TikTok is 'Digital Nicotine' Meant To Hook Kids, AGs Fume in New Suits (courthousenews.com) 28
The District of Columbia and 13 states sued social media giant TikTok on Tuesday, accusing the company of knowingly creating an addictive product and getting children hooked with "digital nicotine." From a report: D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb brought Washington's suit in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, asserting that the app's design -- including its algorithm, "infinite scroll," push notifications, filters and in-app currency -- boost the company's profits at the expense of children's health. "TikTok's platform, designed to be dangerously addictive, inflicts immense damage on an entire generation of young people," Schwalb said in a statement announcing the suit. "In addition to prioritizing its profits over the health of children, TikTok's unregulated and illegal virtual economy allows the darkest, most depraved corners of society to prey upon vulnerable victims." More than a dozen states brought similar suits against TikTok in their courts Tuesday, including New York, California, Kentucky and New Jersey. Each stems from a national investigation into the company that a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general launched in March 2022.
quit thechand wringing already (Score:1)
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Step by step, we're building a crummy, low effort great firewall of the USA.
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Step by step, we're building a crummy, low effort great firewall of the USA.
Indeed.
Nicotine is legal. So is alcohol. So it THC in many jurisdictions.
Why is TikTok such a fucking obsession? Because it upsets The Powers That Be; there is a frictionless, uncontrolled place for people say stuff. Hillary committed some candor the the other day: She's concerned that "we close total control" without content moderation (Oct 5, CNN.) Telling. These fucking people are losing sleep every night because there is a place you can put shit that they can't just disappear when it upsets th
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Nicotine and alcohol are highly regulated and taxed, and children aren't allowed either.
Why should Tiktok be any different then, if that's what you're comparing it to.
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Primarily because:
A. that's an obviously overextended metaphor and not accurate to the true nature of online addiction
B. cigarettes aren't protected free speech, but rather dried plant wrapped in paper.
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C: Tiktok isn't free speech either
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B. cigarettes aren't protected free speech, but rather dried plant wrapped in paper.
Indeed. However....... the advertising of cigarettes (free speech) is heavily regulated.... And, in fact, prohibited in many situations... Under federal law you may not advertise cigarettes on TV or Radio. You cannot hand out free samples (even to people "of age"). Tobacco companies may not use their logo, name, likeness, etc in the sponsorship of just about anything.. (sports games, movies, concerts, art exhibits, cultural events, etc).
You conveniently left all of that out...
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"Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost." -Neil Gaiman
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"To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker." -Frederick Douglass
"Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost." -Neil Gaiman
Like Twitter?
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and just outright block tiktok, you know you want to, just block tiktok, tell Apple & Google to remove tiktok from everyone's phone & tablets, other nations block undesired apps & social media when they perceive a problem/threat to the public
Are you looking to eliminate the addiction problem, or the competition problem? Asking for a friend named “Yu Toob”..
No cancer? (Score:2)
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I agree with your sentiment. I'm not about to defend tiktok, but I'm not a fan of *how* some of these people are attacking tiktok.
Schwalb said, "TikTok's unregulated and illegal virtual economy allows ..."
Yeah, that sounds more like what's under their skin than any of the ambiguous hyperbole like "digital nicotine". There's money flowing, and the big capitalist companies aren't getting a cut. Can't have that.
Also, "knowingly creating an addictive product?" Isn't that kind of the goal? Especially given that this has zero chance of being physically addictive. IE: it's not like they'
Same methodology (Score:4, Informative)
I think the main problem people have with these complaints is that TikTok uses exactly same fundamental mechanisms to addict people (including children) that all Western social media platforms also use. Instagram and Youtube come to mind as almost directly analogous in both what they offer and how they addict people.
And we have inherent problem with hypocrisy when we experience it as unfairness (i.e. when hypocrisy doesn't directly benefit us). Expression of this is almost certainly biologically encoded, as it's observed in animals.
So I suspect that these AGs went after Western companies even marginally as hard as they're currently going against TikTok, there would be a lot less complaints. Instead you have maybe one-two lame lawsuits against those that get minimal publicity, while these get widely publicized.
So I think they're right to go after social media for this specific feature and frankly there should be legislation to protect children from it as their developing minds are far more susceptible to being addicted and being addicted in childhood affects personality formulation in much more dramatic way than in adults. But they should go for all who do it, not just the sole foreign agent in the market.
How is YouTube harrmful (Score:2)
The Algorithm detects I have right-wing sympathies and keeps serving up Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld?
People here will tell me I need to check myself into Cyber Rehab.
And Greg's Airplanes (Score:2)
Oooh.
Honey, I need to take in one more turbocharged engine power curve before I turn in tonight.
And here comes the analogies (Score:3)
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They can kind of do what they want here, since the first amendment doesn't protect foreign companies, and the government is the one that makes the laws.
Bytedance should have sold Tiktok and gone public when the US government was telling them to, and then open an alternate headquarters in USA. Then they'd be able to get on the same lobbying bandwagon as the western social media companies.
But the CCP wouldn't let that happen, and have final say in anything Bytedance does.
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TikTok Inc is incorporated in the US, plus the courts have recognized that the 1A forbids the government from "silencing" foreign entities operating within the US for the simple reason that the 1A doesn't care if you are a citizen or not - it just cares that the government isn't allowed to suppress people's speech, free association, free press or religion.
I have to ask, have you even read the Constitution? Let me quote the 1A and you can then decide if the government can make any law they want:
First Amendme
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The content posted to Tiktok is protected speech.
Tiktok being made available for download or use in USA is not.
Banning Tiktok from app stores has nothing to do with the first amendment.
Why would I need to have read the Constitution? I can just read slashdot posts and get many, differing, incorrect interpretations. I don't need to make my own incorrect interpretation.
Accordiong to https://www.oyez.org/cases/199... [oyez.org] , the government can make restrictions on speech is if does so without regard to the content. T
Don't single out tic-toc (Score:2)
Interesting legal theory (Score:3)