TikTok’s inane videos are “eroding ambition and motivation” in Western teenagers, the president of the British Chambers of Commerce has claimed.
Baroness Martha Lane Fox, who is also a former Twitter board member and co-founder of Lastminute.com, said the video sharing app was bombarding young people with addictive content and keeping them glued to their phones.
The peer claimed TikTok was purposefully feeding Western teenagers “dumbed down” content while presenting Chinese young people with videos about “maths, science and the brilliance of going into space and invention”.
Hmm, maybe she has. No doubt we should have a wholemal, British made, version. The Austin Allegra version perhaps?
MLF is away with the fairies. Every time she pops up as a talking head somewhere she spouts nonsense. Makes you wonder what she actually did at Lastminute.com.
I would have thought TikTok’s like any of these sites. You get the sort of stuff you’re looking for*. So maybe it reflects what particular teenager’s interests are.
*Given the sort of TikTok links have been Whatsapped in my direction, mostly by presumed adults, we’re talking about the habits of the brain-dead here.
Jimmers,
I suspect she got lucky. Fell in with startup events, met someone, realised he had a great idea, worked within it in some capacity. Maybe she’s well organised or good at socialising to raise money or make speeches, I don’t know.
I mean, this is just a total failure to understand the situation: “The peer claimed TikTok was purposefully feeding Western teenagers “dumbed down” content while presenting Chinese young people with videos about “maths, science and the brilliance of going into space and invention”.”. No, TikTok would gladly provide this shit, they just aren’t allowed to.
Also, I think TikTok’s great. Yeah, there’s a load of shite, but has anyone looked at TV lately? It’s all shite. Newspapers: shite. There’s people doing tutorials about programming, personal finance, woodworking on TikTok. It’s all there if you want it. It, or something like it is just not going away.
While I’ve never been on TikTok, I regularly watch videos on YouTube, and I’m “fed” videos about electrical engineering, low-level computer hardware contruction and coding, roads history and development, railway history and development, japanese language and culture. Weird, I must be being fed stuff I’m interested in!
we should have a wholemal, British made, version
Build it and they will come, or more likely avoid it like a turd in a jacuzzi.
Bloke: Oh Gawd, if I stumbling on some lathing videos, that’s me lost for hours! “Watch as Chen takes this 80-metre tree and lathes it into set of soup bowls” 🙂
IIRC she was still quite young at the time, so was presumably hired to flash some cleavage at investors. Then all the legacy media latched onto posh totty as the spokesman of the dotcom bubble, and she eventually lucked into a peerage: “Shit, we’ve got to fill the quota of women. There was this bird on the telly yesterday, dotcom something, she’ll do…”
BIW,
My memory is also that she was front of house, PR and investor relations. She may have done a bit of tech stuff but that isn’t how she made her name.
MLF’s point is that the Chinese version of TikTok has use limits built in and directs to improving content, while the ex-China version deliberately points users to the most brain and soul-destroying content and makes limiting usage almost impossible. Like it’s designed to sap and undermine our culture…
Sounds like a reasonable point to me.
@MC that’s the thing.
I remember when Tiktok originally popped up many years ago, it was ‘known’ to have been set up by a current (or very recent) big wig in the CCP army. Who are rather keen on decades-long strategies which includes psychological influence on the ‘enemy’.
Some Jonny-come-latelys seem to suddenly be becoming aware of this, it seems.
Dunno who she is, but, she has a valid point.
The Romans used to inspire their scions by showing them the death masks of their ancestors and praising the achievements and daring the kids to outdo those, and the Chinese seem to have a similar idea here, and, as a bonus, they ban the stupid stuff.
What is not to like?
Can’t get past torygraph paywall any more
The comment in the snippet is completely plausible and, if true, eminently sensible.
If she goes on to say “we need a British version” then that is bonkers, but you haven’t quoted that bit.