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TikTok’s Poison Pill

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Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#331

Post by izzylan »

lghh wrote: post #153

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…

I also have ADHD and I made the mistake of downloading TikTok once. It ended up costing me a lot of time, money, and a significant chunk of my attention span. It became so bad that I couldn't focus at work because all I could think about was TikTok.

I uninstalled it and haven't looked back. I don't feel angry at the company, but I do feel exploited and preyed on. Makes me worried about the kids that use this app and have even less self-control than I do.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#332

Post by srcreigh »

lumost wrote: post #158
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?

Banning the app may be the only way.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#333

Post by reggieband »

TikTok scares me in the same way that DALL-E scare me.

DALL-E is very, very good, but still obviously flawed. But behind the flaws I know it will get better. Like the original iPhone vs. the crazy powerful phones we have now. Or the original 3d games like Doom or Duke Nukem 3d compared to modern PC graphics. Or the insane quality of modern movie CGI. In 5 years or 10 years this AI tech to generate incredible images will advance at a similar pace. (Shout out to GPT-3 in this space as well)

I don't think we fully understand how TikTok is connecting to our subconscious but it is doing it in a way that most people agree is unsettling. And we are at the very beginning of this journey. There is no way to predict if this is going to be good or bad without us doing it. And every company now realizes that it is both easy to achieve and tremendously effective.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#334

Post by chowells »

angryasian wrote: post #286
ethanbond wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course it matters. Is it sufficient? Probably not. But it’s a substantial improvement over not being able to e.g. protest the government. Anyway, our government isn’t designed to be steered by protest but by voting, which despite all its flaws does shift inertia.

> isn’t designed to be steered by protest but by voting Even voting within states are completely rigged with gerrymandering and popular vote means nothing in national elections.

If voting doesn't matter, why do Republicans work so hard to prevent voting?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#335

Post by BitwiseFool »

withinboredom wrote: post #76
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.

A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction and treat it more effectively vs banning. Banning only makes the addiction features more taboo and thus even more addictive. See prohibition, 1920-1930.

>"A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction"

It's hard to say no to the idea of more education, but I believe this is a non impactful solution. We've been teaching about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, unhealthy food, and much more for decades - if not generations. It only goes so far. I don't believe most addicts are addicted because of ignorance or a lack of rationality. I believe the primary driver is biological rather than a lack of knowing better.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#336

Post by nostromo »

lghh wrote: post #153

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…

Similar to how the vast majority of people can enjoy alcohol responsibly, most people can and do enjoy social media responsibly.

I like to enjoy a nice beer after a hard day's work. Sometimes I also like to enjoy TikTok for a bit to get my mind off of work and other challenges. Neither company should feel bad about providing a great product that people enjoy just because some folks have a problem enjoying it in moderation.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#337

Post by makeitdouble »

bioemerl wrote: post #317
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…

Seems insane to me to undercut our own companies because a hostile foreign state is operating in our nation. Kick out the hostile state. That's not hypocrisy.

Imagine in the current world that every other countries take the same approach and kick out that now hostile influence (basically banning Meta/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon). How would these companies look when limited to domestic market ? And is that really the world we want to live in ?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#338

Post by makeitdouble »

kevinschumacher wrote: post #321
bioemerl wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems insane to me to undercut our own companies because a hostile foreign state is operating in our nation. Kick out the hostile state. That's not hypocrisy.

The comment chain you’re replying to is advocating for reigning in “our own” companies, regardless Kicking out the hostile state solves the immediate threat from China. But what about threats from our own (current and/or future) government?

I find it fascinating how China is described as an hostile state when it's manufacturing the vast majority of our goods.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#339

Post by withinboredom »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #335
withinboredom wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction and treat it more effectively vs banning. Banning only makes the addiction features more taboo and thus even more addictive. See prohibition, 1920-1930.

>"A better solution would be to teach how to get out of addiction" It's hard to say no to the idea of more education, but I believe this is a non impactful solution. We've been teaching about the dangers of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, unhealthy food, and much more for decades - if not generations. It only goes so far. I don't believe most addicts are addicted because of ignorance or a lack of rationality. I beli…

How sure are you about that? There are countries that are successfully fighting addiction (such as Portugal) to drugs[1].

The US has massively failed addicts for some time, wanting to just put them in jail instead of treating them.

1: https://deserthopetreatment.com/addiction-guide/drug-industr...

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#340

Post by anonymousDan »

puppymaster wrote: post #171
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…

while many struggles with the mental gymnastic, for me it has always been clear-cut. Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we criticize it? Did any harm come to Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Adam Driver for portraying real life events depicting US government in lesser light? Can the same be said to Fan Bing Bing if she is to portray Li Wenliang in a movie? Or Viktor Bychkov playing Navalny in some sort of biopi…

Tell that to Julien Assange (ducks).
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