[HN Gopher] EU opens formal investigation into TikTok over possi...
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EU opens formal investigation into TikTok over possible online
content breaches
Author : dev_tty01
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-02-19 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| HermitX wrote:
| The subtle influence of TikTok on people is quite astonishing. I
| believe that there should also be antitrust laws in the field of
| communication. Otherwise, platforms like TikTok can gradually
| change people's thoughts, making their ideas more uniform. The
| government should not control people's thoughts, nor should any
| giant company control people's thoughts.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Governments should invest more into education to train kids to
| actively seek and sense their cognitive biases. I think this is
| the only serious solution, punishing or baning platforms just
| addresses symptoms.
|
| To tackle filter bubbles, you need digital competence, which is
| also an educational problem.
| kyleplum wrote:
| I wish someone would make a social media version of the North
| American house hippo commercial that ran in the late 90's.
| dmonitor wrote:
| i don't think awareness of reward training through
| likes/engagement makes you any more resilient to it
| earthwalker99 wrote:
| yeah, one has to actually be rewarded appropriately for
| their effort to learn such habits, but capitalism considers
| it more important to reward owners of capital for doing
| nothing at all, so we do that instead.
| gameman144 wrote:
| What would you imagine an appropriate reward for such
| efforts would be, other than intrinsic ones?
| earthwalker99 wrote:
| giving parents time off to spend with their kids would be a
| lot more effective. the schools can't even teach basic
| material to poor kids because their home lives are so
| lacking.
| psychlops wrote:
| Given any problem, someone will always find a government
| solution.
| vdaea wrote:
| I've seen this done in Spain and basically it means all kids
| have to go through an entire year of progressive propaganda.
| Thanks but no thanks.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Will this actually work? If anything people will just think
| they are too smart to be influenced.
| psychlops wrote:
| > The subtle influence of TikTok on people is quite
| astonishing.
|
| On _some_ people, not all. There will always be a susceptible
| portion of people who gravitate towards some influence. Today
| it is TikTok.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >platforms like TikTok can gradually change people's thoughts,
| making their ideas more uniform
|
| Its nothing special to TikTok, the only difference of TikTok is
| that for the USA its a first(as a foreign owned social media
| company). The rest of the world was under the influence of Meta
| and Google for decades. It was reported that Facebook did
| experiments like making people sad by curating the feed.
|
| Anyway, TikTok is working great for me. I see no political or
| culture war content, I enjoy comedians, travellers, scientists,
| culture, culture commentators, songs, hot women and cats. Its
| like the good old days of the internet, its fantastic. Also,
| unlike the traditional social media, it doesn't induce FOMO. I
| don'y check TikTok all the day, I don't feel the urge to be on
| top of my feed but once I'm in I can spend hours. Much more
| healthier than Instagram or Twitter IMHO. Also, I see all the
| cringe inducing TikTok stuff when on Twitter. That stuff never
| appears on my TikTok feed.
|
| I wonder if EU will find anything. maybe sharing of private
| data illegally?
| snowpid wrote:
| There are reports of rising antisemitism thanks to Tiktok e.
| G. https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bildungsstaette-anne-frank-
| pr...
| mrtksn wrote:
| There were also reports about rising extremism because of
| Youtube, it was discussed many times here. Also, do I have
| to remind of the state of Twitter? Wasn't Facebook involved
| in an actual genocide[0]? Maybe its just the society
| evolving and engagement based algorithms accelerating it?
|
| As I said, I don't see political content on TikTok but
| that's probably due to my engagement patters. People who
| are into these things, they likely see as much as they
| like.
|
| I do agree that social media can be a danger to the society
| though. IMHO, the solution to this shouldn't be suppression
| of speech or tune algorithms to favor any politics. After
| all, the world is never simple as the good vs the evil,
| even though every party tries really hard to depict
| themselves as the good ones.
|
| I think we would be better off with enforcing transparency.
| I would love if EU made TikTok open its algorithm and
| enforce review on the data that the algo runs on.
|
| [0] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-
| faceb...
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Wasn't Facebook involved in an actual genocide[0]?
| Maybe its just the society evolving and engagement based
| algorithms accelerating it?
|
| The algorithms seem to feed people what they like, so
| people with fringe ideas think they have a lot of
| support. Matched together with mob mentality, threaten
| and "downvote" dissenters, which makes the "downvoted"
| people believe they are fringe, I can easily see how
| Facebook at least increases the risk of genocide mobs, or
| any other obscene herd mentality action.
|
| Like, people that are considered maniacs by their peers,
| can more easily find each other and organize,
| fundamentally. And the algorithm does it for them.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Maybe its just that we as species are not able to act
| intelligently as large groups? Maybe we have tools to
| deal with bad actors in small groups but those tools
| don't exist in the artificial large networks? Maybe those
| networks are structured in such a way that we can't act
| in any other way and participate? Maybe being flamboyant
| hustler is the only succeeding strategy?
|
| I don't know but I' definitely not happy with the current
| state.
| snowpid wrote:
| I glad your engagement pattern doesn't lead you to
| antisemitic content According to the DSA researcher will
| get access to Tik tok. We might have more data in the
| future.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I get all my antisemitism from Twitter. Good thing that
| words are not spells, I might have turned into one.
| toyg wrote:
| That sort of cry reminds me of the '80s "Dungeons and
| Dragons turn children satanists!!!"...
| snowpid wrote:
| Except there is rising antisetism in Germany (source of
| the report) and according to media reports there is
| rising antisemitism in the US which is the source of your
| phrase.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Antisemitism might be rising due to many things, like an
| ongoing event where huge number of civilians, including
| children are killed. That kind of stuff can make people
| angry and emotional and direct it towards a group of
| people instead of politicians. It's beyond me why anyone
| would attribute it to social media company.
|
| If there was no TikTok/Twitter etc, people would have
| heard of it from politicians and NGOs and some people
| with other motives would have used it.
| snowpid wrote:
| Can you eloberate why the Gazian Israelian war is linked
| to planned terror attacks with bombs on Synogogs in
| Berlin? Also this link can be seen on Tik Tok so they
| become more antisemetic.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I have no idea if it is linked or if so why would it be
| linked on that particular incident. What I see on Twitter
| though, is that people get angry and seek answers when
| people they feel connected to are wronged and there are
| always people providing answers like "because Jews are
| like that".
|
| I wouldn't say that this is necessarily Twitters fault
| and I don't think these comments should be blocked.
| People gravitate towards easy answers to their problems
| and blocking doesn't help because there's private groups
| and real life communities where that kind of stuff is
| discussed.
|
| I think, people concerned of social media are also
| seeking easy answers like those concerned with the mass
| killings of Palestinians. They all have valid concerns
| but their desire of easy solutions is misguided. It's so
| easy to say its the "evil jews" and its so easy to say
| that social media companies are radicalising people. Only
| if they can do this thing they will fix it, they think.
|
| There's no easy solution to Gaza-Israel conflict, there's
| no easy solution to people communicating BS with each
| other.
| victornomad wrote:
| Germany got a bit off-rails during the last months. Any
| critique towards Israel's actions it is called
| antisemitism.
|
| As an example, this event organised by jewish people to
| talk about peace have been marked as antisemite by the
| government and lead to funding cancellation of a cultural
| center.
|
| https://oyoun.de/en/news/offener-brief-oyoun-muss-
| bleiben/
| snowpid wrote:
| 1.) The study is about antisemitism in Germany. There are
| Hamas supporters who plan terror attacks against
| synagogues and churches. 2.) Just somebody claimed to be
| canceled is not objectely canceled. 3.) this institution
| invitated people who have a positive and supportive view
| on 7 October massacre, source
| https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/neukollner-
| kulturzentrum-... 4.) It's about governmental funding.
| They still operate but why should my tax money put into
| this institution who have a positive attitude to
| massacres.
|
| Can you read German or does your knowledge is based on
| English sources on this topic?
| DaveExeter wrote:
| I think you've identified the real problem with Tiktok! It
| is resistant to political censorship.
| snarfy wrote:
| I recall during the last election cycle I would always see
| divisive posts from friends on facebook. Facebook has me
| marked as liberal. I would always see rather inflammatory
| posts from conservative friends.
|
| What bothered me was that those same friends would post
| dozens of times a day about non political things, posts that
| would get a lot of comments and likes. I _never_ saw those
| posts unless I went directly to their page. Facebook only put
| their posts on my feed which would be inflammatory.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't mind political content even from fringe ideologies.
| I'm actually curious why people think what they think, why
| people do what they do. I know the arguments of "my side"
| and I want to know the "other side".
|
| That's why I still use Twitter but my problem with the
| traditional social media is that it constantly induces
| anger in me.
|
| Lately, I also begin seeing too much bullying, the red pill
| alpha male stuff that constantly argues someone is
| bad/immoral/weak if doing this unimportant or mundane thing
| and we are all doomed and this one weird trick can fix
| it(usually crypto, some BS attitude towards someone etc).
| It feels like high school. Just unbearable.
|
| I made myself a few list of people from different view so I
| can be aware of their agenda and argumentation but can't
| stand the "for you" tab.
|
| If Twitter was a real life those people in the "for you"
| tab wouldn't have survived a day among the society, IRL you
| can't just go around and spell BS constantly. There's a
| serious hustler overload in the traditional social media, a
| functioning society doesn't have space for that many
| flamboyant people.
|
| Its exhausting. One Dan Bilzerian may be an entertainment,
| add a Kardashian too maybe but a society of %0.1
| Kardashians is too much. That's not a society. Maybe we
| don't have a real social media anymore due to the
| engagement wars.
| kitd wrote:
| My kids are self-confessed TikTok addicts. They are aware
| that now when they watch YouTube, they get 5 minutes in and
| wonder when the heck it's going to end.
|
| Even they recognize the adverse effect on attention spans.
| ysavir wrote:
| It doesn't help that YouTube was pushing creators towards
| longer and longer videos, resulting in lots of fluff and
| padding to convert a simple idea into an unnecessarily long
| entity for the sake of algorithm rankings.
|
| While lack of attention span is a valid problem, YT has
| also created the problem of attentions not being rewarded.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm happy for you for having good kids but in my experience
| becoming truly self happens much later in life and I think
| your kids are simply thinking in your mental models, which
| I guess makes you a good parent. Not necessarily right
| about TikTok though.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Anyway, TikTok is working great for me.
|
| I mean there are productive members of our society that are
| heroine addicts, the vast majority of heroine addicts aren't
| though
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm much less addicted to TikTok than I'm addicted to HN,
| Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. I will use TikTok
| every few days, usually before sleep because I don't feel
| like something is happening and I'm missing out.
|
| On the other hand, I constantly feel the urge to check
| what's going on in the rest.
|
| Other people may have a different experience but its up to
| them to write about it. I can't speak for them and I'm not
| obligated to repeat the mainstream narrative. TikTok is
| working amazingly well for me.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| China _is_ a special case, as Tiktok does not have the
| oversight of a democracy.
| gwervc wrote:
| The exact same thing can be said about Instagram and the
| US. The fact consumers are summoned once in a while to
| chose in-between two sockpuppets of the establishment
| (corporations + deep state) is of little relevance,
| especially to foreigners like me living under its
| imperialism.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| It matters quite a lot that it's bound by effectively no
| treaties or oversight by the population. Instagram also
| sucks, but there's at least a theoretical path to reining
| it in.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Until "recently" it was only crackpots and dictators that even
| though about controlling social media, by definition -- you
| were one if you raised concerns. At least how I read the
| political climate.
|
| I guess it is good that awareness is raised, but I feel it is
| for the wrong reasons. There can be no major distinction
| between e.g. Facebook and TikTok.
| mypornaccount wrote:
| I have noticed that a lot of people I follow on instagram who
| use tiktok all adopt the exact same opinion of
| $CONTROVERSIAL_TOPIC at roughly the same time.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Relevant reads:
|
| _Manufacturing Consent (1989)_
|
| https://archive.org/details/pdfy-NekqfnoWIEuYgdZl
|
| _Persuasive Technology (1996,2002)_
|
| https://archive.org/details/persuasivetechno0000fogg
| psychlops wrote:
| Old school. Is there a TikTok summary of these?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Unregulated Social Media is a toxic death spiral for human
| relations, just like unregulated capitalism is for humans and the
| environment we share with this planet's inhabitants.
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