People on TikTok are paying elderly women to sit in stagnant mud for hours, cry

https://restofworld.org/2023/indonesia-government-ban-tiktok-mud-bath/

by Apocryphon • 3 years ago

56 44 3 years ago

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

Engagement optimizers may as well be paperclip optimizers. These systems don't have human values and will go far beyond what any person thinks is reasonable.

warning26• 3 years ago

It's time to ban all social media, or at the very least any kind of "for you" feed. It's the only way to put a stop to this kind of engagement maximization.

dangus3• 3 years ago

Let’s take it further: ban semiconductors. It’s the only way to put a stop to this kind of engagement maximization.

nine_k4• 3 years ago

Look how well does banning specific parts of the internet work in places like Turkey or Russia or India or even China.

Look how well did banning of alcohol (which was a really problematic. destructive substance) work in the US.

Banning what people crave is a stopgap measure at best, and it increases the popularity of the banned thing because it gives that thing more publicity, even while limiting its availability.

autoexec2• 3 years ago

No need to ban social media, but I'd agree that companies should be accountable for what they promote using their own algorithms

anon7331• 3 years ago

Ahhh yes, our future generation. I'm glad I won't be around.

YellOh• 3 years ago

Plenty of us hate it just as much. Sadly I'll probably be around for it all, though.

fnord77• 3 years ago

depressing and dystopian. Industrialized misery for pity coins

accrual• 3 years ago

That's pretty messed up. On one hand I can see why they do it - it pays better than back breaking labor. But on the other hand it absolutely shouldn't be that way.

I don't hate TikTok. IMO they actually do a fairly decent job of moderating. And TikTok itself is just a tool like any other and can be used in good or harmful ways.

The article mentions no specific content rule was broken and thus the streams were allowed, and it's a fine line for TikTok to walk.

I guess I just don't see how to solve the problem. TikTok can ban the streams to avoid elder abuse, but then they may be forcing them back into labor.

Is this something that needs to be addressed at the country level? Why are the elderly in this situation to begin with?

megiddo• 3 years ago

Isn't this just vilification of begging by technical means?

The article says the mud bath participants were lining up for gigs. I don't understand the videos, but how is this morally different than criminalizing begging?

mcpackieh3• 3 years ago

It's on the same level as bumfights. Commercial exploitation of desperate people.

paddw• 3 years ago

How are they being exploited? Assuming TikTok skims some revenue off the top, they are still being exploited far less than they would by any form of traditional employment.

TikTok is a mirror to the suffering and depravity that occurs in these places. We should be focused collectively on trying to make conditions better for these people, not trying to smash the mirror.

docandrew• 3 years ago

I came here to say this. What’s funny to 13-year olds stops being funny at some point, but it seems like everything in our culture is being targeted towards that demographic.

tomjen3• 3 years ago

This sounds pretty horrible, but its also not that simple:

In an interview with Indonesian media outlet Detik in January, 55-year-old Inak Mawar, one of the participants in Akhyar’s videos, said she earned almost $600 after nine livestreams, and that she preferred TikTok to working in the fields in Lombok, where she earns $2 per day doing backbreaking labor.
Mutiara Ika Pratiwi, the head of Perempuan Mahardhika, a Jakarta-based women’s rights organization, told Rest of World the TikTok mud baths were a form of “commodification,” and that it didn’t matter if the women were seen as willing participants.

KRAKRISMOTT• 3 years ago

Gamer girl bathwater production shouldn't be exclusive to young first world egirls

Apocryphon• 3 years ago

Completely different approach, same goals (monetization), see NPC streaming:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36723934

micah94• 3 years ago

When the French did this to Africans (taking them from their homes and throwing them into zoos), they weren't getting paid anything -- perhaps this is a step up in a dark morid kind of way. And the voyeurs had to travel to the zoos to see them. Now you just have to swipe or click. Our tech makes depravity easier. (<your search engine>: 'human zoos')

tibbydudeza• 3 years ago

It seems rather mild compared to "Bum Fights" and Cartman's "Crack Baby Athletic Association".

happytoexplain• 3 years ago

Naively, yes. But I find it easy to imagine a human mindset that wants to see bums fight, while I can not imagine a human mindset that wants to see this, and therefore the audience for this seems much more disturbed or mentally ill.

friend_and_foe2• 3 years ago

Enduring indignity for lucrative return is not unheard of or really all that uncommon. There's prostitution, pornography, and in most of the professional world there is some degree of hazing.

It's a shame, and I'm a person that would not endure indignity like this for any amount of money (probably unless it was a ludicrous amount; we really don't know until the money is on the table in front of us), and I'm sure there are lots of proud people like me, but when these people say they'd rather do this than toil in the fields for $2 I have to say, as disgusting as it is, it's their choice.

To say you don't like it is to say you wish there weren't people willing to pay for this, perhaps you find those people disgusting, and that you wish these people could find a less degrading way to make good money, but at least for me, it is not to say that you think they should be prohibited from doing it.

nine_k4• 3 years ago

It's relatively easy to reject "dirty money" if it's extra money on top of your normal, sustainable income. It's much harder to reject when you literally don't know how are you going to feed yourself, or your children, next week. This is what the poorest face.

glimshe• 3 years ago

Agreed. Even in fairly normal jobs like hotel room cleaning, workers have to endure indignities that a person with a reasonably high, stable income would never want to endure, such as handling bed sheets with bodily fluids, entering rooms with naked people etc.

People who endure this humiliation usually have few other options. In the case of room cleaning, the downsides are largely intrinsic to the job and not necessarily immoral in my point of view - even if we should put mechanisms in place to try to get these people better pay. However, in the case of the TikTok videos, it's purely about exploiting the desperation of others, so I can't put it in the same level as normal unpleasant jobs.

autoexec2• 3 years ago

I don't really consider this "dirty money". Not as long as nobody is being hurt by it. I'm not worried about people willing to humiliate themselves for money (assuming that they're even bothered by what others would find humiliating).

It's the people willing to hurt others for money that bother me most. The ones knowingly selling poisoned or unsafe products because they'll save a fraction of a cent per unit sold. That's "dirty money" to me. It's usually being done by people who already have obscene amounts of wealth too, but even in cases where someone is struggling to feed themselves or their children it doesn't give them the right to hurt others. That's a choice. People who scam and exploit others for profit are just evil.

jstarfish3• 3 years ago

but when these people say they'd rather do this than toil in the fields for $2 I have to say, as disgusting as it is, it's their choice.

It's not that simple! This looks to be the case when you're the center of your own universe, but the effects cascade to everyone around them-- once landlords and merchants realize all these wage slaves now have money to burn, they raise prices of everything to capture as much of that as they can. You can no longer remain solvent as a $2 rice-picker; in order to compete with the prostitutes, you're forced to become one yourself. It's only the illusion of choice; if there were a way to make that much money through other means, you'd be doing it already.

This "hack" only works if you're among the first few people to do it. Once everybody is doing it, supply outpaces demand, and now you have to do something even more degrading to stand out from the others in competing to earn the privilege of sucking off some schlub. It's a race to the bottom...and beyond.

Lack of control for inflation is why UBI won't ever work, and why fraud and prostitution are problems. Much as we can't survive off of eating our own shit, you can't have a sustainable economy or civilized society built on rampant cannibalization.

analognoise3• 3 years ago

How is this any different than Amazon workers being forced to piss into bottles and people becoming homeless due to medical debt?

That's why we'll never have UBI: because people are (apparently) fine with this.

metalcrow• 3 years ago

Doesn't price raising only work if there is either 1.an enormous wealth disparity between the lower and upper classes or 2. the upper classes have a monopoly on violence? The only way competition shouldn't be able to cancel out this price inflation is if the "wage slaves" can't say "maybe i should take this extra money and start my own landlord business, and undercut those assholes who just raised prices".

After all, in other first world counties, even those without strong regulations, landlords and merchants don't capture all of your profit.

Your second point about supply of this type of content outpacing demand is valid, though.

gpas• 3 years ago

People on Twitch are paying young women to sit in hot tubs for hours, write usernames on their exposed skin.

People on TikTok are paying elderly women to sit in stagnant mud for hours, cry

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