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There was no platform that allowed a person to put their lifestyle on blast to millions. Forums and chat rooms is/were niche groups. IM was/is 1 on 1 messaging in most cases. There was no such thing as following/followers, simps, subs, orbiters, influencers etc.
I understand that. All I'm saying is that is simply a new form of social media. Letters to the editor of a printed newspaper are also social media.
 
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this coming from instagram who 10+ years after the iPad has launched still hasn't come up with an iPad app for its massive service. But we can add features :) I'm sure an iOS port to iPadOS isn't that hard with their resources
 
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Seems there are more prudes on MR than I would have at first guessed.

And for those who think porn websites are new, let me introduce you to the alt.binaries.___ groups on USENET.

And yes, one could use USENET to broadcast your life to the world, though few would do so back then because people had more inhibitions (or so it would seem.)

FB and Musk are as damaging to our society as TikTok but unfortunately ByteDance did not bribe American politicians enough.

I doubt Reels will draw in very many TikTok fans. There are already other services popping up that will be much more fashionable for the kids.
 
I think maybe that people massaging their frijoles to corn videos is perhaps not quite as detrimental to society as having the majority of kids, teens, and young adults spending most of their waking hours glued to a video slot machine that's designed to keep them pulling on the lever until 04:00 in the morning.

Corn is also terrible. And a lifelong addiction to some. But most corn sites operate with way(!) lower budgets than big tech and social and could never get amount of data on user behavior that sites like TikTok have(nobody wants a corn-site user profile). Not even close and that's why they're nowhere near as addictive as social media despite showing corn.

TikTok is way worse.

Like, don't you have any kids or younger people in your life? No "iPad kids" that you know, personally?

Sure, if academic performance, physical fitness, and mental wellbeing hadn't taken a massive dip with social media then I would not spend a second thinking about what apps they're on.

But are we out here pretending it's all innocuous? Why?

And not to get personal, because this question pertains to anyone reading this

-But what about yourself, can you honestly say you feel fully in control of how much time you spend on social media? Can you say it feels productive, that it increases the quality of your life? That the time you spend on it couldn't be spent better elsewhere, but you feel like you're to some extent not able to abstain from using it, even if you really wanted to?

I'm not claiming to have a solution. But I don't know why anyone loves it so much and wants to prevent the ban?

But then again, the ban doesn't really matter as Zuckerberg, Musk or Google will gladly step in and fill the void with a TikTok clone if the ban actually happens. And America's CEO will, naturally, not have an issue with any of them as long as they serve his current interests.
This guys loves being told by the government what he can and can't consume.
 
Insta reels is such a half assed copycat of TikTok. How about fixing playback, scrub bar for rewinding/FF, stop memorizing where I left off so i can go back and forth to restart it (since trying to rewind an Insta reel is futile).

Better, something not ****erberg owned.
 
P.S.: Interesting conversation, given that the TikTok thing was partially rooted in the desire to keep Americans from potentially coming under the sway of an authoritarian government with a collectivist culture known for valuing collectivist concerns over personal freedoms.

Have you noticed who is being sworn in on Monday? Clearly half of America doesn't care about anything except themselves, through a lens of stupidity because eggs and food won't be cheaper at the market on Tuesday, and probably more expensive because people also not only care about only themselves and a small view of life, they're also too dumb to actually educate themselves on these basic things.

These are the same people that would easily be brain washed by the Chinese influence like they were Russian so.... at least the Government is saving them from themselves. Not that I think China did anything nefarious with TikTok yet -- but they absolutely would. How fast we forget the Chinese weather balloon and drones.
 
Have you noticed who is being sworn in on Monday? Clearly half of America doesn't care about anything except themselves, through a lens of stupidity because...
It's easy to vilify the other side. I've noticed people on both the Right and the Left do it; single out and make a grievance list of the other side's perceived sins while engaging some minimization, denial or selective ignoring on their own. I was not a fan of either side. Blanket condemnation and over-generalization of people on either side doesn't tend to be accurate or productive.

These are the same people that would easily be brain washed by the Chinese influence like they were Russian so.... at least the Government is saving them from themselves.
I'm guessing regarding the Russian thing, you are going with the accusations back in 2016 that Russian meddling via FaceBook pushed the needle and cost Hillary Clinton the Presidential election, this should've been prevented by FaceBook (sort of a 'Ministry of Truth' thing, perhaps), and thus be extension it was sort of Mark Zuckerberg's fault we saw Trump's first term.

It might be helpful to read (it's a long slog) this:

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century

If you want to cut to the section dealing directly with the accusation Trump was FaceBook's fault, click here. I think you will see from the description of Trump this is not some Right wing populist propaganda. From the article: "The false yet foundational claim that Russia hacked the 2016 election provided a justification—just like the claims about weapons of mass destruction that triggered the Iraq War—to plunge America into a wartime state of exception."

A key question is whether it is the place of the United States federal government to 'save people from themselves.' We're not talking about minors or the severely mentally ill. We're talking about adult citizens.

And there's evidence to support that the government exercises a lot of power over social media. Silicon Valley is (in?)famously liberal (aside from a love of free market capitalism and minimal regulation). I got the impression Zuckerberg probably voted Democrat. But lately he's been cozying up to Trump. Why? And more than that...Tim Cook contributed to Trump's inaugural fund. The gay CEO of a clearly leftist leaning tech company sent a fat donation to Donald Trump's inauguration fund.

That's how you act when you're scared. And if they're worried about Trump, stands to reason they're worried about other people at other times. Zuckerberg shared some concerning claims about pressure from the Biden administration during the pandemic - saw that in a PC Magazine article online.

So your mention about the government 'saving people from themselves' is an astute observation of the attitude some people in power have.

I think it's the attitude the Chinese Communist Party has when they restrict freedoms. Can't have the peasants running the country.
 
"We want Instagram to not only be a place where you consume entertaining content, but one where you connect over that content with friends," Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a video announcing the change.
You don't have to "consume content". You can read a book, watch a movie, listen to a music album, share some photos. Only those who see no value in these artistic endeavors other than the pennies they can squeeze out of their audiences refer to such endeavors as "content" to be "consumed".
 
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Seems there are more prudes on MR than I would have at first guessed.

And for those who think porn websites are new, let me introduce you to the alt.binaries.___ groups on USENET.

And yes, one could use USENET to broadcast your life to the world, though few would do so back then because people had more inhibitions (or so it would seem.)
I definitely wouldn’t be one to criticize someone for choosing to live a chaste lifestyle.

The problem is more with the impracticality, censorship, and possible harms of such a proposed ban.

You won’t delete lust from society and people will still find ways to obtain stuff to wank to.
 
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The MacRumors comment section is about as close as I get to social media these days.

No algorithm steering the content you are fed in forums.

I miss the pre-2006 internet, before social media started to creep everywhere online and offline…

I cannot help but think we have passed peak internet. Now it has become echo chambers, faux content and a swamp of misinformation. It is another example of why we cannot have nice things.
 
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Not sure whether Instagram will have more users because TikTok gets banned. Maybe for a short while. Anyway I am not using these features of Instagram.
 
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Isn't it great that the Fediverse offers alternatives for all those surveillance capitalism services: Pixelfed (Instagram), Loops (TikTok), Iceshrimp or Friendica (Facebook) and many more. Wondering how it can be legal that Meta removes any post mentioning Pixelfed.
 
Suckerberg never lets go off an opportunity to make some good money.
This platform is beyond pathetic nowadays.
 
I never thought the US would ban social networks like Russia or China. I think TikTok should just ignore the US. The result would be that iPhone users would no longer be able to download TikTok. That would put pressure on Apple.
 
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They want to ban TikTok, but they can't ban pornography sites in America, on what planet does this make sense?
You obviously have no clue why they are banning TikTok in the US or you wouldn't made that comparison.
 
I never thought the US would ban social networks like Russia or China. I think TikTok should just ignore the US. The result would be that iPhone users would no longer be able to download TikTok. That would put pressure on Apple.
You forgot some countries that have banned TikTok to some extent: EU, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, and others. Suddenly, it doesn't seem so "communist", does it?
 
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