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South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

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Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to what other part of the world? Interest in drier, more educational content is less for every human society I know of.

I found that European TV is a lot drier and more educational than US TV, but I don't know if that's because of interest, regulation, a smaller market (in each language), or ?

In the U.S. we have no non-commercial media free of commercial influence. Our "public" broadcasting services rely on commercial advertisements.

Is the European programming you're impressed with publicly funded by any chance?

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a choice being made by TikTok, this is due to regulations/laws in China. If the US passed laws requiring TikTok to do the same in the US, they would obviously comply.

No, it is almost certainly deliberate. In China, all companies with more than 50 employees are legally obligated to have dedicated Chinese Communist Party representatives overseeing, according to Harvard Business Publishing ( https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/R1403J-HCB-ENG ). Social media companies? They probably have tons of mandatory representatives guiding the system. ByteDance also had a "nominal" 1% ownership ta…

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Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#44
post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

It's a cultural war. I'm personally convinced they are also trolling many different ways on platforms such as 4chan and reddit. When the Ukraine war started I noticed so many sleeper accounts suddenly wanting to defend Russia's side...

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#45
post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

I think this is a serious issue but underestimated. People in the US believe that the top science and engineering roles should be filled by immigrants which I don't think is sustainable or even a healthy view of education. I am basing this on the huge foreign population of our top schools and the push for H1-B visas. It can be a self fulfilling prophecy if people remove themselves from the running for STEM in earlier childhood.

This survey showed a growing number of people who want to be social media stars[1] as fewer want to pursue STEM. I can't picture a healthy society that makes this decision. You can't shun important roles of society collectively and then hope everything works out.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/american-kids-youtube-star-a...

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#46
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife worked for the government. When they deployed wfh, they used mfa. They banned Google authenticator out of the view Google can't be trusted. But told people to search the app store for any other mfa app. They one my wife found makes you wait for an ad run before it displays the code. It sometimes crashes and is generally terrible. The point being banning certain apps seems far more political than well thought…

Sorry, their official MFA policy was "just go find a random one"? How would that even work? Do they have a contract with every MFA service?

I would presume a random TOTP app. Incredibly stupid policy nonetheless.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#47
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife worked for the government. When they deployed wfh, they used mfa. They banned Google authenticator out of the view Google can't be trusted. But told people to search the app store for any other mfa app. They one my wife found makes you wait for an ad run before it displays the code. It sometimes crashes and is generally terrible. The point being banning certain apps seems far more political than well thought…

Sorry, their official MFA policy was "just go find a random one"? How would that even work? Do they have a contract with every MFA service?

Yes that was the official policy. I was in such disbelief I made her show me the official guide she was given. Of course im sure they had no contracts anywhere, it looked like someone simply said "google will sell your data" and someone senior bought it and banned one app.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#48
post #11
post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

It's really hard to prove that this is a result of deliberate algorithms and not simply that Chinese culture promotes things like science and technology whereas the US promotes more dumb things. For example, someone like Logan Paul would have never gained popularity in China but he's one of the biggest creators in the US.

> someone like Logan Paul would have never gained popularity in China

You can't really prove that. They have their own influencer culture that looks just as vapid as ours.

Re: South Dakota first to ban TikTok on state-owned devices

#49
post #5

The bigger deal (bigger than the tracking that people usually focus on) might be how the algorithm is specifically tuned to reward dumb content in the US, compared to rewarding STEM and other educational content in China. One minute video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hus9fWz0RRk Further reading: https://www.opindia.com/2022/07/tiktok-china-engineering-oth...

sounds like china has the right idea. it takes me (in america) constantly weeding the garden of my youtube (also american) to minimize the dumb shit it shows me. so does america want stupid americans? is that not the biggest deal?

What are you proposing exactly? That the US government moderate YouTube content?
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