this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
166 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37794 readers
331 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not quite. TikTok has been shown to tweak their algorithm against criticism of China. That's the real reason for the concern. Their ability and willingness to purposefully manipulate people.
Which is no different from any of the US social media companies tweaking their algorithms against criticism of all number of political things.
Twitter blatantly forced right wing radical propaganda down their entire user bases through a for months. Facebook was selling user data to foreign influence groups to assist with political message targeting. They're all the same.
Lots of people think the US social media platforms do that. But none of the scientific studies have been able to show it.
The US companies are all purely driven by engagement, to maximize profit. The most effective source of that engagement, changes from person to person. But it's most commonly what you might call "Rage Bait".
Twiter's recent bend toward the right, is primarily self selection of it's users. As the left... left... the platform, the pool of available content shifted right; Causing even more to leave. Unless you have some paper I haven't seen.
And Facebook selling data, is entirely different and unrelated. Nobody (no lawmakers) care about that.
No, Twitter changed its algorithms leading up to the election. That was not self selection. They were actively pushing right wing bullshit down everyone's throats because the owner spent $200 million trying to get the dipshit elected.
That could be. It sounds plausible. Do you have any studies?
I don't think you're going to find peer reviewed studies on something that happened a month ago, but I would be very sure to say someone is working on it.
But if you've used Twitter you can recognize when something changes. I haven't used it for years, but secondhand I've heard it was pretty egregious. Obviously this could be due to external parties heightening a disinformation campaign, but I'm not sure that really matters.
American social media platforms creating an environment where propaganda and misinformation flourish and refusing to take action against it has the same net effect as TikTok altering internal algorithm. Arguing that somehow TikTok is worse because it's a foreign government is nonsense when every social media platform is manipulated by foreign governments to the same effect.
Doesn't help the US government just keeps saying "trust us bro, we have reports that say China is spying on us" while they threaten to ban one platform. Nobody trusts that, it looks like a witch hunt, and sounds racist when they single them out this way.
Targeted intent vs general apathy is a massive difference.
Do you have a source that is not from a hostile intelligence agency?
What intelligence agency?
NCRI is a social media research group.