TikTok’s bid to overturn a law which would see it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected.
The social media company had hoped a federal appeals court would agree with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users.
But the court upheld the law, which it said “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.
[…]
The court agreed the law was “carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”
While the justification for this is primarily based on TikTok being a privacy and data security risk due to it being owned by a Chinese State Organ/Corporation… which is hilarious bullshit because the US does exactly the same thing with all the net data that goes through US corporate social media…
Brainrot is a real thing.
Shortform video platforms are addictive the same way cigarretes or heroin is, extended use ruins your cognitive ability, ruins your attention span, increases depression and anxiety, and fhe format promotes an absurdly fake, narcissistic culture, scams, and mis or disinformation.
Algorithmic profiling is definitely not unique to TikTok, but it is used by the app, and this often pigeonholes the user into content/advertisements that often becomes more and more extreme, manipulative and exploitative of the user.
Though this is being done mostly for stupid reasons, and it isn’t stoping US Corpo brainrot inducing social media platforms, I’ll take what I can get.
I’m with you. Tiktok is about as “healthy” as vaping. There are other just as bad (if not worse) apps out there, and the reasoning is stupid and has some first amendment concerns. But I won’t die on the protecting Tiktok hill.