Probably 2/3rds of the younger half, at best.
Only saying this because it's how people in power legitimize their own power over everyone else. External boogie men help as well. Of course foreign influence is a real factor that works against people in their own country. The USA has done many foreign influence operations that has been detrimental to those people. I'm not surprised that foreign governments would do the same over here.
All in all, the general population often suffer downstream from these games of power.
However, i have some ability to influence my government in how it influences social media platforms and which messages it spreads. I might have much much less, if any, ability to influence foreign governments in how they influence social media platforms and what messages they spread. And most non-Americans realize how helpless they have been to influence American laws and decisions, and maybe it's just a time when Americans also realize this helplessness in the face of foreign corporations.
Prior to that, most, if not all, social media platforms were American run, which allowed Congress to have more influence on how they were run and more power to investigate and learn how they were run, compared to one owned by a foreign country, especially one we haven't considered to be a close ally.
It brings to mind declassified documents that revealed how the KGB basically pissed money away trying to destabilize the US economy by engaging in large irrational trades. All they really did was make money for those who had the fortune to be on the opposite side of the trades.
This very much would be a prime realization of the "social debt" the author is talking about, the mass polarization and instability caused by the overreliance on such networks, and the divestment can be argued to be an direct attempt to restablize things onto a common ground. In many ways it's already quite a liberal approach by divestment rather than a straight ban.
For me personally, I've unfortunately turned to the opinion that the "accuracy" of what consumes ultimately is going to be defined by the individual, not the source. I'm reminded of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, in that yes, of course these networks can influence one's views, but it's not deterministic. If one seeks the truth, one can easily just read from other sources freely availiable on the internet.
The problem here is that most people, including many in this thread and in HN I'd argue and perhaps myself, are not interested in the truth. The problem isn't that people are using TikTok or Instagram, the problem is that they are ONLY using TikTok or Instagram. Nobody reads actual articles instead of headlines. And that's because for most people, including many in this thread and HN and myself, we're here just to consume for entertainment, or to confirm our own priors. Why would we question our own beliefs? It's hard work, and there no real consequences if we get it wrong. We can retreat into our social circles and be told it's okay for it. Face it, the majority of people ARE easily manipulable, most in this thread included. People are only going to seek the truth if their job depends on it, and that is only going to include a narrow slice of domain knowledge. Outside of that, everything really is just noise.
I was involved with this effort. Gaza was immaterial in the Senate and worth maybe a handful of votes in the House (where they weren’t needed, but helped).
The binding energy came from Bytedance pushing a political message to its users, including children [1], and the Chinese embassy lobbying against the bill [2]. (Keep in mind this has been a multi-year effort of iteration and refinement [3].)
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/krishnamoorthi-gallagher-tiktok...
[2] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2024...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-timeline-ban-biden-india-d...
It will not, in any way, because it is only a pretense. The original push to ban Tiktok was for the government to get access to Tiktok moderation. After they got it, the push petered out to a few local loudmouthed Republicans who had run with a hardcore anti-China stance. Then, after October 7th, when Tiktok accurately reflected the views of the younger half of the American public on Palestine, the push was renewed by the usual arms dealers and allies, which got it through.
Nobody cares about Tiktok's algorithm. They care that people are anti-Israeli on Tiktok. When all of those people move to another app, they'll suddenly be concerned about that other app, or young people's access to social networks in general. Tell them girls are killing themselves over social networks, they don't care, tell them that arms dealers incomes are threatened by girls talking on social networks, our government gets very concerned.