AIBU to think TikTok should be banned in the UK too?

[User09678]

The Sureme Court has upheld a decision to ban tiktok in the US. Am I unreasonable in thinking the UK should have done the same yesterday? Always puts in mind the opium wars, I'm sure some are more than happy (justifiably so even) to let Western youth utterly rot their minds

I completely agree with you, there is a massive propaganda drive from all sectors, Tik Tok is one as is other forms of social media and msm.

TikTok is controlled by a country that the US is building up to war with, where twitter and the others aren't.

‘Building up to war with’

More required here to substantiate. We have connections as do the US through diplomacy and actual invitation to invest

I agree with you on not rushing to censor.

Look at state controlled media where nothing else gets in.

I’d need more info on the security risk before deciding

There's already a Cold War going on, it's only a matter of time before it turns into a hot one. Although technically there's already a hot one with Russia in Ukraine, and to some extent with Iran in Gaza via Israel.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea are the key enemies who are sidling up to each other.

Thinking that there's no problem with allowing those countries access to our key infrastructure (why do people think we had to remove Huawei equipment from our mobile phone networks rendering them pretty rubbish?) or to allow their propaganda unfettered access to our youth is just batshit.

If politicians fuck it up there could be but your prediction re inevitability is just a mner’s view. Not a given

As for Cold War maybe let Reeves know as she’s invited plenty of investment from China

Or free toilet paper.

Censorship only really works when you trust the censors. This is why Allied censorship in WW2 was more effective than Nazi censorship in Europe.

It's why the Churchs power to control waned as fewer people trusted them and their censorship.

It's why despite the East German government telling East Germans how lucky free and rich they were and how poor oppressed and unhappy West Germans were the Berlin Wall was built to keep them in (not the West Germans out).

If you trust your own side, you are much less likely to fall for propaganda than if you don't.

And if you trust neither side, then propaganda is pretty useless.

The issue is "trust" isn't objectively assessed (because that would be madness, clearly), It's a subject state of being bought about by a persons prejudices.

It's very hard to sway people with few prejudices.

(Is that enough for today ?)

Everyone who thinks they have ADHD should be put on a scrolling ban for 3 months before they're allowed on the assessment waiting list.
This.
It destroys the ability of children to concentrate on anything for longer than a minute.
A whole generation of kids are growing up with it and I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it was tiktok more than any other factor responsible.

It should at least be banned for under 16s.
Of course for an adult who's formative years were not affected by scrolling it's far less damaging.

There’s been research to suggest the UKs unique issue with low productivity is largely due to poor senior management.

A reliance on old boys networks rather than genuine meritocracy means companies which would naturally die in the US stick around limping here. It also leads to less innovation and investment.

In America companies are more ruthless with senior leadership and you innovate or die. In the UK we often don’t train staff or invest in new technology. The same groups of guys who went to the same type of schools and uni’s just pass big jobs to each other, no new thinking.

You see this in the television sector. Where America does have a lot of dross, they will have standout shows. We have the same group of people who went to Cambridge footlights doing yet another production of royalty or poorly written BBC police drama. There will be diversity on screen but same group of Timothy’s and Dan’s in the positions of genuine power.

We will limp along forever until this is properly addressed.

Which explains exactly why the propaganda is being used to chip away at people's trust in their government.

It's a war of information and undermining thinking. Look at how people's thinking has changed with cancel culture. How much criminality has been permitted because there's now a fear of causing offence. Being offended makes you a victim which means there's a perpetrator, a spat online can see lives ruined through "cancel culture". You can no longer make mistakes, said something 20 years ago you no longer agree with and someone screen grabbed it, you can still lose your livelihood, home and be put in prison.

Critical thinking no longer exists, news is informed by social media. We are told we need stronger boundaries while at the same time we are told to ignore instincts and natural boundaries because if you don't you're upsetting people.

It may not be obvious what has happened (because cat videos) but it's there, its happened, it's not happening it has happened.

However you can't chip away what doesn't exist ...

Remember our own government has lied to us and treated us like shit on occasion.

You really do reap what you sow.

Have they lied to us or done the best they could do with the information they had? People are fallible and make mistakes. No one is allowed to make mistakes anymore we all have to be perfect or nothing, it's a horrible way to live.

Your desire to ban won’t give good outcomes

High level state controlled media is just that, nothing else gets in

There's a middle ground. The internet needs policing, not just from hostile states but domestically from hackers, drug dealing and worse.

I think there's a big reason why 'free speech' is being so heavily touted at the moment and of course there is the reasonable backlash to heavy policing of speech by those on the left of thing that they disagreed with that they instead claimed were harmful. But the calls for 'free speech' also benefit those who wish to spread lies unhindered.

When it comes to MN, which is the social media platform I engage most with, I would previously have been of the opinion that lies and false information should be rigorously challenged rather than deleted, to educate people etc.

But during covid there was a massive influx of false information about the vaccines, and clearly, during a pandemic, this is a huge health and safety issue. I'm not talking about reasonable concerns about side effects or whatever but 'vaccines give you autism' or 'vaccines are going to be used to control the population by killing off half of them' or 'vaccines are implanting a microchip into you' or even 'vaccines are the tool of the Jewish elite who control the world and we are headed into melding with robots' (yes really).

And people were challenging. And you'd report it to MN and they'd say 'we note that it is being challenged on the thread so we will allow it to stand'.

But it was overwhelming. And people were getting tired of challenging, and just giving up. And I think MNHQ realised that there was a genuine problem and started deleting these threads and posts that were deliberately spreading misinformation which, I think was in that scenario, the better solution.

But that costs money that people aren't going to pay.

I think a massive platform like twitter should have both a system of citizen policing (e.g. community notes) and moderators that rigorously delete disinformation.

Relying solely on community notes is expecting unpaid users to do the work for you.

I think there's a big reason why 'free speech' is being so heavily touted at the moment and of course there is the reasonable backlash to heavy policing of speech by those on the left of thing that they disagreed with that they instead claimed were harmful. But the calls for 'free speech' also benefit those who wish to spread lies unhindered.

The SCOTUS decision was 9-0. Total and utter rejection of the free speech (1st amendment) argument in favour of national security.

And this is a court that is conservative and supposedly Trump-friendly.

As far as the US is concerned this is not a free speech issue. Unless you want to take on SCOTUS.

Who is gonna pay for that, pray tell ?

Surely they will just move to alternative platforms. Most are in a range of platforms anyway to maximum earnings.

Is it actually 'grabby' or 'work shy' to spend their days creating videos, advertisements and other content in order to earn money. It's just a different type of work to the one you're, presumably, doing. And, for the short term at least, they get to earn good money. I don't really see the issue.

It's not something I want to do as a job, but if others want to and companies are happy to pay them to advertise their products - good for them.

Hopefully an end will be put to it eventually.

There is absolutely no way social media and video sharing platforms are likely to all be closed down any time soon.

The company. You want to operate in this country you provide robust moderation, and not this weird AI half moderation but doing nothing effective, that Meta provides.

But you trust YouTube? 😂