16 ms·

I really hate how people are arguing that it should be banned because of the content being inappropriate in one way or another when the content you see is based

I really hate how people are arguing that it should be banned because of the content being inappropriate in one way or another when the content you see is based on how you interact with the app. We don't all see the same stuff. So yeah China may have more educational content but that's probably just becuase the people there are interested in that stuff. When I travel to the mountains, I get more outdoorsy/hiking videos. When I'm in my hometown, I get things relevant to our community. It's really a beautiful algorithm once you get to know it. And its so sad that the most ignorant in our society feels like they can make decisions like this for the rest of us. This sort of issue shouldn't even be state or municipal issue, it should be a household one.

libertine 2y ago
Are you aware of what happened in Romania with Tiktok? A candidate got funded by foreign agents, paid for influencers, and sprinkled with Russian bot accounts it was enough to make a pro-Russian candidate get 20% of votes when he was an unknown political figure.[0] The app allows this. You can try to distract everyone from an app that enables illegal foreign interference by hiding under the guise of "oh, this is just what people want to hear; the problem isn't Russia but Romanian politicians." - that's a very dangerous stance and a threat to free & fair elections. [0]https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/romania-tiktok-propaganda-campaign/ https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/romania-tiktok-pr...
- olivierduval 2y ago
  And that's why X/Twitter should be banned too... ;-) And Facebook too !! :-D (obviously kidding but... well... not so much after seing https://www.france.tv/documentaires/documentaires-societe/6711838-emprise-numerique-5-femmes-contre-les-big-5.html https://www.france.tv/documentaires/documentaires-societe/67... )
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    Not so much, which is precisely why China does ban Twitter and Facebook. I’d love to have a detente where every country has a permissive policy towards social media apps and accepts some degree of soft power from it, but that’s not where we’re at.
    - flkenosad 2y ago
      So the US wants to be like China???
      - 0xBDB 2y ago
        The US wants to be much more like a wartime US, in the face of its most intense completion since WWII. I think most Americans have no conception of what WWII era US censorship and propaganda looked like, but it looked a lot like modern peacetime China. TikTok is being treated more gently than Tokyo Rose. Of course things will not go that far domestically... unless the shooting starts.
  - libertine 2y ago
    X is a fine example of a platform tuned to push propaganda, which helped get Trump elected. I wouldn't be shocked if X gets banned on EU for example, hopefully, they will set the example.
  - flkenosad 2y ago
    And HN! And GitHub!
- maverwa 2y ago
  But is the issue really the app itself? Or that not a symptom of a larger problem, or even multiple problems, we face, seemingly now more than ever before? I don’t want to say „banning TikTok is wrong“, I honestly do not know. But I don’t think it it solves any of the underlying problems. It may make it harder to hit these vulnerable demographics directly in the short term, but it won’t solve media literacy, corruption, or any of the other issues involved.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Taxing social media companies and using the tax proceeds to fund transparency initiatives would be interesting. E.g. grants to researchers and civil society labs Make them pay to monitor the problem they potentially create.
- api 2y ago
  The solution to this is to change the way elections work to make it harder to pull off this kind of short term influence pumping. The problem is that it’s possible to flood the zone with shit before people have a chance to have discourse on it. I’ve heard a number of ideas including multiple round elections with averaged results. That way if someone pops in round one the discourse can focus a spotlight on them and if people don’t like what they see on closer inspection they can push the other way in round two. The other problem though is that establishment politicians are so unpopular in so many places around the world that a rando with a simple catchy meme-worthy message can run in from nowhere and upset things. If the establishment were more responsive to the people it would be harder to do this.
  - onemoresoop 2y ago
    All social media is a fertile ground for propaganda and manipulation by bots. The only way forward is to ban politics in all social media.
    - Thiez 2y ago
      You can't ban politics. Everything is politics.
      - flkenosad 2y ago
        If everything is politics then nothing is.
        Thiez 2y ago
        Exactly, and that's why it's so pointless to ban politics. Whatever you include in or exclude from that ban is in itself a political decision.
- nemothekid 2y ago
  1. TikTok isn't being banned in Romania 2. Meta has a far worse track record here. If your argument is social media allows the subversion of free and fair elections there is no reason for TikTok to be singled out. In fact you could argue that WhatsApp groups should be banned as well.
professor_v 2y ago
So how do we ensure that Tiktok doesn't covertly alter the algorithm to subtly include propaganda tailored to China's geopolitical interests that are detrimental to the US? Or even just propaganda tailored to enhance internal strife to weaken the country?
- tw1984 2y ago
  this is the exact same question being asked around the global - how could you be sure that American made LLMs are not altered in a way to maximize US interests at the costs of everyone else's.
  - aziaziazi 2y ago
    Or like, movies? > The agreement was seen as a way to "spread the American way of life" though a war-torn France (and Europe at large) > To further the cultural propagation effect of the Blum–Byrnes agreements, the informational Media Guaranty Program was established in 1948 as part of the Economic Cooperation Administration to "guarantee that the US government would convert certain foreign currencies into dollars at attractive rates, provided the information materials earning the moneys reflected appropriate elements of American life". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blum%E2%80%93Byrnes_agreement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blum%E2%80%93Byrnes_agreemen...
    - immibis 2y ago
      There's also the agreement where movie studies can use real war machines as props, provided they agree to make the US military forces appear heroic, noble and victorious.
  - dkd903 2y ago
    Simple - no one asked you to use American LLMs. The same way no one asked you to rely on America to power your defence forces.
  - joe200 2y ago
    You cannot. But in US you have elections every 4 years wheres in Russia or China both Putin and Xi are "elected" for their lifetime. Does it tell you anything ?
bamboozled 2y ago
I guess you're someone familiar with programming and algorithms begin this is HN, so you must be able to understand that it would be trivial for TikTok to serve different kinds of content to people based on their geographical location and other attributes?
- flkenosad 2y ago
  They do. Like I know for a fact that I get different content in different cities. But it's algorithmic. I don't think anyone at TikTok is saying let's manipulate specific locations. They don't need to and it would be too risky and not worth the tech debt tbh. Besides, you can do it as a third party with bots. So like whatever replaces it will get manipulated just the same. Facebook has had this problem for over a decade now and nobody's solved it. Let's just admit that national governments are stupid.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    The thing is, if they wanted to influence an election they could easily do it. They could start to feed you content which is bias towards "their" candidate, and there is no way you could probe they did that intentionally because "it's just an algorithm". They don't need to and it would be too risky and not worth the tech debt tbh. lol, a targeted propaganda machine would be worth every bit of a tech debt for an authoritarian regime.
rcMgD2BwE72F 2y ago
>This sort of issue shouldn't even be state or municipal issue, it should be a household one. And I guess you believe that every consumer product and service should be treated strictly as household issue. For absolutely everything - even the most dangerous, toxic and antisocial ones, I can find one good use case credible enough to ask other to behave themselves. And I'm no David Hahn.
- flkenosad 2y ago
  No dude. Just for software.
api 2y ago
This is really naive. These algorithms can be and are tuned to manipulate the audience. That being said, it’s not fair to single out TikTok. They all do it. The only unique danger with TikTok is that it could be controlled by a foreign adversary, or at least could be more easily than the others.
- shlant 2y ago
  > That being said, it’s not fair to single out TikTok. > The only unique danger with TikTok is that it could be controlled by a foreign adversary, or at least could be more easily than the others. Isn't that the entire reason given for why they are singling them out? You say it's not fair then give the exact reason why it seems to be.
  - ripply 2y ago
    I think they mean that those should also be banned, but this ban isn't about addictive technology, it's about China owning the addictive technology and being able to exert control over it if they wanted. I also am of the opinion that this addictive technology should be regulated, including domestic.
    - flkenosad 2y ago
      At least they should be clear it's about control.
- joe200 2y ago
  The danger with TikTok is that some already used it to influence elections (recently in Romania) so it is proven to be working.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    It's important to differentiate worries here. Issue #1: The platform owner itself uses the platform algorithm(s) to manipulate public opinion Issue #2: Third parties use the platform to manipulate public opinion (e.g. Romania) #1 could be solved by algorithmic transparency. #2 could be solved by more realtime transparency into content.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
You don't know how it works, you think you know how it works. The algo is proprietary and secret.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Exactly. The real fix here would be to require algorithmic transparency for any social media entity with a userbase greater than some threshold. Transparent to the degree that if there were a centrally managed influence campaign, researchers would be able to detect it in near real-time.
gradus_ad 2y ago
China and the US are in a deepening cold war. Our political systems are fundamentally opposed so conflict is inevitable (given there is no higher authority to manage our relations). If you are looking for some specific justification for a ban, you're missing the forest for the trees.
- close04 2y ago
  > Our political systems The rift has nothing to do with the political system (e.g. the US is freely and openly allied with Saudi Arabia despite radically different political systems), and everything to do with the competition for power and influence in the world. SA is not a real contender there, China is. From here the rift and inevitable conflict. > If you are looking for some specific justification for a ban, you're missing the forest for the trees Every reason for the ban comes from the above competition for power and influence in the world. Whether it's not having an adversary financially profit from your own citizens or influence their decisions, or it's to eliminate foreign competition and fill the gap with local companies, it's all abut power and money and the political system couldn't matter less.
  - nswest23 2y ago
    > power and influence good observation but it's probably both. The EU is a significant center of power and influence but so far the US hasn't started banning bidets.
    - N19PEDL2 2y ago
      > so far the US hasn't started banning bidets. Not really, but it looks like it will impose tariffs on other goods from the EU. [0] [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warned-to-prepare-for-early-donald-trump-tariff-action-us/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warned-to-prepare-for-ear...
    - close04 2y ago
      The EU is neither willing nor capable of challenging US supremacy economically or politically any time soon (not even mentioning the military). And as it stands with the current war in Ukraine the EU was further shot in the foot. Today the EU is a good ally to further bolster US' claim for supremacy. China on the other hand has all but openly challenged the US for that title. On the surface at least they are skyrocketing in every area (won't go into how or why). They had the same "incompatible" political system for decades but they stood as manufacturing partner for many of those decades until Western leaders noticed a trend with a dangerous slope. And as it sank in that inaction means ceding the top spot, here is some action. CIA trying to overturn a regime is a tall order with China so the more handy ways were economic: tariffs and bans.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
Yeah, is nothing to do with that, it's "reds under the beds"-level fear of China. It was fine when it was US companies...
- flkenosad 2y ago
  For real. Fear based decision making. Yikes.
Zak 2y ago
Engagement driven algorithms do not necessarily show what users are consciously interested in, but what they subconsciously can't turn away from. You are probably a well-regulated, internet-savvy adult who easily recognizes engagement bait and knows to swipe away form it quickly to train the algorithm to stop showing it to you. People arguing for a ban are probably concerned about how it affects those who are not so regulated using logic similar to arguments for banning drugs. I do not share that position, but I'm inclined to support some weakening of platform immunity for services that use an individualized recommendation algorithm to maximize engagement. I did not quickly find an authoritative source, but it is widely reported that Douyin, the Chinese domestic market equivalent of TikTok deliberately favors educational content, especially for children. Here's one news report claiming that: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111708 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111...
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing that article. > the distinctions largely owe to stiff regulations in China centered on youth social media use and political dissent. > The differences between the two apps highlight a comparatively permissive legal environment for social media in the U.S., protecting free expression but also leaving some users -- especially young ones -- vulnerable to addictive behavior, the experts said. > That same year, Douyin imposed a 40-minute daily limit for users under 14. Last year, Chinese regulators introduced a rule that would limit children under age 18 to two hours of smartphone screen time each day.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
unethical_ban 2y ago
It is important for context that the above poster seems to be of the opinion that government rarely if ever can be useful for citizens. So when they say "government shouldn't get involved", it doesn't seem to be a statement of their opinion on social media or tiktok, it is about government in general.

libertine 2y ago

Are you aware of what happened in Romania with Tiktok? A candidate got funded by foreign agents, paid for influencers, and sprinkled with Russian bot accounts it was enough to make a pro-Russian candidate get 20% of votes when he was an unknown political figure.[0] The app allows this. You can try to distract everyone from an app that enables illegal foreign interference by hiding under the guise of "oh, this is just what people want to hear; the problem isn't Russia but Romanian politicians." - that's a very dangerous stance and a threat to free & fair elections. [0]https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/romania-tiktok-propaganda-campaign/ https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/romania-tiktok-pr...

olivierduval 2y ago
And that's why X/Twitter should be banned too... ;-) And Facebook too !! :-D (obviously kidding but... well... not so much after seing https://www.france.tv/documentaires/documentaires-societe/6711838-emprise-numerique-5-femmes-contre-les-big-5.html https://www.france.tv/documentaires/documentaires-societe/67... )
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Not so much, which is precisely why China does ban Twitter and Facebook. I’d love to have a detente where every country has a permissive policy towards social media apps and accepts some degree of soft power from it, but that’s not where we’re at.
  - flkenosad 2y ago
    So the US wants to be like China???
    - 0xBDB 2y ago
      The US wants to be much more like a wartime US, in the face of its most intense completion since WWII. I think most Americans have no conception of what WWII era US censorship and propaganda looked like, but it looked a lot like modern peacetime China. TikTok is being treated more gently than Tokyo Rose. Of course things will not go that far domestically... unless the shooting starts.
- libertine 2y ago
  X is a fine example of a platform tuned to push propaganda, which helped get Trump elected. I wouldn't be shocked if X gets banned on EU for example, hopefully, they will set the example.
- flkenosad 2y ago
  And HN! And GitHub!
maverwa 2y ago
But is the issue really the app itself? Or that not a symptom of a larger problem, or even multiple problems, we face, seemingly now more than ever before? I don’t want to say „banning TikTok is wrong“, I honestly do not know. But I don’t think it it solves any of the underlying problems. It may make it harder to hit these vulnerable demographics directly in the short term, but it won’t solve media literacy, corruption, or any of the other issues involved.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Taxing social media companies and using the tax proceeds to fund transparency initiatives would be interesting. E.g. grants to researchers and civil society labs Make them pay to monitor the problem they potentially create.
api 2y ago
The solution to this is to change the way elections work to make it harder to pull off this kind of short term influence pumping. The problem is that it’s possible to flood the zone with shit before people have a chance to have discourse on it. I’ve heard a number of ideas including multiple round elections with averaged results. That way if someone pops in round one the discourse can focus a spotlight on them and if people don’t like what they see on closer inspection they can push the other way in round two. The other problem though is that establishment politicians are so unpopular in so many places around the world that a rando with a simple catchy meme-worthy message can run in from nowhere and upset things. If the establishment were more responsive to the people it would be harder to do this.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  All social media is a fertile ground for propaganda and manipulation by bots. The only way forward is to ban politics in all social media.
  - Thiez 2y ago
    You can't ban politics. Everything is politics.
    - flkenosad 2y ago
      If everything is politics then nothing is.
      - Thiez 2y ago
        Exactly, and that's why it's so pointless to ban politics. Whatever you include in or exclude from that ban is in itself a political decision.
nemothekid 2y ago
1. TikTok isn't being banned in Romania 2. Meta has a far worse track record here. If your argument is social media allows the subversion of free and fair elections there is no reason for TikTok to be singled out. In fact you could argue that WhatsApp groups should be banned as well.

professor_v 2y ago

So how do we ensure that Tiktok doesn't covertly alter the algorithm to subtly include propaganda tailored to China's geopolitical interests that are detrimental to the US? Or even just propaganda tailored to enhance internal strife to weaken the country?

tw1984 2y ago
this is the exact same question being asked around the global - how could you be sure that American made LLMs are not altered in a way to maximize US interests at the costs of everyone else's.
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  Or like, movies? > The agreement was seen as a way to "spread the American way of life" though a war-torn France (and Europe at large) > To further the cultural propagation effect of the Blum–Byrnes agreements, the informational Media Guaranty Program was established in 1948 as part of the Economic Cooperation Administration to "guarantee that the US government would convert certain foreign currencies into dollars at attractive rates, provided the information materials earning the moneys reflected appropriate elements of American life". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blum%E2%80%93Byrnes_agreement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blum%E2%80%93Byrnes_agreemen...
  - immibis 2y ago
    There's also the agreement where movie studies can use real war machines as props, provided they agree to make the US military forces appear heroic, noble and victorious.
- dkd903 2y ago
  Simple - no one asked you to use American LLMs. The same way no one asked you to rely on America to power your defence forces.
- joe200 2y ago
  You cannot. But in US you have elections every 4 years wheres in Russia or China both Putin and Xi are "elected" for their lifetime. Does it tell you anything ?

bamboozled 2y ago

I guess you're someone familiar with programming and algorithms begin this is HN, so you must be able to understand that it would be trivial for TikTok to serve different kinds of content to people based on their geographical location and other attributes?

flkenosad 2y ago
They do. Like I know for a fact that I get different content in different cities. But it's algorithmic. I don't think anyone at TikTok is saying let's manipulate specific locations. They don't need to and it would be too risky and not worth the tech debt tbh. Besides, you can do it as a third party with bots. So like whatever replaces it will get manipulated just the same. Facebook has had this problem for over a decade now and nobody's solved it. Let's just admit that national governments are stupid.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  The thing is, if they wanted to influence an election they could easily do it. They could start to feed you content which is bias towards "their" candidate, and there is no way you could probe they did that intentionally because "it's just an algorithm". They don't need to and it would be too risky and not worth the tech debt tbh. lol, a targeted propaganda machine would be worth every bit of a tech debt for an authoritarian regime.

rcMgD2BwE72F 2y ago

>This sort of issue shouldn't even be state or municipal issue, it should be a household one. And I guess you believe that every consumer product and service should be treated strictly as household issue. For absolutely everything - even the most dangerous, toxic and antisocial ones, I can find one good use case credible enough to ask other to behave themselves. And I'm no David Hahn.

flkenosad 2y ago
No dude. Just for software.

api 2y ago

This is really naive. These algorithms can be and are tuned to manipulate the audience. That being said, it’s not fair to single out TikTok. They all do it. The only unique danger with TikTok is that it could be controlled by a foreign adversary, or at least could be more easily than the others.

shlant 2y ago
> That being said, it’s not fair to single out TikTok. > The only unique danger with TikTok is that it could be controlled by a foreign adversary, or at least could be more easily than the others. Isn't that the entire reason given for why they are singling them out? You say it's not fair then give the exact reason why it seems to be.
- ripply 2y ago
  I think they mean that those should also be banned, but this ban isn't about addictive technology, it's about China owning the addictive technology and being able to exert control over it if they wanted. I also am of the opinion that this addictive technology should be regulated, including domestic.
  - flkenosad 2y ago
    At least they should be clear it's about control.
joe200 2y ago
The danger with TikTok is that some already used it to influence elections (recently in Romania) so it is proven to be working.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  It's important to differentiate worries here. Issue #1: The platform owner itself uses the platform algorithm(s) to manipulate public opinion Issue #2: Third parties use the platform to manipulate public opinion (e.g. Romania) #1 could be solved by algorithmic transparency. #2 could be solved by more realtime transparency into content.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

You don't know how it works, you think you know how it works. The algo is proprietary and secret.

ethbr1 2y ago
Exactly. The real fix here would be to require algorithmic transparency for any social media entity with a userbase greater than some threshold. Transparent to the degree that if there were a centrally managed influence campaign, researchers would be able to detect it in near real-time.

gradus_ad 2y ago

China and the US are in a deepening cold war. Our political systems are fundamentally opposed so conflict is inevitable (given there is no higher authority to manage our relations). If you are looking for some specific justification for a ban, you're missing the forest for the trees.

close04 2y ago
> Our political systems The rift has nothing to do with the political system (e.g. the US is freely and openly allied with Saudi Arabia despite radically different political systems), and everything to do with the competition for power and influence in the world. SA is not a real contender there, China is. From here the rift and inevitable conflict. > If you are looking for some specific justification for a ban, you're missing the forest for the trees Every reason for the ban comes from the above competition for power and influence in the world. Whether it's not having an adversary financially profit from your own citizens or influence their decisions, or it's to eliminate foreign competition and fill the gap with local companies, it's all abut power and money and the political system couldn't matter less.
- nswest23 2y ago
  > power and influence good observation but it's probably both. The EU is a significant center of power and influence but so far the US hasn't started banning bidets.
  - N19PEDL2 2y ago
    > so far the US hasn't started banning bidets. Not really, but it looks like it will impose tariffs on other goods from the EU. [0] [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warned-to-prepare-for-early-donald-trump-tariff-action-us/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-warned-to-prepare-for-ear...
  - close04 2y ago
    The EU is neither willing nor capable of challenging US supremacy economically or politically any time soon (not even mentioning the military). And as it stands with the current war in Ukraine the EU was further shot in the foot. Today the EU is a good ally to further bolster US' claim for supremacy. China on the other hand has all but openly challenged the US for that title. On the surface at least they are skyrocketing in every area (won't go into how or why). They had the same "incompatible" political system for decades but they stood as manufacturing partner for many of those decades until Western leaders noticed a trend with a dangerous slope. And as it sank in that inaction means ceding the top spot, here is some action. CIA trying to overturn a regime is a tall order with China so the more handy ways were economic: tariffs and bans.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

Yeah, is nothing to do with that, it's "reds under the beds"-level fear of China. It was fine when it was US companies...

flkenosad 2y ago
For real. Fear based decision making. Yikes.

Zak 2y ago

Engagement driven algorithms do not necessarily show what users are consciously interested in, but what they subconsciously can't turn away from. You are probably a well-regulated, internet-savvy adult who easily recognizes engagement bait and knows to swipe away form it quickly to train the algorithm to stop showing it to you. People arguing for a ban are probably concerned about how it affects those who are not so regulated using logic similar to arguments for banning drugs. I do not share that position, but I'm inclined to support some weakening of platform immunity for services that use an individualized recommendation algorithm to maximize engagement. I did not quickly find an authoritative source, but it is widely reported that Douyin, the Chinese domestic market equivalent of TikTok deliberately favors educational content, especially for children. Here's one news report claiming that: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111708 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-china/story?id=108111...

aziaziazi 2y ago
Thanks for sharing that article. > the distinctions largely owe to stiff regulations in China centered on youth social media use and political dissent. > The differences between the two apps highlight a comparatively permissive legal environment for social media in the U.S., protecting free expression but also leaving some users -- especially young ones -- vulnerable to addictive behavior, the experts said. > That same year, Douyin imposed a 40-minute daily limit for users under 14. Last year, Chinese regulators introduced a rule that would limit children under age 18 to two hours of smartphone screen time each day.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

unethical_ban 2y ago

It is important for context that the above poster seems to be of the opinion that government rarely if ever can be useful for citizens. So when they say "government shouldn't get involved", it doesn't seem to be a statement of their opinion on social media or tiktok, it is about government in general.