At the same time letting politics go unchecked turns it into a cesspool like reddit, where politics is shoehorned into most of the default subreddits and "Epstien" is brought up in any thread vaguely political. You might think these issues deserve attention, and they might even drive engagement for some, but not everyone wants their cat video app to be like a 24/7 cable TV news channel.
And Reddit's far more tightly censored than Tik Tok. Most subs won't even allow open discussion of certain hotly debated topics because the Reddit admins have threatened to shut them down (and shut down subs that didn't tightly censor discussion in the past). Twitter used to be pretty tightly censored as well. Right now there's a huge drama on Bluesky because many people want those that don't agree with them politically banned.
That's one of the things that's tiring about these debates. Too many people only view "free speech" as a rhetorical cudgel, using it to hit "the other side" when it's convenient, then immediately discarding it and going back to "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences!" when it's not.
They went out of their way to pick on disabled people, out of all groups. I don't even think there's a party on either side of the spectrum that's like "fuck disabled people". It's pretty obvious that even before the recent acquisition they were trying to cater to a specific type of content.
Right, but the point is that it hasn't turned into a salient culture war topic like trans people have. There's no political impetus for tiktok to oppress disabled people, yet they did it anyways.
> I don't even think there's a party on either side of the spectrum that's like "fuck disabled people".
Trump said to her niece about her disabled son: "maybe he should just die". The right is ableist, you can see it most everywhere, in their rhetoric, in their policies... They cut billions from healthcare programs in their big bill, that disproportionately benefited the physically diabled. Now a lot of these people will most likely die, as a direct result. This was a desired outcome.
different issue, but remains suppressed in those regions. That isn't really something the platform can influence or change. It either complies with local laws or is blocked in that region. Platform wide / world wide suppression of anit-genocide content is new.
- Isn’t the point of apps like TikTok that they show you content that is interesting to you? Why can’t they show politics to people who are interested but not to people who aren’t?
- Does TikTok ban all political content? Or just some? Do they ban all “non-joyful” content? Or just some?
- Might this be related to the sale of TikTok to American investors linked to Trump?
>- Isn’t the point of apps like TikTok that they show you content that is interesting to you? Why can’t they show politics to people who are interested but not to people who aren’t?
How far can we extend this? Assuming AI is good enough to detect shock gore/shock images, why have content guidelines at all? If I want to watch ISIS/cartel beheading videos, why should I have to go to another platform? The standard in the US for clamping down on free speech is "imminent lawless action", so it's unlikely to run afoul of any laws. You can even make the argument that it's bad to ban them, because they're conveying some important information and to do otherwise would be "I want to be kept in the dark and resume my mindless consumption of brainrot". If that's too far fetched for you, replace "beheading videos" with "gaza or ukranian war footage".
>- Does TikTok ban all political content? Or just some? Do they ban all “non-joyful” content? Or just some?
Most users will have a very different reaction to being served politics they are uninterested in vs being served shocking gore. (Bored or annoyed vs traumatized)
Many users want to see political content. Almost none want to see beheadings.
You can treat this as one long spectrum but if I was in charge of content moderation I’d treat politics and gore as separate categories. (And most sites do!)
> They've also been accused of having a left bias by the right.
That doesn’t mean they don’t have a political bias. It may just not cleanly fall across modern American political party lines. (And it may have changed over time.)
——
But this is all theoretical. My stance is that if you are going to allow some political content then you should allow all political content that doesn’t break other rules.
And I think “non-joyful” is a bullshit rule for a major social media company to have. It can easily be reinterpreted by moderators to selectively silence political speech
>Most users will have a very different reaction to being served politics they are uninterested in vs being served shocking gore. (Bored or annoyed vs traumatized)
That's why I in the second sentence specifically also supposed AI could identify such content.
>That doesn’t mean they don’t have a political bias. It may just not cleanly fall across modern American political party lines. (And it may have changed over time.)
The point is that without actual evidence of political bias going on, actual allegations are a dime a dozen, and shouldn't be taken seriously.
>But this is all theoretical. My stance is that if you are going to allow some political content then you should allow all political content that doesn’t break other rules.
There's no shortage of political content on tiktok, hence why right wingers think there's a left wing bias. There's also no evidence they're trying to cover up ICE raids as a particular topic, only footage of this particular incident that involves violence.
That's a terrible take. Of course politics will play an increasing part in daily life when the country is devolving into a dictatorship. A journalist is getting abducted on the street by the regime's gestapo and your first reaction is "boring, I want to be kept in the dark and resume my mindless consumption of brainrot".
They're important conversations but people don't want to engage in them every second of their living lives. The point of entertainment is to be able to compartementalize and regulate.
If they do what you suggest, all the creativity that makes the platform attractive is going to flock to somewhere else.
Hard disagree. I dont need politics in every corner of life now 3 years ago 10 years ago etc. when the boy cries wolf at everything that moves people tend to ignore the boy.
Exactly. The whole "this might be the last election we have!" messaging has been going on for at least the past decade. Maybe 2024 was actually the last one, but people are tired of it, and have tuned out accordingly. Of course, the politics/news junkies think otherwise, and would rather that their message be shoved down people's throats.
It's not messaging, Trump has literally said this.
Trump supporters have a very interesting perspective in that they believe Trump to be the ultimate liar. The only people who think trump is honest is, ironically, his opponents.
People tend to do this justification behavior where they claim their dopamine hits are good for them/their health/society, when in actuality it's detrimental.
Almost no political junkie I know has changed their view on Trump over the past decade. They'll spend hours a day, sometimes hours a week, focused on him, but it ends up absolutely having no positive impact on their selves or their lives (usually a large negative impact).
Then I ask them about their local politicians, where they stand on certain issues, what their record is, what's been happening with their local government - and they have absolutely no clue. They can't even recall who was running in the previous local primary, or why they voted for who they voted for.
They're wasting countless hours on Trump and national politics because it feels good. Then they won't even spend a fraction learning about things that could actually make an important difference in their voting, because it's too boring for them. Even worse, many people will try to pass off these actions as being virtuous or being informed.
Um, I'm not from the US, so my comment was more general than that.
Politics exceeds politicians and specific partisan things. Politics shapes your life and that of your loved ones.
It's not simply about arguing online about stuff.
I'm my opinion one should be informed about local, national and world politics. Also history. What happens in the US unfortunately impacts my country (currently very directly; you are about to bail out Argentina, my country, just because Trump likes our president), so I'm paying attention.
>I'm my opinion one should be informed about local, national and world politics. Also history. What happens in the US unfortunately impacts my country (currently very directly; you are about to bail out Argentina, my country, just because Trump likes our president), so I'm paying attention.
What good does "paying attention" serve? Are you standing ready to send Trump a well timed tweet to get him on your side? Or maybe boycott US products? That's the problem with the 24/7 news cycle. There's "breaking news" happening all the time, and glued to your screen to stay "informed", but what does that actually do?
Moreover the OP isn't even against staying informed. He specifically points out the contrast being glued to some national issue that has no impact on his life, but isn't informed at all for any local issue that actually impacts his life.
I don't understand this position. What good does knowing anything about anything serve? What good does reading about history do?
I like being informed about the world and matters that affect me. Trump extending a lifeline to my disastrous government has implications for my life in our upcoming elections, and possibly beyond (they are saying the bailout comes with draconian "conditions"). I also care about more indirect ramifications and what it means for our sovereignty.
I like being informed about the world.
> He specifically points out the contrast being glued to some national issue that has no impact on his life, but isn't informed at all for any local issue that actually impacts his life.
You can and should be informed about both. There are no issues with absolutely zero impact in your life. Maybe they won't impact now, immediately and in a way that you notice, but in the longer term they will. Even as a trend for your nation.
Everything in life is political (just not about political parties, not sure why people conflate the two things).
PS: I've never used TikTok, I'm arguing out of principle. I do use Facebook and Instagram though. I swore off Twitter even before the Musk era, so I wouldn't know what's it like now (I imagine not good).
How much time do you think people should invest in staying informed about politics?
The upthread discussion was about being glued to the 24/7 news cycle, which at least in the US focuses mostly on national political drama. If you're suggesting that people should spend most of their limited attention budget following that news cycle, then they won't have attention left for much else.
I don't think anyone in this thread would say that spending, say, 15 minutes a day getting caught up on political happenings is a bad thing. It only becomes harmful when it sucks up all of your attention (as it does for political junkies).
Did letting politics go unchecked turn the telephone system into a "cesspool"? How about the newspapers? The bookstores? Videotape rental stores? The public library?
Maybe censorship is the problem, not the solution. The fact that people are allowed to use a medium to talk about things you aren't interested in doesn't imply that you can't use it to talk about the things you are.
>Did letting politics go unchecked turn the telephone system into a "cesspool"?
No, because it does a poor job at disseminating information. The best you can do is robocall, and that quickly gets hung up on/ignored.
> How about the newspapers? The printing press?
The second half of the 20th century was more or less a golden age of objective journalism, but it wasn't always that way. Newspapers used to explicitly partisan and had poor journalistic standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
Moreover in the 2000s 24/7 cable TV channels were widely criticized for sensationalism to drive viewership. That's the closest analog to /r/all, where there's always some sort of political crisis happening every day.
Yet those very partisan newspapers created a public that was, by all accounts, far better informed than the public of the 20th century you think was a "golden age".
I omitted the "vast wasteland" of television on purpose: it's the major medium that suffered pervasive government censorship in the US.
>>The second half of the 20th century was more or less a golden age of objective journalism, but it wasn't always that way. Newspapers used to explicitly partisan and had poor journalistic standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
>Yet those very partisan newspapers created a public that was, by all accounts, far better informed than the public of the 20th century you think was a "golden age".
Are you claiming that the public was better informed in the 19th century than in the 20th? That's a wild claim to make, not least because the former had far worse literacy rates.
Yes, I am. It's a well-substantiated claim. I suggest reading Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. Literacy rates were not far worse; US literacy in 01880 was 80%; in the 01980s it was estimated at 86%.
