Don’t forget that not only they can do that, but they also disproportionate amount of damage (see US elections).

This person wasn’t anonymous to TikTok. They were doing this for payments.

TikTok had their information! Voluntarily, too.

Forcing everyone to ID themselves to companies would not have changed anything about this story

> In a fantasy world where I were king, the person who ran this tiktok would be in jail.

Now take this thought one step further and imagine if the king was someone you disagreed with, putting people in jail for posting things they didn’t like. Imagine if the king disagreed with you. Straight to jail?

I have the same dilemma. Privacy and anonymity has always been a top priority for me, but we can't excuse malicious actors, we shouldn't even accommodate people with good intentions but misguided means if the outcomes are so clearly detrimental to society.

I don't think there is a good answer without limiting freedoms in either direction, and I don't envy the people in government that are earnestly trying to do good for their constituents but are struggling with a solution.

> This is not what the first amendment was designed to protect.

There is no codified constitution in the United Kingdom.

A reasonable compromise might be to require ID before payments are made to people.

In a lot of places this is required by KYC regulations anyway.

We need laws to stop this sort of thing for sure. I love the first amendment but we place sane limits on it all the time. This seems like one of those things cases where it's easy to draw the line and when people are being paid it's easy to trace the money to those responsible

You are conflating different things. Anonymous or not, people can post hate on the Internet. That's a question of moderation.

Personally I think it would be easier to just ban anything that is political altogether. Bluesky for example is 90% politics. Just because something can be allowed in some spaces on the Internet that doesn't mean it should be allowed on every single space. No reason for the "funny short video" platform to become a news/opinion essay platform.

Pseudonymity is sufficient to curb most antisocial behaviour on social media. A site operator doesn't need to know a malicious user's name but the operator should be able to permanently block someone.

It isn't necessary for anyone to be the arbiter of truth, but some body should be the arbiter of good taste. That someone doesn't need to be the government; it can be the community. Since good taste is subjective, it should be defined democratically.

At this point in history, it seems that unless social media has a mechanism to promote civilised behaviour, society will lose the ability to advance and improve.

>faked video and photo evidence

Yea, I've also watched mainstream news. Remember that time ABC showed "war footage" that turned out to be footage from some Kentucky gun range?

>combat this evil

Teach media literacy. I know this is utopian even as I say it, because you can't even teach people to close the door behind them, but I sure as hell don't want the government or anyone else to tell me what I'm allowed to read. That right is worth any cost. Any.

Apparently yes, as long as you vomit far right hate.

I would assume part of the payout rate would also be determined by level of engagement of those followers, or also people who are not subscribed but are still sitting through your content.

Yes, as long as you’re eligible for monetization

TikTok's algorithm makes follower counts less important than they are on other platforms. The means by which your video gets into people's FYP feed is not very clear but it is very, very common to see content from someone you do not follow, and I think if it shows positive engagement stats it'll get shown to more and more people.

Payments are for views and not followers.

It can range from $0.40 to $1.00 per 1000 views depending on the video. So, 1 Million Views can pay around $400-$1000.

Hate videos are advertiser poison so payouts are lower. I'd assume $0.4 per 1000 viewers or even lower. So, $1000 will require ~2.5 million views.

I can see that happening. Right Wingers are dedicated viewers and if a channels fulfills their narrow viewpoint they will watch every video.

That said, YT handles this better than Tiktok. People can be sent to demonization hole if they keep posting stuff like this on YT.

I suppose it's possible but I think the more basic answer is that there's been a huge influx of Indians into the west recently i.e. find an example historically where people don't end up fighting in such situations.

A lot of hateful content is boosted by Russian bots, there were also instances of bot accounts that went silent with Iran internet blackout.

Another example are conspiracy theory content, and some far right channels - like the case of Tenet Media being funded by Russia.

This is the reality we're dealing with, a constant undermining flow of lies and hate to destabilize western democracies.

The result is in sight, and will only get worse because one of the consequences is that these account gradually give permission to be racist, xenophobic, etc. And LLMs are making this worse.

Of course that there's a sentiment that comes with migrants for example, but it's the disinformation that turns up a notch and blows it out of proportion.

At some point comments on social media will have to be disabled.

I think it might be related to support disrupting the US work visa process somehow. Like the strange "actually Indians" meme on Reddit etc.

I bet there are many well-moneyed interests that would benefit from discord and conflicts in the Western society writ large.

A worldwide social network is subject to the worldwide political pressures, like any other media would be.

> there is a also a very strong anti india sentiment on twitter / x just search for #india or look at the comments of posts made by people like vivek ramaswamy , nikki haley, and any other politician and you ll see it.

In a time of rising anti-immigration and anti-foreigner sentiment across the world, you are shocked by anti-india comments?

> I wonder if this is some kinda state sponsored campaign for objectives that are not clear to me

Or musk got rid of the censors on twitter ( many of whom were of indian origin ) and now people are free to express themselves?

One of the "British" racist social media posters turned out to be Pakistani, another Sri Lankan: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...

Both in it for the money.

It's definitely being pushed by people looking for views but there is obviously some truth to it when half the businesses around Leicester Square are completely empty frauds.

It's such a bummer to see such blatant manipulation, and even worse to see people buy into it wholesale.

For what it's worth living in NYC often feels the same. There are people who live on Long Island - many just an hour or so from the city - who are convinced it's a hellscape here.

Even people with children who live in the city are somehow able to tolerate the cognitive dissonance of hearing their children talk about the lives they lead while also believing the city is crime-ridden and dangerous.

Also the US politicians suffering from Khan Derangement Syndrome. He really is one of the most anodyne politicians around, obviously no one is genuinely upset about him.

> Monetary pursuit has become a guiding principle for alot of people

People need money to survive. The wealthy class have made it such that it's harder and harder to earn enough money the normal way. Often it doesn't even pay enough to survive. This is what creative people come up with in order to make a living. And it's obviously not in the wealthy class' interest to make any changes to that.

Culture is a pendulum, but humans are consistently greedy.

"Journalistic integrity" was a marketing concept designed to sell newspapers at a time when there were hundreds and most were inaccurate. It was extremely profitable to have ethics. (A good reminder that noble minded Benjamin Franklin ran his own periodical that he regularly and intentionally slandered others in.)

Now we have an entrenched media (with their own ethics problems) and there is opportunity to start pumping out garbage again.

As Voltaire said, "History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below." In other words, progress has to be fought for from hard lessons, but once that progress is taken for granted, people let it slip not knowing the value of what they have.

Michael Sandel's "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" covers it quite well.

Markets create unfairness by systematically disadvantaging the poor when money becomes necessary to obtain certain goods or quality of goods. Market values corrupt non-market spheres by changing the meaning and value of goods being exchanged (e.g., paying for grades undermines intrinsic desire to learn). Monetary incentives crowd out altruistic motivations and civic duty (e.g., fines becoming fees people willingly pay rather than norms to uphold). Commodification degrades human dignity (e.g., treating drug-addicted women as "baby-making machines" in sterilization-for-cash programs). Markets increase wealth inequality and create segregation in previously egalitarian spaces (e.g., luxury skyboxes in sports stadiums). Market exchanges under severe inequality or economic necessity become coercive, not truly voluntary. Purchased tokens of friendship and personal expressions (apologies, wedding toasts) lose their authenticity and dilute social bonds. Wealthy individuals and countries can pay their way out of moral obligations (e.g., carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions). Markets have infiltrated areas traditionally governed by ethical considerations - medicine, education, personal relationships - without public debate about whether this is desirable. The economic approach treats everything in an ethical vacuum, ignoring morality in favor of purely analyzing incentives.

Yes. Greed is king right now.

There is a very, very clear and specific problem: "free" advertising supported sites incentivizes farming user engagement. Farming user engagement needs be sharply curtailed because it's proven to be broadly damaging to society and the direct way to do that is to reduce the incentive, advertising revenue. It's as straightforward as that.

It's a shame he's doing it on Substack, where hate brings views.

It's the same perspective that asks, "If he's so bad, why doesn't she leave him?" And when she doesn't ultimately reconciles it by blaming her.

It reveals that the emotional relationship to the consequences take priority over the consequences themselves. Whether it's justifying domestic violence or justifying the consequences of an obesity epidemic, or the consequences of a sizeable fraction of people living in a false reality.

Those problems still exist, nothing is solved except if we apply the salve of personal choice, we can avoid meaningful change. It's a nilhistic, defeatist defense mechanism that says much more about the person employing it and their inability to withstand emotional discomfort than the facts of each case - that people regularly take actions that are objectively against their best interest.

Our failure to provide aid and cling to the that really the world is just by hiding behind the idea of rational choice is childishly naive.

Yes, there are people like that out there. If this makes your head spin, I can't imagine what the Epstein Files must be doing to you!

If this topic interests you, I recommend `Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation`, by Andrew Marantz. Great read but it's definitely stress inducing at times.

> Seems to lack any internal moral compass, basically if the website lets him slander or lie it must be ok because he has no capacity to assess that value for himself.

As deplorable as that behaviour is, it mirrors how many of us, employees, are expected to function. Since Milton Friedman's 1970 doctrine, generations of business leaders have been thought that their sole social responsibility is to maximise shareholder profit. This assumes that any profitable action is inherently good for the society otherwise the government (like TikTok here) would have already forbidden it through law. This mindset trickles down to employees, if an action isn't explicitly discouraged by law (silenced by the platform), it is ethically permissible in the pursuit of result, making profit.