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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

#191
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 change…

>I'm neither meant to mark anyone as traitor Saying anyone who doesn't fully back Western democracies is supporting the enemy is calling them a traitor. Maybe that wasn't your intention, but providing support to the enemy is a textbook definition of traitor.

I did not say that you suppose to fully back western democracies or their governments. What I said is that you cant play "politically neutral" by pretending that Facebook (that obviously affected by some US state actors) is as evil as CCP backed company.

Facebook and Zukerberg personally obviously have political agenda, influence and censorship. At the same time it's not the same thing as totalitarian state agenda and censorship.

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

#192
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part is a conspiracy theory?

That the content is promoted to create disorder. Facebook has similar issues (they're even being sued for contributing to genocide) but they were never accused of the same thing (but mostly of negligence).

Facebook wasn't created to create social disorder as a first principle, it was created to be addictive and make MarkZ and crew billionaires. TikTok is being used to do something similar but it is completely designed to do that by a foreign power and use algorithms specifically to damage the psyche of westerners with distracting videos, tuning them to give just enough of a dopamine buzz to keep you there and coming back, and in general distract youth from pursuing more enlightening and educational activities while building a psychological profile on them to be filed away for future clandestine purposes. Or that's just my 5 minute take on it.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol… free speech for those who don’t rock the boat. Go ask someone in the US who criticizes Israel in any serious way how their employment prospects are going.

Go ask the buried corpses of those in China who criticize the CCP anything.

Or the ones who are tortured for years before getting dumped, half dead, on a random street corner.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Lots of people will refuse to even entertain the thought, because if true, it means that we're already at war and our people are being killed, and most western people are too mentally weak to take on the burden of accepting that bitter reality.

We're already at war because we're bombing several countries and arming insurgents. Not because China is getting fewer people addicted to opiates than the Sacklers.

I remember when I also held this very comforting assumption.

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

#195
post #40
post #23

There is more complaining about kids making tiktok videos then there was about them making super offensive memes on 4chan.

4chan has nowhere near the influence over children that TikTok does. Maybe a /pol/ thread gets 500 replies or something, while Cobra Tate (a sex trafficker who went viral by openly hating women) gets 100M+ views by literal children on TikTok who go on to repeat everything he says.

And yet, primary complain about tiktok is that it is shallow or cringy. I remember some complains over ableist algorithms. The complains about racism and what not are vanishingly rare.

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

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some peak moral panic material, mixed with a healthy dose of irrational nationalism (which was planted into your mind with intention, just a hint).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurting_the_feelings_of_the_...

And your point is?

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> We get a special TikTok that isn't bound by Chinese censorship Content negative to China gets removed all the time while content negative to the US stays up. So I would assume there is still censorship.

Which hash tags can I try out to see that it doesn't lead anywhere because the content gets removed?

Maybe I don't know enough about what bugs the CCP but I can find content with the hash tags #tiananmensquare, #hongkongprotests or about the social credit system in China, each showing thousands of videos with millions of views.

When a video by "Stopcommunistchina" about Tiananmen Square is the top result when typing it into their search bar, I wonder how bad their censorship algorithm must be to miss this.

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

#198
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not apply just as well to almost any social media. TikTok is unique in its control of the user experience, its use of data, and its popularity. Best not to throw this on the pile of “well duh, it’s social media — of course it’s bad.” TikTok is spyware. TikTok is an adversary. TikTok must be regulated. Let’s talk about TikTok in this comments section, and not zoom out like we so often do.

> TikTok is spyware. TikTok is an adversary. In what unique ways is TikTok compromising privacy that Facebook isn't that warrants the labels of "spyware" and being "the adversary?"

I wonder why it would be a valid argument to say "what about Facebook". To me, the same applies to Facebook too, and I don't participate on either platform - well maybe I do on Facebook[0], despite me not registering.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile#Shadow_profile'...

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

#199
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TikTok is spyware. TikTok is an adversary. In what unique ways is TikTok compromising privacy that Facebook isn't that warrants the labels of "spyware" and being "the adversary?"

I wonder why it would be a valid argument to say "what about Facebook". To me, the same applies to Facebook too, and I don't participate on either platform - well maybe I do on Facebook[0], despite me not registering. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile#Shadow_profile'...

It's a valid argument in the context of the comment being replied to. If you look at the parent comment, you will see that they are specifically claiming that TikTok is different than other social media companies in its intrusion on privacy.

>No it does not apply just as well to almost any social media.

>TikTok is unique in its control of the user experience, its use of data, and its popularity.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is defending facebook in this discussion?

Anybody who isn't trying to ban it as they try to ban TikTok, unless they see a material difference in the behavior of the applications other than hypernationalism. Ban both for kids. Double ban Instagram. If nobody has planted a flag in your moral center, you'll rarely find a reason to mention TikTok by name when talking about the manipulation and surveillance that social media decided it wants to be.

I have no love for facebook, but if we're talking about protecting kids from exploitative social media, it's probably beneficial to focus on platforms they actually use.
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