But when you have billions of, ahem, "less gifted" people sucking at the teat of putrid misinformation, well... THAT is the problem right there.
And assuming you know better than those "less gifted" people is the good intention that paves the road to hell. It's fundamentally antithetical to freedom to tell people what they're allowed to think, even if your intentions are noble.
Weren't the republicans the ones squealing when social media was blocking them.
Actually, I think the greater irony was how the Republicans made a big stink about being deplatformed from Twitter and Facebook, and how social media is "the new town square" - then they proceeded to pass legislation that will potentially deplatform the entire userbase of TikTok. Rules for thee, not for me.
Regardless of the partisan bickering, NN for the most part ended up being a nothingburger either way. Turns out that while the market certainly could nickel and dime "fast lane" access, that really only happened in the real world at theme parks, and on actual physical highways. TBH, I find those sorts of "fast lanes" far more insidious.
"we don't want you to see our algorithms because it would expose our bias, give proof of the data mining we do of our users and put a spotlight on how TikTok amplifies addictive and dangerous content."
Or it's just that YouTube's and Meta's algorithms are absolute dogshit, and Bytedance doesn't want to get ripped off. I'm personally not a fan of short format videos, but from what I've seen on YouTube and Facebook, it's mostly just weird shit and rage bait. If that's the best they can do, it's no wonder TikTok is more popular.
Rights are for citizens, is a foreign owned company a citizen to the supreme court
If the government comes along and yanks my megaphone out of my hand because it's made in China, they've infringed my right to free speech.
The "there are other platforms you can use" argument is absolute bullshit, otherwise why did Musk pay $44 billion for Twitter? If all platforms are equivalent then he could've saved a fortune by just launching his own microblogging service, but clearly there's value in the existing connections users have made on an existing popular social media platform.
Like most Big Tech companies, I'm sure that they have a plan ready to comply with the letter of the law without actually complying with the spirit of it.
Sounds like Bytedance needs to ask Apple if they can borrow some of their lawyers.
Isn't there research that FaceBook, Instagram, Tiktok negatively affect mental health, with teenage girls more susceptible to poor mental health because of social media?
Here in the US, that's actually a good thing because we have for-profit healthcare. More mental health problems, more money for shrinks and anti-depressant drug manufacturers. The social media companies aren't the enemy, they're just driving the wheels of capitalism, baby!
"And nothing of value was lost"?
Yeah, it's easy to enjoy the schadenfreude of seeing something you didn't use get the banhammer. Sooner or later they'll come for something you do enjoy, and you know how the "first they came for..." parable ends.
I'm no longer a fan of electric cars after I learned that they don't really solve the smog problem and after I was introduced to the concept of High-Speed rail and walkable cities, but if I can't have those things I guess I will take the facts that they at least reduce our dependency on foreign oil.
So, rather than running some wires, which the defeatist contingent is already saying is too costly and infeasible, we should just *checks notes* rebuild every suburban community in the country? Oh, and also while we're at it, fundamentally reprograming the human psyche so that we don't get people losing their shit from living in an urban environment.
I guar-an-fuckin-tee if you were living in some urban ratbox with your neighbor blasting Fox news all hours of the night, you'd deeply regret the lifestyle you're promoting.
The fundie religious right in the US isn't far away from the Mullahs in Iran.
It's why we even jokingly refer to them as "Y'all Qaeda".
Is that something that happens often?
I'm not sure how we got from manga to implanted credit cards, but personally, if I'm going to engage in any retail consumerism activities, step #1 involves driving to the store in my car. For that, I'm legally required to carry my driver's license (which is in my wallet, along with my credit and debit cards), and unless I just want to stand in my driveway and stare blankly at my locked car, I also need my keyfob (which is on my keyring). Technically, I could leave my smartphone at home but then I'd have no navigation or music (aside from terrestrial broadcast radio, yuck) in my car.
So, when I arrive at my shopping destination, I've got several different ways of paying for things just by virtue of all the crap I've had to bring with me anyway out of necessity. There's no way I'd ever want to go under the knife to solve a problem that isn't actually a problem. Plus, on more than one occasion I've placed an in-store pickup order while I'm already at the store, and all I needed to pay for that was my username and password, which I have memorized. It seems barbaric to perform self-mutilation as a workaround for stores that can't just process payments via a simple account login, if someone really insists on not carrying around other forms of payment.
What constitutes sexualized depictions of minors is rather subjective when it comes to works of fiction that do not involve abuse of actual children. It's worth mentioning that Romeo and Juliet were underage.
I honestly expected foreign porn sites to just do the old Goatse disclaimer (which was something along the lines of "if you find this image offensive, don't look at it.") rather than blocking users from the US. I'm also not sure if the Japanese porn site operators are trying to make a political statement or if they're genuinely concerned that they'd be arrested if they entered the US on a business trip or vacation.
China along with Russia will want Trump only because he will pretty much end NATO allow allow Russia to take over Ukraine. That alone will be enough to hurt the US a lot. Then the next step for China would be Taiwan.
You could just as easily make the argument that OPEC has the ability to manipulate our elections in such a manner, too. Biden is really concerned that high gas prices might hurt his reelection chances, even to the point that he's considering tapping the strategic petroleum reserve again. Funny how nobody ever wants to suggest banning foreign oil, though...
Why should US residents be denied access to foreign speech when they could not be denied access (due to the First Amendment) to that same speech if it were domestically generated?
Except that TikTok isn't even analogous to a foreign broadcaster broadcasting foreign speech. TikTok's US content largely consists of videos produced by American creators. The potential ban would deplatform an entire social media network of American users. How the free speech implications of such an action managed to slip past the minds of so many elected representatives, is a truly disturbing revelation.
which is that this doesn't solve anything. If China wants to manipulate us they can do it like Russia does with troll & bot farms.
That's because it's not really about foreign manipulation. It's that Meta and YouTube's short format offerings aren't as popular with the young kids, and they see a potential future where something like WeChat comes along and dethrones them in other aspects of the social media sphere as well.
Nobody wants to be the next "MySpace", and these days the established social media players spend enough lobbying money to make sure that never happens, so they can keep legally buying up domestic competitors, and getting any foreign competitors banned (or bought out - hey - it's even in the damn bill!). It's so blatantly corrupt.
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
