Interesting to note here: getting preteens to confusedly call Congress with threats of self harm and questions like “what is Congress” with a push notification is not the best plan
Democracy doesn’t work when centralized powers build tools like TikTok or Facebook to influence people’s thoughts with bias and other psychological hacks.
If it were me, I would ban all social media platforms larger than 100,000, and create task forces to reign in on predatory marketing and social media collusion.
People just can’t be trusted to see how they are constantly being manipulated by companies with deep pockets and foreign governments. Children and adults alike. It’s not people’s fault either.
Either that or we need a widespread social repudiation of these platforms, a wake up to the fact that our minds are constantly being poisoned, like Tobacco was reigned in.
Tobacco took like 50 years. I genuinely don’t think we have the time ;-)
After this staffer asked a caller to give their name to record their message, the young caller asked if they could leave their comment without giving out their information. The senior staffer recalled explaining that protecting the caller’s private information was exactly the point of the legislation they were calling about.
No, every other platform is free to violate your privacy and serve you up propaganda from domestic/foreign misinformation campaigns without any repercussions. If this bill addressed that in some way I would likely support it.
But this is about China, specifically. Russian bot/click farms and homegrown manipulation of social media platforms are a much more apparent and immediate issue that has already played a significantly role in the destruction of Democracy and accountability in this country.
censorship, censorship, censorship = narrative control. That simple.
