No. The instance being killed by the taliban is the opposite of that is happening here.

The taliban has done nothing, in this case. The admins of the instance have chosen not to keep the instance due to not wanting to fund the taliban in anyway.

This phrasing fucks up which way the action flows, which is important for a headline to get right to remain accurate to the story. Does that make sense?

I got a reason! It’s because people are afraid meta is doing what Microsoft did to a much earlier project. The crux of that whole story is that Microsoft adopted the new tech, became the biggest player thus dominating the area, then, when they had full control of the tech they ended up shutting it down. Some people are convinced meta is going to do that to the fediverse.

This is vague and handwavy, I’m hoping someone actually knows the name of the project. It was early 90s I believe or maybe into the early 00s but it was before my time in the tech sphere of the internet.

1. you don’t have to understand it, you just shouldn’t be a legislative genocidal asshole about it (not that that’s what you’re doing, but that’s what republicans seem to do to anything they think isn’t their slim sliver of a definition of “normal”)

2. if you’re talking about furries, to my layman’s understanding of the subculture, that’s not how the vast majority of furries relate to themselves. From what I’ve seen, it’s not that they are the animal itself, they are the aspects of the animal, and those things are just little icons that they’re like boosting because they resonate with it. That said, there are at least a few people who DO feel that way, but I’m pretty sure they have a special category name (ferals? I think that’s what they’re called but I could be wrong, this is some deep lore I picked up years ago). If they do have that special name and I’m not just making that part up, then that implies that most furries do not feel that way about themselves.

But, acknowledging the existence of people like that at all does validate your question in my mind. I don’t really understand that extreme either. My only point is that most furries are what you would likely consider “normal”, they just have a particular hobby. It’s no more nefarious or odd than being into gender bending cosplay. You’re just taking something (yourself rather than an anime/video game character) and twisting it into something artistically different (a fursona instead of a cosplay outfit).

…no I did not intend to write that much defending furries but here we are lmao

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…there is a joke here that I could make about incel forums. I’m not going to try to because it’s in poor taste, but my point is that I’m pretty sure that does exist…

Also, what’s your actual position if that’s your devil’s advocate position? I’m a bit unsure if the implication there is intentional or not

The way I (layman) read it, they seemed to be saying that it would be phased out by newer companies finding different alternatives, not that everyone is phasing it out as we speak.

Does this seem more realistic? Or just completely non-factual?

That’s a fair perspective, but most people strive for as few clicks between users and their targets as possible. Forcing a user to become semi-tech-competent by sending them on a fetch quest to figure out their os, while not an inherently bad thing, does work against this overall goal…

Idk, it’s like education vs service industry goal setting, that’s all I’m trying to get at here lol

Edit: plus, there’s no guarantee that it will remain just the big 3 for forever. There was a time before Linux, maybe we’ll see a time after windows… Unlikely, but one can dream lol

Tbh at this point I’m convinced articles like this are just life support trying to claw back as many Musk dick riders back into normies.

It’s good work, and I think it should be done, but yeah, this is exactly what a sane person would expect to see given all the context.

It’s not news to most, but to the audience that I think this sort of thing is going after, it genuinely might be news to them.

Not that this article alone would get anyone to drop their fanboy bs, but it seems like it’s intended to be a tool to facilitate that. As for why it’s here specifically in world news, probably in case anyone wants to use it as a facilitation tool for anyone in their lives. Can’t use what you don’t know exists and all that lol

Hijacking my own comment in case anyone else is interested in this, apparently it’s called e ink, and they’re just now starting to come out with full color monitors using it. Very cool stuff!

I’m not sure if this would accomplish what you’re looking for, but it did give me an idea: wouldn’t it be cool if they had a monitor that used the fake ink effect (that thing that non-backlit digital books sometimes use) to make displays look “more natural” (read: different in an interesting way)

I think that’d be cool at the very least, and, due to it not being backlit, it would possibly get rid of the blue light issue (i’m not an expert in this field so idk how much of an issue blue light actually is when it comes to dopamine overdrive)

I might try and make a monitor like this if I can gather the skills to do it, I am only getting more excited about this idea lol

Ty for the inspiration!

Well I mean, that does make sense. I still believe tiktok [https://youtu.be/Ti8v4eL8oIE](really is a bit of spyware) (sorry for the longish YouTube video) but that could definitely be a contributing factor to this case

Ah I can’t really argue with that.

Republicans “trust me, bro”'d the US into shitty situations time and time again, and I’m slightly worried if we give them the ability to ban apps, they will not stop until the only shit left is Truth Social. They love their fucking echo chambers, as much as they used to rail against them.

I think that’s why my kneejerk reaction is to distrust their reasoning, but I did get what I was looking for in another part of this thread:

If the CCP can monitor you indefinitely, and have enough man/ai power to pull it off, they could theoretically social engineer infrastructure attacks without actually putting themselves at almost any legal risk (blackmailing is always illegal, but the methods used to get the blackmail would be hidden in the tandc’s)

Unfortunately, all I hear from republicans is tiktok=China, China=bad without any of these sorts of details, which is why I approached this with such skepticism initially

I literally can not imagine what life in China must be like. Especially for someone of about my socioeconomic class. I may have seen American Factory a while ago, but in case I’m thinking of the wrong thing, I’ll check it out again. Thanks for the rec!

(Also, in case it’s not clear, I wasn’t saying the US was anywhere near as bad as or better than China in regards to anything, just that I couldn’t tell if this specific rattling was just republican red scare bs or if it actually had substance to it. Turns out, there’s some substance to it, they’re just not articulating a position well on it, imo)

I would say malicious malware shouldn’t be sold on the app store and that anyone who hosts it should suffer whatever fallout it comes with (not the end users, the apk providers). However, due to the US being The Way That It Is™, we don’t actually have any recourse like that for providers of malware. As for spyware… I guess it probably should be handled like malware too. Eh you got me lol

I’ve said a couple different places in this thread I support a ban of tiktok on government phones and in at least one other place I support a ban of it on military bases, but my main issue was that I couldn’t figure out how it could be used for nefarious purposes outside of government phones or areas.

As for “you have the right to work with the data models, but not remove the data from US soil”, that’s a new one, I’ll have to think about that some more. Good point though, I think.

Beautiful, this is what I was looking for.

I think, still, that the best defense against this type of thing is education. Education on what nefarious actors can do with data types xy and z, and education on how to not get owned by a foreign actor.

I still think an app ban is principally un-American, but this is the imagination part that I couldn’t come up with that at least gives what I’m still calling republican hysteria a veneer of legitimacy.

Thank you for that!

I think the paranoia is what I was looking for, so thank you for delivering!

For the most obvious: idk, I think people should generally have a healthy distrust of those in government positions. Maybe ideally not, but in reality, it’s necessary to not be taken advantage of by any manner of power hungry people. If tiktok half truths inspire someone to start actually looking at what xyz government has done, then that’s a win in my book. If they just eat the half truths as is straight from tiktok, that’s when there’s a problem, but that’s what my “why don’t they educate people on how to spot propaganda” is to address.

Less reasonable: I think people should be allowed to do what they want to do long as it doesn’t infringe on the health and safety of another. I guess you can split hairs about it decreasing health due to people working out less or something like that, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason for government action.

Unreasonable: this actually seems the most reasonable to me, believe it or not. Military people posting the wrong thing at the wrong time from even a personal account can and has had bad effects on security before. That’s why I would support a ban of any spyware-like app on government devices and on military bases (this was originally only support for a ban on gov devices, but I think if we’re thinking about security, banning it in places where leaks may cost lives makes sense)

As for the endless possibilities of leveraging mental illness knowledge of a user, I’m afraid I can’t imagine what one could do. The only time I can imagine that would really matter is if China takes over the US and goes full genocide on the population. I think the world would go down in nuclear flames before that would happen though…

Unfortunately I literally can’t imagine anything convincing coming out of the US’s mouth given that case. It’s not like we can Manchurian candidate sleeper cells in Russia using our influence, and I’d argue China also has similar limitations.

The worst I can imagine is “us bad” with a lot of easily disprovable half truths that only stand for idiots who believe whatever tiktok gives them. And if the politicians who support this ban are arguing that most Americans are like that, then they’d better be pushing for better education or else they are also nefarious (because why else would they want people to be susceptible to propaganda, but not XYZ’s propaganda?)

I guess maybe my issue now is that it almost seems that republicans are trying to do their own propaganda machine, but are incensed that China might be stealing morons who are, as another commenter put it, ripe for radicalization. But that doesn’t seem right because I’d be surprised if they didn’t also have a bunch of outreach shit through tiktok… Idk, this is already delving into conspiracy theory territory so I’m gonna just stop myself here.

But all in all, I totally agree with your last paragraph, especially “if you don’t like it, then don’t use it”.

I argue the government is nefarious for using propaganda instead of the facts of the matter to sway public opinion. (This opinion extends to any government, which likely means every government because, in my general assumption, power holders seem to be unable to not lie to hold on to and amass more power.)

At this point, I can’t really argue with your point, you’re right, but I sure hate it regardless.

As for your edit, I don’t think that really applies. It’d make sense if the issue was voting for someone from China vs someone from the US, but this is more like “who’s allowed to spy on you? Our creepy guy who has a higher chance of doing something with the info they spied from you or this other creepy offshores guy who is less likely to do anything with that info (but the offshore guys are creepier! And worse!!! Trust me, bro!!!)”

In your example, obviously I’d rather the guy who is invested in the neighborhood to some degree so if it turns to shit, he’s going down with it. In my example, I’d much rather the guy who’s not.

Hmm… I hadn’t thought about it like that, that actually makes it make sense in a roundabout way. I’ll keep that one in the back of my head for now…

I can’t disagree with an opinion like that coupled with an anecdote like that.

I disagree that it’s the federal government who should be stepping in to limit screen time though.

In fact, tiktok is the only app I’ve seen that has a “why don’t you go touch grass” timer, so in that regard, it’s got less nefarious design patterns than, say, Facebook.

I don’t think I understand what you mean by dangerous in this context, honestly. When I think danger, I think of bodily harm. What does your definition of dangerous entail when it comes to social media apps that physically can’t cause harm? Is my understanding of danger too simplistic?

What are these interesting and terrifying possibilities inside information warfare and kinetic warfare?

That’s specifically what I’m after. It sounds like boogyman fear right now, but it sounds like you have something more concrete. What is it that you have in mind, exactly?