The thread is about tiktok being banned in Albania. I thought you might be familiar with Australia’s threats to ban tiktok whilst ignoring the crimes other tech companies commit and making no effort to protect Australians from them.

Did you miss the comment I made about Instagram? That was specifically about the content of the site having a negative impact on users.

I commented on your post so yeah I think I managed to click on it. Did you bother to read mine and think of a coherent response before typing? Nah just ignore my efforts to put this in a wider context and dismiss me as a tankie. I’ll just dismiss you as racist since you only complain when it’s a Chinese company doing it.

I’m all in favour of robust privacy protections like GDPR. I don’t support yellow peril bullshit when a Chinese company successfully operates in the same space that US companies do.

Is it a bad thing when political leaders have a presence on social media? Would you prefer it if the leaders of the 2 biggest economies in the world were actively censored and suppressed by these platforms?

Seems like a weird complaint to make.

Everything TikTok is accused of is either just a true for other social media/ website or more so. Thanks to Edward Snowden we know for a fact that US tech companies forward your emails and data to the NSA. There is no evidence of Tiktok sharing any data with any government. Yet it’s tiktok that get’s threatened with bans rather than facebook and gmail.

Instagram is notorious for making girls feel bad about their appearance and pushing them to anorexia and self harm yet no one’s proposing to ban it.

Because the tail doesn’t wag the dog.

You may as well ask why Toyota sells right hand drive cars in Japan and why it sells left hand drive cars in USA?

Why do you think that is?

The truth, duh

Not at all. When google operated a search engine in China it looked nothing like the Google you can access in other countries.

Why would google or tiktok handicap themselves and operate a less profitable, less competitive version of their service when that isn’t required by local regulations?

Don’t forget this line;

The social media platform told the BBC it had found no evidence the person who allegedly stabbed the 14-year-old boy, or the victim himself, had TikTok accounts.

It’s a huge failing by government regulators. It appears China is the only country capable of policing tech companies adequately.

Except no one involved uses tiktok

We have the power to fine companies up to £18m or 10% of their qualifying worldwide revenue – whichever is greater – and in very serious cases we can apply for a court order to block a site in the UK.

Firstly I’d expect regulators to focus on the big fish rather than this minnow. Secondly losing 10% of revenue isn’t a huge deal whilst any fines larger than that would get the entire news media rallying behind you. Shutting down the site is premature to say the least.

That being said I am surprised that this legislation applies to everyone immediately. You’d think they’d start with a high threshold of say 1 million active monthly users and then reduce that each year as practices and technologies get established. It’s ridiculous to expect hobbyists and small scale operations to be able to meet this burden just as easily as multi-trillion pound corporations.

The suffragettes are remembered fondly. They even had a rail line named after them in London.

It also seems very obvious any answer is given will be a non-answer.

Of course it will be a non-answer since you just posted a whataboutism. You gotta give people something to work with if you want a meaningful response.

There are numerous reports of newborns with birth defects being euthanised in NHS hospitals during the Thalidomide crisis. I’m not aware of anyone waiting until the child is one year old to abort. Surely any justification to abort would be identifiable at birth.

The author discusses the impact of the pill at length in her book and I don’t think she identifies as pro-life. My reading of the article was that she would like abortion to be a last resort not a first resort.

I’m pro-choice and atheist. I just thought the article presented an interesting perspective.

How did the fetus get into the woman’s womb? Why do they have no responsibility towards it?

Showing consideration for the life you created when it is in it’s most vulnerable form isn’t in anyway comparable to organ donation.

It’s not enough just to discuss it in the abstract, they need to interact with it in a controlled environment

I’d prefer for kids to learn to navigate social media whilst they have access to adult supervision and oversight. 16yos aren’t going to listen to their parents’ advice.

There are toilets that analyse your waste and send the results to your doctor. They ID you by scanning your anus since everyone’s anus is unique. Maybe one day the results can be sent to your kitchen and your fridge and airfryer can deny you access to unhealthy foods when your toilet tells them to.

That’s an immature argument. “If you don’t like guns don’t buy one.” “If you don’t like abortion don’t get one.” Maybe we could think a little deeper?

One of the reasons the internet is so centralised is due to network effects. I have a facebook account because everyone else has one and it’s difficult to maintain a social life and a family life if I exclude myself from that space. I can choose not to drive a car, too but again that would make life much harder for myself. Perhaps we could subject these businesses to some basic standards of accountability and oversight and put the public interest ahead of private profit once in a while.

Given that they can rewrite their T&C or sell to facebook at anytime avoiding practices you dislike isn’t practical.