[HN Gopher] TikTok's Poison Pill
___________________________________________________________________
TikTok's Poison Pill
Author : yarapavan
Score : 255 points
Date : 2022-08-03 04:52 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.calnewport.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.calnewport.com)
| jrm4 wrote:
| Broadly, it's fascinating that I think we've definitively moved
| out of the age of "social media theory" (what might this new form
| of media do) into "experimentation and iteration" (in which we
| are absolutely the guinea pigs, but at least for now we mostly
| know it?")
|
| TikTok is especially a wildly mixed bag for me. I fully
| acknowledge that its manipulation of attention is disgusting and
| the data it holds is wildly dangerous.
|
| And yet, more immediately, it is serving _very well_ the job of
| being Cory Doctorow 's Little Brother which in our current
| political times (at least in the US) is wildly beneficial. As a
| black man I _especially_ appreciate the light it shines on
| behaviors and practices I knew to be valid and yet was repeatedly
| told "that doesn't really happen." So, next, how to separate one
| from the other.
| mal-2 wrote:
| This is the real reason behind the FUD in my opinion. Despite
| all these articles presenting TikTok content as vapid and
| mindless time wasting, in my experience it's been the opposite.
| TikTok is full of authentic policial commentary, anti-racist
| education, historical analysis, and anti-capitalist content.
| It's doing a lot to give people a voice who otherwise haven't
| been well-represented on other platforms. It's a big reason why
| Reels has been a failure imo, there's just not any important
| conversations happening there. Gen Z is not being given enough
| credit, they're not just addicted scrollers, they're using a
| better platform to organize and share culture more effectively.
| emptyfile wrote:
| Yeah, sure.
|
| The entire world revolves around the American Race Problem.
| As it always does from inside your bubble.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Did you even read to notice that I carved out merely one
| example that happened to apply to me? Dismissive people
| like you literally _comprise_ the race problem that you
| appear to be so annoyed by.
| mal-2 wrote:
| I can only speak from my bubble, fair enough, but I almost
| never see this aspect explored in reporting on Tiktok. The
| articles always focus on the algorithm, never the actual
| content and community.
|
| Evidently _something_ is quite different from Reddit and
| Twitter since those platforms have about a quarter to a
| half of the MAU of TikTok despite being around much longer.
| "Algorithm" is a hand-wavey explanation. No amount of
| algorithmic content selection can keep me engaged when the
| content itself is of lower quality.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Fair criticism. It's not quality reporting by any means;
| I wouldn't say it gives too much intelligent nuance. But
| it _starts_ the conversation. It 's been a slow burn, but
| I very clearly recall a time when most white people I
| knew believed police misconduct to be rare, if not
| nonexistent.
| mal-2 wrote:
| Oh no worries I didn't even mean to criticize you, I was
| mostly responding to emptyfile's post. I agree with you
| sometimes there is nuance lacking but at the same time
| there's often _more_ context and nuance than what you
| hear from a politican 's soundbite. Hearing experiences
| directly from someone's mouth is a lot more impactful
| than reading it in a news report or political ad, even if
| the video is short.
| nixcraft wrote:
| There is lots of talk going around TikTok, especially now
| geopolitics has been added to this kind of discussion due to
| ongoing tensions between two giants. Instead of banning or
| removing the TikTok app, how about the US government put a firm
| privacy policy that forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook,
| Twitter and co from collecting excessive data on users? That
| would be a better solution, IMHO. Let users download and use
| whatever app they want but keep a firm privacy policy. But, of
| course, geopolitics will take over, so I have ZERO hope for a
| tight privacy policy for all apps.
|
| Similarly, there is no such thing as a backdoor in apps for good
| guys (3 letter agencies) vs bad guys. Just make one rule for all.
| Otherwise, it is all grey areas open to abuse. Also, it is not
| just geopolitics; big social media like YouTube, Insta, FB and
| others face colossal competition from TikTok. As a result, they
| are losing users to TikTok. So they want this kind of _ban_ (
| _emphasis mine_ ), at least they won 't object to it, and it is a
| slippery slope.
| nextos wrote:
| > [...] how about the US government put a firm privacy policy
| that forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co
| from collecting excessive data on users
|
| And also a policy that forbids UX addictive-by-design patterns
| to induce bad habits.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| How exactly would you word or enforce such a policy? What is
| a "bad habit"? Is fun or happiness addictive? Why might the
| puritan nanny state approach work better here than with
| alcohol, drugs, or abortion?
| Teever wrote:
| You hire the same kinds of people that these companies hire
| to design their products to be addictive and then you draft
| legislation banning the things that they say are addictive.
| nradov wrote:
| Nonsense. There is no way to write such a law that would
| comply with the vagueness doctrine. It's impossible.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vagueness_doctrine
| withinboredom wrote:
| A better solution would be to teach how to get out of
| addiction and treat it more effectively vs banning.
| Banning only makes the addiction features more taboo and
| thus even more addictive. See prohibition, 1920-1930.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"A better solution would be to teach how to get out of
| addiction"
|
| It's hard to say no to the idea of more education, but I
| believe this is a non impactful solution. We've been
| teaching about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, illicit
| drugs, unhealthy food, and much more for decades - if not
| generations. It only goes so far. I don't believe most
| addicts are addicted because of ignorance or a lack of
| rationality. I believe the primary driver is biological
| rather than a lack of knowing better.
| withinboredom wrote:
| How sure are you about that? There are countries that are
| successfully fighting addiction (such as Portugal) to
| drugs[1].
|
| The US has massively failed addicts for some time,
| wanting to just put them in jail instead of treating
| them.
|
| 1: https://deserthopetreatment.com/addiction-guide/drug-
| industr...
| Teever wrote:
| Do you really foresee a future where addictive aspects of
| social media are banned and the descendents of
| moonshiners are setting up servers next to rusted out
| stills in abandoned shacks in the Kentucky mountains so
| that people can get their doom scrolling fix over Tor?
|
| Now that I reread that, I think it's entirely possible.
| Man the future is weird.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Ah, you'd set up the revolving door system of regulation
| the likes of which is used to ensure banks, stock
| markets, and military procurement don't operate against
| the public good. Well that takes care of "addictive".
|
| Now how about "bad habits"? Have Republican politicians
| appoint their "experts" to draft it? Or perhaps your
| politics sway the other way and you'd prefer Democrats to
| appoint their experts, perhaps the Catholic Church, given
| the persuasion of their current leaders.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| what's the "addictive" part of tiktok to ban? Scrolling?
| Providing recommendations? Seems quite nebulous to
| legislate against.
| grumbel wrote:
| The core problem with most social media, including
| TikTok, is that they fully control how you can consume
| the content, be it the endless-recommendations-scrolling
| of TikTok or the Twitter or Facebook timeline. You can't
| browse it in a non-addicting fashion, even if you tried,
| as third party clients are not allowed.
|
| So the solution should be to force them to open up to
| third party clients. This won't magically make the
| problem go away completely, but not having so much
| content locked inside a Skinner box would certainly be
| helpful.
| nradov wrote:
| And how much should those third-party clients have to pay
| for access? Who sets the price?
| jollybean wrote:
| It'd be practically impossible to enforce the 'privacy'
| concerns, because the data is so vast and accessible to CCP
| entities employed by ByteDance. I mean, they literally pay CCP
| members to promote government policy agenda within the company.
|
| As for trade - FB, Google etc. - none of it is even allowed in
| China. So purely from a 'trade parity' basis, Chinese social
| apps simply should not be allowed in the US. If we can't have
| apps 'there' then our policy should be 'tit for tat' and do the
| same thing our side.
| angio wrote:
| Technically US companies are allowed in China as long as they
| follow the local regulations (which probably involves
| following Chinese National Security Letters etc). What OP
| proposes and the EU is doing is to allow anyone in the market
| as long as they follow strong privacy laws. Existing apps can
| defend themselves in court and only get banned after a
| sentence from a judge.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The specific regulation is having a Chinese Communist Party
| member on the board and having the owner be a Chinese
| citizen.
| 8note wrote:
| The second requirement in that definitionally excludes
| american owned companies, other than dual citizens
| vorpalhex wrote:
| China does not recognize dual-citizenship (at least not
| if one of those citizenships is Chinese).
| simion314 wrote:
| >It'd be practically impossible to enforce the 'privacy'
| concerns,
|
| But US would first need a law, now you just surrendered
| before you even tried. It could be possible to enforce it,
| you find an illegal action you slap them with a fine, find a
| new infraction slap them again and again.
|
| Do I need to spend my time thinking for americans? Make a law
| so Tik Tok keeps US people data in US, force them to have US
| employees and offer a bounty to this employees to report
| illegal stuff. The only downside is that most US citizens and
| companies will have no choice then to accept EU privacy laws
| as really good and valid (but I am sure the world can find
| soem other laws to make fun off, like something about bananas
| shape).
| jollybean wrote:
| "Do I need to spend my time thinking for americans? " Only
| if makes sense, and unfortunately, I don't think it does in
| this case.
|
| Which is the point: TikTok can't really be TikTok with
| those laws in place.
|
| There's no way to make any US or European privacy laws gel
| with CCP policy and there's no realistic way to 'segregate
| the data'.
|
| The only 'solution' would be to have a complete and total
| separation of the app in almost every way, essentially
| meaning TT as an operating entity would be an
| American/Western company, which happens to be 'owned' by a
| company in China, but that's it. Literally everything else,
| except for maybe some code-sharing, would be completely
| different.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Just make one rule for all.
|
| This is the correct solution of winning the moral high ground.
|
| What Russia has been doing for several decades (see Yuri
| Bezmenov [1]) is leveraging the "west's" inner discontent.
| Every time a Watergate or Snowden happens it's a gift to them.
| It exposes our 'hypocrisy', and failure to live up to our own
| democratic standards. That fuels the narrative of the western
| nations as corrupt.
|
| We're in a bind because the kind of medicine that would fight
| the even more sophisticated Chinese tactics now would also hurt
| our own corporations and agencies. But we must take it.
| Targeted advertising and domestic surveillance must go if our
| values are to survive in the world.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Bezmenov
| puppymaster wrote:
| while many struggles with the mental gymnastic, for me it has
| always been clear-cut. Government might be bad, and if they
| did bad, can we criticize it?
|
| Did any harm come to Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Adam Driver for
| portraying real life events depicting US government in lesser
| light?
|
| Can the same be said to Fan Bing Bing if she is to portray Li
| Wenliang in a movie? Or Viktor Bychkov playing Navalny in
| some sort of biopic produced by Russian production house?
| BrainVirus wrote:
| _> Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we
| criticize it?_
|
| Assange rots in prison, Alex Jones gets found guilty of
| defamation _by default judgment_ , FBI raids James O'Keefe
| and leaks his phone data to NYT (which he is suing), and to
| top it all we have a soviet-style shitshow trial directed
| by politicians in January 6th Committee.
|
| Now, I will see some awesome mental gymnastics of people
| explaining how none of these things have any effect on
| freedom of speech.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default
| judgment
|
| Given that Alex Jones has in the last 24 hours been found
| to be lying under oath repeatedly during his trial, since
| his lawyers accidentally gave a full digital copy of his
| phone to the prosecuting attorneys (which they were
| supposed to have done already during discovery, but did
| not), this may not be the most effective example.
| BrainVirus wrote:
| It's a perfect example of how people are brainwashed to
| accept degradation of _their_ basic speech and due
| process rights because powers that be found an example (a
| scapegoat, really) that 's not sympathetic to the public.
|
| I recall the debates around banning Jones from YouTube.
| It was "sold" as an unprecedented step to combat
| unprecedented violation of basic decency. And here were
| are a few years later, when simply mentioning some
| wrongthink words automatically demonetizes your videos,
| splatters them with warnings and even cuts live streams
| from air. People are banned from YouTube left and right
| (pun intended). It's the new normal and brave
| technologists who posed as defenders of "real" free
| speech are mostly rationalizing and cheering it on.
|
| BTW, would you care to explain how something that
| happened in the last 24 hours is relevant to the issuance
| of default judgment that occurred in November last year?
| altruios wrote:
| the default judgment happened after 6 months of 'fuck
| around and find out' from Alex 'turn the frogs gay'
| Jones...
|
| he putted around with blatant disregard for the trial and
| cries crocodile tears when he's found lying under oath
| during the damages hearing...
|
| Alex 'you may be my neighbor but i'll eat your ass' jones
| is not some Bastian of freedom - he's a snake oil
| salesman profiting off other's pain and misery. selling
| 'real' pills his family makes.
|
| He had due judgement - he had 6 months to do literally
| anything (He didn't raise a finger in this regard).
|
| You don't 'not go to trial' by ignoring it... that's not
| how this works... not how any of this works.
|
| BESIDES ALL THAT:
|
| I agree with you: platforms are censoring people...
| that's in reaction to malicious (not just false - but
| intentionally crafted and designed to cause harm)
| information propagating through our social networks -
| mind viruses just like bulimia and anorexia that are
| shared socially - only far more potent: things like
| QAnnon.
|
| information is spread not by how true it is - but by how
| sticky.
|
| if malicious actors infect a network - besides censorship
| - the alternative is violence - either by inaction
| allowing the malicious mind virus to flourish - or by
| taking action against it.
|
| We are in a brave new world - and we don't even know the
| tools we need to protect ourselves as a species from the
| existential threat of memetic viruses...
|
| Maybe we just all need to stop sneezing our thoughts out
| onto the internet letting them congeal into this
| amalgamations of ideas that seem to have a life of their
| own.
|
| the life status of biological viruses is suspect. I
| suspect viruses made of thoughts and memetic imagery can
| potentially reach agent-hood.
| Kye wrote:
| How would you know if someone less famous got disappeared?
| How would you evaluate the claim from people who say they
| saw it happen?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > How would you know if someone less famous got
| disappeared?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| Almost everyone living in the US has some sort of record.
| They went to school, had friends, teachers, family, etc.
|
| It's unlikely you wouldn't know someone has disappeared,
| especially if they were important enough that the
| government decided to illegally disappear them.
| cylon13 wrote:
| I want more freedoms than just the ability to complain
| about not having freedom though.
| kn0where wrote:
| America is more Brave New World than 1984; people can
| protest the government, but if that protest rarely
| overcomes the inertia of the status quo, does it even
| matter?
| ethanbond wrote:
| Yes of course it matters. Is it sufficient? Probably not.
| But it's a substantial improvement over _not_ being able
| to e.g. protest the government.
|
| Anyway, our government isn't designed to be steered by
| protest but by voting, which despite all its flaws does
| shift inertia.
| angryasian wrote:
| > isn't designed to be steered by protest but by voting
|
| Even voting within states are completely rigged with
| gerrymandering and popular vote means nothing in national
| elections.
| chowells wrote:
| If voting doesn't matter, why do Republicans work so hard
| to prevent voting?
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| It depends on where you live. Some states your individual
| vote will not matter because the outcome has already been
| decided by the popularity of one party.
| yadaeno wrote:
| This is a disingenuous pattern of argument. You point out
| a known problem and then throw the baby out with the bath
| water. In this case, its clear voting does have some
| effect because seats are constantly changing parties, and
| parties fiercely compete for votes.
|
| Other similar examples of this argument:
|
| "Everyone knows taxes go to corrupt corporations, they
| are completely useless get rid of them"
|
| "Everyone knows masks dont block 100% of airflow, theyre
| completely useless!"
| WaxProlix wrote:
| > seats are constantly changing parties, and parties
| fiercely compete for votes
|
| Possibly because those seats are worth money. I don't
| know that people competing for them means voting 'works'
| in any definitive fashion.
|
| Princeton recently released a study (this one[1], I
| think?) that basically says as much: voting does very
| little.
|
| 1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-
| on-poli...
| Fatnino wrote:
| What seats are changing party? I live in California where
| my vote counts the least. Since I turned 18 every single
| election has sent a Democrat to Washington for both
| senate seats and my representative and president (though
| California doesn't have final say on that last one).
|
| Currently, of those 4 seats, 3 are in their high 70s or
| even 80s and the 4th was appointed by the governor.
|
| I'm in my 30s. My interests are either entirely not, or
| very very poorly represented in Washington.
|
| Tell me again how my never missing an election has made a
| difference?
| yadaeno wrote:
| What seats are changing party: In November there are 50
| tight races for house seats alone. The house and senate
| play a huge role in legislation so this election will
| have massive impact.
|
| https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-
| forecast/...
|
| Even if you live in WA/CA your vote still matters. At the
| federal level there are 4 elected positions, 14 at the
| state level, and more at a local level. There are also
| primaries, so even if your Governor is guaranteed to be a
| Democrat you can at least pick which one.
|
| The people that do vote have an outsized impact because,
| like you, most Americans are too lazy to vote.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Tell that to Julien Assange (ducks).
| account42 wrote:
| You don't need a "narrative" to describe western nations as
| corrupt.
|
| All you need to do is look at wealth inequality over time:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Wealth_i.
| ..
| harvey9 wrote:
| You push a narrative by including 'western' there. Non
| western nations also have tremendous wealth inequality.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| You are also pushing a narrative. You can't ignore the
| basis of the hypocrisy of the west: the west purports to
| be better. You aren't just not doing better than the
| comment above, you're doing worse.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Show me please how wealth inequality implies corruption.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Well, okay corrupt, but still capable of self-repair.
| meanwhile others have the corruption build into the very
| system of thiefdoms handed out to nobles.
|
| Also there are quite alot of ideals at work, for example
| when it comes to free trade. Anybody can sell his product
| and ideas in the us, meanwhile alot of beligerents, have
| walled of their societies from free discours and sabotage
| any external market contenders.
| CodeSgt wrote:
| Why do you think wealth inequality is an inherent sign of
| corruption?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Because wealth can be turned into power.
|
| Because when power is unevenly distributed a few people
| can make boneheaded decisions that create misery for the
| many.
|
| To point to the Russian experience the Tsar made the bad
| decision to take an odyssey the long way around Asia (and
| Africa for some ships) to attack Japan and they got their
| asses handed to them in a few hours. That was the first
| time Lenin and company tried a revolution and ultimately
| they made this feature film about it
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_Potemkin
|
| A few months back we had the spectacle of Elon Musk
| possibly buying Twitter (maybe he was in the running for
| asshole-in-chief) but I think he got some sense scared
| into him and he is keeping his head down these days.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Btw, you still didn't answer the question.
| okasaki wrote:
| > It exposes our 'hypocrisy', and failure to live up to our
| own democratic standards. That fuels the narrative of the
| western nations as corrupt.
|
| I don't know why though. It should be clear by now that
| nobody in the west cares about hypocrisy, democracy,
| standards or corruption.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Remember kids, propaganda doesn't need to convince you of
| anything to be successful, only to get you to believe in
| nothing. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
| is for good men to do nothing," . The intention of 'what
| aboutism' is to get you to do nothing, especially to not
| speak up in support if you aren't sure. 'Don't Let the
| Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good'. Don't let doom posters
| like this one suck you into their world of apathy and hate.
| If someone says something that's goal appears to be
| negativity, hate, or apathy, they are toxic, do not rent
| them space in your head.
|
| After action reports, critical evaluation with a goal
| towards improvement, great. Apathy, the world sucks, give
| up? F that.
|
| In the 90s the USA had the developed world's worst infant
| mortality rates. But if you look at the way we gather our
| statistics, it is different from all other countries. Why?
| Because unlike others we didn't manipulate the metrics
| because it was more important to us to have actual data to
| help save/improve lives. So who sucks? Who is failing kids?
| The country who is willing to make itself look bad with the
| worst metrics so that it can change things, or those not
| honest enough to be willing to look bad or make self
| examination?
|
| Yeah, America sucks, but it's 10x better than it was when I
| was a kid in the 70-80s, or most places I have traveled. I
| would rather have public suck that can be addressed than
| the general apathy that this poster has.
| okasaki wrote:
| What a nice piece of creative writing. The internet truly
| is a wonderful place to let loose with one's imagination.
| a_techwriter_00 wrote:
| Do they still pay you guys 50 cents a post, or is it more
| these days?
| okasaki wrote:
| Oh well, at least I'm paid.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| A great many of us care, but are powerless in the face of
| the hypocrisy and corruption.
|
| Where is it that you live that you fought _and won_ the
| good fight so handily that you're able to criticize us from
| afar?
| adrianN wrote:
| I care.
| bigfudge wrote:
| I do too, but statistically we are "nobody".
| carschno wrote:
| Given the lack of data, you might as well assume that you
| are not so special, and hence part of a statistically
| significant group.
|
| I see the claim that nobody cares about democracy as
| another piece of right-wing propaganda.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| This! It is propaganda designed to give you apathy.
| Ironically it only works because you are aware enough to
| know you want a better world.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Seems insane to me to undercut our own companies because a
| hostile foreign state is operating in our nation.
|
| Kick out the hostile state. That's not hypocrisy.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Imagine in the current world that every other countries
| take the same approach and kick out that now hostile
| influence (basically banning Meta/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon).
| How would these companies look when limited to domestic
| market ? And is that really the world we want to live in ?
| hef19898 wrote:
| That is only a problem if value profits of a few companies,
| that don't even pay that much of taxes, over your citizens.
| Unless, of course, FB and Co. are doing for the letter
| agencies what TikTok is doing for the Chinese. In which
| cade it never really was about the companies in the first
| place.
| kevinschumacher wrote:
| The comment chain you're replying to is advocating for
| reigning in "our own" companies, regardless
|
| Kicking out the hostile state solves the immediate threat
| from China. But what about threats from our own (current
| and/or future) government?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I find it fascinating how China is described as an
| hostile state when it's manufacturing the vast majority
| of our goods.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but so far I never noticed "the west"
| having much moral values in the first place.
|
| Opium epidemic?
|
| Vapes for kids?
|
| Nestle Pure Life?
|
| We've allowed all sorts of clearly immoral and actively
| harmful behavior just to boost corporate profits.
|
| Maybe we didn't punish contrary opinions quite as badly as
| China / Russia, but then again just look at Julian Assange
| and his extra fair trial ;)
| gruez wrote:
| >Nestle Pure Life?
|
| According to google "Nestle Pure Life is a brand of bottled
| water". What's so morally bankrupt about selling bottled
| water?
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| add "controversy" to search string - depletion of
| waterways etc
|
| https://www.mashed.com/717227/nestles-water-controversy-
| expl...
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >They say that by extracting ground water to sell,
| bottled water companies are actually draining natural
| waterways.
|
| Okay but people have to drink somehow right? It's not
| like if nestle stopped operating that the demand for
| water would evaporate. It'll just cause another waterway
| to be depleted instead.
|
| The other point raised in the article seems to be that
| nestle is taking water, which it pays little to nothing
| for, and charging $1/bottle or whatever. This sounds
| outrageous on the surface, until you realize that water
| in a well or whatever isn't really useful. You still need
| to bottle and transport it, which is where most of the
| value-add is. If people only needed water they'd get it
| from their tap, not buying $1 bottles. When they are
| buying bottles, they're paying for the convenience of
| water being available right then and there.
| jeromegv wrote:
| It's not quite to the level of geopolitic but selling
| bottled water is entirely unnecessary in majority of the
| US. It's extremely bad for the environment, both for the
| plastic but of course the transport. When it's often the
| same damn thing you get in your sink.
|
| But no idea what's specifically bad about this brand in
| particular.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I've yet to visit a country that didn't sell bottled
| water though. That doesn't seem US specific
| llampx wrote:
| Many other countries have tap water that is not potable.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| As do some places in the U.S. and many people do fear
| that _their_ water while technically potable, is full of
| unhealthy materials like lead. Even for me in a
| relatively new building, I have no idea about the
| materials of the lines built into it or the water main in
| my city. I use a Brita or straight from the tap
| personally but I can 't say I blame people who are
| concerned (in the U.S.) where infrastructure is quite old
| and there doesn't seem to be much concern by officials
| even in the most dire of cases like Flint to fix things.
| danaris wrote:
| Not sure what the GP was referring to, but...
|
| There are some serious concerns about bottled water in
| the US, particularly with how the manufacturers (like
| Nestle) often get the water for free or at preferential
| rates, then sell it with a huge markup, and how some of
| it is (from what I've read) sourced from places like
| California, which need the water very badly.
|
| There are _also_ very serious concerns about Nestle in
| particular as a company; the big one I always remember
| (because it 's been going on basically as long as I've
| been alive) is how they aggressively push baby formula on
| mothers in developing countries despite knowing that the
| water in their area (needed to reconstitute the formula)
| is unsafe to drink. There are a number of other problems
| with their business practices, but I don't recall what
| they are off the top of my head.
| neves wrote:
| Nestle also is famous for exausting the natural
| resources.
| aeternum wrote:
| Natural resources should be owned by the government and
| rented to the highest bidder.
|
| It's kinda crazy that we do this with wireless spectrum
| but not with resources like water, oil, gas, etc.
|
| Even land should probably work like this. Rather than a
| property tax, you pay a yearly rent on the land, afterall
| the US gov is spending quite a bit to protect it from
| forceful seizure by other nations.
| bj-rn wrote:
| Checkout this documentary:
| https://www.bottledlifefilm.com/about-the-film
|
| It's from 2012 but I suppose Nestle hasn't changed much
| since.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Everything you say is true. But it's not an argument.
| Failing to live up to all your stated values in past is not
| a reason to give up on then for all time.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Russia and China also have lists of noble values that
| they don't live up to. That's not a distinction.
| Jochim wrote:
| It's not about giving up on them. It's about being
| willing to accept that you haven't lived up to those
| values and make the changes necessary to uphold them.
|
| While still in the wrong, how seriously should China or
| Russia take the country that lead the invasion and
| occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan for 20 odd years when it
| offers it's condemnation of their own ambitions?
|
| To be frank, how can we expect anyone to take our
| condemnation seriously when we are currently doing the
| same things or have let the same things go unpunished in
| recent memory. We refuse to hold our own torturers and
| war criminals to proper account.
| headsoup wrote:
| I think the argument is that there is not so much
| difference in result at the end, even though the
| projected image appears opposite.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| The irony here of doing exactly what was outlined
| towaway15463 wrote:
| > Maybe we didn't punish contrary opinions quite as badly
| as China / Russia
|
| Understatement of the year. We also currently don't outlaw
| homosexuality or religion or engage in genocide and we
| elect our leaders democratically among other things.
| withinboredom wrote:
| You should probably check your facts. All but the first
| one is false. They have engaged in genocide: see Native
| Americans; trail of tears. The USA is a republic, not a
| democracy.
| pessimizer wrote:
| And we certainly still do genocides, we just don't do
| them locally.
| causi wrote:
| I believe he means currently, not ever in its history.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Then why even bother having the conversation? No one is
| free of guilt here, which was my point.
| zamfi wrote:
| Guilt is not a binary.
|
| When one group is actively trying to absolve its sins of
| the past, and the other doesn't even recognize them while
| doubling-down, the claim that "everyone has sins" an
| abdication of the idea that behavior matters.
| causi wrote:
| Because you can't resurrect people who died hundreds of
| years ago but you can potentially stop a genocide that's
| ongoing.
| afiori wrote:
| Republic and democracy refer to two different axis.
|
| Republic is about how the vertex of government is
| structured.
|
| Democracy is about where the executive/legislative power
| comes from.
|
| The US is both, you could argue that Canada is not a
| republic as they have a recognized queen, but it would be
| a stretch as she has essentially zero power there.
| withinboredom wrote:
| They said they elect their leaders democratically which
| is simply not true no matter how you want to phrase it.
| The president is elected by an electoral college and not
| a democratic vote.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Do you really want to vote on every little bit of minutia
| that you would have to if this were a direct democracy?
|
| There's an old game, Anachronox, that does a wonderful
| job of making fun of this when the player is on the
| planet Democratus. Worth a play if you haven't.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| But the electoral college ultimately derives its members
| from people who are voted on by the general electorate.
|
| The electoral college is an abstraction so that the
| states in the United States are able to have a check and
| balance on federal power. Having a direct democracy of
| 300 million people would be a bad idea, a lot of
| political philosophy has been written on why.
|
| If you build on a library that builds on library using
| AGPL license, you are still bound by the AGPL license, no
| matter how abstracted. If your country ultimately derives
| for the people, you are democratic. It is just that the
| USA is technically a democratic Republic, and
| intentionally so.
| withinboredom wrote:
| That doesn't magically make it a democratic election. In
| fact, the way you describe it working is a relatively new
| way of doing things and varies from state to state. It is
| not uniform. Also, if you paid any attention at all in
| the last election, you'd realize how tenuous it all
| really is and in multiple elections, the actual person
| voted in wasn't even the winner by popular vote. So by
| definition, it can not be democratic.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > That doesn't magically make it a democratic election.
| In fact, the way you describe it working is a relatively
| new way of doing things and varies from state to state.
| It is not uniform. Also, if you paid any attention at all
| in the last election, you'd realize how tenuous it all
| really is and in multiple elections, the actual person
| voted in wasn't even the winner by popular vote. So by
| definition, it can not be democratic.
|
| Now I am by no means a fan of the electoral system and I
| think one van argue that the US fails to live up to being
| democratic in practice for several reasons (I consider
| the electoral college a very minot part of the issues),
| however saying that it can not be democratic by principle
| or definition it can not be a democracy. I mean let's
| remember that in Athens (where the term comes from) only
| a minority of male citizens was allowed to vote.
| xenophonf wrote:
| I think that some of the problems with the EC would go
| away if the number of electors/House seats was updated to
| match current U.S. demographics. The last time that was
| changed was in the 1930s, if I recall correctly. In the
| first United States Congress, there were about 65
| thousand Americans per representative. Nowadays, that
| ratio is closer to 760 thousand Americans per
| representative.
|
| Unfortunately, that kind of rebalancing has zero
| political support. The National Popular Vote Interstate
| Compact, while not as good a solution in my opinion as it
| doesn't fix the underlying problems with citizen
| representation, is probably more politically feasible in
| terms of fixing presidential elections.
| afiori wrote:
| If your definition of democracy is "nationwide popular
| vote to elect a single role" you will find that there are
| very few democracies around.
|
| Actually in the US the election of the president is
| remarkably linear.
|
| In Italy the actual head of state is elected by the
| parliament (with no underlying direct vote) and then
| during national elections 1) the people elect a new
| parliament (with a complex mixture of proportional/non-
| proportial seats) 2) the parliament proposes various
| governments to the head of state 3) the head of state
| selects (and makes suggestions for modifications) the
| government (the actual executive branch).
|
| And surely there are democracies that follow a more
| complex process.
|
| The main difference between the US and most other
| countries is that the US counts votes for the president
| federally and not nationally, and the difference would
| almost completely disappear if more states would follow
| Maine and Nebraska example and drop the Firts Past the
| Post election style.
|
| Democracy means that the legitimacy of the state is given
| by the people, not blood, not military, not religion, not
| oligarchs.
| 8note wrote:
| Every country is ultimately derived by its people though.
|
| Rather than a boolean, democratic is better understood as
| a numeric value.
|
| "How democratic are you?" not "are you democratic?"
| partiallypro wrote:
| This is like saying the US had segregation and internment
| camps in the 40s, so it had no moral standing on the USSR
| and Nazi Germany committing genocide. Which would be
| complete nonsense.
| mistermann wrote:
| This seems like a mischaracterization of the parent
| comment and some self serving logic.
| 8note wrote:
| if youre going to make that comparison, its worth noting
| that the nazis did draw their inspiration from America.
|
| For a long drawn out analysis:
| https://youtu.be/R1gcipAvplY
| boomchinolo78 wrote:
| It's more than a narrative for sure.
| xtian wrote:
| How do you know that pointing out the 'hypocrisy' is the
| propaganda rather than the idea that these values as commonly
| understood have any basis in reality in the first place?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I think that's a fair objection. I don't know. But my lived
| experience in a family who have sacrificed a lot on the
| alter of democratic values leaves me with a strong bias for
| which I make no apologies.
| xtian wrote:
| People in my family have sacrificed meaningfully for
| these values as well, but I think it's important to
| evaluate objectively whether those sacrifices are honored
| by the people who wield power or taken for granted.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...:
|
| > But the picture changes markedly when all three
| independent variables are included in the multivariate
| Model 4 and are tested against each other. The estimated
| impact of average citizens' preferences drops
| precipitously, to a non-significant, near-zero level.
| Clearly the median citizen or "median voter" at the heart
| of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy does not
| do well when put up against economic elites and organized
| interest groups. The chief predictions of pure theories
| of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy can be decisively
| rejected. Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely
| substantial power over policy decisions; they have little
| or no independent influence on policy at all.
|
| > [...]
|
| > When both interest groups and affluent Americans oppose
| a policy it has an even lower likelihood of being adopted
| (these proposed policies consist primarily of tax
| increases). At the other extreme, high levels of support
| among both interest groups and affluent Americans
| increases the probability of adopting a policy change,
| but a strong status quo bias remains evident.
| misterprime wrote:
| I generally like this, but there's another risk to keep in
| mind:
|
| Purposefully over-regulating to such a degree that only the
| existing behemoths can survive and no startup could reasonably
| navigate the costly labyrinth of policies in that sector.
|
| I think California has been doing OK recently in creating tiers
| of companies based on employee size and applying varying
| degrees of requirements based on that.
| dahfizz wrote:
| And what do you do when tik tok violates the privacy policy?
| You're not changing the geopolitics at all.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Yeah, this sort of protectionist interference in the name of
| "security" isn't new - look at Boeing.
| randomdata wrote:
| TikTok is feared not because of privacy, but because it shows
| China can do tech too. America placed its economic bets on
| being a tech superpower and that is now under threat.
| Restricting American companies in the same way would only serve
| to also diminish tech in the US.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Eh, not really. There have been plenty of perfectly
| functional apps working in China for a long time. Makes sense
| that people are worried about feeding video streams,
| geolocation data, facial recognition data, social network
| data, etc. to our adversary who uses the very same data
| sources to manipulate and control its own population.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> There have been plenty of perfectly functional apps
| working in China for a long time._
|
| But, for the most part, they've seen little fanfare outside
| of China. Even the breakouts, like Alibaba and WeChat, have
| really only succeeded where they are able to bridge
| connections with China. They hadn't proven they can develop
| software for a wide audience. TikTok changed the landscape.
| TikTok is an app that could have come straight out of
| Silicon Valley and is successfully going head to head with
| American players on their own turf.
| greenthrow wrote:
| How on earth would you enforce such a law on a company
| headquartered in China?
| lumost wrote:
| How would the US possibly enforce this law on tik tok? At the
| end of the day, if a regulator can't investigate, then they
| can't enforce. What's to stop tik tok from providing lip
| service then doing the opposite?
| srcreigh wrote:
| Banning the app may be the only way.
| Aunche wrote:
| I honestly don't see a reason for the US not ban TikTok for
| arbitrary bullshit reasons, simply because China does the same
| sort of bullshit for American internet companies. Foreign
| websites often get mysteriously throttled, which encourages
| people to use their domestic alternatives. The iTunes store was
| banned, despite following all their censorship rules. They even
| hacked Google.
| panda_2134 wrote:
| Chinese here. While I can confirm a lot of these sites are
| banned for whatever reasons, iTunes is not. Check it yourself
| with https://ping.pe .
| Aunche wrote:
| Sorry. I meant iTunes Books and iTunes Movies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_the_iTunes_Stor
| e
| yibg wrote:
| I don't think "china does it" is a good reason for the US to
| do it. There are lots of things China does that we don't want
| to.
| Aunche wrote:
| I'm not advocating censorship for censorship sake. The
| problem I have is with asymmetric rules regarding commerce.
| If China wants to have free access to US dollars, they need
| to allow us to have equally free access to their RMB.
| lghh wrote:
| I, on the other hand, don't see a reason to ban TikTok. Just
| because China does something doesn't mean the US has to do
| the same thing.
| sebow wrote:
| > how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that
| forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co from
| collecting excessive data on users? That would be a better
| solution, IMHO.
|
| Something that frankly won't happen since that would put those
| companies out of business. Not to mention actual collusion
| between US gov and some of those corporations (all of them
| depending on the subject: from military to political data
| mining). Collectively they have more influence than the US
| government,so even assuming that the politicians would
| correctly try to protect the citizens from what are de facto
| surveillance machines it would be a big stretch. Again, that
| would actually go against their interests, so let's not hold
| our breaths on this.
|
| Hate to dig up old skeletons, but if most of the tech consumers
| (not even all the knowledgeable and principled individuals, let
| alone the mass of users) stood by Snowden & Assange, what kind
| of chance do we stand now? Some of the criticisms of
| Snowden(undermining US influence thus helping China) let's say
| was "half-tolerable", but with TikTok (which is de facto
| China's spying & "hypnotizing" tool in the west) we have no
| excuse of tolerating that here. People brushed it off when
| Trump said it, but he was right.You need to clean house with
| external players(Tiktok) before you move on towards harder,
| "more legitimate" opponents(FB,etc), which were dying anyways.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| _from collecting excessive data on users_
|
| Nothing's going to happen for at least a generation.
| Boomers/Gen Xers in power need to die off, they don't/refuse to
| understand the Internet.
| headsupftw wrote:
| This top comment is odd, in the sense that the article does not
| talk about TikTok's privacy and/or geopolitics debacles at all,
| even though the title "poison pill" might lead some users who
| didn't read the article to think it refers to TikTok's
| violation of privacy, or it being created and controlled by an
| Internet giant based in Communist China, or something along
| these lines.
|
| The "poison pill" in the title actually refers to TikTok's
| recommendation model that disregards (or at least de-weights)
| social graph, versus Facebook/Instagram's approach.
| mtrycz2 wrote:
| They could not even exist without harvesting data - it is their
| business model.
|
| Unfortunately, the only option is to just leave.
| taf2 wrote:
| Which law will be used to reveal the encrypted traffic between
| the app and server was sending personal data to be used in
| influence campaigns by the CCP?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Does tiktok actually collect that much (valuable) information?
| It seems all the scaremongering people spread (rightfully or
| not) is around it's moderation and attempts to steer discourse
| and change opinions to pro-china?
| mistermann wrote:
| I think the real concern that isn't being said out loud is
| that it's fear of TikTok's ability to _distribute_
| information, and that the US government doesn 't have
| management under their thumb.
| dm33tri wrote:
| Yeah to me seems they rather buy data, so in the app I see
| ads about things things I've looked for somewhere else. Never
| seen it other way around, but maybe it is more subtle -
| YouTube Shorts and TikTok have a huge overlap in content for
| me, but does it mean YouTube buys my data from TikTok?
| dailykoder wrote:
| Yes, they basically collect everything.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It's far worse than just data collection. At least at one
| point in time Tiktok's client was disassembled enough to
| reveal that it had a function to download an unsigned binary
| blob and run it on the device. They're able to bypass app
| store protections completely...
| [deleted]
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| No American pundits and politicians just hate TikTok because it
| is not a US corporation.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that
| forbids TikTok, [...] from collecting excessive data on users?_
|
| This wouldn't address the way the CCP can use TikTok for
| subversion of America, vis-a-vis foreign election interference
| by Russia on social media in 2016.
|
| > _Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co_
|
| The American government has more options with American
| corporations, these companies aren't intrinsically linked to
| foreign governments in the way that TikTok is to the CCP.
| However, the EU should probably kick these American social
| media companies out of the EU.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| All of them to to great lengths to ensure Taiwan isn't
| accidentally mentioned as being a country.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| As does the American government, unfortunately. I hope this
| period of appeasement is soon coming to an end.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I don't want to personally malign you and I'm not gonna
| downvote, but it's irritating to me that this is currently the
| top comment. I noticed exactly the same thing yesterday where a
| top comment was explicitly commenting on a completely different
| article from the one in the link that the commenter had read
| the week prior about a similar topic.
|
| What you wrote here has nothing to do with the linked article.
| The article doesn't discuss what American government policy is
| or should be toward TikTok. It's entirely about the business
| implications of Facebook potentially losing a competitive edge
| from its social graph if it adopts TikTok's content model that
| does not use a social graph.
|
| You've hijacked that topic to talk about a completely different
| and more divisive topic du jour that is already discussed every
| other time TikTok comes up.
| angryasian wrote:
| agree, I wish this discussion was less about politics and
| more of the impact on social media
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >how about the US government put a firm privacy policy that
| forbids TikTok, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and co from
| collecting excessive data on users
|
| Because the U.S. has access to and therefore benefits from the
| data that these companies collect. The exception on that list
| is TikTok - the U.S. can't access that data, but their rival
| can. That's why they're keen on banning it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Respectfully...
|
| Does anyone really think the NSA are not able to access
| Tiktok? Or that Chinese equivalent orgs are not able to
| access Facebook etc? Really?
|
| This whole thing is just the cultural side of people pushing
| a new cold war for self serving purposes (increase my budget,
| grant me more powers, buy my newspaper etc).
|
| I'm not saying China is great, I'm just saying this seems
| very much like a made up issue to me.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| TikTok is already a NATO propaganda app anyway.
|
| https://archive.ph/qYSsL
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Everyone is hacking everyone. For true matters of
| intelligence gathering and national security physical
| location is no serious object. If it's on a server it's
| accessible to us, the Russians, the Chinese, etc. etc,
| basically public. But, and this is a thicc but, the US
| government and its various enforcement arms really like
| having a domestic data pile because they can trawl through
| it some veneer of legal legitimacy. Google's data is only a
| rubber stamp warrant away and that data can then be used in
| court. The same is not true for offshore providers like
| Tiktok. Sure they could probably get access if it's in a
| friendly country but that's a much higher more expensive
| bar.
|
| Basically the discussion we're having about Tiktok is the
| discussion we'd be having about all these data haystacks if
| it weren't for the fact that there are powerful government
| interests that like the domestic haystacks.
| ammo1662 wrote:
| Their business is built on top of collecting and selling users'
| data. Why will the politicians sponsored by them try to
| establish a policy to break their own business?
| lghh wrote:
| TikTok makes me incredibly angry and I need to vent about it
| somewhere so I am going to vent about it here.
|
| I have ADHD. TikTok is almost certainly designed in a way to
| directly exploit that fact. It really makes me angry. It feels
| like they are making a real attempt to take my agency away and to
| create a product that triggers me so viscerally that I can't keep
| away from it. I feel like I am intentionally being taken
| advantage of by TikTok.
|
| I had TikTok installed for one day and vowed never again.
|
| Is this how gambling addicts feel about casinos? Or how smokers
| feel about cigarette companies?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I wouldn't take it personal. The reality is we all have much
| shorter attention spans with or without an ADHD diagnosis.
| Tiktok as of last year had 1 billion active accounts which
| means a lot of people like or even prefer content in smaller
| chunks.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I feel like I am intentionally being taken advantage of by
| TikTok.
|
| Well, you are. That's true for all of the "attention economy".
| nostromo wrote:
| Similar to how the vast majority of people can enjoy alcohol
| responsibly, most people can and do enjoy social media
| responsibly.
|
| I like to enjoy a nice beer after a hard day's work. Sometimes
| I also like to enjoy TikTok for a bit to get my mind off of
| work and other challenges. Neither company should feel bad
| about providing a great product that people enjoy just because
| some folks have a problem enjoying it in moderation.
| root_axis wrote:
| It's just a video app, exercise some self-discipline and self-
| accountability and uninstall the app.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Great if you're able to do that easily. Please understand
| that some of the most brilliant minds in the world get up in
| the morning usually somewhere in California, and work many
| hours in the day, and their literal job is to _figure out how
| to subvert this._
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Unfortunately regulations will always be one step behind.
| Asking for them is victim mentality. We're responsible for
| our own choices.
|
| Everyone might get addicted to TikTok for some period. But
| everyone needn't _stay_ addicted to TikTok. (Of course I
| use "TikTok" as a placeholder for any infinitely consumable
| feed of targeted content.)
|
| Regulation has a place. For example, an obvious and easy
| win would be to pass a bill requiring any product with a
| consumable feed to offer and default to an option to sort
| it in reverse chronological order.
|
| But regulation is a reactive and slow strategy to shrinking
| a problem that continues to metastasize. There are more
| proactive social strategies available to us. Education is
| free. Self-control is free. Unfortunately, they're only
| "free" modulo the minutes of attention we can allocate to
| them from our finite lifetime supply.
|
| I wonder, how many minutes of education or self-
| introspection is required to prevent one future minute of
| app usage? I'm optimistic this ratio is favorable, so that
| once people sufficiently internalize the effect of infinite
| consumable feeds, they will naturally reduce their self-
| sabotaging usage of them.
|
| People will adapt. It will just take a while. Sometimes you
| gotta get burned to learn not to touch the stove. In the
| meantime, we could require the products to provide
| resources and tools to reduce addiction (like HN's
| noprocrast). And we should also find a way to blunt the
| impact of social media on those who have not yet begun
| their journey with its addiction (like children, or people
| yet to be born into our satirical dystopia of a society).
| If kids are glamorizing social media before they are old
| enough to use it, they will not have an easy experience
| separating themselves from it later in life.
|
| Cigarette smoking rates are way down since twenty years ago
| when we started convincing children it was gross and
| uncool. We can do that with social media too.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Your first sentence is wildly and dangerously misguided.
| Yes, it's slow and difficult but it's also the reason we
| have underappreciated institutions like the FDA.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Unfortunately regulations will always be one step
| behind. Asking for them is victim mentality._
|
| Is this a self-serving idea you apply only to the
| industry you work in, or is this a general principle you
| apply to all industries? Do you feel this way about the
| petroleum and chemical industries? The pharmaceutical
| industries? Food processing? The nuclear industry?
|
| Are _all_ industrial regulations instances of 'victim
| mentality', or only those that apply to _your_ industry?
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I'm not sure where you got the idea that I harbor some
| absolutist opposition to regulation in any industry, or
| even in the social media industry for that matter. My
| comment listed specific examples of social media
| regulation that I would support.
|
| My goal was simply to highlight the naivete of thinking
| regulations alone will solve the problem, unless the USPS
| is going to send a weekly pill bottle of amphetamines to
| every citizen who is vulnerable to the dangers of social
| media addiction.
| raverbashing wrote:
| reminds me that "the greatest minds at 1600 Amphitheater
| Parkway" made it harder to open your list of apps on Play
| Store but never mind
|
| Open the list, select 'TikTok' and click 'Uninstall'
|
| This is not to be demeaning. But if you're having too much
| trouble disconnecting from it, then that should be the way.
| You can still see videos in a browser.
| SinParadise wrote:
| this is the personal responsibility or bootstraps
| argument in a poorly made sheep's clothing.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| It's addictive. Many users don't uninstall because they
| are addicted, and the social media companies exploit this
| for profit.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Preaching to the choir here, I don't do _any_ social
| media on my phone at all.
|
| But still, kind of unhelpful. What do we do about _them?_
| root_axis wrote:
| > _some of the most brilliant minds in the world_
|
| Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are working
| on anything you could name.
|
| > _their literal job is to figure out how to subvert this._
|
| I mean sure, but at the end of the day all we're talking
| about here is an app that shows you a sequence of
| entertaining videos, it's not streaming directly into your
| brain stem, it's not fundamentally different from any of
| the other addictive things that have existed on the
| internet for years.
|
| Frankly, it's not even that important... So what if you
| waste your time looking at a bunch of random videos? I
| personally know people who spend 6+ hours a day on twitch,
| youtube, minecraft etc, they don't frame themselves as
| victims being subverted by the insidious machinations of
| majong, it's understood that they simply enjoy minecraft so
| they play it a lot, sometimes more than they know they
| should, but that's just life, there is nothing special
| about tiktok that merits this subversion of agency
| narrative.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Let's try it like this -- a _disproportionate and
| extremely high number of the most brilliant minds in the
| world_ work in Silicon Valley. Overwhelmingly, that work
| is essentially "harvesting the behavior and attention of
| human beings for profit, most often through advertising"
| That describes all of social media and all of FAANG to
| various extents.
|
| Those are _facts._ Up until now I haven 't said anything
| about whether this is good or bad, and I'm still not
| saying "this means we should shut it down."
|
| But I've seen too much to suggest that it makes sense to
| hand-wave this phenomenon away and say "it's just life."
|
| No. It's worth studying and doing our best to determine
| how dangerous this is.
| deepGem wrote:
| I don't use TikTok but even in my mid 40s fell victim to
| Instagram reels. What's astonishing to me is that I have a
| level of self control that's way more than the average
| individual (for instance I have taken cold showers for
| ever).Even with such an otherwise resilience I fell victim to
| Instagram reels and their infinite supply of mindless
| entertainment. It took a week for me to unshackle and get rid
| of this imbecile nonsense. I still have the app on my phone
| but am actively not opening it. My hypothesis is that if you
| can do this for a continued duration, then the existence of
| the app won't bother you. You can't go around deleting
| everything from your life. You lead your life on your terms,
| despite the distractions.
|
| So the addictive forces are quite powerful and for the
| average individual, it's really hard to get out of this
| addiction.
| selykg wrote:
| It's just poker, show some self-discipline and self-
| accountability and uninstall the app!
| jjoonathan wrote:
| They did.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Yes and no. I mean, you are correct in a very abstract way,
| but there is something to be said for an industry that is
| able to manipulate a large swath of the population by
| exploiting various human predilections. Saying it is just
| self-discipline and accountability is limiting the
| conversation to a frame that benefits those companies without
| looking at the totality of the reasons behind it.
| moolcool wrote:
| Some of the brightest minds in the world work tirelessly to
| develop impossibly advanced algorithms which exploit our
| monkey-brains' attention mechanisms. It's scary to me that
| there's people working in the tech industry who would upvote
| a comment like this-- it shows a lack of respect for the
| level of power software engineers possess over real people's
| lives.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| They clearly did uninstall it but "use some some-discipline"
| is pretty disingenuous given companies are abusing biological
| mechanisms to get people hooked on their apps. This is
| especially true for teenagers who are underdeveloped in the
| self-discipline department.
| system16 wrote:
| Replace TikTok with food, porn, or drugs. At some point the
| individual has to take responsibility for their actions and
| seek support if it's something they can't do on their own.
| Or we just ban everything.
| hiq wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is, we do ban some of these
| (with various successes and failures), so why wouldn't we
| do the same for social media?
|
| Yes we shouldn't ban everything, but there's a large
| spectrum of acceptable regulations with different
| tradeoffs and it's fine to discuss what your society
| wants in that regard instead of precluding any kind of
| regulation.
| system16 wrote:
| TikTok is not as harmful as drugs (at least I haven't
| seen anyone end up on skid row over watching too many
| dancing videos). So if it's to be regulated it would
| likely be similar to porn or gambling and be age
| restricted.
|
| OP is clearly an adult capable of making their own
| decisions, so this regulation wouldn't help them.
|
| So what is your point?
| jamincan wrote:
| There is such a thing as shared responsibility. An
| individual smoker is responsible for quitting; Phillip
| Morris is responsible for making a harmful and addictive
| product. In the case of social media, individuals are
| responsible for how they use them, but
| Facebook/Tiktok/Twitter are also responsible for building
| apps that encourage overuse.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Imagine something you have struggled with for a very long
| time. Now apply (the spirit of) your reply. Good luck, I hope
| it helps!
| lghh wrote:
| Exercise some self-discipline and read what I wrote. I did
| uninstall it.
| root_axis wrote:
| Yes, I read that, I am speaking in the general sense with
| respect to remarks such as "it feels like they are making a
| real attempt to take my agency" and "I feel like I am
| intentionally being taken advantage of by TikTok". I can
| see why that's not clear though, so fair critique.
|
| I understand you literally removed the app from your phone,
| but framing yourself as hapless prey without any agency
| negates the ethos of self accountability and self
| discipline.
| lghh wrote:
| I am not hapless. However I do have a mental disability
| that makes me especially susceptible to the psychological
| tricks (and they are tricks) that TikTok employs to keep
| people scrolling. The fact that I was born with ADHD and
| can't get rid of it, even if I can curb it, does reduce
| some of my agency by definition. It sucks, but it's the
| truth.
| data_ders wrote:
| Commenter: "I have (insert DSMV behavioral condition) and it
| makes having X with Y extremely difficult" You: "It's just Y,
| have X. Problem solved"
| dwaltrip wrote:
| It's just a bottle of liquid, exercise some self-discipline
| and don't drink it.
| bequanna wrote:
| I think that comparison makes the opposite point that you
| intended.
|
| The answer to treating alcoholism actually is some amount
| of personal responsibility and strengthening of willpower,
| not blaming the companies that manufacture alcohol.
| root_axis wrote:
| If an alcoholic goes around making pronunciations about how
| they lack agency and how they feel like bars are
| victimizing them, they will be sternly told to exercise
| some self-discipline and self-accountability at a minimum,
| likely they will also be told to _check into rehab_.
|
| Imagine if, guided by your analogy, I were to have instead
| replied to the OP with "check yourself into rehab". Most
| likely, I'd have been downvoted for snark, because everyone
| understands a sequence of entertaining videos is a
| different kind of thing than a drug which you ingest and
| become physically dependent on.
| j245 wrote:
| Let me guess, the solution to ending world hunger is..
|
| It's just hunger, use your wallet, just go buy some food and
| eat it.
| amerkhalid wrote:
| As an ex-smoker, I never felt any anger towards cigarette
| companies. Only anger I felt was towards government regulations
| like banning smoking indoors or high taxes on cigarettes. Also
| felt a bit annoyed with society judging the smokers. Even when
| I was trying to quit, I didn't blame cigarette companies.
|
| Now in retrospect, I am glad that those regulations, taxes, and
| judgmental stares slowly nudged me towards quitting.
|
| My guess is that the most TikTok/social-media users don't
| realize that they are addicts.
|
| EDIT: And yes TikTok is indeed extremely good at giving you
| dopamine hits. I don't keep the app on my phone but every once
| in a while if I am extremely bored or feeling very low, I will
| download it. It makes time go by so fast.
| jeffwask wrote:
| >As an ex-smoker, I never felt any anger towards cigarette
| companies. Only anger I felt was towards government
| regulations like banning smoking indoors or high taxes on
| cigarettes. Also felt a bit annoyed with society judging the
| smokers. Even when I was trying to quit, I didn't blame
| cigarette companies.
|
| If the majority of this cultural change happened during the
| age of the internet and the leaked info from manufactures
| around tweaking recipes to be more addictive, falsifying
| research, etc was being dropped on Twitter, Reddit, etc on a
| weekly basis, I imagine that would have played out
| differently
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Better or worse? The cigarette companies would've _loved_
| the era of "fake news".
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| Perhaps the real culprits are the digital "gas stations" that
| make money hand-over-fist with TikTok's engagement loop.
| Apple, Google, and to an extent, Microsoft are all complicit
| in letting people make addictive experiences that promote
| their respective platforms. Much like the gas station, the
| smartphone is ubiquitous. Everyone passes by the TikTok aisle
| on their way to texting their mom or Googling a pie recipe,
| rich or poor. Worse yet, the guilt they feel for their
| addiction causes people to hide it. Nobody wants to address
| it, they just want to scroll their For You Page, enveloped in
| the comfort of homogeneous content. I normally don't glean
| empathy from people who make bad choices, but social media
| just makes me sad.
|
| I think, ultimately, the only solution will be stripping
| platform owners of their power. Google and Apple have both
| undeniably abused their market position to promote harmful
| content and shelter the problems that TikTok causes. We'll
| either die in the shackles of our own corporations, or live
| long enough to watch them topple over.
| trebbble wrote:
| I'm not seeing the connection between the Google/Apple
| duopoly and the rise of TikTok or other addictive social
| media. I spend half or more of my waking hours on one Apple
| device or another, and if I had only things Apple has
| pushed at me to go by, I'd _not even know TikTok exists_.
| What 's the sequence of events you expect from removing
| Google and Apple's platform power, that'll lead to reduced
| social media activity on their platforms and/or in general?
| Apple, for their part, seem to have spent a fair amount of
| effort developing features that exist _only_ to curb
| addiction-like smartphone use--I 'm not sure why they'd
| have done that if they were _that_ focused on getting you
| to use your phone as much as possible.
|
| Now, if we were talking about whale-chasing F2P games, I'd
| see your point, but I don't see the connection with social
| media.
| deepGem wrote:
| I was just having a chat with my buddy today about how
| Apple, Microsoft and to a large extent Google are largely
| the best positioned to profit from any upstream
| applications. While the likes of Facebook, Instagram and
| TikTok fight for viewership, these underlying platforms are
| just counting profits regardless of who reigns supreme on
| the top. I don't know if Jobs saw this future unfold but
| here it is.
|
| The gas stations of the digital era are just doing their
| job, ensuring that there is enough gas supply. What's
| ironic is that the biggest gas company also created the
| first automobiles, and basically told the market, everyone
| is welcome to build an automobile to use my gas as long as
| you give me 30% of your profits. Oh BTW, your automobile
| can run only using my gas. Boy, imagine this in the
| physical world.
| smoldesu wrote:
| If it's any consolation, I'm equally comfortable cussing
| out Henry Ford as opposed to Steve Jobs.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > It feels like they are making a real attempt to take my
| agency away and to create a product that triggers me so
| viscerally that I can't keep away from it.
|
| That's most social media and even products in general. Profit
| comes from consumption, and the best way to keep you consuming
| is to keep you engaged. Products thrive off of outrage which is
| why platforms like social media and the news optimize for
| outraging consumers rather than efficiently delivering
| information, which is why I actively avoid typical social media
| or the news. Just don't use it
| maicro wrote:
| I've not been diagnosed with ADHD, though have some symptoms
| (though honestly, some of those are just standard "human living
| in 2022"), but I do know I have what I would consider an
| "addictive personality".
|
| I can't answer how gambling addicts or smokers feel, but I will
| share a similar experience - I had to uninstall Candy Crush
| Saga from my phone, because I would literally open it, and then
| "come to" ~40 minutes later at the end of my drive (carpool,
| not me driving). This went on for about two weeks before I
| decided to uninstall the game.
|
| I've never been on TikTok, but I do know that mobile games like
| Candy Crush are designed specifically to be addictive/habit
| forming - look up "gamification" for some related aspects,
| though that's really more about applying those sorts of
| mechanisms (mostly daily login bonuses / streak rewards, but
| also carefully spaced repetitions / cooldowns to get you to
| come back multiple times a day, highly stimulating audio and
| visual feedback for that "dopamine rush") to form habits around
| other domains (exercise being a theoretically "positive"
| application).
|
| All that is to say, good on you for recognizing your negative
| interaction with that app, and for uninstalling it. I don't
| know where the balance lies when weighing personal freedom (of
| both you to install whatever you want, and developers to
| release whatever they want) vs. legislation and regulation, but
| I do think awareness of the techniques that are being used
| (similar to how I learn as much as possible about scams /
| social engineering) is extremely important on a personal level.
|
| One final note - 2048, a few years after Candy Crush, hit me in
| a pretty similar way. The interesting thing there is, with no
| ads, microtransactions or fancy animations, it really was the
| core gameplay loop that I got hooked on. After finally hitting
| the titular number, however, I uninstalled it and haven't gone
| back.
| robocat wrote:
| If you are interested in viscerally understanding
| gamification, I suggest you install a free-to-play game with
| the sole intention of understanding how you are being
| manipulated. Pay attention to the slow cook, the social
| pressures, the dopamine hits, the sunk cost. I tried this
| (The Walking Dead: Survivors) and I learnt a lot.
|
| Question to gamification engineers: do you play addictive
| "gamified" games, or does the internal knowledge of how the
| sausage is made ruin the joy?
| zoltrix303 wrote:
| I read a book called "the power of habits" a few years back
| and there was a few chapters focusing on the gamification and
| how our brains tend to develop habits (and in some case
| addiction).
|
| Ever since reading this book, I've noticed patterns in the
| way apps are developed.
|
| Candy crush and other similar game apps are a bit obvious,
| but for me the most sticking one for me is the facebook app.
| They introduced a few years back these emoji that flash in
| the screen when you received a hearth or a smiley face in the
| chat. This is almost a direct copy of a technique used by the
| gambling industry where they flash coins in the screen of a
| gambling machine. In the book, I believed they explained that
| by making positive results / feeling of result stronger, you
| can trigger more deep rooted habits.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I remember when acquaintances at Facebook first saw all of
| the psychological stuff Candy Crush was doing and how
| distraught they were about it. So sad that they chose to
| emulate what they knew was horrible behavior.
| dislikedtom wrote:
| I find it hard to try to blame the cigarette (or any) companies
| in a world where maximizing money is encouraged. Don't hate the
| player, hate the game. I'm not trying to justify anything, but
| there would be another tiktok instantly exploiting the
| opportunity if tiktok would vanish.
| lghh wrote:
| I do, in fact, hate the player for doing something bad or
| evil. The game exists because there are players willing and
| wanting to play.
| dislikedtom wrote:
| Does it help? Would it maybe be more useful to focus on the
| people that run the game, and try to make them change the
| game by changing rules?
| lghh wrote:
| I can do both. Hate isn't finite.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm perfectly happy blaming people for doing immoral
| things even though they are legal. "I'm doing it unless
| someone stops me" is not a mark of morality.
| Permit wrote:
| > I have ADHD. TikTok is almost certainly designed in a way to
| directly exploit that fact.
|
| Can you share any evidence that TikTok was designed to exploit
| people with ADHD? Where do you get such confidence for this
| claim?
| Bayko wrote:
| I have metric shit tons of ADHD. All social media will match
| on to you easily. I don't think TikTok was designed
| specifically to target us as much as it was geared to target
| everyone. It's just we fall easily. Most ADHD people have
| addictive personalities.
| Permit wrote:
| This is what I would have expected as well so it was
| surprising to hear otherwise. I thought perhaps the OP had
| seen leaked documents or some other form of evidence that
| indicated TikTok targeted people with ADHD deliberately.
| lghh wrote:
| You're being intentionally rude. You know I don't have
| that. You know I was not implying that I had that.
| Permit wrote:
| ?
|
| I'm not being intentionally rude. I'm trying to
| understand your comment. TikTok was previously discovered
| to be reading your phone's clipboard on every keystroke:
| https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/tiktok-seems-
| to-b...
|
| Your claim that TikTok deliberately targeted users with
| ADHD would be consistent with some of TikTok's previous
| behavior but I wanted to better understand what evidence
| you had for it.
|
| You stated that TikTok was _almost certainly_ designed to
| _directly_ exploit the fact that you ADHD. I realize now
| that you meant something less direct but please re-read
| your comment and understand why someone might come to the
| same conclusion I did.
| dqpb wrote:
| > It feels like they are making a real attempt to take my
| agency away
|
| Have kids. They will claim your agency for themselves, and
| you'll have none left for TikTok.
| lghh wrote:
| I do have kids.
| wzdd wrote:
| I understand that having ADHD would make this more diffcult,
| but I have found it helpful to use the feature on my phone
| (iOS, but presumably Android has similar) which limits the
| total amount of time I can use a particular app every day.
|
| When the time limit is up, I can still keep using the app if I
| want to, but often that is a sufficient reminder ("I've already
| been using this app for an hour?!") that I can stop.
|
| I appreciate this feature because I can enjoy the app but also
| still feel in control of my time.
| dncornholio wrote:
| You could have left the ADHD part out of your comment and your
| argument would stand just as true.
| lghh wrote:
| Yeah, probably. Having ADHD doesn't help the issue.
| [deleted]
| dixie_land wrote:
| the Chinese actually call it "spiritual opium".
|
| the CCP probably see it as some sort of poetic revenge for the
| real opium trade and the ensuing Sino-British war that they see
| as the start of the "century of humiliation"
| philwelch wrote:
| They also manufacture most of the precursors for fentanyl, so
| it's not like the poetic revenge stops at TikTok.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Precurses? They make and market new analogs to pass
| importation on Alibaba (though they don't pass the Analog
| act so don't get any ideas it's legal).
| izzylan wrote:
| I also have ADHD and I made the mistake of downloading TikTok
| once. It ended up costing me a lot of time, money, and a
| significant chunk of my attention span. It became so bad that I
| couldn't focus at work because all I could think about was
| TikTok.
|
| I uninstalled it and haven't looked back. I don't feel angry at
| the company, but I do feel exploited and preyed on. Makes me
| worried about the kids that use this app and have even less
| self-control than I do.
| forsythe_ wrote:
| I left Facebook/Twitter years ago for this reason and then got
| an ADHD diagnosis shortly after. So yeah, I can relate. I've
| never downloaded TikTok but I subscribe to two users via my RSS
| reader, which at least provides insulation from being subject
| to their algorithm and endless video feeds. That could be a
| good half-way solution for you.
|
| Nowadays my main vice is Reddit with the occasional YouTube
| binge. I find I *can* manage using both in moderation but it's
| a slippery slope. It's even harder if I don't have a healthy
| outlet to focus on instead, like an interesting project, hobby,
| or class. But honestly, complete avoidance of those platforms
| paired with really good internet hygiene ("digital minimalism")
| are only consistent solutions for me.
| lma21 wrote:
| I installed it for one day, then I removed it. Came back a few
| days later, then I removed it again, And I've been in this
| (vicious) cycle for a while now. Whenever boredom hits,
| something in me thinks of TikTok. It's impressive. Never had
| that feeling with other platforms, not even Reddit. To fight
| TikTok, i'm trying a different approach, getting to know what
| my bored self really wants and feed it something else.
| criddell wrote:
| I've given TikTok a try four or five times now and for some
| reason it just doesn't click with me. It's not that I'm
| immune to this stuff because I really enjoy Instagram and I
| read HN fairly regularly. It seems that I'm somebody the
| TikTok algorithm doesn't know how to serve.
|
| I did see a few interesting videos, but nothing very
| compelling. How many dog videos or welding videos does one
| person need to see?
|
| Instagram, on the other hand, is super sticky for me because
| I know the people I follow and it's wonderful to see a photo
| of them and message back and forth once in a while.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| TikTok is an interesting case because on the one hand they have
| some fantastic content, cooking videos, explainers, etc. On the
| other hand how that content is delivered is absolute garbage
| (from the POV of sucking out attention).
| lghh wrote:
| Yeah, I wish I could use it. I have friends who send me
| cool/interesting stuff.
|
| Part of it having that stuff is the reason it's so addicting.
| I get in a loop of "maybe the next video is The One". That's
| why short form, title-less videos are such an addicting thing
| to consume. Especially when you can't see the next until
| you're playing it and by the time you've played it, the video
| is over.
| nyadesu wrote:
| The fact both Youtube and Instagram are now displaying short-
| form videos within their apps only makes it worse. I know it's
| hard to fight against it but focus on something else more
| worthy of your time.
| rapind wrote:
| > Is this how gambling addicts feel about casinos? Or how
| smokers feel about cigarette companies?
|
| More like how gamers feel about modern games. Just gotta
| swipe...
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Yeah but to be fair the internet has been like this for awhile
| now. TikTok just takes what the internet offers and gives you a
| respective hit of dopamine or adrenaline to persuade you to
| swipe more.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Or how people with body image issues feel about instagram? Or
| how people with social injustice fixations feel about facebook?
| Or how people with porn addictions feel about pornhub?
|
| These platforms are clearly utilizing super-normal stimuli to
| overwhelm our brains and elicit addiction-like behavior. Is
| that legal? Yes. Is that moral? Hell no.
| MandieD wrote:
| The concept of super-normal stimuli, or more specifically,
| the avoidance thereof, has guided a lot of my parenting
| decisions. I know I won't keep him away from all of that
| forever, but I want to make as much space as possible these
| early years for his little mind and attention span to
| develop.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really
| weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia - especially
| given there's no proof that TikTok is actually being used by the
| Chinese, whereas Snowden etc. has shown us that the USA already
| does stuff like this.
|
| I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do
| with all my cat videos anyway...
| Banana699 wrote:
| I'm non American as well, I get what you mean, the hysteria can
| sometimes be tiring. And the hypocritical it's-only-okay-when-
| we-do-it exceptionalism is maddening.
|
| However, you shouldn't put too much weight on the absence of
| proof for Chinese invasion of your privacy. China is an
| authoritarian regime, what this translates to in practice is
| that, while a "democracy" like the US or a European country
| will spy on you and violate both your and its own citizens
| rights, it can be caught and its PR will then cry and act
| really sorry (for whatever good this does), while a regime like
| China or Russia will brutally lock away or assassinate anyone
| digging dirt, and in the rare case they do get caught they will
| just smirk smugly and ask you what you're going to do about it.
| Both of those options suck, I know, a sane man will get far
| away from both of them, but one of them is strictly worse than
| the other in a very clear sense.
|
| >I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do
| with all my cat videos
|
| Why, they are going to breed feline supurr-soldiers and
| subjugate your people with them off course. Meowahahaha.
|
| Jokes aside, you're underselling the amount of power they have
| over you. Just off the top of my head, and I'm not remotely
| knowledgeable in security, smartphones put geotags and
| timestamps in photos and videos. The PLA and their friends are
| probably not interested in your Mr.ButterMeow, but they _are_
| interested in where you live and when you are glued to an app
| that monopolises your attention. What are they going to do with
| this ? I don 't know, but it can't be a good thing.
|
| There is such a thing as a "I don't have anything to hide"
| fallacy, it's a fallacy because (1) you don't know your
| attacker's mind, _anything_ you do could be something you would
| very much want to hide if you only knew what your attacker
| intends to do with it (2) Rights are defended on principle, if
| I broke into your home and stole all the garbage, then that is
| still a violation of your rights, even if 0 harm or even
| negative harm was done. A principle is like an algorithm, it
| has to be followed to the letter even if the circumstances are
| amenable to a special shortcut.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| That's because it largely is sinophobia (or more reasonably on
| the American side, blind nationalism).
|
| That said, I would caution against the temptation to "grade on
| a curve" here. While it's true what you said, that there's no
| direct evidence of spying, the case of proven US spying should
| demonstrate that government are more likely to be spying and
| hiding it than not.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems
| really weird
|
| China, via a state sponsored outlet, just threatened to shoot
| the speaker of the house's plane if it went to Taiwan and you
| find USA's stance on TikTok, an extension of the CCP, "really
| weird"?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| The US just bombed a dude in a foreign country they recently
| abandoned. As a different non-American the level of anti-
| TikTok sentiment still seems really weird.
| infinitezest wrote:
| The US government is a menace so the American people have
| no reason to feel threatened by a foriegn power? Am I
| understanding your argument correctly?
| nimbleplum40 wrote:
| Bombed a dude that was cofounder and 2nd-in-command (at the
| time) of the organization that committed the worst
| terrorist attack on the US...
| djohnston wrote:
| By any chance are you German?
| galoisgirl wrote:
| (Non-American too.)
|
| China may not have been proven to use TikTok data specifically,
| but their track record about human rights and privacy is what
| it is.
|
| > I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do
| with all my cat videos anyway...
|
| Ah, the old "nothing to hide" argument.
| epups wrote:
| No, but really: Facebook collects very private data,
| including personal messages. Google has even more sensitive
| information. I also don't see why suddenly TikTok is such a
| concern, except for sinophobia or pure misinformation.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| There's a large and substantial difference between "Google
| has your data" and "Google abuses your data".
|
| You might have doubts whether the limits set by Western
| authorities on Google's use of your data would be
| effective, or about the ability of those authorities to
| investigate and enforce, but I think we can all agree the
| odds are much better than for TikTok where no chance exists
| at all.
| angio wrote:
| Snowden showed 10 (!) years ago that american tech
| companies share data with the us government even when
| that's clearly against the law. That, in my book, is
| abusing my data. EU courts agree with me and are limiting
| how much data can be shared with us-based businesses.
| runevault wrote:
| This presumes people don't also have a problem with FB
| and/or Google. Speaking for myself I have concerns with all
| of them. I almost never interact with FB properties, Google
| I've sadly become attached to but I'm not one for Apple
| products so it is sort of hard to get away from the big G.
| pid_0 wrote:
| foepys wrote:
| TikTok has massive reach and influence. Just look at the recent
| articles about teenagers thinking they have mental illnesses
| [1].
|
| Misinformation campaigns are very powerful and this is
| especially worrisome when the most popular platform is
| controlled by an authoritarian regime with no regards to human
| rights, democracy, and free press.
|
| 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-diagnosis-videos-
| leave-s...
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Well we know that US intelligence agencies reserve the right to
| access all data harvested by American companies. They have a
| law about that.
|
| Do I particularly agree with the CCP politically? No. But I
| want everyone to be equal to the law and I'm not going to
| delude myself that Americans give one flying fuck about the
| privacy of foreigners- or their own citizens even.
| npc54321 wrote:
| zaroth wrote:
| I think the issue is more about influence than it is about
| privacy.
| ralusek wrote:
| > has shown us that the USA already does stuff like this.
|
| Ya, you're right, China isn't known to collect or do much with
| population data.
|
| China and the US officially regard each other as adversaries.
| The CCP outright declares the US to be an enemy. The CCP is
| also not subject to the rule of law within its own borders,
| even in theory.
|
| Then you get into the economics of it. The liberal west is
| generally in favor of free markets, but to what degree do we
| remain free when dealing with a trading partner who doesn't
| operate as a liberal democracy? China has banned Google,
| Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram...because they don't want
| their citizens giving business to foreign powers which they
| could be directing to their own growing businesses, and they
| don't want their citizens giving data to foreign powers.
|
| So please clarify, is the US banning TikTok "sinophobia" but
| China banning Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram,
| etc just something else entirely?
| christkv wrote:
| democraphobia ?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I'm not American but I hate TikTok because it seems to be the
| source of all stupid memes and joke videos people share with
| me. I can't stand it. Even though I don't use it, it still
| causes people to dump that crap on me. I wish there was an auto
| filter to remove everything with a TikTok logo because if it
| has that it's certain I'm going to hate it :)
|
| This is mainly because they embed their logo into everything
| that's shared of course. It's like the tramp stamp of stupid
| memes.
|
| In this case it works out negatively but I guess there's a lot
| of people loving mindless entertainment so I guess this is why
| they still mark their stuff this way.
|
| So in my case it has nothing to do with China even though I'm
| admittedly opposed to their government. But that's a different
| thing. FWIW I hate Facebook and Twitter too (for other reasons,
| Facebook because their datamining, Twitter because of the huge
| amount of nonsense ("Look I just had chicken wings"). But I use
| Instagram to follow certain artists.
| luckylion wrote:
| > I wish there was an auto filter to remove everything with a
| TikTok logo because if it has that it's certain I'm going to
| hate it :)
|
| I'd love for that to be an option. I've tried looking at
| Youtube Shorts and it's pretty much 500 TikTok videos being
| uploaded by dozens of channels and dumped on everyone. Making
| it possible to filter by "the TikTok voice", "the TikTok
| laugh" and the top 5 songs used for TikTok would improve the
| experience by a lot and I might actually see something I care
| about. Downvoting doesn't change anything either, they'll
| even start looping around and showing me Shorts I've
| downvoted before. Or maybe it's really not used by anyone and
| automated TikTok uploads are all there is, I don't know.
| cudgy wrote:
| They could present videos of dogs that look like cats to
| influence your opinion to be more favorable about dogs.
|
| They could simply show addictive videos to school-aged children
| to reduce their time available to study or interact with other
| children to make them less intelligent or less socially
| prepared. Or, they could flood your child's feed with videos
| from children their age discussing perceived mental illness
| self-diagnosis to encourage the youth of a nation to consider
| themselves mentally ill. They could flood young people of
| primary child-bearing age with videos of other children
| discussing their homosexuality in order to lower the
| reproduction rate within a country. They could flood videos
| that are critical of key practices or institutions within a
| country to promote dissent.
| stavros wrote:
| > They could simply show addictive videos to school-aged
| children to reduce their time available to study or interact
| with other children to make them less intelligent or less
| socially prepared.
|
| This is what every US social media company has been trying to
| do forever, except they didn't focus on schoolkids, they
| focused on everyone. It's called "maximizing engagement".
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > They could flood young people of primary child-bearing age
| with videos of other children discussing their homosexuality
| in order to lower the reproduction rate within a country
|
| Are you suggesting that ones sexuality can be changed by
| being exposed to other sexualities?
| ok_dad wrote:
| > They they they
|
| I'm, aren't parents supposed to be keeping track of their own
| kids, not some company?
|
| The stuff you said in the last half there is insane to me, so
| I'll assume you're either trolling or perhaps we have a very
| different view of certain things.
| dilap wrote:
| Put more broadly, control the media and you'll control
| people's beliefs, at least to a certain extent.
|
| (I assume this is why US Gov has been going after TikTok --
| it's the only major social site not more or less under
| their control.)
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's better to look at the world from a perspective of
| possible/impossible rather than sane/insane as there exist
| people inside governments who are paid to do insane-yet-
| possible things.
|
| I don't believe the theories around the Chinese government
| controlling children's minds through TikTok are likely to
| be true. It's probably just a dumb app. But there's nothing
| impossible about it.
| foldr wrote:
| >But there's nothing impossible about it.
|
| The claim that you can *control* people's minds via
| TikTok is a pretty big claim. You can influence
| behaviour, but what the OP is suggesting is highly
| outlandish and almost certainly impossible (particularly
| the homophobic fear that TikTok can turn kids gay).
|
| Remember that the advertising industry has been trying to
| control people's minds via all kinds of media for over a
| century, but is still only moderately successful at it.
|
| Historically, the Soviet intelligence services used to
| think that they were very good at spreading Communist
| propaganda within Western countries. In many ways they
| were. And yet, not many Westerners became Communists.
| Just look at this guy explain how successfully the
| Soviets are subverting US public opinion only a few years
| before the fall of the Berlin Wall:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw
| JasserInicide wrote:
| The DoD did exactly this with a campaign on Facebook back
| in the 2010s (moreso to understand the capability of the
| platform rather than out of malice). There is nothing
| insane about what that poster listed.
|
| If the Snowden leaks haven't shown you that the schizos are
| starting to become more right about many things, then I
| don't know what else to say. You're being willfully
| ignorant I guess.
| derbOac wrote:
| Snowden is sort of an unusual standard to apply for this sort
| of thing? Espionage and intelligence almost never meets a
| certain level of proof that's available to the public eye.
|
| I'm not really sure what to make of Chinese government
| involvement with TikTok but from the information available, it
| seems like whatever it is, TikTok isn't being forthright about
| it.
|
| You can distrust the US government and also think there's
| reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to TikTok
| for domestic or foreign intelligence.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > You can distrust the US government and also think there's
| reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to
| TikTok for domestic or foreign intelligence.
|
| I wish people would stop giving me permission to believe two
| things at the same time as a way of pairing
|
| a) the thing with overwhelming evidence that I'm worried
| about and they're trying to minimize, with
|
| b) the thing that there's little evidence for that they're
| trying to get me to believe.
|
| It's a marketing tactic. a) suffers by association with the
| innuendo and rumor of b), and b) is strengthened by being
| associated with the extensive documentation of a).
| nsv wrote:
| They're not giving you permission, they're defending their
| own beliefs. "You" here could be replaced by "one" or "a
| person", similar to the French pronoun "on".
| matsemann wrote:
| Yeah, as an European it almost feels nice to diversify, so US
| agencies&companies don't know _everything_ about me..
| soco wrote:
| In this situation the diversification means _also_ the CCP
| will know everything about you.
| severino wrote:
| But the CCP is not our government, and at least it can mean
| that your government knows less about you.
|
| In the old East Germany, it wasn't a problem that the CIA
| knew everything about you. It was that the Stasi did.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > But the CCP is not our government,
|
| But there are Chinese dissidents and Tibet
| independentists in your country which are at risk, so
| it's OK if China spies on those because "they are not
| your government"?
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/opinions/j-michael-
| cole-o...
| epups wrote:
| So we shouldn't use TikTok because... Chinese dissidents
| who live in the US can be harmed?
| severino wrote:
| I don't think they are at risk while they remain here in
| my country. It's very unlikely that the Chinese
| government decides on a strike against any dissident
| here. That's more typical of the US like they did
| yesterday in Afghanistan.
| angio wrote:
| The US also kidnapped people in Europe to send them to
| torture camps in the middel east. The US military was
| also caught buying location data from muslim prayer apps,
| we can guess how that data was used.
| soco wrote:
| So your example of "US dissident" is the head of a global
| terrorist organization?
| severino wrote:
| China will also call those dissidents terrorists, and
| some may even fill that definition. And we can end up
| agreeing: for example, last month, Sweden decided that
| the political refugees it has been hosting are now
| terrorists and should be extradited, as requested by
| Turkey in exchange of not vetoing the country's accession
| to NATO.
| soco wrote:
| Nobody really cares what they are called, important is
| what happens to them. The ones put bombs and kill people,
| the others say nasty things about a government. This is
| what makes the difference between who got killed by the
| US (because bombs) and who got killed by Putin (because
| ooh critics) or who got killed by the CCP (because ooh
| muslim).
|
| But let's not forget what started the discussion: we play
| here the game of relativization to justify the CCP spying
| on tiktok users. That's all there is to know.
| soco wrote:
| Unless you use some sort of totally de-googlified phone
| (if such a thing exists), it will still be both
| governments knowing everything about you.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| 1 superpower vs 2 superpowers both of questionable morality
| doesn't make a difference.
|
| Don't forget we talk about 6.5 billions humans that US
| already treats as sub-humans as in being entitled to less
| basic human rights than US citizens. If US wants rest of
| the world to actually give a damn lets start with this
| simple issue.
|
| Till then no, I don't care much if also chinese have my
| browsing data.
| soco wrote:
| If you're a civilian on the receiving end of some bombs,
| it doesn't make a big difference indeed. For everyone
| else it does, unless we are taking that high ground
| argument in which everything is doomed and everyone is a
| jerk.
| drno123 wrote:
| Yes, but in the last 20 years, US has actually invaded
| foreign countries (Afganistan, Iraq and Lybia), while PRC
| is only threatening to invade Taiwan.
| bogomipz wrote:
| The PRC is "only threatening" to invade Taiwan? By "only
| threatening" you mean by regularly sending war planes
| into Taiwan's Air Identification Defense Zone[1][2]? Do
| you really believe the line between "only threatening"
| and provoking is wide enough to not be of any concern?
| Also it's curious you left out the whole Uyghur Xinjiang
| internment camps thing out of your comparison between US
| and the PRC.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61642217
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58794094
| AinderS wrote:
| > the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it
| really does just seem like sinophobia
|
| "It's so weird how scared people are of falling under the
| control of a foreign government. Don't they know their own
| government is just as or even _more_ corrupt? "
|
| Granted social media have less influence than a government, but
| that doesn't make the risk go away. And yes, the same logic
| applies to US (social) media in other countries, though the
| relationship between countries should be taken into account
| when assessing that risk. Though that relationship is itself
| influenced by media..
| Animats wrote:
| "Poison pill" is the wrong phrase here. That has a different
| meaning.
|
| TikTok is not a social network. It's a short-form Youtube
| competitor. It's an entertainment system.
|
| China has WeChat, which is much closer to Facebook in style. It's
| mobile-first, which turned out to be a good decision. It handles
| messaging, shopping, ads, banking... It's a closed replacement
| for the Web. TikTok is mostly push, for timepass (a useful term
| from India), and WeChat is mostly pull, for doing stuff. Users
| have both, and they don't compete much.
|
| Facebook is trying to be both, and is now doing both badly.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > TikTok is not a social network
|
| I mean... it's made up of people "socializing", just through
| videos.
|
| People dancing to trends, doing duets.
|
| "hey what's your tiktok so I can see what you post/who you
| follow/what you like/what defines you as a person socially
| partially"
|
| It for sure has a social aspect.
|
| It's kind of splitting hairs to say it isn't a social network.
| I agree. It isn't Facebook. I'm not catching up with relatives
| in the DMs of TikTok.
|
| But scrolling through "people" and what they post certainly
| does feel social. People can build a brand for themselves (good
| or bad).
|
| You can interact by commenting + tagging / @ mentioning users,
| that can lead to jokes/followup videos, etc.
|
| Trends/dances/sounds/songs can go viral. What makes something
| viral? People thinking it's viral.
|
| Sounds like social/society to me.
| kart23 wrote:
| Bring back google+. oh wait, I guess we really can't trust anyone
| with user data.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Google_data_breach
|
| >In October 2018, the Wall Street Journal published an article
| outlining the initial breach and Google's decision to not
| disclose it to users.[18] At the time, there was no federal law
| that required Google to inform their consumers of data breaches.
| Google+ originally did not disclose the breach out of fears of
| being compared to Facebook's recent data leak and subsequent loss
| of consumer confidence.[4] In response to the Wall Street Journal
| article, Google announced the shutdown of Google+ in August 2019.
| Thorrez wrote:
| What is the definition of a breach? Are all vulnerabilities
| considered breaches? If a website finds a vulnerability in
| their code, fixes it, and doesn't find any evidence of attack,
| do they generally tell the public about that?
|
| Disclosure: I work at Google, but never on Google+.
| leksak wrote:
| Depends on the vulnerability. It might be prudent to disclose
| it so users have the freedom to, for instance, change their
| passwords elsewhere as most people do indeed reuse passwords.
|
| I'm not sure how this metaphor holds up under scrutiny but
| disclosing all vulnerabilities might be akin to considering
| yourself having had a break-in every time you forgot to lock
| the door.
| lrem wrote:
| From the linked article:
|
| > unauthorized access to private users' names, emails,
| addresses, occupations, genders and ages.
|
| Dislaimer: I work in Google, but don't know anything about
| the breach that isn't in the linked article.
| cudgy wrote:
| "... we just might be left with more breathing room for smaller,
| more authentic, more human online engagements."
|
| Like talking and writing directly to a chosen audience of friends
| instead of acting as an unpaid or low paid content creator /
| publisher for a social media company?
|
| Any examples of recent apps that might accomplish this goal pf
| authentic human online engagements? Seems like the difficulty is
| getting enough users on a platform to facilitate a broad level of
| interests without a company being tempted to turning their users
| into neurological lab rats to be milked for ad revenue.
| Siira wrote:
| Telegram channels/groups are good for this.
| carapace wrote:
| It's not recent but IRC is good for authentic human online
| engagements.
| bigtunacan wrote:
| Vibely comes to mind
|
| https://www.vibely.io/
| fullshark wrote:
| Legacy media has been openly rooting for FB to die or lose
| influence for about 8 years now. Nice for the author to reveal
| their desire for this openly on their own blog.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| TikTok is having longer and longer videos. TikTok will become
| something else. The machine learning only works for short videos.
| For long videos, you need social graphs to match videos to users
| who like them. I expect that both technologies will be combined.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Why do you need social graphs for long videos? I'm not sure why
| that would be the case.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| It's becoming more popular to start a long video with a short
| teaser but in general, long videos need some time to reveal
| their value. If you show long videos randomly to everybody
| then the perceived noise increases which may reduce user
| engagement.
| vecter wrote:
| > _For long videos, you need social graphs to match videos to
| users who like them._
|
| YouTube is all about long videos and there is basically zero
| social graph on there.
| mal-2 wrote:
| Does YouTube organic discovery work for anyone besides
| toddlers? I can't remember a time I was suggested or
| autoplayed a video that I actually was interested in.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| Right now, YT doesn't have competition, but they will have to
| improve once TikTok has the content.
|
| According to his parallel discussion [1], suggestions on YT
| were much better.
|
| [1]
|
| Ask HN: Why has quality of YouTube reduced drastically?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32328207
| everdrive wrote:
| I do hate the equivocating between Tiktok and other social media
| services. (eg: "Well, isn't TikTok just as bad as what Facebook
| is doing?")
|
| But that said, the use of the term "poison pill" is excellent,
| and something that I've been using to describe modern tech in
| general. It'd be wrong to say that Google maps is "bad." Really,
| it's incredibly convenient. But it's got a poison pill: it tracks
| you obsessively, it can be used in a geofence warrant, etc. You
| could say the same for facebook. It's quite convenient to be able
| to contact everyone from your life, but it's got a poison pill:
| (Fill in all the complaints about Facebook over the last 10
| years.)
|
| I bring this up only because we often get caught between a simple
| binary: are things better now, or were they better in the past?
| Usually it's both: one component of things was better in the
| past, and one component of things is better now.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can still use the ways of the past (paper maps, etc).
|
| The fact that we don't, show we think the new ways are, on
| balance, better.
| psyc wrote:
| It shows that we don't think the poison pill is going to
| poison us.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >on balance, better
|
| I think this is somewhat true. It's definitely more
| accessible, which makes it better in the sense that more
| people can use it because it is simpler.
|
| It's not immediately obvious how to use a paper map. There's
| a lot of information in there that one has to either know or
| learn how to interpret. Sitting down with a stack of paper
| maps and planning out a route is more complicated than
| letting the googlemachine tell you what to do and how to get
| there. But, if you're a certain type of person, there is a
| definite thrill about making the plans, marking out your
| route, and doing this interactively with another person (who
| will be the navigator) that is a bit lost in the translation
| to digital.
|
| While the googlemachine may tell you about all of the
| restaurants or interesting sites along the way (that it knows
| about, or that have paid for prominent placement), it won't
| give the sense of adventure that "we'll figure it out when we
| get there" does, even if "figuring it out" means asking the
| waitress at the un-googleable diner over pie.
|
| Paper maps have a lot of advantages, but it takes work, and
| you have to be willing to accept that your seat-of-the-pants
| judgements about where to eat won't have the data-driven
| information of crowd-sourced reviews, so you might get a
| crappy meal or two.
| everdrive wrote:
| Maybe so, but I think a sugar/calorie analogy is useful here.
|
| "The fact that we [on average prefer unhealthy foods], show
| we think the new ways are, on balance, better."
|
| We might think so, but our preferences are often short-
| sighted and destructive.
| xmprt wrote:
| I don't think anyone's arguing that the new ways are better.
| However, it's not clear that we're going in the right
| direction and instead we're stuck in a local maximum. Maybe
| if we took a step back and had mapping provided as an open
| source service with offline maps then we wouldn't have the
| current problems with Google Maps (real-time traffic data can
| be queried anonymously). Or maybe if we designed streets that
| were easier to navigate we wouldn't need maps in the first
| place.
| dqpb wrote:
| TikTok is cringe
| nr2x wrote:
| Twitter seems to be going a similar route. I barely recognize my
| feed, it's 50% I don't follow, and 25% content I think is idiotic
| and harmful.
| markstos wrote:
| The Reddit app is changing, too. My "Home" feed used to be only
| communities I follow, now it adds algorithmic content that I
| constantly have to say "less of this". It used to be only the
| "Popular" and "News" tabs were algorithmic, but now the "Home"
| tab increasingly is too.
|
| For me, it's worse and I open Reddit less.
| nr2x wrote:
| Same! I hate the fact companies can't understand they fill a
| specific niche.
| mattwest wrote:
| Reading through the comments, I see so much focus on specific
| companies and the occasional focus on social media as a whole.
| You gotta keep zooming out if you want to understand the true
| issue which is the "attention economy".
|
| Just stop participating in the attention economy. Well that's
| impossible of course, but seriously try to minimize your
| participation. It's a system designed to glean consumer
| preferences and then engineer marketing strategies for optimal
| sales. We don't need it. Stop over-consuming and stop feeding the
| system.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32273083 - July 2022 (441
| comments)
| notacoward wrote:
| > we just might be left with more breathing room for smaller,
| more authentic, more human online engagements.
|
| HAHAHAHAHA no. What we'll end up with is a different behemoth or
| small set of behemoths indistinguishable in their behavior from
| predecessors. Meet the old boss, same as the old boss. (The
| longer I live, the more prescient that verse seems.) And in this
| case, the behemoth will be in a country that is even more willing
| than the US to exert control over such companies. Not really a
| great deal for anyone except TikTok's owners.
| Milank wrote:
| It's the flow of nature. Nothing lasts forever.
|
| Looking from addiction perspective, TikTok is even worse. But, as
| the author said, it's more shallow, so it should be easier to
| move away from.
|
| I hope that people (or at least majority) will find a way to move
| from this mindless fun and finally start using all the technology
| we have at our disposal in some more meaningful way.
| mal-2 wrote:
| Many recent boycotts and other activist causes have achieved
| critical mass through organizing on TikTok. A ton of content
| there is historical and educational. People misunderstand
| short-form as shallow and that has never sit right with me. I
| find creators on TikTok to often go deeper and communicate more
| clearly than the cacophony of text posts on reddit or Facebook.
| Milank wrote:
| It's true that you can find useful content on TikTok.
|
| But, let's be realistic - percentage of people using TikTok
| to learn something is... probably negligible.
|
| But there's an example on how the technology can be used in
| good purpose.
| mal-2 wrote:
| Yeah I don't have numbers to back it up so I can't say for
| certain. I wouldn't agree it's negligible though, because I
| often am served educational content that's not an interest
| of mine (eg nutrition, DIY repair, writing). So the
| algorithm knows that content is desirable to some users,
| but is testing if I'm personally interested. Anecdotally I
| am constantly hearing friends talk about stuff they
| 'learned on TikTok'. Qualitatively, the content
| consistently seems more serious and useful than content I
| see on YouTube, Twitter, or Reddit. So my experience of
| TikTok has been that it's a mixture of entertainment and
| serious discussion. I think that balance is a large part of
| why it's so engaging.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Do you have any basis for your negligible statement?
|
| About half the videos I watch on TT are 'educational'
| RektBoy wrote:
| Nooo please leave Tiktok be, they didn't do anything wrong....
|
| _cough_ _cough_ OSINT treasure trove _cough_ _cough_
| est wrote:
| because collecting meme video feeds are vital to OSINT.
| yorwba wrote:
| People upload all kinds of stuff. I remember seeing videos
| with a TikTok watermark of Russian military equipment being
| moved towards the Ukrainian border before the invasion.
|
| E.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shows-russian-
| troop-b...
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Near the beginning of the war, I saw a reuploaded Tiktok of
| this Ukrainian girl hopping into an abandoned Russian tank
| and figuring out how to drive it.
| maven29 wrote:
| Let's hope we do linkedin next.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Something I've never understood about these pivots from
| successful, revenue generating products. Sure, some users will
| leave Instagram for Tiktok. But isn't it a different product?
| Wouldn't Meta have been better off creating a new product and
| integrating it with Instagram, rather than killing the golden
| goose?
|
| This kind of thing seems to happen really often.
| sct202 wrote:
| They had an app called Lasso a couple years ago that they shut
| down, I don't know anyone who actually used it though.
| prawn wrote:
| Adjusting your product means you don't start your userbase from
| scratch, but I do agree that I'd prefer they start a fresh
| product and leverage the userbase to promote it.
|
| But I think it's easier for them to centralise advertising
| operations where possible and steer the most malleable and
| lucrative audience rather than appease (what they thought of
| as) a minority of people.
| djaychela wrote:
| From what I've read, Meta's strategy (and valuation) ultimately
| relies on 'ubiquity' (as they put it) - where everyone on earth
| has a Meta account and uses it. The stall in user growth is
| accompanied by a massive decrease in the company's valuation as
| a result of this, so they do the classic "what's working for
| the competition" action.
|
| I've not had a FB account for years, and didn't use it other
| than for messenger for years before that, but when I was on
| there, I felt that most of their growth came from 'copy what
| other sites are doing, extinguish the competition by doing
| this' strategy, as everyone is on facebook anyway. It's worked
| for them so far, just now it's a bigger shift to try to emulate
| TikTok rather than try to destroy local ads sites or small
| business site hosting.
| throwfh80h82 wrote:
| They can't really be relying on 100% market share. Is this
| hyperbole? Or real?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > The stall in user growth is accompanied by a massive
| decrease in the company's valuation
|
| That's because of unrealistic expectation from the stock
| market, not due to the company's health. A stall in user
| growth means a limit to the company size, and investors were
| betting that after the IPO Facebook (that was already used by
| a large share of the humanity) would still grow by two orders
| of magnitude.
| rr888 wrote:
| I'm not into Tik Tok style videos. I recently really cut back
| using both Instagram and FB because they're just showing me
| humorous videos and not why I used those apps.
| notatoad wrote:
| is there any evidence that the pivots actually "kill the golden
| goose"? facebook has a long history of making product changes
| that initially cause a lot of complaining from existing users.
|
| they seem to be making a bet that existing users are addicted
| enough to the product that a change to it won't drive them
| away. and so far that seems to have worked for them.
| trebbble wrote:
| Facebook's changes have taken a whole lot of users from "I am
| on here because it's useful and I actively like it" to "I am
| on here only because of inertia and network effects, but
| dislike it and will be happy when I can get rid of it"
|
| May not have killed the golden goose yet, but they've sure
| sharpened the axe, stretched the neck over the block, and
| drawn a little X right in the middle.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| There has been push back against the more algorithmic content
| they are pushing because it gets in the way of the post of
| people you follow. I use Instagram to follow some artists and
| design companies, and it's frustrating when every other post
| is not the people I follow, but some bad influencer vaguely
| related to your interests begging for likes and follows.
| Previously, they had suggested posts after you scrolled a bit
| or after you've caught up with everyone you follow.
| Havoc wrote:
| Launching something new and separate inherently means starting
| with zero user base.
| fragmede wrote:
| I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg could use his influence at Facebook,
| Instagram, and WhatsApp to get a few users to try out a new
| app he coded up over the weekend.
| draw_down wrote:
| HaloZero wrote:
| They already have a tab called Reels inside of Instagram, I
| tried using it instead of TikTok and it was fucking awful at
| trying to learn what videos I liked. It seems that they're just
| gonna force the video format on everyone in order to get better
| learning data?
| IshKebab wrote:
| The "what are my friends up to?" golden goose of Facebook is
| long dead. The "news feed" is already not really news about
| your friends so I guess it doesn't matter that they're
| admitting that and explicitly turning it into something like
| Tiktok.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I hope the author is right, and a social evolution toward more
| open networks would necessarily be the culmination of many
| factors, but I'm optimistically skeptical. TikTok is like a drug,
| it is an algorithm that unabashedly and almost directly induces
| an emotional state. It is similar to amphetamine, opioids, slot
| machines in that it distils almost to purity the traits needed to
| solely perform this function. These other addictive things have
| been around a long time. There's no reason to expect tiktok (or
| the concept of algorithm interfacing with human to produce
| chemical happiness) to go away.
|
| That said, I hope so. I hope that these other empty social
| bahemoths chase tiktok to irrelevance, I hope the population gets
| burned out on the empty calories, but history tells us that this
| won't happen really. Some people, enough to keep it all going,
| just can't stop no matter how miserable it makes them.
| thih9 wrote:
| > If platforms like Facebook and Instagram abandon their social
| graphs to pursue this cybernetic TikTok model, they'll lose their
| competitive advantage.
|
| Is it really a competitive advantage if a competitor is doing
| better without it?
| meltyness wrote:
| Cal has apparently confused his own language here.
|
| A graph of details about rich media is still, in some sense, a
| social graph.
|
| Rather than documenting: who do you know? when did you meet
| them?
|
| Capturing: what do you know? when did you learn it? who did you
| learn it from? what do you call it? how should it be presented?
| And so on...
| lopis wrote:
| > A graph of details about rich media is still, in some
| sense, a social graph.
|
| Yes, but it's a kind of graph that the user can generate from
| zero without needing friends or following anyone. It's not
| social from the user's POV.
| pantulis wrote:
| I fail to follow Cal's argument. It seems that he is
| abandoning his "digital detox" doctrine towards privacy.
|
| If the issue with social networks is the time we waste on
| them, why would an algorithmically generated feed be less
| addictive than a social network feed?
| Balgair wrote:
| I didn't read that Cal is arguing that one should use TT
| over FB.
|
| I think he's just pointing out that FB's change into a TT-
| like graph isn't in their wheelhouse. FB built up a social
| graph. TT has built up an attention profile. Though they
| look similar, Cal is saying they are different. FB will be
| starting from the near bottom and years behind.
| bink wrote:
| I don't think it matters much whether it's in their
| wheelhouse or not or whether they succeed or not. What
| matters is that transitioning away from the social graph
| is abandoning their moat, the very thing that keeps them
| a monopoly in social media. Once that's gone it'll be a
| level playing field and they are unlikely to survive for
| long.
| Banana699 wrote:
| The competitor is not doing better _because_ of its
| disadvantage, it is doing better _despite_ it. The space of
| apps is high dimensional, (what used to be) Facebook 's niche
| is a very obvious local optima that it filled early on and
| locked away from past and future competitors. Tiktok was forced
| to find another non-obvious local optima and it did.
|
| Facebook also have long abandoned their competitive advantage
| with their outrage porn focused recommendations since at least
| 2015/2016, they were just doing it badly. Tiktok is showing
| them how it's better done.
| meltyness wrote:
| I wouldn't call it better, TikTok isn't presently obligated
| to care about their market, however.
|
| Wheras YouTube recommendations are seen as exploitable by an
| adversary to undermine ad revenue and platform trust, TikTok
| has the benefit of being "nascent" with a "runway" to survive
| without a real business model, on the relative strength of
| the current user base.
|
| This isn't a new frontier, and ByteDance hasn't solved the
| robustness problem, they're just receiving the going discount
| on ignoring it. It'll work itself out.
| jsemrau wrote:
| The social graph is a terrible approximation of personal
| interests.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Yup. It's not that an echo chamber is inevitable; for me,
| finding something interesting that's not represented among my
| social graph is more likely to be viral/marketable/attractive
| than something circulating among the most-active 5%. TikTok
| doesn't need that graph on an individual's scale.
| jsemrau wrote:
| Hence, it so much more resembles "real life". And I think
| that's where TikTok thrives, it is a single player
| experience with networked features. Similar to going window
| shopping in a Mall with Billions of windows.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Who writes this?
|
| > If TikTok acts as the poison pill that finally cripples the
| digital dictators that for so long subjugated the web 2.0
| revolution ...
|
| "Digital dictators"? "Web 2.0 revolution"? Seriously?
|
| Behind this self-congratulatory word ooze there is a point: the
| market will "solve" the Facebook "problem". In a decade we've had
| 2 existential threats to FB (the other being IG). That's just not
| a monopoyl that requires immediate government action.
|
| The social graph will still have value but I think people
| overstate its importance. Tiktok (as noted) didn't rely on it to
| grow. And neither did Twitter. Nor Reddit.
|
| Tiktok's UI/UX is really top notch. It reminds me of the IG of
| old before Facebook's Directors of Product Management really sunk
| their MBA claws into it.
|
| There are legitimate security concerns with Tiktok however. The
| US still has a level of separation between corporations and the
| government that China doesn't. Chinese companies are extensions
| of the state. if anything, the US government is an extension of
| US corporations rather than the other way around. But there's
| still a level of separation and rule of law nad order in the US.
|
| But here's an even bigger issue: trade. Specifically, China
| cheating on trade. I support reciprocity here. China blocks
| access to its market to the likes of Google and Facebook. This is
| protectionist and I personally have no issue with the US doing
| the same to Chinese companies.
| aaronsimpson wrote:
| The question I have - at what point do Instagram and Facebook
| converge such to the point that it's not even worth having them
| as separate apps anymore? At a certain point, I imagine Meta
| would like these apps to all combine into one united "Meta" app.
| idomi wrote:
| I doubt it, they got too much traction at this stage.
| drewda wrote:
| When I read that article in the New Yorker, I did find it odd
| that a long piece all about video platforms didn't mention
| YouTube. I can see that the writer wants to make a more specific
| argument about "social graph" vs. "public" approaches to social
| media platforms. But YouTube is such a successful version of the
| latter.
| FeaturelessBug wrote:
| It's really aggravating to me because I use different social
| media sites for different purposes. I understand that our current
| business model revolves around making more and more money, but if
| all of the social media sites are the same then they won't be
| making any money because people won't want to deal with multiple
| accounts.
| everyone wrote:
| All these social media things are pure crap. Who cares.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| TL;DR "all my friends are here" becomes less of a lock-in factor
| with TikTok-like model (as social graph becomes unimportant). If
| others follow suit, losing lock-in advantage might encourage
| competitors in the industry.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Wow. An article about TikTok that has the word poison in it, that
| is not actually anti-TikTok. How far we have gone.
|
| And yes! TikTok is how we break the shackles of big tech. TikTok
| on its own we can handle. But a Facebook backed by the full force
| of the US military surveillance industrial complex. That is going
| to kill off the whole planet.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Yes the metaphorical poison pill is being ingested by Facebook
| and Instagram.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Yes. It is incredible. They have all the money in the world,
| the best advisers, you can buy. Yet they do something this
| stupid.
| computerfriend wrote:
| TikTok is Big Tech. Neither will "kill off the whole planet",
| but it is so crazy to me that someone who can hate Facebook and
| the "US military surveillance industrial complex" can
| consequentially support TikTok.
|
| You don't actually have a problem with big tech or
| surveillance, you have a problem with the US.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Of importance: it has been revealed several times that user
| identification and data collection has been used for
| malicious purposes by US intelligence agencies (see NSA and
| CIA leaks a few years ago)
|
| The same has not been proved for China. There have only been
| accusations by the US government, followed by an absolute
| reluctance and failure to provide any proof whatsoever.
|
| The US accuses China of being a bad actor engaging in data
| surveillance, refuses to back up accusations, and then
| commits the very same act themselves. The very definition of
| dishonesty and hypocrisy.
| bigtunacan wrote:
| This isn't really news, many countries collect data on
| their own citizens in expanding ways.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/a
| c...
|
| TikTok almost certainly receives requests from various
| governments to collect data no differently from
| Facebook/Google/Verizon etc..
|
| I think it's not a question of if China is doing this as
| well; certainly they are. No politician is going to
| publicly say though, "Look we know China is collecting data
| on you from TikTok because, uh duh, that's what we do with
| all of your US based social media posts."
|
| I also don't think our government is all that directly
| concerned that China is monitoring. I think the concern is
| more on how the data and the outside control of the
| platform might be used to influence public opinions.
| Election tampering and the like.
| Apfel wrote:
| There's an awful lot of cases of people being "disappeared"
| based on what they've said in WeChat group messages or
| friend feeds.
|
| Similarly, the PSBs in some cities have used social media
| contacts as a means of working out which foreign English
| teachers to do impromptu drug testing on.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Indeed. Here in Europe, the Chinese we can handle, for the US
| we have to bend the knee.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Against Chinese we have pretty good buffer zone. Same can't
| be said for a country that continues to murder innocent
| civilians around the world with drone strikes. And
| forcefully extradite foreigners...
| jollybean wrote:
| TikTok is backed by a Chinese giant, financed by massive
| Chinese banks which are de facto arms of the Chinse government
| and wherein Xi can intervene directly.
|
| So this is as 'big brother' as it gets.
|
| Edit:
|
| "Government "golden shares", tiny investments that give a high
| degree of control over companies, have been rumoured for years;
| only recently have they been disclosed in the likes of Weibo
| and ByteDance." [1]
|
| "In April 2021, a state-owned enterprise owned by the
| Cyberspace Administration of China, the China Internet
| Investment Fund, took a partial ownership stake in ByteDance's
| main Chinese entity and placed a government official, Wu
| Shugang, on its board of directors" [2]
|
| "ByteDance's China business has a strategic partnership with
| the Chinese Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's
| public relations efforts.[ In 2019, ByteDance formed joint
| ventures with Beijing Time, a publisher controlled by the
| Beijing municipal CCP committee"
|
| "Yiming issued a letter stating that the app was
| "incommensurate with socialist core values" and promised that
| ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the
| authorities to promote their policies.Following the shutdown,
| ByteDance announced that it would give preference to Chinese
| Communist Party members in its hiring and increase its censors
| from 6,000 to 10,000 employees."
|
| "In April 2022, ByteDance announced that it would report users'
| content on Toutiao and Douyin that engaged in "historical
| nihilism" in contradiction of official CCP history"
|
| ... the list goes on ...
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/business/chinas-communist-
| authorit...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance#cite_note-48
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Twitter and Meta's social graphs competitive advantage will still
| be there with tiktok like features, what screws them is the dream
| of growth and every new person having a FB account. If tiktok
| doesn't have a social graph or relies on one, it looks like
| there's a gap in the space of FB for the gen Z. Also the title is
| confusing, I thought Bytedance had a poison pill in a sense it
| has some governance or legal means to dissuade would be
| acquirors.
| reggieband wrote:
| TikTok scares me in the same way that DALL-E scare me.
|
| DALL-E is very, very good, but still obviously flawed. But behind
| the flaws I know it will get better. Like the original iPhone vs.
| the crazy powerful phones we have now. Or the original 3d games
| like Doom or Duke Nukem 3d compared to modern PC graphics. Or the
| insane quality of modern movie CGI. In 5 years or 10 years this
| AI tech to generate incredible images will advance at a similar
| pace. (Shout out to GPT-3 in this space as well)
|
| I don't think we fully understand how TikTok is connecting to our
| subconscious but it is doing it in a way that most people agree
| is unsettling. And we are at the very beginning of this journey.
| There is no way to predict if this is going to be good or bad
| without us doing it. And every company now realizes that it is
| both easy to achieve and tremendously effective.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > DALL*E: Creating Images from Text
|
| https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/
|
| for anybody else out of the loop
| angio wrote:
| It's interesting to read this article from March [0] and then
| check the tiktok's coverage on the news after that.
|
| > Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok
|
| > The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the
| country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American
| children.
|
| > "Dream would be to get stories with headlines like 'From dances
| to danger,' " one campaign director said.
|
| [0]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...
| simion314 wrote:
| Related to think t the children, I recently read a few comments
| from women in Romania that told that since around 12-13 years
| old they got on the Facebook page ads promoting those girls to
| work as cam girls. Facebook and their ad network should also be
| analyzed IMO, would make more sense to put all social media
| under the same standards.
|
| Also dudes working in ad industry, tell us why should we not
| install ad blockers when you put this kind of ads in front of
| children? FB knows 100% the user account age so is it
| stupidity? is it "we don't care", "a innocent bug"?
| partiallypro wrote:
| None of this detracts from concerns about Tiktok and the CCP
| though. Just as Microsoft funding anti-Google pieces doesn't
| detract from Google's near monopoly status in online
| advertising. Competitors do that all the time, you can't let
| that be a distraction from what the underlying problems are.
| angio wrote:
| Most of these articles single out TikTok when they apply to
| all big tech companies. Clearly the call should be for better
| privacy protection laws that protect all citizens from all
| present and future tech companies.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Name another big tech plugged directly into the Chinese
| Government.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| Tencent?
| tobylane wrote:
| Huawei, but I think your question was about social media
| platform owners.
|
| Other platform owners are bad, I don't need them to be
| equal to China before doing something about it.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Other platform owners are bad, I don't need them to be
| equal to China before doing something about it._
|
| I agree. But by the same token, we don't need to do
| something about the others before doing something about
| TikTok. Where would we be today if we accepted the
| argument that before addressing tobacco companies we must
| first address alcohol companies, and before addressing
| alcohol companies, we must first address tobacco
| companies?
|
| Arguing that X shouldn't be regulated because Y is not
| yet regulated is never a legitimate argument.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > ... before addressing tobacco companies we must first
| address alcohol companies
|
| > Arguing that X shouldn't be regulated because Y is not
| yet regulated is never a legitimate argument.
|
| Either you've got the question wrong, or your position is
| more disagreeable than you think. It seems to me that the
| question is whether Chinese X should be regulated when
| American X is not regulated. It is still technically X vs
| Y but the justification is far less obvious to me (when
| compared to justifying that we can regulate tobacco
| despite a lack of regulation of alcohol).
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The problem with _" not X until Y"_ arguments against
| regulation is you can swap the Y and X around depending
| on the context of the conversation and use this to
| disingenuously argue against all regulation while
| pretending you're only interested in fairness.
| williamscales wrote:
| Baidu?
| crakhamster01 wrote:
| As engineers, it often feels like enforcing one policy
| regardless of the actor is the best solution, but I think
| it breaks down in practice.
|
| For example, imagine if your email password was given out
| to two individuals - one is your significant other, and the
| other is a random dude on the internet. In theory, good
| password hygiene should be maintained no matter who the
| individual is. In practice I would be (and should be)
| vastly more worried about this random dude than my partner.
|
| Trying to figure out a generalized solution for big tech
| may prove to be too hard, and is frankly a waste of time
| when there's a credible geopolitical threat on our
| doorstep.
| mncharity wrote:
| > These bare-knuckle tactics, long commonplace in the world of
| politics, have become increasingly noticeable within a tech
| industry
|
| Has WaPo every managed a similar article on Hollywood
| catalyzing attacks on tech? Or maybe that's the commonplace
| politics... Still, nice to see mention of press coverage
| artifice.
| rrdharan wrote:
| See also: https://searchengineland.com/microsoft-funding-anti-
| google-t...
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