Something that occurred to me this morning is that its a bit worse than just them sucking up to Trump with that to get unbanned; to my understanding, he's just stated he wont enforce the ban law, so if he was to change his mind, he wouldnt need congress to pass another I dont think? He'd just need to start enforcing the existing one. That means that TikTok has a strong incentive to continue sucking up to him throughout his whole term, to stay on his good side. But it goes further, because it also creates an incentive for other corporate social medias that compete with TikTok to do the same (though admittedly, their owners seem to want to anyway), in the hopes that they can convince him to enforce the ban again and remove some of their competition.

TikTok is not bootlicking. They’re manipulating him.

Maybe people can give up social media. I won't hold my breath though. People are fuckin addicted.

RedNote is touted as an alternative.

Will they actually move? I sincerely doubt it. Getting people to change their social media is impossible if they stake any amount of their identity on its use and, sadly, most users do. Frankly, I’d have a hard time leaving lemmy for that reason. Love this little garbage heap among the endless poison wastes of the modern internet.

Aren't we on one?

Except they won’t.

Don't you think it would've happened to Twitter already? And it’s certainly not happening to something "essential" like Facebook, where it’s (for instance) the only place your grandparents are on, or the only place that most people list local used stuff on.

I don't know about TikTok I guess, but it seems integral to the lives of younger people.

All that should be preserved and should be easily accessible by the public. Links for past governance should never be removed.

bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov

Does this not work? I'm not sure to what extent it is archived.

What’s more, now we know it would have been "banned" only because it wasn’t pro Trump.

Twitter is not as addicting as TikTok is. Using Twitter doesn't form psychological dependence to nearly the scale that TikTok does. This is like comparing a ban against soda versus a ban against cigarettes. If soda is banned then a large number of previous soda-drinkers will just quit drinking soda. If cigarettes are banned, it's not as likely that cigarette-smokers will suddenly decide to quit as a result. Granted, nicotine is known to be one of the most chemically addicting substances to mankind, but I think the comparison is still appropriate.

They did

The real question is why did the same search show blocked results in the US, but unblocked results when on a VPN outside the US?

I installed TikTok specifically to look at this. I got "no results" in the US, but DID get search results when on a VPN to the UK.

The really interesting bit is that now, that it's all gone public, I get "no results" both ways. Cleared cache and data between searches even.

Imagine posting some proof, getting downvoted, then coming back to post the same ‘proof’ again without any additional information or explanation.

The point is, Trump made remarks recently directly pertaining, and to some, admitting, to rigging the election. This is news.

A “Fuck Trump” B “Trump Racist” and C “Trump election lies” are either (A and B) search terms that are clearly made by users who already have their mind made up, or (C) just really old and ongoing news that is not going to generate a surge of traffic.

It’s a clever strategy, and it empirically works because you bought it. If TikTok was caught blocking all anti Trump content? That would be over. Everyone leaves. It’s too obvious. But if TikTok only blocks some anti Trump content, when it’s relevant, then “oops we fixed it” a week later when the media cycle has moved on? That can have a real effect on traffic to that content. Those creators don’t get views—don’t get paid. Abusing plausible deniability to create material consequences.

What once set TikTok apart, literally a week ago, was that this didn’t happen. Not subjected to the political pressure from Israel and Zionist media, TikTok allowed a relatively uncensored expression of the violence and material conditions in Gaza and fostered the significant growth of the online pro-Palestinian movement.

Something as cool as this will certainly never happen on TikTok again.

It's specifically the rigged election conspiracy. I have TikTok and have seen several anti Trump videos just today.