TikTok

Penis Cops

TikTok is at the intersection of bad ideas and bad negotiations. Trans folks are still being targeted with aggressive laws across the US and beyond. Tech CEOs testified once again to congress, this time about the kidlins.

Endeavorance

01 Feb 2024 — 4 min read

TikTok, Your Destination for Long Videos

While Instagram and YouTube work tirelessly to try and steal the lightning that TikTok captured in a bottle, TikTok is now striking back in the dumbest possible way.

TikTok is now planning to actively push horizontal, longer-form videos in their algorithm. Their bet is that longform video content on TikTok would be enough to get you to turn your phone sideways sometimes, despite literally (read: figuratively) everyone agreeing that "turning your phone" is way too much effort for the average FYP sesh.

Now, if this was implemented in a separate tab and perhaps a separate FYP feed, that'd be neat. But for some reason, platforms seem incredibly oblivious to the idea of letting people pick the form factor of the content they want to watch. I said the same thing when TikTok came out with text posts. Imagine if they had made a "TikTok Text" FYP that just lets you play your music and read posts from who you follow. They came out with it right as Twitter began its meltdown, and they proceeded to fumble it as hard as possible.

TikTok, Your Destination for Muted Videos

After failing to come to an agreement, TikTok and Universal Media Group will be parting ways, as UMG pulls the streaming rights for its music on TikTok.

What does that mean? Well, any TikTok video that has music from UMG (which, scientifically speaking, is a shitload of them) will just be muted. Sound? What sound? Audio? Never heard of it.

This applies retroactively, to be clear. If you uploaded a video to TikTok and used music what UMG has the rights to, no you didn't, lol. I mean, your video will still be there. But like, just the video part.

This is already underway, as people are seeing their videos get muted. To be clear though, part of this comes from failing to reach an agreement for royalties to artists, which TikTok was not willing to increase. While yes, fuck UMG, TikTok should also pay artists who create the music that drives their platform.

Trans Rights, As Always, Are Human Rights

Content Warning: Ongoing trans erasure/genocide

Florida, Ohio, and Utah are all in the news right now for their continued campaign against their own citizens, passing laws that restrict their citizens rights to expression and, well, just existing.

Florida's deputy executive director of their highways and motor vehicles department has stated in a memo that Florida citizens no longer have the right to determine how they are represented on their government-required driver's licenses. The director—a single, unelected official—feels he has the power to make it literally illegal to carry a piece of plastic that has the letter "M" on it if you don't have a penis. I'm not particularly certain why he is spending so much time thinking about my driver's license and how it relates to my penis, but go off, I guess.

Meanwhile in Ohio, where just last year we saw horrific train derailments and a botched clean-up effort, lawmakers are spending time overriding their Governor's veto to pass a bill which restricts the healthcare options for minors who may be suffering from well-documented conditions. The bill goes further to restrict what extracurriculars children are allowed to participate in depending on their genitals.

And further meanwhile in Utah, Republican governor Cox (lol) has signed a bill into law which restricts your freedom of movement, disallowing you entry to bathrooms in certain spaces depending on what some government-run paperwork says about you.

These laws set a precedent: the feds can write up some paperwork and use that to restrict your ability to drive, seek healthcare, use the bathroom, or even just play games with your friends.

Of course, all of these laws are specifically targeting Trans people. Trans people who, to be clear, are lawful citizens of these states, who comprise a miniscule percentage of the population, who want to simply be allowed to live their life, who are doing absolutely nothing to harm you, and who day after day are having lawmakers spend millions in taxpayer dollars to draft, support and enforce laws that police their junk.

We don't need cops, and we certainly don't need penis cops.

Social media CEOs were once again testifying to congress, this time about child exploitation on social media.

ZUCC, as well as CEOs from TikTok, Discord, Twitter and Snap were grilled on child exploitation on their platforms, while an ocean of parents of victimized children sat in the audience.

At one point, ZUCC actually turned to the parents and gave his condolences, which is just honestly BIZARRE. Here's this dude, this guy who has more wealth and power than you can possibly imagine. He made that money from an internet platform that caused your family immeasurable grief, be it the loss of a child from bullying, or sexual abuse, drug abuse, whatever it may have been. And he's like, "sorry about that," before heading back to his private jet to fly home to his private cattle farm.

Anyway, nothing much came of the hearing aside from the usual "we promise we care" from the companies and the usual "now we gotta make laws that invade everyone's privacy" from lawmakers.