TikTok’s Poison Pill • Hacker News Board

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#101

Post by brobdingnagians » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:10 PM UTC

withinboredom wrote: post #88

afiori wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#102

Post by Apfel » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:12 PM UTC

lizardactivist wrote: post #21

computerfriend wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 eng…

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#103

Post by wellthisisgreat » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:14 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #100

fxtentacle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

>Nestle Pure Life? According to google "Nestlé Pure Life is a brand of bottled water". What's so morally bankrupt about selling bottled water?

add “controversy” to search string - depletion of waterways etc

https://www.mashed.com/717227/nestles-water-controversy-expl...

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#104

Post by headsoup » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:14 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #53

fxtentacle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

I think the argument is that there is not so much difference in result at the end, even though the projected image appears opposite.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#105

Post by rrdharan » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:15 PM UTC

angio wrote: post #56

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.was…

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#106

Post by withinboredom » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:16 PM UTC

brobdingnagians wrote: post #101

withinboredom wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#107

Post by jeromegv » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:17 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #100

fxtentacle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

>Nestle Pure Life? According to google "Nestlé Pure Life is a brand of bottled water". What's so morally bankrupt about selling bottled water?

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#108

Post by everyone » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:18 PM UTC

All these social media things are pure crap. Who cares.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#109

Post by IshKebab » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:19 PM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#110

Post by grumbel » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 12:22 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #84

Teever wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

what's the "addictive" part of tiktok to ban? Scrolling? Providing recommendations? Seems quite nebulous to legislate against.

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.