House Speaker Johnson plans to package TikTok legislation with critical aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and send it to the Senate. President Joe Biden vowed to sign it into law.
Same as Twitter and Facebook bit we have more control over those.
Only in the sense that the people using them to manipulate us are the same ones making the laws. They’re leveraging it for their own ends, not stopping it.
The correct course of action (from the perspective of the American people, in stark contrast to that of the American government/oligarchy) would be to ban TikTok as the threat it is, and also ban Facebook, Twitter and Reddit for the threats they pose as well. The trouble is that it won’t, because it is the entity wielding that weapon against the American people and will not voluntarily disarm itself.
Banning them is the exact wrong way to go about the problem. That just gives the government the power to ban apps that contain information that doesn’t fit the narrative the government wants to put out. It gives them control over the consumer.
What should happen is comprehensive privacy protections for consumers and extensive fines when companies don’t abide by them. That way, the consumer benefits and the government has more oversight over companies, not people.
The way I see it, the problem is centralized social media with opaque engagement and content-boosting algorithms. Think of it not as the government banning apps with content it doesn’t like but instead as enforcing anti-trust law.
Only in the sense that the people using them to manipulate us are the same ones making the laws. They’re leveraging it for their own ends, not stopping it.
The correct course of action (from the perspective of the American people, in stark contrast to that of the American government/oligarchy) would be to ban TikTok as the threat it is, and also ban Facebook, Twitter and Reddit for the threats they pose as well. The trouble is that it won’t, because it is the entity wielding that weapon against the American people and will not voluntarily disarm itself.
Banning them is the exact wrong way to go about the problem. That just gives the government the power to ban apps that contain information that doesn’t fit the narrative the government wants to put out. It gives them control over the consumer.
What should happen is comprehensive privacy protections for consumers and extensive fines when companies don’t abide by them. That way, the consumer benefits and the government has more oversight over companies, not people.
The way I see it, the problem is centralized social media with opaque engagement and content-boosting algorithms. Think of it not as the government banning apps with content it doesn’t like but instead as enforcing anti-trust law.