Bonum Certa Men Certa

Why Techrights Condones Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban and Suggests Extending Bans to Supposedly 'Good' Fentanyl

Fentanylware: Who's there?



Summary: We're going to write a lot more about why social control media/networks ought to be avoided and what can be done to eradicate this disease from civil society (it's not social; it's surveillance, propaganda and censorship)

SOCIAL control media (AKA centralised manipulation) is generally bad and "modern" socially-manipulative 'media' [sic] even more so; it is a lot worse for reasons we'll name in future posts. There are many reasons and itemising them properly takes effort. The "dosages" are increasing over time (like narcotics for the brain), not just the bandwidth. Surveillance, propaganda and censorship are among the levers (tenets?) and addiction is leveraged through gamification and "FOMO". This is no children's game.



Those who have been following our Daily Links are well aware that we're not proponents of TikTok and not even remotely apologists of the parent company; it's not "racist" or "uncool" to point out what TikTok does, probably by design (the same is true for social control media made in/operated from Europe and north America).

"Computers were meant to make life easier and safer. In practice, however, we often see it turning out to be exactly the opposite."In the coming years we're likely to write a lot more about the issue. It's not an enigma or some deep mystery why media has often sided with TikTok, seeing that budget was allocated to AstroTurfing and many in the media are themselves TikTok junkies.

Computers were meant to make life easier and safer. In practice, however, we often see it turning out to be exactly the opposite. In some cases, computers over-complicate life and put life itself at risk. That's due to the choices made by people who truly control them, and those people aren't the users who paid for these computers.

We strongly discourage adoption of social control media and we encourge people to abandon not only TikTok. The media found itself a bit of a scapegoat to distract from equally culpable surveillance and manipulation giants.

"The problems here are multi-faceted..."When it comes to tackling this problem (both TikTok and others), one must tread very carefully and not adopt a one-size-fits-all 'omnibus'-like legislation. Disdain and scepticism towards TikTok has been weaponised to "RESTRICT" a lot of things under the guise of "national security". It is super important to differentiate between a specific ban on ByteDance or TikTok and the RESTRICT Act in the Unites States. It is being discussed in Congress and the media sometimes conflates the two issues. There are a lot of things going on. A specific ban would be good -- either restriction on all social control media or just TikTok -- but the RESTRICT Act makes the old PATRIOT II look mild and benevolent in comparison. Among other things it neutralises FOIA -- i.e. the ability of the public to demand and impose transparent governance. There are many sites/paperw which are trying to confuse the topic of a TikTok/ByteDance ban with support for the RESTRICT Act.

The problems here are multi-faceted and cannot be reduced to single sentences (RESTRICT Act, for instance, is a bit of a monster made by mobsters). We'll try to come up with a concise or coherent explanation at a later date, differentiating between the different companies and listing the underlying issues associated with each. It's getting worse every year.

Recent Techrights' Posts

People Used to Talk
If pets can live a measurably happy life without gadgets and "apps", why can't humans?
Rust is Starting to Seem More Like Microsoft-hosted "Digital Maoism", Not a Legitimate Effort to Improve Security
Maybe this is very innocent, but they seem to have taken a solid, stable program from a high-profile Frenchman and looked for ways to marry it with GitHub, i.e. Microsoft/NSA
 
Gemini Links 08/05/2025: Practical Gemini Use Case, Shutdown of the Blanket Fort Webring
Links for the day
Links 08/05/2025: "Slop Presidency", US Government Defunds Public Broadcasting
Links for the day
Lasse Fister, Organiser of Libre Graphics Meeting, Points Out the Code of Conduct is Likely Violated by the Same People Who Promote Codes of Conduct (and Then Bully Him Into Cancelling a Keynote)
I am starting to see Lasse Fister as another victim
LLM Slop Attacks Not Only Sites of Free Software Projects But Also Bug Reporting Systems (Time-wasting, in Effect "DDoS")
Microsoft, the leading purveyor and promoter of slop, is a cancer
The Richard Stallman (RMS) "European Tour" Carries on In Spite of the Nuremberg Incident
Some people spoke about how they saw yesterday's talk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 07, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 07, 2025
The CoC Means the Founder of GNU/Linux Cannot Talk and a 72-Year-Old Man With Cancer is Somehow a "Safety" Risk?
Those who don't like RMS are not forced to attend his talks
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: A Shopping Spree and Digital Gardening
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: Pegasus Guilty and a Path Towards EU Without Russian Energy
Links for the day
Outsourcing GNU/Linux to Microsoft GitHub Promoted by Microsoft LLM Slop and Army Officers
Something doesn't seem right
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025