Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

nrk.no

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 371 posts

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#181

Post by Jcowell »

tommiegannert wrote: post #55
haliskerbas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this comment and others like it. It's important to also know where the mindshare is. Where are most average individuals spending most of their internet hours? It is likely not niche-blog.com. TikTok is quickly becoming "the internet" for all intenents and purposes for some people. It's also how some folks get their news, etc.

You don't even have to go that far to shoot down GP's argument. The blogs can be censored just like TikTok, as long as ISPs are incorporated in local states. Whether censorship happens by telling TikTok the rules, or telling the ISPs the rules seems inconsequential to the democritized availability of information. Starlink et al. have a unique possibility of being state-agnostic and even leave citizens room for plausi…

Wouldn’t Starlink just be beholden to the US government and it’s laws ?

As I see it no corporation can be state agnostic unless you want a corporation more powerful then states themselves and you don’t want that either because a corporation is not beholden to the people.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#182

Post by BoiledCabbage »

nirui wrote: post #81
dotancohen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat that you're modeling against is not a threat to the internet. The internet is a group of technologies enabling near-realtime dissemination of information. It has no implicit promise of freedom of speech or press, democracy, or any other political ideal. Even the World Wide Web has no such implicit promise. The great democratizing force to which you refer is the ability to publish content, and to an extent…

> It has no implicit promise of freedom of speech or press, democracy, or any other political ideal That's the magic part: you don't have to be explicit to promote certain thing, you just create the ground tech-knowledge to enable the easy access of such thing, and hand everything else over to natural progression. The Internet for example, enables everyone to exchange information with everyone else. That's textbook d…

> The problem about the Internet today, is that most people thinks Amazon+Google+Facebook+Twitter+other big brands is the Internet. They forgot that they can host things themselves without those big tech companies.

With all due respect the problem with the internet is that you (and many others) don't know what the Internet is.

You and many others believe the Internet is what the internet is capable of. It's not. The Internet is exactly what it is to the vast majority of people that use it. And that's Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok...

It doesn't matter that the internet could be what you want it to be, not that it once was. But it's not now, and history isn't on your side - ask usenet or IRC.

So here we are and yet again technologists are shocked or in denial after believing that the existence of a technology would somehow overpower the interests of the powerful and the system they've built - instead of realizing it will be co-opted by them.

The martial arts adage - don't bring a weapon unless you know how to use it / control it. Otherwise it will simply be taken from you and used against you.

If you are a technologist and failing to rigorously think through the negative cases and faults of your tech, or how your tech can be used against the interests of people or society you are a failure of a technologist. It doesn't matter if you're building an ML model, crypto, or a TikTok app.

As an example, where does crypto end?

1. High efficiency money laundering, permitting sanctions evading (like Russia would love to do right now on a massive scale), and the medium for illegal business like digital extortion / ransomware

2. Just as regulated as the existing banking/credit system, centralized in a few exchanges, failing at any anonymity, no better than existing banking and CCs, while using up massive resources.

Neither is any good and yet tons are in denial that that's where we'll end up.

Technology does not exist independent of society at large as much as we'd like it to.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#184

Post by karatinversion »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #154
jl6 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that despite the internet appearing to be an infinite sea of nodes that can all participate in a global village, the reality is that “the media” is the very finite set of nodes that have control of users’ attention. We’re surely all guilty of facilitating this. Forget the global village of a billion voices - the number of news sources I regularly read isn’t even dozens. Anybody can still put up a web ser…

Is there a "Jevons paradox" equivalent for information and media? That is, Jevons paradox states that as efficiency of resource usage improves (e.g. MPG goes up) that usage of that good can also, somewhat paradoxically, also go up, because the relative cost of that good goes down so it can be used in more ways, people can drive further, etc. With information and media, lots of us originally thought that lowering barr…

My take, which is less a paradox and more of a "bitter lesson", is that increases in ability to communicate always lead to increases in centralisation, for the types of reasons you indicate.

The early internet's utopianism took place in the window when the new ability to communicate had not yet been used to effect the new centralisation.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#185

Post by dcchambers »

This is a great visual and concrete example of how easily a narrative can be controlled.

This is but one example of a larger systemic issue with media in the 21st century, and an issue with how people consume that media.

Virtually every platform is like this, not just TikTok. It's not like TikTok tries to present itself as a neutral, unbiased source. Their whole premise is delivering "highly curated" content to you as fast as possible. The problem is that people have accepted that as normal and it's doing horrible things to the world. There's a reason everyone feels like we're the most divided we've ever been...and it starts with things like this.

As far as the war in Ukraine is concerned, this is just like classic WW2 propaganda but turned up to 11 due to the nature of how fast and easy it is to spread [mis]information these days.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#186

Post by brimble »

toxik wrote: post #24

The dream of the internet as some sort of great democratizing force is already dead and buried, but for any who still believes, this must surely be the final nail in that coffin. Controlling the narrative is only a problem for existing democracies with press freedom. All bets are off once the threat model includes control of the media. So cherish your freedom of speech, and exercise and defend it. I don’t know what t…

In a McLuhan sense, I'm not sure the "message" of the medium of the Internet is one that's compatible with free society, ultimately, once we get past the idealism and look at how it works in practice. Which is... not great.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#187

Post by spyder »

sourthyme wrote: post #30
toxik wrote: post #24

The dream of the internet as some sort of great democratizing force is already dead and buried, but for any who still believes, this must surely be the final nail in that coffin. Controlling the narrative is only a problem for existing democracies with press freedom. All bets are off once the threat model includes control of the media. So cherish your freedom of speech, and exercise and defend it. I don’t know what t…

To me TikTok is not the "internet" because no matter how much the app gives, the user doesn't own their content. You can still write anything in a blog that you own and have people see it. To me that freedom is the "internet".

Because blogs and websites aren't getting blocked in Russia or what? The only way content can be a little more resilient against blocking is P2P hosting. But even that can be made hard to access by blocking the on-ramp ( websites, app for the tools to get access to P2P ) or the protocol.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#188

Post by willeh »

qiskit wrote: post #174
vages wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> outside of serving autoplaying ads NRK is Norway’s equivalent to the BBC. I’m not sure about the BBC, but NRK is not allowed to run ads. More importantly, they have a number of great in-house developers that churn out quality content and a great video streaming service (tv.nrk.no).

> NRK is Norway’s equivalent to the BBC. Which is britain's equivalent to RT?

If you think the BBC is anything like RT you ought to read about the BBCs reporting during the Falklands War.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#189

Post by pydry »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #179
pydry wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're effectively saying the same thing as me...? Russian FUD propaganda resonates in the west because of the lack of trust in western media. That's them successfully exploiting a hole our media dug for themselves. The fact that we've responded by banning RT highlights that that hole goes deep enough that we're responding by, as a matter of imminent practicality, violating a core value of our civilization. That both…

> them successfully exploiting a hole our media dug for themselves You're arguing that RT exploits a hole the West dug itself into. The comment you're responding to argues the hole is besides the point. The exploit would work with or without it. (The fact that all media is lumped into a single category, a fallacy, seems to prove the point.)

>The comment you're responding to argues the hole is besides the point.

They're making no comment about why RT resonates, just that those people it does resonate with "are the problem".

By media I was referring exclusively to mainstream newspapers/sites, TV, etc. I realize that the way I used the term was slightly ambiguous.

Re: One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine

#190

Post by Eduard »

SecondChildSev wrote: post #15
vages wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> outside of serving autoplaying ads NRK is Norway’s equivalent to the BBC. I’m not sure about the BBC, but NRK is not allowed to run ads. More importantly, they have a number of great in-house developers that churn out quality content and a great video streaming service (tv.nrk.no).

The BBC isn't allowed to run ads either. They are also generally can't recommend products without talking about alternatives. Always amusing on kids arts/crafts shows when they name a brand and then have to state other products that are available. They can display adverts under certain circumstances though. Public billboards aren't censored in news reports, and adverts on the sidelines/stands of sporting events (like…

Browsing bbc.co.uk, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60947877 , from outside of UK, half the page estate is dedicated advertisement.
Post reply on HN