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Comment by bradleybuda | Hacker News Reader

As far as I can tell, TikTok scares like these are 30% standard social media moral panic, 70% jingoism. Everyone knows that they are paying for TikTok with their data and a few hundred million people (myself included) are okay with that calculus and making a rational, informed decision to continue using the product.

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>As far as I can tell, TikTok scares like these are 30% standard social media moral panic, 70% jingoism. Everyone knows that they are paying for TikTok with their data and a few hundred million people (myself included) are okay with that calculus and making a rational, informed decision to continue using the product.

This is just silly.

The overwhelming majority of people have no idea of what any of that means thus have not made any such calculus.

No, that's silly.

The overwhelming majority of people probably know just as much as you and I do about the uses to which TikTok puts the data they gather. Which is why conversations about TikTok immediately move into attacks on the Chinese government and Chinese people rather than discussing a single material effect that their data gathering or use has or could have on anyone's life.

The difficulty with discussing material objections to TikTok is that people would immediately enter areas that they personally have a hand in working on and/or investing in, and would lobby to preserve. They want American data to go to American oligarchs.

> The overwhelming majority of people probably know just as much as you and I do about the uses to which TikTok puts the data they gather.

As a very technical person in this industry, do you really think you don't have a better understanding of the data TikTok collects and what it will be used for than Average TikTok User?

Absolutely. Not only do I think that the general public has a good, though vague idea of what their social media data is used for, but I also think they're rationally alarmed about it (aside from the anti-China, anti-Russia, anti-Republican, anti-Democrat talking points they're taught to repeat by people who should be trustworthy.)

We like to call users stupid or confused for using something that is bad, then we only give them one choice. People aren't using Facebook because they don't care about what's happening to them, the use it because it's the only/easiest way to get certain things done and they have other problems in their lives to worry about.

You're not paying with your data, you're paying with the foundations of functioning society and democracy that are being algorithmically subverted by a totalitarian slave state. The very things that trend on TikTok in the West are banned and filtered in China for a reason.

Jingoism. "Facebook may algorithmically subvert the foundations of society and democracy, but at least it's being done by a state I support."

If it's jingoism to support Western enlightenment values, liberal democracy, and basic human rights, then yeah I guess I'm a jingo.

There's a patriot in China talking about you and your government in exactly the same way. And his government has a quarter of the incarceration rate the US does, and bases its governance on the work of one of Hegel's students.

The difference is he's objectively and provably wrong about the comparative evil of his own government.

You've fallen for one of the most obvious and silly propaganda techniques there are.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

You believe CCP furnished statistics?

What open forum is he able to freely discuss ideology, philosophy, and types of government again?

none of which are exclusive to 'western' countries and even less demonstrated by the actions of the big corporations and governments

zuckerberg pelosi liz truss elon musk et al are not paragons of virtue and they are the people being defended here

Who is defending facebook in this discussion?

Anybody who isn't trying to ban it as they try to ban TikTok, unless they see a material difference in the behavior of the applications other than hypernationalism.

Ban both for kids. Double ban Instagram. If nobody has planted a flag in your moral center, you'll rarely find a reason to mention TikTok by name when talking about the manipulation and surveillance that social media decided it wants to be.

I have no love for facebook, but if we're talking about protecting kids from exploitative social media, it's probably beneficial to focus on platforms they actually use.

Not that I support Facebook, but it's impossible to be moral absolutist in today's world. You either support western democracy with all it's imperfections or you are supporting authoritarian / totalitarian states. Everyone who pretend to be "politically neutral" will always be helping later.

UPD: Yeah I meant "later" and not "former". Corrected.

>Everyone who pretend to be "politically neutral" will always be helping former.

I'll assume you mean latter, easy mistake to make.

Personally I find the "if you aren't supporting the ridiculous things we're doing you're supporting the enemy" argument ridiculous. I'm capable of thinking both need to seriously change, and think it's a better use of my time to try and change the Western Democracy I am a part of as it's supposed to change if I disagree with it. It's strange how that point of view gets me labeled a (possibly unintentional) traitor.

I'm neither meant to mark anyone as traitor nor I like how Facebook affected society. At the same time I totally for any limitation or sanctions against media companies controlled by totalitarian or authoritarian states. Allowing literal "enemy" propoganda machines to run freely while they banned everything in their own countries is madness.

Disclaimer: I'm not US or EU citizen. I just seen how my home country changed from liberal state of almost absolute freedom into authoritarism and then into fascism. Western democracies do all kind of things I dont like, but at least they dont risk to burn planet in nuclear fire.

A Western democracy invented nuclear fire, is the only country to have ever burned anyone in nuclear fire, and is currently threatening the two largest nuclear powers on the basis of their border disputes.

Where has any US official threatened Russia or China with nuclear attack?

>I'm neither meant to mark anyone as traitor

Saying anyone who doesn't fully back Western democracies is supporting the enemy is calling them a traitor. Maybe that wasn't your intention, but providing support to the enemy is a textbook definition of traitor.

I did not say that you suppose to fully back western democracies or their governments. What I said is that you cant play "politically neutral" by pretending that Facebook (that obviously affected by some US state actors) is as evil as CCP backed company.

Facebook and Zukerberg personally obviously have political agenda, influence and censorship. At the same time it's not the same thing as totalitarian state agenda and censorship.

who is 'you'? white people in the 10% of so of nato;anzac countries? maybe

the rest of he world is not interested on keep perpetuating the status quo

> who is 'you'?

Those of us who want to live in countries without concentration camps.

like guantanamo ?

That's because China has strict censorship laws while the US protects free speech. TikTok (like Meta) follows local regulations when it comes to their content.

lol… free speech for those who don’t rock the boat. Go ask someone in the US who criticizes Israel in any serious way how their employment prospects are going.

Go ask the buried corpses of those in China who criticize the CCP anything.

Utterly ridiculous, jingoistic nonsense. This isn't the Cultural Revolution.

Or the ones who are tortured for years before getting dumped, half dead, on a random street corner.

I suppose you have some evidence of this???

No it's because TikTok is owned by the CCP and used as a tool to sow discord and subvert liberal democratic values so that it may destabilize the west and pave the way for CCP supremacy.

That's a conspiracy theory with, so far, no confirmation.

Which part is a conspiracy theory?

That the content is promoted to create disorder. Facebook has similar issues (they're even being sued for contributing to genocide) but they were never accused of the same thing (but mostly of negligence).

This thing started with Facebook being accused of being the conduit for the stealing of the 2016 election through 100K worth of ads featuring Bernie shirtless. It's hard to remember because they got utterly bored with it eventually, and they have relatives that they brag work at Facebook.

Facebook wasn't created to create social disorder as a first principle, it was created to be addictive and make MarkZ and crew billionaires. TikTok is being used to do something similar but it is completely designed to do that by a foreign power and use algorithms specifically to damage the psyche of westerners with distracting videos, tuning them to give just enough of a dopamine buzz to keep you there and coming back, and in general distract youth from pursuing more enlightening and educational activities while building a psychological profile on them to be filed away for future clandestine purposes. Or that's just my 5 minute take on it.

This is some peak moral panic material, mixed with a healthy dose of irrational nationalism (which was planted into your mind with intention, just a hint).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurting_the_feelings_of_the_...

And your point is?

25% of their user base are kids in the age range of 10-19 world wide and that goes up to 32% is you look at the US. Do you really think most of them are making rational decisions about their data? Take a look at studies on brain development and rational thinking. Combine that with literacy rates and data privacy understanding... the overwhelming majority of their users are not making rational or informed decisions.

Do you think children whom have social media thrusted upon them by their peer groups are capable of making rational, informed decisions?

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