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Comment by simonswords82 | Hacker News Reader

I recently hired a person who was on the moderation team at TikTok.

I won’t go in to detail but they suffered at the hands of a barbaric company which does not care about its staff or its users. People on the moderation team are SLA’d to death and most have some form of PTSD from the videos they’re subjected to.

I’d love to see Tiktok and all the other attention grabbing shitty apps die a death. But here’s the kicker… despite leaving TikTok due to the stress and anxiety working there caused her she still uses the app!

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Addiction is crazy. You see people doom scroll several feeds, in a loop. They’ll see the same status again and again and again, just hoping something changed.

Sounds like any other Chinese company. The country is run by Engineers vs America being run by Lawyers. On paper is sounds like China is better until you realize that everything shouldn't be run like an engineering project.

Moderators at US social media companies have similar experiences, in terms of the PTSD (and I assume SLA stats)

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57088382

The country is run by bureaucrats, not engineers.

bureaucrats with an engineering mindset.

Only bureaucrats with an engineering mindset would stamp out a ideology by systematically putting people in camps and their kids into all day long "re-education" schools that teach people to forget their culture and try to "install" a new culture onto them.

This is consistent with meta or any other large social media platform with user uploaded content. They outsource to cheap locations and mods are subjected to the worst videos that are flagged for review.

That’s crazy.

TikTok is, first and foremost, a deplatform American tech play. Thats it, and it is hyper aggressive about getting there. Anyone who works there and thinks otherwise doesn't know whats up.

At least we get to enjoy the American elite losing their marbles over the fact that there is a mass-platform where they have no control over the narrative. Imagine if we had TikTok during the ramp up to the Iraq war. May have turned out differently.

I actually believe any social media platform back in those days would have made things worse. War mongerers seem to scare people to silence in the initial hysteria phase.

Looking at e.g. Reddit today it seems the narrative is controlled by bots. Maybe that would have been hard in 2003.

The War mongers DID scare any opposition into silence or losing big. Recall how professionals lost their careers: The Dixie Chicks lost their career at their height, Bill Maher lost his show etc.

Sure today we are seeing a repeat where Pro-Israel supporters are getting pro-Palestinian newscasters fired, actors are losing their roles, people who place Palestinian flags in their linkedin bios are getting their employers harassed etc.

But with the advent of Tiktok we are at least getting an avenue to see what is happening in Palestine whereas its buried on all other platforms. Maybe its being artificially boosted but the end result is that there are mass protests in all the cities and TikTok is allowing the conversation to continue so the topic remains top of mind in peoples heads. A future president may actually be in one of those protests and Tiktok may have directly contributed to their future world view. A world view where the current power base loses out.

> Recall how

I was way to young at the time to have had any political conscious.

The scary part is that the war mongerers seems to hide in the closet until they collectivly see a chance to war monger. Then they come out in force and there is a window where they control the narrative (relative to their usual share of control of the narrative) until people calm down abit.

There is always this implied "I'll hit you in the face" or "when SHTF I'll shoot you" from those personality types. They are very hard to deal with.

The "narrative" difference on e.g. Reddit vs TikTok or Twitter is baloney.

Reddit is so extremely manipulated nowadays. Not just in this matter at hand regard, but in many questions it is sect like.

>I was way to young at the time to have had any political conscious.

Well its important to learn what happened in the run up to the Iraq war since a lot of the same government officials that ran things then are still around. Its not ancient history.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicks (the section on the 2003 era explains how this band got destroyed due to their opposition to the imminent war)

[2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Maher#Politically_Incorre...

>The "narrative" difference on e.g. Reddit vs TikTok or Twitter is baloney.

Do you have any additional reasoning as to why? Without it your argument falls apart. From what I can see, the mere fact that you have constant updates flowing on TikTok vs Reddit or other platforms is what makes it stand out.

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