To all the trolls saying TikTok shouldn’t be banned because free speech
Another comment I recently saw here on Lemmy put this really well:
Foreign owned, FARA-unregistered influence operations have never been a facet of “free speech” in the USA.
Idk why so many people assumed they would its a data gold mine even with the USA blocked
Only US tech companies can harvest all that data from their products, I mean, customers.
Problems with this app go beyond just privacy and bleed into national security.
You as a citizen of your country have an obligation to not freely offer yourself up as an attack vector for cybercriminals all so you could fry your brain with garbage media.
Problems with this app go beyond just privacy and bleed into national security.
Entire world should ban US based apps in this case.
The U.S government doesn’t have the same ability as the CCP to just get whatever info they want out of corporations with no due process. The two are completely incomparable.
Do you seriously believe in this?
Do I honestly believe China has an easier time getting corporations to bend over and violate their citizens rights? Why do you need to clarify this??
What is the difference if both countries access to user data at the end no matter easier or harder way? US is trying to block Tiktok under the name of national security but US itself has been violating other countries’ national security and privacy of people of these countries for years. What bothers me is people like you support this hypocritical action.
Hypocritical action? China’s internet hasn’t allowed external companies to offer services since its inception. All I’m saying is if the US wants to treat Chinese companies like China has treated US companies that should be perfectly fine.
You’re out here complaining that China’s not receiving the same rights it fails to extend to other people and calling that hypocritical??
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If you actually think that app is there for the purpose of entertaining you and marketing to you you are naive beyond belief. Go look into the level of control the chinese government has over their tech sector and the restrictions they place on companies operating there.
Or on second thought don’t even bother. For sheep like yourself it will all go in one ear and out the other. Keep letting them shove their hands down your ass and puppet you more.
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just a case of the mask falling off
Case in point: all the college protests. All the arrests happening are from people being encouraged on TikTok to become aggressive and angry towards apartheid. But the question is how the fuck is protesting at a college going to change what a government in another country is going to do in any way? The Israeli government gives little to no fuck about kids opinions protesting at a college campus in the United States. It’s likely civil uneasy being spread by TikTok.
College protests have been a thing since Vietnam. Look up Kent State.
It wasn’t China that gave them the idea, it was history.
And it’s working. More and more people are sympathizing with Palestine the more the government overreacts to peaceful protests.
If they don’t care then why did satanyahu come out in a speech against it? Protesting does work and does matter. You only need to look at history to see that
Civil unrest to force the great satan to stop supplying the zionist entity is good and cool actually. In fact, I hope the unrest stops being civil.
All the arrests happening are from people being encouraged on TikTok to become aggressive and angry towards apartheid.
THEY ARE TRYING TO STOP THE GENOCIDE BEING PERPETRATED IN THEIR NAME
WTF is wrong with you?
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They have very simple demands, they’re not giving some pie in the sky stuff like “have Joe Biden tried for war crimes and abolish capitalism” or something; the protests all have demands along the lines that their university boycott Israeli companies and cut ties with weapons manufacturers aiding the genocide. To claim otherwise is completely infantalising to the protestors who are risking their university positions and physical health to protest despite the police crackdowns.
Here’s a link to the list of demands of the student protest in new York, for instance
And here’s a picture of the list of the demands of the columbia faculty protest:
I dunno, I absolutely want to see Genocide Joe internationally tried for aiding and abetting a genocide.
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The US government is not committing genocide, it’s the Israelis. I’m telling you these protests don’t do shit becuase it’s literally another government doing it and do not give a fuck about college kids in a completely different country.
TikTok is spreading this shit. These protests do nothing and only increase civil unrest.
The US government provides weapons for the genocide.
One of the main campuses in the protests is opening a campus in Israel, which students are opposing until Israel ends genocide and apartheid.
Many of the campuses donate money to or have partnerships with candidates and organizations that are also complicit in the genocide.
Of course Israel isn’t going to stop genocide because a bunch of college students in the US don’t like it. But that doesn’t mean students have to sit idly as their tuition dollars go to fund genocide.
Funded by Amerikan money. The government you uplift, and everyone who still supports them after eight months of unmitigated genocide, is complicit. Is a collaborator.
Seeing someone posting sense and reason. From the heart of a disingenuous, hyperbolic propaganda storm is rare and appreciated.
Asserting that Biden is committing genocide. Really downplays and belittles what genocide actually is. It’s a despicable thing to do. And everyone involved should be ashamed.
Biden can still be wrong, and also not committing genocide. And he is. His reluctance to distance himself from Bibi the Butcher. Has absolutely left him enabling it. Even as he tries in vain to reach out diplomatically to stop the slaughter. We’re long beyond the point of diplomacy. And Biden must start acting like it.
Thank you for being a rational voice.
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No, dipshit. I am also participating in these college protests and it’s typically peaceful. And I’m also trying to tell you TikTok is perpetuating the aggressive nature of some of them causing cops to start mass arrests to delegitimize the protests. It is a fucking attack vector to cause unrest.
Israel is dropping US bombs. 🙄
How is protesting at a college going to stop it?
Pretty sure people protesting in the US are trying to influence the US govt.
I’m not sure it’s true that the Israeli government doesn’t care about American public opinion, since they do benefit from American military support, but let’s assume what you said is true.
Even if Americans protesting won’t stop the genocide, won’t end apartheid, I’d prefer that those atrocities are not committed with my tax dollars, with support from my government, in my name. The lesson learned from 9/11 shouldn’t have been “we need to enact regime change anywhere in the world where American interest are opposed”. It should have been “Americans better make sure they are OK with the things that their government is doing abroad”.
I’m not OK with it, I’m not willing to risk dying in a terrorist attack so that Gaza can be levelled with “made in America” munitions. I’m not willing to risk dying in a terrorist attack so that oil companies and other big business interests have friendly regimes to collude with in the region as they scam the people out of their resources and freedoms.
If you are an American, you have an obligation to humanity to be a fifth columnist.
I hate America though
As if all these other social medias don’t have garbage media or propaganda
That’s not the point
We must return to AOL and Friendster.
Fuck Amerika’s national security; I don’t claim this mf country. I don’t even think twice about lying about where I’m from when I’m in international circles that ask me what it is. If someone offered me citizenship with them to Yeonmi Park y’all asses, I’d do it in a new york minute.
I mean let’s be honest, that’s slightly better than US companies plus the Chinese Communist Party being able to do so.
Everybody Sucks Here
What can China do to you? You don’t live there.
They (not just China - any country, in fact) don’t have to do anything to you. But they can in such a way influence you to go against your own country’s policies directed towards these countries, for example. That’s the reality when a country choose to be a foe instead of a friend - they’ll get extra paranoid to think that the other country have everything planned to go against them, which ended up to be a reality as a consequence of retaliatory measures by these new foes.
TikTok enacted a very obvious influence campaign to fight this legislation that resulted in congressional phone lines becoming jammed. So what China can do is directly influence our laws.
They still can, they just have to go back to buying that data lmao
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Because your government can use the information against you while a government on the other side of the planet can’t.
Used to be true. See countries affecting populations in foreign countries. Propaganda is not local.
Because definitionally, fewer people doing a bad thing is better than more people doing a bad thing?
I don’t know about you, but if I must leak my private data like a sieve to use the internet, I’d much rather that data go to a government that isn’t governing me!
A government that isn’t governing you … yet and that has no ambitions (/s) to take over as much power as possible in the country you live in, you mean?
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Look, I don’t know which country you live in but if you’re worried it might make you a slave, you should riot (if at all possible, that is). Be part of the opposition.
Damn I thought private prisons were a loophole and not in the constitution to punish people with slave labor.
So what…?
Not everybody is living in the “default country” and also, with the US we see how well it all works for them and how slavery is not a thing there at all.
I hope the CPC takes power here in burgerland. Maybe then the place would stop being a shit hole.
I don’t think you’d like ruining your social score by hanging out too much on lemmy and as a result losing access to movies/streaming/games, driving cars and your dog.
America defended. You get +1 FICO credit score. You can now afford air conditioning for 2 hours.
I have enough hate for both governments, no worries.
It’s obviously more of a problem when a government that actually has agency over you harvests your data. If you can’t even understand this, then you’re truly lost.
Not having the choice is slightly worse I’d say.
Get fucked, stay fucked. YouTube shorts eating good.
Neither TikTok nor YouTube Shorts a good.
Lol YouTube Shorts is fine, TikTok is oversatured dogshit.
It’s the same shit. Same dogshit.
Yeah, wasn’t bad for me. Don’t know what shit you guys get but I get stuff that isn’t brainless sigma videos or 14 year olds dancing in thongs.
Lol it’s what the algorithm thinks you want. It goes by what you watch right through, not just what you actually upvote.
Then I guess I skip past the trash because it actually gives me things I want. Like some dude cosplaying in fallout gear and acting out scenarios in a funny way. It feels like what Vine used to be, so it’s chill to me. TikTok just has too much jailbait and room temperature IQ posts of ‘stimulating’ videos. Like cutting kinetic sand or some shit.
Yeah this is why I never let other people use my tiktok, ten minutes and they wreck the algorithm.
If you just search option find proper content, follow that, then block/not interested any kids or kinetic sand and shit in fyp, it will change and never show you it again, it learns way faster than youtube.
If we could have it banned in Europe or just Germany I would be happy for my people.
Ok boomer
Just don’t use it if you don’t like it.
Where do we start and where do we stop with that kind of stuff?
If we ban TikTok we also would need to ban a lot of Social media platforms from the US for the same reason.
Actually, no. That’s not how this works and it’s not the reason behind the TikTok ban. TikTok is being banned because it’s directly controlled by the Chinese government, a foreign adversary that has vested interest in controlling and manipulating the American public through propaganda.
Then force them to add a disclaimer of that whilst signing up. That simple.
Oh then please mark and ban American propaganda, too.
I dislike it. But no. Don’t ve authorjtarian like China. Bann it on phones of those with security clearances, but that’s all.
Banning a foreign propaganda platform is not authoritarian, it’s a necessary step to protect democracy from being negatively influenced, manipulated and controlled by hostile, authoritarian actors like the CCP.
Still think it’s a baited headline given their stated intention to go to court to fight the “unconstitutional ruling”. I’m not so sure the constitution gives foreign companies many legal rights so in that regard they’d perhaps be more protected if they were an American company. Whoops.
TikTok’s 80% of investors who aren’t ByteDance won’t pass up billions of dollars in cash either if the alternative is that they forever get zero from the American market.
They’ve been investing heavily in the US market for the last couple years too, so I doubt they are in the black.
They’ve just all around played politics the American way very poorly. I can’t really comment on whether that’s good or bad but I’m blown away this Shou Chew CEO dude still has a job after this came down.
They’re probably going to find themselves having to explain what it means that a social media platform is itself engaged in speech, instead of functioning as a platform for others to speak. TikTok users, whose voices are allegedly curtailed by the ban, aren’t exactly prevented from going to another platform.
If they say that it’s Tiktok’s speech that’s curtailed, they’re going to have to explain carefully how they’re not a foreign influence operation.
The language of the first amendment is pretty stark, but the courts have always understood it has various limits.
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Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the TikTok community?
It would be if McCarthy’s hearings were full of actual KGB agents.
It never went away.
Sounds like some progressive commie hippie dippie talk!
Type a 2,000,000 word essay on why democrats are better then Republicans and say “Joe Biden is the most pro union president in American history” 69 times as penance for your transgressions against the congregation.
/$
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They never thought it was a bad thing; they just put it back under the log that they hide their racism, genocidal bloodthirst, and unearned arrogance-- wait, they still call that “Exceptionalism”.
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A thing never mentioned in these debates is that noone in the world is buying tiktok without buying the underlying algorithm, the same algorithm the app runs on worldwide, the algorithm is the special sauce. They are not going to sell the basis for their app just for a single payday in the US market, which after buying it, they could rebrand and then once successful in the US, compete in the global market against tiktok but with the income of the most lucrative app market in the world behind them. It’s an extremely stupid business move.
i don’t use tik tok and think this is all hilarious. watching you all fight over it is even funnier.
I don’t protest so watching the government arrest protestors is hilarious. No way this will ever blow back on me!
this has nothing to do with tik tok
Nothing gets by you 🤣
no. it doesn’t
🤣
But but but… the American government HATES having a light shined on it.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet; the real reason TikTok is being banned.
You have got to be kidding. Did you really just link the canary? The same canary that got banned from Twitter for making antisemitic remarks.
They also failed dozens of fact checks.
fact checks
Opinion disregarded.
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The ban on tiktok was going through before palestine attacked Israel. This article is just pure speculation and conspiracy theories.
The Canary has faced criticism for claiming that Israel is an apartheid state for its occupation of the West Bank. According to the Jewish Chronicle, Kerry-Anne Mendoza, the editor-in-chief, had her Twitter account suspended when she compared Jewish Labour Supporters with South Africa’s Apartheid “Imagine if during a day of international solidarity with the oppressed of Apartheid South Africa the Labour leadership opted instead to spend the day with white supremacists. That’s what Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner are doing today.”
What great journalists.
I did. Because the leaked phone call is real.
That’s incredibly damning.
I enjoy your YouTube channel. You read Blackshirts and Reds to me.
Nice, thx! I’ve got 2 more books recorded recently, just gotta do the work of tagging and uploading them (should be ~week or so).
- Zak Cope - The wealth of (Some) nations.
- Domenico Losurdo - Nonviolence - A history beyond the myth.
And irrelevant. You are grasping at straws trying to connect all the dots in your conspiracy theories.
This move against TikTok predates the Hamas attacks and Israel’s military action. It’s insane that TikTok’s ban is because teens are more likely to be pro-palestine.
Sure. Ignoring that this started in 2020 during Trump’s presidency.
Yes. This has been ongoing since TikTok acquired musical.ly. The CFIUS didn’t care as much until it became popular. TikTok has tried to comply, so why isn’t the CFIUS and there considerations being heeded?
And back then the Republicans were the party screaming about banning TikTok.
Now that israel is involved this became a lot less partisan very quickly.
I vote Democrat. I and everyone I’m aware of who wasn’t already addicted to TikTok supported banning it.
Maybe if your arguments contained an iota of good faith, they’d be taken seriously
Can you explain why we don’t ban the other social media platforms?
This is the same conclusion Second Thought came to a while back in one of his youtube videos. While I don’t disagree with the conclusion, I also wouldn’t say it’s mutually exclusive to reasoning promoted by the mainstream media of "foreign influence. " What’s really wild is the idea that the ban is also being pushed by “foreign influence.”
The concept that “foreign influence” can destabilize the system means the system itself is not transparent and fair enough.
It means local influence does not work in public interest, and the problem is not abroad, it’s in your government.
Plausible deniability, 2 birds with 1 stone. There are hundreds of companies with foreign investors and influence. TikTok has tried to work with investigators and even spent $1.5 billion on a server framework for Project Texas. If TikTok was a crappy app and wasn’t the primary source of news for young adults, the government wouldn’t care.
what does this do to the press freedom index ranking of the united states? nothing im guessing
These are advertisement platforms. Not free speech platforms.
Freedom ends on Chinese propaganda astroturfing
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That’s your words
Can we have like serious discussion without these sensationalising but dumb quips? Is there any adult here at all in this room who would be willing to have a nice conversation about the dangers of safety vs control?
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You draw some false equivalency strawmans and look down upon thinking you are so smart. It’s idiotic. Are you able to have mature conversation at all?
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We should make an Adult in the Room bingo card.
Do you not want lemmy to succeed? People from reddit should be welcomed.
Yall are acting like Voat did when the_donald got banned and the MAGAs tried to migrate to voat. Hows voat doing these days?
A government ultimately does control TikTok though…
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The only difference between Lemmy and Reddit Is Lemmy is smaller and its down way more often
'Cuz here on Lemmy, only the US gov’t matters. Which is, of course, similar to what 95% of people on Reddit think
TikTok is a platform, not press. I just wish they were banning the other walled gardens too.
Won’t people just continue using the app? Wouldn’t it be as easy as side loading future installs?
iPhone has enormous market dominance in the US and no sideloading.
Shhh, you’re not supposed to point out Apples fla… uh, features.
I expect that Tiktok will strart distributing the app as an apk on their website.
iPhone has left the chat.
You overestimate the tech literacy of the majority.
It’s excruciatingly easy to side load on android, to the point where it is outright dangerous for laymen.
All it will take is a 30s tiktok showing how to side load and they’re done, tech literate or not
If the tutorial can’t be boiled down to a 30 second video, tiktok users aren’t going to be able to comprehend it.
Worse. Unless they’re going to start the Great American Firewall you can just go to the website.
Bye felecia
I feel like this ban WILL start a monopoly. Since Facebook does the same amount or more data mining than TikTok, Facebook will have to be banned alongside Instagram, making YouTube Shorts a monopoly, as there really isn’t any other alternatives that are relevant.
They don’t care about monopoly. They care about evil China. It doesn’t seem to be an issue to strenghten evil Meta and Alphabet.
This isn’t about privacy or Meta and Google would be slapped too, this is just about the newest boogeyman for americans.
Seriously this smacks of McCarthy’s grocery list in the House Unamerican Activities Committee.
If there is evidence then they need to show us. We’ve learned some hard lessons about not trusting our government with this stuff.
They already held hearings on this at Congress last year, plenty of evidence was presented during those hearings. They basically forced the CEO to admit that the CCP has control over TikTok on the record. It’s on Youtube
Where is it then? Where is the evidence? Can you link to it? Is there a CSPAN broadcast of it or some talking head making shit up?
I would be very surprised if there was evidence because the newspapers haven’t turned up any and they aren’t about to just let it sit on YouTube.
Here’s the full hearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1xEuK0Fxu8
There are also many articles across tech sites on the internet that you can find evidence of how the TikTok app is a data mining monster. If you haven’t read any about it yet, it’s probably just because you don’t want to hear it. It’s certainly not because the evidence is not out there, as there is a shitload of it.
Oh wow. All you could find is the entire 5 hour hearing? You don’t have any time marks? Articles referencing it? Are you seriously just hoping I’ll give up because you threw 5 hours of raw footage at me?
If there’s so many articles then link them. If they proved something in that 5 hours then give me the time stamp. You don’t get to make assertions that destroy people’s jobs and rights to speech without actually citing something.
Oh wow, I provided literally what I said I would provide, and all you can do is complain like a brat? Go find your own shit, I have already wasted enough time attempting to help you.
Long story short, there’s plenty of evidence out there and you will never look for it. Anything that I send as a reply will not be good enough, because you already have chosen what you want to believe about it.
I wonder if Tiktok will just make a seperate company that would comply before the 2025 ban comes to effect…
Or they will just exit the US market, interesting stuff.
I still think Glenn Greenwald views on this topic hold true.
“ByteDance doesn’t have any plans to sell TikTok,” the company posted on its official account on Toutiao, a social media platform it owns.
The sell-or-ban measure was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
“We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts,” said TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew in a video posted on the platform this week.
“The facts, and the Constitution, are on our side… rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere.”
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
The last line sounds like a threat from a country that has had State sponsored hackers take over a great deal of the US infrastructure.
Yeah, not too sure why you would forcefully see it as a threat…
If you already see it and think of a country as an enemy (boogeyman) than anything people from that country or gov’t says would look like a threat or to be a scary statements…
At least that is how I see it…
I hope we shall continue to analyze our own way of thinking and talking about such topics!
There’s literally no reason to retaliate using state actors for this. It won’t fix the economics, it won’t fix the power balance.
The retaliation is when the US sets precedent in international economic relations and China uses it to cut off American tech companies from the Chinese market which is a massive revenue source for them. If China announced anything like that, it would kill the tech stocks future projections because all that growth that US tech was banking on would disappear.
The reason regulation is required for this is because private companies, being purely proft-driven, won’t. It’s a state matter.
I have no idea what you’re responding to
US tech companies betting on China to sustain their growth are foolish. China doesn’t need an excuse to favor its internal tech companies over external ones. It already does favor its own tech companies, and its own industries across any sector in which it can compete. China has already crippled US tech company growth within their borders. Any “retaliation” here is just spin, they are doing it anyway.
Imagine WW3 kicking off from TikTok. Not even a cool battle or anything, just massive misinformation campaigns to incite violence and false flag attacks
That’s literally already happening
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
If instead of getting anything they are opting to get $0, that actually confirms the “paranoia”.
The fact that the two countries that are most accused of spreading disinformation (including using Western’s own social media) not only provide their own alternatives, but also bans Western social media shows that West wasn’t paranoid enough.
The Chinese government has also dismissed such concerns as paranoia and has warned that a TikTok ban would “inevitably come back to bite the US”.
The fundamental ethos of the US and its propaganda of why it’s the greatest country on the planet is the first amendment and the current bunch are absolutely destroying that illusion in plain sight of younger generations.
They’re sending billions for wars and to Israel supporting and assisting them in genocide yet are saying to the ones they expect to pay for it that there’s no money for healthcare, infrastructure, education, welfare, raising minimum wage, etc, etc, et al, and then still demanding they should receive their votes “because the other guys much worse”.
I see a lot of younger people saying that both are shit, that the system is rigged and they ain’t playing their game anymore. That is tantamount to revolution.
Funny how you concerned citizens always seem to mention Israel without also mentioning supporting Ukraine. Almost like it’s not on your talking points list.
If you don’t see an issue with a hostile nation state directly controlling something that is consumed by so many Americans, you’re not looking at it properly.
Also because Ukraine is a nazi state. It has nothing to do with my “talking points” just that Ideologicaly I am opposed to The Ukraine, so I do not want support being sent to them.
Ah, so you’d be perfectly ok with Russia just expanding in Europe and invading the Baltics and Moldova? Oh, you’re a .ml user. Your answer is obviously yes.
Who said anything about the baltics ot moldova?
Ukraine was doing a genocide and violated 2 treaties Russia granted aid and enforced the treaties, and then the areas voted to join russia
If you want to talk about the baltics we can, or Transistria, not Moldova, we can, but that wasn’t the topic of discussion
Don’t stumble down that slope jackass
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Here’s Bernie Sanders from a year ago talking about how a handful of companies control the news people see, read, and hear. TL:DR - He makes the argument that it’s not fake news, that journalists are usually hard-working and honest. He says the problem is the limitation of allowed discussion - what topics make it to the consumer. He says for instance that he’s never asked about wealth and income inequality.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control. If the issues justifying a potential ban were truly data security or mental health as some argue (not without merit mind you), then the legislation to address those issues would look a lot different and include companies like Meta, Google, Instagram, etc. Those are valid concerns but the new measure is clearly not designed around them.
Finally, we’ve seen how Trump can tie up the courts for months on end even after all his self-snitching. Thus I very much doubt we’ll see any actual action in the 9 months + 3 months grace period laid out for the resolution of the TikTok matter. There are too many constitutional and business law challenges in my (admittedly layman’s) reading of expert opinion.
He is wrong though. When the war machine gets going we 100% have fake news. And the Journalists do not matter just look at New York Times massive Zionist propaganda takeover.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time on TikTok knows this is true. The narrative is beyond their control there, lots of eyes see. That terrifies them.
I agree with this. I think you’re right.
I believe TikTok is being banned because as it stands now it brings topics outside the limits of allowed discussion to a lot of eyes in ways US government/companies haven’t proven able to control
I mean, if this were true, that would mean you wouldn’t be able to find similar content on Western platforms. Are you really saying similar content isn’t readily available on YouTube? If so, what content?
Western SM is already in the pocket of the state and any content that goes against their values is suppressed.
Pro-Palestinian content on Tiktok can easily get traction and receive over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.
Considering that younger people are not watching regular media news, channels like fox just do not have comparative reach and they aren’t buying into the zionist propaganda like previous generations.
There are a lot of content creators who are articulate, succinct and organisation has come out of it. People have created sites & apps that list all corporations and products to boycott because of their support for Israel and it’s had an impact.
Sure, TTs algorithm can easily push you down unpleasant rabbit holes but that’s the nature of algorithms, not just specific to TT.
So there might be similar content on western SM but it’s being held down and isn’t showing on people feed ‘organically’.
I just did a brief search on YouTube and found pro-Palestinian content posted over the past week with hundreds of thousands of views too. I’m not arguing about the quality of the platforms, I’m saying this has more to do with geopolitical corporate hegemony (aka money) than with any specific content, as evidenced by the fact that this has been on the table since well before the Oct 7 attacks
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I just randomly selected this Channel 4 (3.8 million subscribers) video with 370K views on YouTube: Israeli soldier speaks out on war in Gaza. The next video it played was In Gaza now, it’s worse than ethnic cleansing from Al Jazeera. Then it gave me another Al Jazeera video, Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The US could have stopped Israel on day one. From where are you driving your accusation that YouTube is delivering you any more pro-Israel content than TikTok?
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Just one of the first 20 hits when I searched for “Palestine.” I have to admit I’m struggling to find any pro-Israel content among those search results. Searching for “Israel” gives a more mixed bag, but still plenty of pro-Palestinian content mixed in
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Israeli soldier speaks out on war in Gaza
In Gaza now, it’s worse than ethnic cleansing
Norman Finkelstein on Gaza: The US could have stopped Israel on day one
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
That’s a solid criticism and I upvoted. I hadn’t thought about YouTube. Anecdotally I’ve had factual comments about how many kids are killed, what Israeli politicians say, etc. auto-moderated into oblivion on YouTube. But at the same time I get a lot of my criticisms from YouTube (basically never been on TikTok) so it holds water. I also get a lot of info from other sources, but I can’t think of something specific I’d get from them that I could never find on YouTube.
In my defense, I’m basing my opinion on why TikTok is particularly targeted on interviews like this one with Ted Cruz. He talks about how TikTok is specifically designed to push messages that are harmful to America, including what he calls pro-Hamas content but I suspect is actually anti-Israeli policy, pro-Palestine content. That is why I would argue there’s some evidence of a campaign against TikTok in particular that might skip over YouTube or other major platforms. Perhaps the Western powers feel that YouTube is still acceptably moderated towards their interests whereas TikTok isn’t. Perhaps Google is just too influential domestically.
Doesn’t mean your point isn’t worth discussion, or that my points aren’t opinion. I’m interested to see how it develops.
I think this ban is completely agnostic re: content. The issue is more fundamental – it’s fully owned and operated by people in China. This is a geopolitical battle that is currently playing out across many industries. Social media grabs headlines where less sexy industry battles do not.
I think Tom Nicholas gives a great overview.
Also, fuck Ted Cruz with a 20 inch dildo. Don’t take anything that sniveling carcass has to say seriously.
it’s fully owned and operated by people in China
US private equity firms own more than anyone. WSJ: What Is TikTok Worth? Some Say $20 Billion, Others Say $100 Billion
[ByteDance founder] Zhang owns 20% of ByteDance, according to the company, though super shares have given him larger voting rights. Roughly 60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors including Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group. The remaining 20% is owned by company employees.
The CEO is Singaporean Shou Zi Chew and the VP is American Michael Beckerman.
TikTok is a subsidiary of ByteDance, and that the Chinese government exerts significant political influence over ByteDance really is not a question
I think it’s a many birds with one stone situation - an industrial battle, a move to monopolize for Facebook after years of lobbying, Censorship etc.
For one the YouTube algorithm is absolute dog shit compared to TT, which is literally the gold standard at this point.
If you haven’t tried, you’re seriously missing out. It’s legit incredible how good it is. I hardly use it because I prefer long-form content (and don’t honestly have much time) but I absolutely can respect what they created
Fuck all the algorithms, I don’t need any of that bullshit.
Nice username, btw 👍🏽
K… you alright? lol. What’s with the aggression 😂
Can you show us on the doll where the algorithm touched you?
Kinda like the not-so-unsupported conspiracy theory that musk bought Twitter to silence protest coordination. That Twitter was too useful to the ‘masses’ and the “sinister cabal” (not my words) said it needed to be taken out.
To reiterate: this is not my position but it is one I’ve heard that matches the sentiment expressed in the parent comment
What we certainly do know is that Musk bought twitter not to enable free speech, but to control speech according to his personal whims and beliefs.
I imagine the Saudi’s went in with Musk on the twitter deal to also control and dilute unfavorable speech. The Saudi ruler is the guy that assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi on foreign soil because he wasn’t exactly a team Saudi ruler kind of guy.
So if the Saudis went in with him, and he worked with them, then it wasn’t solely his personal whims and beliefs. Just, for once, stop psychologizing celebrities and look at what’s actually happening. Twitter was 100% a State Department and military intelligence asset. Musk makes most of his money from federal contracts, mostly related to military intelligence and adjacent domains. The state has all the means to stop Musk from destroying their asset with his personal whims (FTC, SEC, etc). Instead, he buys it with support from the Saudis, a family that leaders of the USA have sworn to protect for decades.
Face it. Musk’s personal beliefs are merely what allows him to work with the power brokers. He is the lightning rod, the money launderer, the public face, the whipping boy, and eventually the sacrificial body. He’s not running the show.
I think it’s a little column A, a little column B.
It’s his wealth and ego that allows him to attract folks like the Saudi regime. Shared whims, beliefs and goals can also be a thing. The Saudi’s were buying influence. Kind of like how the Crown Prince bought Jared Kusher thanks to all the business deals he was busy working on while his father-in-law was president. Kushner the self-serving stooge of the Saudi Crown Prince helped sweep U.S. intelligence reports on Khashoggi’s killing under the rug. Then was gifted $2billion of investment by the Crown Prince, which not even the Saudi’s believe is a good investment.
"Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman serves as the chairman of the Public Investment Fund, and reportedly personally intervened to approve the investment and overruled a panel of advisors who called the sum “unsatisfactory in all aspects.”
No one is claiming Elon is running ‘the’ show, but he certainly is running some show and has done plenty of damage with his twitter buyout. If you’re calling out US foreign policy and the Mid East you’re not wrong. Short-term selfish goals have lead to a myriad of long-term problems. Elon is not that bright, he has the temperament of a thin skinned teenage boy that never really grew up. I still don’t understand why you’re making him out to be some sort of martyr though.
I’m not saying he’s a martyr, I’m saying he’s not doing this from inside his skull but in concert with power brokers. The same is true of Kushner. Kashoggi’s dad was likely involved with the CIA based on the history of his work and institutions. MBS is not some rogue mastermind - the USA, up to and including presidents, have publicly stated that the Royal Family is under their direct protection and a major part of US policy. The murder of a journo and the subsequent coverup happened within the context of US power brokers calling the shots. MBS is somewhat roguish as he seems he may be trying to decouple from the USA enough to save his house from the inevitable collapse of the USA, and the Kashoggi killing may have been part of that, so the USA powers got a little split over whether to threaten him or cover it up, so they did both, but ultimately Saudi isn’t buying into Twitter with Elon as some part of a scheme against America, or against American liberals or against the Ds or whatever. MBS may be trying to purge Saudi institutions of the CIA, but his foreign policy is still constrained by his country’s absolute need for American protection.
Musk didn’t buy Twitter because he loves Trump and hates wokeness. He couldn’t have because it’s far too disruptive to power. Twitter was majorly important to power. Some moron with a lot of money, mostly money from the USA war machine, isn’t going to be allowed to just go wrecking USA war machine components, especially not when there are so many controls in place. We have to see Musk not as an evil mastermind nor as a sideshow but rather as a state actor. I guarantee most nations adversarial to the USA see Musk as a state actor and not some strange independent anomaly. And if we have to see Musk as a state actor, then we have to see the purchase of Twitter as a behavior beneficial to the USA power centers and that it happened because it was beneficial to them, not simply an accident.
Also Musk is incredibly dumb and for most people, that veil is finally falling.
Some of the real power behind the ‘throne’ is Peter Thiel. That guy is the worst of everything.
I 100% admit that my take on the TikTok ban is opinion based on the hearings and arguments + the scope of the bill, so you aren’t being unfair. I have never heard that about the Twitter purchase - I had read it was a poor decision Musk made only half-seriously and then was basically forced to follow through with.
The conspiracy theory, which I must again say is not my opinion, states the reluctance of the purchase was either: (A) A show put on to obfuscate “the truth”, or (B) An internal power struggle between the ruling elites and Musk
Just explaining, not advocating. Please don’t @ me.
That is some top level propaganda. Mixing facts with half truths and fiction. Nice.
TikTok is being banned for a bunch of different reasons all added together.
Republicans agreed to it, among the other reasons, because Democrats will get the blame for it and it will hurt Biden at the election.
Republicans and Democrats supported its ban because of sinophobia. It’s a big, successful business in America, there’s scaremongering around what data it’s collecting or ways it could be used to manipulate people’s opinions—ByteDance did not do itself any favours by coming out and telling all its American users to tell their Congresspeople to vote against this, which was spun as a demonstration of that power.
They also support the ban as part of an ongoing backlash against “big tech”. Republicans are angry at big tech because they think it’s too liberal. Democrats are angry at it for being addictive, abusing monopolistic powers, and other quite legitimate issues. The problem is that neither party is very good at actually dealing with the problem, so they just lash out wildly at whatever comes along that looks vaguely tech. Not realising that in this case, that will give way more power to Meta and Alphabet.
I think the reason it’s happening now is because of the growing protest movement against the genocide in Gaza.
All the other US media companies actively sensor pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content and TikTok doesn’t. Unacceptable!
Maybe, but I don’t think so. The US govt is infamously slow and inefficient. I’ve been following this and it’s been a drumbeat that’s been growing for years, since long before Israel’s latest genocidal push began last October.
If there’s any particular reason that it’s succeeded now, I’d put it more down to the upcoming election.
Here’s US Senator Pete Ricketts saying that we need to ban TikTok because pro-Palestine videos “have more reach than the top 10 US news websites combined”
The reason it’s succeeded now is because of Gaza. Crediting the election makes no sense, how does this help anyone’s election chances?
how does this help anyone’s election chances
It doesn’t help. It hurts Biden among younger voters. Because he gets the blame for this.
So why are Democrats doing this? This isn’t just a Republican thing, it’s bipartisan and Biden signed it. Why?
So why are Democrats doing this?
For all the other reasons already listed?
That’s a bingo.
Y’just say ‘bingo’. /ref
Oh shit, how did I miss the Noam Chompsky Bernie Sanders crossover episode!?
Thanks for sharing!
