Scattered notes I took over the past year on the TikTok ban.
Congressional hearings on social media, early 2024:
Mark Zuckerberg apologizes to families over social media harms in contentious Senate hearing, Clare Duffy, Brian Fung and Aditi Sangal, CNN, January 31, 2024.
On March 13, 2024, the House of Representatives held a vote that increased the likelihood that TikTok would be banned in the US. The Senate was to consider it.
All social media has big problems:
"Mere weeks ago, the New York Times published an exposé on underage girls being pushed into “child influencing,” a world which is full of pedophiles. Instagram’s effects on teens has been widely documented by Meta’s own employees, and without really trying we have been able to document the sale of guns and drugs, hacking services, and counterfeit services in ads displayed on the platform. Discord is full of communities used for organizing by Neo Nazis and paramilitaries, criminal hackers, crypto scammers, deepfake peddlers, teens who kidnap each other, etc. Facebook is full of AI-generated bullshit that people think is real, was used by foreign adversaries to attempt to influence an election, was credibly accused of being abused to facilitate a genocide in Myanmar, and has had innumerable scandals over the years. Twitter is full of malware and has essentially gotten rid of all of its rules. YouTube is a place that has been used by ISIS terrorists, white supremacists, mass shooters, and child brainwashers. Telegram was founded by Russians, is now based in the United Arab Emirates, and is full of criminals, hackers, and Russian disinformation. We have reported endlessly that all of these platforms are monitored by governments, militaries, surveillance agencies, and commercial interests around the world using "social listening," "social media monitoring," and OSINT tools.
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[Yet] I am unaware of any political pushes to ban Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter, and efforts to meaningfully regulate them to be less harmful seemingly have no political will. The only actual regulation of these platforms have been laws passed by conservatives in Florida and Texas which give them even less ability to moderate their platforms and which is the subject of a Supreme Court case.
This is just to say that TikTok and the specter of China’s control of it has become a blank canvas for which anyone who has any complaint about social media to paint their argument on, and has become a punching bag receiving scrutiny we should also be applying to every other social media giant."
— "The U.S. Wants to Ban TikTok for the Sins of Every Social Media Company," Jason Koebler, March 13, 2024
The House passed the bill, April 2024:
House Passes Bill That Could Lead To TikTok Ban In The U.S.: The measure, which has bipartisan Senate support, gives TikTok's Chinese parent company one year to divest itself of the popular video platform or get blocked. Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost, Apr 20, 2024
On surveillance:
"Larry Ellison¡s surveillance fever dream isn’t actually a fever dream: All of these are technologies that already exist in some form, many of which have not measurably driven down crime or solved the complicated societal, political, and economic problems that lead to crime in the first place or the societal power structures that protect police at every turn. These technologies have collectively cost billions of dollars, made surveillance companies very rich, and have created new privacy problems. Big Brother is here, and, surprise, having AI 'supervision' has not created a crimeless utopia."
— Larry Ellison's AI-Powered Surveillance Dystopia Is Already Here, Jason Koebler, 404 Media, Sep 17, 2024
On beauty:
"Lost in all the drama over the recent TikTok ban in the United States is the news that the TikTok algorithm suppressed views of people it viewed as unattractive and boosted people who were attractive."
— The Beautiful Ugly: Until you learn to love the flawed and broken, lasting happiness will always be out of reach. Jason McBride, Weirdo Poetry, Feb 19, 2025
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