Thread by @wildkait

Should the USA BAN Tiktok (as India has already done)?

Leaving aside the political motivations re the administration, there’s probably a real interesting discussion here (continued in next tweet)

I’ve always maintained that if Instagram wanted to they could create earths biggest celebrity by simply “boosting” the explore/algorithm ranking of a particular account so that it always shows up at the top of everyone’s feed/dominates the explore/discovery feature.

Influencers as a group are remarkably attuned to trends and figure out pretty quickly when something is trending or doing well. There’s also immense peer pressure/group think in shaping our values depending on what the deafening voice of the “masses” are saying/engaging with

This is probably ethnocentric to some extent, but facebook is beholden to US laws (which are fairly strict as far as data usage/tracking/monitoring is concerned).

The idea that "facebook steals your data" is a bit misunderstood. Facebook, and google use general

demographic type data. Like a Machine learning algorithm goes "oh you like X? People who like X tend to like Y, let me show you ads for Y"

It's not like in the Jason Bourne movies where they have tons of people combing over pictures of you, known connections and proclivities

Facebook and google "using your data" typically means they have retargeting cookies that track what sites you visit, and use really huge troves of data to draw a remarkably accurate picture of what you might be interested in. Or what content you like.

How accurate are these prediction models?

TikTok is a Chinese company (despite being "registered in the cayman islands). And it's not subject to the restrictions imposed on say facebook or google.

It would be nearly impossible to imagine Congress calling a bytedance (tiktok parent co) executive to DC.

Additionally, tiktok registers your password, all your information they can get ahold of. How many people use the same login details for tiktok across their other socials?

Additionally, there are some geopolitical risks.

If tiktok wanted to nefariously shape opinion around

a particularly hot issue, they could increase the "trending coefficient" and make an issue trend. Imagine wanting to sway an election or public policy by making tiktok videos that supported your position trend (and burying the opposition position at the bottom of every feed).

If you were subtle enough, influencers might not catch on, but naturally reacting to incentives they would eventually soften their perspective or conform it to the content that is trending. Eventually you'll created an echo chamber around a policy or candidate.

The distribution of a message, or constantly being bombarded by the same world view is the closest thing to "mind control."

I think humans as whole are very much inclined to change our minds when it seems as if "everyone else is on the same side wrt to an issue."

"when all the cool people are saying the same thing"

Or depriving of oxygen a message the CCP doesn't want heard (*cough cough Covid or hong kong protests)

They say knowledge is power, but that is an antiquated idea.

We live in the information age, and knowledge and information is abundant if not infinite. When the cup of knowledge overfloweth, then it becomes difficult to separate signal from noise.

When access to information is profuse, then curation = power.

This is a huge reach. Since we don't know that tiktok would or even plan to do anything like that. Just that they could...

Is the potential for something bad happening enough justification to swing an axe?