• joenforcer@midwest.social
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    17 hours ago

    The good news is that the main contingent of people upset about TikTok getting banned have willingly rotted away their attention spans (ironically, through TikTok) to do anything meaningful about it. The moment they realize being mad takes effort they’ll find something else to do.

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      16 hours ago

      Instagram, facebook, twitter, youtube, and reddit: all well-known for improving the mental health and attention-span of their users. /s

      • prole
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        6 hours ago

        Literally the only “argument” you people have.

        “Wah, the other ones do it too!” yeah, no shit, and they should also be regulated. I don’t think anyone here believes otherwise. Maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to prioritize the one that’s under the control of a foreign adversary.

        And even if you don’t prioritize it, this is the one that we currently have the opportunity to regulate, so why would we refuse that just because we’re not doing the same thing to the other ones RIGHT NOW? Once again allowing perfect to be the enemy of good.

        Do you see now how that’s not a real argument?

        It’s like if a student got caught cheating on a test, and complains that they shouldn’t get an F, because “everyone else was cheating too.” Were they cheating? Maybe. Is it relevant? Not at all.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          5 hours ago

          Why on earth would the US government regulate its own propaganda and surveillance programs? Their goal is to control the narrative world-wide, and force-feed the world pro-US foreign policy positions.

          Also, the US are the ones telling you that tiktok is doing the same thing that their companies are. You should take anything a serial liar says with an extreme grain of salt, and distrust it by default. There’s no evidence that Chinese companies are doing what the US companies are.

  • firadin@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Bad take. We’re in the modern world of information warfare: expecting every citizen to be immune to psychological trickery from a nation spending tens of billions to research and test ways to trick them is unrealistic and unreasonable. There’s people with PhDs in human psychology spending their entire time and untold amounts of compute power trying to stoke the flames of division and push misinformation and you think we should allow it?

      • firadin@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        The US government isn’t in charge of one of the largest social media platforms in the world. US corporations are absolutely doing this as well, but that’s an argument for more regulation not to grant China free reign

        • prole
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          6 hours ago

          US corporations are absolutely doing this as well, but that’s an argument for more regulation not to grant China free reign

          Exactly this. This is their only argument against it, and it’s trash. Yeah, no shit, we know they are all doing it. Yes, we all agree that they should be dealt with as well.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          16 hours ago

          The US government isn’t in charge of one of the largest social media platforms in the world. US corporations are absolutely doing this as well, but that’s an argument for more regulation not to grant China free reign

          US-run social media apps are pretty much now just arms of the US surveillance state, functioning both as pro-US propaganda machines, and tools to spy on the communications of the entire world.

          For example, the most popular social media app in India for example, is facebook. The US controls the main method of news and communication for a country much larger than its own.

          • prole
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            6 hours ago

            Yeah, and…? Does that mean we ignore the one under CCP control because… why? It’s not fair?

            Also, I’m not questioning the data as it’s clearly about when they began collecting data, but that chart looks a little… sketchy. Like you pulled it from your Great Aunt’s Facebook feed in 2014. Where is the data from? That does not appear to be any kind of valid source I’m aware of in the corner. When was this made, and how much has changed since then?

            • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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              5 hours ago

              Like you pulled it from your Great Aunt’s Facebook feed in 2014. Where is the data from? That does not appear to be any kind of valid source I’m aware of in the corner.

              They’re slides of internal US prism program documents from the 2010 US global surveillance disclosures that Snowden and Assange exposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM#The_slides

              When was this made, and how much has changed since then?

              There’s no reason to think the US government has stopped any of these programs. If anything, given the massive DoD budgets, they’ve increased.

            • peppers_ghost@lemmy.ml
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              6 hours ago

              He didn’t say the government owned Facebook. Even so, it doesn’t need to own it to control the flow of information.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          16 hours ago

          The US intelligence & propaganda machines dwarf those of all other states, just as the US military dwarfs those of all other states. And they don’t only direct it at other countries, they direct it inward, too. “Russiagate” was a domestic psyop directed at its own people, to manufacture our consent to censorship. Hamilton 68: How former intelligence officials and Democratic operatives conspired to manufacture ‘Russiagate’

  • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    I’d like tiktok to fully disappear but not for the reasons governments want it to. I just miss YouTube haikus and memes without music always playing.

  • Lucy :3@feddit.org
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    2 days ago

    TikTok has literally nothing to do with informing tho… it’s literally the opposite.

  • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com
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    2 days ago

    This is actually a good point. Last time I said something good about China I was attacked on lemmy for it being censored. As if that doesn’t happen here

    • “Lemmy” isn’t one thing. Every community on every instance is different so you didn’t get censored on “Lemmy” you get moderated in a specific community. Lemmy itself (the software) is censorship proof meaning you are free to launch you own instance, as you have done, with your own communities and post there and no one would be able to censor you and it would federate to any linked instance to your subscribers.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      There is no contradiction here, because the communists, with their customary candor, acknowledge the necessity of stifling speech they deem to be harmful. It is the liberals, those self-appointed guardians of unfettered discourse, who are engaging in hypocrisy. They wax lyrical about the sanctity of free expression, only to abandon their lofty principles the moment their narrative falters.