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Geopolitics has everything to do with it. Tik Tok would be banned immediately under any sane policy we have never allowed mass media outlets to be controlled by
by CPLX 3y ago
Geopolitics has everything to do with it. Tik Tok would be banned immediately under any sane policy we have never allowed mass media outlets to be controlled by state agents of a hostile foreign power for obvious reasons.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alluro2 3y agoI agree in principle - but why is TikTok different - why then not, for example, Instagram as well? Is the content on IG any better? Does Meta for some reason have any one individual's interests at heart more than TikTok?
- CPLX 3y agoThose should be broken up for different long-standing and obvious reasons, namely that they’re clearly prohibited by existing antitrust statute. That however is a different issue to foreign state controlled media.
- numpad0 3y agoThe only problem with social media algorithms to anyone is that that anyone is in its line of sight through the operating end of it. It’s generally inadvisable, uncomfortable and principally incorrect to stand downrange of such devices, that’s all.
- jasmer 3y agoIt's geopolitical, and the 'content' stuff is just populism. Insta is hosted in the US controlled by Western firms, not privy to the CCP and that's it.
- kieselguhr_kid 3y agoSomeone help me understand why I should care more about the Chinese government having my data than my own. My own government actually has power over me.
- tomatokoolaid 3y agoThe value of the data can be as simple as knowing what negative messages/videos you'll continually watch and how those videos, in part, impact larger swaths of the population. And with data sharing between apps and devices, you could likely track actions across much of the web to the influence of these videos. It's in China's interest, and others, to destabilize the populations of it's enemies. Traditionally this could be through propaganda, but a potentially more powerful force could be to make the population depressed, angry, confused, and distracted. This impacts the real world in your day to day, the communities you live in, and the quality/intentions of elected officials. Now this could easily be accomplished even with the best intentions from the company creating the software. So how nefarious or not this actually is, or how much manipulation the Chinese government is applying here is totally debatable. I'm not arguing for one side of that or the other. My point is data is super powerful, is often tied to apps and devices you don't realize, and can be used to motivate action at large scale, so the holder of the data really does matter. That said, US companies and others outside China also have tons of data and use it for their own profit and potentially to spread propaganda and destabilizing information. In the US, however, the chance of malintent being the driving force is less probable and, as far as I can see, tend more to be influential actors or groups. In these cases, the software company and regulators are more likely to to moderate or suppress this because it can be bad for business. When it's a geopolitical foe who is or simply can cause issues this way, the intentions and lack of regulation are far more problematic.
- CPLX 3y ago[flagged]
- kieselguhr_kid 3y agoSetting aside the far more malevolent impact of American power, China has no way to use my data to oppress me. The US does, and routinely uses social media data against its own citizens and people abroad.
- surgical_fire 3y agoI think every other country should ban Twitter, FB and Instagram, based on these same arguments. In fact, the world would be a better place.