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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

#131

Post by initplus »

anonporridge wrote: post #113
initplus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nu…

> TikTok is seriously affecting peoples quality of life en-masse in a way that social media has never achieved before. What evidence do you have that its effect is worse than other platforms? Perhaps its scale is worse, but is the actual effect on the individual that much worse than it is with Instagram?

I mean obviously TikTok keeps their data close so we only have anecdotes.

But anecdotally for myself and anyone I know who has used TikTok, the app is just so much more addicting than any other social media has been before. I'm not a social media newcomer, I have used social media nearly all my life. I have used instagram in the past.But never before have I felt the same addiction/compulsion that exists with TikTok. I don't think this is that unusual an experience, have you tried using the app yourself?

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

#132

Post by martin_a »

anonporridge wrote: post #102
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.

A better analogy. It's like comparing alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Historically, we socially glorified alcohol and tobacco while heavily criminalizing marijuana in order to be sneakily racist. The problem is not what TikTok is doing to people. The problem is that we don't control it and China does. This is a sneaky thing those who manufacture consent do. They are very thorough in calling out the bad of the thing…

> The problem is that we don't control it and China does.

So, if TikTok was a US-based company (like Meta) fucking up peoples' minds (like Meta) it would be fine? Sounds a bit racist, if not everybody is allowed to destroy lives.

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

#133

Post by pessimizer »

tjr225 wrote: post #125
anonporridge wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TikTok is seriously affecting peoples quality of life en-masse in a way that social media has never achieved before. What evidence do you have that its effect is worse than other platforms? Perhaps its scale is worse, but is the actual effect on the individual that much worse than it is with Instagram?

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

But this is one wrong done by many different groups, not two wrongs.

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

#134

Post by patmcc »

kareemsabri wrote: post #127
patmcc wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it's absolutely not easy finding that niche content. You're going to need to swipe past a lot of cleavage to find anything else. To get more of whatever you're currently on, re-watching, liking, commenting all probably work. To get less, either swipe past quickly or long press (I think?) and you can choose "not interested" or something. I think there are other ways to block particular creators and sounds (and may…

It just sounds like a lot of work trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Point taken that the content (maybe) exists on the platform, but if I can't find it what good is it? As essentially a worldwide daily competition for virality, it seems like it'll trend to what is mass entertainment.

Yah, if you're looking for particular content or something it's not a great app. It's really meant to be a maximally configurable timewaster. The app doesn't care if you waste an hour on dancing videos or slime videos or politics videos, as long as you spend it on the app.

I don't think things go viral on it quite the way they do on other platforms - like on youtube, to a certain degree, anything viral enough is going to show up in the recommendations for everyone. Less so on TikTok, I think.

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

#135

Post by pessimizer »

berjin wrote: post #105
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.

If YouTube and Facebook are like vodka then TikTok is crack. LinkedIn is like a used bottle everyone wants to piss in but nobody wants to drink from.

> TikTok is crack.

If you mean lots of propaganda meant to bolster racist sentiments.

Crack Babies: The Epidemic That Wasn't

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27coca.html

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

#136

Post by anonporridge »

martin_a wrote: post #132
anonporridge wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better analogy. It's like comparing alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Historically, we socially glorified alcohol and tobacco while heavily criminalizing marijuana in order to be sneakily racist. The problem is not what TikTok is doing to people. The problem is that we don't control it and China does. This is a sneaky thing those who manufacture consent do. They are very thorough in calling out the bad of the thing…

> The problem is that we don't control it and China does. So, if TikTok was a US-based company (like Meta) fucking up peoples' minds (like Meta) it would be fine? Sounds a bit racist, if not everybody is allowed to destroy lives.

It would be less bad, yes, because American elites could more easily co-opt and control it to their support own agendas, like they are doing with Meta and Twitter and have done with all traditional media.

I have heard it said that in China, the TikTok algorithm heavily favors content supporting and glorifying science and engineering, in an attempt to encourage their youths to go into those fields, while here, they prioritize vanity like dancing and bodybuilding.

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

#137

Post by anonporridge »

ficklepickle wrote: post #129
anonporridge wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. TikTok has had tons of bad press from day one, even if it was just the sense of ick that it's just for kids and skeevy people watching young people dancing. And there's been criticism for years that it's a covert tool China is using to manipulate our youths. We need to think of the children!

They do seem to have a policy of asymmetric warfare, for example turning a blind eye to the export of fentanyl. It's not exactly far fetched. See the book "Unrestricted Warfare" by 2 PLA colonels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

I doubt they merely turn a blind eye.

China's mass production and export of fentanyl strikes me as a literal modern Opium War.

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

#138

Post by SXX »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #123
SXX wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I support Facebook, but it's impossible to be moral absolutist in today's world. You either support western democracy with all it's imperfections or you are supporting authoritarian / totalitarian states. Everyone who pretend to be "politically neutral" will always be helping later. UPD: Yeah I meant "later" and not "former". Corrected.

>Everyone who pretend to be "politically neutral" will always be helping former. I'll assume you mean latter, easy mistake to make. Personally I find the "if you aren't supporting the ridiculous things we're doing you're supporting the enemy" argument ridiculous. I'm capable of thinking both need to seriously change, and think it's a better use of my time to try and change the Western Democracy I am a part of as it's…

I'm neither meant to mark anyone as traitor nor I like how Facebook affected society. At the same time I totally for any limitation or sanctions against media companies controlled by totalitarian or authoritarian states. Allowing literal "enemy" propoganda machines to run freely while they banned everything in their own countries is madness.

Disclaimer: I'm not US or EU citizen. I just seen how my home country changed from liberal state of almost absolute freedom into authoritarism and then into fascism. Western democracies do all kind of things I dont like, but at least they dont risk to burn planet in nuclear fire.

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

#139

Post by pessimizer »

echelon wrote: post #91
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.

1. TikTok appears to be the optimum in social media platform evolution for the foreseeable future. The other platforms don't even come close. TikTok presents a perfect stream of user interests - no "friends" that bare little interest graph similarity. It's all delivered in a video funnel (great for ads) and A/B tests are so natural they're part of the platform itself. Highly optimized dopamine-triggering doom scrolli…

> TikTok appears to be the optimum in social media platform evolution for the foreseeable future.

Could have been Vine, but we allow leaders in an industry to buy out insurgent, innovative competition and shut them down.

> Furthermore, all US-based social media is blocked in China, and there's an argument for reciprocity.

Reciprocity would be walling off sections of our social networks that could be bound to Chinese censorship laws. We get a special TikTok that isn't bound by Chinese censorship, if we want to be in China we must give them a special Facebook that is.

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

#140

Post by fezfight »

joshe wrote: post #130

Here's a list of social panics that turned out to be nothing: Kids being poisoned by halloween candy (no child was ever poisoned by a stranger on Halloween) Kids being latchkey kids Violent video games Jazz Hip hop Rap Heavy Metal Satanists meeting up to cut up animals Marijuana Dungeons and dragons (really https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-1980s-media-panic-over-dungeons-dragons) People gassing Euro trains a…

Yeah but just because you made a list of unrelated things, doesn't mean I have to let my kids get addicted to some silly government controlled app. I wouldnt want them to get addicted to gambling, or drugs either. Thatd be a dumb thing to do. The power of marketing is real.
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