The End of the Virtual Land of the Free
- Thread starter Humphrey Bogart
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China's version of Tik Tok is actually very educational. Math, science, etc. Minors are limited to how much time they use and what hours during the day. North Americas version is unlimited and makes games out of licking toilet seats and firing fireworks on buses. It is also capable of gathering information from your phone and sending it to Red China. If you like the app go to YouTube and watch the Congressional Hearings on it. You might change your mind.
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I think the same applies for the internet at large; on one hand, there is a wealth of knowledge with published research, open data, how to, archives of out of copyright books, etc, then a huge swath of stupid challenges, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and then exabytes of porn.
One of my favourites for random internet browsing is Yours for the making - Instructables where people put up instructions, in varying levels of quality, to build different things, in varying levels of quality/success. It's a bit like an internet version of a weird tinkerer's shed.
Another one I found really useful for academic work was ResearchGate | Find and share research; a lot of the papers are published with no restrictions, but does make it a lot easier to find journal articles, and with the author's contact info you can generally ask them for a copy with reasonable success. It's pretty incredible what you can find there though, especially now when most universities will publish thesis results, and a lot of researchers will also self publish things on it. Because it's very academically focused the papers generally have the results included so you can look at the data yourself if you want to see where they got their conclusions from.
Haggis
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The internet has saved me countless hours and money on car and home repairs. I learned how to ride a motorcycle on YouTube, but still took all the rider safety courses I could.
It's like shopping at Dollar General. There's some good stuff in there, but the rest is garage sale quality junk.
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Also appliance and small engine repair; I've brought my washing machine, drier and lawnmower back to life a few times with youtube tutorials and a few part lists.
There is a ton of really good content for sure, and the Dollar General example is a great analogy. Even with a lot of good stuff, it just seems like all junk because of the volume of garbage.
RangerRay
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Someone described TikTok as a data mining app used by the Chinese government to gather information on people, which also doubles as a video sharing app for teens.
There’s a reason governments are telling their employees to delete it off of their government issue phones. I could have advised they did that years ago.
There’s a reason governments are telling their employees to delete it off of their government issue phones. I could have advised they did that years ago.
Jarnhamar
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In China, kids under 14 can only access child-safe content. Only access TikTok for 40 minutes a day and not between 10 pm and 6 am.
If you want your next generation to outsmart ones from other countries getting other country's kids (and parents) addicted to watching hours upon hours of stupid videos is a good way to do it.
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The argument against Tik Tok in my view is not just what it is clearly already doing in terms of data collection, but what it can be made to do. Corporations in China can be compelled by the Chinese government to hand over data or even modify their products to meet specific State aims. With 1 Billion active monthly users and 4.8 Billion total users [Ref] Tik Tok can become a very useful tool for a wide array of secondary purposes.
Here's a recent example (from Thursday) of potentially this kind of activity:
blog.pradeo.com
Now don't get me wrong, more or less the same caveats apply to Western social media platforms. We all have voluntary surveillance platforms in our pockets, we might get to influence where some of that data goes.
Here's a recent example (from Thursday) of potentially this kind of activity:
Two spyware tied with China found hiding on the Google Play Store
This week, our engine detected two spyware hiding on the Google Play Store and affecting up to 1.5 million users.
blog.pradeo.com
Now don't get me wrong, more or less the same caveats apply to Western social media platforms. We all have voluntary surveillance platforms in our pockets, we might get to influence where some of that data goes.
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That's not really an argument AGAINST tiktok, that's really just an argument FOR government control of freedom of access to information by individuals. Basically government deciding for parent what their kids can and can't do.
I'm genuinely surprised to see you are "pro" regarding a CCP policy.
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Blocking it would be a safety measure. Same reason letting kids play with dynamite is illegal. One could also make a case for espionage, or do you think it's OK for Red China to mine your electronics without permission? Again, I suggest you watch the Congressional hearings pertaining to Tik Tok.
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At the risk of putting words into his mouth: he isn’t advocating for the CCP.
He is pointing out how the software has been weaponized against western countries.
Halifax Tar
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Oooo you were waiting in the grass for that one lol. You'ol sniper you.
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You're right. He basically stated it matter of factly and it was unfair to assume that was his position. I should have committed the last line. @Jarnhamar I apologize.
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Target of opportunity. I was actually going to finally say what I felt the three vices of tik tok were and my stance on it, but Jarn's post just sparked something in me.
Internal Thoughts
"There's a singer in here about Chinese kids already being academically smarter than our kids just by virtue of being 'the Asian kids'...
But that would be racist so I won't make such zinger..."
Jarnhamar
Army.ca Myth
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All good! Intentions aside I think China quickly recognized the dangers of kids being addicted to stuff like it. I'm not pro-government control by any means but I think they're on to something with limiting kids access. I know enough parents here who lost that battle.
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Look at it this way. It's an act of subversion, perpetrated by a hostile nation.
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I'd argue that the reason why Chinese kids (and Asian kids in general) can be academically smarter is due to the way they are educated.
However, that type of education is generally really good at short-term retainment of material, like preparing for university entrance exams. Not so much anything else. A good comparison would be taking Asian kids born/raised in other countries (with different education systems) and seeing how they compare with other kids. I suspect it's more "nurture" vs "nature".
Also, no one hears about the dumb ones. It is statistically impossible for every kid to be smart.
But I digress.
Colin Parkinson
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I am already seeing the young Caucasian kids working for Asian managers and know enough Asians who just shake their heads at our young people. It's not just educational content, but the Asian kids get discipline back home where they are required to do x hours of study and work hard. A lot of the teenagers I meet can be divided into two groups, those that get some form of stable and disciplined home life and those that don't. The ones that don't are often the ones with the issues, because they never meet a boundary they can't cross and often floundering and very aggressive to anyone that does put boundaries. Now this is a bit of a generalisation but generally holds true in about 80% of the kids I am seeing.
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