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Is the TikTok ban a chance to rethink the whole internet?
- deadbabe 2y agoWe can rethink the internet, but people wouldn’t like the answer, so let’s not. Just carry on, carry on.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mitchbob 2y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20250117213235/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/is-the-tiktok-ban-a-chance-to-rethink-the-whole-internet https://web.archive.org/web/20250117213235/https://www.newyo...
- al2o3cr 2y agoIf your idea of "rethinking" is to have a slightly different set of billionaires that control everything, you'll love this article
- hardbants 2y ago[dead]
- SllX 2y agoIt’s a New Yorker article. Even if the ideas were sound, it wouldn’t be lovable. At least this one doesn’t begin with “Webster’s says…” but it does appear to be a puff piece courtesy of The Submarine[1] McCourt is using to try and drum up support for its TikTok bid. Fortunately we don’t have to indulge them as the project founder’s page is here: https://www.mccourt.com/project-liberty/ https://www.mccourt.com/project-liberty/ and the project website is here: https://www.projectliberty.io/ https://www.projectliberty.io/ New tech isn’t the solution to what ails the web though. The web is built on great tech, and there’s a constant forward motion to iterate and improve on the technical stack of the web. Reigning in specific anti-consumer practices characteristic of surveillance-oriented businesses is because even if you manage to make a decentralized protocol popular for a short period of time, if there is ever enough people for it to be commercially lucrative, exactly the same cycle of centralization will repeat itself. [1]: https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- amelius 2y agoWe need to rethink capitalism.
- timbit42 2y agoWe need to move beyond capitalism. Capitalism is just a gentler version of feudalism, which was a gentler version of slavery.
- spamizbad 2y agoInteresting trend I've noticed: Tiktok's users tend to like its algorithm, and its probably the app's most valuable assets, but western tech executives tend to hate it and speak of it with derision. This stands in stark contrast with US-based social media companies, where both its users and content creators often speak like they're at war with the algorithm, yet to the tech elite these sites algorithms are tuned to perfection.
- chenzhekl 2y agoNo, I don’t think Meta hates such algorithms. It just couldn’t beat TikTok algorithm-wise.
- Liquix 2y agoi think they could if they started with "show users content they like" instead of "keep users staring at the app for as long as possible". both result in more engagement and more ad dollars, but optimizing for the latter becomes a race to the bottom with increasingly extreme, polarizing, emotion-inducing content. the blatant algorithm manipulation around elections and politics is just the icing on the cake. sure, china is probably doing this too, but they're either being more subtle or playing a longer game. meta et al may have come out ahead for a few quarters but what's that worth if user count is declining long term?
- bsenftner 2y agoIt's pretty simple, the Tiktok algorithm recognizes the value of long term user satisfaction of it's users, and all the American Tech Algorithms are blind to anything long term, and plus the "user" is not the customer in the American tech product, the advertiser is, American social media is a product for the advertisers and not for the users. This is clear as day.
- troupo 2y agoTikTok's algorithm is also nearly instant. From time to time it will show you content adjacent to what you watch. After three or so viewings your feed will add the content you watched/engaged with regularly. Press "not interested" twice (or sometimes once), and content will disappear. American social media effectively ignores any input from users.
- xnx 2y agoRSS was too good and too decentralized to exist. It's a miracle that it's still possible to independently publish and subscribe to podcasts (notably, Spotify doesn't let you subscribe to unapproved podcasts). I social web based on RSS would be heaven: publish anywhere you want, own your content and URL, no content moderation, pick your own service (separately) for discovery. Google should be pushing harder for this to bust content back out of the walled gardens of Instagram.
- nicoco 2y agoYes. But atom please.
- packetlost 2y agoRSS/Atom works for certain kinds of content, but not as well for others. It basically necessitates long polling and for anything that needs realtime publishing it just straight up won't work at any meaningful scale
- xnx 2y agoDoesn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSub address that?
- packetlost 2y agoSeems like it, but I wasn't aware of it!
- arch_deluxe 2y agoI totally agree. Is there a community of like-minded folks out there somewhere? I'd love to see someone give this a try.
- xnx 2y agoThe US is trying its best by kicking 170 million users out of their prefered app. Amazing that I haven't seen more effort to pick up the refugees. Twitter could've made a big video push. Tumblr (I know photomatt is a little distracted now) could've reminded the world it exists. etc.
- khalilsautchuk 2y ago[flagged]
- cryptonector 2y ago> Is the TikTok Ban a Chance to Rethink the Whole Internet? No. Next question.
- salt-thrower 2y agoGoing out on a limb here: nope. Do I wish otherwise? Of course. Will anything of the sort happen? Nope.
- ripped_britches 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...
- salt-thrower 2y agoLove this. I’ve had the same thought for years and I’m glad to hear there’s a name for it.
- zaphirplane 2y agoThe answer to Headlines that ask a question is almost always No
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoBetteridge’s law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headline...
- lemming 2y agoOf course it's a chance to rethink the internet. COVID was also a chance to rethink our responses to pandemics. Cambridge Analytica was a chance to rethink data privacy as it relates to private companies. Edward Snowden was a chance to rethink data privacy as it relates to governments. Climate Change is a chance to rethink how we live our lives, build our cities, and produce our food. In my hometown, an earthquake was a chance to rethink how the city worked. Life is full of these chances, but we seldom take them. Whatever happens with TikTok, it'll be business as usual in no time.
- vaylian 2y agoCounterexample: 9/11 (11th september 2001). This changed so many things for the worse. More government surveillance. More security theater. More racism/distrust against people who looks like muslims. And the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have left their traces as well.
- gmuslera 2y agoWe are in a Ghostbusters world, the options we have are just to choose the form of our destructor.
- feverzsj 2y agoRecommendation algorithms never worked for me. I still prefer good old search and sort.
- wileydragonfly 2y agoTik tok seemed to push a lot of obviously mildly retarded or fetal alcohol syndrome people at me. Felt like it was normalizing things we shouldn’t aspire to.
- throw_a_grenade 2y agohttps://archive.is/20250118032034/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/is-the-tiktok-ban-a-chance-to-rethink-the-whole-internet https://archive.is/20250118032034/https://www.newyorker.com/...
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago> When I went to school, I was taught that free will is the distinguishing characteristic of the human species Hugely off-topic, but that strikes me as a very strange thing to be taught. Personally, I believe that, if humans have free will, other animals do too, but that's all it is: a belief.
- xyzzy9563 2y agoBiologically humans are just animals with more powerful brains. Why do some people think we alone have novel things such as free will?
- ghssds 2y agoThis is what Christians teach. God made us in His image and put us on Earth so we can dominate it, including all living creatures. He gave us Free Will because He loves us, but will punish anyone who use it, because we should submit to Him. This more or less is what my Catholic school was teaching anyway.
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoLuckily god doesn’t exist so you can use your free will without being punished by anything :)
- techno_tsar 2y agostuff like this gets taught in school? that’s like a take from the 1600s. literally descartes’s argument that animals are just automatons and only humans have minds.
- hereme888 2y agoCan we get over the nonsense that banning tiktok has anything to do with free speech? Companies get shut down or penalized whenever they break laws or behave in obviously abusive ways. Tiktok was given several recourses, and they refused. That's all there is to it.
- ANewFormation 2y agoWhich recourses are you talking about? It was mostly a classic witch hunt in that they were charged without evidence, presumed guilty, and then told to prove that they were not a witch. It's a tried and true method to find witches.
- seydor 2y agoWhat makes people think that people don't like addictions? They jump from one to the other all the time
- BSDobelix 2y ago>rethink the whole internet? The IP protocol has been proven for decades, but the "newyorker" is probably thinking about the entire Internet of Facebook, Google, Instagram and X?
- diggan 2y agoThe article is not about alternatives to social media giants, but rather about a billionaire who wants to "rescue" TikTok. > McCourt, who says that he has no interest in becoming TikTok’s C.E.O., is unique among the group of potential buyers. For starters, he has been steadfastly public, voicing his desire to purchase the app in print and televised interviews, including on “Fox & Friends,” reportedly Trump’s favorite show. He is also the only potential buyer so far promising to serve the public’s interest—to address not only geopolitical concerns about the app but also the deleterious effects it has been shown to have on young users. It seems to be little more than a thinly veiled ad for billionaire Frank McCourt to push his bid to buy TikTok, which he promises will not just be another social media platform but so much better under his ownership, and fix all the problems. Surely wouldn't be used to push his and his friends' agenda. Not to mention that ByteDance seems to have repeatably said they don't want to sell, but everyone seems to have their price, maybe they just haven't got the right offer yet.
- whoitwas 2y agoThe owners of Tiktok banned it in the US by not selling off or offering protection for American data. Anyone that thinks giving a hostile nation access to more than 100 million sensor arrays in their country is not thinking well.
- peoplefromibiza 2y ago[dead]
- tappaseater 2y agoThe TT creator, John Aravosis, said recently on his show that it took TT 3 days to figure out he is gay and he said he never interacted with it in any way that would convey that. On the other hand, it kept giving me animal snuff that utterly revulsed me, despite my reporting it, thumbs downing. I deleted my account about a year ago. Although I loved a lot of content and was awed by the work of many creators, I got this weird anxiety when I had been scrolling for, say, an hour. It was like my brain was giving me a warning sign, though my consciousness did not perceive it. I came to a personal decision, unscientifically, and without any jingoism or conspiracies, that short-form scrolling is bad for my health. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for Loops (the fediverse version of TT) and I scrolled a few videos. I had such a strong negative feeling that I closed it and uninstalled. I am so happy YouTube Shorts is so shit, because I watch one or two that catch my eye, then go back to the longer videos.
- tormeh 2y agoAfaict TT only cares about dwell time and maybe if you comment or something. These dislike buttons do nothing. In fact, since they increase dwell time using them makes it more likely for such content to reappear in your feed than if you simply scrolled.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thrance 2y agotl;dr: another billionaire wants to buy TikTok. Oligarchs won't stop until all media (social and legacy) are turned into ideological echo chambers in favor of laissez-faire capitalism and a return to the Gilded Age. All done in the name of free speech and freedom, of course.
- 331c8c71 2y agoGiven that a lot of people have multiple interests and consumption patterns I wonder why the platforms like YouTube (the only one I use) do not give user a conscious choice? For instance, I watch educational content, music-related content and some talk shows. Yt can figure out this out (clustering) and let me choose what i want to focus in a given moment.
- diggan 2y agoAll these platforms aren't build for users who want to make choices. They're all built for the lowest common denominator, namely a user who opens a app, uses it for 30-120 minutes then close it, and don't really mind much what they're consuming. These users are not out after learning something necessarily, but just pass time watching something. The higher up you put something, the more likely they're to watch it.
- 331c8c71 2y agoYou think promoting a minimal level of agency for consumers would drive engagement and revenues down? One could use such "user care" for marketing as well. I have been wondering quite a while how engineers working explicitly on "lowest common denominator" tech feel about themselves and their work? EDIT: I kind of forgot that yt serves ads in unbearable quantities for quite a while. Thinking that yt might care for viewers seems indeed a bit naive.
- truth_or_dare 2y ago[dead]