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If we're going to credit books with potentially expanding your vocabulary, we should at least acknowledge that while you can mindlessly scroll through insta and

If we're going to credit books with potentially expanding your vocabulary, we should at least acknowledge that while you can mindlessly scroll through insta and tiktok you can also be consuming thoughtful and educational content. Even tiktok which doesn't exactly lend itself to useful content has some great stuff. Books, TV, the internet, cell phones all have the potential to benefit you. They often don't, but it's not the medium that's the problem, it's our own choices - except the spying on you bit. That's 100% a problem with TV, the internet, cell phones and now even books.

walleeee 4y ago
I definitely agree there are upsides. I had a Twitter for a while and found a ton of interesting articles, informative accounts, etc. I've learned a ton from YouTube. Sure, some TikTok videos can be helpful. But the idea that the media forms and platforms play no causal role and it's all on us and our choices is nearly indefensible imo
- autoexec 4y ago
  > But the idea that the media forms and platforms play no causal role and it's all on us and our choices is nearly indefensible imo Some do make it a lot harder to make beneficial choices than others for sure! Some are specifically designed for it.
a9h74j 4y ago
Don't want to contradict your point, just a FWIW ... Yesterday I saw a TV ad for Meta suggesting that with VR you will be able to stand in a small conversational circle with Socrates. Yea, it will be educational. But skepticism aside, with a personal instance of AI some benefits could be significant. Just having a personal AI critic to read your writing and give feedback could be a huge benefit -- or if not your writing, your thought process. Queue the spying on you part.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Right? The fact that we have all this cool tech, but it's all actively being used against us instead of working for us really dulls my enthusiasm for technology. What good is it if we get robot butlers or personal AI assistants if the assistants can't keep our personal info to themselves and the robots record everything they see and hear and stream that back to MegaCorp along with extensive telemetry detailing every time we have sex with them? Already we've seen Roombas being used to spy on the people who paid for them, with iRobot Corporation selling maps of the inside of their homes to random 3rd parties.
  - tim333 4y ago
    The benefits often outweigh the 'spying on you', which is usually just targeted ads.
    - eternalban 4y ago
      No, this is not an accurate assessment of what is at stake here. So yeah, targeted ads and spooky tv sets are annoying at the least but the poing is that the infrastructure could easily support 1984 style monitors. Regardless of the purpose of current usage, this is infrastructure for a surveillance society. That is the issue. The infrastructure is not going to go away unless we rip it down [down to and including transport layer] and rebuild with privacy and other human rights protections as a primary requirement of ubiquitous networking. DARPA was not concerned about these matters so all these fall under the 'operators discretion'.
      - a9h74j 4y ago
        machine voice: Your post shows a combined social volatility plus initiative score over 37. Please report to the HappyWellnessCenter for your injections. ... While you are there, the weed is free.
      - sizzle 4y ago
        Their algorithm dispenses a personalized feed that uses soooo much data from your watch preferences alone, regardless of it's permissions. This is so far ahead of user suggestion systems on other platforms, which are generally driven by collaborative filtering. Which inadvertantly is a stopgap for psychological exploitation of users. Other platforms plateau on their information gathering of profile due to the implicit conformity of the exchanges on social media. Not TikTok though. I want to start by saying this isn't your Cold War sheen propaganda. This is Harmonious Society, "river crab" propaganda. This method can belie and camouflage the salient points of persuasion, sure. But it's not only intended to stream a deluge of coercive media. The purpose is to dominate the aesthetic discourse around topics, learning as much about you as they can, while ingratiating their clusters of community norms at the same time. There isn't a monolithic identity either. It's about picking the winners of our long form cultural evolution. Country to country data definitely shows varying preferences, but aside from the initial exposure to determine what clusters you associate with, these feeds are tailored heavily by user interaction. The public description of their process divulges the use of object and character recognition, along with audio/tag keywords, to all items in a video. So even on a virtual machine with no app permissions, this site is making an incredibly detailed profile of your media consumption habits. For example, when you stop watching a video at a certain point, TikTok records what items were in it up to that point making you stay, and what audio/objects occurred at the point of losing interest. This catalog culminates as a set of meticulous preferences that end up correlating to all sorts of useful suggestion information; preferences for video formats(do you like dance videos, rants, or documentary content?), types of speech(language and culture obviously, but also intonation, volume, frequency of use, monologue vs dialogue), length and pacing, even framing of the camera, its all logged and associated with your device and you. Along with this, topics and community clusters are accrued. This goes way beyond blanket brainwashing or disinformation propaganda in it's effectiveness. It's like if a personal interrogator was assigned to billions of people to know every minute detail of their personal media narratives. And at the same time, became a congenial friend who is coaxing all of them to subtlety shift their identities and preferences. Mass media always takes this trend to some degree, but TikTok isolates the individual's identity. (I didn’t write this lol)

walleeee 4y ago

I definitely agree there are upsides. I had a Twitter for a while and found a ton of interesting articles, informative accounts, etc. I've learned a ton from YouTube. Sure, some TikTok videos can be helpful. But the idea that the media forms and platforms play no causal role and it's all on us and our choices is nearly indefensible imo

autoexec 4y ago
> But the idea that the media forms and platforms play no causal role and it's all on us and our choices is nearly indefensible imo Some do make it a lot harder to make beneficial choices than others for sure! Some are specifically designed for it.

a9h74j 4y ago

Don't want to contradict your point, just a FWIW ... Yesterday I saw a TV ad for Meta suggesting that with VR you will be able to stand in a small conversational circle with Socrates. Yea, it will be educational. But skepticism aside, with a personal instance of AI some benefits could be significant. Just having a personal AI critic to read your writing and give feedback could be a huge benefit -- or if not your writing, your thought process. Queue the spying on you part.

autoexec 4y ago
Right? The fact that we have all this cool tech, but it's all actively being used against us instead of working for us really dulls my enthusiasm for technology. What good is it if we get robot butlers or personal AI assistants if the assistants can't keep our personal info to themselves and the robots record everything they see and hear and stream that back to MegaCorp along with extensive telemetry detailing every time we have sex with them? Already we've seen Roombas being used to spy on the people who paid for them, with iRobot Corporation selling maps of the inside of their homes to random 3rd parties.
- tim333 4y ago
  The benefits often outweigh the 'spying on you', which is usually just targeted ads.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    No, this is not an accurate assessment of what is at stake here. So yeah, targeted ads and spooky tv sets are annoying at the least but the poing is that the infrastructure could easily support 1984 style monitors. Regardless of the purpose of current usage, this is infrastructure for a surveillance society. That is the issue. The infrastructure is not going to go away unless we rip it down [down to and including transport layer] and rebuild with privacy and other human rights protections as a primary requirement of ubiquitous networking. DARPA was not concerned about these matters so all these fall under the 'operators discretion'.
    - a9h74j 4y ago
      machine voice: Your post shows a combined social volatility plus initiative score over 37. Please report to the HappyWellnessCenter for your injections. ... While you are there, the weed is free.
    - sizzle 4y ago
      Their algorithm dispenses a personalized feed that uses soooo much data from your watch preferences alone, regardless of it's permissions. This is so far ahead of user suggestion systems on other platforms, which are generally driven by collaborative filtering. Which inadvertantly is a stopgap for psychological exploitation of users. Other platforms plateau on their information gathering of profile due to the implicit conformity of the exchanges on social media. Not TikTok though. I want to start by saying this isn't your Cold War sheen propaganda. This is Harmonious Society, "river crab" propaganda. This method can belie and camouflage the salient points of persuasion, sure. But it's not only intended to stream a deluge of coercive media. The purpose is to dominate the aesthetic discourse around topics, learning as much about you as they can, while ingratiating their clusters of community norms at the same time. There isn't a monolithic identity either. It's about picking the winners of our long form cultural evolution. Country to country data definitely shows varying preferences, but aside from the initial exposure to determine what clusters you associate with, these feeds are tailored heavily by user interaction. The public description of their process divulges the use of object and character recognition, along with audio/tag keywords, to all items in a video. So even on a virtual machine with no app permissions, this site is making an incredibly detailed profile of your media consumption habits. For example, when you stop watching a video at a certain point, TikTok records what items were in it up to that point making you stay, and what audio/objects occurred at the point of losing interest. This catalog culminates as a set of meticulous preferences that end up correlating to all sorts of useful suggestion information; preferences for video formats(do you like dance videos, rants, or documentary content?), types of speech(language and culture obviously, but also intonation, volume, frequency of use, monologue vs dialogue), length and pacing, even framing of the camera, its all logged and associated with your device and you. Along with this, topics and community clusters are accrued. This goes way beyond blanket brainwashing or disinformation propaganda in it's effectiveness. It's like if a personal interrogator was assigned to billions of people to know every minute detail of their personal media narratives. And at the same time, became a congenial friend who is coaxing all of them to subtlety shift their identities and preferences. Mass media always takes this trend to some degree, but TikTok isolates the individual's identity. (I didn’t write this lol)