The thread is about tiktok being banned in Albania. I thought you might be familiar with Australia’s threats to ban tiktok whilst ignoring the crimes other tech companies commit and making no effort to protect Australians from them.

Did you miss the comment I made about Instagram? That was specifically about the content of the site having a negative impact on users.

I commented on your post so yeah I think I managed to click on it. Did you bother to read mine and think of a coherent response before typing? Nah just ignore my efforts to put this in a wider context and dismiss me as a tankie. I’ll just dismiss you as racist since you only complain when it’s a Chinese company doing it.

I’m all in favour of robust privacy protections like GDPR. I don’t support yellow peril bullshit when a Chinese company successfully operates in the same space that US companies do.

Is it a bad thing when political leaders have a presence on social media? Would you prefer it if the leaders of the 2 biggest economies in the world were actively censored and suppressed by these platforms?

Seems like a weird complaint to make.

Everything TikTok is accused of is either just a true for other social media/ website or more so. Thanks to Edward Snowden we know for a fact that US tech companies forward your emails and data to the NSA. There is no evidence of Tiktok sharing any data with any government. Yet it’s tiktok that get’s threatened with bans rather than facebook and gmail.

Instagram is notorious for making girls feel bad about their appearance and pushing them to anorexia and self harm yet no one’s proposing to ban it.

Because the tail doesn’t wag the dog.

You may as well ask why Toyota sells right hand drive cars in Japan and why it sells left hand drive cars in USA?

Why do you think that is?

The truth, duh

Not at all. When google operated a search engine in China it looked nothing like the Google you can access in other countries.

Why would google or tiktok handicap themselves and operate a less profitable, less competitive version of their service when that isn’t required by local regulations?

Don’t forget this line;

The social media platform told the BBC it had found no evidence the person who allegedly stabbed the 14-year-old boy, or the victim himself, had TikTok accounts.

It’s a huge failing by government regulators. It appears China is the only country capable of policing tech companies adequately.

Except no one involved uses tiktok

We have the power to fine companies up to £18m or 10% of their qualifying worldwide revenue – whichever is greater – and in very serious cases we can apply for a court order to block a site in the UK.

Firstly I’d expect regulators to focus on the big fish rather than this minnow. Secondly losing 10% of revenue isn’t a huge deal whilst any fines larger than that would get the entire news media rallying behind you. Shutting down the site is premature to say the least.

That being said I am surprised that this legislation applies to everyone immediately. You’d think they’d start with a high threshold of say 1 million active monthly users and then reduce that each year as practices and technologies get established. It’s ridiculous to expect hobbyists and small scale operations to be able to meet this burden just as easily as multi-trillion pound corporations.

It’s not enough just to discuss it in the abstract, they need to interact with it in a controlled environment

I’d prefer for kids to learn to navigate social media whilst they have access to adult supervision and oversight. 16yos aren’t going to listen to their parents’ advice.

There are toilets that analyse your waste and send the results to your doctor. They ID you by scanning your anus since everyone’s anus is unique. Maybe one day the results can be sent to your kitchen and your fridge and airfryer can deny you access to unhealthy foods when your toilet tells them to.

That’s an immature argument. “If you don’t like guns don’t buy one.” “If you don’t like abortion don’t get one.” Maybe we could think a little deeper?

One of the reasons the internet is so centralised is due to network effects. I have a facebook account because everyone else has one and it’s difficult to maintain a social life and a family life if I exclude myself from that space. I can choose not to drive a car, too but again that would make life much harder for myself. Perhaps we could subject these businesses to some basic standards of accountability and oversight and put the public interest ahead of private profit once in a while.

Given that they can rewrite their T&C or sell to facebook at anytime avoiding practices you dislike isn’t practical.

I misspoke in my previous post. The tech companies conspired to act simultaneously when they banned Alex Jones to minimise the blow-back they’d suffer from his fans. Destroying his business/ career was a byproduct.

He/infowars broke their ToC so they acted accordingly.

How do we know that? Did they make their case in front of a neutral 3rd party? Did Jones have the oppourtunity to defend himself or appeal any decisions? No. If 20 gov’ts announced that Facebook broke their laws and its license will be suspended tomorrow Zuckerberg doesn’t just have to suck it up. He can go to court and appeal that decision. He’d even be allowed to continue operations whilst the case was pending as Uber, which is guilty of breaking numerous laws, did in London.

This bootlicking for the robber barons that dominate society is ridiculous. “It’s only oppression if it’s done by the gooburmint!” he said with Apple’s boot on his neck.

It’s interesting that this is happening to Info Wars after the tech companies conspired to destroy it and Alex Jones’ career by simultaneously banning it from all their problems at once. As I said at the time; it is very concerning that the tech companies could deny a business access to their platforms without proving their case in front of a neutral 3rd party, without offering their target a chance to defend themselves and without any oppourtunity to appeal their decision.

It was very difficult to say anything in defense of Alex Jones, even in the abstract, so they were able to set this precedent with ease.

I was thinking of Russia, which was the poorest and most backwards country in Europe when the communists came to power. Within 30 years they transformed it into a military and technological superpower that defeated the Nazis and launched the first human being into space.

Soviet Union, China, Vietnam

Communist governments took power in poor countries and had to endure ‘primitive accumulation’ before they could start building a socialist economy. At best they created workers’ states where employment and basic services were guaranteed to all.