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TikTok’s Poison Pill

calnewport.com

301–310 of 430 posts

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#301
Twitter seems to be going a similar route. I barely recognize my feed, it’s 50% I don’t follow, and 25% content I think is idiotic and harmful.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#302
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social graph is a terrible approximation of personal interests.

Yup. It’s not that an echo chamber is inevitable; for me, finding something interesting that’s not represented among my social graph is more likely to be viral/marketable/attractive than something circulating among the most-active 5%. TikTok doesn’t need that graph on an individual’s scale.

Hence, it so much more resembles "real life". And I think that's where TikTok thrives, it is a single player experience with networked features. Similar to going window shopping in a Mall with Billions of windows.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#303
The question I have - at what point do Instagram and Facebook converge such to the point that it's not even worth having them as separate apps anymore? At a certain point, I imagine Meta would like these apps to all combine into one united "Meta" app.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Other platform owners are bad, I don’t need them to be equal to China before doing something about it. I agree. But by the same token, we don't need to do something about the others before doing something about TikTok. Where would we be today if we accepted the argument that before addressing tobacco companies we must first address alcohol companies, and before addressing alcohol companies, we must first address to…

> ... before addressing tobacco companies we must first address alcohol companies

> Arguing that X shouldn't be regulated because Y is not yet regulated is never a legitimate argument.

Either you've got the question wrong, or your position is more disagreeable than you think. It seems to me that the question is whether Chinese X should be regulated when American X is not regulated. It is still technically X vs Y but the justification is far less obvious to me (when compared to justifying that we can regulate tobacco despite a lack of regulation of alcohol).

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#305
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?

It's far worse than just data collection. At least at one point in time Tiktok's client was disassembled enough to reveal that it had a function to download an unsigned binary blob and run it on the device. They're able to bypass app store protections completely...

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#306
post #141
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…

I honestly don't see a reason for the US not ban TikTok for arbitrary bullshit reasons, simply because China does the same sort of bullshit for American internet companies. Foreign websites often get mysteriously throttled, which encourages people to use their domestic alternatives. The iTunes store was banned, despite following all their censorship rules. They even hacked Google.

I don't think "china does it" is a good reason for the US to do it. There are lots of things China does that we don't want to.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#307
post #142
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to visit a country that didn't sell bottled water though. That doesn't seem US specific

Many other countries have tap water that is not potable.

As do some places in the U.S. and many people do fear that their water while technically potable, is full of unhealthy materials like lead. Even for me in a relatively new building, I have no idea about the materials of the lines built into it or the water main in my city. I use a Brita or straight from the tap personally but I can't say I blame people who are concerned (in the U.S.) where infrastructure is quite old and there doesn't seem to be much concern by officials even in the most dire of cases like Flint to fix things.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#308
post #256
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many recent boycotts and other activist causes have achieved critical mass through organizing on TikTok. A ton of content there is historical and educational. People misunderstand short-form as shallow and that has never sit right with me. I find creators on TikTok to often go deeper and communicate more clearly than the cacophony of text posts on reddit or Facebook.

It's true that you can find useful content on TikTok. But, let's be realistic - percentage of people using TikTok to learn something is... probably negligible. But there's an example on how the technology can be used in good purpose.

Do you have any basis for your negligible statement?

About half the videos I watch on TT are 'educational'

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#309
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Non-American too.) China may not have been proven to use TikTok data specifically, but their track record about human rights and privacy is what it is. > I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos anyway... Ah, the old "nothing to hide" argument.

No, but really: Facebook collects very private data, including personal messages. Google has even more sensitive information. I also don't see why suddenly TikTok is such a concern, except for sinophobia or pure misinformation.

This presumes people don't also have a problem with FB and/or Google. Speaking for myself I have concerns with all of them. I almost never interact with FB properties, Google I've sadly become attached to but I'm not one for Apple products so it is sort of hard to get away from the big G.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#310
post #245
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I would have expected as well so it was surprising to hear otherwise. I thought perhaps the OP had seen leaked documents or some other form of evidence that indicated TikTok targeted people with ADHD deliberately.

You're being intentionally rude. You know I don't have that. You know I was not implying that I had that.

?

I'm not being intentionally rude. I'm trying to understand your comment. TikTok was previously discovered to be reading your phone's clipboard on every keystroke: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/tiktok-seems-to-b...

Your claim that TikTok deliberately targeted users with ADHD would be consistent with some of TikTok's previous behavior but I wanted to better understand what evidence you had for it.

You stated that TikTok was _almost certainly_ designed to _directly_ exploit the fact that you ADHD. I realize now that you meant something less direct but please re-read your comment and understand why someone might come to the same conclusion I did.

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