Both @steevc and I noticed, after both of us collected the news for our posts from yesterday, that there is a new wave of censorship going around in the world. He reported about the one in the UK while I talked about the one in Malaysia, affecting one of our witnesses. I saw something about Australia not so long ago.
There is talk about closing down Tiktok in the US, a rhetoric that has been borrowed for a while by some of our politicians too, after this platform had a role in the elections fiasco in my country.
Personally, I don't like Tiktok, don't have an account and don't intend to, and I believe it can be dangerous in many ways, from collecting data, making user profiles, to creating dangerous trends, and I'm not going into politics here, although we've seen it can be used as a weapon there. What I'd rather focus on are the challenges that I hear are made on Tiktok, especially followed by youngsters looking for belonging and approval, and which can lead to serious accidents.
The collecting of data and making user profiles happens on EVERY social media, so the only difference is WHO collects and uses them. And with the world starting to become multi-polar, that problem will become more and more of an issue based on which decisions may be made.
After all, Western social media platforms are forbidden in China. Interestingly, Tiktok doesn't target the Chinese market either, although it is a Chinese company behind it, but it is oriented to the global audience.
The Chinese have a version of Tiktok called Douyin, which is exclusively focused on the internal market. One can wonder why the different platforms, right?
Anyway, we have entered a new world, where social media impact drives the agenda, can decide presidents and what is or isn't relevant, while the traditional news (i.e. cable news networks, news agencies, and anything else we can add in here) lost control almost completely and... to be honest, are going kind of crazy about it, instead of understanding the situation and maybe even evolving, where possible.
The approach is... let's ban what we don't understand rather than understand the paradigm shift and see how you remain relevant in the new reality.
I don't often use the Bible as a reference in my writings, but the "forbidden fruit" approach has a long history of being ineffective for humans since the original sin. You'll always find enough people who will do exactly the opposite of what they are told, others who simply disregard you as a legitimate authority, and the category I like the most... the curious ones, who want to know what is behind the locked door.