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Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

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Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#501
post #459

TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created. The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive. There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction. Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is…

Note that the Supreme Court decided the argument based on national security grounds, not content manipulation grounds. Justice Gorsuch in his concurrence specifically commended the court for doing so, believing that a content manipulation argument could run afoul of first amendment rights. He said that "One man's covert content manipulation is another's editorial discretion".

Be that as it may, I think a large percentage of the opposition don't buy this natsec reasoning at all. You could use that excuse for anything, like mass surveillance via the Patriot Act...

EFF's stance is that SCOTUS's decision based on national security ignores the First Amendment scrutiny that is required.

> The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. The ban or forced sale of one social media app will do virtually nothing to protect Americans' data privacy – only comprehensive consumer privacy legislation can achieve that goal. 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.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#503

Wait, where's the Facebook/Meta ban? Is unlawful data collection only unlawful if it's done under a foreign adversary? I guess not to the US Government where their interests align with adversarial data collection practices against its own people.

It's not about data collection, it's about being able to manipulate viewpoints based on that collection and access to people's eyeballs.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#504
post #283

This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content. Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries. Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content. Will it…

Tiktok is actually surprisingly national in how it serves its content. If you're outside the US you don't see most American accounts except the ones that go very viral. Edit: I should clarify. This might mean most content you see is English, if you're interested in English content. However it matters where the video was geographically uploaded from. If you upload a tiktok video and check the stats you'll see most vie…

As an American in the US, I get quite a bit of foreign and foreign language content under For You.

This is the inverse to the situation you describe but it makes me doubtful that non-US don't see a lot of American content.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#506

TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created. The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive. There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction. Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is…

> beginning to scrutinize these platforms. I think the government could fix it with a screen time limit. 30 mins for under 18's, and 1 hour for everyone else, per day. Maybe allow you to carry over some. After that, it's emergency calls only.

It's still weird to me to see tech website comments calling for extreme government restrictions on technology use. Limiting adults to 1 hour of screen time per day across social apps? That's a call for an insane level of government intrusion into our lives that is virtually unheard of outside of extremely controlling governments.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#507

This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content. Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries. Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content. Will it…

Or Indian content. It will probably end up getting banned in a lot of places over time.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#509

What I love is that apparently tons of Americans are signing up for a different Chinese social video app whose name is being translated as “Red Note”. I would love if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app.

Why do you love this?

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#510

What I love is that apparently tons of Americans are signing up for a different Chinese social video app whose name is being translated as “Red Note”. I would love if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app.

I'm pretty sure it would be more a quick "Add this app to the TikTok court order".
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