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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32152 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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TikTok is a Chinese Superweapon

Basic argument of the article is simple:

  1. Social media addiction has clear psychological and societal downsides. It can shrink and monopolize our attention, make us more anxious and lead to damaging fads like stupid "challenges" that kids do.

  2. TikTok is very good at this due to its ability to adapt to the user and the short attention span videos require.

  3. China is aware of this and has demanded that Bytedance moderate TikTok moderate TikTok for China (so as to encourage people to wish to be things like engineers instead of influencers) and banning it for Chinese kids, while allowing it to run rampant in the West.

  4. This is sort of a practical proof of the degeneracy and internal contradictions of Western capitalism and a deliberate attack.

An interesting look at how the Chinese view the West through the eyes of a powerful Chinese policy-maker:

Wang writes:

“Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification… Commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems. These problems, in turn, can increase the pressure on the political and administrative system.”

Thus, by turning everything into a product, Western capitalism devours every aspect of American culture, including the traditions that bind it together as a nation, leading to atomization and polarization. The commodification also devours meaning and purpose, and to plug the expanding spiritual hole that this leaves, Americans turn to momentary pleasures—drugs, fast food, and amusements—driving the nation further into decadence and decay.

For Wang, then, the US’s unprecedented technological progress is leading it into a chasm. Every new microchip, TV, and automobile only distracts and sedates Americans further. As Wang writes in his book, “it is not the people who master the technology, but the technology that masters the people.” Though these words are 30 years old, they could easily have been talking about social media addiction.

Wang theorized that the conflict between the US’s economic system and its value system made it fundamentally unstable and destined for ever more commodification, nihilism, and decadence, until it finally collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. To prevent China’s own technological advancement leading it down the same perilous path, Wang proposed an extreme solution: neo-authoritarianism. In his 1988 essay, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture,” Wang wrote that the only way a nation can avoid the US’s problems is by instilling “core values”—a national consensus of beliefs and principles rooted in the traditions of the past and directed toward a clear goal in the future

The bolded is especially relevant to the final solution to what the author (speculatively) considers an attack by a civilizational competitor:

That leaves only one solution: the democratic one. In a democracy responsibility is also democratized, so parents must look out for their own kids. There’s a market for this, too: various brands of parental controls can be set on devices to limit kids’ access (though many of these, including TikTok’s own controls, can be easily bypassed.)

The article first concedes that China is right that the market will drive us to the bottom of short-attention-span content and degeneracy, but then its solution is the platitude of "parental responsibility" in the face of an unprecedented technological challenge.

We've never dealt with this problem before. The idea that individual parents are going to figure this out when they're in competition with some of the most sophisticated companies in the world who've totally saturated the web with their influence seems patently absurd to me.

Especially in a system where the state is usurping more and more responsibility for child welfare. But, when it comes time to regulate tech companies, the state is powerless?

This sort of learned helplessness is common in the West, even when China is providing a counter-example of what can be done (i.e. regulation, which the author writes off because people will just make a new site*). But the argument is: in an ideologically fractured world the state has no right to impose its preferences in terms of the good life on citizens who may disagree. Now, it may be that the West is too far down the anomie and moral anarchy road to change course. But then the question is whether this is palatable to anyone else who is shopping for a civilizational model?

Especially since there's a strong argument that it is precisely this sort of liberal-influenced learned helplessness that leads to the very fracture of core values that could help mitigate such crises. I would bet that a 1950s America would have more social cohesion to push back against some of these things, but that's due to a shared culture that has been destroyed by...well, take your pick: neoliberalism, secularization, individualism, mass immigration, therapy and the breakdown of homogeneity, racial animus.

So it may be true that liberals - once their culture has become sufficiently fractured - cannot solve this problem (due to the ideology's resistance to compelling certain choices). But that may be an argument to never become liberal in the first place.

* If only someone had applied this insight to the drug war.

China is the new red scare, replacing the USSR. Every generation has one it seems. Before that it was ever-present threat of Islamic terrorism, which unlike the threat of China was not entirely unfounded. Remember all that hype about Huawei spying electronics a couple years ago, which vanished from the headlines after Covid came. Or about Trump wanting to ban TikTok, which predictably went nowhere . Whenever politicians want to boost sagging approval numbers or project decisiveness , pointing fingers at China is a surefire bet.

Do you think it would have been a good idea to let the USSR own enough major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees? Because that seems to be more or less the position that China is in right now with Tiktok, whether or not we can prove that they are abusing their control.

As discussed down-thread, tiktok is not much different from what other companies, social networks do. I have a tiktok account admittedly and have not seen anything that can even remotely be considered CCP propaganda (or maybe that means it's working...hmm).

So you'd be okay with the USSR owning major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees, as long as their content so far seemed superficially similar to American-owned broadcasting networks?

I mean... do you not see the strategic threat? Or do you just trust that China won't make use of it?

If it could be demonstrated TikTok poses a threat to national security, not just suspicions but actual evidence of harvesting intelligence info, then I could see the justification for censoring it. But merely for being addicting, no. All social networks gather user information, which is sent to a central server. This is necessary for a social network to function, so I don't see how this can be avoided. Banning a site which is as popular as TikTok introduces externalities , especially for a country as large as the US. People are going to be wondering what happened to it, such censorship may discourage entrepreneurship and VC activity. It sets a precedent that I don't think anyone wants to embark on.

I didn't say anything about harvesting intelligence info. The threat is in controlling the programming of the media that an entire generation sees. It's a vector through which they can influence America.

again, there is no evidence that TikTok as a vector is worse than competing sites. it's mostly people dancing and doing stuff like that.

I didn't say anything about harvesting intelligence info

You said "do you not see the strategic threat?" That can mean many things. I cannot read your mind. working on that.

You said "do you not see the strategic threat?" That can mean many things. I cannot read your mind. working on that.

I ask only that you read my comments. Specifically here's what I included in my first comment (emphasis added): "Do you think it would have been a good idea to let the USSR own enough major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees?" I don't know how you go from "control the media that an entire generation sees" to "they're trying to steal our personal data." The connection just doesn't make sense to me.

again, there is no evidence that TikTok as a vector is worse than competing sites.

So is your answer yes, it would be fine for the US to have allowed the USSR to own enough major US broadcasting networks in the 1980s that they could control the media that an entire generation sees, as long as their content so far seemed superficially similar to American-owned broadcasting networks? You allow the geopolitical adversary to insinuate themselves into your nation's information infrastructure until and unless you actually catch them using it to run an info op?

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