Welcome to Incremental Social! Learn more about this project here!
Check out lemmyverse to find more communities to join from here!

kava

@kava@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

kava ,

I've seen reddit accounts who regularly posted comments for months all at +1 vote and never received any response or reply at all because nobody had ever seen their comments. They got hit with some automod shadowban they were yelling into the void, likely wondering why nobody ever felt they deserved to be heard.

I find this unsettling and unethical. I think people have a right to be heard and deceiving people like this feels wrong.

There are other methods to deal with spam that aren't potentially harmful.

There's also an entirely different discussion about shadowbans being a way to silence specific forms of speech. Today it may be crazies or hateful speech, but it can easily be any subversive speech should the administration change.

I agree with other commenter, it probably shouldn't be allowed.

kava ,

There's a sub to test if you are shadowbanned. The mods set it up so automod automatically approves any post there, so that way even if you're shadowbanned you can post.

Then a bot goes through and scans to check your comments and sees if they show up.

When shadowbanned, people can still see your comments if they go onto your profile. They just won't see it in the thread.

You ever seen a thread that says something like "3 comments" and you click and only see 1? 2 people commented that were shadowbanned.

I've gone through the sub and browsed through profiles of people who were shadowbanned. Some of them posted nothing controversial to warrant a shadowban.

kava ,

I think private platforms that do this are acting in an unethical manner. Lots of things that are perfectly legal but of dubious morality. Like fucking a 16 year old as a 40 year old man in Georgia or used car dealerships.

kava ,

I've been on reddit for 15 years and I've been banned from dozens of subs. I got banned from /r/libertarian for quoting Wikipedia page of Libetarianism. I got banned from /r/geopolitics for linking a report on the effects of 2019 sanctions on Venezuela. I got banned from /r/socialism for bringing up Henry Ford and his influence on the 40 hour work week. I got banned from /r/kratom for mentioning it's an addictive substance that bindes to opioid receptors. Got banned from /r/the_donald back when it was a thing, don't even remember why.

If you've been talking regularly on reddit and you haven't been banned from at least a handful of places, then in my opinion you haven't actually been saying much.

I believe we need to democratize the banning process and make it more transparent. Sort of like criminal justice system. Jury of your peers. Make a case in your defense and let everyone see it.

The way it's handled right now is authoritarian and allows any mod to arbritarily silence views they personally don't like, even if the community at large would have no issue with.

kava ,

Nice writeup but there's one key piece of information here that's wrong in the context of reddit.

The "bot overlord" can easily tell if an account is shadowbanned. I use my trusty puppeteer or selenium script to spam my comments. After every comment (or every x interval of comments), I load up the page under a control account (or even just a fresh page with no cookies/cache, maybe even through VPN if I'm feeling fancy, different useragent, different window size.. go wild with it) and check if my comment is there.

Comment is not there after a certain threshold of checks? Guess I'm shadowbanned, take the account off the list and add another one of the hundreds I have to the active list

The fact is that no matter what you do, there will be bots and spammers. No matter what you do, there will be cheaters in online games and people trying to exploit.

It's a constant battle and it's an impossible one. But you have to try and come up with solutions but you always have to balance the costs of those solutions with the benefits.

Shadowbanning on reddit doesn't solve the problem it aims to fix. It does however have the potential for harm to individuals, especially naive ones who don't fully understand how websites work.

I don't think the ends justify the means. Just like stop and frisk may stop a certain type of crime or may not, but it definitely does damage to specific communities

kava ,

Hey I was born in a country with a military dictatorship and my parents grew up under it.

That's exactly why I believe in freedom and liberty. Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association. We need to uphold these principles so that the US doesn't slowly slip into authoritarianism like most democracies tend to do over the long term.

That's exactly why I oppose this TikTok ban with every fiber of my being. If a citizen wants to communicate on a Chinese platform, he has every right to do so under our laws. He can make the executive decision for himself about the potential risks or benefits.

That's what it means to live in a free society. You are advocating for authoritarianism while you rail against authoritarianism. Reminds me of 1984. War is peace, right?

kava ,

I find it amusing how people talk about things they read second hand without understanding.

The nominal reason they are banning TikTok is because of the data collection. Nothing to do with election security, but national security. The real reason is that they want to lock down the digital information space in preparation for WW3. TikTok is harder to control and there's a lot of anti-government messaging on it.

It's sort of like the Voter ID laws in GOP states. They pass laws for "election security" by making it so you need an ID to vote. The nominal reason is so that they prevent election fraud. The real reason is they've done statistical analysis and that law reduces black votes by a couple percent, and blacks tend to vote Democrat.

The real reason in both cases would be unconstitutional, so they come up with another.

And the mass of idiots online cheer on the deterioration of whatever legitimacy was left in American democratic institutions.

kava ,

In other to infringe the right to speech, you need a valid justification. It needs to be a) narrowly tailored and b) actually accomplish the aim of the legislation.

This is the same reason the judge stopped the Montana TikTok ban.

For a) 170 million Americans use TikTok. So the law has to be ironclad legally speaking to be considered narrowly tailored. It needs to be the bare minimum the government can possibly do to alleviate the ill it claims to address.

The fact is, this legislation does not actually result in a scenario where China loses access to data on Americans. They can just buy it - it's an ocean of data out there and there's no real way to stop them accessing it.

Unless you were to make large sweeping changes to the way we handle data, like the EU data laws. But that would affect all social media companies.

What I'm saying is it's not actually for national security. It's just that if they said the real purpose "ban content potentially manipulated by a specific group of people" then they would require a much higher burden of scrutiny which they could not meet.

There's a difference legally speaking between "content-neutral" bans and "content-based". Content neutral for example is national security and requires less scrutiny. You can't just arbritarily ban content because of what it says. Note the specific text in the ban: because of data collection. Not the content itself.

Make sure to pay attention to the upcoming court case on this situation. It will be an important case. The CCP has signaled they will not approve a sale to an American company, so Bytedance essentially only has one option, and that is to fight this in court.

The fact is the federal government is playing games. They're playing loosey goosey with the laws in an attempt to manipulate the digital media environment.

This isn't something a democracy should be doing. It's akin to banning foreign media. Like Israel banning Al Jazeera. Whole world is going nuts and we're pretending it's OK.

kava ,

The only titles that don't work in Linux are the ones with invasive anti-cheat, some multi-player titles.

Virtually all single players game work. I've had games that don't work on Windows due to crashes / performance but run on Linux.

kava ,

Is the investigation exhaustive? If these are all the crashes they could find related to the driver assist / self driving features, then it is probably much safer than a human driver. 1000 crashes out of 5M+ Teslas sold the last 5 years is actually a very small amount

I would want an article to try and find the rate of accidents per 100,00, group it by severity, and then compare and contrast that with human caused accidents.

Because while it's clear by now Teslas aren't the perfect self driving machines we were promised, there is no doubt at all that humans are bad drivers.

We lose over 40k people a year to car accidents. And fatal car accidents are rare, so multiple that by like 100 to get the total number of car accidents.

kava ,

Because if the answer is "nobody", they shouldn't be on the road

Do you understand how absurd this is? Let's say AI driving results in 50% less deaths. That's 20,000 people every year that isn't going to die.

And you reject that for what? Accountability? You said in another comment that you don't want "shit happens sometimes" on your headstone.

You do realize that's exactly what's going on the headstones of those 40,000 people that die annually right now? Car accidents happen. We all know they happen and we accept them as a necessary evil. "Shit happens"

By not changing it, ironically, you're advocating for exactly what you claim you're against.

kava ,

A) you do realize cars have insurance and when someone hits you, that insurance pays out the damages, right? That is how the current system works, AI driver or not.

Accidents happen. Humans make mistakes and kill people and are not held criminally liable. It happens.

If some guy killed your nephew and made him an orphan and the justice system determined he was not negligent - then your nephew would still be an orphan and would get a payout by the insurance company.

Exact same thing that happens in the case of an AI driven car hitting someone

B) if I had a button to save 100k people but it killed my mother, I wouldn't do it. What is your point?

Using your logic, if your entire family was in the 20,000 who would be saved - you would prefer them dead? You'd rather them dead with "accountability" rather than alive?

kava ,

Your thought experiment doesn't work. I wouldn't accept any position where my family members die and beyond that, it's immaterial to the scope of discussion.

Let's examine various different scenarios under which someone dies in a car accident.

  1. human driver was negligent and causes a fatal car accident.

Human gets criminal charges. Insurance pays out depending on policy.

  1. human driver was not negligent and causes a fatal car accident.

Human does not get criminal charged. Insurance pays out depending on policy

  1. AI driver causes a fatal accident.

Nobody gets criminal charges. Insurance pays out depending on policy.

You claim that you would rather have 20,000 people die every year because of "accountability".

Tell me, what is the functional difference for a family member of a fatal car accident victim in those 3 above scenarios? The only difference is under 1) there would be someone receiving criminal charges.

They recieve the same amount of insurance money. 2) already happens right now. You don't mention that in the lack of accountability.

You claim that being able to pin some accidents (remember, some qualify under 2) on an individual is worth 20,000 lives a year.

Anybody who has ever lost someone in a car accident would rather have their family member back instead.

kava ,

PS: I also never claimed I rather have 20000 more people die for accountability...

You said it's not a question of how much safer it is. You said it's a question of accountability. So even if it were 50% safer, you claimed it was wrong.

And here's the thing man, I understand where you're coming from ij that you shouldn't reduce a life to numbers. But how does AI driving fundamentally change the current situation?

Car companies already do this. They calculate whether or not fixing a safety problem will cost more or less than the lawsuits from all the dead people. There's a famous documented case of this. Maybe it's the Ford / Pinto thing you are referencing.

If you think of AI driving as a safety feature - like seatbelts - would you support it? I don't know what the actual statistics are, but presumably it's only going to get better over time.

kava ,

What does everyone think about the TikTok ban?

Personally I think it's absurd. What happened to freedom of speech? Freedom of association? Free market capitalism?

If an American citizen wants to use a Chinese platform, why don't they have the right to?

I think the data collection stuff is a red herring. Real reason is that war is coming and they're preparing the online information space so they can more easily manipulate it. Sort of how they did a test run with covid. Banning misinformation and such.

They don't have such a friendly relationship with TikTok as they do with Google and Facebook, for example. Behind the scenes, the feds work with them to amplify or suppress certain types of speech.

If the sale doesn't go through, I don't see how this will eliminate whatever little bit of credibility the federal government has among the younger generations. 18~25 or so

kava ,

I don't use Tiktok and never have. I view it more a matter of principle.

China is an authoritarian state. We should not imitate them. Unfortunately I think Zizek was right when he said China's model is the most effective form of capitalism and predicted that all liberal democracies would eventually converge into a version of that system.

This is what you embrace with open arms. Do you not care about being able to access whatever media you want?

kava ,

There's always a back and forth between a government respecting personal freedoms and their responsibility to protect it's people.

There are justified limitations on personal freedoms and unjustified ones. For the classic example, yelling fire in a movie theater. That is a crime because it can cause people to get harmed. It is only a minor infringement on speech, therefore the benefits outweigh the infringement.

Every single time we infringe on personal freedoms, we need to do this calculation.

So there are 3 main justifications for this TikTok ban.

A) stop Chinese data collection. I think this is just misdirection. You say it's conspiracy, but just like the PATRIOT Act had nothing to do with patriotism or protecting children and the Iraqi war had nothing to do with WMD... the government often misleads or outright lies.

Much of our data is for sale to anyone who wants to buy it. In fact, our law enforcement loves buying data instead of going through the process for a warrant.

There are so many apps out there with less than scrupulous devs who are more than willing to scrape for as much data as possible and sell that off. China can easily acquire massive amounts of data regardless.

  1. stop Chinese influence on Americans. I think this one makes more sense than the first one. China is able to quietly suppress or encourage certain points of views - subtly pushing the 170 million Americans into directions that are beneficial for China's interests. For example, perhaps media discouraging support for Taiwan.

  2. connected to 2, by banning TikTok the US leaves only the main tech companies which have a proven track record of cooperating with the federal government. Not only in criminal cases but suppressing and amplifying specific types of media.

So what are benefits? US has better control of the digital media landscape. Cost? Americans are being restricting from accessing media they would otherwise access.

I don't see this as a worthwhile exchange. I think federal government should stay out of the media space. I believe this because we are a free society.

You are right that we don't always live up to that term, and never really have. But we get a hell of a lot closer than China or Russia. We shouldn't be moving towards them in ideological terms, but away from them.

As for the young people, there are 170 million people on the app and it skews younger. A large portion of these people use Tiktok as their primary social media. A lot of these will be pushed towards anti-establishment and radical ideologies. Tiktok already leans leftist (and not neoliberal left).

kava ,

I appreciate your comment but let me ask you. Are you OK with the federal government getting to decide what is appropriate for you to read or watch?

I read the 3 body problem novel series and it was by a Chinese author. I loved the series and it dealt with a lot of interesting science fiction concepts.

Do you think that it should be banned? What if it's subtly influencing Americans through propaganda?

kava ,

The courts have repeatedly ruled that freedom of speech comes with freedom of association.

Montana tried banning TikTok and a judge blocked it for that reason - it infringes upon free speech. I think Bytedance will likely sue federal government under similar grounds. The government cannot arbritarily control what you want to say, who you want to say it to, or where you want to say it.

The Supreme Court has long held that the First Amendment's protection of free speech, assembly, and petition logically extends to include a “freedom of association."

It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the 'liberty' assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech. Of course, it is immaterial whether the beliefs sought to be advanced by association pertain to political, economic, religious or cultural matters, and state action which may have the effect of curtailing the freedom to associate is subject to the closest scrutiny.

It appears from the Court's opinions that the right of association is derivative from the First Amendment guarantees of speech, assembly, and petition,2 although it has at times been referred to as an independent freedom protected by the First Amendment.

kava ,

First off, it doesn't matter what China is doing. Just because they are doing it, doesn't mean it's a justifiable infringement on American citizens. The dynamic between the American citizen and their government is what we consider when determining legality of a law.

Second, removing a platform that people want to communicate on does infringe on speech. You have a right to associate with whoever you want - by the government banning that platform they are telling you who you can and can't communicate with. Please read previous comment on freedom of association. This is a well established concept with courts ruling this again and again.

The government is arguing that they are justified in this infringement on speech because of national security interests. It is unequivocally an infringement on freedom of speech. It's just the government is claiming that the pros outweigh the cons.

Sort of like when we infringe on free speech so people can't yell fire in a movie theater.

Judge Molloy also analyzed the second prong: narrow tailoring. He declared that the state failed to demonstrate that it was not burdening more speech than was necessary to achieve its ends.

... the court found that SB 419 was not narrowly tailored, because Montana had failed to show that the ban would alleviate the harms it sought to address. Molloy determined that, even if SB 419 passed, China would be able to access data on Montanans

There's an entire legal distinction here between "content-neutral" speech suppression and "content-based". The federal government's official stated reason is a "content-neutral" one: China is able to collect data on Americans and this harms national security.

They are not claiming China can influence Americans. Why do you think? Because that would be a "content-based" infringement and therefore subject to a higher level of scrutiny - one that the government likely cannot pass.

Therefore, just like the Montana bill to ban TikTok, the government will have to show that banning TikTok will fix the harm that it's claiming to address. The law was struck down in Montana because of that reason - banning TikTok does not actually prevent China from collecting data. Anybody can buy data on Americans from many different sources. It's not a hard thing to do and China could likely do it for a cheaper price than running TikTok.

I believe that the real reason that they are banning TikTok is a "content-based" justification. They don't want China to influence Americans. They want to have influence and control over the content on TikTok.

This is unconstitutional and deceptive. I hope the USC truly does have political independence and strikes this down. Otherwise this is just another notch on the spiral to authoritarianism. We are becoming China.

kava ,

I think it's amusing how you call me wumao, feeling proud of how clever you are, while advocating for the US to emulate China.

kava ,

You are creating a false equivalence here. China is not choosing what is valid or not. They are not preventing you from visiting any other platform. The US government, however, is stepping in and preventing you from visiting a specific platform.

Ideally I agree with you everything would be transparent and open source and we would all be singing hakunah matata.

But if the issue is an opaque system of AI Blackbox algorithms then why target TikTok? All social medias use the same exact principles.

unable to inspect it then I want the person who is able to do so to have interests that are better aligned with mine, either an elected representative or at least a worker with similar national interests to me.

So instead of deciding for yourself, you would rather hand it off to the paternalistic state?

Because newsflash- the executives of TikTok and the CCP officials behind them have less incentive to screw you than the American big tech executives and the federal officials behind them.

a matter of the book store instead of a single book

If we were to use your analogy, it's not a book store but a farmer's market. Anyone can set up shop and sell whatever they want.

Your stated issue is that the management of the farmer's market has the capacity to suppress or amplify certain items depending on their interests.

The problem I see is that what if the American citizen, being fully aware of the bias of this farmer's market, wants to go on there anyway?

Why should his right be infringed?

Note that the government used very specific language in the ban. There's a difference between a ban on speech based on the content and one that is content neutral.

For example if I ban a farmer's market because of a safety issue, that's a content neutral ban. If I ban because they are selling things I don't want, that's a content based ban.

The government is very explicit that this is a content-neutral ban. They claim in the legislation it's for the explicit purpose of preventing China from collecting data.

Of course, that is nonsense and the real reason is the same one you mention - a content-based justification. Why didn't they say it?

Because the legal scrutiny for infringing on speech for content-based justification is much higher, and the government would not meet that scrutiny.

kava ,

The national ban has also presumably been crafted by much more experienced lawyers and lawmakers than the Montana ban. Presumably folks that understand the law better than either of us.

Unconstitutional laws are deliberately passed all the time. They happen for political reasons. For example, GOP-led state congress from various states repeatedly tried to pass abortion bans even while Roe V Wade was still active. Why? They are not stupid, they knew it would get stricken down by the courts.

The reason is a) it shows to their base they are trying to do something about abortion. It's essentially political theater.

b) by continously challenging the law, you can hope for a court case that potentially sets useful precedence for the future. For example Crawford v. Marion County Election Board in 2008. After passing many voter id laws that got repeatedly struck down, eventually it led to a court case that set a better precedence for voter id laws.

If you keep trying, eventually you get a nice ruling and all of a sudden the unconstitutional law you passed is a little less unconstitutional. So next time, you can go a little further and keep pushing the boundaries

So even though we had very strong amendments in the constitution to protect right to vote (15th amendment, 19th amendment, 24th amendment, 26th amendment) by repeatedly challenging those amendments by passing unconstitutional laws, the GOP has effectively managed to bypass the constitution in many states by passing voter id laws that have the simple purpose of getting blacks to vote less

They infringe upon rights the constitution explicitly gives to the citizens by sheer persistence.

IMO comparing a TikTok ban to some major infringement even remotely close to an authoritarian country ... it's just wrong

The reason it's authoritarian is because the government is playing that game I mentioned above. It's clear this law has nothing to do with data collection.

They are using that justification because they don't have any legal leg to stand on if they named the real reason - they want to ban specific content. Instead, they claim they are content neutral and are doing it for national security.

So they are deliberately bending the boundaries of the law in order to reduce personal freedoms and give the government more control over the media that shows up on your screen.

If this isn't a step towards authoritarianism, I don't know what is. The DNC is now holding hands with the GOP as they continue to degrade the remainder of legitimacy that American democratic institutions have left while marching towards WW3

And you and many others in this thread are cheering it on, letting your xenophobia be used as a tool to consolidate power by the federal government

kava ,

Nice deflection. A jingoist with a sense of moral superiority. Yeah, OK.

kava ,

It's sort of like how YouTube ran at a loss for a long time. The idea is to get ingrained in the market and make up the money later.

Right now Meta has the best VR / AR that is easily accessible. If some new idea or technology catapults VR into a more popular position, then Meta is in a prime position to take advantage.

Will that happen? I don't know, but Meta seems to think so.

kava ,

Everyone in my family has one. We play ping pong. It's cool, you feel like you're in the room with someone even when they are many miles away.

Having said that, I believe most of the users are minors. Whenever I log into a multilayer game, there are children taking.

Besides ping pong, there's Best Saber and 3d jigsaw puzzles. Outside of that, I haven't really had much fun outside of occasional shooting / archery.

It sucks that it's owned by Facebook of course. I deleted my Facebook over 10 years ago now. I had to set it up with my girlfriend's Facebook account.

kava ,

Valve's commitment to Linux is why I've consistently bought games virtually exclusively through Steam.

Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis (www.theverge.com)

Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis::Google says it’s aware of historically inaccurate results for its Gemini AI image generator, following criticism that it depicted historically white groups as people of color.

kava ,

Then you have black Nazis and Native American Texas Rangers. It doesn't work.

kava ,

reality doesn't downsample when you're not looking

As far as you know. Maybe that's the reasoning behind weird stuff in quantum mechanics. The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box and look at it.

kava ,

When we talk about the cat being both alive and dead, it's a simplification to help visualize a quantum phenomenon where particles exist in multiple states simultaneously until measured or observed.

Schrodinger came up with the cat to represent the absurdity of quantum mechanics because he thought it was absurd - but that doesn't mean his metaphor isn't a useful one. Particles like electrons or photons can exist in a state of superposition, where they hold multiple potential states (e.g., spin up and spin down) at the same time. This isn't just a theoretical curiosity; it's been experimentally verified in numerous quantum experiments, such as the double-slit experiment.

The act of measurement in quantum mechanics forces a system to 'choose' a definite state from among its superposed states, a process known as wave function collapse. Before measurement, the system genuinely exists in all its possible states simultaneously, not in one state or the other. This is a fundamental aspect of the quantum world

Waymo issued a recall after two robotaxis crashed into the same pickup truck (www.engadget.com)

Last year, two Waymo robotaxis in Phoenix "made contact" with the same pickup truck that was in the midst of being towed, which prompted the Alphabet subsidiary to issue a recall on its vehicles' software. A "recall" in this case meant rolling out a software update after investigating the issue and determining its root cause....

kava ,

You have legal recourse against the owner of the car, presumably the company that is profiting from the taxi service.

You see these all the time in San Francisco. I'd imagine the vast majority of the time, there are no issues. It's just going to be big headlines whenever some accident does happen.

Nobody seems to care about the nearly 50,000 people dying every year from human-caused car accidents

kava , (edited )

sure, but why do these accidents caused by AI drivers get on the news consistently and yet we rarely see news about human-caused accidents? it's because news reports what is most interesting - not exactly accurate or representative of the real problems of the country

kava ,

The problem is where does the line end? I can use a Mason jar, metal bits, and some simple household chemicals to make a shrapnel bomb like they used in the Boston Bombing. Should we ban Mason jars? I can additionally buy a dozen consumer drones and then attach those shrapnel bombs and fly them into a crowd at eye level - making the Boston Bombing look tame in comparison.

Are we to ban drones? I can use basic household cleaners to make mustard gas, I can get cyanide from regular items, I can take my car and drive it into a group of children waiting for the bus.

If someone wants to commit a crime, they are going to find a way. There's a line where we have to look and say - the costs of living in a free society means that individuals have the capacity to commit crimes. If we get rid of the capacity to commit crimes entirely, we would have also necessarily gotten rid of the free society.

kava ,

Is that the kind of society we want to be? Where a private individual or organization cannot go to another country to interview a world leader?

What happened to freedom of expression and freedom of movement? Are we going to go back to the Iron Curtain? Are we going to totally disconnect so that the only news we ever see is from "approved sources"?

This is a dangerous path to go down.

Tucker Carlson is a con-man, but if our citizens want to watch him - don't they have the right?

kava ,

Elaborate on your position. You say he should not be platformed. I think people shouldn't use hard drugs. However, I also don't think we should criminalize drug possession or use.

kava ,

It is quite scary. Unfortunately it's not just Lemmy. The entire country and probably the world is becoming increasingly polarized and reactionary.

I think a lot of this is due to propaganda and astroturfing. Many comments online are faked in some way and then certain views are pushed to the top through vote manipulation.

There are many such active groups on reddit, and I don't doubt they have some influence here. The Politics lemmy is essentially a word-for-word echo of the /r/politics sub.

So rational people who can hold nuanced views sort of get drowned out by the shallow and reactionary views.

This is unfortunately happening on the right as well. Both sides of the establishment are giving up on even pretending to care about the principles they claim to support.

The left is OK with censorship and suppression. The left is OK with supporting war. The right is OK with eliminating personal freedoms. The right is OK with destroying the free market and preventing freedom of movement.

Both sides are slowly becoming the same end-goal. I think the current system is in its death throes. It seems we are going through another period similar to the early 1900s where old ideologies will collapse and new ones will fight for control.

I just hope we can make it out the other side without falling to fascism this time around.

kava ,

I think it's a short-sighted move by Universal. Granted, maybe they know something we don't (Tiktok getting banned soon), but the benefit in TikTok for artists isn't necessarily the revenue but the promotion of their songs. They are short clips, usually no more than 15~20 seconds long. Lots of people use the songs in their videos, lots more people listen to a clip and want to listen to the full thing -> they go to youtube or apple music or whatever where Universal presumably would make a much larger share of the revenue.

kava ,

I know it's become a meme, but exposure is a real tangible thing. If I get a clip of my song onto millions of people's phone screens and I don't pay for it, it's basically thousands (if not tens of thousands) of dollars of free advertising.

Just because some asshole on Facebook marketplace is begging for free commissions doesn't invalidate the benefits you can gain from exposure in general.

Having said all that, we are talking about Universal not some indie folk band. The same thing Tiktok is doing to Universal (paying a very small %) is exactly what Universal does to artists. I have very little empathy for either Tiktok or Universal.

On the topic, I actually support Tiktok more in the sense that independent artists now have the means to go viral much more easily on a platform which inevitably leads to organic growth + success. Universal is a behemoth from an era that hasn't fully died.

kava ,

i used to think it was just the dances but then i started dating a girl last year who uses tiktok a lot and there's actually a lot of interesting content on there. it's like a different version of youtube. there's an algorithm.. you like cooking? lots of interesting cooking videos. there's also some interesting political content, mostly leftist from what i gather.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • incremental_games
  • meta
  • All magazines
    •