So, these users likely already were not using meta (reels etc), or YouTube for the purposes of Tik Tok style short form content as users but as content creators who were doing so this hurt them more than it hurts the platforms they’re boycotting. Leaving Tik Tok hurts Tik Tok more than it helps them, yes, even as a form of protest. Apple and Google are still gathering information about you through your phones, and meta will literally follow you around the internet using cookies and trackers wherher you use their apps or not.

What I would like to see personally is these users, and internet users in general, take their personal internet data privacy and security seriously (regardless of whether it’s against apps like tik tok that are foreign, or meta/Google etc all which are domestic).

I have lots of ideas but most of them involve forcing the issue on internet privacy laws by lobbying the government and voting out elected officials who don’t want to do things like repeal the Patriot Act and subsequent legislation that allows the government to spy on people. Leveraging this ban against the federal government to sue for the right to data privacy would be a good idea as well. The argument probably should be that this bill foments the idea that this scale of internet/app data collection is harmful, and if it’s harmful in the hands of a foreign adversary it’s just as harmful in the hands of the federal government who have countless times leaked the sensitive information of citizens. Voting in younger politicians is also a form of protest. Lobbying not just for data privacy but for a non-government entity to audit any decisions made by the AG and such investigations would be a start as well.

I actually agree that Loops is not ready for this number of users to descend on it, and if they tried the platform would very likely go belly up. That’s why I said like Loops. I would love for it to be fedi related but there’s more than a handful of other apps from places like Japan and the EU that would work. It doesn’t have to be the fediverse, much though I wish what you say about us being ready for prime time wasn’t true. I don’t disagree with you there.

It’s not about tik toks reach. I know from long experience that reach is the only problem. Tik Tok’s reach with its userbase probably will not translate to the apps they’re targeting for protest specifically because of how those apps moderate (and censor) specific content. Some Tik Tok users have already been banned from rednote for the content they post and comments they make.

I’m not downplaying the users, their number, or that they are trying to protest by taking these steps. I’m pointing out that the apparatus to thwart what they’re doing is basically already in place, and if this isn’t the long term plan they may as well abandon it now because the government is not going to change their mind about this ban just because it seems like “work”. The idea that the government will get tired of using resources to ban these apps before the people do is just not reasonable, unless they’re planning to do this til the end of time. And people lose interest in these kinds of movements pretty fast. We only have to look to the whole reddit fiasco to know that the user base of 150 MIL is not going to stick this out for a long period of time so long as they can find something reasonable to switch to. There’s a lot of users who post the same content to meta, Google, and insta already, on top of posting that content to Tik Tok. Those creators will likely be cutting off revenue streams and harming themselves to push this protest and if that is their only source of income it’s fairly unlikely for them to do that long term. To be frank, that math doesn’t add up.

Users with an addiction (which describes a large number of social media users full stop), will try to get their fix elsewhere eventually.

The American apps and the government will be happy to wait them out. I think people should use their system against them.

Hell, if creators got together and put in a bid to buy Tik Tok, that would be a better protest because at least then they’d be collectively attempting to save it.