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I disagree with the unbiased part of the comment. IMO all social medias, whether it's Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok - they are all heavily censored and their algorithm is tipped in a direction that optimizes attention, click throughs, and in general, is not good for you.

Notice how on TikTok, even accounts you follow sometimes will show up with the + sign, begging you to click Follow eventhough you are already following them. This isn't a bug, rather, it's dark UX tricks to keep you trained on clicking the follow button.

On Meta (be it Facebook or Instagram), you only need to be sympathetic to what people in Gaza are experiencing to begin to see the censorship. It's blatantly obvious.

Coming back to TikTok, similar to Meta, they have crafted an incredible algorithm that will keep you glued to your phone. We have no idea if they have adjusted the levers to increase dissent in young people in the West. Just because they are saying they haven't, or we have not been able to prove that they haven't, doesn't mean they won't. I can tell you with a guarantee that if Instagram or YouTube were allowed to operate in China, they would certainly use these levers to increase dissent against the CCP. We already have an example of what these companies are doing to censor certain content and boost others in places like India and Pakistan.

In general, all of these social media companies are this generations cigarette companies. We need heavy regulation from congress. We need to take tech's lobbyist money and not do their bidding.

We need to shutdown lunatics like Andreessen Horowitz and more.



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