The hacking of culture and the creation of socio-technical debt

This very much would be a prime realization of the "social debt" the author is talking about, the mass polarization and instability caused by the overreliance on such networks, and the divestment can be argued to be an direct attempt to restablize things onto a common ground. In many ways it's already quite a liberal approach by divestment rather than a straight ban.

For me personally, I've unfortunately turned to the opinion that the "accuracy" of what consumes ultimately is going to be defined by the individual, not the source. I'm reminded of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, in that yes, of course these networks can influence one's views, but it's not deterministic. If one seeks the truth, one can easily just read from other sources freely availiable on the internet.

The problem here is that most people, including many in this thread and in HN I'd argue and perhaps myself, are not interested in the truth. The problem isn't that people are using TikTok or Instagram, the problem is that they are ONLY using TikTok or Instagram. Nobody reads actual articles instead of headlines. And that's because for most people, including many in this thread and HN and myself, we're here just to consume for entertainment, or to confirm our own priors. Why would we question our own beliefs? It's hard work, and there no real consequences if we get it wrong. We can retreat into our social circles and be told it's okay for it. Face it, the majority of people ARE easily manipulable, most in this thread included. People are only going to seek the truth if their job depends on it, and that is only going to include a narrow slice of domain knowledge. Outside of that, everything really is just noise.

> In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of governments and now hold political power. States exist merely to ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession. Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on the market. Some of the products contain addictive substances designed to make consumers dependent on them.

Hmmm…

Prior to that, most, if not all, social media platforms were American run, which allowed Congress to have more influence on how they were run and more power to investigate and learn how they were run, compared to one owned by a foreign country, especially one we haven't considered to be a close ally.

I was involved with this effort. Gaza was immaterial in the Senate and worth maybe a handful of votes in the House (where they weren’t needed, but helped).

The binding energy came from Bytedance pushing a political message to its users, including children [1], and the Chinese embassy lobbying against the bill [2]. (Keep in mind this has been a multi-year effort of iteration and refinement [3].)

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/krishnamoorthi-gallagher-tiktok...

[2] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2024...

[3] https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-timeline-ban-biden-india-d...

In the vocabulary of Kurt Vonnegut, creating a "granfalloon".

https://granfalloon.indiana.edu/what-the-heck/index.html