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I just find it funny that voices are now being raised about "protecting our culture" solely against a Chinese tech firm. If you take this argument to its logical conclusion, you'd start censoring films, banning pornography etc. But of course this moral crusade is conveniently deployed against a single firm and the argument that TikTok is somehow uniquely bad compared to other social vices is unpersuasive to the point of being laughable. Either be consistent with the principle or admit the hypocrisy.
Agree. Facebook + Instagram are equally bad in this regard as far of teenage anxiety and other social ills..
Hell, Xanga and Myspace were destroying friendships and lives back when I was in high school in the early oughts.
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It is fundamentally incorrect reasoning to conclude that a person ought not criticize a bad thing because lesser bad things in the same category occurred before. “All these people caring about the Iroquois Theatre fire didn’t care when houses burnt the year before!” But an especially bad event can prove to us the true risk of a thing. In the case of Tik Tok it is worse for obvious reasons: the format is worse than its predecessors, its popularity is greater than its predecessors, and it can plausibly be weaponized by a geopolitical enemy whose ascent has only recently started to be dealt with. It is clearly worse for a vice to be weaponized by an adversary you are in competition with than not. Because geopolitical dominance is zero-sun.
That’s the logical reason, and here’s the pragmatic: the China element of the story reminds the Public that our everyday habits have maximal consequences, including the risk of geopolitical ruin and worsening quality of life. It reminds them that dominance whether socially or geopolitically is zero-sum. At the same time, it shows the Public that there are alternatives with clearly better results in the young (China’s policies). Lastly, human males have a built-in instinct to fight against an enemy intentionally harming us.
We already do this for the young, let’s hope we expand it.
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Bingo.
IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects it should not matter whether the app is Chinese, European, or simply homegrown American. The platform is designed for maximum addiction, this isn't something that is specific to Chinese design.
If it were an American app the Chinese would restrict it because of these effects anyway.
For my part, I think the problems about it being a Chinese app are more along the lines of it opening important institutions up to hacking, social engineering, and other more direct attacks on American interests by China.
One could model it as a disease which infects massive amounts of the population and lies dormant except under certain conditions which can target 'vulnerable' individuals. The mass infection is the vector which enables it to ensure it penetrates the valuable targets, but focusing on the symptoms/methods of spread is kind of missing that point.
Who said it was? Who said it ever was?
Debates about TikTok have always involved fear of China's role AFAIK.
That's what the OP is saying the "Chinese Superweapon" is.
Killing people's attention spans and otherwise causes mental degradation.
Rather than, say, giving China access to persons who have influential positions or access to sensitive information.
No, it's a Chinese superweapon because it's doing that selectively to the West while trying to push the exact opposite stuff to its own public. That's why it's a weapon and not just a creator of externalities.
MacDonald's may or may not be more damaging but it's not a weapon in the sense of being a tool to harm foreign consumers specifically while making US consumers eat healthy food.
Except even the article points out that this is likely why TikTok is/will be banned in a way that the other sites (including hypothetical clones) that also harm us won't be because of the China factor.
Personally, when I first started hearing concerns about TikTok, it was almost always about China's possibly-not-passive role and its spying on you. The attention span stuff is relatively recent.
If China were doing this to their own population as well would it not be considered a super weapon against the US?
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Would the situation be different in the slightest if it were an American company?
Would China permit said app to operate in their country? Would the content it presents in the West be any different?
Because Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, at least, all pretty much mimic Tiktok in multiple ways.
I'm failing to see why the alleged damage being done is specific to the "Chinese Superweapon."
@MelodicBerries is making the broader point that if we are worried about the impact Tiktok is having our our psyches, then banning TikTok solves nothing. We'd have to ban most internet porn, heavily regulate social media, and try to restrict various other superstimuli that the modern world presents. Tiktok isn't the root cause here.
If the complaint is that China is somehow causing massive psychic damage to the West, then one notices that we're also causing a lot of the damage TO OURSELVES.
If the American company is showing the same general material to all parties (at least where it's allowed) then yes, obviously. It would not be asymmetrical where one group of people are apparently being made marginally worse as a matter of government policy in a way that demonstrates that they know this harm is being done and they can apparently easily avoid doing said harm (i.e. they don't do it to their own people)
It would also mean that the company is - like TikTok is in China - more likely to be subject to the pressure of the American government, which gives Americans some leverage (well...insofar as you think Americans determine government policy).
This doesn't seem to challenge the original point. The bone of contention that kicked off this thread was:
There's no reason to grant this; IME the concern about TikTok has never, ever been solely about psychological effects so the argument falls flat.
This also presumes that I'm not worried about things like porn. I'm not sure why: my criticism of liberal learned helplessness applies even more to US-produced porn and social media sites (since I've already argued that the US has more agency there)
So I'm unmoved that US media is bad too (I simply bite the bullet on that)
So it seems like we're agreeing that Tiktok poses more danger than just being psychologically poisonous.
I'm just not sure that banning Tiktok is an 'antidote,' especially with the difficulty inherent in enforcing a ban/preventing some CCP-controlled replacements from arising.
To be clear, my position is basically that it's way easier to justify a ban on Tiktok if it is based on the concept of removing an attack surface that is controlled by a (potentially) hostile party.
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It's about who controls it. American elites know the shenanigans they've been pulling with their social media, and are afraid a foreign power can do the same to their citizens.
It's a completely valid fear, to it cannot be stated so bluntly.
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