[kirse]

TikTok, at the end of the day, is just a kind of printing press.

No, TikTok is essentially digital opium. And China itself has confirmed that reality by 1) restricting their citizens' daily access and 2) significantly filtering the content they can see on it:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/08/1069527/china-ti...

It would only be fair of the US to follow China's example of protecting its citizens from numbing out on TikTok digital garbage. We should most certainly should follow suit with an equivalently restrictive measure.

[bugglebeetle]

If you honestly believed this to be true, you would be arguing for a ban on all social media, as like half of Instagram is just reposts of TikTok content and is otherwise mind-numbingly equivalent to the service.

[kirse]

Nah, I'm just arguing that it's both reasonable and fair to do unto others. Here's some more evidence:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/china-wants-to-ri...

I'm sure it's not "xenophobic moral panic" when China does it though, right?

[code_biologist]

I believe it to be true and I'd like broad, heavy restriction of algorithmically targeted content but that would go against the interests of massive companies. Not gonna happen. I'll take the win in this instance though, where national security concerns and congress' desire to look like it's doing something align to make a small positive change.

[kenjackson]

How is this a win at all though? Especially now. Every kid I know says Reels is a perfectly good alternative now (it wasn't two years ago). It's making a statement about something, but it's not helping any of the problems you noted.

[remarkEon]

>If you honestly believed this to be true, you would be arguing for a ban on all social media

Your terms are acceptable.

[jrockway]

"I'm going to smash all the printing presses because people are reading dumb books" is exactly why the first amendment exists.

[remarkEon]

You don't seriously believe that social media is analogous to the printing press, do you? Because it's not, and it's so obviously not that I'm having trouble imagining what point you were trying to make relative to 1A. Because this isn't a 1A issue either, and it never has been.

If you must, this is like destroying foreign radio towers or something, where those radio towers have the ability to algorithmically predict what people want to listen to and then generate content tuned to affecting their state of mind, what they believe, and so on. So, yeah, blow 'em up.

[jrockway]

TikTok gets people's ideas in front of other people. That's a printing press.

[kirse]

Cocaine has low calories, reduces appetite, and increases metabolic activity. That's a weight-loss supplement.

[serf]

both things spun the world as we knew it as humans into chaos in one way or another, but despite the metaphor floating around this thread the printing press and social media are not equivalents.

[nextaccountic]

However, we are talking through a social media website.

[aydyn]

False equivalence. You're essentially equating caffeine with cocaine.

Not being the target audience, you're likely naive to the extent of harm enabled by tiktok.

[bugglebeetle]

And you’ve lost all perspective by hopping on the bandwagon of a xenophobic moral panic. There is zero difference between Instagram Reels and TikTok garbage.

[sanktanglia]

these days instagram is much more used by older people than tiktok which has a large younger audience. Also scale wise, tiktok is crazy huge, so yes there is a difference between the two offerings

[aydyn]

> And you’ve lost all perspective by hopping on the bandwagon of a xenophobic moral panic

In my experience the people who lead with this non-argument tend to be the most privileged. It's always nice talking down to other people of color, isn't it.

> There is zero difference between Instagram Reels and TikTok garbage.

Demonstrably false.

[pests]

>> There is zero difference between Instagram Reels and TikTok garbage.

> Demonstrably false.

Ageeed.

I put Reels on the bottom of the short content platforms - TokTok, Shorts, then Reels.

If you haven't used these platforms a lot, you wouldn't be able to tell a difference. Reels is boring. Everything it shows me, no matter how much I use it, always sucks. I lose interest in minutes. Shorts is decent but mostly just marketing for a channels main brand, but still gets boring after a little use or I'm back in the main tab. TikTok - where did the time go?

TikTok Live is also quite unique, never before I have I experienced other peoples lives so up close and (politely) invasively. Such a strange feeling seeing some family in India making clay cups, or the (Eastern European?) tile guy grinding for hours, or the loading dock somewhere where people are sliding massive blocks of ice around, or the Australian DJ on his balcony - while I'm across the world laying in bed at 3am.

[hughesjj]

If only twitter didn't kill vine, that was and still is my favorite short form video platform

I'm kind of surprised musk hasn't ressurected it

[butlike]

FB, Insta, Twitter, Snapchat. All home-grown opium. Also, what if. AND I DO MEAN...WHAT IF...there was no CCP propaganda sent through TikTok?