It looks like the US government is going to put some kind of ban on TikTok, or force them to sell or something like that, because you know, China is bad and who knows what they are going to do with all that data that they collect from the 150 million Americans on the platform, and how much influence will they be able to exert through that access. Well, they will do the same thing that the US has done through their numerous platforms to influence all kinds of thing in order to increase their reach, their control and most importantly, their profits.
TikTok is a scourge on society.
But, is it a governments job to dictate what social platforms citizens use?
Just think how it wasn't that long ago that people were up in arms about how China and Russia block citizen access to Western media, and how dangerous it is. How when governments dictate what their citizens are allowed to see and not see, it leads to those citizens being manipulated, controlled, and it leads to them supporting or being forced into being governed by terrible regimes.
That only applies to the bad governments though.
The good governments governments are all about supporting freedoms of the citizens, about helping them become the best versions of themselves, about building infrastructure and education systems that help people improve the quality of life and have more options in front of them. To align the powers of the corporations with the best interest of all the citizens so that everyone is winning together. A symbiotic relationship where everyone benefits, not an abuse relationship where a small fraction benefit, from taking advantage and control over the majority.
Glad the majority of governments have the best interest of citizens at heart!
Finland, a country that less than two decades ago prided itself on having no national debt, is again entering into austerity measures, raising taxes, cutting services to citizens and the like. They just can't balance the books, because they don't want to. None of the countries want to balance the books, because debt is just too lucrative as a generation mechanism for that micro minority that the governments say they aren't supporting - but that is where the value from the debt they generate ends up.
And, they don't want to recognize that the reason they can't balance their books any longer, is because of the finance structures of the very corporations they have supported to extract all they can from us, the citizens, in order to hit those numbers, increase profits, make the GDP look good, even though it negatively impacts on us.
And, of course, Finland isn't the only country to be in this perpetual debt cycle that just increasingly gets worse and worse, until it all collapses and, the people suffer even more. We then go out and blame the government, then install another government in its place that promises to do better, without recognizing that it is the government itself, not who is in government that is the problem.
Name a government that has been truly good for the people it has governed.
It doesn't exist.
And this is part of the reason that all the governments end, because they are unable to actually help people thrive, so all they do is try to extract all they can until someone notices. And then the next figurehead of the extractors is elected, promising to clean up the swamp, and pandering to the lowest common denominators - hoping not to get noticed too soon. It is an endless cycle, for as long as we keep supporting it, and no government is ever going to be able to make our lives better. The best they can do is cater to some small group, and then shift their focus to the next, in a process of help and hurt.
The world of humans is far too complex for governments to handle, because they work on algorithmic rules that are always unable to meet the needs for everyone well. So, what they do is build algorithms that are going to help themselves, because at least they know what they want - power, and control over resources, so they can get more power and control over resources.
We are human resources.
The picture is from the gym tonight, and I found it interesting. It is the chain of a rowing machine, so that it goes around and around and gets nowhere. As you can see, the word "peer" is printed on two of the links, but it doesn't appear on the others in the picture, just those two as far as I could find.
Peer to peerPeer with Peer.
Around and around, and around again.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]