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EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

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Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#271

Post by mmooss »

willis936 wrote: post #181
logifail wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astroturfing the platform and/or manipulating the algorithm (either through paid advertisements or by owning a platform and controlling the algorithm outright) Anyone willing to take a good-faith stab at why this couldn't equally well be a description of traditional media too - say - the WaPo?

I challenge the notion that they're equal. Social media at least provides vox while traditional media is completely one-way. How much is astroturfing and illusion can be debated forever, but any positive value is greater than zero. Traditional media acts as programming first. Journalistic integrity and trust in institutions has been sold off for shareholder value.

> How much is astroturfing and illusion can be debated forever, but any positive value is greater than zero.

That's an easy way to toss aside a very damaging attack on the public and freedom, with power unlike anything humanity has seen. I'm not sure what "any positive value is greater than zero" means, other than a mathematical tautology, but I certainly don't accept that social media is a net positive.

> Journalistic integrity and trust in institutions has been sold off for shareholder value.

Your reasoning is circular. You both conclude and use as your premise that they've been sold off.

Sadly, after generations of (mostly) not being sold off, of standing up for freedom and professional journalism, in the last couple of months many of the institutions have capitulated.

Part of the cause is you (and people like you): Serious journalism was a threat to the far right, so they did what they always do: Use a campaign of constant repitition and demonization. They do it also to immigrants, trans people, liberals, Democrats, and individuals they see as threats (including any leading Democrats). Part of that campaign is getting everyone repeating it on social media.

Now we have few reliable sources of news left.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#272

Post by mmooss »

ab5tract wrote: post #237
Thorrez wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT does have a left leaning bias. Here's an example where a conservative person and a liberal person each did the same donation tax avoidance strategy, and the NYT said the conservative got "an enormous personal tax windfall", but the liberal got "no tax benefit". In reality they both got the same benefit. NYT describes the conservative person as greedy and the liberal person as selfless, for doing the same thing. h…

A few scattered examples of this does nothing to counterbalance the neoliberalism and outright cronyism of NYT. They are probably a big reason why you might even (wrongly) associate neoliberalism with leftist ideology. Back in 2004 they withheld publishing the fact that the NSA had spliced themselves into every internet backbone. (RIP Qwest). Back in 2002/2003, they drummed for war like all the good sycophants. A few…

Your comment and others are great examples of how the NYT, as good journalism does, angers everyone. They've taken positions all over the spectrum. Look at their editorial page (though that does omit Trumpism, possibly because that is often based on falsehoods).

> If the NYT were even moderately leftist, they would have endorsed Bernie Sanders.

Only progressives think Sanders is 'moderately leftist'.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#274

Post by quanto »

Etheryte wrote: post #170
quanto wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, and they do. Even the US allies in Europe don't completely trust the US with their citizens data, hence the on-shore data requirements. This is despite the US is footing the bill for Ukraine and, by extension, defending Europe right now.

European nations have provided more aid to Ukraine in total in both absolute and relative terms than the US. Hopefully the irony isn't lost on you when we're talking about controlling the narrative here.

The Ukraine comment is supposed to be a casual quip, but I suppose it struck a cord with folks here. I am happy to be corrected, but I do see in the data the US as the single largest donor by far on the battlefield.

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#275

Post by gmuslera »

lolinder wrote: post #3

> Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally. These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature, increasingly so in the age of LLMs. They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astrot…

The biggest concern is having just one player directly or indirectly controlling all of them. One voice, under Trump (or anyone else) control.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#276

Post by loeg »

whoitwas wrote: post #200
loeg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've just seen an example of the US blocking a sale on national security grounds -- we can block sales to China, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/politics/us-steel-nipp...

Right, but an entity or a number of entities could buy shares in a small cap company to own a majority stake without scrutiny. Seems like a good way to do espionage since corporations are global and have protected status.

Mechanically, how are a number of small <10% shareholders actually going to exert their influence? I guess they can coordinate to get their chosen board members elected, but won't it be pretty obvious that there is a huge coalition of foreign shareholders coordinating on votes? I think they'd be in violation of SEC reporting requirements in an unsubtle way.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#277

Post by _t9ow »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #228
_t9ow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't say "there is good evidence" and then not provide the evidence Unfortunately very common these days; people who say this probably hope that they won't ever be asked to provide receipts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok All the usual trigger topics like Tiananmen and Tibet are suppressed on Tiktok at the behest of the CCP.

Thanks for the link; it's very informative.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#278

Post by thisislife2 »

tmnvdb wrote: post #96
uludag wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically this is exactly why I think TikTok is so important. Obviously every media site is used for manufacturing content, from NYT to Facebook. Also, obviously the US government has a say in what gets published and promoted. Wouldn't it be good then to have checks and balances to this, by having media not under the US government supervision? Unless are you suggesting that the US government doesn't misinform the pu…

You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet. It is also not clear to me how TikTok is supposed to provide better "checks and balances" just because it is owned and manipulated…

> You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government ...

I had a chuckle at the naivety of this statement. Even HN shadow-bans posts here that are perceived as anti-US or pro-Russia / pro-Israel (I am not talking about off-topic political posts, which are against HN rules, but on political threads on Russia - Ukraine and Israel - Palestine conflicts that were allowed by the mods). HN algorithms also give undue preference to western media sources. It is the same with StackExchange (on politics and skeptics SE, for e.g.) where even factual posts countering US propaganda on Russia-Ukraine war or Israel-Palestine conflict is highly discouraged with downvotes or deletion. When complaints were raised about biased moderation, one SE mod even publicly commented that they are under heavy pressure to "moderate" the content on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Let's also not forget that RT . com is now banned on most US social media networks like FB and Youtube. And during COVID pandemic, we saw how the US government strong-armed the social media platform to prevent the spread dubious and unverified news on the disease, its treatment and the vaccines (which was the right thing to do).

I have realised that as a non-westerner (Indian), the political space for me online is continuously shrinking and increasingly suffocating because I refuse to subscribe to the western political black-and-white world view. This is readily apparent when you look at how Americans are shaping these platforms into echo-chambers - Bluesky and Reddit is for American left- content while 9gag and Twitter / X is for the American right- , and whether you want it or not, both of these shove American political content on you.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#279

Post by ipython »

llamaimperative wrote: post #243
ipython wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely do require confirmation in some cases - https://www.facebook.com/help/1090831264320592 Of course that’s not foolproof and there are millions of bot accounts by facebooks own admission. But at the scale of billions of active users across the globe I’m not sure what approach could be 100%

> in some cases some != all therefore, it is not a real-name only network. I'm not asking for Facebook to become a confirmed real-name only network. I am not asking for anyone to be compelled to supply a confirmed real-name only network. I am saying: I wish that one existed and caught on with consumers.

I totally get what you’re saying. I just don't know how you actually implement this at global scale. I dislike Facebook and have not used it in over a decade, but I do believe they at least used to try and enforce real name policies.

Re: EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

#280

Post by ipython »

TheCleric wrote: post #83
ipython wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that what Facebook is supposed to provide? From anecdotal evidence, people are happy to engage in vitriol online that they would never do face to face, real name or not.

Heck I’ve seen some nastiness on LinkedIn with people’s government name and employer right next to it. Real names don’t do much to prevent online assholery.

And to that point LinkedIn makes an active effort (in my experience) to highlight the most extreme political comments (I assume for the same reasons as any other social network- anger is a simple formula to fuel engagement).

It insists on sending me push notifications of the most bizarre conspiracy theories, even after I muted the accounts. Super frustrating when all you want is basically an electronic business card catalog.

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