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TikTok’s Poison Pill

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Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#381

Post by puppymaster »

BrainVirus wrote: post #356
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…

>Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we criticize it? Assange rots in prison, Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment , FBI raids James O'Keefe and leaks his phone data to NYT (which he is suing), and to top it all we have a soviet-style shitshow trial directed by politicians in January 6th Committee. Now, I will see some awesome mental gymnastics of people explaining how none of…

And books and movies are being or have been made about Assange and Alex from both sides with no repercussion. Case in point.

Here's another one: Show me a China documentary that outlines the overreaching adverse effect of state digital surveillance on China population. I can show you at least 5 docs on NSA and Snowden, produced by HBO / published by Harper Collins.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#382

Post by notacoward »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #19

An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia - especially given there's no proof that TikTok is actually being used by the Chinese, whereas Snowden etc. has shown us that the USA already does stuff like this. I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos anyway...

Have you considered that it's not the nationality but the actual toxicity of the platform/content itself that people dislike? It has largely displaced Instagram and YouTube as the epicenter of airbrushed/photoshopped "influencers" who are having calamitous effects on young girls' self esteem. It's full of "challenges" that range from the anti-social to the illegal to the dangerous.

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/parents-beware-of-these-...

That doesn't even mention the one about stealing something from school, or the "fractal wood burning" stuff that has actually killed people. Their purely-algorithmic feed denies people the validation they seek from their own circle, encouraging them to dial up the outrageousness to get views from strangers instead, so these things are not accidents. There are lots of cool things on TikTok - I'm a fan of B Dylan Hollis and Amaury Guichon and just about anyone singing a shanty or covering a Pink Floyd guitar line - but overall "TikToxic" captures it pretty well. Why play the sinophobia card when an even simpler explanation is right there?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#383

Post by ypzhang2 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #150
CodeSgt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think wealth inequality is an inherent sign of corruption?

Because wealth can be turned into power. Because when power is unevenly distributed a few people can make boneheaded decisions that create misery for the many. To point to the Russian experience the Tsar made the bad decision to take an odyssey the long way around Asia (and Africa for some ships) to attack Japan and they got their asses handed to them in a few hours. That was the first time Lenin and company tried a…

Yes wealth can be turned into power, but you know what already is power? Political power. Wealth is a counterpoint to political power. This is why communist systems become authoritarian, because there is no counterpoint to the power of the politburo. View xi’s crackdown on tech in China as a elimination of a potential competitor, just like his earlier corruption purges.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#384

Post by unityByFreedom »

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…

Ok, what about moderation? You won't find viral videos about Xinjiang or China's organ "donor" program on TikTok and that seems more problematic.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#385

Post by gopher_space »

okasaki wrote: post #322
ROTMetro wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember kids, propaganda doesn't need to convince you of anything to be successful, only to get you to believe in nothing. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” . The intention of 'what aboutism' is to get you to do nothing, especially to not speak up in support if you aren't sure. 'Don't Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good'. Don't let doom posters like this one suck…

What a nice piece of creative writing. The internet truly is a wonderful place to let loose with one's imagination.

It's entirely possible that you're living and working with a bunch of zeroes, and getting all of your information third hand. How many real people do you know well, one dozen? Two dozen? Maybe you could spend your time around better people.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#386

Post by BrainVirus »

puppymaster wrote: post #381
BrainVirus wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we criticize it? Assange rots in prison, Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment , FBI raids James O'Keefe and leaks his phone data to NYT (which he is suing), and to top it all we have a soviet-style shitshow trial directed by politicians in January 6th Committee. Now, I will see some awesome mental gymnastics of people explaining how none of…

And books and movies are being or have been made about Assange and Alex from both sides with no repercussion. Case in point. Here's another one: Show me a China documentary that outlines the overreaching adverse effect of state digital surveillance on China population. I can show you at least 5 docs on NSA and Snowden, produced by HBO / published by Harper Collins.

It's astounding how smoothly we went from "you can criticize the government" to "you can make a documentary about someone who criticized the government and got royally fucked". As if those two are the same thing.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#387

Post by gopher_space »

Jochim wrote: post #124
nonrandomstring wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not about giving up on them. It's about being willing to accept that you haven't lived up to those values and make the changes necessary to uphold them. While still in the wrong, how seriously should China or Russia take the country that lead the invasion and occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan for 20 odd years when it offers it's condemnation of their own ambitions? To be frank, how can we expect anyone to take our…

Do you feel at all represented by your elected officials? Did you vote for them? If not, why would you accept the burden of guilt for their actions?

A relative handful of people made all the torture decisions for us. I don't think I want them hiding behind the flag, or me.

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#388

Post by dragonwriter »

BrainVirus wrote: post #356
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…

>Government might be bad, and if they did bad, can we criticize it? Assange rots in prison, Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment , FBI raids James O'Keefe and leaks his phone data to NYT (which he is suing), and to top it all we have a soviet-style shitshow trial directed by politicians in January 6th Committee. Now, I will see some awesome mental gymnastics of people explaining how none of…

> Alex Jones gets found guilty of defamation by default judgment

Civilly liable, not “guilty”, and how is that not his own fault?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#389

Post by afiori »

8note wrote: post #344
brobdingnagians wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Every country is ultimately derived by its people though. Rather than a boolean, democratic is better understood as a numeric value. "How democratic are you?" not "are you democratic?"

> Every country is ultimately derived by its people though.

Dictatorships do exist.

Sometimes power is held by a small group of individuals that control the military and can make dissenting voices disappear.

Sometimes there are elections but the ruling class can simply throw out unwanted votes with impunity.

In both cases power is derived form people, but not The People.

My question for you would be, do you know of a country that IS a democracy by your definition?

Re: TikTok’s Poison Pill

#390

Post by afiori »

xenophonf wrote: post #186
cycomanic wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 de…

I think that some of the problems with the EC would go away if the number of electors/House seats was updated to match current U.S. demographics. The last time that was changed was in the 1930s, if I recall correctly. In the first United States Congress, there were about 65 thousand Americans per representative. Nowadays, that ratio is closer to 760 thousand Americans per representative. Unfortunately, that kind of r…

Rebalancing the EC without addressing the widespread use of First Past the Post Winner Take All system used by most states would not do much.

Currently it is perfectly possible to win the entire EC minus 2-3 states with less than 50% of the popular vote.

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