I think we can worry about both things. I’m basically not on social media (not counting this one) because I don’t want to support the idiots. And I fully support bans of people saying the hateful things you mention. But as bad as they are, it is not quite as bad as a denial of service attack with captured passwords which disrupts the banking system. Banning TikTok does not mean letting the transphobes have free rein.
But you expressed the same opinions of the answers you’ve been getting here and IMO, the bulk of these responses have laid out good, easy to understand reasons why surrendering all sorts of personal data to mega-corporations, especially those that may share data with an antagonist foreign power, is clearly a bad idea.
The way you criticized the NPR experts answers is identical to how youve criticized the answers here. So maybe you just werent able to understand their answers like it seems youve havent grokked the SDMB answers?
The answers here have gotten better, more specific, less obfuscatory, as we’ve gone alone and as I (and others) have requested clarification. The first few answers were simply useless–broad and superficial–as were the NPR experts, and my requests for clarity have resulted in concessions about the U.S. complicity in China’s misdeeds, about the nature of the problem of data mining, about the personal safety of cat-video watchers, and several other sources of ignorance, both mine and the SD’s. As I keep insisting, this has always seemed to me an answer capable of clarity and precision, which has been slowly wrung out of those offering partial and vague answers.
…sure.
But we aren’t worrying about both things though. Not in the same way. Nobody is proposing that we ban Twitter or Facebook. That isn’t on the table.
Social media can be incredibly useful and in some cases, essential, if you are in business. It has put me in touch with people that have helped me navigate some of the most difficult moments in my life. And sometimes I just want to watch cat videos. Hundreds of cat videos. One after the other.
You can support bans of people saying those hateful things all you like.
But you know that the owner of Twitter doesn’t have a problem with them, right? That he practically endorses L$bs of TikTok and allows them free reign to carry out targeted harassment? He’s one of them.
Did you now all the most horrible people on Twitter, the racists and the supremacists with large audiences are the only people that Musk talks to on the platform? (And lets not pretend the other platforms aren’t just as bad. The only real difference between them is that Musk doesn’t have a filter.)
There are no systems in place to take care of the “bad people.” Because the bad people are in charge.
I’m not quite sure you really understand how bad these people are. Because in reality:
China doesn’t need a social media network to launch a denial of service attack with captured passwords which disrupts the banking system.
I just went and checked the L$bs of TikTok Twitter feed right now. On the list of today’s accomplishments:
-they got a Massachusetts pre-school teacher fired
-they quote-tweeted Project Veritas who are spreading fake Covid propaganda
-attacked an iconic British brand for (this is a lie) “promoting young physically healthy women getting double mastectomies”
-targeted a non-binary queer teacher, linking everyone to their official school account so that people can harass them
-targeted a Tennessee teacher for explaining why she quit
-quote-tweeted Andy N^o, one of the most active alt right accounts, who was targeting a “left wing” twitter account (and later succeeded in getting that account banned)
-attacked a daycare teacher in New York for allegedly teaching “gender identity”
There is more: but I couldn’t read it any further. My eyeballs were starting to burn.
If you want to balance a theoretical denial-of-service attack (that doesn’t need control of a social network to happen) vs the very real world daily harassment, targeting, that is getting people suspended, fired, has resulted in bomb threats and disruption and will get people killed, I’ll take the theoretical (never gonna happen) former option right now, thanks.
Just letting the transphobes have free rein gives them free rein. They have that now. This isn’t something that will “self-correct.” TikTok doesn’t pose an actionable threat that would justify a ban.
Is this the name of a group, or a euphemism for the name of a group? Because I’m not sure what the group is, but feel i ought to be aware of them, which probably means recognizing the name.
I also wonder if they can be criminally prosecuted for harassment.
…nah. They know what they are doing. They are careful enough that they don’t outright call for harassment. Just point people in the right direction.
Thank you.
Is going easier on TikTok going to in any way help us enforce some limits on Facebook? If not, I don’t see the problem. The First Amendment sucks some times, to be sure. I’m also not very comfortable with the Indian government making Twitter remove bits of a BBC documentary about Modi. Is that where you want us to go? But not him, the people you and I both don’t like.
…what do you mean by “going easier?”
I go on TikTok to watch mainly cooking videos. The algorithm on TikTok works better than pretty much every other social media network. It typically shows me what I want to watch. And when it throws in things I wasn’t expecting: they are typically also things that I want to watch. The Twitter algorithm typically will randomly put the odd racist in my feed. The youtube algorithm often tries to get me to watch anti-vax videos. That rarely happens for me on TikTok.
So what does “going harder” on TikTok actually entail, according to you?
The problem is that outside of some very broad strokes, nobody has really been able to articulate an actionable reason why TikTok is more problematic than any other social network out there. Both Facebook and Twitter have higher body counts. Telegram is actively used to plot coups. Is it the involvement of the state? Well over the last 12 months the BBC has practically morphed into a mouthpiece for the conservative government.
Sure does! And how it is held up by most Americans as some sort of sacred text that somehow makes America “the land of the free” is the strangest thing about it.
Why would you think that would be “where I’d like to go?”
On the one hand we have deliberate targeted harassment campaigns that are getting people fired and causing people to go into hiding, and on the other we have a state actor going through the existing processes to take down content that it claims is illegal in their country, to which Twitter agreed.
I haven’t actually argued for “censorship” in either case. Twitter is complying with the law in both of these instances. Its just that: if we are fine with what can happen on Twitter, why are we talking about banning TikTok?
Its never been about “people I don’t like.”
The people that Musk has allowed back onto the platform were people that were banned for hateful, racist, misogynistic, transphobic actions. They were banned because they were hurting people. They’ve been allowed back onto the platform, and they’ve immediately gone back to hurting people again.
That distinction is important.
Here’s a perfect example of the problems TikTok and other social media can cause. The algorithms are designed to promote controversial and inflammatory content, whether political, ethical, or in this case, medical. It’s not hard to see how this can be dangerous, and also easily to manipulate. If you’re “just watching cat videos” you could very well be served up “how the ASPCA is lying to you about spaying and neutering your pet” or “this medical treatment for your pet is a scam”.
…well yeah, but that isn’t a TikTok specific problem, and banning TikTok won’t fix controversial and inflammatory content, whether political, ethical, or , medical, that is endemic on every other platform as well.
We all know the problem here. But it isn’t a China problem.
In compliance with the directive issued by the White House, the agency whose umbrella I’m under moved to ban TikTok from all government-issued equipment today.
It strikes me as odd that it was ever allowed on government-issued equipment. I’ve worked in US Government IT for 45 years (active duty military and contractor) and installing anything not authorized by the agency has been a termination infraction for just about that long.
Maybe weird and borderline-irrelevant functions like Public Relations may have had a legitimate case for that noise up to now.
Well, we’re not really supposed to watch YouTube on government-issued equipment, either – they say it’s to conserve bandwidth. People tend to ignore that, though.
I’m listening to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testify in Congress right now, this is not going well for for him. I know this is going to sound and I know he’s from Singapore not China, but from a strictly PR perspective I don’t think his accent is helping.
That hearing was a total fucking clown show. Everyone of those lawmakers should be ashamed of themselves.
Why do you say that?
…well there isn’t anything he can do about that.
…this tweet says it best.
Considering this is an app from China, it could be used for gathering information for nefarious reasons. Earlier this year, Home Depot in Canada was gathering personal information through emailed receipts to customers and passing that information along to others. If you got a paper receipt at the time of purchase there no such BS.