Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

What needs to happen is that all of these platforms need to be straight up banned. TikTok is getting picked on because of its ties to China, but why is it better for Zuckerberg or Musk to have the capabilities that are so frightening in the hands of the CCP?

The US social media billionaire class is ostensibly accountable to the law, but they're also perfectly capable of using their influence over these platforms to write the law.

One plausible theory for why the politicians talk about fears of spying instead of the real fears of algorithmic manipulation is because they don't want to draw too much attention to how capable these media platforms are of manipulating voters, because they rely on those capabilities to get into and stay in power.

View on HN

Because if Zuck or Musk does something bad with said power, we can do something about it.

We can't really jail the CCP. Additionally, Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda. We shouldn't let foreign powers own the means of broadcast...

>Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda

But they're about to have all three branches of government to back it up.

Who is we, though? I can't do anything about it. Can you?

The people who can do something about it are the people who are already in power in the US. They understandably don't want to share with the CCP, but most of them came to power by manipulating enough voters into voting for them. They stay in power by ensuring that enough voters continue to want to vote for them. Which means that someone like Zuckerberg or Musk has an insanely inordinate amount of influence over whether these people who are in power stay in power.

Yes, I think it's marginally better that that influence remain out of the hands of the CCP, but I would rather that that influence not exist at all. It's too dangerous and too prone to corruption.

Who is we, though? I can't do anything about it. Can you?

Isn't this true for literally all problems in a democracy? Do you have a better solution?

Hopefully we'll get AGI soon and it'll take over and rule as a benevolent overlord. Short of that, everything in your comment feels like it has always applied to every societal problem, and always will.

US is not a democracy in a strict sense, it is more like plutocracy (people with money have the power).

  - the electoral college where winner takes all, so minority opposition vote is always suppressed
  - gerrymandering that dilutes and suppresses the minority opposition vote
  - oligopoly of two parties
  - unchecked financial influence by allowing unlimited funding via PACs
  - legalized lobbying/bribery
  - influence of special interest groups
  - the influence of legal system with expensive lawyers (that only rich can afford)

this all indicate that it is people with deep pockets who have all the power

> Isn't this true for literally all problems in a democracy? Do you have a better solution?

Create a level playing field where money does not amplify speech. Our existing democracy is basically a spending contest with a very small component of eloquently persuading voters to vote against their own interest. The richest of the rich have voices and can manipulate the platforms on which others express their voices, and so those rich people either pick the victors or become them.

For democracy to survive we have to get past the idea that a "free market" approach to speech leads to democratic outcomes. It doesn't, it leads to plutocratic outcomes, which is painfully obvious on both sides of the aisle right now. Americans haven't had a true representative of the people in generations.

> Because if Zuck or Musk does something bad with said power, we can do something about it.

We can? Like what? What's the chance of that happening?

> Zuck and Musk don't have armies to back up their propaganda.

I'd like to note the seating arrangements published for the upcoming presidentia inauguration ceremony.

The TikTok CEO will also be sitting in the same row as Zuck, Musk, and Bezos.

I'd like to note that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, a former Goldman Sachs banker and venture capital investor, joined TikTok in March 2021. He is from Singaporean and is married to Vivian Kao, an American of Taiwanese descent.

Unlike Zuck, Musk, and Bezos, Chew did not found the company with which he is most associated, and his net worth is somewhat less than a billion dollars.

So what you're saying is, freedom of speech doesn't really work?

Perhaps algorithmically weaponized "speech" by bad actors with bad intentions, especially controlled by adversaries, doesn't work, and was wholly unpredicted or accounted for by the founders.

Zuck and Musk already have done bad things with their power, and continue to do so. No real consequences so far.

Under what reasoning should these be banned?

I, personally, have views that would lean towards being labeled by HN users as supporting a “nanny state” (at least far departure from younger libertarian phase), but even I struggle with a “why” on banning these platforms in general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com