The information warfare situation is highly asymmetric, and we seem to just let it fester on.
The west doesn't have ubiquitous mind control devices deployed behind the great firewall. That this situation persists is a signal, to me, that our leaders aren't well equipped to deal with the realities of tech in 2024.
Our leaders do their job by trying to uphold our values like freedom of expression and equality and that other stuff.
This makes us vulnerable and we have to adapt. But hopefully not by banning these things, but by educating ourselves about the risks and gains of using addictive technology. At least that's the theory, I guess.
TikTok should be handled like an addictive substance. It and things just like it should be heavily regulated and watched over (e.g. by protecting and educating our youth).
> Our leaders do their job by trying to uphold our values like freedom of expression and equality and that other stuff.
Is that so, what about Chat Control then? is that law upholding freedom of expression? I guess I was not aware that automated reports to the EU cops of "suspicious" messages could be seen as maintaining freedom of expression in the EU.
Have we crossed the Rubicon here? War is peace, freedom is slavery and freedom of expression is 24/7 monitoring of your private conversations.
It's a travesty that western countries have moved from trying to gain their people's support by improving their living conditions to trying to gain their people's support by lying to them, such that unrestricted discussion of the facts is such a threat to the governments in power.
If only it were facts being discussed, but social media is plagued with alternative facts(aka lies) and no mechanism of getting rid of it, as reporting doesn't do anything since social media companies just fake compliance but take no serious action against disinformation.
This is all from my personal experience reporting egregious fake information (the kind you can check with the first google result) on social media sites and the content still exists.
If we are going to go down that road, then what about the mainstream media then? How many lies have they gotten away with and never corrected?
I agree that misinformation is spreading on social media, but let's not forget that the mainstream media has been caught lying deliberately or by omission more times than I can count.
Given the YT algorithm is such that (in my case) out of 60 recent suggestions on the home page, 45 were bad and 14 were already in my "watch later" list, I don't think there's much chance of it influencing anything.
But sure, keep an eye on it anyway. It's not magically good by virtue of which country owns it.
The west doesn't have ubiquitous mind control devices deployed behind the great firewall. That this situation persists is a signal, to me, that our leaders aren't well equipped to deal with the realities of tech in 2024.