You Give Them a Stool Sample to "Feel Humane"?
What if skinnerboxes in South Korea also required that people provide urine and stool samples?
Nope, There's No Twitter "Successor"
There's a lot of horrible abuse going on in social control media
A Calm Year in IRC is a Good Year for IRC
Next year IRC will turn 38 (in August) and in 2028 it'll turn 40, just like the FSF did a couple of months ago
Slopfarms Covering Up for "Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" After a Terrible Performance and a Terrible Year at Microsoft
How to cause many to resign/retire, hence not be counted as "layoffs"
IBM Was Never Saved, It Has Been a Downhill Journey for Decades Already
Gerstner wasn't a tech person but a fiscal butcher
Some GNU Joiners in Geminispace
Jose E. Marchesi (known for GNU poke and a bunch of other things) adopted Gemini Protocol
Jean-Slop Van Damme and the Art of Bull--- Code
it's saving neither time nor money
IBM Seems to be Doing to HashiCorp What It Did to Red Hat (Many Key People Leaving)
"Today marks my last day at HashiCorp, wrapping up an incredibly rewarding 5-year journey"
State of the Slop, Day 364
How does Phoronix feel about Google promoting slopfarms that 'rewrite' its stories and slap slop images on top?
Links 30/12/2025: "Durian Tsunami" and "Unneeded Surgeries"
Links for the day
Links 30/12/2025: Social Control Media Detox, Rage Against Slop Wasting People's Productive Capacities
Links for the day
Reality Check About IBM's Louis Grestner, Slopfarms Say He Was IBM CEO for 30 Years!
It is "hallucinating" (lying)
Debt as the New Currency?
Rich people get richer because they take money from the rest of us, if not directly then by compelling us (collectively) to borrow money at a national level, then "invest" in them
EPO People Power - Part XIX - "Berenguer Has Known of Campinos' Substance Abuse First Hand For a Long Time"
"You rightfully claimed that Berenguer is Campinos' protegee"
Gemini Links 30/12/2025: Quitting Coffee, Apartment by the Beach, and Strange Retail Ethics
Links for the day
Nintendo and Sony Outsold Microsoft XBox by 15:1!
The mass layoffs indicate Microsoft is aware of this
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 29, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, December 29, 2025