I loved TikTok but we all have to leave.

I loved TikTok, but unfortunately, TikTok has very likely fallen into the clutches of the fascist regime being spearheaded by trump and musk. It's unlikely that it's not poisoned at this point and poised to be the next Facebook/X/twitter in their collection, slowly and stealthily spreading and sewing seeds of that enable fascist and bigoted ideology and misinformation, tuning the algorithm to radicalize peoples intellectual vulnerabilities while we happily consume the quality content and good communities.

Since Trump suddenly undid the ban (which he originally was strongly in favor of) and attempted to position himself as some savior of TikTok by bringing it back online, videos discussing progressive rights have been getting removed or flagged. Commentary on musk and video evidence of his Nazi salute is being removed. And years-old content is suddenly getting new strikes against it.

There's no certainty yet.

It's possible that Shou has a winning plan in his pocket, that he could have planned for this and that Trump's vie for control over the platform played to his hand, that there's going to be some surprise "gotcha muthafucka" situation but that feels to me like the longshot.

It's not worth the risk to hope that the pool that might be poisoned is fine to dive back into. Unfortunately I think we need to find a long-term alternative and for many that's not RedNote due to expansive content restrictions - but we knew it was meant primarily as a form of protest and not a long term home.

The future isn't worth the grwms and muscle mommies and memes, no matter how good the algorithm was.