[ceejayoz]

The humans it feeds content into are the botnet.

For example, it's alleged that Russia promoted competing rallies on both sides of the political divide in the US in hopes of sowing discord in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency#Ralli...

[hypeit]

A human is not a bot. In addition to being dehumanizing, it removes agency to say that.

[ceejayoz]

Pretending large groups of humans can't possibly be influenced to do things is lunacy.

We do weird things in crowds even without intentional propaganda at play. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8091

[bluefishinit]

That's not a "botnet" though, advertising does the same thing. We don't call the people buying things they've been marketed a "botnet".

[ambicapter]

There's definitely areas of advertising that are banned/controlled so that comparison seems more damning than beneficial (e.g. alcohol to minors, medication in any country other than the US

[ceejayoz]

It needn't be a perfect comparison to be a useful one.

[bluefishinit]

It's not useful though. I actually think it's very cool that TikTok got a bunch of young people to contact their representatives. If this ban goes through, the political blowback is going to be extreme. It will be like the Streisand effect x100,000,000.

[stale2002]

> If this ban goes through, the political blowback is going to be extreme.

Its not a ban. Whats going to happen is that tiktok will divest.

Kids will continue to have their social media.

[ceejayoz]

> I actually think it's very cool that TikTok got a bunch of young people to contact their representatives.

I don't think that's the concern.

[butlike]

Just capitalism slaves :P

[butlike]

I'm a human, and I identify as a "bot," so there.