by Greg Piper
The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet” may not be as powerful as believed by the bipartisan chorus demanding reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
TikTok’s biggest immediate problem now may be its own users, their parents, and state attorneys general, rather than the state and federal lawmakers seeking to ban the Chinese-owned company and force ByteDance to sell it to an American entity, following a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Aug. 27 that denies TikTok legal immunity for an algorithm choice.
The potentially crippling liability a whole host of apps could now face is a civil parallel to France’s arrest and indictment of Telegram founder and Russian exile Pavel Durov, who faces up to 10 years in French prison for just one charge, for his hands-off approach to content moderation and resistance to governments.
Signal, Apple, and Meta’s WhatsApp are concerned by one of the charges – providing “cryptology services aimed at ensuring confidentiality without a license” – according to “three people with knowledge of the companies,” The New York Times reported Thursday. more
Words… only idiots think simple words – created by someone’s opinion – have ANY power.
Respectfully disagree, @ fullmetal. “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” Words are extremely powerful. Particularly when directed at impressionable, vulnerable children. Social media algorithms are explicitly designed to expose and draw us into the perverse. Example: I primarily use YouTube to listen to Chuck Missler Bible studies . Yet, YouTube relentlessly insists on placing an ad for a gay men hook up site, at the top of the feed. Every. Single. Time.
That said, my 12 year old does not own a phone or mobile device and I take the internet cable with me anytime I leave him home alone. I am very, very sad that this little girl is gone from this world.
Another lawsuit in 2022: “The girls were 8 and 9 when they died last year after viewing the challenge, which encouraged users to choke themselves until they passed out”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/technology/tiktok-blackout-challenge-deaths.html
WTF are these CHILDREN doing unsupervised on TikTok? I don’t understand parents handing 8, 9, and 10-year-old children a loaded mind-warping weapon and then being shocked and surprised when they pay the price. I hate that this shit happens, but there’s no replacement for parental involvement and vigilance.