However I find it baffling that all the VC in the Global West is unable to come up with a popular alternative, even though it's glaringly obvious[0] what the "secret sauce" is in TikTok and why it works so well.
Instead we get stuff like this, where a quite good photo-sharing service radically undermines its inherent advantages in order to play catch-up, with most of the videos still sporting a TikTok logo.
At some level I'm happy if Zuckerberg destroys my artists' community on IG because it at least opens the door to creating a better one elsewhere. But I'm also a little worried that this coterie of billionaires keeps having their lunch eaten by a pretty straightforward system run on a pretty classic Valley model.
[0]: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/a16z-podcast/tiktoks-al...
In a way Europe has been doing that for many years. The US does not have any privacy protection of foreigners, the NSA is only not supposed to capture data on US citizens.
Only now are we seeing Google Analytics banned in many European countries. But it's a very small step.
The cultural influence of the US on Europe is enormous, and the US has often crossed the line spying on European citizens, but the US is not an adversary.
1. Committing acts of violence against people they don't agree with.
2. Silencing opposing opinions.
3. Media and political propaganda, projection, and gaslighting.
4. Vilifying segments of society.
5. A tiered justice system.
6. Consequentialism.
7. Destruction of history to fit a modern narrative.
Sure, we can speak about political correctness from West in campuses, but that has no future by definition.
However... Both trends has similar goal to steal freedom from citizens.
Why ? political correctness in progressive-dominated spcaces like western uni campuses goes back to the 70s/80s. I was browsing Ted Kaczynski's (better known as the UnaBomber) Industrial Society and Its Future[1], and he spoke about political correctness as an established thing. A 40-year phenomenon seems like something that won't end anytime soon.
>Shaping education by foreigners that not accept democratic principles is far more dangerous.
I wouldn't be too quick to judge. Not all of china is a single brain, maybe the people funding european universities have meaningful ideological differences from the ruling class. And the blanket usage of "democratic principles" irritates me hugely, because most of modern wesern democracies is a pathetic and transparent sham that is trampled at the earliest encounter with any real established power.
[1] http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/howard/Anarchism/Unabom/manifesto...
Because ideology is wrong.
>..because most of modern wesern democracies is a pathetic and transparent sham...
I wouldn't argue with that, but advantage of free society is that you, as individual, can do something about it. In totalitarian state your attempts to change something that is against state ideology would be suppressed. If we, in democratic states, let others people do nasty things, than it is only because we let them to do it. Is it laziness? Is it lack of responsibility? Or maybe that image that media told us every day... "Don't stick your nose here and there, you wouldn't be able to change anything anyway. Stay scared."
I have no objections to political correctness being wrong, I was contradicting the claim that it's something that's going away.
>If we, in democratic states, let others people do nasty things, than it is only because we let them to do it
Or because they have vastly more wealth, status and connections than you, and can crush you like a bug (totally legally) if you ever went anywhere near them. That's why you can't do anything, not because you choose not to. Democracy is theatre, it doesn't change the fundamental power structure since Ancient Egypt and Babylon. There is an upper caste, and you're not one of them.
I agree with this on a knee-jerk, but it still seems to me 'the west' is different from China, Russia, etc. Why do I feel that, what's the source?
In truth, not only votes are a placebo that doesn't measure anything but the crudest of desires, and not only those worthless votes are further made worthless and pointless by the fact that vast hordes of uncoordinated humans are exceptionally easy to manipulate and control to give their votes to anything, much more than individuals or small groups. The reality is that votes and elections just don't matter. Bush didn't need votes to invade Iraq, he just went ahead and did it. The vast vast majority of anything done by an elected official is due to his or her very own desire (modulo reality, of which you as a voter are not part of untill the next election). Democracy is just tyranny except there are multiple competing tyrants (not a novel feature) and you get an extremly small chance to depose the tyrant every n years.
"But Term Limits" oh you think 4 or 6 years in office aren't enough to form connections and make favors that can last you 20 outside the office ? "But Free Press" oh okay (1) lol, look at who owns the press (2) what good is a voice that can't affect things, you scream and rage and cry and then what ? someone comes along and convinces you they can solve this problem, For Real This Time^TM, and you vote them into office (if you manage a majority) and after an intial 100 days of theatrics, nothing.
But... Do not forget about positive aspects of personal freedoms, individual rights, etc.
Btw, what is a perfect system for you?
This is the "Helpless Voice" aspect, 'democracy' allowed you to scream at the top of your lungs about how it sucks, giving you the illusion that you're more free than you really are. Imagine if Putin made it legal to insult him on the streets, would that make it any less of a totalitarianism ?
>Btw, what is a perfect system for you?
I'm not sure there is a word for it, anarcho-primitivism is the closest thing, although I don't necessarily agree with them that technology is fundamentally centralized or coercive. Basically, I think that all the ills of society is due to the fundamental idea, the preversion really, of living with people you don't know. That is, to fix society, you have to destroy society, it's a fundamentally unfixable idea. You can't make people who don't feel kinship to each other play by any set of rules. Here's me arguing this from an older comment of mine:
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>>>I'm a techno-primitivist, I believe political units should be extremely small, extremely numerous, with an emphasis on blood ties as the ultimate guarantee of group cohesion and loyalty. I have a burning hatred for and deep distrust of any political unit with more than 1000 persons. There is no way to make a social organization of >1000 persons consistently fair, the rules are always arbitrary and ad hoc, a few assholes always play the meta-game and find ways around them, and somebody is always oppressed and bullied and consistently given the shorter end without a way to be heard.
Family is different, affinity for genetic similarity is deeply hardwired into your lowest level circuits, very few assholes can find their way around the rules evolution built. Every single social organization is a prisoner's dilemma come alive, why cooperate with that stranger you're never going to see again? The answers are always arbitrary and subject to abuse and evasion : Because God, Because Emperor, Because CEO, Because General. Family is the only social unit where the rules stem from your very being : Because Evolution, the very factory that built you, that encoded your love and respect for your own flesh and blood as deep inside as it encoded your liver and kidneys.
In another, and better, universe, we never built nations or states or parliaments or public school systems, every family is an autonomous unit under the leadership of its bread winner, and federations of families handle cross-cutting concerns in a way that leaves as much power to the families as possible.
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Here's another comment of mine from a different forum, arguing the same point in a slightly more colorful (and angry) tones :
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>>>Imagine You live in a cramped and inferior society among countless nameless millions like farm chattel. You are controlled by monstrous alien entities called States, composed of people like animal bodies are composed of cells, caring about the welfare of people exactly as much as animals care about the welfare of their cells : not at all, unless relevant to their survival.
You were not built for this perversity, for hundreds of thousands of years your ancestors lived among people whose very flesh and blood was molded out of the same language as them. Nobody needed to craft rules on how to live with each other; or rather, nobody needed to craft rigid and easily exploitable set-in-stone (or paper or computer memory) rules. You started with the willingness to live with each other, and a natural affection only life born out of itself can hold, and the rules trickled down and evolved as needed. You look upon ants and bees, they are marvellous in their numerousy and organization, but you're not like them, your place is to live among a hundred or a thousand of your kin, governing no one but your kin, and being governed by no one but them.
The society you live in is a poor imitation of ants and bees. Everytime you complain someone points to some numbers and explains how they have gone up, how it's good that they go up, how your complaints are misguided and irrational because the only thing that matter is numbers going up, and the societies you're nostalgic for are societies where those numbers have not gone up, and thus can't be worth living in.
Can you imagine that ? Some of us don't have to, because we're living it. If you're not, count yourself lucky that you adapted to the life of ants and bees, but don't dismiss or make fun of those who long for the long lost life of humans.
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It does not change the validity of democracy if democratic nations make mistakes.
And it does not legitimize a tyrannical government just because democracies have made mistakes.
Edit: I'll double down. The whole point of democracies is to hold our governments accountable for those mistakes, something that is (at least by design) much harder in non-democratic governments.
What hyperbole. There are plenty, myself included. Don't confuse criticism of the US with us not being an ally.
> the energy crisis we’re going through thanks to US
??? The finger is clearly pointed at Putin and Germany's naivity over the past 10 years for this mess we are in.
I'd be curious to read a European publication that even suggests this is due to the US (if you have a link).
I miss Trump so much, like he was a issue for US , but the rest of the world just could have a laugh and live in peace
It was Obama that started poking Putin saying that he was at the end of a medium power, and it is Biden that is giving all the weapons asked to Ukraine without even asking for a way to de-escalate and find a compromise, it is Biden that is letting Ukrainian lose territory and life just for weakening Russia for US interests
As a personal example, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was obvious back in 2014 (read accidental superpower). As is the eventual annexation of Taiwan. Both are not the kinds of actions I like to see in the world and support efforts to reduce the occurance of those actions. European nations are aiding Ukraine as well, this not a unilateral US action.
I also don't support prolonged invasion of Afghanistan by the US, just in case you're wondering.
Correct, in the USA, It it NONE of the world problem, like in EU we have done business with Russia for decades without issues, we got gas, companies got energy and everyone was happy, except US, of course Europeans are also supporting it (politicians) but they are doing it without going through people, they didn't campaign for it, and if everything goes well, they will see the effect of their loyalty to US interest at next elections
I just wanted to say that USA interest are likely to match the interest of EU, but it is not always, EU interests were more likely to keep making business with Russia in peace
Eyes in Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Poland - and the Baltic States.
A reminder that Russias invasion of Ukraine violates the 1994 Budapest Agreement.
When meanwhile NATO has been training in Ukraine on Russian borders for many years https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-military-success-years-...
This is a persistent rumour, but despite what people want to say even Gorbachev himself says no such promise was made.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-...
But this begs the question, why does the west have to abide by imaginary agreements but Russia is allowed to violate the Budapest agreement?.
> When meanwhile NATO has been training in Ukraine on Russian borders for many years https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-military-success-years-...
Western is hardly on the Russian border it’s probably the furthest from Russia you could get in Ukraine.
So, either those surveys are lies, or the US has somehow brainwashed EU's citizens, or there actually is broad European support for aiding Ukraine in its defense, sanctioning Russia including reducing Oil and Gas purchases, and welcoming Ukraine into the EU in time.
I don't know where you live, but it is entirely possible that there will be backlash in your country or district, while still maintaining the general support for what's going on across the broader EU.
So I think the only way to let Zelensky think about making compromise, is to shrink gradually the amount of weapons supplied, because this war can't go on forever on european soil, and we need to get an end to it. The issue is: US doesn't any any interest touched by keeping this war, so the EU and US interests are not matched, and that's why I wouldn't consider them allies right now.
While peace is not always possible, if we balance the amount of support, to compromises, then we can get there, and I think Biden is sucking at making compromises at the moment
You are pretty much saying that Ukrainian sovereignty doesn't matter and the Zelensky shouldn't try to defend his country but instead roll over, and let Russia, loot rape and kill whatever they want.
Russia must face a decisive defeat on the battlefield, good news is it looks like this may happen, Ukraine will retake Kherson soon, and they can even easily reach Crimea from there.
> So I think the only way to let Zelensky think about making compromise, is to shrink gradually the amount of weapons supplied, because this war can't go on forever on european soil, and we need to get an end to it. The issue is: US doesn't any any interest touched by keeping this war, so the EU and US interests are not matched, and that's why I wouldn't consider them allies right now.
The only way to stop this happening again, is to do the opposite, supply the heaviest weapons possible to Ukraine and push back Russia with such force that even blinking in Ukraines direction becomes unthinkable in the future.
> While peace is not always possible, if we balance the amount of support, to compromises, then we can get there, and I think Biden is sucking at making compromises at the moment
It's easy to say this when it's not your people, country or friends getting killed annex and genocided.
You mean an adversary from China rather than an adversary from the US?
There's a small, but not that significant advantage in having the company having ~questionable~ societal effects be from your own country, especially if you're not going to regulate them anyway.
There's something about the way you phrased this that just made me just realize there's a very real possibility that the internet could turn into television part two. If you think about the most popular platforms, they are mostly video and now the other very popular ones are trying to follow in kind. There's also all the streaming platforms that are not really thought of as the internet, but work basically the same. It really might be that the internet as we think of it--text based--might be a bit of a niche interest (not that this is necessarily a bad thing).
My friend, we're already there.
Does not seem at all comparable to being locked into what some bosses at a cable/satellite TV/TV channel company decide you have access to, at the time they say you can access it. With no ability to upload.
And if that’s how 99.9% of users are experiencing the internet, how is that not a TV?
Video is more engaging than text for most people.
Articles are so much better at giving information, it's crazy to me that people bother with video.
It's also much easier to skip through parts in a written document because you can see the context before and after easily on a written text. Whereas with video you have this kind of catch up every time you skip.
Text is also easier to search both for humans (skimming) and computers. "This meeting could have been an email" also applies to entertainment.
How so? There's only 24 hours in a day, and so many things to do in them. During those hours, one can pay attention to multiple topics but even then, the time limit means only so many details and thinking time can be acquired during them.
The discovery algo is still terrible. But the content is there.
Is KitchenAid losing to Tesla? Is BNSF losing to PepsiCo?
These statements are only valid if you think the two things should be comparable.
The backlash is because people want them to be separate, and to serve separate purposes.
The people at Facebook controlling Instagram are making this comparison, but to me (and probably many other people), this is more akin to KitchenAid building an electric car to compete with Tesla, while simultaneously dismantling their kitchenware department.
I don't understand why Facebook just cannot accept that different apps have different use cases for different people. They're already one of the biggest tech companies in the whole world. Why is that not enough? Is it greed?
What did you expect from Facebook?
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-hackers-took-trillions-...
- https://fortune.com/2021/04/21/suspected-chinese-hackers-tar...
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/china-technolo...
Also the "product" of science innovation is the actual innovation and being first to publish. An equivalent freeloader problem would not be someone copying the idea/papers after they are released. It would be spying inside the laboratory, copying the ideas and releasing competing papers before the actual researcher releases their own. If that was happening, I am sure you would object.
The open/free scientific communities are responsible for most tangible benefit - meanwhile, those reaping the biggest rewards give us... planned obsolescence
I understand the sentiment and even agree to an extent, but the reality is things are abused and wasted as well - to a shocking degree, in pursuit of 'mine'
But all tangible benefits arising from that involved a lot of people, a lot of work, and a lot of risk. Planned obsolescence, bad as it may be, is a non-issue in the bigger picture.
For the development/application part? Let people race to figure out the best way to deploy things before someone else does, the way the swiss and Germans and Chinese did in the free for all time. I've heard competition be called something that incentivises people to find edges that aren't easily copied, and trade secrets can still exist
I think this is only true to a certain extent. We have reached a point where a lot of new innovation and invention is only possible with a truly tremendous amount of financial investment. No amount of tinkering in your garage is going to bring about the next advancement in EUV lithography. You need an entity with a lot of capital and a strong incentive to bring many of these things about. That can come from either the private sector or the government, but it cannot realistically be pulled out of thin air.
How can trade secrets exist if we are “just sharing ideas openly with each other”?
China, on the other hand, can spend those funds elsewhere while also poaching the work of the American firm, which would put them at a great competitive advantage.
You get a lot of money funding weird ideas in VC firms, where the incentive structure (of profit) makes it possible to fund a tonne of ideas, where it is expected that most of the ideas will fail.
Once you have a process up and running, it's almost human instinct to try and improve it. If you start by copying the latest stuff, chances are you'll find a few new tweaks.
Improving thing is not a given and not in every culture. It is a trait of the western culture for sure, but not necessarily shared in the world.
TikTok is just making Silicon Valley mad because they finally met a bigger VC (the Chinese government) running their own playbook and they can't beat it.
You need the engineers too. There is no Bond-like blueprint to steal.
Peak by what measure?
If by profit, probably. From the perspective of a product I like and want to use? Facebook peaked long, long ago.
Too bad you edited your comment in this part, your previous remark was quite fun and accurate.
This may be the beginning of the end for what Silicon Valley calls "tech", but is just ads with social content. Peak Facebook was in Q2 2021.[1] Instagram is losing to TikTok.
(If you think the "metaverse" is going to be important in the social space, check out what's happening in China in that area. While the US has been distracted by the NFT clown car and Facebook's rather pathetic efforts, companies in China are actually building it.)
[1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/02/peak-facebook.html