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TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

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Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#81

Post by schemescape »

Barrin92 wrote: post #49

>Whatever the strength of your scroll, you are going to be shown the next video TikTok selected for you, one by one — or keep moving your finger to actively scroll up after each video begins. They are in control of what you see, not you I mean this is just plain wrong given that TikTok has a search function. In fact this seems to work so well for young people that apparently half of Gen Z is now using TikTok as a rep…

From that link, it makes TikTok sound more like a replacement for Yelp than Google:

> Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan told the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference that according to Google's internal studies, "something like almost 40% of young people when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram."

I'd go as far to say that is a clickbait headline.

Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#83

Post by [deleted] »

angio wrote: post #44

Reminder that Facebook paid a firm to create negative buzz around TikTok [0]. > The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said. > The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, pr…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#85

Post by pessimizer »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #24

Point: Tobacco is especially bad for young children. Therefore we must restrict it for children. Counterpoint: Caffeine is bad, too. Therefore, should we also outlaw Coca-Cola for children? The argument that "TikTok is no worse than other social media" is the Counterpoint. TikTok is very bad for children and adolescents, and we should do the difficult-but-honorable thing and prevent them from using it. If that's diff…

I find this argument unintelligible, if not intentionally deceptive. We don't ban tobacco because it is bad, we ban it because it is addictive and causes COPD and cancer. We don't ban bad grammar.

The argument that TikTok is no worse than other social media is not a counterpoint, and has absolutely no relation to any rational argument about whether TikTok should be banned. It's a statement intended to raise a simple, obvious question: Why only ban TikTok when we can ban all social media for children? Is other social media better?

Watch me answer that question about caffeine and bad grammar: It makes sense not to ban caffeine and bad grammar along with cigarettes because we ban cigarettes for being dangerous, and caffeine and bad grammar are somewhere between far less dangerous and not dangerous at all.

Didn't have to twist myself into a single knot.

Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#86

Post by [deleted] »

angio wrote: post #44

Reminder that Facebook paid a firm to create negative buzz around TikTok [0]. > The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said. > The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, pr…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#87

Post by CharlesW »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #57

I'm with the rest of the commenters here in being puzzled about why TikTok is being singled out here with respect to the other social media apps. It's like comparing whiskey, vodka, and tequila in terms of health risks. You can't single out one as particularly pernicious when they do about the same thing.

TikTok is a completely different experience than any form of social media that's come before. It's like comparing weed with heroin.

Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#88

Post by [deleted] »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #24

Point: Tobacco is especially bad for young children. Therefore we must restrict it for children. Counterpoint: Caffeine is bad, too. Therefore, should we also outlaw Coca-Cola for children? The argument that "TikTok is no worse than other social media" is the Counterpoint. TikTok is very bad for children and adolescents, and we should do the difficult-but-honorable thing and prevent them from using it. If that's diff…

[deleted]

Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#89

Post by initplus »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #57

I'm with the rest of the commenters here in being puzzled about why TikTok is being singled out here with respect to the other social media apps. It's like comparing whiskey, vodka, and tequila in terms of health risks. You can't single out one as particularly pernicious when they do about the same thing.

All social media apps have the same goal: soak up as much of your attention as possible to get you to look at ads. But it's a difference of degrees, TikTok is simply so much more successful at soaking up peoples attention than competing platforms.

TikTok is seriously affecting peoples quality of life en-masse in a way that social media has never achieved before. Any social media person will tell you how insane the numbers are on TikTok compared to their competitors.

Re: TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy

#90

Post by piggybox »

angio wrote: post #68
charles_kaw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because facebook (a soulless ghoul amalgamation trapped in the vortex of a billionaire p-zombie) took shots at tiktok (also a shit company), doesn't absolve tiktok of real, actual harm. This is whataboutism, although I always do appreciate light being shown on Fb/meta.

There's no need to single out TikTok, the same regulation that will make them spy on people less will also work with Meta, Twitter, Google. TikTok does nothing extra compared to them.

Nothing extra? You haven't read the article clearly
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