Kentucky high school teens charged with "terroristic threats" after TikTok challenge

Franzia, 10 months ago

I wish I was having as much fun as these stupid kids

Skulgan, 10 months ago

TikTok challenge

I haven’t even read the article and I do not need to, anyone dumb enough to do a TikTok “challenge” gets their stupid reward.

atzanteol, 10 months ago

“Hey guys, it’s your boy chazz, here’s a fun challenge you can do with your friends. Rob a bank.”

FlyingSquid, 10 months ago

Yeah, that’s pretty fucking stupid of those kids. I don’t think the charge is actually fitting, but they need to face some sort of repercussion for that.

betterdeadthanreddit, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Makes me wonder how hard it’d be for the company that runs TikTok to identify and promote dangerous trends like this. Turn up the dial to cause a little chaos, interfere with schooling, do some economic damage and maybe even injure or kill some people if they’re lucky.

Kids are dumb^1^ enough on their own. While I’m not ruling out the idea that these things come about organically, there’s a lot of information we’re missing which could explain why their content moderation seems selectively ineffective in these areas.

1Not to say adults are automatically smart, we have plenty of examples to show where that assertion would fail. Teenagers are still mentally developing and (ideally) learning what it means to be responsible and have consequences for their actions.

perviouslyiner, 10 months ago

deleted_by_author

betterdeadthanreddit, 10 months ago

Going to toss out the “hybrid warfare” buzzword (buzzphrase?) here. This is something that could be done in a way that’s inexpensive economically and, because it’d be hard to prove conclusively, without much risk of political repercussions.

If it’s happening now (which is a very big “if”), the capability isn’t wasted unless they overplay their hand and the app gets banned either because the malice becomes apparent or the damage is significant enough that intent doesn’t matter. There’s also the possibility of opsec failure or defectors giving up the game.

Holding on to it until they’ve got soggy-booted PLA troops on the beaches of Taiwan would not be the best move in my opinion. I’m not exactly sitting in on either side’s strategy meetings and don’t expect an invite any time soon so take that with a generous grain of salt before moving on. At that point, it may be easier for voters and their representatives to get behind a ban (possibly as part of a sanctions package) which would limit the amount of damage they could do moving forward. Starting early works in their favor.

MossyFeathers, 10 months ago

Yeah, I mean, I don’t remember ever hearing about challenges like this before tiktok was a thing. There were dumb challenges that could have potentially been dangerous or harmful, but none of them seemed intentionally dangerous or harmful. Tiktok, on the other hand, seems like one challenge after another intended to cause harm and chaos. Combine that with claims that the Chinese version is the polar opposite in terms of trending content and it’s not hard to see why some people believe there’s a CCP conspiracy to make westerners look like degenerate idiots.

That said, while I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, I’m not convinced that it isn’t actually the result of the Chinese credit system. It could easily be explained that way because the system is going to encourage people to only document and share actions and events that align with the system’s ideals. The result is that Chinese tiktok will naturally look a lot less chaotic and troll-y.

However, it’s still pretty suspicious that they have no issues with being able to ban people livestreaming for profanity but have issues with stopping blantant bigotry and challenge trends designed to cause harm, property damage, and general chaos.

FlyingSquid, 10 months ago

I don’t think they were done as challenges, but I remember multiple fake bomb threats when I was in high school in the 90s. Probably kids wanting to get out of tests.

It didn’t help that there was an outdoor phone booth right at the front of the school, convenient for calling it in.

betterdeadthanreddit, 10 months ago

It’s definitely not something that TikTok invented as your example shows, just seems possible that the amplification could be deliberate. I see it like pushing somebody on a swing where you only need a little extra force at the right time in the cycle to get a desired result.

FartsWithAnAccent, 10 months ago

Even if it weren’t originally deliberate, once these things start they obviously don’t try very hard (or maybe at all) to stop it. Stuff like TikTok and Facebook are cancer.

snooggums, 10 months ago

You didn't hear about challenges before tik took because before that they were called dares and were things that people did in person on a small scale. The whole "tik tok challenge" billshit is just the name dares got because it was through a new medium and people love naming things in the least logical way possible.

Jaded, 10 months ago

I remember when hazing was a thing and there was a scandal because a teenager got sodomized with a broomstick.

Feathercrown, 10 months ago

BROOMSTICK HANDLE

HOCKEY STICK HANDLE

Angry_Maple, 10 months ago

I agree mostly, but the cinnamon challenge and the chubby bunny challenge were a thing years before tik tok was released. People have been posting themselves doing dumb things online to follow trends for a pretty long time.

I agree that it could totally be a possibility, though. I just don’t want to give tik tok undue credit.

greaterthanstupid, 10 months ago

Like it really takes a conspiracy to show Americans are degenerate idiots…

howsetheraven, 10 months ago

Nah that’s a legitimately crazy stupid conclusion. The kind that your grandma makes and thinks computers are taking over the world. America is rotten to it’s core. TikTok just holds up a mirror and shines a floodlight at it so you can consume more of that chaotic American juice.

I don’t need a Chinese surveillance application to show me how fucked society is. I live and see it weekly. It’d be daily if I left the house more.

FartsWithAnAccent, 10 months ago

To the CCP, it’d be a feature, not a bug.