As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

Their algorithm dispenses a personalized feed that uses soooo much data from your watch preferences alone, regardless of it's permissions. This is so far ahead of user suggestion systems on other platforms, which are generally driven by collaborative filtering. Which inadvertantly is a stopgap for psychological exploitation of users. Other platforms plateau on their information gathering of profile due to the implicit conformity of the exchanges on social media. Not TikTok though.

I want to start by saying this isn't your Cold War sheen propaganda. This is Harmonious Society, "river crab" propaganda. This method can belie and camouflage the salient points of persuasion, sure. But it's not only intended to stream a deluge of coercive media. The purpose is to dominate the aesthetic discourse around topics, learning as much about you as they can, while ingratiating their clusters of community norms at the same time. There isn't a monolithic identity either. It's about picking the winners of our long form cultural evolution. Country to country data definitely shows varying preferences, but aside from the initial exposure to determine what clusters you associate with, these feeds are tailored heavily by user interaction.

The public description of their process divulges the use of object and character recognition, along with audio/tag keywords, to all items in a video. So even on a virtual machine with no app permissions, this site is making an incredibly detailed profile of your media consumption habits. For example, when you stop watching a video at a certain point, TikTok records what items were in it up to that point making you stay, and what audio/objects occurred at the point of losing interest. This catalog culminates as a set of meticulous preferences that end up correlating to all sorts of useful suggestion information; preferences for video formats(do you like dance videos, rants, or documentary content?), types of speech(language and culture obviously, but also intonation, volume, frequency of use, monologue vs dialogue), length and pacing, even framing of the camera, its all logged and associated with your device and you. Along with this, topics and community clusters are accrued.

This goes way beyond blanket brainwashing or disinformation propaganda in it's effectiveness. It's like if a personal interrogator was assigned to billions of people to know every minute detail of their personal media narratives. And at the same time, became a congenial friend who is coaxing all of them to subtlety shift their identities and preferences. Mass media always takes this trend to some degree, but TikTok isolates the individual's identity. (I didn’t write this lol)

Much of the stuff you mention like shops treating rich customers better predates tech and just is kind of how the world is. Likewise "arrested or questioned by police when you've committed no crime" happened pre tech and is more a problem with the police and legal system than say facebook leaking what your preferences are. The worst places I've been with real spying where you got arrested/killed for doing the wrong thing were like 1980s China and Myanmar with little tech and many human spies. I'm skeptical tech makes this worse.

I mean tech is a double edged sword but I'm guessing the positive like police having a job beating people up without being filmed by some phone outweigh stuff like your roomba uploading your floor plan.

>Prohibiton is next to over.

Tell that to the people who continue to be put in prison every day for a plant that is far less harmful than sugar and alcohol

>Knee-jerking against articles like this is perpetuate harm by keeping people in the dark about the very real drawbacks of the drug. You can't make an informed decision about using it without actually know the pros and cons.

Even worse than that, you can't make an informed decision about cannabis when the government, scientists, and the media have been lying to everyone for decades, implicitly and explicitly, in telling them that cannabis is more harmful, addictive, and sickening than sugar and alcohol.

Correcting those lies and adding relative comparative context is not "knee-jerking", its promoting science which can save lives.

Why does that upset you so greatly? I'm not saying people shouldnt be informed about how/how not to use cannabis

Everything I mentioned has already been happening, it's just a matter of scale. It's becoming more common as time goes on. If it hasn't impacted you personally already, it will although you may not be aware of it.

If your insurance rates go up next year, you won't be told that it was because people in your area spent more on fast food over the last 6 months than last year. you just get the highe4r bill.

What I fear is that we'll end up with a digital caste system where people are treated very differently based on hidden scores that follow them everywhere.

> It really depends on running form and individual physiology

True enough. I too have read "Born to Run", and would suggest that most modern humans aren't adapted to it (certain populations certainly, but most not). Although I have hit reasonably good times, I don't count myself among that population. In high school and in my 30's, I certainly was in the 90th percentile of runners, just by the numbers. Individual races, definitely higher. I love to look at the form and economy of top tier runners, and frankly, I'm not built like that; I could never perform like that. I'm bound to break down eventually, and I'm pretty good at running.

> on an elliptical machine or something

This is not running. This is training for running by not-running. Dress it up how you like, but it's how people like me save the damaging work for races.