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> Then TikTok came along and it's kind of disproven that? ... none of the algorithmically generated content is as polarizing as what I would find on the other apps.

I don't think this is fully accurate. The big differentiator for Tik Tok's algorithmic feed from FB's or Youtube's (in my mind) is not its accuracy or lack of polarization, it's actually that it draws much firmer and harder to cross lines between the parts of its userbase with an (IMO intentionally) nerfed search capability, so it's very difficult to break out of the demographic/interest bubble it decides you are in for feed purposes. So you, personally, probably receive literally no polarizing, political, etc content that you aren't happy to see. But that doesn't mean it's not there!

Here's an example: a researcher set up a new account, interacted with transphobic content, and was very quickly (in a few hours of viewing) seeing far-right conspiracy theory, antisemitic, white supremacy (and so on) content, some of which was endorsing violence. https://twitter.com/abbieasr/status/1445888305997000705

ByteDance (字节跳动) the parent company that owns TikTok and mainland china Douyin 抖音 have been caught suppressing and hiding videos from disabled or LGBTQ users so that they are not shown to regular users. [0] [1]

One might wonder what other content is suppressed on the platform. [2]

[0] https://www.dailydot.com/irl/tiktok-fat-lgbtq-disabled-creat...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50645345

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

In my personal experience with tiktok it will pigeonhole you rapidly. But overall the platform is heavy on silly and fun content (not sure if it intentionally maintained like that by the owners). So before you know it you are pigeonholed into extremely fun stuff (compared to tediously polarizing content on other big apps).

Now over time it might devolve into bad content if there is no higher level moderation to keep it on lighter side of things. I would personally be okay with not all platforms being totally democratic.

isn't ByteDance's play with TikTok to be as inoffensive as possible too? over-greedy filtering out of voices deemed to be "controversial"

> betting against a company with such a huge war chest is like trying to catch a falling knife.

Indeed. My biggest fear is that succeed.

I happen to prefer PCs (and there is no reason to argue for or against that). Apple has been incredibly successful at capturing market share and their devices are now mandatory at my new job. I might not like it, but it's not the end of the world: Apple behaves ethically.

Now imagine your [otherwise] dream job demands that you strap a Quest on and feed Zuck's data fetish.

Don't forget to put on your Meta Smartwatch with front-facing camera

edit: for reference https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/leaked-ph...

>Apple behaves ethically

There was that whole no poaching thing.

And:

caught attempting to be a book cartel

hostile to right to repair

browser render lockdown in iOS

slow moving PWA support in Safari

deliberate slowdown of older iPhones due to battery

And sharing imessages and imail with iCCP.

if you can believe Apple behaves ethically you can convince yourself Meta is ethical too if you try

> Now imagine your [otherwise] dream job demands that you strap a Quest on and feed Zuck's data fetish.

Its very likely that a commercial Oculus device won't collect data (what company approves that?), so it might actually give FB a path to money that is free of data+ads.

> what company approves that?

Kissing by the number that have FB accounts, most?

They only want to collect consumer data for themselves, not the data of employees by other corporations.

Sorry, moving too fast. “Judging by the number that have FB accounts, most?”

You do realize there's an edit button? It's next to the timestamp etc., the comment metadata

The edit button goes away after a while - if there is a way to edit after that has happened I’d happily use it.

Apple behaves ethically with those file scanners on your devices? Iphone parts that show errors when replaced with the same parts from another phone? Lobbying against the right to repair? Blocking access to 3rd party app stores?

lol. It's just marketing, nothing more.

a) The CSAM scanning on your phone only happens if you specify that you want your photos to be uploaded to iCloud Photo Library. And if doesn't happen client-side then it simply happens server-side with less privacy and security.

b) iPhone parts showing errors issues was a bug that was already fixed and applied to TouchID security validation. If it's something new then it's almost guarenteed that this is a good thing i.e. you're trying to tamper/remove the biometrics components.

c) Apple's customers don't want 3rd party App Stores. It's not a computer to them but an appliance like a microwave. They want security, privacy, moderation, convenience and alternate stores trade those away for features e.g. flexibility, price that no one really wants.

1) Lets not have client side scanning apologists here. They are setting a terrible precedent. Even if apple does it right, the copy cats won't and that'll be terrible for everyone.

2) Apple customer support has a history of being deceitful. In the US it is illegal for them to reject jailbroken devices from warranty and I've been told by apple they will void your warranty on their internal services if you bring them a device.

3) Not all customers want a 3p App Store. Some do. iPhones are not microwaves, they are computers.

> They want security, privacy, moderation, convenience

Like a microwave? Wtf. Also, all these things can come through 3p app stores. Security is provided by the OS not App Store. Privacy is by app. Moderation apple still doesn't do right. Convenience is IAP that apps will actually use.

>Lets not have client side scanning apologists here.

It's not scanning on the client side, it's hashing. People on this site should really understand the difference. The alternative, as many have pointed out, is them uploading your whole image to be scanned server side.

Smart money is that this is a move in front of Apple encrypting your whole icloud backup, and they have to do something if they don't want the legal, political, and social liability of being a free encrypted cloud storage for CSAM.

There's lots of reasons to criticise Apple, this isn't one.

What is scanning if not reading every byte of your private images and using an algorithm to decide whether or not to call the cops on you? It's scanning.

Well that's a convenient set of arguments, lets politely agree to disagree.

Privacy is #1 selling point for Apple phones for geeks, it for sure ain't some mediocre hardware catching what chinese manufacturers released 1-2 generations before, nor sheepish bragging mentality that is so popular in poorer parts of the world.

They broke privacy. It ain't some super bendy term that you can argue about and twist to suit your current needs, in similar vein as ie truth. Lets break it down - private means mine and mine only, 0 other access, here, there, everywhere. Anything else is not private, whatever 'noble' cause you wrap it in that keeps shifting with time, location, political regime etc..

They claimed they had it. Many honestly believed them. They openly kicked it out and failed at it so badly they didn't even grok it could be an issue. Then whole clusterfuck happened as we all saw from first row.

Apple doesn't have privacy, period. It can claim to have some other features, and with some they are correct. And that's about it.

> It's not scanning on the client side, it's hashing.

They are (their code is) looking at every item and reviewing it opaquely to us, and deciding if they should have an employee look at tiny thumbnails to tell the cops the owner is a pedophile. Its (a) not real hashing - its "perceptual" which is fancy math that says they're looking at thumbnails and (b) cycling through every item in a list and running an Algo against it is what I'd call scanning - lets not get bogged down on the terms.

We all know the tech details they shared, people on this site all understand the difference. We know the algorithm is easy enough to produce collisions. We know that apple said multiple 3 letter agencies can determine what goes in the bloom filter, and it would be downloaded from the internet and not audited. We know they are going to open it up to other countries governments too. We know that its on if you want to use opt-out services.

> The alternative, as many have pointed out, is them uploading your whole image to be scanned server side.

> Smart money is that this is a move in front of Apple encrypting your whole icloud backup

The whole image is being uploaded server side anyways.

My smart money says that this won't lead to encrypted backups anytime soon. Too many other things in those backups.

> social liability of being a free encrypted cloud storage for CSAM

I don't really think there is much tbh. That said, it is clear people would rather have non-absolutely-private cloud than a non-absolutely-private personal device. I know I would!

People criticize apple for "not letting you own the device" and this is a much bigger step down that road. I would rather a less-absolutely-private cloud service than an absolutely-private-everything where my local stuff is scanned.

> There's lots of reasons to criticise Apple, this isn't one.

There's lots of reasons to criticize Apple. Including this one.

Apple doesn't do E2E, and there's no evidence they are going to. It's very likely they just legally can't.

First, the FBI (which supposedly stopped the last attempt to introduce E2E) has more concerns than CSAM.

Second, the current scanning system + E2E will have significant weaknesses* compared to server side scanning. As it is, Apple will pay the same legal costs as it would be if it had implemented E2E without scanning.

The only way to answer both concerns is to have way more invasive scanning than Apple told us it would do. IMHO, iCloud E2E is just a made up slogan to justify Apple snooping on the device. The real future is just way more scanning.

* The scanning database must receive updates after the images have been uploaded, because the hash as described inherently cannot catch most offenders right away. It's an issue of both space (the proposal is based on a perceptual hash, but the hash must be far smaller than the original, so similar images can't all get the same hash) and timing (NCMEC can't find new CSAM right away).

However, the images were likely deleted on the device, so neither side has access to allow rescanning in the E2E scenario. Unless.. The solutions here all involve more scanning than the original proposal.

I agree that most customers are not asking for another App Store, but they are being negatively impacted.

1. Apple has blocked apps as objectionable because they were political even though simply factual. [1]

2. Apple's lock on the App Store facilitates government blocks on apps that Apple itself would otherwise deem fine. [2]

3. Apple blocks "adult" oriented apps. How many times do people have to rehash the lines between art and porn with authority gatekeepers instead of making their own choices?

4. Apple blocks game streaming apps, and other apps that act as front ends to other app-like worlds on the web, a whole new category of innovation cancelled. [3[

5. Apple inserts itself into otherwise peer-to-peer transactions, i.e. in-app non-code content purchases. This economic tax is both unfair, but also a dampener on innovation.

6. Apple on iOS restricts the downloading of code within apps to educational situations. (Currently rule 2.5.2 [4]) This is a huge dampener on innovation. Coding, including no-code coding, should be available to anyone wanting to be code literate or want to make their own tools. I get that their are safety issues, but those can be addressed with sandboxes, etc. Again, another layer of innovation killed off.

In summary, instead of being a bicycle shop for the mind, Apple's app stores block many kinds of innovation, tax providers in ways unrelated to Apple's role as phone provider, and routinely censor useful apps that are politically unappealing to Apple or governments, threaten Apple's lock on development tools, or based on Apple's sensitivity to safe (from a tech point of view) material where legitimate opinions vary as to what is desirable or not.

This is all user hostile.

Noting that there are alternative phones isn't a good response, as Apple's phones are at the center of tightly knit ecosystems. Customers do not have the ability to mix and match products between a few ecosystems and get the same value.

I view the App Store as Apple's new Achilles heal.

Apple's gatekeeper role has created perverse incentives for Apple to block significant innovation, economic viability, and freedom of expression on devices at the center of many of our lives.

Perverse incentives don't go away. They tend to metastasize (pun very much intended) [5].

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/apple-drone-striking-app-remo...

[2] https://www.vox.com/recode/22680010/russia-apple-app-store-s...

[3] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/07/apples-block-of-x...

[4] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/29/facebo...

I don't understand why nobody seems to care that apple shares imessages with CCP. Google and Facebook avoid that by not operating in China.

How can a company claim to be privacy friendly because it blocks ads while sharing private messages with a genocidal government?

Apple has knowingly used child labor for a few years in China, and are alleged to do the same thing in Congo. This is not just them, but the people who hate on FB for being unethical while lauding Apple for being ethical... the cognitive dissonance or willful ignorance is astounding.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-l...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mining-children-trfn/...

Apple has certainly displayed some anti-consumer behavior. No one will argue with that. But not all sins are equal. Let's not say that blocking access to repair stores is the same thing as knowingly aiding and abetting genocide.

Good thing you bring that up: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

Sharing imessages with CCP that is ethnically cleansing uyghurs should certainly count as aiding and abetting genocide.

It's the difference between eating an okay meal and literally stabbing yourself in the face with a knife

Here's hoping Microsoft's HoloLense takes off in the corporate world.

Ugh. Here's hoping that all crapware VR crashes, burns, and takes down their host companies.

> Then TikTok came along and it's kind of disproven that?

TikTok is the epitome of content augmentation through engagement. They literally will push more and more of what you're engaging with. Their algorithm is highly optimized to put you into very deep rabbit holes of content.

During the BLM protests you could see two very different feeds depending what content were you liking and engaging with. After a few minutes of browsing it would literally feed you only pro-BLM or anti-BLM. No middle grounds.

> The only way FB could grow was by pushing content that got people riled up.

Not sure if I've ever believe it was the only way for them to grow. I hate Facebook (product) for what it has become but it is an excellent tool for its original use, which is keeping in touch with friends/family/communities.

Right. Easiest maybe, certainly not only.

So is email.

What? The core aspect of FB/Twitter/etc. is twofold

1. No guaranteed-attention obligation from your circle, so you're free to share more things

2. Algorithms for YOUR attention so you see what you want to see in the order of importance. If you have very little time, you only see the most important things.

Email, Slack etc. are not even in the same category, it's like comparing a postcard to a newspaper headline

Grossly underestimates how complicated email can really be.

> betting against a company with such a huge war chest is like trying to catch a falling knife.

Maybe. But if money could buy product adoption we'd all be using Microsoft phones right now.

I think part of it is demographics. Facebook's userbase is and continues to trend older especially for Facebook/WhatsApp and slightly for Instagram as well compared to TikTok/Snap. I'm not saying Facebook has abandoned the younger demo but wants to continue to cater to the earning and older demo. We're not going to live in Wall-E's world but when the older generation no longer wants to or can engage in IRL experiences that require being full mobile and healthy, AR and moreso VR will allow them to immerse themselves and "preserve" youth well longer than we thought possible. We are at an interesting time in history where wealth inequality is growing and the wealth transfer from rich to poor and more significantly from old to young may not happen as quickly as society needs it to. If the older demographic can and wants to hold on a decade or 2 longer compounded with healthcare advances giving them longer life expectancy and their existing investments/savings growing well, who knows what and when the future will look like?

FB has so much money they could try literally hundreds of thousands of ideas, have all of them fail, and still have money for hundreds of thousands more. Eventually they will find the next big thing and execute perfectly.

It is inevitable.

I don't think I've gotten an actual misinformation / hate speech / etc. recommendation from Youtube, Facebook, or Tiktok.

On Facebook, I see potentially divisive posts from friends with very different political views. The difference with TikTok is that those friends don't post content.

I think if you explicitly seek out problematic content you can end in a rabbit hole on any large algorithmic app.

You must be really good at only reading content you already agree with.

The moment you watch a few seconds of a polarizing video, out of curiosity, they will start recommending more of the same. This is how people fall into more radicalized bubbles.

As a counteranecdote to many on this thread, I have also never seen hate content on any platform except TikTok.

Only on Tiktok have I seen teen girls dancing along to clearly white supremacist content about racial superiority.

Your experience is anecdotal. What "you think" isn't what others have found through actual testing, there are actual papers written about this. Also, I don't think TikTok is different because they are more ethical or anything; I think the framework they operate in (China) has forced them to take a heavier hand on emotionally extreme content.

I get far-right, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy, misinformation recommendations from Youtube at least a few times a week. And it's been like this for years despite me asking them not to show this type of content again.

Anyone who thinks these issues are somehow unique or exclusive to Facebook is simply being dishonest. They are a byproduct of the anonymous, unfettered free speech we get from the internet not something intrinsic to recommendation algorithms.

We had free speech before social networks and this wasn’t an issue. The problem is when you encourage all the 5000 lunatics who think the earth is pizza-shaped to congregate and consume each other’s content.

Now content consumption is a crime. Next we're going to curate reading lists, right ?

Reddit and Twitter proves that it's not the case.

They have allowed anti-vaxxer, conspiracy, misinformation etc communities to thrive and flourish and it's happened without recommendation algorithms. It happened because when people can see other's peoples comments they are able to follow them to discover more people like that.

Twitter absolutely uses an algorithmic feed to show you content you'll engage with more.

On Reddit this is somewhat true, but it's a well-known part of Reddit culture (though this has been changing as they've been kicking out more subs) that each sub has its own set of cultural mores, opinionated mods, and memes. There's lots of drama/hate on subs from other subs but you'll see the same phenomenon on the Fediverse or, for that matter, in a neighborhood gossip group.

It's not like these views go away without algorithmic newsfeeds, it just that algorithmic feeds accelerate their spread.

I think Snap or TikTok should rebrand to Antimeta, or at least build a subsidiary with that name to show how ridiculous this is. Facebook, or however the want to call themselves, is still the same company with its unethical leadership.

Unless leadership changes, nothing good will be in store for society at large.

3-5 years ago, the prevailing narrative about Facebook and other social media was that of the 'filter bubble', where you would only see things you agreed with. More recently, it's been a 180 to decrying Facebook force-feeding users content they disagree with. TikTok is basically the old model, the one that was blamed for things like Trump being elected.

My opinion is a name change is just that. You can also put a Ferrari body kit for a Pinto, but it’s still a pinto. Name change is just them trying to dodge their own brand’s untrustworthiness.

Before their user base "dies off" they will enjoy a period of convalescence a be of a generation to appreciate VR/AR once they can't move good.

Knives may be snapped mid air by the appropriate adversary.

The tide is correctly turning against the manifest abuses of this organization, regardless of what it asks to be called; with any luck it will be systematically dismantled and defanged.

The pathology and amorality inherent in its DNA goes back to Zuckerberg; the fish has rotted from the head from the start. That pathology leads to market valuation is not a surprise but it's also not conducive to survival.