HN Reader

Of course it's a chance to rethink the internet. COVID was also a chance to rethink our responses to pandemics. Cambridge Analytica was a chance to rethink data privacy as it relates to private companies. Edward Snowden was a chance to rethink data privacy as it relates to governments. Climate Change is a chance to rethink how we live our lives, build our cities, and produce our food. In my hometown, an earthquake was a chance to rethink how the city worked.

Life is full of these chances, but we seldom take them. Whatever happens with TikTok, it'll be business as usual in no time.

Interesting trend I've noticed: Tiktok's users tend to like its algorithm, and its probably the app's most valuable assets, but western tech executives tend to hate it and speak of it with derision.

This stands in stark contrast with US-based social media companies, where both its users and content creators often speak like they're at war with the algorithm, yet to the tech elite these sites algorithms are tuned to perfection.

RSS was too good and too decentralized to exist. It's a miracle that it's still possible to independently publish and subscribe to podcasts (notably, Spotify doesn't let you subscribe to unapproved podcasts).

I social web based on RSS would be heaven: publish anywhere you want, own your content and URL, no content moderation, pick your own service (separately) for discovery. Google should be pushing harder for this to bust content back out of the walled gardens of Instagram.

> When I went to school, I was taught that free will is the distinguishing characteristic of the human species

Hugely off-topic, but that strikes me as a very strange thing to be taught. Personally, I believe that, if humans have free will, other animals do too, but that's all it is: a belief.

Recommendation algorithms never worked for me. I still prefer good old search and sort.

The article is not about alternatives to social media giants, but rather about a billionaire who wants to "rescue" TikTok.

> McCourt, who says that he has no interest in becoming TikTok’s C.E.O., is unique among the group of potential buyers. For starters, he has been steadfastly public, voicing his desire to purchase the app in print and televised interviews, including on “Fox & Friends,” reportedly Trump’s favorite show. He is also the only potential buyer so far promising to serve the public’s interest—to address not only geopolitical concerns about the app but also the deleterious effects it has been shown to have on young users.

It seems to be little more than a thinly veiled ad for billionaire Frank McCourt to push his bid to buy TikTok, which he promises will not just be another social media platform but so much better under his ownership, and fix all the problems. Surely wouldn't be used to push his and his friends' agenda. Not to mention that ByteDance seems to have repeatably said they don't want to sell, but everyone seems to have their price, maybe they just haven't got the right offer yet.

Given that a lot of people have multiple interests and consumption patterns I wonder why the platforms like YouTube (the only one I use) do not give user a conscious choice? For instance, I watch educational content, music-related content and some talk shows. Yt can figure out this out (clustering) and let me choose what i want to focus in a given moment.

The TT creator, John Aravosis, said recently on his show that it took TT 3 days to figure out he is gay and he said he never interacted with it in any way that would convey that. On the other hand, it kept giving me animal snuff that utterly revulsed me, despite my reporting it, thumbs downing.

I deleted my account about a year ago. Although I loved a lot of content and was awed by the work of many creators, I got this weird anxiety when I had been scrolling for, say, an hour. It was like my brain was giving me a warning sign, though my consciousness did not perceive it. I came to a personal decision, unscientifically, and without any jingoism or conspiracies, that short-form scrolling is bad for my health.

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for Loops (the fediverse version of TT) and I scrolled a few videos. I had such a strong negative feeling that I closed it and uninstalled. I am so happy YouTube Shorts is so shit, because I watch one or two that catch my eye, then go back to the longer videos.

The owners of Tiktok banned it in the US by not selling off or offering protection for American data. Anyone that thinks giving a hostile nation access to more than 100 million sensor arrays in their country is not thinking well.

The answer to Headlines that ask a question is almost always No

Going out on a limb here: nope.

Do I wish otherwise? Of course. Will anything of the sort happen? Nope.

Tik tok seemed to push a lot of obviously mildly retarded or fetal alcohol syndrome people at me. Felt like it was normalizing things we shouldn’t aspire to.

If your idea of "rethinking" is to have a slightly different set of billionaires that control everything, you'll love this article

We can rethink the internet, but people wouldn’t like the answer, so let’s not. Just carry on, carry on.

tl;dr: another billionaire wants to buy TikTok.

Oligarchs won't stop until all media (social and legacy) are turned into ideological echo chambers in favor of laissez-faire capitalism and a return to the Gilded Age.

All done in the name of free speech and freedom, of course.

> Is the TikTok Ban a Chance to Rethink the Whole Internet?

No. Next question.

>rethink the whole internet?

The IP protocol has been proven for decades, but the "newyorker" is probably thinking about the entire Internet of Facebook, Google, Instagram and X?

What makes people think that people don't like addictions? They jump from one to the other all the time

Can we get over the nonsense that banning tiktok has anything to do with free speech?

Companies get shut down or penalized whenever they break laws or behave in obviously abusive ways. Tiktok was given several recourses, and they refused.

That's all there is to it.