Technology

Right, but things rarely happen 'for the good of humanity', they just happen, and like mass production or the newspaper or even writing and language itself, it appears, we make use of it, we stumble and eventually we figure out where it really fits into the world. It will always be taken advantage of by those with the means to do so, but my point is that there is a period where we truly don't know how to approach it as a society and there is a learning curve and we are in that adolescent or teenage year type curve for the Internet, and probably toddler stage for ai, and we will learn, but we're not there yet.

Further, whether we learn enough quickly enough, or whether those with enough power and foresight will truly steal that opportunity from society remains to be seen. It may seem like it will be obvious right now, while we're in the thick of things, but only history will tell if it's an obvious eventuality or whether it is comical that they think they are smart enough to actually control it. Maybe it contains the seeds of their own undoing.

why not have better data protection laws instead

This is all theater.

trump is going to "save" tik tok after starting the initial push to ban it (for the wrong reasons) to pretend he did something for you. Worst part is that all of the no/low info voters and non voters will eat it up.

It's the equivalent of a person pushing you into the middle of the street and at the very last second, that same person tells the drivers to all stop. "Wow, I owe you my life!"

And now, this adds two layers:

1. You think trump and the Supreme Court are colluding? now they get to say, nah uh!!!! Even though again, this is all convoluted.

2. trump gets to look "stronger" than the "highest court in the land" to help delude the next generation of low info tiktok folks.

P.s. The Chinese "protest" apps are going to mine the FUCK out of these millions of phones in the brief window they have them. Also, when the kids inevitably move back to tiktok, majority of them will leave these other apps installed on their phones, dormant and collecting in the background.

i don't understand why everyone wants to push trump, who already doesn't care for the constitution, to just unilaterally decide not to obey laws passed by congress? like what are we doing?

As an Indian, welcome to the party.

TikTok being banned is good. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter should be banned as well. Closed, source, manipulative and harmful algorithms should be banned and these apps all use dark patterns in their design.

The fediverse and open social networks where the algorithms are open source and well understood and the user is allowed to choose their own algorithms is the only safe way to use social media.

Non-American here. This actually goes a long way in helping me to avoid US-centric news and content for the next 4 years. So, there’s that.

The only thing I really feel bad for from this is the small town food banks/animal welfare societies/sanctuaries that were able to find alternative sources of incomes through Tiktok via their partner programs and through a wider audience. Apparently Instagram doesn't pay as well, and Youtube shorts are abysmal for discovery.

I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, and my city dropped funding for them in 2023. Tiktok donations helped a lot more than you'd think. Highly encouraged people reading this to drop some food/donations off at your shelter of choice if you have any to spare.

I'm really surprised they're not pushing the web version, which can operate in a way not covered by this ban.

Calling it now, the supposed "rumors" of Musk wanting to buy out TikTok are suddenly going to become not-rumors on January 21st.