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TikTok’s Poison Pill

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Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#151

Post by jensensbutton »

angio wrote: post #133
partiallypro wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Name another big tech plugged directly into the Chinese Government.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#152

Post by mistermann »

madeofpalk wrote: post #83
nixcraft wrote: post #5

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…

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?

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#153

Post by lghh »

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?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#154

Post by harvey9 »

account42 wrote: post #93
nonrandomstring wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'r…

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...

You push a narrative by including 'western' there. Non western nations also have tremendous wealth inequality.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#155

Post by sct202 »

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.

They had an app called Lasso a couple years ago that they shut down, I don't know anyone who actually used it though.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#156

Post by nradov »

Teever wrote: post #73
throwawaylinux wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#157

Post by everdrive »

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#158

Post by lumost »

nixcraft wrote: post #5

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…

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?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#159

Post by tobylane »

jensensbutton wrote: post #151
angio wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Name another big tech plugged directly into the Chinese Government.

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.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#160

Post by nsv »

pessimizer wrote: post #140
derbOac wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> 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 th…

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".
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