I was curious too (tho I don’t really partake in the community) and this explains the situation:

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20976989

Prob a highlight of how Lemmy needs to solve community migration cross-instsnce properly as well as how community moderation vs. instance moderation will always be a problem in reddit-like fediverse implementations.

Microsoft doesn’t ACTUALLY care about teams so it’s a nonstop bad UX, then they try to fix it, then they go a different direction, and so on. To Microsoft, its an add on that they mostly use to keep people away from Slack. When they spend time on it, all they are doing is enough to keep people away from Slack.

Its been like, what, 2 years there they’ve shipped a “new” client seperate from the existing client (at least on macOS)? People are constantly using the wrong one or switching when one breaks, and Microsoft constantly breaks the new one.

On windows the existence of the built-in “Teams” App is constantly confusing when people are trying to sign into a work account, which requires a different client. This is because the “Teams” App in Windows is just a rebadged Skype.

Before 2022 when I used it for some meetings (we used slack in our unit since we had some of our own budget, but the wider corp was on teams) it was a daily toss up as to whether video calls would work on macos or linux.

Most of my frustrations come from having to develop some integrations with teams:

1. Right now there’s a massive bug for the templating language to render cards in the UI and Microsoft’s answer has largely been a big shoulder shrug.

2. There are several really easy ways an admin can break a custom integration via azure. Obviously an app-based integration is better, but it’s also really common in b2b to have more ad-hoc setups to send some data to teams. Even better, lots of small/medium companies have been convinced that they don’t need IT people to help them with their Azure configuration, so no one ever knows how to solve any problems they create (this also applies to email fwiw… Unbelievable how many small/medium O365 customers have very broken email servers)

3. Microsoft’s implementation of federation between O365 users is a mess of tiered settings, and figuring our if rhe issue is on the business side or your side is a sysiphean task. If you are in an org which doesn’t have a domain hooked up to your setup (as in you use username@company.onmicrosoft.com) there is a very specific sign in page you have to use or it’ll blow up on you. And it’s not the generic sign in page you get when going to teams or O364’s web site.

Tl:dr; Teams is a hacked together mess of bubble gum and toothpicks masquerading as a chat app. Its a miracle ir works as well as it does for “normal” usage, but it’s a joke compared to Slack in every other way and quickly becomes a nightmare if you are working on integrations with it.

They may not be happening in Chicago, but they are very much happening in Phoenix. I’m not informed enough specifically to say whether Chicago or any of the other listed cities were just a feint or if they have been delayed for other reasons. Its also likely that many state and city officials are doing their best to put roadblocks in the way right now.

As someone who lived in Phoenix during Arizona’s SB1070 raids, don’t expect news coverage to keep up. Even outlets trying their hardest to stay on top of it are under-resourced, and it can take time for civilian footage from the scene to get vetted. It’ll likely get better the more awareness is spread and once the strategy Trump’s administration is more well understood.

Not the biggest fan either but sometimes it’s the only way to organize a response in text with multiple layers of context. Far to easy in async discussion to branch off and it can be difficult to circle back or ask for clarification while addressing other items and it provides a way to organize.

I’m not here to have an in depth academic, cited, philosophical discussion. Not right now. I understand that you are pushing more in that direction and there’s nothing wrong with it. As such, I’m not formulating arguments or discussing with that in mind. We don’t need to have a discussion of dismissal of evidence because I’m sure we’re on the same page. But I don’t owe you a perfectly crafted argument in a Lemmy thread. This is informal, and as such there are times where one has to leave space for less rigid constructs for presenting evidence.

I’ve found this frustrating. But I don’t think you are outright trying to troll which is why I’ve engaged. I hope you understand that I’m not going to engage at the level you might wish I would. (Its exhausting to do so in a context like this even though I’m an academic and philosophical discussion-minded person at heart)

I’m more concerned about the methodology of the ban and its downstream effects of it than whether (in your case, extremely valid criticism) amounts to it deserving a ban. I’m not going to find some articles for you or counter that because it’s not something I want to spend my time doing since the reality is extremely nuanced and we could present evidence from both perspectives for days.

In an effort to combat this, would it be fair to say your position is that while TikTok is bad, it’s okay to still use it because it’s extremely popular, and thus the ability to do things like engage or organize with other people in your subcultures is consequently quite high? “The good outweighs the ill” as it were? Which is a reasonable position to take, to be clear, even if your actual feelings are more nuanced.

More or less. I think there are plenty of things to criticize the platform for and/or strive to adopt a less-bad platform for. Users of the platform should be allowed to stay or not stay, and not be abruptly cut off for a political stunt by an authoritarian act of government, and as such, my position is that celebrating this particular ban is antithetical to the overall goals that one would expect from people using the fediverse.

So why is tiktok, an equally bad app (but one you like), suddenly okay?

It shouldn’t be banned for the reasons the law is stating. I’m all for people moving to better places. Centralized moderation will always be influenced by the ownership and succiptible to problematic choices (intentional or unintentional) that will effect people. some content will be less moderated on different platforms and that will change over time, which is just the reality of the current social media landscape.

Look I’m sorry this apparent egalitarian wonder app is on the chopping block, but do you seriously want to be a TikTok Apologist?

I’d be happy to see a better option that works for people currently using Tiktok that doesnt have the baggage of the corporation. Maybe Loops can be that one day. Maybe something else will show up. But I’m not wishing an entire platform to just evaporate even if I have major issues with it, and pointing out things that it is good for compared to alternatives is not the same as being an apologist. Pointing out that a ton of people incomes (in a country in a time where small businesses and self employed income is at every increasing risk) is not defending EVERYTHING tiktok has done, currently does, or will do. Nor is any of that claiming it’s an egalitarian wonder app.

Could you imagine your reaction to someone this zealously defending, say, Facebook? You’d think they were nuts, facebook has been exhaustively shown to be so evil their CEO is widely rumored not to be human.

I’m all for people abandoning Facebook. While I’d be less caring if it got banned in a similar way, i would not celebrate it. There are still tons of normal people using it for normal reasons and they shouldnt be suddenly cut off like this. They should absolutely move away from it or their own voilition, not due to authoritarian intervention.

Facebook has actively promoted a genocide entirely of its own creation, which is quite a different issue from content suppression. You are mischaracterizing my arguments by making it out to be equivilant to a completely different situation.

You’re changing the requirements for evidence to render previous valid evidence invalid.

I never said your evidence was invalid, I just said it needed context.

I offered my opinion (which is absolutely personal experience bias!). I suggested you consider that the article in question it may not be universally applicable to the current state of the App due to its age. I did not say you had an invalid opinion or reason to dislike it. I did not say that there was not a problem. I did not say that there still aren’t problems.

Being in a minority on social media sometimes means choosing the places that are the least awful. Tiktok can be both good and bad for groups. That doesn’t mean it deserves to be banned.

Look, I’m just advocating for people who are being harmed by the actions of an authoritarian government against an app and suggesting that celebrating the actions of said authoritarian government is problematic, even if there are other reasons to dislike the app.

You’re the one who seems pretty upset about things but sure. Feel free to stoop to name calling and bad faith accusations if you’d like.

Time is, in fact, a thing that exists. Pointing out the age of an article is not shifting the goal post. Bad actions can be learned from and it is possible for things to become less shitty. You are welcome to couch your opinions in out of date information.

Tiktok is absolutely not perfect. It absolutely has issues of over-censorship at times. It absolutely should be critiqued. Even so, it provides a valuable place for people who are disenfranchised on other social media, even if it’s simply that they are disenfranchised less on Tiktok.

This was absolutely happening in 2020. That was a long time ago and the App is practically unrecognizable from its 2020 state.

Disabled, black, queer, ugly (which is subjective but whatever) seemed quite unsuppressed on tiktok to my perception and the perceptions of many in those spaces… I’m sure there are exceptions due to the large sample size.

I fit several of those categories and have been immersed in those spaces on tiktok for a long time and the opinion has always trended to it being far superior for discussing and being in those groups than Instagram or YouTube. Especially for disabled and queer groups, tiktok was always the bigger audience.

defending it on the grounds that people will have to advertise somewhere else really isn’t.

Shop is a lot more than advertising. Much closer to pre-enshittified etsy, and there’s a reason a lot of small businesses formed around it instead of instagram. Tiktok would actually allow those products to be shown to people rather than supressed in favor of corporations.

Wild to me how much people here are celebrating the App ban.

I get that this is the fediverse and the goal is decentralized social media, but this ban also means thousands of small businesses will lose a primary or secondary source of income that they can’t just replacewuickly, tons of people will lose access to methods of communication that would otherwise be censored on US platforms, and it eliminates a platform that has excelled at breaking down governments placed barriers of communication between different groups (which is something the fediverse does well, too)

Celebrating this is rather selfish and anti-free speech.

(Edit 2: read the bill, it also bans American companies from offering hosting services to a company that is banned through the law https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text)

Arguably, if the app isn’t easy to obtain then the cost of all the US-based servers would become an enormous expense. All US customer data is on its own US-based infra hosted by Oracle. Migrating all the US data elsewhere would also be an enormous expense. Server infa for 170 million Americans on an App is not gonna be cheap to keep running, esp since even if tiktok tried, the best they could do is get apk’s to android users. iOS users are SOL.

Given how iOS dominates the US still and only a small portion of android users are comfortable manually installing apps from non-store locations, why would they go through the effort to stay around for a fraction of the previous user base.

Its a perfectly uneerstsndable business decision, and its one they may be making on the hopes thay the ban will get reversed shortly after its put in place. Its also perfectly understandable to not want to sell the US-based component of the App when they still operate in plenty of other countries, including China, and the sale would devalue what they retained.

(Edit: and while their web offering has improved over the years, they probably are assuming a similar drop of userbase since only so many would be willing to move their usage to a web app that is not super easy to use for capturing video or handling notifications)

It still has a real impact on the people being harmed. I dont know if bullies getting social consequences for their actions outweighs the pain they have already inflicted.

That said, hopefully better information dissemination will help anyone being targeted to find better places where bullies are defederated/moderated for being shitty humans rather than based on shareholder value and kissing the ring of a dictator.

Its less censorship AND an allowance of actual hate speech.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/metas-new-content-policy-will-harm-vulnerable-users-if-it-really-valued-free

“Vast” would be a different company from the one marketing the Vera station, no?

For a company with plans so ambitious, they only have a marketing site, a YouTube channel, and some news articles from 2+ years ago, much less a partnership with SpaceX.

I know they market mars hard, but the more relevant thing this is enabling is the starships that will be used for the NASA Artemis missions and upcoming moon base efforts. Those missions are going to need a few heavy flights each for the lander and a re-fueling ship, in addition to the SLS + Orion capsule for the actual astronauts.

Still wish the money was being invested in NASA to do themselves, and that it was being done without all the waste and environment destruction SpaceX so enjoys, but this is still a big deal to ensure Artemis happens.

The central point of that article is certinally valid. Something that was worked on for a while with broad congressional support and public support getting vetoed isnt ideal for a democratic process. No resolution on issues is not a good thing since another 3-6-12 months of no regulation for a theoretically netter bill to work through the system will allow for continued abuse by AI behemoths. Newsom is a corpo dem, so idk what people expected, anyway.

I don’t buy into the AGI FUD. These are word calculators. But these tools are being hooked up to all sorts of things they shouldn’t be hooked up to and the lack of broad privacy regulation in the US puts LLM usage that handles sensitive data and/or decisions firmly into dangerous territory. Business decisions made by irresponsible management with no regard for data privacy or human safety are already a massive problem that actively cause harm, and hooking current AI tools onto these processes only seems to make the problems worse, especially while AI usage is in this gray space where no one wants to take responsibility for the outcomes.