281–290 of 1001 posts
> TikTok... estimates one-third of the 170 million Americans using its app would stop accessing the platform if the ban lasts a month. If customers care that little about the product, maybe it's a good sign that it isn't providing significant value to their lives.
I downloaded Rednote and was already blown away by just the app quality. So much better than X. I'd never used TikTok but I really hate the idea of our government censoring what I can and cannot see. Rednote has a bunch of great content on it too. Thanks for the Streisand rec US gov!
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I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up: Just get rid of all of them. They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. If you have to combine your online interactions with people with the interactions you have with them in real life, you're better off, and that doesn't hap…
I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up: Just get rid of all of them. They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. If you have to combine your online interactions with people with the interactions you have with them in real life, you're better off, and that doesn't hap…
Idk Xanga was peak non toxic social media. Pretty much just blogging. I miss it.
"Social media" went from blogging and commenting with your friends and others to watching videos of ads interspersed with random memes and shit.
Quite a slide.
Given how easy it is for China to buy US data legally from data brokers and how similar the functionality of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, I feel like the only explanations are: 1. The govt is mad that a foreign company is outcompeting a domestic one Or more likely, given that there are so many other industries that didn't get a ban: 2. The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on…
The big issue isn't data security; it's propaganda. Irrespective of whether the government has control of the narrative on Facebook (I would argue they pretty clearly don't) there is no reason to let a foreign adversary have a deniable propaganda line to millions of Americans. Would we have let the USSR acquire a major television network? And even if you disagree with the national security reasons for disallowing Chi…
I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up: Just get rid of all of them. They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. If you have to combine your online interactions with people with the interactions you have with them in real life, you're better off, and that doesn't hap…
Worse, it's treating symptoms as the problem. We, as a society, deify hyper-individualism. This is to such an extreme that people actually in completely and utterly selfish ways are glorified and celebrated because "freedom".
Social media happened after we destroyed community and any sense of collectivism. Unhealthy social media habits are a consequence of that. They didn't cause it.
Where once you needed just one job to live, you now need 5. Every aspect of our lives is financialized. We spend 30 years working to the bone to pay for a house that cost 1/10th what it did 30 years ago. The high costs of housing have destroyed all the so-called "third places".
Federating services does nothing to the core problem here. I find HN's obsession with federation, which literally solves zero problems for users and creates a bunch of problems, bizarre and out-of-touch.
The problem is capitalism.
I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up: Just get rid of all of them. They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. If you have to combine your online interactions with people with the interactions you have with them in real life, you're better off, and that doesn't hap…
One has to be extremely naive to think Google (youtube) lobbyists didn't play a role in this Tiktok ban.
Given how easy it is for China to buy US data legally from data brokers and how similar the functionality of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, I feel like the only explanations are: 1. The govt is mad that a foreign company is outcompeting a domestic one Or more likely, given that there are so many other industries that didn't get a ban: 2. The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on…
China certainly engages in security theater for their own economic advantage as well. It's no coincidence that any American internet company that tries to operate in China gets throttled or "accidentally" blocked by the great Chinese firewall. And no, economic retaliation against China isn't "stooping down" to censorship of China. That would be like framing the EU's retaliatory tariffs against Trump as a punishment to European bourbon lovers.
> The govt is mad that they have control over the narrative on Facebook but do not on TikTok
Yes, but people do not appreciate what that really means. Countries need to eat the consequences of influencing domestic media, so you at least need to maintain a weak form of checks and balances. For example, anti-lockdown censorship during Covid in China eventually caused even more resentment against the CCP.
On the other hand, look at examples of Russian election interference in 2016 [1]. One of the posts is "Satan: If I win Clinton wins. Jesus: Not if I can help it. Press like to help Jesus win." The entire goal is to get Americans to distrust and hate each other. Nobody in America has anything to gain from posting this, but China and Russia have nothing but to gain from a more fractured America. We only found out about this because Facebook cooperated with American intelligence to find this foreign propaganda. At best, you can't expect the same cooperation from TikTok they are accountable to the CCP. At worst, TikTok would actively be working with China to disguise this propaganda as genuine content.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not the same data or data quality. the concern isn't just data collection but manipulation of the american public (psyops). What russia is doing through their trollfarms, china is doing through tiktok.
> the concern isn't just data collection but manipulation of the american public (psyops). I don't buy it. If that were actually the concern, we would be talking about banning Facebook and X for manipulating Americans to vote against their own interests and hand over more power & money to the platforms' owners. Facebook has done way, way, way, way more harm to America and Americans than Tiktok ever did. The Tiktok ba…
Haven't seen anything about an IP ban/block (ahem, great firewall), nothing's going to block anyone from business as usual on Sunday right?
There's no 'shut down'. And other than a bunch of misinformed users jumping over to RedNote briefly or whatever, the only difference will be an oddly American-free app for the rest of the world?