I plea ignorance….
Until the liked piece below from the NY Times?
I had NO idea this even existed….
Some Trump people do…
And they go to the site to pat themselves on the back for liking Donald J. Trump…
Now WE know….
The biggest American social networks predate the presidency of Donald J. Trump, some by more than a decade. All were changed by Mr. Trump’s arrival to power, joining many other American institutions in a conspicuous struggle to account for or accommodate political and social upheaval.
Each social network has expressed its intention to be a place where people can gather, communicate and act. Their shared surprise at what it actually meant to find themselves at the center of American politics was, if we’re being generous, a failure of imagination.
In 2018, just two years into the declared era of “America First,” Musical.ly, a lip-syncing app popular with young teenagers that had recently been purchased by the Chinese technology conglomerate ByteDance, was merged into TikTok, known in its home market as Douyin. The resulting app, a short-video-sharing platform combining elements of Instagram, Snapchat and Vine (R.I.P.), glued together with heavy-handed recommendation algorithms, became an enormous hit. Its success — it claims far more daily active users than Twitter, for example — also came as a surprise to the tech industry, even after ByteDance spent lavishly to advertise its app on American platforms, and as videos created on TikTok spread across competitor networks like Instagram.
In its American form, at least, it’s the first post-Trump social network. So what do its users think of the president?…
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It wouldn’t be quite right or even possible to suggest that Donald Trump is “taking over” TikTok, or that there’s even an unusual amount of pro-Trump content on the app. (Besides, the only politician regularly seen on TikTok is Arnold Schwarzenegger.) And nearly everything you encounter on the app feels like it’s “taking over,” because you’re rarely sure why you’re seeing it at all….
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This is Trumpism stripped of conflict, as shared among members of the same group that perceives itself to be on the outs, even as it happens to support, and have the support of, the president. It’s a celebration, refracted through a Chinese video app for teens, of a potent force in American politics, and global politics, in the 21st century. It’s the ability to say “I dare you” while asking “how dare you?,” all by expressing support for the most powerful people in the world….
Note….
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday [Feb. 2019] levied a $5.7 million fine against media app TikTok over allegations that it illegally collected personal information about children under 13.
The multimillion-dollar settlement is the largest civil penalty the FTC has obtained in a children’s privacy case, commissioners said. It comes as part of a settlement agreement between the agency and TikTok.
The FTC alleged that TikTok violated the federal child privacy law by collecting the “names, email addresses, and other personal information from users under the age of 13” without their parents’ permission. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires websites and apps to obtain parental consent when collecting and sharing data on young users.
“The operators of Musical.ly—now known as TikTok—knew many children were using the app but they still failed to seek parental consent before collecting names, email addresses, and other personal information from users under the age of 13,” Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement. “This record penalty should be a reminder to all online services and websites that target children: We take enforcement of COPPA very seriously, and we will not tolerate companies that flagrantly ignore the law.”…
image…Getty