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Few Americans have considered the rationality of the GFWC without the context of authoritarianism. China blocks the internet because 50 years ago the vast majo

Few Americans have considered the rationality of the GFWC without the context of authoritarianism. China blocks the internet because 50 years ago the vast majority of the country was illiterate and subsistence farming. You don't wake up one day equipped to critically think about statements that sound good but aren't true. You don't wake up understanding the tragedy of the commons. You don't suddenly have a historical understanding of how your country came to be and the values it was founded upon. You don't wake up having thought about the golden rule or "equality" and matched that to various situations in the zeitgeist. You don't wake up having fully contemplated that others might treat you the same way you treat them. These things come from major investments in public education. Americans have huge amounts of privilege they aren't even aware they have. We grew up with public education, and don't understand what it means to not have public education, or have a poor literacy rate. It might surprise many to know that while china does have great power over the GFW they choose not to enforce it for many of their educated and more well off citizens, which is why you can use VPN services to get pretty unfiltered internet within China. The US is facing a crisis where half the population doesn't understand that in November they are going to vote to lose the right to have a meaningful vote, and so many people here haven't fully contemplated not taking that very very real possibility seriously. "Hoping" that Americans will arrive at the right conclusion is a poor strategy to continue living in a "liberal democracy." Living in a liberal democracy requires more than hope. We are in the "if you can keep it stage" of "a republic if, you can keep it." Letting a hostile genocidal foreign power have direct access to our countries most vulnerable and impressionable people, our children, is not good policy, especially when that foreign power has gone to great effort to make sure that what they are doing to us, is not done to them.

ryandrake 3y ago
What does any of this have to do with TikTok? I've looked over my daughter's shoulder at what she's watching on TikTok. It's mostly silly kids doing silly dances to silly music. Not my cup of tea, but not exactly election-manipulation. What are they "doing to us" specifically?
- doktrin 3y ago
  > I've looked over my daughter's shoulder at what she's watching on TikTok. It's mostly silly kids doing silly dances to silly music. Not my cup of tea, but not exactly election-manipulation. What are they "doing to us" specifically? Your last question is perfectly reasonable, and I'm interested in hearing more specifics to this point as well. However, your primary stated basis for skepticism seems flawed. One child's usage pattern under parental surveillance is almost certainly not reflective of the platform as a whole.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Yea, I get that the content is algorithmically generated like all the other sites. What I've never heard a satisfying answer to is why TikTok is doing is worse than YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on. Something more specific than just "because China".
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  Rereading what I wrote, I think I emphasized poorly. America's youth in general have been on the right side of history in the US, IMHO. So I think I am wrong in the way I emphasized. I do think children are disproportionately harmed by the addictive properties of social media, but what I find primarily scary about TikTok is its potential for political malfeasance. > What are they "doing to us" specifically? You could have asked the same question about Wikileaks. Wikileaks was (credibly) publishing information in the interest of the public, yet Wikileaks played a direct and major part in compromising the presidency in 2016. I think the main arguments against TikTok are: 1. They have ability to push specific agendas with plausible deniability 2. TikTok can suck in huge amounts of data and feed it to the Chinese intelligence apparatus 3. TikTok is "digital opium" under foreign supply and administration 4. China has banned our apps that both inspired and compete with TikTok in their own country 5. China has regulated TikTok in their own country because they believe it to be damaging to kids/society > What does any of this have to do with TikTok? The question being danced around is "should America head down the path of a great firewall or the greater path of internet balkanization?" Many here claim a firewall (banning a foreign app) is inherently authoritarian. I think a firewall is an amoral tool that can be used for good or evil. A gun can be used to defend freedom or take it. Guns are not authoritarian. A firewall is a similarly a tool of force. > Something more specific than just "because China". But that is the core problem. The problem is not so much TikTok, which in terms of actuality is likely not different than our own medias. The problem is China. I would be orders of magnitude more skeptical of anti TikTok efforts if TikTok were owned and operated by/in the EU. If you start to bring up Cambridge Analytica, I think that would be pretty devastating to my stance. Maga-twitter is pretty devastating to my position too. Too few men having too much unchecked power is it's own problem which is arguably much more damaging than than anything China is doing, certainly in the long run.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
archagon 3y ago
> The US is facing a crisis where half the population doesn't understand that in November they are going to vote to lose the right to have a meaningful vote, and so many people here haven't fully contemplated not taking that very very real possibility seriously. I agree. > We are in the "if you can keep it stage" of "a republic if, you can keep it." Letting a hostile genocidal foreign power have direct access to our countries most vulnerable and impressionable people, our children, is not good policy, especially when that foreign power has gone to great effort to make sure that what they are doing to us, is not done to them. X, Meta, Instagram, and YouTube have far more power over our children in this regard, and also tend to disseminate more radical content than TikTok. If we're now banning social media for the sake of public health, then we should ban those first.

ryandrake 3y ago

What does any of this have to do with TikTok? I've looked over my daughter's shoulder at what she's watching on TikTok. It's mostly silly kids doing silly dances to silly music. Not my cup of tea, but not exactly election-manipulation. What are they "doing to us" specifically?

doktrin 3y ago
> I've looked over my daughter's shoulder at what she's watching on TikTok. It's mostly silly kids doing silly dances to silly music. Not my cup of tea, but not exactly election-manipulation. What are they "doing to us" specifically? Your last question is perfectly reasonable, and I'm interested in hearing more specifics to this point as well. However, your primary stated basis for skepticism seems flawed. One child's usage pattern under parental surveillance is almost certainly not reflective of the platform as a whole.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Yea, I get that the content is algorithmically generated like all the other sites. What I've never heard a satisfying answer to is why TikTok is doing is worse than YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on. Something more specific than just "because China".
hayst4ck 3y ago
Rereading what I wrote, I think I emphasized poorly. America's youth in general have been on the right side of history in the US, IMHO. So I think I am wrong in the way I emphasized. I do think children are disproportionately harmed by the addictive properties of social media, but what I find primarily scary about TikTok is its potential for political malfeasance. > What are they "doing to us" specifically? You could have asked the same question about Wikileaks. Wikileaks was (credibly) publishing information in the interest of the public, yet Wikileaks played a direct and major part in compromising the presidency in 2016. I think the main arguments against TikTok are: 1. They have ability to push specific agendas with plausible deniability 2. TikTok can suck in huge amounts of data and feed it to the Chinese intelligence apparatus 3. TikTok is "digital opium" under foreign supply and administration 4. China has banned our apps that both inspired and compete with TikTok in their own country 5. China has regulated TikTok in their own country because they believe it to be damaging to kids/society > What does any of this have to do with TikTok? The question being danced around is "should America head down the path of a great firewall or the greater path of internet balkanization?" Many here claim a firewall (banning a foreign app) is inherently authoritarian. I think a firewall is an amoral tool that can be used for good or evil. A gun can be used to defend freedom or take it. Guns are not authoritarian. A firewall is a similarly a tool of force. > Something more specific than just "because China". But that is the core problem. The problem is not so much TikTok, which in terms of actuality is likely not different than our own medias. The problem is China. I would be orders of magnitude more skeptical of anti TikTok efforts if TikTok were owned and operated by/in the EU. If you start to bring up Cambridge Analytica, I think that would be pretty devastating to my stance. Maga-twitter is pretty devastating to my position too. Too few men having too much unchecked power is it's own problem which is arguably much more damaging than than anything China is doing, certainly in the long run.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

archagon 3y ago

> The US is facing a crisis where half the population doesn't understand that in November they are going to vote to lose the right to have a meaningful vote, and so many people here haven't fully contemplated not taking that very very real possibility seriously. I agree. > We are in the "if you can keep it stage" of "a republic if, you can keep it." Letting a hostile genocidal foreign power have direct access to our countries most vulnerable and impressionable people, our children, is not good policy, especially when that foreign power has gone to great effort to make sure that what they are doing to us, is not done to them. X, Meta, Instagram, and YouTube have far more power over our children in this regard, and also tend to disseminate more radical content than TikTok. If we're now banning social media for the sake of public health, then we should ban those first.