Hacker News Reader

> It's true that this means all similar US-based things should be banned as well

Or... regulated? I'd be all for privacy regulations and data handling regulations that would affect the algorithms of everyone but as long as the law is targeting TikTok only and not also FB, Insta, Twitter, etc, the idea that this ban is about "the overall harmful effects of the algorithmic firehose" is a total red herring.

View on HN

I'm not saying the ban is about that, but it does accomplish something in that direction, and we need more bans that are explicitly about that.

Ultimately though I don't think regulations about privacy and data handling are sufficient. To go just one level deeper, a large proportion of the data in question should not even be collected, regardless of how it's handled or who it's shared with. But many of the problems are even deeper, and have to do with things like how big companies are allowed to get and how much venture capital is allowed to destroy things that work by funding things that don't.

It's not about the algorithmic feed, it's about allowing your #1 adversarial state to have control over that algorithms parameters. They don't let Twitter, Google, or Meta operate in China.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com