Scott Boehmer

Tag: TikTok

  • Views Are Lies

    Views are the most visible metric on the internet. You can see, in more or less real time, how many views something got on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and most other video platforms. X tracks views for every single thing you post, as does Threads. A view is the universal currency of success — more views, more fun.

    But it’s all nonsense. Views are nothing. Views are lies.

    David Pierce

    ‘Views’ are lies (The Verge)

  • The TikTok Ban Has Happened Before

    This is all to say that I’m of two minds about the legitimacy TikTok ban. China has cultivated a national surveillance apparatus so powerful and so efficient that it now exports city-scale surveillance packages to more than 52 nations around the world. Data inside a Chinese company is effectively also inside that national surveillance apparatus. So handing a live nationwide psychological profile on 150 million Americans to a Chinese-owned company is asking for trouble. But we also have shown such callous indifference to the privacy of Americans that specifically wringing our hands about TikTok while giving free rein to the rest of surveillance capitalism rings hollow to me.

    Jacob Ward

    The TikTok Ban Has Happened Before (The Rip Current)