And he is right. Class warfare has been raging for decades as a few old white sacks of shit accumulated soft power like nobodies business, accumulating vast amounts of money in the process of controlling all of the media. The internet was a threat for a hot second until the capitalist "Elite" consolidated that into a few companies controlling everything as well.
The fediverse is so crucially important, people really don't realize it.
For some reason I always thought that was Warren Buffett and I was like that doesn't really seem like his message but Rupert Murdoch makes so much sense now.
Lobbying, and publicly traded companies, were both a colossal fucking mistake. We elect these people to be the voice for us, but they only act in their own interest, while a ton of money is flowing directly into their "donations" pocket
“Childrens advocates “ have been backing the most egregiously unconstitutional, paternalistic, data broker friendly, moral panic, privacy dystopia bullshit bills around the country. “Childs advocates” are why we have anti pornography pearl clutching panopticon laws that require you to scan a government ID to jerk off. Fuck off with that.
No, this is old as dirt shits upset that kids exist issue. Sorry Grandpa I won't turn the music down. Now go fuck off to Florida and play bingo until you die
But this is none of that. This is informing people that the evidence says that excessive social media use does harm, because most people genuinely don't understand the risks.
Because there is no easy way to ban in a democracy. Originally, the term means someone who hangs around in the lobby of congress (or such like) and talks to representatives when they come through. Imagine this is just some ordinary voter who has an important issue on their minds; perhaps someone like Raphael Lemkin. He did that. Non-profit organizations - like Greenpeace - lobby, as well. It's hard forbidding lobbying without unintended side effects.
Even if you did, it might not get you where you want. Representatives would still have an open ear for major employers in their districts. After all, voters want those jobs. Representatives meet those bosses on many occasions, like charity events. Money and power can be used to get more money and power.
Personal access is only a part of it, anyway. People influence the media and fund political ads. There's also funding for think tanks and universities. People with money and power (or fame) can do more of that.
Don't assume this something that just happens behind closed doors out of the public eye. For example, you may have noticed the recent kerfuffle between actress Scarlet Johansson and OpenAI. OAI allegedly hired a voice actress that sounded too similar to ScarJo. This community here seems to have largely sided with ScarJo. Which means that they want famous people to receive a rent for lending out their voices; a rent which will be ultimately paid by consumers. And if you have a similar voice? Tough.
This is exactly something that many of these AI lobbyists are paid to achieve. They are supposed to get money for the rich people who pay them; preferably without the rich people having to do work.
Interesting take I can appreciate, but hold on there...
This community here seems to have largely sided with ScarJo. Which means that they want famous people to receive a rent for lending out their voices
I dont think that's what they mean at all. I doubt people care about ScarJo growing her bank account. I think most people who side with ScarJo just dont want Open AI stealing stuff it doesnt own, including people's voices. Especially if they're profiting off it.
That's a bit of a fine point, but yes. They want famous people to have the power to demand a rent, other concessions, or to refuse a deal entirely. So it's about more than just rent. It's the same power that landlords have, but eventually it's all about the money. If you equate it to stealing, then it's about the money, no?
I think it would be unconstitutional in the US in light of citizens united. I'm sure that there are many things that could be done, but no simple answers like just banning lobbying.
How do you think smoking went from something nearly everybody did to being taboo? Maybe the labels don’t do anything for the last 10% of the population who still smoke today, despite the taboo, but those labels played a big role in reinforcing public awareness of the health effects of smoking.
No they didn't, people got tired of the smell and public awareness of smoking came from watching family members die. Labels didn't do shit. Smoking was on the decline before the labels even showed up.
Warnings probably work better on products you're putting in your body. If you have blackened lungs on the cigarette packaging I can't imagine choosing to smoke.
On social media, you basically have to destroy my experience for me to stop using it in the same way. All effective options are terrible: ads, microtransactions, auto-playing unexpected sounds, nonresponsive interfaces.
The fact is, with the world we live in being like it is, why the fuck not smoke? For the chance to live a little further into the distopian hellscape of our impending future? Some reward that is for denying myself something I enjoy.
You would have to be an absolute moron to think smoking only kills you early. That's not how it works.
Even if you don't like the world around you today and aren't enthusiastic about the future, the way smoking kills you makes your day to day worse until you eventually get a very painful day to day until you eventually give out and die. You are advocating slowly committing both expensive and painful suicide over a 30 year span because you don't want to live for 40 more years.
I got a downvote for saying that smoking kills you slowly and eventually painfully. Like, how is that debatable at this point? Am I getting a downvote because I'm not vibing?
Well as long as opinions matter more than data now. Might as well criminalize Tik Tok with one hand and give out free AR-15s to mentally ill 18 year olds with the other.
Except even if they ban TikTok, that won't work. Because there's always the fediverse and nostr. If somebody wants to talk about something on social media, they will talk about it, and they will talk about it on services that cannot and or will not ban them. So good luck with that.
The fediverse has less than 10M users. Tiktok has a billion. It doesnt compare. Its like saying we should allow banning newspapers or radio because people will still share information over phone calls
No they wont theyll go to instagram reels since it already is a tiktok clone on an app they already use and already has an algorithm and an infrastructure and is easy to use. Theyll just be fed alt right and anti vax propaganda now instead of all the leftist in depth videos with sources on tiktok that consistently go viral
This. People who believe the reasoning behind this need to understand that the same arguments were made last year and the idea was laughed at.
What's different is Biden took on another proxy war on the side of genocide and tiktok is the only platform they can't prevent using the word "genocide"
Let's face it, the goal was never privacy or security. The killer clowns in charge of US regime are simply upset that there's a popular social media platform they don't control. This is about bullying China into selling this platform to US oligarchs. It's sad and pathetic, and it's not going to happen.
China chill? The legitimate concern is that China is controlling the way certain messages are pushed ("the algorithms") to control topics that they have an interest in. I.e. pushing misinformation to drive support for Trump or Biden, as an example. That is not free speech or privacy, that is malicious interference and the the fear of the US doing this is the sole reason China has already banned similar US apps in China.
That is also the reason they would rather be banned than to "give up the algorithms" (they certainly won't allow anyone to see how they push misinformation).
One party scares you dumb people into believing Russia interferes with your elections, the other scares you into thinking China interferes. Meanwhile, all the interference is going on within USA by white house and Congress terrorists.
The reasons China banned US platforms is not the same as ones US is using to do vice versa.
Well TikTok is not just bad for privacy but also for mental health and everything else you can possibly think about so probably the ban isn't actually that bad
So Meta, Twitter, Snapchat and all the others who've redefined what data collection looks like and keep folks self centered is fine? The only reason the US is throwing this fit is because they can't access the collected data like they can with US based data brokers, I mean social media. The key aspect of this ban revolves around freedom of speach more than anything else.
It is the same worse. Billionaires do not have an allegiance to the well-being of any nation's citizens. What is a foreign state going to brainwash us with that could possibly be worse than the existing gamer-to-far-right-radical pipeline?
They could use their advertising platform to manipulate US public opinion and elections. And, again, this isn't to say it's fine for domestic companies to do this. But that's no argument against this law. In fact, I daresay the "gamer-to-far-right-radical pipeline" you identify is an example of this.
I don't think I would argue against this law, IDK. It's just a slap in the face to see they recognize how dangerous the thing is.
We always knew they would do nothing to legislate misinformation, bigotry, and electioneering on the US-based platforms. But now we know for a fact that they understand these platforms are weaponized against the public.
Far, far worse for your own country to have that data. If you live in the US for example, facebook can and does forward your messages about getting an abortion to law enforcement if you live in one of the no-abortion states. That mother and daughter both have charges now.
“If lawmakers want to rein in the harms of social-media platforms, targeting just one under the guise of national security ignores an entire industry predicated on surveillance capitalism. Like all popular platforms — including those that Meta and Google own — TikTok collects far too much user data. But banning a single platform will not address the privacy problem that’s rotting the core of the entire tech industry.
If domestic social media is collecting dangerous amounts of personal info about Americans, then foreign social media under who are subject to the laws of adversarial nation-states should be seriously concerning.
The matter of domestic social media will have to be addressed by a completely different law because it cannot be addressed by a law similar to this new one. People who bring up domestic social media in discussions of this law are completely missing the point.
From what I have seen, most people who object to a federal tiktok ban oppose it because they do not want the US government to censor the internet. I think privacy is brought up as a justification of the ban, and so opponents of the ban argue that it is selective to only focus on the app that is controlled by an adversarial country. I see the ban as addressing a symptom of weak privacy laws instead of addressing the root issue/cause. If privacy were actually taken serious by our government and not enforced selectively, then objections would be a lot less.
I've seen that too. But they're mistaken. "Censoring the internet" is not what this law does. That's hyperbole not based on any reasonable interpretation of the actual law.
Don't misunderstand me; this is not a good law. Nobody should be happy about it. But it is prudent, wise and perhaps even necessary. Refusing to acknowledge this while ignoring that actual 1st amendment concerns that this law will be challenged on does not help your argument.
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