After mostly enjoying the new Dune flicks, I started reading the first book yesterday… I’m like 100 pages in, and I’m already upset at Villeneuve’s near-total omission of the Mentats.
> The idea that direct access to TikTok’s video-ranking and recommendation algorithms would give you similarly direct access to the brains of American voters is patently absurd.
It's wise to be skeptical of this misinformation screechers, but you seem to be saying here that propaganda is never (has never been?) a concern; in fact, it isn't even a thing, whatsoever?
Surely you know that Facebook can crank up or lower divisiveness across the platform, and has throttled this meter. Your theory is that... none of that actually matters? That the public is... never persuadable? Does this mean I can stop caring about Fox News?
I agree with you on the persuasiveness of the other three, but it seems obvious to me TikTok could be leveraged as a propaganda platform if the U.S.-China conflict intensifies. Surely, CHINA thinks of it as an strategic asset, or they wouldn't be fighting so hard to keep it!
The premise and characterization of "banning TiKTok" is a canard. A falsehood. A fraud. A cheat. What is proposed is that the People's Republic of China (communist China) divest itself from TikTok USA so that the company is under the full control of American interests. No changes to how content creators in the USA work with TikTok. No disruption to content creators and other businesses. AND we prevent communist China from accessing our data and influencing our elections and perverting our youth.
It seems worth exploring TikTok and MrBeast in terms of the fantasy of controlling a software company’s data. All roads leading to fantasies of being a “master of the universe”, in the realm of controlling our rectangular black mirrors. Caring about content is in and of itself a distraction from Wall Street types (double entendre intended).
Blowing my mind right now that Mr Beast is from North Carolina. I don't know why I thought he was from Finland or some shit. I have seen some of his videos and heard him speak. Is this the Mandela effect?
This might be a dumb question, but I’m wondering if you could elaborate a little on why a national security ban on TikTok having positive knock-on effects on general well-being would be a bad reason to support the law?
“it’s never been clear to me what that “sensitive data” might be, or how the C.C.P. would use it maliciously”
Everyone says this as if the interactions with the app itself would be the prize, or even real time location data, but I think that’s beside the point. It’s the phone contact data - the graph of connections between 200 million Americans.
I'm also largely indifferent and easy to persuade on either side of the aisle on TikTok.
India banned TikTok in 2020, which meant 200 million users needed to go someplace else. As far as I know, most simply recalibrated to YouTube Shorts and Reels.
Overall I just don't see how this is useful (and not just punitive) unless we turn it into a teaching moment about cybersecurity and overall user awareness about the softwares on their phones.
After mostly enjoying the new Dune flicks, I started reading the first book yesterday… I’m like 100 pages in, and I’m already upset at Villeneuve’s near-total omission of the Mentats.
> The idea that direct access to TikTok’s video-ranking and recommendation algorithms would give you similarly direct access to the brains of American voters is patently absurd.
It's wise to be skeptical of this misinformation screechers, but you seem to be saying here that propaganda is never (has never been?) a concern; in fact, it isn't even a thing, whatsoever?
Surely you know that Facebook can crank up or lower divisiveness across the platform, and has throttled this meter. Your theory is that... none of that actually matters? That the public is... never persuadable? Does this mean I can stop caring about Fox News?
I agree with you on the persuasiveness of the other three, but it seems obvious to me TikTok could be leveraged as a propaganda platform if the U.S.-China conflict intensifies. Surely, CHINA thinks of it as an strategic asset, or they wouldn't be fighting so hard to keep it!
The premise and characterization of "banning TiKTok" is a canard. A falsehood. A fraud. A cheat. What is proposed is that the People's Republic of China (communist China) divest itself from TikTok USA so that the company is under the full control of American interests. No changes to how content creators in the USA work with TikTok. No disruption to content creators and other businesses. AND we prevent communist China from accessing our data and influencing our elections and perverting our youth.
It seems worth exploring TikTok and MrBeast in terms of the fantasy of controlling a software company’s data. All roads leading to fantasies of being a “master of the universe”, in the realm of controlling our rectangular black mirrors. Caring about content is in and of itself a distraction from Wall Street types (double entendre intended).
Blowing my mind right now that Mr Beast is from North Carolina. I don't know why I thought he was from Finland or some shit. I have seen some of his videos and heard him speak. Is this the Mandela effect?
This might be a dumb question, but I’m wondering if you could elaborate a little on why a national security ban on TikTok having positive knock-on effects on general well-being would be a bad reason to support the law?
“it’s never been clear to me what that “sensitive data” might be, or how the C.C.P. would use it maliciously”
Everyone says this as if the interactions with the app itself would be the prize, or even real time location data, but I think that’s beside the point. It’s the phone contact data - the graph of connections between 200 million Americans.
I'm also largely indifferent and easy to persuade on either side of the aisle on TikTok.
India banned TikTok in 2020, which meant 200 million users needed to go someplace else. As far as I know, most simply recalibrated to YouTube Shorts and Reels.
Overall I just don't see how this is useful (and not just punitive) unless we turn it into a teaching moment about cybersecurity and overall user awareness about the softwares on their phones.