| ▲ | ericmay 9 hours ago |
| I've never in my life used TikTok. Can you please point to a specific article, news source, journal, any piece of information that is legal in the United States that I don't have easy access to so I can see what I'm missing? |
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| ▲ | woooooo 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's not about legality, its about scrolling and recommendations. Young people see stuff by other young people by default. Its been a conservative/zionist talking point for years now that "the youth are getting brainwashed by tiktok", and Ellison in particular seems to be in the "I've gone hard right due to the latest Israel conflict" camp. So of course they're not being subtle about it. |
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| ▲ | pjc50 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, this is where the friction is because it's ambiguous. "Access to" and "promoted by" are not the same thing, especially on platforms where you don't have a pure-chronological feed and all "home screen" content and its ordering is selected by the platform. Leaky, imperfect filters are still filters. | | |
| ▲ | woooooo 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | There's 2 orthogonal lanes: 1) A philosophical debate along the lines you've indicated here, how much is it worth to control the algorithm, and how much does that equate to controlling speech. 2) The allegation that current buyers bought it specifically to bring their ideology to the algorithm, however effective or valid you think that is (I think it just hastens TikTok becoming something for "old people"). |
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| ▲ | ericmay 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So I do have easy access to information, and the OP was incorrect? > its about scrolling and recommendations Don't scroll and don't take recommendations from these platforms. It's better now that it's American owned, but you really shouldn't have been using it when the Chinese Communist Party owned it. And I'm only talking about TikTok because that's the OP. I don't use any social media platforms besides LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is such a big piece of trash I don't think it matters if anyone uses it. | | |
| ▲ | woooooo 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | OP said "buying TikTok was about hiding information from people", and the people who bought TikTok are trying to suppress certain information on TikTok. Whether you or I think that's effective or not is up for debate, I also avoid social media, but OP made a statement about intentions. (And, aside, the current intentions appear far more pointed and ideological than when it was owned by ByteDance as a lottery winner with a surprise overseas success, optimizing for youth engagement.) | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to. Restating the OP ^ I don't know exactly what the OP intended, and they are welcome to clarify, but based on the words above I read it as selling TikTok is a means of suppressing information that the rest of the world has access to from Americans. I disagree with the notion because what matters is whether or not information is suppressed holistically, not whether or not information is suppressed in a limited manner on a platform. If you think it's a problem, by the way, you should reach out to the EU, China, India, and every other major government that influences what content is posted on social media platforms including but not limited to TikTok. If you want to argue the US obtaining control of the content from TikTok in America is tantamount to information suppression, you can only do so by also arguing it's true only for people who use TikTok. In which case it's an improvement anyway since the CCP is no longer influencing content. |
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| ▲ | giraffe_lady 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The chinese government has never physically assaulted me or my neighbors, never used tear gas around the elementary school my family attends. The united states government has. It's interesting to me that you're so certain about your threat model here but I don't share it. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The chinese government has never physically assaulted me or my neighbors, never used tear gas around the elementary school my family attends. Ok, well here where I live the government has never physically assaulted me or my neighbors, nor used tear gas around the elementary school my friends and family members children attend. But the government is clearing my streets of snow, gave me an opportunity to get an education, and generally helps make sure my life isn't so bad. On the other hand, the CCP (and others) has created lots of fake accounts, engaged in paying off people to help incite riots, and is responsible for algorithmically promoting divisive content which has caused people to go out and riot, shoot at each other, become white nationalist goons or antifa goons, and helped get Donald Trump elected. Donald Trump himself claims TikTok helped him get elected, he was wildly popular on the platform. > It's interesting to me that you're so certain about your threat model here but I don't share it. It's not that interesting, and this isn't warranted. I don't even know what you mean by threat model, and you never asked, so there was never an opportunity for it to be shared. Please don't wantonly levy suspicion here. | | |
| ▲ | giraffe_lady 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Ok, well here where I live the government has never physically assaulted me or my neighbors, Lucky for you I hope you can keep saying that. But uh, where you live didn't need to have a civil rights movement? Plain and simple I think americans, and the american government, and movements formed in america and made of americans, are far more likely to harm me than any foreign power and I act accordingly. In fact they already have! > On the other hand, the CCP (and others) has created lots of fake accounts, engaged in paying off people to help incite riots, and is responsible for algorithmically promoting divisive content which has caused people to go out and riot, shoot at each other, become white nationalist goons or antifa goons This is americans doing this to americans with the help of the american tech industry for the benefit of american elites. How have you come to lay the whole thing at chinese feet. I know... but do you know? You worried about the wrong propaganda my man. |
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| ▲ | gruez 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] | | |
| ▲ | woooooo 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Bro, conservative talking points have existed since before Jan 2024. |
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| ▲ | asveikau 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You have easy access in that you can find things if you look for it. What that commenter means by easy access is that the information is in mainstream sources pushed to people such that you are likely to know about it without having looked. For example I made a comment here on HN recently that immigrants commit crimes at fewer rates than US born people. That sends a segment of Americans into a flying rage even though they have access to that information, they were never going to hear it in their ordinary channels, even if they stick to "mainstream" media. |
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| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Mainstream sources that control narratives, and are owned by the same extremely wealthy people that we're complaining about now owning TikTok? Sorry, this doesn't pass the smell test for me. | | |
| ▲ | asveikau 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right now the Ellison family owns both CBS and the US version of TikTok, so sometimes the connection is kind of literal. But this complaint is pretty old, I think of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. (Setting aside his Epstein connections for a moment) The way we do censorship is much less the methods of a traditional totalitarian state and more like the private sector policing what is acceptable discourse. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | The problem with Chomsky's argument is that you can't do anything about it. Every country, every group in power, democracy, republic, chiefdom, &c, is participating in manufacturing consent and even if you fight to gain power, once you gain power you wind up doing the same thing. | | |
| ▲ | asveikau 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not citing Chomsky with a claim that he's unassailable, just that it's a very old complaint. I also think he was right about a bunch of stuff, and wrong on others. As for what he suggested, this is reminding me that I never read his work On anarchism. I heard him speak favorably about the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. I also found that topic very interesting when I was getting a Spanish minor many years ago at college. I am sure many HN commenters will disagree that it's something to emulate. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think I have that book but haven't read it. I did read Manufacturing Consent but it has been some time. I didn't mean to imply that he was unassailable, just had that critique of that general point. I think his writing is very interesting, in general, and it always helps expand the mind to new or reframed ideas. |
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| ▲ | JeremyNT 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I've never in my life used TikTok. Can you please point to a specific article, news source, journal, any piece of information that is legal in the United States that I don't have easy access to so I can see what I'm missing? Whataboutism. You presumably know full well what the parent was describing, but if not: TikTok presents users with feeds of videos. For many users, this is their primary news source. An American oligarch and party loyalist now has de facto control of the app. Therefore, the regime has the capability to shape the narrative by boosting or hiding videos from the feed (whether or not they are doing so is an open question). Could users still hypothetically find the same information elsewhere? Sure. But if this app is their primary source of information, would they even know they should bother doing so? |
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| ▲ | ericmay 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > For many users, this is their primary news source. That's their problem. You can't make blanket claims saying Americans now don't have easy access to information when there are other sources, ranging from the NYT to the Intercept, to anything you want to read being written and translated right on your computer from the EU or Japan or anywhere else you want to read. > An American oligarch and party loyalist now has de facto control of the app. Chinese oligarch, American oligarch. Either way someone without your best intentions in mind owns your platform. Maybe you should stop using it. | | |
| ▲ | JeremyNT 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Goalpost moving, this one. The post you were replying to stated: > hiding information from the US public They didn't say "Americans now don't have easy access to information" (your words). They said this sort of manipulation would be to hide information from the American public. Many people in the American public only see news on TikTok. If information is suppressed within TikTok, it is hidden to them. If TikTok stops showing content, can they find it some other way? Yes, if they know to look. It's not blocked or destroyed, but it's hidden. Is that a problem? Yes. TikTok's dominance was and is a problem in and of itself. But that isn't an excuse to abuse its dominance for propaganda purposes. As X has shown, these platforms are crucial to the information ecosystem, and their selective curation can warp the views of an entire population. | | |
| ▲ | ericmay 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nope, didn't move the goalpost, let's set that aside. > The post you were replying to stated: Now you're cherry-picking what the OP wrote. > But that isn't an excuse to abuse its dominance for propaganda purposes. I didn't suggest that any of that was an "excuse" for anything - instead I called out that regardless of how TikTok operates you still have access to whatever information you want. If you choose to silo yourself, whether that's TikTok or FoxNews, that doesn't change the fact that you still have access to information. Reminder of the OP: > The forced US hosted tik-tok sale is all about hiding information from the US public that most people in the rest of the world have easy access to. If what you are suggesting is true, than OP's claim is untrue because all governments and all social media platforms regardless of where they exist or who owns them curate content to some degree and are thus "hiding information from the public". You can't have it both ways here. |
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| ▲ | tdb7893 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Larry and David Ellison have been buying media outlets and those media outlets have started spiking (or delaying, editing, etc) stories that look bad for Trump. It's not that you don't have access at all, it's that these specific platforms are starting to suppress it. This is the notable example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_CECOT |
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