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Comment by jacooper | Hacker News Reader

Do we have a confirmation of this? It was said on a random podcast and then everyone took it as truth.

They are both ultimately controlled by the CCP, however, the Chinese version is very restrictive. Having colored hair or tattoos will get you auto-banned. All the same evangelical-type restrictions apply of course.

The only thing keeping the western version from turning into a complete sewer are the advertisers. The TikTok Algo prevents people who are fat, wrinkly, too old, or unsemmterical (unattractive) from bubbling up. This is know from leaked internal documents supposedly.

> Having colored hair or tattoos will get you auto-banned.

I just opened the Douyin app and seven of the first ten human videos have people with colored hair. Tattoos tend to be subtle and obviously won’t be seen in most videos, but you see them all the time if you pay attention. Dying hair is so normal in China especially for women (usually to shades of brown, but some will use more lively colors), you can hardly film a crowd without capturing a ton of colored hair. There’s of course also a whole world of cosplay for every popular game and anime on Douyin. I don’t know where people are getting these ridiculous clips of misinformation and confidently spreading them around without thinking twice.

Edit: As an example, I just looked at the Genshin Impact cosplay tag. Tons of videos with hundreds of thousands to more than a million likes. Every single one of them has colored hair — purple, red, pink, green, blue, white, you name it. Conspicuous tattoos in maybe 10% of them. Go figure.

Here's the Chinese version, go check it out: https://www.douyin.com/

i've literally used the chinese version briefly and have friends from there. it's facts. all good positive influences there, no dancing thots and dph challenges.

OK but that's what you friends say.

I want an actual source, an actual study.

no. lemme flip the burden of proof: the CCP is a known hostile actor against our nation. i want proof that they're not doing something shady before we let them play with the minds of kids.

> I want an actual source, an actual study.

This could be applied to the US too from the perspective of all the countries it destroyed.

So no I dont buy the CCP is bad and the US is good.

i obviously don't agree with you on us "destroying" but they already do that. they literally block most of our stuff. so turnabout is fair play.

why are you advocating chicoms get special privileges to be let in without proving they're good relative to us having to do the same in china?

Because they have laws. They have laws to do time limits on social media, and co trol what content is recommended.

> all good positive influences there, no dancing thots and dph challenges.

This is 100% bullshit. I’ve used Douyin and it’s just the same as TikTok, and even if I haven’t, anyone with surface familiarity with human nature would know there won’t be a social media network without dancing and “bad influences”. Now, Douyin literally means trembling/dancing musical notes, guess where it got started?

Douyin does have a “youth mode” where supposed bad influences are more limited. It’s opt-in however, and through talking to actual Chinese teenagers I gathered that nobody uses it, because guess what, teenagers like the “fun” content. Enabling this youth mode is actually a prank they pull on friends.

Also, search for posts from Chinese parents trying to block Douyin on their router, you’ll find a ton. Guess why?

Normally I would chalk things up to differing perspectives, but your claim here about “all good positive influences” is so absurd I have to conclude you’re straight up lying.

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