Society Has Been Destabilised by Social Control Networks
Is it time to get rid of them, if not by sanctions/bans then simply by popular boycotts? Enjoy the outdoors, not narrow timelines on 3-inch-wide screens.
THERE is a lot more to life than fake friends and fictional "popularity" quantified by clicks. Some people realise that sooner than others.
This past week we saw a pair of reports about the ban on TikTok in (New) Caledonia, where Windows usage has fallen. One French group challenged the ban. One press report said the ban had been reversed.
For those who don't know or haven't paid attention, the media used to explain how China's TikTok helped brew violent riots in the "former" French colony.
Social control media is generally a bad thing. If the US uses it to cause unrest (see [1, 2, 3]), why won't China?
Yesterday an associate of ours wondered aloud, "since when are foreign weapons (or even foreign companies) under 1A?" (First Amendment) The associate argued that "company services, especially propaganda weapons, are not freedom of speech (in relation to "La Quadrature du Net takes legal action against the French government’s censorship of TikTok").
As a side note, there's hardly any merit in using this junk as a substitute for real media. Social control media started as a platform type for people who don't know how to run/maintain a site or people who can barely put together more than a single sentence (or take a huge amount of time and effort to do so).
We already wrote many statements here about TikTok, but a lot of the same can be said about Mastodon/Fediverse, Twitter/X, Facebook/Instagram and so on...
Drugs come in many forms. Weapons have many types. But the net effect is the same, no matter who makes them or uses them.
An hour ago in IRC we talked about the role of tech in people's lives. psydruid said that "tech became a purpose in itself rather than a way to improve how to get things done in the real world [...] I regularly do things just using pen and paper because that allows me to focus on the problem I want to solve rather than working around some piece of tech that just isn't designed to suit my needs [...] and even on this backdoored phone most of the "apps" I've installed are for learning/training purposes, but even better would be a reasonably powerful pocket computer that can run the software I want to run rather than the (proprietary and limited) software someone else wants me to run." (Scrollback for more)
I gave the example of the wristwatch and its practical benefits. I said "you don't need "notifications" while you are out, it might even distract you while crossing the road [...] some tech is sold as "lifestyle" even if for practical purposes it does not improve the life but complicates it [...] it's flaunted as class/status [and] they tell people to judge other people by the gadgets they possess and carry around."
Many studies have consistently shown that social control media and "smart" phones are bad for one's mental health, not just in the age groups of children/adolescents.
There are pragmatic reasons to leave both of them behind. That would not render one a "Luddite".
On their deathbed people are more likely to regret not seeing particular places... rather than regret not getting enough "likes". █