Bonum Certa Men Certa

TikTok is a Chinese Weapon Controlled by a Dangerous Company (ByteDance) and We Must Treat It Like a Chinese Weapon for Our Own Sake

Fentanylware: Who's there?



Summary: Many people believe -- or get paid to say -- that TikTok is no worse than social control media made by the West and controlled by the West; those people clearly have no clue about TikTok (where the stated aim is harm, it is not merely a side effect)

TikTok is, bluntly speaking, a Chinese weapon disguised as an "app" or "site". Consider some recent examples such as [1] (some idiot "arrives at his own funeral in helicopter after faking his death"). As we noted some days ago in the series about YouTube, this imperils emergency services, can cause a suicide, etc. What healthy-minded person does this? And what for? To teach one's family a "lesson"? See "Paramedics turn on premier in TikTok tirade" [2], "The Battle for Control" [3] (yes, it's about TikTok), and then witness disturbing trends [4]. Even German media [5] has had its say.



For those who do not know what ByteDance is, Wikipedia says this: "ByteDance Ltd. (Chinese: 字节跳动; pinyin: Zìjié Tiàodòng) is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands." Well, "internet technology" is a typo (should be capitalised i, but Wikipedia is no longer known for quality) and calling it "internet technology" is a gross understatement. It's a surveillance giant that farms behaviour. It's like a Chinese "profiling" or "scoring" system for the entire world, operated by youths for the most part but aimed at adults.

Yesterday the New York Times wrote [6]: "On the short-form video app, long-established facts about the 1912 disaster at sea are being newly litigated as musty rumors merge with fresh misinformation and manipulated content."

Yes, "misinformation and manipulated content" is very common there because it is actively being encouraged and promoted (selected to go viral, by hostile forces). It harms people's safety, feelings, self-image, and education.

Techrights has been consistently and unapologetically against TikTok, more so than any other social control media. If you know someone who uses TikTok, do your best to wean them/him/her off it.

Related/contextual items from the news:


  1. 2023-06-15 TikToker arrives at his own funeral in helicopter after faking his death
  2. 2023-06-15 [Older] ‘Hey Chris Minns, remember us?’: Paramedics turn on premier in TikTok tirade
  3. 2023-06-14 [Older] The Battle for Control: TikTok, Parental Consent, and the Rights of Children
  4. 2023-06-14 [Older] Fewer People Trust Traditional Media, More Turn to TikTok for News, Report Says
  5. 2023-06-10 [Older] Drohnenkrieg: Die TikTokisierung des Grauens


  6. The Titanic Truthers of TikTok
    On the short-form video app, long-established facts about the 1912 disaster at sea are being newly litigated as musty rumors merge with fresh misinformation and manipulated content.




Recent Techrights' Posts

Jean-Slop Van Damme and the Art of Bull--- Code
it's saving neither time nor money
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: 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
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
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
Slopfarm: Firing 35,000 Employee is "Saving the Company"
"Big Blue" is getting smaller all the time
Slopfarms About the "Linux CEO" Linus Torvaldos [sic]
nowadays NVIDIA builds and helps build a giant Ponzi scheme
Vista 11 is "10" (Ten Percent)
Some months ago Microsoft openly admitted that it had lost (shed off) hundreds of millions of Windows users
Dealing With Online Pogroms
lawfare funded by third parties
The Year Apple Would Rather Forget
We await further stumbles and falls from Apple (in 2026)
"EU's reform agenda threatens to erase a decade of digital rights"
This is really sad for those of us who spent decades promoting and boosting/advocating the EU
IBM Layoffs in India, More Coming Soon, Say Apparent Insiders
Threads regarding IBM layoffs
Gemini Links 29/12/2025: Earlier "Happy New Year 2026" and "Dead Archivist Society"
Links for the day
Links 29/12/2025: Putin Critic Sergei Udaltsov Imprisoned, Cloudflare’s Outages Discussed
Links for the day
LLMs Are Inherently Parasitic, We Need to Treat Them Accordingly
a maintenance burden for those who possess actual intelligence
Links 29/12/2025: Bottled Water Considered Harmful, Cheetos Promoting Nazis in Europe
Links for the day
EPO People Power - Part XVIII - European Patent Office "Paints Itself as Progressive While Literally Being Represented by Cokeheads"
To what length/s will German authorities and media (not just in Germany) go to protect the EPO's "precious image"?
What IBM Will Do to Red Hat in the Coming Year or Years
This won't end up well for GNU/Linux as a whole
Not Turning in His Grave: When People Die, Their Corporate Destruction Becomes a "Turnaround"
All he did was mass layoffs - a tradition that has not ended since then
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 28, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, December 28, 2025
Louis Gerstner Has Died, His Legacy of Mass Layoffs at IBM Hasn't
Hagiographies will follow. They will say he "saved" IBM.
Links 29/12/2025: The Sunday Routine, Limits of Memory, and Gemini Vocabulary
Links for the day
Doxing is Illegal in the UK (Even If You're Based in the US)
Somebody has just added my identity (name, mugshot etc.) to a "hitlist" site of a political nature, pandering to violent people
Misunderstood Weapons of Censorship
It's cruel world out there. One needs to be aware of these shady activities, including "censorship-as-a-service".
Google Confidently Wrong, Nowadays Defaming People Too
I can relate as people did this to me and to my wife
What Happens When Americans Are Out of Office (Away From Work) for a Week? Vista 11 "Share" Falls to Just 10%.
How's that for slow adoption?
2026 Will Have EPO Focus, People Will See What the EPO is Trying to Hide
We certainly hope people will be held accountable
EPO People Power - Part XVII - Drugged, Stoned, and Drunk at the Office During Working Hours (Campinos Friend and Propaganda Chief Has Long Done This)
It's a total disgrace that press all over Europe is still trying to cover this up!
Gemini Links 28/12/2025: Health Ordeals and Discontinued Pedals
Links for the day
Slop About "Linux" Came Only From One Slopfarm This Weekend
Another day has passed with no LLM slop found in our RSS feeds
Links 28/12/2025: 'Digital Detox' and Slop "Backlash Grew Massively in 2025"
Links for the day
Links 28/12/2025: "Mass Quitting Apple" and "Generative AI Industry is Fraudulent, Immoral and Dangerous"
Links for the day
Links 28/12/2025: Fascination, Holidays, and Mormonism
Links for the day
Microsoft's Weapon Against the Reality of XBox (the Console) Dying Seems to be LLM Slop
XBox is dead/dying
Raffles for the Immaterial: Unauthorised Bingo for Red Hat "Vouchers"
This is IBM and some slop images
Andy Farnell on Standing Up Against Technological Oppression
some portions from it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 27, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, December 27, 2025