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Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

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> after October 7th, when Tiktok accurately reflected the views of the younger half of the American public on Palestine, the push was renewed by the usual arms dealers and allies, which got it through

I was involved with this effort. Gaza was immaterial in the Senate and worth maybe a handful of votes in the House (where they weren’t needed, but helped).

The binding energy came from Bytedance pushing a political message to its users, including children [1], and the Chinese embassy lobbying against the bill [2]. (Keep in mind this has been a multi-year effort of iteration and refinement [3].)

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/krishnamoorthi-gallagher-tiktok...

[2] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2024...

[3] https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-timeline-ban-biden-india-d...

Gonna have to go against the grain here. That younger half of the youth you are referring to here are also the same people the article is referring to that get all their news from social media, aka mainly from Instagram and TikTok and distrust MSM. And I think it would be correct to say that those social media sites did more to shape their views than reflect it, considerng how statistically speaking the majority of people had no opinions on such a complex topic before 10/7.

This very much would be a prime realization of the "social debt" the author is talking about, the mass polarization and instability caused by the overreliance on such networks, and the divestment can be argued to be an direct attempt to restablize things onto a common ground. In many ways it's already quite a liberal approach by divestment rather than a straight ban.

For me personally, I've unfortunately turned to the opinion that the "accuracy" of what consumes ultimately is going to be defined by the individual, not the source. I'm reminded of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, in that yes, of course these networks can influence one's views, but it's not deterministic. If one seeks the truth, one can easily just read from other sources freely availiable on the internet.

The problem here is that most people, including many in this thread and in HN I'd argue and perhaps myself, are not interested in the truth. The problem isn't that people are using TikTok or Instagram, the problem is that they are ONLY using TikTok or Instagram. Nobody reads actual articles instead of headlines. And that's because for most people, including many in this thread and HN and myself, we're here just to consume for entertainment, or to confirm our own priors. Why would we question our own beliefs? It's hard work, and there no real consequences if we get it wrong. We can retreat into our social circles and be told it's okay for it. Face it, the majority of people ARE easily manipulable, most in this thread included. People are only going to seek the truth if their job depends on it, and that is only going to include a narrow slice of domain knowledge. Outside of that, everything really is just noise.

There’s just not enough time to understand the huge range of societal and political issues to a depth that can inform a well-reasoned and holistically defensible position. Those who try inevitably find less reach than those who specialize in distribution of their ideas (whether social media, talking heads on TV, or even opinion writers). Pervasive anti-intellectualism makes it even harder to really grapple with the broad and accelerating range of complex systemic issues that our current civilization has bestowed upon us. I’m really interested in what kind of social changes could help counteract some of this and allow us to harness the good intent of our best and brightest.

Do you believe that governments might want to use social media platforms to try to divide the population within enemy countries?

Do you believe that governments might want to use social media platforms to try to divide the population within their own country?

Only saying this because it's how people in power legitimize their own power over everyone else. External boogie men help as well. Of course foreign influence is a real factor that works against people in their own country. The USA has done many foreign influence operations that has been detrimental to those people. I'm not surprised that foreign governments would do the same over here.

All in all, the general population often suffer downstream from these games of power.

Yes I believe people in government often spread divisive messages, both internally and externally. My personal belief is to train people to respond to such divisive attacks with love, feeling even more united with people after. To let people speak, and learn how to respond to how they're speaking.

However, i have some ability to influence my government in how it influences social media platforms and which messages it spreads. I might have much much less, if any, ability to influence foreign governments in how they influence social media platforms and what messages they spread. And most non-Americans realize how helpless they have been to influence American laws and decisions, and maybe it's just a time when Americans also realize this helplessness in the face of foreign corporations.

Adversary countries also have a deeply wrong view of a population which views dissent as a sign of weakness instead of a process which grants strength. What they want is misleading. They would want to use it even if it was in fact, good for the "victim" country.

It brings to mind declassified documents that revealed how the KGB basically pissed money away trying to destabilize the US economy by engaging in large irrational trades. All they really did was make money for those who had the fortune to be on the opposite side of the trades.

This is interesting because it's like saying I would rather be oppressed by my government than by foreign governments. But if that's true for you, why is not true for the citizens of other countries? Taking this to the logical conclusion, all foreign influence should be prevented for being potentially destructive and all the history's isolationism would be justified.

Or it can go the other way, not more isolation but rather more integration. If the goal of many foreign governments (the US included) may be to divide the population of its enemies, what if had an overarching, supranational, dare I say global, government that united people?

They can want all they like, doesn't mean they're going to be effective. Again, no-one cared until the arms dealers' incomes were threatened.

I think they (meaning US government officials) started to care a lot when they realized a non-American social media platform had significant attention from a significant majority of Americans, especially young Americans.

Prior to that, most, if not all, social media platforms were American run, which allowed Congress to have more influence on how they were run and more power to investigate and learn how they were run, compared to one owned by a foreign country, especially one we haven't considered to be a close ally.

> Then, after October 7th, when Tiktok accurately reflected the views of the younger half of the American public on Palestine

Probably 2/3rds of the younger half, at best.

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