TikTok ban?

[quesaisje]

People who use these apps to the point of sensory addiction are forging their own chains. When you log on, you may as well be signing up for a lobotomy.

However, even if the worst fears about TikTok are borne out, what Bytedance is doing to Americans is no different from what we have done, are doing, and will continue to do to ourselves.

What's most distressing about the ongoing political conversation is just how ignorant politicians are of the real social problems that emerge from new forms of media connectivity. The kids will have to dig themselves out of this hole someday, because Millenials (and older generations) are still digging.

[quesaisje]

People who use these apps to the point of sensory addiction are forging their own chains. When you log on, you may as well be signing up for a lobotomy.

However, even if the worst fears about TikTok are borne out, what Bytedance is doing to Americans is no different from what we have done, are doing, and will continue to do to ourselves.

What's most distressing about the ongoing political conversation is just how ignorant politicians are of the real social problems that emerge from new forms of media connectivity. The kids will have to dig themselves out of this hole someday, because Millenials (and older generations) are still digging.

To the degree that this is true, it isn't something that can necessarily be fixed by laws/government.

It certainly won't be fixed by this one.

[quesaisje]

Look, this isn't about TikTok.  TikTok is really bad on its own, and it's entirely possible that after ByteDance is forced to sell its American operation to, like, Oracle or whoever, it will still be an outrageously addictive app, whose format naturally gravitates towards outrage and extremism and conspiratorial thought, and whose algorithm organically creates information bubbles where disinformation spreads like wildfire.

But:

A) Even if that is the case, this kind of information about how Americans think, what our neuroses and biases and fears are, what we love and hate, should not be in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.  This is just a simple, obvious matter of national security.  Delivering a foreign enemy the most perfect guidebook imaginable on how to manipulate Americans is bad.  Any app that produces data at sufficient volume and quality to make this a concern should not be allowed to operate in the United States if there is a risk of said data being shared with a hostile foreign power who could subsequently weaponize it against us.

B) It's inherently obvious that the app could be weaponized against Americans.  Now maybe you are like me, and you believe it's no accident that the app is dominated by anti-American viewpoints, conspiracy theories and flat-out lies.  But even if you don't, it's impossible to disagree that it could be weaponized by our enemy to inject propaganda into the minds of Americans in an incredibly effective and subtle way.  That's bad, that's a weapon we shouldn't give them.  That's a possibility we shouldn't allow for.

C) Part of the problem with CCP ownership of TikTok is that the U.S. government has no way to audit it, so if they are controlling the algorithm, or if they're not today but tomorrow they start to, we have no way of knowing.  If an American company owned it, we could regulate it, audit it, pass legislation forcing them to police disinformation and remove content harmful to mental health.  Even a simple community notes system similar to Twitter would be massive for cutting down on TikTok's ability to spread totally fake BS faster than the speed of light.  But we don't have any kind of control over its operations today, nor do we have any insight into the black box of its algorithm.

I would say the same about any app or website operating on American soil that becomes too powerful and collects too much data.  We can not allow any foreign app to obtain such a massive amount of data about Americans that could potentially be weaponized against us.  We can not allow any foreign app to hold such a massive degree of control over what Americans see every day, what we believe, how we perceive the world around us, etc. without any ability to regulate or audit it.

And this isn't some unheard-of position.  It's literally the position of the CCP.  There are tons of American apps that don't operate in China because of Chinese rules, or like Google they make special China-specific versions that China can audit/regulate.  Now that's not saying we should become the People's Republic of America.  Unlike China, we have a first amendment that lets us say whatever we please.  But that first amendment doesn't give foreign enemy states the right to collect unlimited data on Americans with zero accountability or regulation!

I'm struggling to understand the distinction that you're drawing when it comes to regulation. The federal government has no way to "audit" the algorithms used on platforms owned by publicly traded companies like Meta or Alphabet, let alone privately held ones like X. These organizations have made changes to both their feeds and their advertising policies in response to political pressure from various quarters (regulators, consumers, shareholders - if applicable), but that's also true of ByteDance.

By the same token, if TikTok's data collection practices are a national security risk, then the business models of many tech companies are a systematic national security risk (to the point that any regulation strong enough to control this would destroy their revenue models), because the mere existence of large quantities of data describing the behaviors and beliefs of Americans represents a vulnerability. Cyberattacks routinely tap into even our most sensitive data (e.g. electronic medical records), and much of it is available, legally, in one form or another, on the open market. Is there some more specific subset of data that you're worried about?

I also don't see how "what would the CCP do?" is a relevant question. This is a polity with different values, a different history, and different regulatory framework. In the United States, we value freedom of speech, economic competition, diversity of thought, and rule of law. The people responsible for settings China's tech policies are committed not just to a different set of interest, but a different set of values.

If we decide that TikTok is equivalent to "the Entertainment" from Infinite Jest, and needs to be targeted for elimination by government fiat, we are saying that our core values are flawed, that speech is really something like hard drugs where certain forms are too dangerous for the average person to risk engaging with it, that we need some overseer who knows better to protect the rest of us from the inevitable social corrosion and systemic risk that these forms of speech create, and that specific companies should be targeted by the government to protect the market share of domestic competitors with our preferred politics.

Finally, I don't use social media, but from what I see of its users, the people using TikTok don't seem any more poorly informed than avid users of YouTube, X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram/Threads, Reddit, or LinkedIn. Maybe there's data proving otherwise, but this seems like an assertion made mostly on the basis of the platform's extremely young user base and a few high profile stories about viral misinformation. The other platforms don't have this under control either, and to the extent that some of them do it's largely because they have chosen to suppress news-related content altogether.

[quesaisje]

I've seen literal 14 year olds make better memes than that

He had to pick from a smaller pool of fourteen-year-olds with more peculiar politics to make that one

[quesaisje]

They want to ban TikTok because the western media can not control it. TikTok is one of the few places the youth can get a pro climate, anti-corporate, anti-military industrial complex, reform or anti-capitalist messages. While you might not agree with these things they are all covered by free speech but western media has left virtual no spaces for these topics.

Does the entire World Wide Web, with the exception of this forum, just not exist to you?

[quesaisje]

They want to ban TikTok because the western media can not control it. TikTok is one of the few places the youth can get a pro climate, anti-corporate, anti-military industrial complex, reform or anti-capitalist messages. While you might not agree with these things they are all covered by free speech but western media has left virtual no spaces for these topics.

Does the entire World Wide Web, with the exception of this forum, just not exist to you?

 This just isn't true and also misses the points, a mass distribution platform can not be compared to some niche forum that almost nobody in America knows about. I was previously in favor of banning TikTok but seeing how they have left a space for all the above I mentioned, it can't do much more harm than our own media which has become horribly concentrated and corporate owned and hardly gives a platform to anything that doesn't fit the corporate agenda.

 Yes the Chinese are probably spying on you if you use TikTok but so is Meta, Google, and Twitter. You should know that before using any of these platforms.

There is no need to rely on major social media platforms to access anything, other than content that users choose to post there exclusively.

For anyone concerned with social change, the overriding concern should be getting out while your thoughts are still your own. Last year, one of the most engaged with posts on Facebook was a bunch of people praying to a photo of a potato. That's your future if you keep scrolling.

Anyway, I like your point about distribution, and your original post makes a lot more sense to me with that clarification. A lesson that American-owned tech companies have taken from the past decade is that political discussion isn't worth the trouble, and most of their applications give content that any large group of users might find politically objectionable low priority.

I don't want to ban TikTok either. The layer that a lot of people are missing in this discussion is that Americans are choosing to use it because they built a better and more entertaining product at a time when our own social media platforms had become stagnant and dull.

[quesaisje]

Bolded portion is hilarious- anyone have a source for this?

From last summer:

Facebook [between 2015 and 2021] became a place for old people to share Ring camera footage and haggle over used furniture. I discovered while putting together this month’s Garbage Intelligence trend report that the fourth-most interacted with Facebook post in June was a picture of a potato shared by an Amazon dropshipping page that users were writing “Amen” underneath.

[quesaisje]

I also will note he didn’t at all respond to ElectricCircus’s post calling him out for his “auditing” idea, suggesting he is not influenced by logic here and does not want a legitimate discussion but rather everyone to fall in line with his “thinking”.

I made a number of points in that post that didn't get a response. His bit about "auditing" algorithms was not just BS, but implausible BS.

Maybe he was too busy musing over his next chest-thumping speech?  "Chinese Communist Party, Trump, China, Trump, Republicans, China, China, China!"

It's astounding. The bill that the Republican House is considering would be the one of the most significant government restrictions on freedom of speech in our lifetimes. It's not just an anti-ByteDance bill (although it's not as if a bill targeting a single company would be much better). It would be the end of the open internet in the United States, putting vast powers of internet censorship in the hands of the president.

Yet the bill's proponents turn this around. "If you're against it, you're a pawn of communist China! You are licking the Asiatic boot." Imagine that, when you threaten to take something away from people, you get angry calls from them when they find out about it!

This attitude - I am right, and those who disagree are not just wrong, but could only have arrived at their views through external manipulation - is a very dangerous one. It reduces other people to objects. Those who adopt this way of thinking can justify anything.

[quesaisje]

That's even more ridiculous than the original proposal.