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"Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

londoncentric.media

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Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#71

Post by autoexec »

Legend2440 wrote: post #51
autoexec wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imagine if the king was someone you disagreed with, putting people in jail for posting things they didn’t like. Which is why if we passed laws against this kind of thing they shouldn't make posting what the king doesn't like illegal. They should explicitly make it illegal to post disinformation harmful to others. It should work similarly to defamation laws where it makes no difference if you publish something someo…

This is a very slippery slope. Who gets to be the arbiter of truth? What if you think something is false, and then it later turns out to be true or at least undetermined? What if you create all this infrastructure for regulating speech, and then the political winds shift and a strongman president ends up using it to suppress speech they don't like?

> Who gets to be the arbiter of truth?

The same people who decide truth in a defamation case. Let's not pretend that truth doesn't exist or that it's impossible to determine. Anybody can make a factual error, or make a well-meaning post that turns out to be wrong, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're discussing accounts whose entire purpose is to spread harmful disinformation.

> What if you create all this infrastructure for regulating speech, and then the political winds shift and a strongman president ends up using it to suppress speech they don't like?

Again, if the law banning this practice is well written it will be impossible to do that within the context of the law. The fact that some hypothetical strongman president might be able to get away with suppressing speech by acting outside of the law, or might be able to pass other laws that allow for it, is irrelevant. They could theoretically do anything at anytime to anyone regardless.

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#72

Post by sdellis »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #68

Man what a PoS this guy was. he started as a lame re-poster >His head was turned by the substantial sum of money: “I told my wife, wow, it’s £1,000.” >Then, to his annoyance, TikTok immediately deleted his account because he was just stealing other people’s videos and reposting them. and dove straight into fabricating hate, and worst of all after directly confronted seems to literally have no concept of what he was d…

Yes, there are people like that out there. If this makes your head spin, I can't imagine what the Epstein Files must be doing to you!

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#73

Post by kelseyfrog »

lordnacho wrote: post #54

There's a huge problem with the media landscape. It's similar to the junk-food problem, or gambling, or addiction to drugs. We've made a society where "number goes up" is the only measure of success. We don't care whether what makes the number go up is good, and that leads to exploiting the irrationality of consumers. People know they aren't supposed to eat chips all day. They know they aren't likely to win their bet…

It's the same perspective that asks, "If he's so bad, why doesn't she leave him?" And when she doesn't ultimately reconciles it by blaming her.

It reveals that the emotional relationship to the consequences take priority over the consequences themselves. Whether it's justifying domestic violence or justifying the consequences of an obesity epidemic, or the consequences of a sizeable fraction of people living in a false reality.

Those problems still exist, nothing is solved except if we apply the salve of personal choice, we can avoid meaningful change. It's a nilhistic, defeatist defense mechanism that says much more about the person employing it and their inability to withstand emotional discomfort than the facts of each case - that people regularly take actions that are objectively against their best interest.

Our failure to provide aid and cling to the that really the world is just by hiding behind the idea of rational choice is childishly naive.

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#74

Post by vintagedave »

Aromasin wrote: post #62
SimianSci wrote: post #28

Seems to be an extension of something we are dealing with across multiple parts of many societies. Monetary pursuit has become a guiding principle for alot of people, and its been revealed that such thinking is leading to major societal consequences. The current Technocratic idealization of efficiency by those in powerful positions is missing the second order consequences of financializing everything, and it appears…

Michael Sandel's "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" covers it quite well. Markets create unfairness by systematically disadvantaging the poor when money becomes necessary to obtain certain goods or quality of goods. Market values corrupt non-market spheres by changing the meaning and value of goods being exchanged (e.g., paying for grades undermines intrinsic desire to learn). Monetary incentives cro…

This is one of the most amazing comments I have read on HN.

You absolutely get to the core of why and how 'leaving it to the market' and money-oriented choices remove social cohesion, trust, and fairness.

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#75

Post by giancarlostoro »

> “My first video got one million [views],” he says.

I hear this a LOT. It seems Tik Tok sets itself up to let a new person's first video go completely viral, not sure what the "trick" is, but I read it often enough it makes me believe that if your first videos good enough you really can hit over a million. Of course who knows if that million is inflated or what.

As for the rest of the article, this person seems to just not care about the consequences of their actions, its pretty disgusting.

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#76

Post by 837263292029 »

realo wrote: post #13
Aurornis wrote: post #9

> He’d previously run a TikTok account that had amassed 24,000 followers. One night, he was astonished to find, he received his first payout from TikTok’s creator scheme. > His head was turned by the substantial sum of money: “I told my wife, wow, it’s £1,000.” I’m not familiar with TikTok’s payout rate. Is it really so high that an account with 24K followers can start getting checks that large?

Apparently yes, as long as you vomit far right hate.

[flagged]

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#77

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

SimianSci wrote: post #28

Seems to be an extension of something we are dealing with across multiple parts of many societies. Monetary pursuit has become a guiding principle for alot of people, and its been revealed that such thinking is leading to major societal consequences. The current Technocratic idealization of efficiency by those in powerful positions is missing the second order consequences of financializing everything, and it appears…

There is a very, very clear and specific problem: "free" advertising supported sites incentivizes farming user engagement. Farming user engagement needs be sharply curtailed because it's proven to be broadly damaging to society and the direct way to do that is to reduce the incentive, advertising revenue. It's as straightforward as that.

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#79

Post by garethsprice »

"While the social media revolution has come with extraordinary benefits..." curious what Khan would say those benefits are.

It's certainly something a lot of people find entertaining but I would not say there have been "extraordinary benefits" to society or individuals from the average UK adult spending 1h 37m a day[1] of their lives on social media platforms.

"While smoking cigarettes has come with extraordinary benefits, we've seen a surge in people misusing these products and getting sick due to a lack of guardrails, tobacco companies need to do much more to make their product healthy and discourage bad faith actors from developing cancer..."/s

[1] https://wearesocial.com/uk/blog/2025/02/digital-2025/

Re: "Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker

#80

Post by safeimp »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #68

Man what a PoS this guy was. he started as a lame re-poster >His head was turned by the substantial sum of money: “I told my wife, wow, it’s £1,000.” >Then, to his annoyance, TikTok immediately deleted his account because he was just stealing other people’s videos and reposting them. and dove straight into fabricating hate, and worst of all after directly confronted seems to literally have no concept of what he was d…

If this topic interests you, I recommend `Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation`, by Andrew Marantz. Great read but it's definitely stress inducing at times.
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