this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Fucking obviously duh its knowingly designed to be addictive and they know it brainrots you.
This is the real reason that TikTok should be massively regulated or outright banned for children, not because of specifically oh we we are worried about data security concerns with a Chinese company, but because its functionally a digital version of a mind melting harmful drug.
If you want to be consistent on the data security concept, then basically you'd have to apply that logic to Facebook and Instagram and well pretty much everything these days.
But also, I guarantee you that if Meta or Twitter/X was investigated similarly we'd find out very very similar things about their products intentionally being designed to be addictive and that they know they degenerate your mental faculties as well, and prioritize spreading dubious inflammatory misinformation.
(Well, in Twitter, now X's case, probably Elon has already destroyed much of that research after he took over, and X now has different and even worse obvious problems.)
Cambridge Analytica anyone?
Tiktok is only different in that it is primarily aimed at children, and that it's not American.
I am so beyond tired of pretending that modern corporate social media apps are anything other than extremely societally normalized drugs that make us all stupid angry idiots.
EDIT, several days later:
Oh hey look here's Sam Seder agreeing with the idea that these platforms are products and they should be regulated akin to alcohol and tobacco and harmful pharmaceuticals, who also all had their own internal data showing they knew their products were/are addictive and damaging but just shelved their own studies:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OWMoZJ5OPdg
Lots of people on the internets tend to do whataboutism around this topic whenever it comes up.
I think what it all boils down to is that TikTok is the worst example we've seen come up, and it is badly addicting and manipulative enough that it finally got people concerned.
When you're one of us who never installed or browsed to TikTok, it's quite obvious how it's fucking up the rest of the people. It has taken smartphone addiction to a new level. People look like addicted zombies on that shit.
...so far :)
And the crazy part is I know of teens who say "I wish I could use my phone less", and these aren't even particularly self-reflective kids. I have to assume many feel this way. Literal textbook addiction, crafted on purpose, and half of the parents are so far up shit's creek with the addiction too that they don't even think to get involved.
The phone addiction thing is strangely very common now. I've seen many posts online about it, people complaining how life is bad and they can only stay on their phone all day.
I just don't get it. Why would you want to stare at a tiny screen in your hand all day? I only waste time on my phone when I'm bored and can't find something better to do.
Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, those "news" pages that show up when you open a new browser tab in Edge, Xitter, Snapchat, and anyone else using an algorithm designed to drive engagement so they can shovel ads at you is 100% the same or worse than TikTok.
The problem is, as you said, is that TikTok is "evil Chinese company stealing our kids' data" and all of the rest are "brave American captains of industry" and boy, we can't possibly do anything that could possibly have our captains of industry making even one less cent than they do now. Why, that'd be communism!
So uh, here we are.
Because of a purported correlation? How many other correlations should be banned?
If a drug was rolled out of clinical trials, and huge, huge portions of the people it was given to reported becoming addicted to it and also massive amounts of negative side effects, would you just say
..., well we don't have a completely precise and thorough model of the causal mechanisms at the chemical and physiological level that perfectly describe how this drug is causing all these side effects...
Instead of, I don't know, recalling the drug ASAP to minimize harm, maybe do the exact science of it later, in more ethical and controlled conditions?
TikTok obviously has an absurdly huge amount of data, a huge dataset, and they themselves have concluded that their product is addictive and that this very often results in deleterious effects with addictive use, and they've intentionally designed it that way.
This is more akin to 'oil companies have known for decades that their industry causes global warming via their own studies and just decided to not release that information and instead spread confusion and doubt to the public when any other scientists start to figure out the same things they did with the same level of specificity'.
Again: These are TikTok's own internal studies that they really, really, really did not want to be made public.