News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns by wonnage on Friday September 18, 2020 @02:45PM (#24520452)
How is Google/Twitter/Facebook any different? Lemme guess your answer: well, they're on our side because it's an American company, and we can control them!

It's been 10+ years of these companies and no meaningful oversight has been exerted, at least not on behalf of users. Not after:

1. Self-admitted election interference https://www.vox.com/2017/4/28/15476142/facebook-report-trump...

2. Tracking and targeting individuals' political speech in the US https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/31/20837448/social-media-dhs...

3. Tracking and targeting individuals' political speech in autocratic nations: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/07/777352750/how-saudi-arabia-us...

4. Paid to suggest pro-CCP propaganda! https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/technology/china-facebook...

Re:US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns by asdff on Friday September 18, 2020 @06:39PM (#24522540)
I don't think google/twitter/facebook are any different than tiktock. Honestly, I'd love to see something done with these companies too, since it's clear that making microphones available to anyone, whether they are a human or a script, just leads to noise that overwhelms any expert level signal on world events or domain knowledge. I'm not sure what can be done at this point, though, it's like pandora's box has been opened. Now that the playbook is there, the internet is legitimately polluted for good. There will always be some other social network to trivially exert manipulation on, since humans are just wired to give into this tribalism as a species at the end of the day.
Re:US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns by valuearb on Saturday September 19, 2020 @12:27PM (#24528556)
Oh Lawdy, people are saying things on social platforms I disagree with!
Re:US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns by 6DM on Friday September 18, 2020 @05:58PM (#24522288)
I don’t think we can control them, I do think we could ideally introduce sensible legislation and hopefully the bad actors would at least be incentivized to benefit their own country to some extent. Also, sorry if I somehow insulted your home country, was only trying to make the point of why Americans would want a Chinese company ran out of town.