But these same companies often have development offices in India; they are on daily meetings with people they'll never see in person.

As US layoffs continue they've replaced some roles with contractors from Brazil, Argentina, Poland, etc at 1/3 the price of US staff.

With all these 'remote' teammates there's no logical reason the remaining US-based staff have to be in the office either. This has all happened at my 5,000 person company and they have shuttered 70% of their US office space and now use the remaining offices for monthly events and hot desking.

There's no going back.

>These efforts have escalated in recent months as marketers pour more
money into meme pages in an effort to reach a young, highly engaged
audience of teenagers

Teenagers. Why am I not surprised.

Pretty much, though as someone who has worked in tech since 2006 I'm seeing something different now: lots of foreign contractors.

We've always had a big cohort of talent in India working alongside us as longtime employees but now I'm also seeing a ton of contractors from places like Brazil, Argentina, Poland, Mexico, etc.

At my company we're told this is our new way of doing business which means reduced US hiring for the extended future. A bunch of my US peers are experiencing the same thing.

Contractors are taking roles in analytics, UX, project management, change management, media production and some product management roles. Development is mostly staying in India.

My manager said the business English proficiency of foreign contractors has vastly improved in the last decade and the company is going to be saving a ton of money.

I dunno. From my lowly position it seems the winds of change are picking up.

So, TikTok was 'weaponized' to be harmful for certain countries and for select age groups? In what way?

YT Shorts and FB Reels exist because they copied the TikTok social graph and business model, which makes them also harmful but not intentionally since they're just copies?

Seems to me that TikTok, Shorts and Reels are all just mirrors to how stupid and banal most people are at any age. If we ban TikTok we should ban all of them, and I have no problem with that.

You're kinda missing the point, which is marginal change transforming demand, which would reduce the number of animals bred and slaughtered.

You're thinking of a snapshot in time of X number of animals and thinking that's the point.

>I suspect he means

So generous of you. I suspect differently.

If the content isn't substantively different from YouTube Shorts or Facebook Reels then all you've got is the spyware claim.

Vietnam might, sure. And as well as the Philippines. I'm thinking more about Africa and South America and most notably any country buying arms from China.

Many of them were colonized. There is no example quite like China of a people shaking off centuries of exploitative European control and horrific invasions from foreign armies to finally emerge as a superpower in their own right.

That positive view might be largely admiration, if not affection.