Albania Will Close TikTok for One Year, Saying It Encourages Violence Among Children

The Associated Press reports that in Albania (population: 2,402,113), "children comprise the largest group of TikTok users in the country, according to domestic researchers."

But "Albania's prime minister said Saturday the government will shut down the video service TikTok for one year, blaming it for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children" after "the stabbing death of a teenager in mid-November by another teen after a quarrel that started on TikTok." There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children taking knives and other objects to school to use in quarrels or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok. TikTok's operations in China, where its parent company is based, are different, "promoting how to better study, how to preserve nature ... and so on," according to Rama. Albania is too small a country to impose on TikTok a change of its algorithm so that it does not promote "the reproduction of the unending hell of the language of hatred, violence, bullying and so on," Rama's office wrote in an email response to The Associated Press' request for comment. Rama's office said that in China TikTok "prevents children from being sucked into this abyss."
TikTok told the Associated Press it "found no evidence that the perpetrator or victim had TikTok accounts, and multiple reports have in fact confirmed videos leading up to this incident were being posted on another platform, not TikTok...."

I'm starting to get a bad feeling about China's re

[Dustin Destree]

Such as destabilizing the world. Cutting off anyone adversarial, and now it seems poisoning the world's children (just not it's own) with hatred and violence, possibly so when they make their moves, it'll be easier to "cull the herd" as it were. Ok tinfoil hat off, but seriously, is it that far out there? Everybody wants to rule the world they say, and it's looking like China has a real long game already producing results I'm sure are even better than they ever expected.

Re:

[Malenfrant]

They're just following America's lead. Facebook, YouTube, et al were there first. The Chinese are just proving better at it. Furthermore, it's not even the Chinese producing the content. It's Westerners, mostly Americans, doing it to themselves and each other. China just provides the means. Remember, guns and Social Media don't kill you, people kill you.

Re: I'm starting to get a bad feeling about China'

[twinirondrives]

Youtube was attacked by china for stifling innovation along with twitter. So we get X and Tic Tok, two efforts china openly supported. So as far as people killing people the strategy has been to deny the opportunity by regulating the guns. Foreign made guns seem designed to circumvent those regulations...

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Ah well, thoughts & prayers, thoughts & prayers.

I hope they realise the kids'll just move their violent, racist, sexist fighting talk onto Instagram, Youtube comments, Facebook, or... heaven forbid, ...Xitter! (The "X" is pronounced "sh").

Re: Good Move

[Slashythenkilly]

Im not a fan of the chinese government but calling an entire people "chinks" is racist and assinine. If youd ever met and talked with someone of chinese origin, they are the most hard working, dedicated, salt of the earth people youll ever know.

Re: Good Move

[Slashythenkilly]

oh so you know "the majority" of chinese people, fantastic help there. Im sure americans dont come off that way at all.

Re: Good Move

[Slashythenkilly]

A statement like that says a whole lot more about you than it does them.

All social media is toxic

[nikkipolya]

The world is binging on toxic content, thanks to Meta Inc. and other social media platforms that are following in Meta's footsteps.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

The best descriptive analogy I've heard of social media yet is, "Imagine that we're all cats. Now, someone's given us all laser pointers to wind each other up."

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

A quick Google/AI-search reveals:

- about 80% of the Albanian population has access to the internet
- broadband coverage is on average about 63 Mbit/s, in the midrange globally but below their European peers
- nearly 100% of the country has 4G coverage
- but digital literacy (whatever that means) is low compared to the rest of Europe

So yes, they have internet there.

Re:

[ClickOnThis]

Here's a link with more details. Note the broadband speeds are somewhat lower than what Google AI reported.

https://datareportal.com/repor... [datareportal.com]

Re:

[bn-7bc]

That report you linked mentioned ookla, and while I won't accuse them of falsifying numers they might not ollways get the most accurate numbers. Personally I (this is in norway) used a Swedish speedtest site (run by the swedish telecoms regulator) for a fre years because ooklas servers consistently gave me results significantly lower than my connection was rated at while the Swedish site was overing about +/12 3% of what I expected to get, I suspect other peering issues in oslo, or the fact that ookla seam

What's wrong with violence among children?

[TheMiddleRoad]

Harry Potter, Ender's Game, The Hunger Games, and population control. Lovely!

TikTok is a security risk, right?

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... the reproduction of the unending hell of ...
... had TikTok accounts ...

Nobody is allowed to blame Facebook and other American corporations that did this first and still do it better.

Why does this finger-pointing feel dishonest?

Re:

[PsychoSlashDot]

... the reproduction of the unending hell of ... ... had TikTok accounts ...

Nobody is allowed to blame Facebook and other American corporations that did this first and still do it better.

Why does this finger-pointing feel dishonest?

You're mixing two complaints about social media. The security issues with TikTok - from a Western perspective - is that it's owned within an adversarial nation. The information it harvests either is, or could be accessible to their government without any notice.

The main difference there is that the others are owned within the US, where government access would require some publicity - except in cases of law-enforcement requests. It's assumed that - for instance - the Biden administration weren't calling