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TikTok and YouTube are profiting from a new wave of British influencers producing misogynistic content that domestic abuse campaigners have warned is radicalising young men.

TikTok and YouTube are profiting from a new wave of British influencers producing socialist content that economists have warned is radicalising young men.

Which should we worry about more? Andrew Tate or Owen Jones? The death toll is significantly higher for one of those two sets of ideas after all.

21 thoughts on “Social media”

  1. Campaigners say some of the messages being promoted by the men, including not allowing a partner to have male friends or stopping them from going to nightclubs, amount to coercive control.

    So if the wife tells me not to go out drinking with other women, that’s “coercive control”?

  2. My wife never objected to me going on lengthy overseas research exercises with a very obviously butch lesbian colleague, but objected strenuously to me even having an after work drink with a attractive straight female colleague, even in a group. Strange that.

  3. Obviously preventing women exerting coercive control over men is men exerting coercive control over women. I note by the way that one of the authors is Ali Mitib, who would surely approve of coercive control over the ladies.

    But as for socialism, I’d argue that all those who whine over the vile misogynistic influencers would be staunch supporters of socialism. With themselves on the top, of course.

  4. And anudder thing:

    TikTok and YouTube are profiting

    YouTube hasn’t made a profit since being bought by Google in 2006. TikTok is also boasting about “revenues” rather than profit. It’s insanely expensive to run these services, electricity costs are going through the roof, advertising revenues are plummeting, and the regulatory environment is becoming ever more hostile to mining personal data.

    Hence the madness of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg’s $100Bn bet that people will want to wear computer goggles on their face, all day, for work. Big Tech is in big trouble, it’s not going to go away or anything, but it’s due a major correction.

    People like Andrew Tate (who I am aware of against my will) aren’t even a rounding error in the finances of the tech giants. Their grifts aren’t actually profitable, they’re microscopic plankton, parasitic on a business model (effectively unlimited ‘free’ online storage and bandwidth) that itself is under massive pressure.

  5. The domestic violence laws have been updated to include a concept of coercive control. Of course the law will apply equally to men and women. I am sure that the CPS and the police will be bring cases against women who are subjecting their domestic partners to unacceptable levels of coercive control.

  6. Hence the madness of Meta and Mark Zuckerberg’s $100Bn bet that people will want to wear computer goggles on their face, all day, for work.
    And those wrist video phones will never catch on, will they?

  7. Harry Haddock's Ghost

    I am sure that the CPS and the police will be bring cases against women

    and indeed they do. DA against men is all to common, I’m afraid.

  8. BiS – people buy smart watches as fashion statements and toys. It’s a nice sideline for the big tech companies, because it’s another way of collecting your data. From a user’s perspective, it’s just a fancy watch. A companion to your smartphone, not a new platform as such.

    Meta is a new platform predicated on the idea that people will want to do business metings in virtual reality. But people don’t want to do business metings in virtual reality, there’s no compelling reason why they should, and there’s plenty of compelling reasons why that would be a horrible, shitty experience for everyone involved.

    There’s 100 billion reasons why Mark Zuckerberg wants it to succeed (his business is dying), unfortunately he hasn’t yet found a convincing reason why actual customers should put money into this stuff.

    If it was gonna catch on, it’d be catching on. It’s not catching on, landfills are going to be filled with unwanted VR headsets, just a couple of stratigraphic layers above 3D tellies, Windows Phone devices and ET cartridges for the Atari 2600.

  9. Going back a few years, my wife (Chinese ethnic Malaysian) asked me how many women I worked with. It being a small internet company and mostly men I said “Three. The woman who does the network and IT Operations, the woman that did bookkeeping/payroll/accounts and the woman in marketing”.

    She then asked me to stop working with them as she didn’t like it and didn’t think it was appropriate for a married man.

    Despite being IT director I was buggered if I knew how to do that without facing an employment tribunal, so I explained that real life didn’t work like that. She was more than a little upset at my refusal, I don’t think she ever understood why I couldn’t fulfil her wifely request.

    😐

  10. Obviously preventing women exerting coercive control over men is men exerting coercive control over women. I note by the way that one of the authors is Ali Mitib, who would surely approve of coercive control over the ladies.

    Ah, but assuming that Ali Mitib is a member of the Religion of Peace (Ha Ha, no, but really…), then he would argue that it is not him who is using coercion against his wife, but simply that his wife is obeying the tenets of Islam for the love of Allah…or whatever.

    As if Mo the Pedo and or Allah were somehow puppeteering the estimated 800 million Muslim women worldwide.

    Yet, the Powers that Be will ignore that more obvious, clear-cut and explicit coercion because they don’t want to be seen as Islamaphobic.

    So that’s alright then…apparently.

  11. Meta is a new platform predicated on the idea that people will want to do business metings in virtual reality.

    Not really, the hope was that everyone would do nearly everything in virtual reality – especially shopping. Why Zuckerberg didn’t spot the big neon Underpants Gnome question mark flashing between shite VR headset and profit is a mystery, one that suggests he just lucked into his previous success.

    I see Apple has further delayed its “Apple Glass” augmented reality vision accessory. Perhaps they’ve solved how and are staring bleakly at why.

  12. No one has ever beaten their wife because they saw some Andrew Dice Clay or Andrew Tate character.

    Children have been separated from their law-abiding fathers because of domestic abuse campaigners.

  13. Steve,

    “BiS – people buy smart watches as fashion statements and toys. It’s a nice sideline for the big tech companies, because it’s another way of collecting your data. From a user’s perspective, it’s just a fancy watch. A companion to your smartphone, not a new platform as such.”

    I don’t get it at all. You can go out with your smartwatch, but oh, it needs to be paired to your phone? So, why don’t you just use your phone? And don’t give me that fitness stuff. Go for a walk for 20 minutes. If you feel like it’s too easy, walk a bit further next time. When I was getting pretty fit at the gym, I just wrote down what I last did on a piece of card and next time, if it felt too easy, I pushed it a little higher.

    Fat women wearing Fitbits cracks me up. Podgy middle aged types that drive their car to Starbucks, buy a Venti latte with extra cream and a cake and they’re wearing a Fitbit.

    “Meta is a new platform predicated on the idea that people will want to do business metings in virtual reality. But people don’t want to do business metings in virtual reality, there’s no compelling reason why they should, and there’s plenty of compelling reasons why that would be a horrible, shitty experience for everyone involved.”

    There’s always this idea of doing things the way we did before, but on a new technology. When what works is figuring out how to do what the thing does for you, but in a better way with the technology. Like, internet means I don’t do that many meetings now. Most things are better done by sending an email or using tools like Jira to have a discussion. No need to synchronise people, everyone answers when it’s suitable, and so forth. If something’s urgent or you just get stuck figuring it out online, then hold a meeting.

    And it’s like “you can walk around in a virtual shop and pick things off the shelf”. Yeah, but typing in what I want and clicking it is faster. So, why would I want this?

    There might be some uses (gaming, movies, porn), but it’s only going to happen when it’s like Stark technology, and about as light as a pair of glasses.

  14. PJF – There’s a big consumer play for Meta, but selling hardware to Joe Public is a low margin activity unless you’re Apple. Enterprise is where the big profitable SaaS customers live.

    That’s what the partnership with Microsoft is about. The idea is that employees can be encouraged, somehow, to wear goofy VR headsets instead of just using Teams on your laptop like a normal person.

    But this is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist: not many people are sitting there wishing their business call was more like VRChat.

  15. BOM4 – And it’s like “you can walk around in a virtual shop and pick things off the shelf”. Yeah, but typing in what I want and clicking it is faster. So, why would I want this?

    Yarp, virtual reality is just a worse way of doing everything except play virtual reality games. And that’s a niche.

  16. There’s a big consumer play for Meta but selling hardware to Joe Public is a low margin activity unless you’re Apple.

    Yes, but the hardware should be subsidised (like Facebook in order to collect data / sell adverts). Meta will want to advertise to consumers and be a shopping mall – that’s the (imagined) big money. Until they can make the Metaverse compelling they should be giving the headsets away for free.

    Perhaps because I’m no tech business whizz, I don’t see big profits in tacking something on to established Enterprise subscription software. Please explain. I mean, it’s bad enough risking having Bill Gates sitting in on every business communication – adding Zuckerberg to the mix might actually make Enterprise realise it’s on the road to hell, and go “back” to something more, dunno, open source / proprietary.

    As for Apple, apparently they’re aiming their headset / glasses very high end – two or three thousand bucks maybe. No idea who that’s for. I suppose it could replace a laptop / ipad for travelling business folks; just have a bluetooth keyboard with trackpad and no-one can see what you’re typing. Supplementary info displayed during meetings without obviously looking things up.

  17. That’s what the partnership with Microsoft is about. The idea is that employees can be encouraged, somehow, to wear goofy VR headsets instead of just using Teams on your laptop like a normal person.

    So, I can do that drunk and in my pyjamas from the privacy of my own bedroom? Otherwise, what’s the fucking point of an avatar / VR?

    Seriously.

  18. Bloke in North Dorset

    I’m a late adopter type and bought my first Apple Watch last year and like all late adopters wish I’d moved earlier:

    Its just told me that since I started taking blood pressure tablets my average resting heart rate shot up by 10BPM, which I can raise with my GP when I have a review on Friday.

    When I fell over recently it asked if I was OK and was about to ring emergency services. A useful feature when yo spend a lot of time out hiking alone.

    I have set a daily active calories target, which helps with fitness and weight management and stops me lounging about the house at this time of year.

    I link it to my headphones when I’m pottering about so I can listen to podcasts without carrying a phone or other device.

    Its expensive but I like and value those and other benefits.

    It tells the time as well 🙂

  19. Never heard of Tate until this latest blowup. So I watched a couple of his vids.

    Migawd, the matriarchy will obviously never let him survive! Big Sister is going to be all over him.

  20. PJF,

    “Perhaps because I’m no tech business whizz, I don’t see big profits in tacking something on to established Enterprise subscription software. Please explain. I mean, it’s bad enough risking having Bill Gates sitting in on every business communication – adding Zuckerberg to the mix might actually make Enterprise realise it’s on the road to hell, and go “back” to something more, dunno, open source / proprietary.”

    Whoever runs your software/services, you run the risk of them snooping on your communication, taking a look at the emails.

    And enterprise is really where the money is with software. I wouldn’t go near consumer software. Armies of people competing in that market of games, utilities or services. Selling to customers who mostly want it for free (so, you’re running on ad support). Enterprises don’t mind paying because they attach a value to it.

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