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Comment by ttrgsafs | Hacker News Reader

So what are the real dangers?

- Frying teenagers' brains with short attention deficit videos. That one seems logical, but others are doing it, too.

- Political indoctrination.

- Compromised politicians who can be blackmailed: The big one, but a certain island run by the daughter of a certain intelligence agency operative was largely ignored.

- Corporate espionage: Probably not happening on TikTok. Certainly happening in the EU using US products.

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Look at what foreign adversaries are already actively doing: working to turn Americans against each other. Social media is the perfect tool to spread discord. Russia has troll farms that create fake news stories, manipulated photos, and incendiary memes targeted at both sides of the political spectrum. They've even orchestrated in-person protests and counter-protests to those protests, though those efforts have been less successful. Now imagine that instead of merely using fake user accounts to this end, an adversary controlled an entire social network, including its algorithm and its content guidelines and could tailor manipulative content on an individual basis.

Or, equally as importantly, imagine if US oligarchs used to be doing that and can't as effectively anymore.

funny many of us(Chinese) also believe that online disputes and the moral decay of teenagers are all part of a conspiracy by the US.

It's possible that we all wrong or we all right about it, or one of us are right

US Govt has a lot more limited say on what content is pushed or neutered.

Content relating to the genocide happening in Palestine for example, is much more restricted on US sites.

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