opinion

Beyond TikTok *Maybe* Being Banned.

~ Taran ~ 9 Comments

The buzz about the possible TikTok ban has been pretty consistent from what I’ve seen in social media, but it seems like most people don’t get why it’s happening.

One post on Mastodon I read said that it was a way for the government to alienate GenZ, and I thought – is this network really such a big deal? Anecdotally, I know quite a few people who peruse TikTok, and I shake my head because I explain why it’s not a great social network to use. In fact, the reasons not to use TikTok are pretty much the same as why people shouldn’t be using Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter X, and whatever else is out there: They want to know your habits, as I wrote.

In that regard, if TikTok is used so exclusively by GenZ, it’s easy to imagine lobbyists from the big social network companies might push for TikTok being banned. That is likely, since all that data on GenZ isn’t in their hands and they believe it should be. But it goes a bit deeper.

…U.S. officials fear that the Chinese government is using TikTok to access data from, and spy on, its American users, spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories...

“Congress approved a TikTok ban. Why it could still be years before it takes effect.“, Rob Wile and Scott Wong, NBCNews, April 23rd, 2024

That’s fair. We have enough domestic (American) disinformation and conspiracy theories during a 2024 election, we don’t need other governments doing their own to their benefit, as happened in 2016 with Russia.

Interestingly, and perhaps unrelated, the U.S. Senate passed a bill renewing FISA, which makes discussion about a ban of any foreign social media a little awkward.

…“It’s important that people understand how sweeping this bill is,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Intelligence Committee and outspoken proponent of privacy protections. “Something was inserted at the last minute, which would basically compel somebody like a cable guy to spy for the government. They would force the person to do it and there would be no appeal.”…

“Senate passes bill renewing key FISA surveillance power moments after it expires“, Frank Thorp V, Sahil Kapur and Ryan Nobles, NBCNews, April 20th, 2024.

Articles about FISA are very revealing – but people who are focused on the TikTok ban alone are missing some great information. This article by Hessie Jones on Forbes puts together some pretty great quotes. so much so I won’t quote it and point you at it: “Data Privacy And The Contested Extension Of FISA, Section 702” (April 23rd, 2024).

You see, it’s not just about foreign data:

“…Under FISA’s Section 702, the government hoovers up massive amounts of internet and cell phone data on foreign targets. Hundreds of thousands of Americans’ information is incidentally collected during that process and then accessed each year without a warrant — down from millions of such queries the US government ran in past years. Critics refer to these queries as “backdoor” searches…“

“Senate passes, Biden signs surveillance bill despite contentious debate over privacy concerns“, Ted Barrett, Morgan Rimmer and Clare Foran, CNN, April 20th, 2024.

So, what’s feeding generative artificial intelligences? Why, you are, of course, with everyone’s social network ‘allowing’ you to do so.

The TikTok ban will likely be fought in court for years, anyway, and who knows what direction it will take depending on who wins the election?

But social networks and companies will still be hoovering that data up, training artificial intelligences all about you. It will help train algorithms to sell you stuff and influence you to make decisions.

TikTok ain’t the issue.

Paper vs. Digital: a personal perspective.

~ Taran ~ 1 Comment

Books in: R.A. Salvatore signed!Someone asked about whether people preferred reading paper books or digital on Twitter, and I responded ‘paper’ with a brief and slightly inaccurate explanation.

So I’ll be less brief here and more accurate.

This is, of course, my experience – and my opinion.

When it comes to what I read, I rarely read novels these days – novels smaller than the ones in the picture (picture less than 500 pages) are sort of like snacks for me. Louis L’amour novels are typically done in a matter of hours.

When I read these days, it tends to be on different specialized topics – my father would complain I read only textbooks when I contributed to our library when I was in secondary school. It got worse since then.

What happens with all that reading is that I end up with references – sometimes I’ll poke back to a book and find something I’m not sure about, or look for a quote, or try to align ideas from other books. To do this, over the years, I’ve used my memory of the books themselves – shape, size, even smell, weight… I remember the books like objects.

Here I am, someone who has worked with data for decades, and I can tell you that the digital formats are also objects. They are not dynamic, like software (well, some are these days), so the way I remember things with digital revolves around how something works – not how something sits there and does nothing.

What I have found is that with digital books, I cannot reference as easily. Maybe it’s a problem I have, maybe not, but it’s simply that way for me. I can look at a bookshelf, though, and find a specific book and drill down to what I was looking for faster than I can search a digital text.

I know there are tools for digital text. I’ve tried them. I’ve used them. I’ve Grepped like a maniac. But in the end, I may not remember the exact words I’m looking for… but I can remember page numbers, the weight of the pages on either side of something I noticed. I can find what I need in the books I’ve read, no matter how old.

Maybe the indexing system of my mind is antiquated, a holdover from the times before the Internet. It is, however, what I have, and what I use.

Paper wins.