tiktok (and all social media) is a cancer

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > tiktok (and all social media) is a cancer

Throb Robinson: Feb 8, 2010; He would enjoy administering the single antidote to Leia. He would enjoy it very much indeed..

Mirello posted:

wasn't sure if this fit in other threads so made this one.

just read this article and it made me so angry! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-12-12/-teentok-influencers-test-tiktok-s-rules-straining-moderators?srnd=premium

to sum it up, some girl has been exploited for years by her family, posting stuff that's just on the edge of cp. I literally felt nauseous reading this article. I know that there's this "think of the children" argument against this, and kids have always been hosed up, but man, I can't think of another historical time when children have been so sexualized by so much of mass culture. this is just one example, there's countless more. as a teacher, I know what kids are into / watching these days. if you're an average adult, you have no idea how much tiktok has taken over the lives and minds of children in america, and all over the world. it literally defines their lives, much more than tv shows, movies, or video games. every joke, every meme, everything they say is all stuff that was drilled into their brains for every waking moment that they can via tiktok.

I think in a just world/society, people under the age of 18 should not be allowed to have accounts or watch social media. it's only a negative. there are no positives. I mean, ideally it would never have been developed, but that cat's out of the bag.

I used to work in social media content moderation circa 2015 for Instagram. It made me and wife commit to making the kid buy their own device when they are 16-18. I can't knowingly hook my kid up to a device that's going to make them into one of these hyper addicted kids who have no concept of reality.

# ? Dec 13, 2022 15:21

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# ? May 2, 2024 19:54

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

Douyin Releases Data Report on Protection of Minors

quote:

On Monday, ByteDance�s short video app Douyin released a data report on the company�s measures to protect minors. The report updates the company�s progress in the promotion of a youth mode, content construction, platform governance and other aspects required with the implementation of the updated Law on the Protection of Minors on June 1, 2021.

According to the report, since September last year, Douyin has adopted the toughest youth mode ever on its platform, with all authenticated users under the age of 14 entering youth mode and unable to exit on their own. For users between the ages of 14 and 18, Douyin provides stricter security protection in content recommendation, social networking and search, such as prohibiting the display of personal information other than avatars and nicknames to strangers. In Teen Mode, users can only use Douyin for 40 minutes per day by default, and cannot use it from 22:00 pm to 6:00 am the next day.

To address the issue of spending by suspected minors, Douyin has established a mechanism with which users can later verify and attain a refund within 24 hours. So far the company boasts a high completion rate at about 97% of applications being completed within one day.

Short video platforms serve as a bridge not only for teenagers to access information but also to explore the world. Up until now, the youth mode has covered a number of content categories including language learning, Chinese poetry, safety education, talent sports, traditional culture, and picture book stories, among others, with an average of 9,146 new quality videos added every day.

# ? Dec 13, 2022 16:52

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

webcams for christ posted:

Douyin Releases Data Report on Protection of Minors

hmm. i wonder if america could do a law like that too

# ? Dec 13, 2022 16:53

Scrub-Niggurath: Nov 27, 2007

op is correct that social media destroys peoples brains and souls but serious lmao @ �I can't think of another historical time when children have been so sexualized by so much of mass culture� like bruh

# ? Dec 13, 2022 17:23

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

StashAugustine posted:

Tiktok is a Chinese plot to destroy America so its cool. Agreed on all other social media tho

Tiktok is literally an accomplishment of communism and a weapon of class warfare.

# ? Dec 13, 2022 18:21

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Throb Robinson posted:

I used to work in social media content moderation circa 2015 for Instagram. It made me and wife commit to making the kid buy their own device when they are 16-18. I can't knowingly hook my kid up to a device that's going to make them into one of these hyper addicted kids who have no concept of reality.

This will be considered child abuse in a few years because your kids can�t get on google classroom.

# ? Dec 13, 2022 18:22

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

Mirello posted:

this might be extremely stupid/hypocritical, but I think that anonymity and lack of algorithms make forums ok in a way that modern social media isn't.

also, I think the internet has always hosed up your brain, god knows it has to me, but it's much worse now than before and it's something to watch out for.

a lot of legacy forum features accidentally counteract the parts of social media apps that were specifically designed to be psychologically addictive

for example, social media apps have engagement algorithms to show you curated content, they have notifications to give you little hits of dopamine, they have endless scroll to keep your eyeballs loading more ads for longer even if you run out of content, because it'll just pull algorithm-recommended content to keep the feed going forever. Our forums have no engagement algorithms, notifications that are barely worth the name (I think the only one is you can tell it to give you a little popup if you get a PM) and natural stopping points at the end of a page or a thread, instead of constant loading content.

the internet fucks with your brain but social media is way worse and intentionally designed to be more addictive than our dead gay forums

# ? Dec 13, 2022 18:33

Honky Mao: Dec 26, 2012

drat maybe there shouldn't be a profit incentive to coming up with more and more subtle and persuasive ways to keep children (and adults) as engaged with social media as possible. On the other hand it's rewarding to participate in the advertising and data collection economy because I know I'm helping to keep American industry strong. Grey area really innit

# ? Dec 13, 2022 19:27

copy: Jul 26, 2007

lol

# ? Dec 13, 2022 22:55

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

StashAugustine posted:

Tiktok is a Chinese plot to destroy America so its cool. Agreed on all other social media tho

Socialist media!!!

# ? Dec 14, 2022 00:52

goochtit: Nov 2, 2021

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1602716416351916032

# ? Dec 14, 2022 01:03

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

vyelkin posted:

a lot of legacy forum features accidentally counteract the parts of social media apps that were specifically designed to be psychologically addictive

for example, social media apps have engagement algorithms to show you curated content, they have notifications to give you little hits of dopamine, they have endless scroll to keep your eyeballs loading more ads for longer even if you run out of content, because it'll just pull algorithm-recommended content to keep the feed going forever. Our forums have no engagement algorithms, notifications that are barely worth the name (I think the only one is you can tell it to give you a little popup if you get a PM) and natural stopping points at the end of a page or a thread, instead of constant loading content.

the internet fucks with your brain but social media is way worse and intentionally designed to be more addictive than our dead gay forums

maybe we should add infinite scroll and notifications to something awful? is that what youre saying?

# ? Dec 14, 2022 02:56

triple sulk: Sep 17, 2014

goochtit posted:

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1602716416351916032

looks like tim apple is going to have to make another visit to the white house

# ? Dec 14, 2022 02:58

Noob Saibot: Jan 29, 2020; by Fluffdaddy

I like how Zuckerberg and the stock market thinks if TikTok is banned all the young people are going to come running back to facebook

# ? Dec 14, 2022 09:02

Cuttlefush: Jan 15, 2014; Gleichheit soll gedeihen

well i used to be kind of suspicious of it all but after reading these posts i just think it's a moral panic

# ? Dec 14, 2022 11:09

MLSM: Apr 3, 2021; by Azathoth

vyelkin posted:

a lot of legacy forum features accidentally counteract the parts of social media apps that were specifically designed to be psychologically addictive

for example, social media apps have engagement algorithms to show you curated content, they have notifications to give you little hits of dopamine, they have endless scroll to keep your eyeballs loading more ads for longer even if you run out of content, because it'll just pull algorithm-recommended content to keep the feed going forever. Our forums have no engagement algorithms, notifications that are barely worth the name (I think the only one is you can tell it to give you a little popup if you get a PM) and natural stopping points at the end of a page or a thread, instead of constant loading content.

the internet fucks with your brain but social media is way worse and intentionally designed to be more addictive than our dead gay forums

god can you imagine how worse it�s going to be by the 2030s?

# ? Dec 14, 2022 11:29

TehSaurus: Jun 12, 2006

I agree that there�s a strong element of moral panic/kids these days going on here.

However, algorithms are both novel and exploitative. We badly need a regulatory framework for governing ethics in machine learning but lmao like that will ever happen. I do have a fair bit of expertise in the field so for once I�m not just talking completely out of my rear end. It�s is just so much easier to make a trash algorithm that more or less does what you want but has hilarious side effects. My favorite example is a talk given by one of my peers about how training an image classifier to tell the difference between dogs and wolves actually just detects snow because it turns out wolves are pictured with snow all the time. If you delete the animal from the picture and just keep the landscape it is still something like 98% accurate. This isn�t something you would ever realize in the normal development process. And if by some miracle you did, the solution is expensive, difficult, and results in a �worse� product so good luck getting your manager to approve fixing it without regulatory/legal putting the fear of god into them.

Double lmao at that tiktok bill. Seems like a great way to bring vpns to mainstream phone users at least so maybe there�s an upside.

# ? Dec 14, 2022 13:24

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

Are you a computer toucher? If so you probably don't have any expertise in the field of how interacting with an algorithm affects people and while you seem like you are better than average in this regard as compared to your peer group, stem lords are notoriously bad at that sort of stuff so I'm really damning you with some faint praise.

# ? Dec 15, 2022 07:54

a strange fowl: Oct 27, 2022

you can counteract a lot of the damage done by the computing age by teaching your kids to grow plants. they learn empathy, patience, fine motor skills that don't involve video games, and practical science and nutrition. and it just brings them into a realm of stuff that cannot be digitally replicated and reminds them the physical world is still there.

# ? Dec 15, 2022 08:40

TeenageArchipelago: Jul 23, 2013

a strange fowl posted:

you can counteract a lot of the damage done by the computing age by teaching your kids to grow plants. they learn empathy, patience, fine motor skills that don't involve video games, and practical science and nutrition. and it just brings them into a realm of stuff that cannot be digitally replicated and reminds them the physical world is still there.

Kids know what Stardew Valley is it's not that niche

# ? Dec 15, 2022 09:03

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

a strange fowl posted:

you can counteract a lot of the damage done by the computing age by teaching your kids to grow plants. they learn empathy, patience, fine motor skills that don't involve video games, and practical science and nutrition. and it just brings them into a realm of stuff that cannot be digitally replicated and reminds them the physical world is still there.

Jokes on you pal, I use computers to grow plants. Love me some probe thermostats etc.

# ? Dec 15, 2022 09:09

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

FreeRangeHexagon posted:

me, a man of culture: "The internet peaked with YTMND, but kids today don't care to learn our history, so they don't know that"

Imagine saying out loud "You're the Man Now Dawg" as a proper nouns to a tween. Explaining how it was a primitive version of tik tok that only showed one video at a time,, only looping. We clicked so you could scroll.

# ? Dec 15, 2022 15:21

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

Cuttlefush posted:

well i used to be kind of suspicious of it all but after reading these posts i just think it's a moral panic

Tik Tok is the dungeons and dragons of this era. It is a framework where the youth can speak to each other in a language we don't understand. It must be destroyed.

# ? Dec 15, 2022 15:24

vyelkin: Jan 2, 2011

KirbyKhan posted:

Imagine saying out loud "You're the Man Now Dawg" as a proper nouns to a tween. Explaining how it was a primitive version of tik tok that only showed one video at a time,, only looping. We clicked so you could scroll.

Try explaining that much of the time it wasn't even a video, it was a still image with a repeating soundtrack

# ? Dec 15, 2022 15:29

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

Taking my sledgehammer to the John Wick stash buried under concrete in my basement. Inside are a collection of walkmans, early gen Ipods, and wired headphones. I take out the computer speakers I stole from the highschool lab. Instead of being stacked with assassin coins, it's filled with CDr disks and printed screenshots of my torrent seed ratios. Everything I need to explain the authentic audio experience of my youth.

# ? Dec 15, 2022 15:56

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

rip what.cd

# ? Dec 15, 2022 17:05

TehSaurus: Jun 12, 2006

Weka posted:

Are you a computer toucher? If so you probably don't have any expertise in the field of how interacting with an algorithm affects people and while you seem like you are better than average in this regard as compared to your peer group, stem lords are notoriously bad at that sort of stuff so I'm really damning you with some faint praise.

I am a computer toucher, definitely. And you are right that I don�t have any direct experience with how algorithms affect human development. Mercifully my work is like eight degrees removed from any sort of social media so I can just shout �algorithms bad!!!� at the top of my lungs without having to actually fix anything.

My latest gimmick is hassling stemlord candidates about psychological safety and bias in machine learning. Why yes I am the technical lead for the team, now what can you tell me about the role of psychological safety in an innovative team? What sort of problems should we not try to solve with machine learning? It�s fun to watch the lovely brains break in real time as they ramble about how math can�t be biased. Bonus is you can almost see the relief on the faces of non-default people when they see that I actually give a gently caress.

I�m under no illusion that I�m actually good. I�m still a hilariously overpaid white man. But I�m at least trying to make things less bad I guess.

Sorry for rambling. This probably reads as though I�m fishing for validation, but my real point is that there�s no ethical algorithms under capitalism.

# ? Dec 15, 2022 17:07

Honky Mao: Dec 26, 2012

TehSaurus posted:

I’m still a hilariously overpaid white man.

Congratulations

# ? Dec 15, 2022 17:32

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

SorePotato posted:

Congratulations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyFQVZ2h0V8

# ? Dec 15, 2022 21:46

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

TehSaurus posted:

My latest gimmick is hassling stemlord candidates about psychological safety and bias in machine learning.

Doing the lords work. Have you seen that bit about the racist medical scan AI?

# ? Dec 15, 2022 22:58

Colonel Cancer: Sep 26, 2015; Tune into the fireplace channel, you absolute buffoon

Television rots your brain!

# ? Dec 15, 2022 23:32

mazzi Chart Czar: Sep 24, 2005

Colonel Cancer posted:

Television rots your brain!

Television turns everybody into a nazi a little bit over a huge span of time.
Social media turns a select few into full blown hyper nazis really fast.

I like social media better because it selectively and quickly decays a person .

mazzi Chart Czar has issued a correction as of 01:19 on Dec 16, 2022

# ? Dec 16, 2022 01:13

AnimeIsTrash: Jun 30, 2018

webcams for christ posted:

rip what.cd

this

# ? Dec 16, 2022 03:28

super sweet best pal: Nov 18, 2009

Been browsing YouTube shorts and blocking any channel that's just obviously reposted tiktok content.

# ? Dec 16, 2022 04:06

webcams for christ: Nov 2, 2005

super sweet best pal posted:

Been browsing YouTube shorts and blocking any channel that's just obviously reposted tiktok content.

getting very strong "I'd never shop at Walmart! I shop at Target" vibes from this post

# ? Dec 16, 2022 12:44

a strange fowl: Oct 27, 2022

i am deeply afraid of what is going to happen when they decide it's more cost effective to just not moderate socials at all and just let everybody have the unfiltered content all the time for clicks

# ? Dec 16, 2022 12:50

Cuttlefush: Jan 15, 2014; Gleichheit soll gedeihen

i think it was ironical

# ? Dec 16, 2022 12:50

Zodium: Jun 19, 2004

vyelkin posted:

a lot of legacy forum features accidentally counteract the parts of social media apps that were specifically designed to be psychologically addictive

for example, social media apps have engagement algorithms to show you curated content, they have notifications to give you little hits of dopamine, they have endless scroll to keep your eyeballs loading more ads for longer even if you run out of content, because it'll just pull algorithm-recommended content to keep the feed going forever. Our forums have no engagement algorithms, notifications that are barely worth the name (I think the only one is you can tell it to give you a little popup if you get a PM) and natural stopping points at the end of a page or a thread, instead of constant loading content.

the internet fucks with your brain but social media is way worse and intentionally designed to be more addictive than our dead gay forums

that's right.

# ? Dec 16, 2022 12:50

a strange fowl: Oct 27, 2022

eventually the audience is so desensitised that they stop complaining. then that level becomes acceptable through a process of hideous cope

# ? Dec 16, 2022 12:51

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# ? May 2, 2024 19:54

a strange fowl: Oct 27, 2022

when i was growing up there was still widespread resistance to screentime for kids. the ones who were babysat by screens 8+ hours a day were cause for concern. then those kids grew up mostly able to function in the economy, so everybody seemed to go "oh it's ok, screens are fine". but then the people raised by screens went on to have children on their own, and interacted with those children sometimes almost exclusively through screen-based content and activities. the consequences of that we will be dealing with for a while.

# ? Dec 16, 2022 12:56

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > tiktok (and all social media) is a cancer

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