391–400 of 769 posts
This is unfair. Apple is not blocked in China now and Americans are getting lot of money from sales in the country, I hope it will become blocked for unfair trade practices.
This is one of the things in my lifetime that gives me the most optimism, alongisde the IRA Bill. as someone in Australia who strongly supports our recent U16 ban, I hope META gets removed/broken up for you guys soon after, at least for underage users. I'm 22 and often wish I had never been born into a world with social media, with the belief that it is one of the worst things we have ever made as a species. I know t…
With regards to social media, yes: we have seen some really unscrupulous use of it. Ranging from driving genocides to cyber-bullying and sex trafficking. Banning something is however often the worst way of dealing with it (I can just imagine the next generation of kids getting a high by figuring how to bypass whatever security is in place; Kids are often the best people to figure out how to break some rule that was set by some dumb adult). On the otherhand, there are people who have used the internet to do genuine good. Ive learned a tonne from youtube videos, MOOCs and wikipedia. Ive also had a tonne of good meals thanks to cooking videos on tiktok. Quite frankly, the free access to information is great for equallizing the playing field. Today I dont have to be an MIT student to learn about the latest breakthroughs in AI. Social media is also a huge boon for small businesses (like a local bakeshop). It was instrumental in reconnecting with loved ones post a natural disaster.
What we really need is to hold our big tech executives accountable. If facebook or google make money of a scam ad or sex trafficking scandal, then the executives of these companies should be charged for facilitating a crime (and charged with jail time not money). We are far passed the age where we need "rapid innovation" in this field. This should extend to cases where children are exposed to content that is inappropriate (theres no excuse now that we have the kind of AI models we have).
The other very pressing thing to note is the mental health epidemic that has started because of social media (which is where I presume you're coming from). I personally do think that kids should not be uploading stuff (and parents should not be making money of their kids cuteness). However, Im not sure how youd enforce such a thing. Banning kids under 16 will simply open a blackmarket for IDs up. Public education could be one way to help mitigate the risks, but also I think stricter penalties for social media bosses will disincentivize them from being over eager to hyper-optimize your feed. Other possibilities include rules about frequency by which social media apps can send notifications and banning them from being pre-installed on consumer devices (though I feel both are overly draconian and there may be other creative ways of getting around them).
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Don't get why your previous comment got flagged
1. There may be users who think I’m going on a flamewar tangent. I may think so myself about similar comments on a variety of topics, but IMO top-down censorship of pro-Palestinian content is something you can’t get around when discussing the TikTok ban. 2. I believe there are a substantial number of users prowling HN flagging anything perceived as anti-Israel. (Same can be said about anything perceived as pro-Israel…
I'm surprised it doesn't come from the EU. On the other hand, I'm not sure if this move is against short form content in general, but rather against China. I wish the entire world would agree to ban short form content and influencer content in general. Things I saw on reels/shorts range from mild pornography, conspiracy theories, medical advice, promoting overconsumption, financial advice, etc. Nothing useful comes o…
How can you be unsure about that, of course it's a move against China. There is after all an impending ban on TikTok specifically, not on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram or Snap.
It's not surprising that it doesn't come from the EU, it's probably challenging to write legislation there that specifically targets TikTok / Chinese corps while excluding American corps.
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Not really. It was not socially acceptable to record in all scenarios. The negative effect for the recording person was larger than the internet fame on average.
It is also not socially acceptable today, to film another person today and upload it against their will. Kids (and grown up kids) do it anyway.
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> You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness. Can you explain this better without the assumption that it is self-evident?
Sure. If censorship is wrong, then it is wrong. If censorship is just fine, the n it is just fine. It is the height of hypocrisy to engage in censorship in the name of stamping out censorship. It feels like a tautology because the opposing viewpoint is a very simple hypocrisy. If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
Could they not allow another TikTok variant to be made that doesn't have the problematic ties. (I'm no TikTok fan)
This was always about running defense for the likes of Israel and it’s ongoing televised genocide…. This isn’t about national security, if it had been this would’ve never gotten as far as it has been, the door would’ve been closed long ago. TikTok and its algorithm isn’t beholden to the US’s government mandate like the other social media platforms. It also just happens to be the one with the largest amount of users a…
This has nothing to do with Israel. It's economic protectionism and refusing to allow a totalitarian government to have a platform they can use to run unfetterd influence campaigns on our citizens. > TikTok and its algorithm isn’t beholden to the US’s government mandate like the other social media platforms Oh please, possible government censorship/influence over US-run social media has been investigated to death ove…
You mean, like the DoD antivax campaign [1], which Meta explicitly allowed to continue after warning DoD their campaign was obvious to them? The same Meta that constantly publishes blog posts about them taking down foreign influence campaigns? DoD already admitted, but I guess I should probably take your word that these things don’t exist? (To be fair, these things usually don’t exist (tm) until declassified decades later. I always wondered why this one was exposed and even acknowledged so soon.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
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"Mistreat" is a bit unnecessarily dramatic. People in the US were fine (possibly even better off) before TikTok, and they'll be just fine if it goes away. China's level of internet control and censorship does seem to rise to the level of mistreatment (in that they control and shape access to information, in ways that further the interests of state propaganda), but denying Chinese companies (and the Chinese government…
How the mighty have fallen. I remember the Arab Spring and all the excitement about media being in people's hands, safe from censorship... So finally, non-Arab people got the same opportunity too. And now, apparently, there's nuance.
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Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
Who says the US isn't controlling the narrative on US social media?
As a Russian people from the West saying how it's total censorship and totalitarianism amuse me.
And I see how totalitarian and censored regimes are using of the lack of censorship with great success.