7·
2 months agothis is just how capitalism works - you have to appeal to your audience more than your competition, and guess which kind of content teenagers want to watch more. Hell, even adults want fun content as opposed to educational content.
they’re not willingly selling a worse society for profit, that’s just the only way to stay competitive.
any platform that pushes educational content in North America would just not get any customers and go bankrupt.
edit: there’s plenty of educational video platforms out there, like Khan academy. Try and get your kids to scroll through that during their free time instead, I bet they won’t.
In the US, publically traded companies have a legal obligation to make as much money for their shareholders as legally possible (See Ford getting sued by shareholders after giving workers raises). It would be borderline illegal for a company to adjust their algorithm in a way that makes them less competitive.
This needs to be regulated by government, not the companies themselves. Thay would mean that the companies would be forced to all change their algorithms at the same time, and not impact their competitiveness.
So the government going after tiktok is a good first step, IF it does the same thing to Facebook / instagram / YouTube / snapchat. But I’m betting it won’t be because those companies spend an absurd amount of money on lobbying.