Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TikTok’s Poison Pill

calnewport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 430 posts

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#371

Post by TechBro8615 »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #284
TechBro8615 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately regulations will always be one step behind. Asking for them is victim mentality. We’re responsible for our own choices. Everyone might get addicted to TikTok for some period. But everyone needn’t stay addicted to TikTok. (Of course I use “TikTok” as a placeholder for any infinitely consumable feed of targeted content.) Regulation has a place. For example, an obvious and easy win would be to pass a bill…

> Unfortunately regulations will always be one step behind. Asking for them is victim mentality. Is this a self-serving idea you apply only to the industry you work in, or is this a general principle you apply to all industries? Do you feel this way about the petroleum and chemical industries? The pharmaceutical industries? Food processing? The nuclear industry? Are all industrial regulations instances of 'victim men…

I’m not sure where you got the idea that I harbor some absolutist opposition to regulation in any industry, or even in the social media industry for that matter. My comment listed specific examples of social media regulation that I would support.

My goal was simply to highlight the naïveté of thinking regulations alone will solve the problem, unless the USPS is going to send a weekly pill bottle of amphetamines to every citizen who is vulnerable to the dangers of social media addiction.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#372

Post by nr2x »

markstos wrote: post #313
nr2x wrote: post #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.

The Reddit app is changing, too. My "Home" feed used to be only communities I follow, now it adds algorithmic content that I constantly have to say "less of this". It used to be only the "Popular" and "News" tabs were algorithmic, but now the "Home" tab increasingly is too. For me, it's worse and I open Reddit less.

Same! I hate the fact companies can’t understand they fill a specific niche.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#373

Post by xtian »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #349
xtian wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that pointing out the ‘hypocrisy’ is the propaganda rather than the idea that these values as commonly understood have any basis in reality in the first place?

I think that's a fair objection. I don't know. But my lived experience in a family who have sacrificed a lot on the alter of democratic values leaves me with a strong bias for which I make no apologies.

People in my family have sacrificed meaningfully for these values as well, but I think it’s important to evaluate objectively whether those sacrifices are honored by the people who wield power or taken for granted.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...:

> But the picture changes markedly when all three independent variables are included in the multivariate Model 4 and are tested against each other. The estimated impact of average citizens’ preferences drops precipitously, to a non-significant, near-zero level. Clearly the median citizen or “median voter” at the heart of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy does not do well when put up against economic elites and organized interest groups. The chief predictions of pure theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy can be decisively rejected. Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all.

> […]

> When both interest groups and affluent Americans oppose a policy it has an even lower likelihood of being adopted (these proposed policies consist primarily of tax increases). At the other extreme, high levels of support among both interest groups and affluent Americans increases the probability of adopting a policy change, but a strong status quo bias remains evident.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#374

Post by lghh »

root_axis wrote: post #300
lghh wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercise some self-discipline and read what I wrote. I did uninstall it.

Yes, I read that, I am speaking in the general sense with respect to remarks such as "it feels like they are making a real attempt to take my agency" and "I feel like I am intentionally being taken advantage of by TikTok". I can see why that's not clear though, so fair critique. I understand you literally removed the app from your phone, but framing yourself as hapless prey without any agency negates the ethos of sel…

I am not hapless. However I do have a mental disability that makes me especially susceptible to the psychological tricks (and they are tricks) that TikTok employs to keep people scrolling. The fact that I was born with ADHD and can't get rid of it, even if I can curb it, does reduce some of my agency by definition. It sucks, but it's the truth.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#375

Post by jrm4 »

root_axis wrote: post #330
jrm4 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great if you're able to do that easily. Please understand that some of the most brilliant minds in the world get up in the morning usually somewhere in California, and work many hours in the day, and their literal job is to figure out how to subvert this.

> some of the most brilliant minds in the world Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are working on anything you could name. > their literal job is to figure out how to subvert this. I mean sure, but at the end of the day all we're talking about here is an app that shows you a sequence of entertaining videos, it's not streaming directly into your brain stem, it's not fundamentally different from any of the o…

Let's try it like this -- a disproportionate and extremely high number of the most brilliant minds in the world work in Silicon Valley. Overwhelmingly, that work is essentially "harvesting the behavior and attention of human beings for profit, most often through advertising" That describes all of social media and all of FAANG to various extents.

Those are facts. Up until now I haven't said anything about whether this is good or bad, and I'm still not saying "this means we should shut it down."

But I've seen too much to suggest that it makes sense to hand-wave this phenomenon away and say "it's just life."

No. It's worth studying and doing our best to determine how dangerous this is.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#376

Post by yadaeno »

Fatnino wrote: post #370
yadaeno wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a disingenuous pattern of argument. You point out a known problem and then throw the baby out with the bath water. In this case, its clear voting does have some effect because seats are constantly changing parties, and parties fiercely compete for votes. Other similar examples of this argument: "Everyone knows taxes go to corrupt corporations, they are completely useless get rid of them" "Everyone knows masks…

What seats are changing party? I live in California where my vote counts the least. Since I turned 18 every single election has sent a Democrat to Washington for both senate seats and my representative and president (though California doesn't have final say on that last one). Currently, of those 4 seats, 3 are in their high 70s or even 80s and the 4th was appointed by the governor. I'm in my 30s. My interests are eit…

What seats are changing party: In November there are 50 tight races for house seats alone. The house and senate play a huge role in legislation so this election will have massive impact.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/...

Even if you live in WA/CA your vote still matters. At the federal level there are 4 elected positions, 14 at the state level, and more at a local level. There are also primaries, so even if your Governor is guaranteed to be a Democrat you can at least pick which one.

The people that do vote have an outsized impact because, like you, most Americans are too lazy to vote.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#377

Post by altruios »

BrainVirus wrote: post #369
oarsinsync wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment Given that Alex Jones has in the last 24 hours been found to be lying under oath repeatedly during his trial, since his lawyers accidentally gave a full digital copy of his phone to the prosecuting attorneys (which they were supposed to have done already during discovery, but did not), this may not be the most effective example.

It's a perfect example of how people are brainwashed to accept degradation of their basic speech and due process rights because powers that be found an example (a scapegoat, really) that's not sympathetic to the public. I recall the debates around banning Jones from YouTube. It was "sold" as an unprecedented step to combat unprecedented violation of basic decency. And here were are a few years later, when simply ment…

the default judgment happened after 6 months of 'fuck around and find out' from Alex 'turn the frogs gay' Jones...

he putted around with blatant disregard for the trial and cries crocodile tears when he's found lying under oath during the damages hearing...

Alex 'you may be my neighbor but i'll eat your ass' jones is not some Bastian of freedom - he's a snake oil salesman profiting off other's pain and misery. selling 'real' pills his family makes.

He had due judgement - he had 6 months to do literally anything (He didn't raise a finger in this regard).

You don't 'not go to trial' by ignoring it... that's not how this works... not how any of this works.

BESIDES ALL THAT:

I agree with you: platforms are censoring people... that's in reaction to malicious (not just false - but intentionally crafted and designed to cause harm) information propagating through our social networks - mind viruses just like bulimia and anorexia that are shared socially - only far more potent: things like QAnnon.

information is spread not by how true it is - but by how sticky.

if malicious actors infect a network - besides censorship - the alternative is violence - either by inaction allowing the malicious mind virus to flourish - or by taking action against it.

We are in a brave new world - and we don't even know the tools we need to protect ourselves as a species from the existential threat of memetic viruses...

Maybe we just all need to stop sneezing our thoughts out onto the internet letting them congeal into this amalgamations of ideas that seem to have a life of their own.

the life status of biological viruses is suspect. I suspect viruses made of thoughts and memetic imagery can potentially reach agent-hood.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#378

Post by ethanbond »

randomdata wrote: post #273
ethanbond wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, not really. There have been plenty of perfectly functional apps working in China for a long time. Makes sense that people are worried about feeding video streams, geolocation data, facial recognition data, social network data, etc. to our adversary who uses the very same data sources to manipulate and control its own population.

> There have been plenty of perfectly functional apps working in China for a long time. But, for the most part, they've seen little fanfare outside of China. Even the breakouts, like Alibaba and WeChat, have really only succeeded where they are able to bridge connections with China. They hadn't proven they can develop software for a wide audience. TikTok changed the landscape. TikTok is an app that could have come st…

Sure, but this set of observations is actually much more explainable by: people are uncomfortable with China either pushing or pulling data directly to/from Americans. This set of observations is not very explainable by "we didn't know China can 'do tech,' now we know, and now we don't like it."

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#379

Post by Milank »

cwkoss wrote: post #308
Milank wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'

Ok, I must take a step back. I have only my personal feeling to back the claim. And that doesn't mean much, considering the fact that I barely ever used TikTok.

So you might be right. My kids (6 and 8) told me a couple of times about life hacks that they saw on YouTube. And that's the only place they visit online, even that being restricted to less than an hour a day on average.

So yeah, new generations might be using that content a bit differently from what I thought.

If true, that is great news.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#380

Post by puppymaster »

Kye wrote: post #267
puppymaster wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How would you know if someone less famous got disappeared? How would you evaluate the claim from people who say they saw it happen?

By reading and applying critical thinking in evaluating said material. Unless you are parroting the infamous FSB playbook of 'question everything it will muddies the truth'.
Post reply on HN