It is definitely part of TikTok's mission to sow dissent in free western countries. And considering that the majority of people in those countries have lousy critical thinking skills, they'll readily believe stuff like this.
That's why TikTok should be banned outright.
potato3732842 · 1h ago
Any those who did their little, blameless, or so we're led to believe, parts to create the situation in which such a message resonates so broadly bare no fault?
Every person who was blanket dismissing legitimate concerns about the macroeconomic implications of immigration policy as racist has some fault here too. Though obviously that's a much tougher pill to swallow than "china bad" (edit: note, I didn't say china wasn't bad).
observationist · 1h ago
The West can be fraught with flaws and weaknesses and there exist bad actors taking advantage of this. This doesn't excuse the active and malicious exploitation of those flaws and weaknesses by other nations, and it doesn't somehow make continuing with the situation the logical outcome.
TikTok is worse than fentanyl. Merely by using it, you're making it better at destroying time, exploiting minds like yours, and becoming more effective at the malignant uses to which it is put, whether by China, trolls, or marketing departments.
YouTube isn't much better. We need regulation banning the adtech global surveillance system from harvesting data, and strict regulation limiting what can be done with data that is voluntarily shared, and how that data is secured and discarded. We've been dealing with terrible outcomes from the status quo for more than ten years; it's past time to fix it.
If a company can't abide by the regulation, either due to scaling compliance or technological dependency on protected data, then the company should fail.
With a sane system, the doom spiral of hyperpersuasion content factories tailoring attention sinks to individuals wouldn't be possible.
maxglute · 1h ago
>TikTok's mission to sow dissent
You mean a western/Canadian marketting firm run by an Indian?
This comment is definitely part of CIA's mission to sow anti TikTok dissent in propagandized western countries.
>lousy critical thinking skills
Amplified by Canadians with basic critical thinking skills from having eyes and a brain.
In last 20 years, Canadian immigration went from 10% -> 25% Indians, 25k to 125k.
Indian (and Pakistani) operated western franchises are notorious for hiring their own in Canadian urban areas. Disproportionately so. They're also the diasphora that now disproportionately, visibly runs timmies, pizza pizza, popeyes etc... aka western franchises. Almost every other diasphora, i.e. East Asians, now mostly visibly operates their own ethnic franchises (bubble tea etc). 10/20/30 years ago everyone was running subways, convience stores, gas stations, but immigration rate was less, and you still had teens working summer jobs at many of these places.
No minority group has peaked Canadian immigration like Indians. PRC at second highest was only 30k per year. No other diasphora had numbers to sweep entry level hiring in franchises historically.
And this isn't even a knock on Indian ran operations - TBH quality tends to go up when Timmies switch to Indian ownership that replaces workforce with Indians. But let's not pretend there's not (at least very obviously percieved) biased in hiring. I know people in social services that work with youth in at/risk diasphora communities, there's pervasive complaining that they're locked out of a lot of entry level jobs because Indian businesses won't hire them.
delfinom · 38m ago
>It is definitely part of TikTok's mission to sow dissent in free western countries.
How?
Because YouTube and other social media is the same as TikTok.
The feed algorithms have a inherent bias by the human audience. Outrage and clickbait draw human eyeballs more than plain content. Advertisers pay more for more eyeballs. The algorithms job is to maximize eyeballs to get more advertiser money.
If anything, Western (lack of education) and degenerating society is leading to more outrage and clickbait working.
happytoexplain · 1h ago
You believe only people with lousy critical thinking skills can be tricked by genAI?
nozzlegear · 1h ago
I believe that only people with lousy critical thinking skills will readily believe a TikTok video about a white guy being rejected from a Tim Hortons job interview because he doesn't speak Punjabi.
bryanlarsen · 3m ago
It's a stretch, but not a big stretch. Almost all Canadians have likely experienced Tim's where all/most workers are of a single ethnicity. Pretty much all small businesses prefer to hire people referred or recommended by people they trust. If the owner of the local Tim's franchise is Punjabi, it's quite likely most of the people they trust are also Punjabi, and most of the people they get recommendations for are Punjabi. Almost all of the networking they do is through the temple.
Rejected for not speaking Punjabi? Not likely. Rejected for not having a recommendation from one of the franchise owner's network, all of whom happen to be Punjabi? Quite likely. The difference between one and the other might be subtle.
ryandv · 52m ago
The implication here then is that a stupefying proportion of Canadians have "lousy critical thinking skills", because even an associate professor of marketing from the article was, quote:
[...] initially taken in. "I was convinced that this was a real character and had
a real story that he was trying to tell in his little eight-second videos,"
he said.
I don't disagree with your assertion; rather, I find it an understatement.
jalapeno_a · 1h ago
The phrase “White man” sure terrifies journalists.
streptomycin · 2h ago
He's AI, created by an Indian guy as a marketing stunt for his AI company lol
ortusdux · 1h ago
Great way to kick of legislation against your industry lol
morkalork · 3h ago
Youth unemployment in Toronto is somewhere around 20%* now; this kind of bullshit is just fanning the flames of resentment towards immigrants.
Yeah its very dumb stuff that people unfortunately fall for.
If those flames of resentment could be redirected toward policy makers and corporations for flooding the lower-income labour market and away from those who took the opportunity, that'd be great.
potato3732842 · 1h ago
There's some weapons grade irony in saying that the lower class people "fell for it" when the misdeeds of the past decades got us here were bought and paid for in large part with the political will of the middle and upper middle classes who "fell for it"
righthand · 2h ago
So we make AI bots that do that? I am not one for war but it seems like the corporate and political worlds want everything to descend into AI spamming for whatever cause.
lostmsu · 1h ago
That's including 15-19yo at least half of which should still be studying.
joemazerino · 2h ago
"..because it wasn't clear enough that they were made with AI."
Having a doubt about the creation tool gives the CBC (purveyor of much misinformation itself) the pass to hand-wave anything. Perfect.
dogleash · 3h ago
>Marketing experts say it's deceptive and unethical.
So, standard marketing. Got it.
What sets these videos apart is that they are impalatable to the status quo.
You can describe why these videos are wrong and I'll agree with you. But wrong is unfortunately irrelevant.
One could say that the marketers failed to understand the audience. I think they targeted a lowbrow segment quite effectively. See the fact anyone is talking about this. Their failure was misunderstanding the boundaries of sleaze that would slide under the radar. No not the race baiting either, there's plenty more of that on TikTok (much more egregious too).
By tying this race baiting specifically to Tim's there was someone uniquely situated against it. And no, Tim's doesn't care about racism either, it's the damage to Tim's reputation. But Tim is in a bind. They can't get their social media team to make a low-brow response to counter the original message. Imagine the reputation damage if the press got ahold of THAT. Therefore Tim calls on the CBC to write a press release on their behalf that Tim is not racist and to perpetuate retaliatory damage against anyone who would sully the name of a great Canadian institution.
advisedwang · 1h ago
These aren't "impalpable to the status quo". They are misleading people and will result in policy based on fantasy. It will do real harm to real people.
That's why TikTok should be banned outright.
Every person who was blanket dismissing legitimate concerns about the macroeconomic implications of immigration policy as racist has some fault here too. Though obviously that's a much tougher pill to swallow than "china bad" (edit: note, I didn't say china wasn't bad).
TikTok is worse than fentanyl. Merely by using it, you're making it better at destroying time, exploiting minds like yours, and becoming more effective at the malignant uses to which it is put, whether by China, trolls, or marketing departments.
YouTube isn't much better. We need regulation banning the adtech global surveillance system from harvesting data, and strict regulation limiting what can be done with data that is voluntarily shared, and how that data is secured and discarded. We've been dealing with terrible outcomes from the status quo for more than ten years; it's past time to fix it.
If a company can't abide by the regulation, either due to scaling compliance or technological dependency on protected data, then the company should fail.
With a sane system, the doom spiral of hyperpersuasion content factories tailoring attention sinks to individuals wouldn't be possible.
You mean a western/Canadian marketting firm run by an Indian?
This comment is definitely part of CIA's mission to sow anti TikTok dissent in propagandized western countries.
>lousy critical thinking skills
Amplified by Canadians with basic critical thinking skills from having eyes and a brain.
In last 20 years, Canadian immigration went from 10% -> 25% Indians, 25k to 125k.
Indian (and Pakistani) operated western franchises are notorious for hiring their own in Canadian urban areas. Disproportionately so. They're also the diasphora that now disproportionately, visibly runs timmies, pizza pizza, popeyes etc... aka western franchises. Almost every other diasphora, i.e. East Asians, now mostly visibly operates their own ethnic franchises (bubble tea etc). 10/20/30 years ago everyone was running subways, convience stores, gas stations, but immigration rate was less, and you still had teens working summer jobs at many of these places.
No minority group has peaked Canadian immigration like Indians. PRC at second highest was only 30k per year. No other diasphora had numbers to sweep entry level hiring in franchises historically.
And this isn't even a knock on Indian ran operations - TBH quality tends to go up when Timmies switch to Indian ownership that replaces workforce with Indians. But let's not pretend there's not (at least very obviously percieved) biased in hiring. I know people in social services that work with youth in at/risk diasphora communities, there's pervasive complaining that they're locked out of a lot of entry level jobs because Indian businesses won't hire them.
How?
Because YouTube and other social media is the same as TikTok.
The feed algorithms have a inherent bias by the human audience. Outrage and clickbait draw human eyeballs more than plain content. Advertisers pay more for more eyeballs. The algorithms job is to maximize eyeballs to get more advertiser money.
If anything, Western (lack of education) and degenerating society is leading to more outrage and clickbait working.
Rejected for not speaking Punjabi? Not likely. Rejected for not having a recommendation from one of the franchise owner's network, all of whom happen to be Punjabi? Quite likely. The difference between one and the other might be subtle.
* https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/youth-unempl...
If those flames of resentment could be redirected toward policy makers and corporations for flooding the lower-income labour market and away from those who took the opportunity, that'd be great.
Having a doubt about the creation tool gives the CBC (purveyor of much misinformation itself) the pass to hand-wave anything. Perfect.
So, standard marketing. Got it.
What sets these videos apart is that they are impalatable to the status quo.
You can describe why these videos are wrong and I'll agree with you. But wrong is unfortunately irrelevant.
One could say that the marketers failed to understand the audience. I think they targeted a lowbrow segment quite effectively. See the fact anyone is talking about this. Their failure was misunderstanding the boundaries of sleaze that would slide under the radar. No not the race baiting either, there's plenty more of that on TikTok (much more egregious too).
By tying this race baiting specifically to Tim's there was someone uniquely situated against it. And no, Tim's doesn't care about racism either, it's the damage to Tim's reputation. But Tim is in a bind. They can't get their social media team to make a low-brow response to counter the original message. Imagine the reputation damage if the press got ahold of THAT. Therefore Tim calls on the CBC to write a press release on their behalf that Tim is not racist and to perpetuate retaliatory damage against anyone who would sully the name of a great Canadian institution.
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