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TikTok is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy
- cosmiccatnap 4y agoI agree but nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head telling them to watch cats smelling stuff and people making songs in response to hot takes. You want to stop them? Make a better platform that respects their privacy while still trying to make a living. Good luck, you'll need it.
- ramoz 4y agoTwitter is hounding a young actress right now because she posted pictures of her conservative family. Tiktok creators are giving Twitter creators shit for it.
- pvg 4y agoDiscussed a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32315074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32315074
- stjohnswarts 4y agoThe biggest thing was left out, its complete existence is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, and you should consider that if you want to offer them up your private data and psychologic profile that TikTok is mining on you.
- anony999 4y agoThis guy has found out the benefits/features of free social media. I don't know why he bothers to mention the name. It could as well be Meta(FB, Instagram) or TW. The last part is really laughable... >> There is also the matter of lack of consent, as children are sometimes too small to understand what is going on .... That being said I believe in the EU at least they will have to change a few things.
- nightski 4y agoHave you used TikTok? I have and uninstalled it after a while. It feels like it takes all the bad elements of social media to the extreme. It's highly addictive, more so than other social networks, contains extremely shallow content, and can be very manipulative. I agree all social media can exhibit these traits to a degree, but TikTok at least for me really took it to the extreme.
- okasaki 4y agoI always have a laugh when people say TikTok has x-type content. The truth is it has that type of content _for you_. Because it's what you engaged with. TikTok has lots of great content, but some people really don't like what they see in the mirror.
- skulk 4y agoIt's hard to believe anything of real value can be communicated in such a constrained format, but would you care to share any tiktoks that are actually worth risking a hugely time-wasting addiction for?
- theplumber 4y agoIf you use tiktok then you already know what tiktoks are worth your time.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- GekkePrutser 4y ago> It's hard to believe anything of real value can be communicated in such a constrained format This is exactly what I've always hated about Twitter. Its length-limited posts actively stimulate stupid crap like people posting what they had for dinner and make real insightful content very hard to read because people have to split it up in 20 different parts which all become their own threads with distracting replies. Even the sane people I followed posted so much nonsense I had to wade through to find the one pearl that it was just not worth it. If something good comes up it'll make it to HN anyway so I just left Twitter. I really don't get why Twitter is so popular either but I guess like with TikTok most people like shallow content. See what's popular on TV too, it's the "reality"/celeb crap.
- abhayhegde 4y agoApplies just as well to almost any social media. The worst thing is that these apps addict one to unrealistic expectations and instant gratifications. Digital tobacco.
- sfvegandude 4y agoNo it does not apply just as well to almost any social media. TikTok is unique in its control of the user experience, its use of data, and its popularity. Best not to throw this on the pile of “well duh, it’s social media — of course it’s bad.” TikTok is spyware. TikTok is an adversary. TikTok must be regulated. Let’s talk about TikTok in this comments section, and not zoom out like we so often do.
- okasaki 4y agoTikTok is regulated. It has to follow the same laws as every other company. Your paranoia is bizarre.
- badRNG 4y ago> TikTok is spyware. TikTok is an adversary. In what unique ways is TikTok compromising privacy that Facebook isn't that warrants the labels of "spyware" and being "the adversary?"
- bradleybuda 4y agoBecause it's Chinese and therefore Evil, of course /s
- suggestion 4y agoThe CCP is objectively, unironically evil
- daqnal 4y agoIts legislation. More transparent governments like the US' are generally trusted with data over closed governments, at least, for the majority of Westerners.
- LiberationUnion 4y ago
- puttycat 4y agoThis site has a really nice design, I especially like the subtle but relaxing margins.
- bilsbie 4y agoCan it read my iMessage or look in my photos?
- FearlessNebula 4y agoAlmost certainly cannot read your iMessages. It can theoretically look in your photos if you grant that permission, but most likely it only looks at your photos when you select videos to upload.
- bilsbie 4y agoI’ve been using TikTok for search lately and it kind of works. Web is at a point where it’s faster to watch a video than open a search result. Click a cookie warning, figure out how to disable my ad blocker, and hope I’m not on an SEO page.
- xtracto 4y agoThe current state of text-based Web is unusable. It's mostly SEO text walls with fill up content for SEO. Most of the content is in Youtube videos, which also have it's own filler blabber but at least you find answers. It's terrible how the "strategic decisions" of one company (Google/Youtube) have marked the flow/form of information in the web. Even "for pay" content providers (mostly news sites) now shove video when you enter into their websites. Long lost and forgotten are information dense text sites like HowTOs, Benchmarks, Shoot outs and similar web pages from the 90s and early 2000s.
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago>Even "for pay" content providers (mostly news sites) now shove video when you enter into their websites. My understanding was that this was mostly a response to a decision by Facebook to boost their algorithmic ranking of articles that feature video. So maybe "two companies" :)
- dopeboy 4y agoI think this is the next move for TikTok - a search + map offering. I've started searching for restaurant reviews on TikTok and it mostly works. Couple things I liked about that experience: * The medium of video. It's just a next level experience compared to reading text and looking at photos of dishes. * I thought I wanted an aggregate vote on a restaurant. I actually like one detailed TikTok review over a ton of shallow, generally extreme Yelp reviews.
- keepquestioning 4y agoHow do we kill TikTok?
- i_am_proteus 4y agoI say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
- GekkePrutser 4y agoHow do you kill that which has no life?
- watwut 4y agoThere is more complaining about kids making tiktok videos then there was about them making super offensive memes on 4chan.
- _zllx 4y ago4chan has nowhere near the influence over children that TikTok does. Maybe a /pol/ thread gets 500 replies or something, while Cobra Tate (a sex trafficker who went viral by openly hating women) gets 100M+ views by literal children on TikTok who go on to repeat everything he says.
- watwut 4y agoAnd yet, primary complain about tiktok is that it is shallow or cringy. I remember some complains over ableist algorithms. The complains about racism and what not are vanishingly rare.
- woevdbz 4y agoIs that surprising given that there are approx 2 or 3 orders of magnitude difference between the popularity of these platforms? 4chan is and has always been fringe even within its demographic, whereas TikTok is already one of the dominant networks.
- UIUC_06 4y agoPoint: Tobacco is especially bad for young children. Therefore we must restrict it for children. Counterpoint: Caffeine is bad, too. Therefore, should we also outlaw Coca-Cola for children? The argument that "TikTok is no worse than other social media" is the Counterpoint. TikTok is very bad for children and adolescents, and we should do the difficult-but-honorable thing and prevent them from using it. If that's difficult, TikTok will have to deal with it. I suspect that the EU will do this.
- p1necone 4y agoProps for using tobacco in your example and not nicotine. I'm sick of explaining to people that tobacco is/contains a bunch of awful carcinogens and will slowly kill you whereas nicotine in isolation is practically harmless, if addictive. (Note to downvoters: this isn't some stealth argument in favour of vaping - obviously those have a bunch of extra factors outside of the nicotine, and in relationship to the addictiveness of the nicotine that should be evaluated when determining safety too).
- Quikinterp 4y agoI don't want to sound pedantic or smug, but I think maybe coca-cola should be banned for children too. Perhaps not illegal but just not for sale for children. I think social media should be similar. 16+ at least
- p1necone 4y agoIt's not in law, but some supermarkets in New Zealand age restrict energy drinks to 16+. On the one hand it strikes me as being kind of silly, because those same kids could buy a coffee/iced coffee with just as much sugar and often even more caffeine in it just fine. On the other hand I do see how the differing marketing/pricing on each product means you can't treat them as equivalent. Probably a good case for voluntary age restrictions by retailers rather than actual laws.
- OJFord 4y agoThat is law in the UK, and I'm surprised if: > those same kids could buy a coffee/iced coffee with just as much sugar and often even more caffeine in it just fine. is accurate? Weak energy drinks, or supremely sugary caffeine-rich coffee down there?
- bradleybuda 4y agoAs far as I can tell, TikTok scares like these are 30% standard social media moral panic, 70% jingoism. Everyone knows that they are paying for TikTok with their data and a few hundred million people (myself included) are okay with that calculus and making a rational, informed decision to continue using the product.
- boredtofears 4y agoDo you think children whom have social media thrusted upon them by their peer groups are capable of making rational, informed decisions?
- suggestion 4y agoYou're not paying with your data, you're paying with the foundations of functioning society and democracy that are being algorithmically subverted by a totalitarian slave state. The very things that trend on TikTok in the West are banned and filtered in China for a reason.
- angio 4y agoThat's because China has strict censorship laws while the US protects free speech. TikTok (like Meta) follows local regulations when it comes to their content.
- miguelazo 4y agolol… free speech for those who don’t rock the boat. Go ask someone in the US who criticizes Israel in any serious way how their employment prospects are going.
- anothernewdude 4y agoGo ask the buried corpses of those in China who criticize the CCP anything.
- 4y ago
- angio 4y agoReminder that Facebook paid a firm to create negative buzz around TikTok [0]. > The firm, Targeted Victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children. “Dream would be to get stories with headlines like ‘From dances to danger,’ ” one campaign director said. > The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- charles_kaw 4y agoJust because facebook (a soulless ghoul amalgamation trapped in the vortex of a billionaire p-zombie) took shots at tiktok (also a shit company), doesn't absolve tiktok of real, actual harm. This is whataboutism, although I always do appreciate light being shown on Fb/meta.
- calvinmorrison 4y agotuquoque screams Facebook's massive publicity arm while it gobbles up what's left of humanities neurons into the metaverse(tm)
- angio 4y agoThere's no need to single out TikTok, the same regulation that will make them spy on people less will also work with Meta, Twitter, Google. TikTok does nothing extra compared to them.
- CharlesW 4y ago> There's no need to single out TikTok… There absolutely is. TikTok is Max Headroom blipverts come to life, and the effect is hypnotic. They're relentlessly slicing and dicing you as you watch to a far greater degree than anything that's come before it.
- Barrin92 4y ago>Whatever the strength of your scroll, you are going to be shown the next video TikTok selected for you, one by one — or keep moving your finger to actively scroll up after each video begins. They are in control of what you see, not you I mean this is just plain wrong given that TikTok has a search function. In fact this seems to work so well for young people that apparently half of Gen Z is now using TikTok as a replacement for Google[1]. >TikTok is newer and much less scrutinized than Facebook and Google TikTok barely escaped being forced to sell off or open up their codebase to inspection by authorities for what was essentially just nationalistic paranoia. Anything said in this piece applies to American domestic companies. the article follows the typical style of "throw enough shit and hope that some of it sticks" together with spurious assumptions about what, why or how people use the app or get out of it. >TikTok is not a suitable place for content that is purely informative or educational, that follows a normal learning pace, well no shit because it's not a replacement for school, it's a short form video app. That's not a crime. There's honestly a decent amount of educational stuff and people do use it for that purpose. This goes for criticism of Facebook and Instagram as well by the way, these are tools, not replacements for parenting or education and it's the parents job, not the companies to see that children use them appropriately. [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/nearly-half-genz-use-tiktok-instagram-over-google-search-2022-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/nearly-half-genz-use-tiktok-...
- schemescape 4y agoFrom that link, it makes TikTok sound more like a replacement for Yelp than Google: > Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan told the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference that according to Google's internal studies, "something like almost 40% of young people when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram." I'd go as far to say that is a clickbait headline.
- walterbell 4y agohttps://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tiktok-employing-national-security-agents/280336/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-tiktok-pipeline-why-tikto... > 2020 pandemonium about TikTok being a national security threat looks increasingly like a power play.. dire warnings, and even the threat to completely shut down its platform, subsided only after TikTok began appointing Western officials to important positions within its organization, thereby giving the state considerable influence over the content and direction of the app.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoI'm with the rest of the commenters here in being puzzled about why TikTok is being singled out here with respect to the other social media apps. It's like comparing whiskey, vodka, and tequila in terms of health risks. You can't single out one as particularly pernicious when they do about the same thing.
- CharlesW 4y agoTikTok is a completely different experience than any form of social media that's come before. It's like comparing weed with heroin.
- enos_feedler 4y agoMore like 60s weed vs 2020s weed
- CharlesW 4y agoAlso a good analogy. My guess is that most of the people commenting that it's "no different than Facebook" must not have used either extensively. They are completely different experiences.
- initplus 4y agoAll social media apps have the same goal: soak up as much of your attention as possible to get you to look at ads. But it's a difference of degrees, TikTok is simply so much more successful at soaking up peoples attention than competing platforms. TikTok is seriously affecting peoples quality of life en-masse in a way that social media has never achieved before. Any social media person will tell you how insane the numbers are on TikTok compared to their competitors.
- GauntletWizard 4y agoFacebook was equally as effective when it launched. People were spending all day on Facebook, then spending all day on Farmville, then spending all day on Instagram. People got tired of it. People move on to new things.
- fatherzine 4y agoIt is way past time for parents and educators to take a stand. You have the power to shut off the sewage pipe bursting in the middle of your living room. NO internet access under 18. Whitelist every single page your kids has access to. Playing whackamole is physically impossible. This social media vs that social media. This hyperaddictive videogame vs. that hyperaddictive videogame, and 1000 more waiting in the wings. Various shades of (soft) porn, including some very mainstream: hello ad industry. Sales funnels for harmful chemicals, including some very mainstream: hello Ritalin. Instant validation for any quackery under the sun, and then some. Etc, etc, etc. Some will say: Wait, but there is clean, useful, value-dense content on the Internet. Aren't we throwing the baby with the bathwater? For an entire childhood, you can buy all of it for a few thousand $$$, in book or DVD format. Better, creators of value-dense content now have a way to sustain their lives. Not worth taking chances with "free" Internet.
- dopeboy 4y agoFor the parents of teenagers here - how do you regulate TikTok usage amongst your kids, if it all?
- falcolas 4y agoShould hear what they said about books... Up! Up! my friend, and quit your books! Or surely you'll grow double. Up! Up! my friend and close your books Why all this toil and trouble? === There is no doubt, but that study is an occasion of exciting lust, and of giving rise to many obscene actions... Hence, as I suppose it is, that we find, in Euripides and Juvenal, that the learned women of antiquity were accused of immodesty. === ... he so buried himself in his books that he spent the nights reading from twilight till daybreak and the days from dawn till dark; and so from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up and he lost his wits. And that doesn't even count the multitude of ills brought upon society by the television. Perhaps we should take a brief step back and consider before we continue our clamor over TikTok.
- thenerdhead 4y agoI wrote about this topic in a book (link in bio). I found myself addicted to consuming and creating tiktoks for about a year and a half after amassing 25k followers in a few months. There’s many repercussions to being on any social platform for countless hours a day, but for me it was a hard addiction to break. Not only do you get the feeling of a slot machine when the platform allows you to win to keep you incentivized to keep creating, but you get stuck in a niche of content you probably would never do otherwise. You become a one trick pony or see yourself following trends out of desperation to keep your views. I find TikTok to be one of the best platforms for manipulating your emotions. It can give you power just as fast as it can take it away. Once you get used to a certain amount of engagement and views, you hardly can settle for less emotionally. It was a whirlwind for me. https://www.tiktok.com/@jondouglas https://www.tiktok.com/@jondouglas
- CharlesW 4y ago> Not only do you get the feeling of a slot machine… Yes! Even as a viewer, you're (very intentionally, I'm sure) lulled into a Vegas casino-like sleepwalk of infinite scrolling.
- afrcnc 4y agoSo is Call of Duty and CounterStrike. Just on a different scale and lacking political motivation.
- joshe 4y agoHere's a list of social panics that turned out to be nothing: Kids being poisoned by halloween candy (no child was ever poisoned by a stranger on Halloween) Kids being latchkey kids Violent video games Jazz Hip hop Rap Heavy Metal Satanists meeting up to cut up animals Marijuana Dungeons and dragons (really https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-1980s-media-panic-over-dungeons-dragons) People gassing Euro trains and removing everyone's kidneys The internet Email (really) Text chat like aol and yahoo messenger Sms messages The dark web Jelly bracelets (really, on Good Morning America https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/the-great-sex-bracelet-scare-and-other-teen-myths/2197833/) Most songs sung by black people Many songs sung by Italian Americans Homosexual men Africanized Honey Bees Facebook Myspace Pinball arcades Video game arcades Pool halls You will probably die after 70 of old age stuff. If not then a car crash or falling. Your kids might get screwed up but we have no idea why and avoiding all the above won't change the odds at all.
- fezfight 4y agoYeah but just because you made a list of unrelated things, doesn't mean I have to let my kids get addicted to some silly government controlled app. I wouldnt want them to get addicted to gambling, or drugs either. Thatd be a dumb thing to do. The power of marketing is real.
- throwoutway 4y agoThe fact OP included the dark web in this list shows how little they paid attention while constructing this list
- alphabettsy 4y agoMaybe you should elaborate in the interest of having a meaningful discussion.
- 29athrowaway 4y agoTide pods challenge? And other similar dumb lethal challenges?
- aaron695 4y ago