"Eby’s first
post to hit one million views on TikTok was a series of messages she received from men on a dating app, after telling them she used a cane. (A sampling: '“If I bring my light saber, we can do battles,' 'You’ll fall for me before we even get dinner,' 'Order another cane because girl u got me trippin.') Much like Eby, many successful influencers with terminal illnesses are female and young, or young for their disease. Their relative youth only punctuates the loss when they’re gone. In May,
Madison Baloy, who shared her life with Stage IV cancer with almost half a million followers across TikTok and Instagram, died at age 26. In October,
Rachel Yaffe, a 27-year-old creator with liver cancer, passed away. Days later,
Bella Bradford said goodbye to her followers in a video she had recorded before dying of a rare soft-tissue cancer. 'Remember that you live every day, but you only die once,' she told them. She was 24...."
From
"When Your Terminal Illness Makes You a TikTok Star/After being diagnosed with A.L.S. in 2022, Brooke Eby could have turned inward. Instead, she opened up — and found a fan base online" (NYT)(free-access link).
I don't like the use of the word "star" in that headline. The point here should be that there is real human communication on TikTok, and the platform does not deserve to be scoffed as and dismissed as though it's just a lot of kids being silly or striving toward some perverse notion of fame. Why not throw it all away in the name of abstract "national security"? It's just a bunch of dummies and narcissists.
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8 comments:
Again, it's the same argument-by-distraction. The platform isn't being made illegal because of its content, good or bad - it's being made illegal because of the way the platform's programming is designed to surreptitiously strip device data away from the user, as the user is lulled into using the platform by its content.
The device data may have little to nothing to do with the programed content. I don't pretend to understand the finer points. Yes, I know that X and Facebook and Google do the same thing - but they are not sworn adversaries of the USA. Why can't a cogent argument be put together that will prevail over the issue properly, so that it can be fairly decided, and so that the user base can understand it? It's not being decided on Free Speech grounds, is it?
I’ve got a son with developmental disabilities. I should make a video of women’s reactions when I tell them that in online dating. Hahah. My video would be exactly zero seconds long.
“ Again, it's the same argument-by-distraction. The platform isn't being made illegal because of its content, good or bad - it's being made illegal because of the way the platform's programming is designed to surreptitiously strip device data away from the user, as the user is lulled into using the platform by its content.”
The government has offered both reasons. It can’t erase the revelation that it went after content. In any event, it is censoring a tremendous amount of valuable speech and it has put other interests above the interest in speech, but there’s a right to freedom of speech and there’s a high standard to meet to say something has outweighed it.
Second, if it’s really concerned about the ability to gather data on people it shouldn’t just be going after TikTok. What about the American companies that are being protected? The law is underinclusive and that’s suspicious.
YouTube has short videos. Other social media could put up a short-video feature pretty quickly to fill the vacuum if TikTok went out of business. Maybe even Truth Social could do it!
JSM
The DC Blob wants to ban Tic Tok because it's the one social media site that it can't force to censor you.
It's important to note that Musk gave up all of Twitter's meta data on Trump and his supporters after he took control of the platform.
Some pretty great gents on that dating app.
I'm avoiding the assumption that the data-mining being accomplished by China is the same as that being effected the corporations. Their objectives are completely different, and I suspect this might be at the root of the complaint, and the US is afraid of showing their cards. The cards will have to be shown eventually though.
Labor, environmental, and monetary arbitrage are a mainstay of progressive social, climate, and fiscal policies in our liberal Democrazi. Tick tock.
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