The way I see this is that democracy is extremely susceptible to tools that can change public opinion en masse. This of course applies to Western social media as much as TikTok, and I'd love to see regulation around all social media algorithms to ensure they're unbiased. I see this as a good start to counter a real threat, which is China's ability to influence US elections through TikTok.
It is not just democracy. All governance systems are susceptible to mass communication tools that can change public opinion, be it books, radio, tv, news organizations, or tiktok. It is why many non democratic countries do not have freedom of press, and a highly censored internet. This is a main contributor to Arab Spring.
It is just sad that even US is susceptible to this.
Well mass manipulation of the people is how the USA functions. This is what Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote about extensively in their book Manufacturing Consent from 1988. So it is no wonder it works when other people do it too. I agree though, it is sad, or frustrating, upsetting, infuriating, that the USA works like that.
This is the same logic as would be used in banning the translation of the bible or the printing press. For any sufficiently concerned state, 'unbiased' means 'agrees with me'. For example, it may be seen in the USA to be 'unbiased' to be completely uncritical of Israel (anti-Zionism is anti-semitism according the US congress bill H.Res.894). However, this is not the case anywhere else in the world, including Israel (which criticizes itself sometimes), in fact it would seem quite insane.
That said I think some regulatory control is needed. There needs to be some sort of accountability e.g. for intentional propagation of fake news or censorship or defamation. This is no different than requirements for ethical behavior in other industries. Just like we regulate public companies in general we should be able to impose some requirements on any business that distributes media. Free speech for individuals but if you are a business or a media "provider" you need to meet a somewhat higher bar? I think we used to rely on journalistic standards or self regulation but with "new" media (and maybe even with old media) this seems to be not working that well any more. There's a fine line there for sure but seems like whether China owns some social media or someone with US citizenship we still want to have guards against harms this can cause. The amount of power these companies wield is scary.
China has already indicated that because the sale would require a "technology export" of the algorithm, it would need their approval. And also that they would not approve it.
So if China has already made it clear it considers a TikTok sale illegal, this is a ban.
That being said, you don't get Nancy Pelosi and Marjorie Taylor Greene on the same side unless there is some serious fire behind all of the smoke. My guess is everyone who has seen the classified info agrees this ban is too critical to even play games with it.
Microsoft will dust off it's previous merger plan from the last time this political football was punted and fill superfluousmanagement and "trust and safety" positions with old national security alumni. The surveillance will continue.
There's many companies that have reproduced the tictok algorithm. Surely if it was sold, the multibillion dollar company would have no issue with that aspect.
Facebook Reels and Youtube Shorts have pretty good implementations at this point, especially facebook, it is kind of scary. But I didn't use the original TikTok app so I don't know if TikTok is somehow better than these (I only started watching them because they started placing them in my Facebook and Youtube feed, sneaky!).
"you don't get Nancy Pelosi and Marjorie Taylor Greene on the same side unless there is some serious fire"
All you need to convince American politicians of anything is jingling keys and cash. Plus MTG opposed the original TikTok bill, they only voted in favor when it was packed together with sending money for Israel.
> I'd love to see regulation around all social media algorithms to ensure they're unbiased.
The bias is a feature. They just don't like the fact that they can't control the bias on TikTok so it spews Chinese propaganda instead of Western propaganda.
You are free to post whatever you want on a different platform. Banning TikTok and its algorithm has nothing to do with free speech. It's funny this always gets brought up, like what is TikTok allowing you to say that you can't say on FB, YT, etc?
Not a problem as long as there are other tools to speak. You have no right to YouTube or Facebook because neither are necessary for your free speech. This isn't complicated.
Overall we would want to give good education to children but sadly many parents resort to electronics quite early. There really should be a law to ban cell phones and pad for children less than 5.
Improving the economics would help too. Raising a kid when both parents probably have to work presents challenges that just don't exist if most careers could support a family on a single income.
It lost $192 million in the first 9 months of 2023. $201 million same period of 2022. It also lowered its passenger forecast to Orlando from 7 to 5.5 million.
That's why I believe public infrastructure should be publicly-owned. It's rare to find a profitable metro system...it should be run by the government as a benefit for citizens, not as a business like Brightline.
The rail infrastructure is publicly owned. But the rail infrastructure is open access that private companies can pay for. As far as I understand you can even have a public carrier but it must bid for access like its private counterparts do.
This has already led to an explosion of high quality high speed rail service in countries like Italy and Spain.
To rephrase, some things are not directly profitable but tend to have outsized profitable effects. E.g., the education budget doesn't directly generate profits, but educated people go on to get good jobs and pay a lot of taxes, refunding the cost of their education by many multiples.
The same goes for roads, highways, and rail. Not directly profitable, but they enable a lot of free movement that boosts the economy and, in turn, taxes.
The $15 charge will push people in your position to optimize their lifestyle for less driving in Manhattan, either by finding a new job, or moving closer to work, or more likely driving to a park and ride and using transit for the last bit.
How about the radical idea of train service on both sides of the river if we don’t want people to drive. There are a massive amount of commuters, rent is outrageously expensive and park and rides are far away and have all the fun unpredictability of regular old driving. And as the parent poster says it is already expensive to go into the city, $18 to cross the GWB, if anyone wants to do the quick math on how many people cross that a day and then come back and tell me why we can’t have better infrastructure.
I pay taxes on every purchase which are used to fund public transit, but I still pay per use. I don't see why it isn't fair to also charge a usage fee on cars so that drivers feel the more immediate costs of a choice to drive somewhere.
I don't think you've received a good reply to the congestion part of your comment.
The most poorly understood urban planning concept by the general public is the idea of induced demand. Usually this is applied to freeway expansion, which inevitably ends up being just as congested as pre expansion.
However, induced demand can just as easily be applied to parking lots. Especially in NYC area, very few people who drive and park don't have an alternative. Those people only have so much tolerance for looking for parking, so limiting parking will push people on the margin to transit.
For the individual, driving will almost always be the best choice if you build endless parking and highways. But, it's not necessarily better for the collective to allocate our land and resources like that. Parking lots aren't free. In fact, they require a huge amount of space. You can fit more people in an apartment building with that space!
In NYC and even other cities you really aren't forced to have a car, that's a huge generalization borne out of much more suburban areas. I live in Seattle and myself and many friends don't have cars, yet we get on just fine. In NYC, especially Manhattan, a car is a liability.
It says that Apple Pay protects your privacy by randomizing the number, but Clover based stores seem to have no trouble tracking my loyalty rewards once I linked my phone number to my virtual card.
Same for transit like OMNY in NYC. It tracks my virtual card enough to implement fare capping.
> Same for transit like OMNY in NYC. It tracks my virtual card enough to implement fare capping.
That's per DPAN, though. Capping doesn't work across devices (or people would just add their cards to friends' and family members' iPhones and split the capped fare).
There must be at least some truth to the fact that it makes the process more difficult. In Central Texas the most prominent grocery retailer by far is HEB, who has purposefully and intentionally not supported any sort of NFC payments, presumably because it somehow makes it easier to track people’s purchases over time by preventing NFC.
FWIW they are the only holdout. You can pay with NFC at Walmart, Costco, gas stations, regular retail outlets, etc almost anywhere else in Central Texas. HEB absolutely sticks out like a sore thumb in their lack of NFC support. And it’s not that they aren’t tech savvy - they own and maintain an Uber-Eats like app here called Favor that works pretty well. They clearly understand technology
I wouldn't be surprised they'd just completed an infrastructure upgrade that didn't support NFC prior to it's growth in popularity and now they're unwilling to pay that upgrade toll all over again. But that's just pure uninformed speculation on my part.
> Take everything as an opinion. Software can be built in multiple ways.
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