> My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why? … Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundr

> My goal was to explicitly set aside the sociopolitical implications. Why? … Because there’s never any opportunity to talk about anything else on HN. One hundred percent of the time, it’s a big discussion about the political implications of TikTok. I’d argue that “setting aside” the implications is a form of wishful thinking. Everything you pointed out can be pointed out without discarding the implications or implying that having a stance regarding the risks is somehow equivalent to wishing HN would be banned. TikTok is primarily an interesting topic here because of those implications and because many folks are quite willing to pretend the problem doesn’t exist as long as they get their dopamine hit. But it is completely compatible with this reality to point out that the content can be joyful to experience, while acknowledging that the context of that experience is a serious issue. And if TikTok is banned, people won’t stop creating the kinds of content found there. It’ll just move to the next big thing.