In each of the separate lawsuits state regulators filed, dozens of internal communications, documents and research data were redacted — blacked-out from public view — since authorities entered into confidentiality agreements with TikTok.
But in one of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, the redactions were faulty. This was revealed when Kentucky Public Radio copied-and-pasted excerpts of the redacted material, bringing to light some 30 pages of documents that had been kept secret.
Fucking obviously duh its knowingly designed to be addictive and they know it brainrots you.
TikTok’s own research states that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety,” according to the suit.
This is the real reason that TikTok should be massively regulated or outright banned for children, not because of specifically oh we we are worried about data security concerns with a Chinese company, but because its functionally a digital version of a mind melting harmful drug.
If you want to be consistent on the data security concept, then basically you’d have to apply that logic to Facebook and Instagram and well pretty much everything these days.
But also, I guarantee you that if Meta or Twitter/X was investigated similarly we’d find out very very similar things about their products intentionally being designed to be addictive and that they know they degenerate your mental faculties as well, and prioritize spreading dubious inflammatory misinformation.
(Well, in Twitter, now X’s case, probably Elon has already destroyed much of that research after he took over, and X now has different and even worse obvious problems.)
Cambridge Analytica anyone?
Tiktok is only different in that it is primarily aimed at children, and that it’s not American.
I am so beyond tired of pretending that modern corporate social media apps are anything other than extremely societally normalized drugs that make us all stupid angry idiots.
EDIT, several days later:
Oh hey look here’s Sam Seder agreeing with the idea that these platforms are products and they should be regulated akin to alcohol and tobacco and harmful pharmaceuticals, who also all had their own internal data showing they knew their products were/are addictive and damaging but just shelved their own studies:
Lots of people on the internets tend to do whataboutism around this topic whenever it comes up.
I think what it all boils down to is that TikTok is the worst example we’ve seen come up, and it is badly addicting and manipulative enough that it finally got people concerned.
When you’re one of us who never installed or browsed to TikTok, it’s quite obvious how it’s fucking up the rest of the people. It has taken smartphone addiction to a new level. People look like addicted zombies on that shit.
TikTok is the worst example we’ve seen come up
…so far :)
And the crazy part is I know of teens who say “I wish I could use my phone less”, and these aren’t even particularly self-reflective kids. I have to assume many feel this way. Literal textbook addiction, crafted on purpose, and half of the parents are so far up shit’s creek with the addiction too that they don’t even think to get involved.
The phone addiction thing is strangely very common now. I’ve seen many posts online about it, people complaining how life is bad and they can only stay on their phone all day.
I just don’t get it. Why would you want to stare at a tiny screen in your hand all day? I only waste time on my phone when I’m bored and can’t find something better to do.
I guarantee you that if Meta or Twitter/X was investigated similarly we’d find out very very similar things about their products
Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, those “news” pages that show up when you open a new browser tab in Edge, Xitter, Snapchat, and anyone else using an algorithm designed to drive engagement so they can shovel ads at you is 100% the same or worse than TikTok.
The problem is, as you said, is that TikTok is “evil Chinese company stealing our kids’ data” and all of the rest are “brave American captains of industry” and boy, we can’t possibly do anything that could possibly have our captains of industry making even one less cent than they do now. Why, that’d be communism!
So uh, here we are.
deleted by creator
Now do Facebook and Instagram. Literally no difference
How does it matter? Not knowing doesn’t protect you from legal consequences. Usually.
There’s a bit of a difference in sentencing between premeditated murder and manslaughter
Anyone able to find the actual published info? The hyperlink in the article leads to another article which also alleges this but also does not provide said documentation. Kind of a low point for NPR to exclusively have other articles in the hyperlinks.