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TikTok goes dark in the US (techcrunch.com)
1180 points by mfiguiere 25 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 2458 comments



Next thread in the sequence:

TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users after Trump comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759336 - Jan 2025 (22 comments)


The Communications Act of 1934 limits foreign ownership of many communication technologies such as TV. TikTok has easily more influence than most TV channels so it does not seem strange to limit its foreign ownership. If the purchase of US steel by a Japanese company threatens national security, surely the ownership of TikTok is also one.


I'm surprised no one replied to your post but maybe that's because it shuts down most arguments. Most, if not all, states in a nation-state world have laws that allow them to ban the imports of foreign goods. Maybe at some point we'll get a global government to resolve inter-national conflict but until then, we have nation-states dividing humanity to protect "their" humans.


Without wanting to enter into ideological debate too much, it seems a contradiction to invoke such rules when precisely the country we're talking about has boosted their GDP by selling products that capitalized on the effective minimization of borders in the information age.

What I mean is: maybe it's not about protecting "their" humans (from what, exactly?), but protecting "their" corporations. Which is a very different goal.


Very possible. Most import tariffs and bans are to protect national industry. Still a "our humans are more important than yours" division of the world.

But yes, countries who impose import restrictions often don't want others to impose them.


The Communications Act of 1934 applies primarily to broadcast media, and many of the restrictions that it put in place were specifically justified by the inherent scarcity of broadcast spectrum, where the rationale that one party can dominate the airwaves and prevent others from rebutting them does have some relevance.

Restrictions that would be clearly invalid as applied to other forms of media were therefore allowed -- you need an FCC license to operate a radio station, but any proposal to require a federal license to operate a printing press, for example, would be extremely unconstitutional.

Once the licencing regime was in place for broadcast media, they were able to work other concerns into the criteria for issuing licenses. But the argument you seem to be making here -- that it's appropriate to regulate public communications in order to control, as an end in itself, who is allowed to have "influence" on public opinion -- flies in the face of the first amendment, and is entirely outside the legitimate role of the federal government.

The internet does not have the scarcity of communication channels that broadcast media does -- apps and websites are more like printing presses than radio stations.


On the same logic, youtube, facebook, google, etc. should not be owned by the parent company in other countries than the US because of the influence they have on ppls opinions (on policital elections and whatnot)


They definitely should do that if they believe that these applications are controlled by US government.

AFAIK nobody seriously believes that.


> They definitely should do that if they believe that these applications are controlled by US government.

The goal of government entities in these types of spots is to have de facto control and/or influence without appearing to have it.

> AFAIK nobody seriously believes that.

Ummmm…


You assume there is a symmetrical relationship between the US and other nations here. There is not, hasn't been since WW2.


Especially since those ironically are among the long list of American websites banned in China for decades...


Maybe we should go farther. Should Samsung divest because so many Americans have a Samsung Galaxy?

Who knows what could be on those chips.


Pretty sure South Korea is considered an ally. That's how political relationships work.


Amd that will be better. No massive global corporation.


So, I guess China had it right with its great firewall then, right? I mean you have to protect your national interest against foreign corporations. I didn't know Americans would agree with CCP policies like this.


From the perspective of the Chinese government, yes.

I would say America has as much right to be upset at China blocking American websites within its borders, as China has to be upset at the US blocking Tiktok within its borders.


Is China upset about this? This just seems to be a huge American self-own (pun intended).


I don't see the downside to Americans as a result of this. Meanwhile, China lost a valuable propaganda tool.

Or, would have. It's all a moot point now that the appeal to Trump's ego worked.


The downside is mostly in terms of PR. But I agree that Americans and American media would still probably call any foreign ban on Facebook or youtube "censorship". Or would say that Chinese style bans on foreign social media is wrong - except when they do it. So I guess I agree, there's no big downside for Americans.


You sound like someone who doesn't use TikTok and therefore isn't affected by this anyway. So your opinion doesn't matter


Extrapolating your logic, I am not currently in a war-zone therefore my opinions on war don't matter. I'm not a politician so I shouldn't have political opinions.


They are just shifting to one propaganda tool (tiktok) to another (fb). For the american citizen nothing changes.


TikTok and the Scope of the Communications Act of 1934 Are Different The Communications Act of 1934 primarily targets traditional media (e.g., television, radio), while TikTok is an algorithm-driven social media platform where content is user-generated. Its operational model is fundamentally different from traditional media. Directly equating the two is unreasonable and does not align with the realities of the modern digital economy.

Foreign Ownership Does Not Equate to a National Security Threat There is no publicly available evidence proving that TikTok has provided U.S. user data to a foreign government. TikTok has already implemented localization measures for data storage and operations (e.g., the "Texas Project"). In contrast, many U.S. tech companies (e.g., Facebook, Google) have faced scrutiny over data privacy issues but have not been restricted due to foreign ownership. Restricting TikTok solely based on "foreign ownership" lacks factual support.

Economic Impact: TikTok Is a Lifeline for Millions TikTok provides a critical source of income for over 5 million small businesses and 1.5 million creators in the U.S. According to 2023 data, TikTok contributed $24.2 billion to the U.S. economy and supported at least 300,000 jobs. Restricting TikTok would directly threaten the livelihoods of these individuals, causing significant harm to social stability and economic vitality.

A More Reasonable Solution Is Strengthening Regulation, Not an Outright Ban Rather than imposing a blanket restriction on TikTok, it would be more effective to strengthen data privacy protections through legislation, ensuring that all social media platforms (whether foreign or domestic) adhere to the same security standards. For example, TikTok could be required to further localize data storage and undergo independent audits. This approach would safeguard national security while avoiding unnecessary harm to users and creators.


>The Communications Act of 1934 primarily targets traditional media (e.g., television, radio), while TikTok is an algorithm-driven social media platform where content is user-generated. Its operational model is fundamentally different from traditional media. Directly equating the two is unreasonable and does not align with the realities of the modern digital economy.

I don't understand your point. Yes, TikTok and traditional media are different. But there are similarities. And you haven't pointed out any difference between them that would make a law restricting traditional media reasonable but a law restricting TikTok unreasonable.

>A More Reasonable Solution Is Strengthening Regulation, Not an Outright Ban

Why capitalize every letter of the sentence? This feels like it was generated by an LLM.


> TikTok provides a critical source of income for over 5 million small businesses and 1.5 million creators in the U.S.

I very much doubt that 5 million people earn significant money from tik tok


the crazy thing is the US isn't even limiting all foreign ownership with this act. all it says is that four adversary countries can't own it -- china, NK, Russia, Iran.


Sure, but just because its law doesnt mean its just. If you are just talking about "the law" you are talking about something very different than everyone else. Even if its the law, its obviously a violation of the intent behind free speech to limit speech only to those who the government can intimidate. If the only way to have free speech is to be within arms reach of the government's threats you arent really a bastion of free speech, you just practice speech within the bounds of what the government will allow. And as we have recently seen, that can change dramatically depending on who is paying.


One would think that should apply to essential services like power, but here in the UK our largest energy distribution network is owned by France.


A point I think most people don’t understand is that the government interest in TikTok has little to do with exploiting user data per se, a lot of other companies do that. The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts.

This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone conflict is, what it looks like, or why it matters. Geopolitic strategies are increasingly executed as grey zone warfare, and some hybrid warfare, because the costs and risks of traditional overt warfare have become unacceptably high.


You mention “grey zone conflicts” then opine that people don’t know what that is…then don’t actually explain what it is!


This is the very top of the "Description" section of the Wikipedia page for "Grey-zone (international relations)"[0]:

> Use of the term grey-zone is widespread in national security circles, but there is no universal agreement on the definition of grey-zone, or even whether it is a useful term, with views about the term ranging from "faddish" or "vague", to "useful" or "brilliant"

It goes on to say:

> Grey zone warfare generally means a middle, unclear space that exists between direct conflict and peace in international relations.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-zone_(international_relat...


OP maligns people for not knowing what it means, but it seems like it’s a nebulous term with no concrete meaning.


Saying people don’t know something is not maligning. Most people don’t know most things.


"You don't know this thing that nobody knows either" is not very informative. Though to be fair "grey-zone" is a bit like obscenity: you know it when you see it.


I don't think obscenity has any sort of consensus, it's based on arbitrary morality.



So it's pretty much a cold war, but we don't want to say that?


Beijing understands very well how TikTok can be used. It’s been banned in Hong Kong since the 2019 protests.


I don't understand your comment. Beijing controls TikTok and understands how it can be used, yet bans it in Hong Kong to prevent it from being used to fuel the independence movement. Aren't those statements contradictory?


Those who control TikTok certainly have more power than the users.


Because during the Cold war information was able to be more efficiently split up between different mutually independent spheres. Now it's more of a free for all because of global Internet access. So yes, you could call it a "cold war", but it's really a more generalized version of that concept.


I guess "The Cold War" is very specific to a historical period, and the term "grey zone conflict" is a generalization of what went on there. Also the Cold War involved lots of proxy wars, not thing "grey zone conflict" necessarily does.

Also, I'm starting to feel like the vagueness of "are we at war or not?" is an intentional feature that gives people in power leverage to gaslight the public. That applies to both cold war and grey zone conflict.


The conflict in Palestine was one (1).

The ADL head (Greenblatt) noted they had a major issue with young people seeing footage from the front lines negatively impacting perception of Israel, this is in a leaked voice memo from early 2024. Ban legislation followed within a month.

(1) https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1852851603365036222

https://x.com/PatriotSt0rm17/status/1878777137479712889

https://x.com/infolibnews/status/1878706591626924522


"Grey zone conflict" sounds a lot like our powers are upset they don't have the level of control over information that the adversary has. They want to be the ones to censor, suppress, and promote, rather than another country. The goal isn't more open access to information.


You make it sound like that's generally a negative thing, implying that the information being promoted by other countries is made equal and has some implicit right to be spread. But it's not, it's geopolitic information warfare.


So we get down to actual situation - TikTok is way too popular and not under reach nor control.

The hell will sooner freeze that me as an European will believe US government is not weaponizing data of all US companies it can get it hands on, and well, it can get hands on all data. That's decade old story at best.

For an European, this is really funny, fight for who can control general population more. Don't get me wrong, I consider all social networks a brain and societal cancer, but to claim one is weaponized and the other is not, pinky promise... Snowden, NSA, secret courts and rulings that can't be even made public, recording basically whole internet traffic for further analysis including this comment (maybe apart from youtube traffic). Discussion who is doing worse is then just an academic one, lets make an Excel spreadsheet and compare numbers.


I'm sure the US government is also weaponizing information. But the decision to ban TikTok while controlled by the CPP isn't done on moral grounds. It's based on pragmatism.


As a european, talking to any american, we notice you guys have levels of propaganda that are way way higher than what we get. And we do get propaganda.

The notion that without tiktok you'll now get anything "true" is laughable.


I think what you are saying could possibly be true, but is probably hard to quantify. Anecdotally, I have a friend living in the EU that claims the opposite of what you are, but I have no plans on taking a stance until I see some kind of proof.

Personally, I'm not too concerned with the propaganda factor, but of course I'm still affected whether I want to or not. I just don't feel it's a strong point.

What is really concerning though is the other points that a lot of commenters fail to bring up:

#1 - The ability for a foreign nation to streamline targeting an American with real time location data is one - for example, a high ranking official has the app or has an aide that uses the app. The high ranking official can then be targeted.

#2 - Another really good one is that China subsidizes TikTok content creators. This is a form of economic warfare against Americans and also a way to generate more growth and users, which ultimately strengthens the capabilities of #1.

There are more of course, but I have no intention on writing a dissertation. My point is that propaganda shouldn't be worried about as much as the risk to national security.

Lastly, I say all this having a great respect for people of China. They feel like one of the countries in the world that takes the "knowledge is power" saying seriously, rather than just using it as a punch line.


It is?

The problem has no easy solution.

At the end of the day, either users are really in control for what they can or they cannot talk about or it's censored one way or another and thus not free.

Information war is complex and if we don't allow our foes to express their povs then all we're left is our own manipulated media. If we do allow it we might face a spread of a different kind of information.

I wish this was all solved by allowing everybody to spread whatever information and educating citizens since young age about raising a lot of doubt about anything they hear/see in the news/socials.

But again this is also complicated on a social media level especially with those auto feeder algorithms that will either push you controversial content because it makes views or just because you stumbled on few videos on the topic so it's gonna push you even further in the hole.

In any case there's no simple solution.

The issue with China is that our own information and misinformation cannot reach them either.

We allowed Russian state media for long on our platforms because they allowed our on theirs too. Reddit or YouTube or X were never banned there. But again 90% of Russians get informed by tv, and the minority that doesn't gets it on VK or other Russian social media.


Users aren't in control. Because you can post whatever you want, but the platform decides if it gets seen or not. This is valid for any social media.

Is it freedom of speech if there is no freedom of hearing?


This misunderstands the topic, it literally has nothing to do with information access.

The Chinese government invested a lot for decades in R&D around population-scale behavioral manipulation, including running a lot of experiments on their own population. It was an impressive research effort; other countries invest in this too but the Chinese commitment to mastery of it was next level. Not an issue.

These capabilities and techniques can make populations wired into it dance like predictable puppets in aggregate but they don’t work that effectively over generic undifferentiated communication channels because humans are too chaotic. It requires tight real-time feedback, control, and instrumentation of the information channels with sufficient critical mass population-wise to matter. Those kinds of tight feedback and control loops under direct control of government systems for constructive manipulation aren’t really a thing at most social media companies. You can spam propaganda but that is qualitatively inferior.

Divestiture of TikTok removes the access and control the Chinese government needs to effect outcomes with TikTok beyond typical propaganda and influence operations.

Most countries desire this capability but the technical implementation and requirement of sufficiently tight control of the channel has been a formidable barrier. China outright banned any vehicle that had the potential to allow foreign governments to do the same in their own country.

All of this has been known and discussed in national security settings for decades. The difficulty of implementation in the real world made it mostly a hypothetical risk at any non-trivial scale until TikTok.

The most insidious aspect is that sophisticated operational analytics has made it such that the manipulation may seem completely unrelated to the desired population-scale effect, it is not propaganda in a conventional sense. Done well, the individual never perceives it but the aggregate effect reliably emerges. The extent to which humans can be analytically manipulated in very indirect ways at scale is both fascinating and scary.

(Many years ago I used to work on problems related to population-scale operational behavioral analysis. China was on the cutting edge of this research even back then. None of the experimental theory is new, but apparently the tech finally caught up.)


Do you have reading material you can recommend on this for someone that wants to learn enough to get an informed opinion on this?


“More open access to information” is not the adversary’s goal, either. Is that goal served by preserving the adversary’s control over the information environment?


I think it's more the other way round, that they don't want others to have the same powers they do?

If you control the "last mile" infrastructure, you have a pretty good idea what's going on. If you control the mobile network, you can track everyone, and flash their baseband processor if you like.

(see also: concerns about Huawei equipment in our internet infrastructure)

The documents that Snowden released confirmed that this kind of thing was going on. To be honest, I don't think that really surprised anyone in the security community.

We just don't want China to have the same power to monitor our citizens as we have ourselves.


> and flash their baseband processor if you like

Could you please give some source on that info?


All the real documentation for this is likely to be classified, but here's

a backdoor: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/replicant-developers-fin...

a patent for doing it in "civilian" applications: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2013114317A1/en

sure, the NSA will respect that


Well damn. I had a vague feeling that something like that was possible, but this is eye opening, thank you.


In the US we allow significantly more spying on foreigners than US citizens. That’s not as controversial as domestic spying.

Look at the backlash against the US government trying to clamp down on Covid misinformation with a national emergency declaration [1]. There’s exactly zero reason to expect the CCP has an incentive to behave differently, especially when there’s effectively no way for companies to push back in China.

And no that doesn’t excuse the nonsense some US administrations get up to. Like undermining the effectiveness of the Chinese covid vaccine [2].

There is already evidence of pressure being applied to ByteDance by the CCP for data on Hong Kong citizens [3].

So it would be silly to think that: 1) data for different TikTok users is more or less difficult for the CCP to access based on their specific locations (technically or practically) And 2) the CCP has more respect for foreigners than Western governments do.

———

1 - https://hms.harvard.edu/news/whats-stake-us-supreme-court-ca...

2 - https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

3 - https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-china-bytedance-user-data-...


You are not wrong per se

> This has been an open secret in national security circles but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone conflict is, what it looks like, or why it matters

Looks like you're just confirming what OP said

Might as well look up the definition of "5th column"


Why drop bombs on your adversary when you can use social media influence to achieve the same ends of reducing productivity? This is far cheaper and gives you plausible deniability.


Whether they want or not, they cannot. The democratic system, even deficient as one in US, still does its job and works against blatant information suppression.


Huh?


It has absolutely made things more difficult not having distinct spheres of information with well defined boundaries. It's genuinely made things much more difficult to plan about. The global Internet absolutely has made a lot of people upset for a lot of reasons that make intuitive sense.

That's what growing conservative "anti globalist" movements backed by national security elements are really about. Not ultimately immigration or racism or tax cuts (that's how you get the tubes on board), but about how the inability to keep civilians out of information conflicts has made running countries incredibly difficult.

This is one area where China absolutely has the right approach and we need to wake up about what it means in the public rather than complain that we can't scroll silly waste of time videos all the time. The US public is incredibly uneducated about this concept and why it poses a threat, so the discussion needs to be had.

I think we should be far more critical of American internet companies as well and quite a few of them should probably be banned because they are creating the same sort of problem w.r.t how we can practically organize a functioning society. That's the unfortunate thing, is a bunch of libertarians in silicon valley a while back decided to invent a business model that could cause a global war.


Do you have any evidence supporting anything you claimed as a matter of fact? "grey zone conflicts", "aggressively weaponized", "national security circles" are just scary/serious sounding phrases that sound a lot more legitimate than I suspect they actually are.

AOC published a video talking about how she (and some other representatives) believed that the arguments that were presented to them were just as vague, nonspecific and theoretical as these online arguments I keep reading.


Grey Zone is a pretty well documented concept in geopolitics, it's a fascinating read if you're interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-zone_(international_relat...


Gray zone conflicts: Evidence shows that China, Russia, and other foreign governments are actively using social media to manipulate and influence Americans through covert and deceptive tactics.

“Aggressively weaponized”: These conflicts rely on information as a primary weapon because it is more cost-effective and impactful than traditional warfare.

“National security circles”: This term commonly refers to the U.S. security establishment, including its agencies and defense systems.


Well, you have the recent Romanian election.

Pro-Russian, right-wing candidate (Calin Georgescu) with zero funding becomes leading candidate overnight. Turns out there's coordinate campaigns to push him on social media channels, like TikTok, where tens of thousands of accounts were opened a couple of weeks prior to polls opening. All pushing Calin.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2v13nz202o


So what? People freely chose to vote for Calin. He won. Why does it matter how these voters came to their decisions?

Deep down, the sorts of people who'd ban TikTok and overturn the Romanian election are those who believe they, not the people collectively, get to weigh the merit of ideas. They see democracy as a rubber stamp for elite consensus. If the rubber stamp malfunctions, it's time to fix it. This attitude is a betrayal of centuries of liberal values that made this country and the west generally what it is today.


It's a national risk, simple as that.


They can’t manufacture consent anymore regarding false flag wars that only benefit large war profiteering corporations.


what “false flag” war has the US engaged in? would love a single legit example of a false flag, closest i can think of is gulf of tonkin which was quite some time ago and not actually a false flag.

i hate that nationalism is becoming another hyper-polarized topic - now we get people who are ridiculously jingoistic/anti-cosmopolitan and other people who reject fully the notion that a government’s first responsibility is to its own citizens. both are radical views that are no way to govern a well-functioning republic.


Remember when we overthrew Saddam’s government because Iraq had WMDs?


that’s not what a false flag is unless you’re saying the US secretly gassed the Kurds and blamed it on Iraq


Well they didn’t don Iraqi uniforms and take photos smiling by vx agent drums or anything I guess. But they alleged as much and got the desired response as if they did. By definition of a false flag operation, you wouldn’t expect to hear of many historical cases. But one wonders cases such as the CIA training Taliban to fight the soviet union. Was this considered a false flag? Training and arming troops and sending them to fight without your flag on their sleeve? Does it matter if they went through boot camp on parris island or in a valley in Afghanistan for this definition? Do we care more about semantical correctness here or the outcomes?


yes i think the taliban in the 90s could be a false flag, although it wasn’t used in a way to justify US intervention


the problem this law solves is that in tiktok's case the "they" who has the power to manufacture consent is the PRC


They don't need to, people share and watch the content voluntarily because it has novel value.

"Why wasn't I told this before?" Is a common sentiment in those videos.


often the reason is because it wasn’t true or they were told and weren’t listening!


Is there solid evidence about that?

The only study I've seen said that TikTok wasn't any more biased than other social medias.



belief laundering, as if “network contagion research institute” is some long-standing research org and not basically an extension of the state like the “Atlantic Council”

anyone with half a statistics brain can see the problems in this analysis


That's not a scientific study but a report from a no profit and the method and data has not been reviewed.

It's not like those hashtags were even banned, so what's the point here?

It's also likely that demographics between the apps are different.


These arguments become so vague to me that it just feels like an excuse for governments to do whatever they want.

Calling it "Grey zone conflict" feels like the "Deep state" shenanigans... It's primarily marketing to achieve your goal.

We've seen the invasion of Iraq; that was all based on lies. We got ISIS as a result... "National security circles" look for evidence so it fits their narrative. Like watching FoxNews. It's a very narrowminded funnel of carefully picked pieces of evidence. They are not truth seekers that aim to provide a holistic view of the situation. No, they are scared aged men who love to control the narrative and see danger in everything in the hope to get more funding for their next projects.

Btw; banning TikTok is a good thing, but for other reasons entirely.


Other ways [0] to think about "grey zone" conflict:

  cold-war (not an obsolete term)

  ambient non-linear conflict

  cyberwar

  business 

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/after-war/


This. I suggest to read Unrestricted Warfare to understand more on how TikTok (or FB, X, Instagram and such) can be used as tools in modern conflict.


Brexit and Trump #1 would've not happened without the likes of Cambridge analytica targeting undecided voters with precision.

Social media manipulation has already been effective.


>but the average person on the street has no idea what a grey zone conflict is, what it looks like, or why it matters.

Education?


College degree here, I have no idea what it actually means.


whenever the words ''national security'' appear in a paragraph, what follows next is usually nonsense or propaganda.


Chase Hughes:

"Manipulation Playbook: The 20 Indicators of Reality Control"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3AN2wY4qAM


But there is no big conspiracy. Just a lot or small ones.


You mean, Romania?


That one appears to be an own-goal by an opposing party: https://www.politico.eu/article/investigation-ties-romanian-...


Interesting, so that doesn't have to be CCP to wield influence over TikTok, anyone can pay to a marketing firm to promote whatever they want.


The "aggressively weaponized in currently very active grey zone conflicts" sounds very very scary! Do you actually mean that young Americans are using it to teach each other about the US-enabled Israeli occupation of Palestine?


A guy in Romania nobody knew existed almost became a president thanks to TikTok [0] last December. Almost every right-wing party in Europe has a huge presence in TikTok, from the Balkans to Western Europe. I guess that’s what they mean.

I’m sorry, but not everything on this world is Israel/Palestine.

0 - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2v13nz202o.amp


TikTok is somewhat unique in presenting a real, non-us-based competitor to FB/Instagram. A bit of lobbying to block your competitor is a deft move on Mark’s part


Also a competitor to Google and X.


The ban on TikTok has been in the works since Trump 1.0, way before Musk destroyed Twitter


>The issue is that TikTok is somewhat unique in being aggressively weaponized in currently very active “grey zone” conflicts.

That has been happening since time immemorial.

What is actually the issue is that for the first time ever in the post-WW2 Pax Americana era, media is being weaponized by a powerful non-American state (China).

America does through Facebook, Mysterious Twitter X, Reddit, CNN, Fox News, PBS, et al. what China does through TikTok. If anything, other countries should also seriously consider banning foreign media and realize insofar as future geopolitics that Pax Americana is ending.


The USSR had significant reach back at the time, and a quite ideological one. The last 25 years allowed the US to relax significantly.


According to wikipedia, China is blocking most of the sites you mentioned. I was surprised to see that Russia does not.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_i...


Didn't the USSR have a pretty good "foreign relations" propaganda team?


Has.


The editorial lines of Fox News are completely different to CNN and PBS. Different subreddits are completely different. The idea that they're all part of some conspiracy run by the US government is very strange.


The goal is to make everyone wear American blue jeans and listen to American pop music, the details are irrelevant.

TikTok serves to make everyone wear Chinese blue jeans and listen to Chinese pop music, and America does not like that.

Putting it another way: America can dish it out but they can't take it.


It’s only about blue jeans? It’s not about pissing Americans off so they are less productive and overall are less able to defend against additional attacks?


China is going for a Culture Victory after watching America land Culture Victory after Victory for the past better part of a century. America does not appreciate the challenge, not the least because it can't compete anymore.

Also, seeing as you took "blue jeans" quite literally I am going to assume you never played Civilization. For being a child-oriented game filled with memes it's actually very insightful about human psychology, I recommend playing it.


I’ve probably played thousands of hours of Civ2. Not so much the newer ones. All I’ve learned so Gandhi is a genocidal maniac with NUCLEAR WEAPONS.


[flagged]


I'm not a "China supporter" so much as I am simply stating reality for what it is.

America banned TikTok because it's not something America can control, that really is all there is to it. It's even stated right there in the law: Sell TikTok to America and they can do business.


There's an interesting cognitive bias in the western media that tends to define freedom of the press (and freedom of expression) as exactly what is perceived as freedom in this side of the iron curtain.

Libgen domains are "seized", and tiktok "goes dark", but of course other countries "censor" porn or news outlets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index


As long as we're not discussing ways to circumvent the American firewall, since there isn't one, we can still say that one country tries but sometimes fails to live up to a free speech ideal perfectly -making exceptions for national security- and the other is blatant authoritarian.


Just a hypothesis: the fact that there's no need for an American firewall might be a consequence of the information controls being enacted at the level of platform moderation, or DNS resolution.

(I agree with you about authoritarianism in a political sense, but I'm trying to look at the informational "water" in which we're swimming in).


The mistake is in thinking that there is no need for an American (or Canadian, or EU) firewall. The reality is that either due to corruption or naivety, western countries let foreign information attacks and foreign propaganda spreads completely unchecked.

One could argue in the US that this was very useful to the new regime gaining popularity.


"Sometimes" fails. If sometimes is every day.


Semantics aside, there's an objective list of who bans or censors more, and it's not even close. Not by an order of magnitude. Source: the great firewall's existence.


This is interesting. I agree, to some extent, but there's nuance in what do you include in the objectification of the concept. The usual argument, as I perceive it, is that we can be objective if we just quantify protocol interference, or DPI, or bogus DNS resolution.

But still, not all blocks are born equal. That's a bit of beating around the bush to avoid going one level up in the abstraction of information controls. There's a thin line between content moderation at the platform level and mandatory hijacking of the DNS system via legal means.

If you squint, they are just a different configuration in the phase space of distributed technical systems, corporations operating in nation-states, and national laws.


> freedom of the press

In many European countries this still includes regulations for publishers - while social media are somehow excluded from these regulations (and that explains why society is in state that is now when lies are not confronted but amplified).


Yes. I was recently in Indonesia and shocked at how many high-profile sites are blocked at the DNS-level there, e.g. Reddit.

Is Reddit a great place? Eh. Is it critical to daily life in Indonesia? Of course not. But what I witnessed was censorship, full-stop.

I understand that the U.S. is not blocking TikTok at the DNS level. And that there are valid concerns over sharing user data and government influence over TikTok. But in my view, this is still censorship. Instead of allowing individuals decide whether or not to use TikTok, my government decided to ban it.

The whole argument over selling TikTok to a U.S.-based company is bullshit, imo. What kind of precedent is that? I use online services from all over the world, and in doing so decide to allow my usage to fall (to some extent) under the jurisdiction of that country.


Censoring is different to banning though. Banning in this case is the correct word to use, censoring isn’t. You can censor things on a platform, you can’t censor a platform entirely - that is a ban.


The censors in this case are Apple and Google, acting at the behest of the US Government. This news isn't about Tiktok censoring, rather about it being censored. Apple and Google are the platforms/publishers.

(There are also a whole host of other service providers that might be put into the position of being censors if Tiktok were to ignore the law and continue working for sidedloaded apps).


...and yet when discussing ways to circumvent the Great Firewall of China, the term used is "Chinese censorship", never "Chinese bans".

This sounds like one of those irregular verb conjugations English is so full of: I ban; you go dark; he/she/it censors.


GFoC specifically filters not only sites (banning) but specific topics, keywords, discussions, and participants (censorship).


I agree with your linguistic point and the interaction of bias and ideology.

It's probably worth adding, though, that Libgen, TikTok, Porn and News Outlets would all be censored/banned/deliberately-excluded-from-culture-by-people-with-legitimate-power for different reasons.

I think TikTok and News Outlets would be the most closely aligned in this sense.


[flagged]


But that is precisely what I was talking about. You do not seem to find any commonality between censoring different categories of websites or apps. As far as I understand it, "media", "gambling", "porn", "politics" are quite common categories when researching (and defining) online censorship. See, for instance, https://censoredplanet.org/censoredplanet

You say "banned", but that is not quite the same as "censored". Just try and search, you will see the US "bans" and China or Iran "censor". Perhaps one regime's "censorship" is experienced as "lawfully banned" from within the context of their legal and cultural system.

And no, I don't see why would I keep my edgy observations to myself. That would be self-censorship :)


Because it isn't censoring. Censoring is selective removal of information. This is wholesale. The tiktok ban isn't even about suppressing information. If you search for e.g. the Moscow Times, you'll also find words like "banned", "declare illegal foreign agent" in the Western press. Censorship already applied to that news outlet, but after the feb 2023 offensive, the Russian state simply forbade the whole publication.

> You do not seem to find any commonality between censoring different categories of websites or apps.

The fact that they're different is important. Pornography is really different from journalism. Aversion against public nudity and sexual acts is deeply ingrained in many cultures, if not all. It also doesn't serve any democratic goal. Freedom of porn isn't a human right.



Those words have different meaning:

1. Libgen domains are "seized" - only the domains got seized, the website is still operational.

2. tiktok "goes dark", yes because it was an action of tiktok to go dark with the hope that they will be operational next week. Nobody banned them and even Biden said he would not enforce it so they could have simply do nothing and wait for the next week.

3. "censor" porn or news outlets, I think thats common usage.


This morning I felt the urge to download TikTok for the first time. I did, but I didn't bother creating an account.

There is a passage in the book Life of Pi, where Pi's family is gathered and ready to leave India for Canada. And his mother does something out of the ordinary:

> The day before our departure she pointed at a cigarette wallah and earnestly asked, "Should we get a pack or two?"

> Father replied, "They have tobacco in Canada. And why do you want to buy cigarettes? We don't smoke."

> Yes, they have tobacco in Canada-but do they have Gold Flake cigarettes? Do they have Arun ice cream? Are the bicycles Heroes? Are the televisions Onidas? Are the cars Ambassadors? Are the bookshops Higginbothams'? Such, I suspect, were the questions that swirled in Mother's mind as she contemplated buying cigarettes.

Do I use TikTok? No, I've always advocated against it. Will I use it if it is reinstated? Probably not. But I downloaded it anyway the same way Mrs Gita Patel wanted to buy cigarettes. It wasn’t about need or use. It was about the loss.

I would stand behind a tiktok ban if it was for the right reasons. But this ban is only because it failed to conform to manufactured consent.


There is a statement from India’s information technology ministry, after 20 Indian soldiers died during border skirmish with China. When India banned TikTok in 2020 [0]

> Chinese mobile apps were stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data.

> The compilation of such data, and its mining and profiling by elements hostile to India is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures

[0] https://apnews.com/article/bd02ecd62ff9da6b1301868f0308e297


If they were really concerned about privacy, they would strengthen privacy laws. Adopt a GDPR like framework with opt-in consent and force platforms to implement a GrapheneOS like model with mock permissions and scoped consent. Banning apps is just a veiled attempt to appease other interests.



DPDP is a watered down version of GDPR and is not as broad with its definition of personal data. Also for a privacy act, it does not have any directives on pseudonymization. But the worst part of DPDP is it makes it illegal for users to provide false information irrespective whether there is an intent to commit fraud. The jury is out whether one can be prosecuted for using an alias online or providing a fake location to an app.


India is also an authoritarian government, is that something to celebrate? Also it is hilarious that they complain about TikTok but when you live in India, you realize that half their mobile phones themselves are from Chinese manufacturers. Some of them have Indian manufacturing units but it doesn’t take much scrutiny to realize that this is all political theater.


huge false equivalency. true India is maybe not a model image of a democracy but they are way more free than China. take a look at the freedom house reports for more details.


> Do I use TikTok? No, I've always advocated against it.

This, to me, is a weird stance. On what grounds did you advocate against it?

I just had to create a new account tonight after the ban[0] to keep using it. When you first start TikTok you might be presented with a wave of seemingly crap, bizarre or boring videos, but after several minutes of liking and watching the good stuff the algorithm very quickly starts serving you some excellent content.

There is some really, really great, really smart content on TikTok. I have always advocated for TikTok on those grounds.

[0] my accounts are all on USA servers and you can't log into them even through a VPN


> On what grounds did you advocate against it?

It is incredibly addictive inducing drug like state:

> You’ll just be in this pleasurable dopamine state, carried away. It’s almost hypnotic, you’ll keep watching and watching. - Dr. Julie Albright

> You keep scrolling, she says, because sometimes you see something you like, and sometimes you don’t. And that differentiation — very similar to a slot machine in Vegas — is key.

I detest slot machines, so many lives wasted away, and I feel like we already spend too much time on computers to the detriment of both ourselves and society, let alone giving the CCP a hand to manipulate people on top of everything else


I find the hard core defenders of tiktok, such as yourself, weird. I know for a fact you get propaganda videos shoved in between your feed of 'good stuff' that you enjoy watching, but I know you wont admit that, or downplay it or say you can scroll past it. It doesn't change the fact the platform is used by the CCP to push a narrative, and while it might not work on you, there's some 120m users in America on TT. That's an awful lot of people who are being fed bullshit and lies.

> my accounts are all on USA servers

Keep telling yourself that ;)


> I know for a fact you get propaganda videos shoved in between your feed of 'good stuff' that you enjoy watching

No idea how you could know this. I have never seen any concrete evidence that there are propaganda videos interlaced into people’s feeds. Everything I have heard is hypothetical. “China could” do this or that. If there were anything more than conjecture it would be huge news.

Casey Newton said on Hard Fork that he started a new account recently as an experiment and didn’t mention anything about China propaganda videos.


Here in my country, Chinese propaganda is vast in TikTok because of the disputes in the South China Sea, Scarborough Shoal and others. Maybe your feed is different since you aren't neighbors with China.


Fascinating, could you share an example link?


I don't use the app personally but I have friends who use TikTok and sometimes they would just casually tell me "oh yeah sometimes it shows me weird stuff like nazi videos, I just scroll past them"

The app's design is to get you to mindlessly doomscroll and not really think too hard about what it's showing you. If it shows you something insane occasionally it's no big deal, it's just the algorithm trying something new right?

It's very difficult to show any concrete evidence for how a secretive algorithm controlled by an adversary behaves. In an ideal world the burden should be on the platforms to prove that their algorithms are fair and not biasing towards certain viewpoints, but that might never happen.


You don’t need to know how the algorithm works you just need to demonstrate an effect it has. As of yet I have not seen that, and I am sure many journalists would love to prove it does.


I've been using TikTok for four years and never once seen anything resembling Nazi content.

I opened a new account in Canada last night due to the ban. I saw a lot of Canadian memes, and a ton of wildly incomprehensible foreign material from every corner of the globe as the algo tried to figure me out. But none of it looked remotely political or ideological in any way.

If there is propaganda it is very covert. Compared with X where my feed is maybe 80% overt propaganda, including from the owner of the platform himself.


"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"


I mean, if that's the standard, I've also unfortunately been exposed to more Nazi content than I'd like on Twitter/Reddit/etc. Should they be banned as well?


What do these "propaganda" videos look like and how do I recognize them?

I did once see a cat that was named "Chairman Meow" in one video, which might have been very subtle CCP reprogramming now that I think on it.


FYI: They are very subtle.

Usually it is about behavior shifts and/or emotions. E.g. if I’d be watching videos with cute penguins and then seen a politician „adopting” penguins at zoo, that’d be a political propaganda.

Political ads have to be marked clearly but if politician is sympathetic to the platform and platform owner has a stake in keeping good relations then it’s just another penguins video, right?

And it’s omnipresent, so you stop paying attention. It’s not only China who is doing that. That’s why Paris Syndrome exists, car manufacturers don’t allow game makers to show their models in a destroyed form or why actresses don’t like to show their nostrils.

The problem with China (as far as I understand) is lack of the symmetry. They will sell you everything, but refuse to let your merchants in.

And I’d describe message shown to American users as a propaganda.


> I know for a fact you get propaganda videos shoved in between your feed of 'good stuff' that you enjoy watching,

I have been using TikTok for months and I didn't see any propaganda at all. I only get content about my interests (3d printing, game dev, tech stuff). Sometimes it shows random stuff like animals and camping and funny videos or something but nothing like heavy politics at all.

I guess if I started engaging with "slightly political stuff" and started searching for it, it may be possible to get that kind of content, but yeah it's definitely not shown to me.

I expect that to stay unless I start to show intentions to the algorithm that I care about that kind of content.


So, when my feed dipped into politics, it was all anti-trump (though I'm traditionally conservative) and if it were my only news, I would have been flabbergasted by the Trump win. But apparently the app was pushing Trumps victory?


Yes, there is high quality long form content on TikTok, but most people just mindlessly consume the short form garbage, wasting their time and destroying their attention span. Everytime I watch teenagers or kids use TikTok I am genuinely horrified. It is clear that the platform does not optimize for thoughtful content, on the contrary! I certainly wouldn't advocate for it.


To me it is a time-sink that drowns our brains in a perpetual state of climax. Every video is designed to bring you to climax, and before it is done, the next video is loaded only to do the same. It is addictive and breeds impatience.

The medium is the message. I treat YouTube shorts and reels the same way. I'm sure there is smart content, but I'd rather take the time to research a subject rather wait for it to be randomly fed to me in the most exaggerated manner.


Not OP, but the users of it I know my person seem hypermobilized by what I consider brainrot ideologies amd generally seem to have highly destabilized psychologies.


>On what grounds did you advocate against it?

It's owned by the Chinese government and I don't trust the Chinese government.


Make no mistake - it conforms to manufactured consent.


The only difference is the manufacturer. But this is an important difference.


It feels like you downloaded it primarily so you could share this related passage.


> But this ban is only because it failed to conform to manufactured consent.

Are you saying that TikTok was banned because the company would not generate specific content? That's not at all how the app works, so maybe I am misunderstanding what your claim here is.


Not at all, the same way the US government does not ask Facebook or other media to produce specific content. However they still send take down requests and guidelines.

TikTok being a foreign entity was under no obligation to conform to the US government, well at least not until now. With the exception to illegal content.


So you're saying then that because TikTok could refuse lawful orders from the United States government, the US had to ban it?


If you're on iPhone that might make sense but on Android there is no need, lots of ways to get access to it after you moved to Canada, if you ever want to pick up smoking.


I would like to understand your position. China doesn't allow US apps. If Chinese apps are allowed, then China has a big advantage over USA.

Do you understand what kind of information can be derived from 150 million smart phones?


Is this supposed to be China only or should the rest of the world also be suspicious and ban e.g. Meta services especially since they don't have any competing service that is popular in the US?


Oh but we are allies! The USA will never ever use the information gathered on allies for their own profit!


Also Twitter (Trump/Musk) would never push for regime changes in Europe.

(For anyone out of the loop, see https://www.dw.com/en/elon-musk-backs-far-right-afd-in-contr...)


Stop. This is stupid. People are allowed to have opinions on politics in other countries. Every other country in the world sure as hell isn’t shy about opining on US elections. Then you want to act all indignant if the US opines on your elections? Fuck off.


The thing is that Elon Musk is not just some guy with an opinion. He's some guy who has an opinion and owns a major social media platform where he tweaks the algorithm to serve his own purposes, similar to what TikTok is being accused of.


Donald Trump also created his own media platform. It's a pillar of the cult. Without them, they can't keep people fearful and misinformed.


“Everyone who has a media platform does it to keep people fearful and misinformed”. What does this tell you about previous media platforms?


In democracies the power of government and media are supposed to be different branches of the system. When this is violated it's considered a threat to democracy. Like in Italy Berlusconi's media empire, etc.


lmao so the past 8 years where the media was a propaganda org for the DNC was what exactly?


This is an odd statement. GOP was in power from 2016-2020. People confuse entertainment and social media with news sources. Nearly anyone can pay to advertise with traditional or social media.

I think you're trying to describe Twitter and the other "conservative" media sources? These are for entertainment, but traditionally would advertise whoever paid them. Now the companies have been purchased or created to spread misinformation.


I don't think that's true. For instance, Meta will spread whatever information it's legally allowed to if you pay them.


Yeah, and a lot of people opining on US elections had media platforms of their own, or were heads of state or otherwise influential.

Too bad. Sucks that you got beat at your own game.


I was talking about what agendas the powers that control the TikTok/Twitter/Meta might have, not (only) protesting the opinion.

And in this case they are known to be exceptionally ruthless and part of Trump's administration.


Non allied nations should absolutely ban US apps. Additionally, all government devices should have strict security features. It would be wise to also protect certain places from all electronic monitoring.


I presume meta is banned in China.


> Meta services especially since they don't have any competing service that is popular in the US

Meta won't tinker with the algorithm to push propaganda. TikTok will.


Excuse me, what? They do it all the time. Vaccines and Israel's genocide are just the tip of the iceberg of the propaganda machine broadcast through Meta's services. Make no mistake, this is not about China.

TikTok had a huge negative impact on special interest groups that want to continue to allow the holocaust of our days to continue happening and the genocidal state to continue to behave with impunity.

The U.S. is already infiltrated by people working for foreign interests. The thing is, it's not infiltrated by China's or Russia's operatives.


One is a "bastion of democracy", and another is the "center of human rights violation".

Would you not expect the rules to be different?

If it's only about reciprocity and global hegemony, well then...


Are you saying the United States is a bastion of democracy? It's not even classified as a full democracy. The list of full democracies are Canada, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, and Mauritius.

United States is classified as a flawed democracy. Partly because sweeping decisions like this one are made by Supreme Court Justices who nobody voted for and who hold their position for life.

Or maybe that's what you meant and you were being sarcastic with the quotation marks around "bastion of democracy"?


I am not making a statement, mostly portraying the official stance from the USA government that has just had their decision to ban TikTok come into effect.

As in, due to their official stance, we should not expect reciprocity at all.

But you did pique my curiosity, where did you get that list of "full democracies"?


Their source is the “The Economist Democracy Index” [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index


In almost every country, the President or the Parliament selects Supreme Court Justices. In some countries, the President picks x, and the Parliament picks y. They don't have terms. Direct democracy does not make sense when selecting justices.


Canada has a king.


So?

A number of democratic countries have residual symbolic figureheads.


In Canada all laws the legislature passes have to be approved by the monarch or the monarch's representative.

In Canada the monarch is the judicial branch. Ministers are appointed and dismissed by the monarch. Parliament can be adjourned by the monarch.


Again, so?

When was they last time these things weren't rubber stamped?

What do you suppose would happen should the symbolic monarch not rubber stamp procedure?

Why is it that Canada, et al are regarded in the world as "full democracies" whereas the US is ramked a bit lower as a "flawed democracy"?

( See: peer comment with wikipedia link to democratic rankings )


It may be a "bastion of democracy" but that says nothing about how it interferes with other countries. Democracy is only for citizens anyway.


Said 'bastion of democracy' is a flawd democracy [1] who voted in a president who allegedly (facepalm) initiated a coup and got away with it. Also, a convicted criminal.

You could say it is a bastion of liberty but I'm from Europe and women here have reasonable abortion and sexuality rights.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Inde...


Now do China.


Heh, agreed. But the derailing of USA is extremely worrying to me (the trend is downward), whereas with China it is a given I accepted.


Bytedance chose this by not doing as requested.

I wouldn't refer to USA as very democratic or China as a center of human rights violation.

If there is no blanket ban, there would have to be many laws, rules, regulations and restrictions prohibiting the software from government buildings, etc.

In addition to the data points: contacts, location, audio, video, etc, malicious actors can learn a lot through deduction. That's before any sort of manipulation.


>If Chinese apps are allowed, then China has a big advantage over USA

Historically speaking the biggest threat by far to the lives and livelihood of US citizens is the US government and corporate elite. Giving them more power to control what information the population can access is much more dangerous to the average American than giving the Chinese government some data.


The app was shutdown a couple of hours ago in the US and this was the message all TikTok users saw when they opened the app.[1]

The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.

[1] https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.c...


> If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing

Most likely, the rationale will be similar to Huawei and Kaspersky.

Not based on actual historical misbehaviour, but rather the amount of power you’re allowing their respective governments to have over US citizens / infrastructure.

There are very few “from first principals” thinkers in the world, especially amongst TikTok’s younger audience. Most people take their beliefs from others, in the same way a llm’s output reflects its training data. If China controls the recommendation system that decides what content people consume, then they can influence the narrative of the country.

China has long banned US social media for likely the same reason.


I understand that people who don't work in intelligence can have a difficult time recognizing risk, and often don't really understand the war other countries don't work the way the US does with the rule of law, but these are very much not baseless allegations. These are not even historical misbehavior. These companies explicitly and intentionally support and perform intelligence actions on behalf of their countries' intelligence services. Facebook and Google absolutely do not.

Kaspersky has been very credibly linked to Russian intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspersky_and_the_Russian_gove...

And Huawei has been very credibly linked to Chinese intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei

There is often an attempt to equate these behaviors with compliance with court-order subpoenas, but they are not the same.


American companies absolutely do aid in intelligence gathering. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A for an example


This is actually a really great example, I wish I had included it in my original post.

Here, in response to a very public failure of our security apparatus, the US Congress passed a draconian law allowing the US government to do the kinds of bad things that Russia and China do routinely. When the public realized this, they made it clear that there is a limit to the power of the government, and that behavior was very quickly stopped. Forever.

The idea that there is a limit to the power of the government, and that the general public can enforce that limit, is what makes America different than China and Russia. That difference is foundational to our Constitution, and I think it is a very good thing.


> When the public realized this, they made it clear that there is a limit to the power of the government, and that behavior was very quickly stopped. Forever.

My memory is hazy on the details and Wikipedia might be wrong, but (1) didn't the lawsuits against the perceived perpetrators (NSA, AT&T, etc) fail and (2) is it also not true, that not only was "Patriot Act" not quickly repealed, the sunset provisions were extended throughout the 2000s and 2010s?


But nothing was done to Room 641A? What imaginary limits are you talking about? All the lawsuits went nowhere.


I'm all for the TikTok ban but listening to your last argument a reasonable opponent might notice that:

1. You assume others play dirty by default, even though we never caught them red-handed. Not necessarily unreasonable, but see 2.

2. You assume we play fair even when we are caught red-handed. You rationalize it with "it only goes to show this was the exception and look what happened after". Spoiler alert, nothing happened after, neither the courts nor public opinion shit it down.

You have to admit these two are a little inconsistent to say the least.


I swear, people would equivocate bicycle accidents to plane crashes if it suited their narrative.


In 2022:

1,105 deaths related to bicycles vs 357 airplane related deaths. Depending on the metric you choose you can argue that either one is more deadly.

So yes, people here would do that.


Last I checked NSLs didn't require a court order, not even one from a secret one with zero effective accountability.


I will say the one problem with it from the perspective of young people is they always get the dick.

* Young people suffer the hardest from the housing crisis

* Young people suffer the most in any kind of job market challenges

* Young people have the least say in elections

* Young people now give up the app they use that actually makes them happy and helps to forget about how shit the world has become for them. Also an app that makes some of them real money.

Basically, the youth have no real legislation in their favour while their quality of life continues to degrade. I imagine that gets old.

This is a rant from someone who supports the tiktok ban.. but I'd extend it to all social media.


> * Young people have the least say in elections

While this is true from the perspective of voting laws (you can vote after 18 but you don’t need to be 18 to see how f’d ip things are…), it’s also true that the age bracket 18-29 has the lowest participation in elections. I didn’t do the math but I would not be surprised if the last elections turned differently if this bracket increased to percentage levels seen amongst older ages.

https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/half-youth-voted-20...


Young people (and really any working age people) just really don't have that much time, energy, and (mostly importantly) money to dedicate to impacting election and legislative results. When you're working age you have more imminent things to worry about, but the matter of fact is that it's mostly retired people who think the world is going to s*t whose voices are heard the loudest.

Of course you can say it's a question of priorities and it's "their fault" for not being politically active, but I would argue the system is stacked against young people's political participation.

Also, most places in the US have minimum age limits for elected positions.


Voting isn't hard and costs nothing

People who don't vote have no right to complain about the government.

Arguments like yours are used by lazy people to justify non-participation. You aren't helping them by making excuses for them.


I'd say arguments like yours are why people don't vote.


They don't vote because people criticize them for not voting?


What are the demographics that don't vote and how do they compare to your current status (financials, privileges, etc) in life? Be data driven and get back to me.


It’s also true that age 18-29 bracket is less likely to have historically been registered to vote and that they are typically working in precarious positions with less ability to take time off to vote.

If voting registration was automatic, and election day was a holiday, I’d expect the participation across age brackets to be much closer.


I don’t know much about voting in other states, but Texas does have it. In a way. I never had to go anywhere to register to vote. It was a part of my DL application, and it got updated with each change of address. You don’t need the mail voter registration to vote either— just your DL. From my understanding there are some states where it’s still not that easy but many do have this integrated with DL renewals, issues or similar.

I agree that Election Day should be a holiday. There’s a slight issue with Federal Holidays being applying only to federal employees and not necessarily to independent businesses, which can choose to observe it or not… but it’s a start.

Also in Texas, the polls are open for early elections for like two weeks ahead of Election Day. I always take advantage of that. No wait, no hassle, in and out. Most states offer either that or mail-in voting.


Young people are also less likely to have driver's licenses.


put the election on a holiday, there is absolutely no justification for it not be a holiday.


> Young people now give up the app they use that actually makes them happy

Citation needed - social media seems to be very bad for young people's health, if anything.


> Citation needed - social media seems to be very bad for young people's health, if anything.

One would need citation for either claim honestly, there's plenty studies around the idea that social media actually doesn't have as much of an impact on mental health as people seem to believe, as well as the other way around. If we get more specific, people who have or are prone to certain psychological conditions do get aggravated by social media, but the same way that's true, it could be for anything else would there not be social media. In the end, what the comment says holds true regardless of how it may affect their long-term mental health


If the US was doing this for teen mental health, they'd have banned Twitter and Facebook too.

This isn't about teen mental health.


I don’t think the parent comment was arguing the motive for the ban.

They’re just saying they’re not convinced TikTok causes the overall happiness the GP comment claims.

I think it’s hard to argue that any social media has a net positive effect on mental health of any age, let alone the younger generations.


My own claim is more like a dopamine high. Like smoking. Both bad things in the long run, but makes them happu in the moment. Video games probably up there too in their current manifestation.

Anywho, main point is more about giving this already vulnerable demographic more tools to succeed. Especially if, from their perspective, all we keep doing is making their lives worse.


That's like telling a drug addict that it's bad for his/her health. Sure you're staying facts, but they're not going to take it up. Might as well preach to the wind.

From a young one's perspective, it's natural they're going to take it as one more incursion into their lives, else Red Note, an app made for a largely Chinese audience by an unrelated company would not have seen so much uptake over the past few days.


Do we have actual numbers on signups for RedNote though? I feel that if I’ve learned anything in the past ten years of social media, a lot of noise is made by a very small percentage of users (not necessarily even people).


I don't disagree with you that it's probably bad for them, much like smoking. But it makes them FEEL temporarily happy. Much like smoking.

Do you see my point? We're just taking random shit from them without giving anything back. Also, objectively, Meta's platform is just as bad for them as tiktok, so it's obvious to them that it's not being taken away because we actually care about their mental health lol.


I agree that young folks feel the pain more acutely - inflation, education and housing costs hurt the most as they have the least amount of income/savings.

I’m not sure I would elevate TikTok to that degree though - we have some serious issues especially for young men. Not sure that scrolling through TikTok videos is actually fixing any of that- it’s like saying “don’t take away the heroin, it’s the only thing that makes me feel happy”


We're aligned on your second paragraph. It just doesn't change how these demographics *feel*.

Maybe if we're going to cancel tiktok or whatever, offer them some tax credits to cover the cost of registration for a coed sport or other such things that might enable them to be happier. Do more to help them get their first house and get their life going.

Just taking things from this demographic, without giving back, is a surefire way keep them disenfranchised. Even if we're taking something away that is objectively harmful to them (but still keeping instagram around lol).


Thanks for pointing their position out. I work with and have these kids they have a lot to offer. They manage a lot of complexity - thus practicing for the always increasingly complex world. I know it’s cliche for prev generations to be down on the next. I have seen such an uptick in talking heads blaming them for {something}. e.g. Bill Maher They have little power! Lacking enough to execute what they are supposedly the cause of. Those who do should wield theirs to improve their education system or whatever deficit they believe the “kids” have instead of blaming.


Then either participate in your government or, at the very least, vote. Take control of your destiny.


> Take control of your destiny.

Deck is stacked against them from birth. The entire system discourages from a young age what you're proposing. So if these kids feel so disenfranchised (and often filled with misinformation) from a young age, it's entirely unreasonable for us to expect them to "step up" in a vacuum.

You need better systems in place from the beginning to help someone become a better person.


Well, better do nothing then!


It's like asking pigs to rebel buddy. If you want people to energize, you've got to give them more the a pulse. You've gotta at least let them think they've got a chance at the American dream of they energize.

Reality is the American dream is dead for most young people not born with a spoon up their ass. And that seems more and more by design. When you experience this reality your whole life, you carry a level of apathy that "get out and vote" is meaningless to hear.

Lives need to get better from a young age. People need to believe in the American dream again. But the policies set in place over the last 30 years are heavy.


Sure, but your choices are to:

1. Participate in the system 2. Violently overthrow the system 3. Do nothing

Sitting on the internet and whinging about how the deck is stacked against you is choosing option 3.

Fact of the matter is that a lot of people picked option 3 because of whatever reasons they had and now a bunch of oligarchs and criminals are running the joint now.

Voting is the least you can do if actually running for an elected position is not an option.

What do you propose as an actual alternative?


Just because I think it’s interesting to mention given your perspective about how the youth feel, here is how they’ve changed voting patterns [1]:

  In past years, voters under 30 have proved essential on the margins, especially for Democrats, where even minimal shifts in support can decide an election.

  It was a group that Vice President Harris had hoped would be part of her winning coalition this year. Instead, she underperformed, and President-elect Trump made gains.

  Since 2008, winning Democratic candidates have received at least 60% support from young voters, but Harris did not meet that threshold, getting 54%, according to early exit polls.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/07/g-s1-33331/unpacking-the-2024...


Gen Z is interesting. My brother and sister in law are Gen Z (my wife and I are older millennials). My brother in law and his girlfriend are openly Trump supporters (both happen to be non-white). They went to the rallies and stuff. So are a lot of his friends at work in a blue city (tech sales). My sister in law is liberalish, does the pronoun sharing before group meetings for school, but doesn’t feel strongly about the issue compared to virtually all the millenial women I know.


Over the last 16 years Democrats have occupied the White House 75% of the time, so for younger folk Democrats are the establishment and Republicans the underdog.


I think it’s more specific than that. The 2008 surge of young people to democrats was driven by rage at the failures of two institutions: the banks (the Great Recession), and the intelligence apparatus (Iraq war). But those institutions never were reformed, and today the Democratic Party has become the staunchest defenders of the banks and the intelligence apparatus.


But for Gen Z folks, that stuff is ancient history, isn't it? Even the oldest members (using 1997 as a starting point, but some definitions use 2000) were too young to protest or serve in Iraq[1]. By the time the youngest Gen Z folks were starting school in the mid-2010s, the US stock market and unemployment rate had reached pre-recession levels too.

[1] I mean when people cared about Iraq, 2003 to circa 2008. We still have troops there, but I don't think most of America is even aware of that.


Both of those institutions were, in fact, heavily reformed.

What you actually mean is that there was little personal legal accountability for past actions, which I don't disagree with. The legal and political frameworks they operate under has changed quite a bit though.


I'm not sure it's that simple. You have to take into account Congress and the Supreme Court as well.


I'm pretty sure that only a small minority of Americans, let alone those in the 18-29 age group, can name their senators and representative and anyone on the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, most Americans instead seem to imagine this country as an autocracy in which they get to vote for a new ruler every four years.


Probably the most impactful to your own life vote you can cast is the local municipal one. And that has such poor turnout among the youth it is crazy. Even in places where they mail you a ballot automatically and you have two weeks to vote at polls. People just don’t care to be engaged.


I've been fascinated by the shift towards Trump by 18-29 voters in this past election, and I think this is a good explanation that I haven't heard before. Yeah, and Bush 43 was so long ago that his popular image has turned from kind of a villainous "worst president ever" to a favorably remembered elder statesman according to some polls.

Note that it was a shift for Trump, still not a majority voting for him. Exit polls that I've seen still indicated an 11-point lead for Harris[1], but that's much more narrow than the 24-point lead that Biden had in 2020[2]. Anyway, I've been fascinated by this because it kind of broke my mental model imagining that the Republican party would eventually be marginalized as its voters died of old age. I definitely thought Trump was going to lose this age group in 2024 by the widest margin ever.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/exit-polls


Racism and mysogeny is still very much alive among the youth and quite a lot of the US lacks any diversity to combat those notions. Or if they do have diversity on paper it might still be somewhat segregated where these communities might be neighbors but don’t overlap in activities. Less a melting pot, more a punchbowl filled with different fruits bumping into eachother.


The problem may not even be that China can control these narratives as much, but just that they (US as in the government/state institution) can't in the first place. Eg there had been complains about pro-palestine narratives dominating tictoc, even if there was no actual evidence this was manipulated (and I doubt it was). This is why i think that this is a case where the interests of the american people may not necessarily align with the "national" interests of wanting to ban tictoc (while the other cases are more about basic infrastructure or access to that), though i think eventually it will not matter much (if tictoc stays the grip for the US part of it by the US government is probably gonna be firmer).

This also can explain bytedance's approach of support and reassurance towards the incoming administration. I bet they care more about their company and not having to choose between two loss scenarios than about politics/international relations, just like most of big corporations in the world.


> This is why i think that this is a case where the interests of the american people may not necessarily align with the "national" interests of wanting to ban tictoc

Your home country at least has some incentive to work towards your interest. No matter how evil they are because they have to pay the consequences of these actions. Even in autocratic China, for example, anti-lockdown censorship during Covid in China eventually caused even more resentment against the CCP.

On the other hand, look at examples of Russian election interference in 2016 [1]. One of the posts is "Satan: If I win Clinton wins. Jesus: Not if I can help it. Press like to help Jesus win." The entire goal is to get Americans to distrust and hate each other. Nobody in America has anything to gain from posting this, but China and Russia have nothing but to gain from a more fractured America. We only found out about this because Facebook cooperated with American intelligence to find this foreign propaganda. At best, you can't expect the same cooperation from TikTok they are accountable to the CCP. At worst, TikTok would actively be working with China to disguise this propaganda as genuine content.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/us/politics/russia-2016-e...


> Your home country at least has some incentive to work towards your interest

It's the opposite: if they can block any alternative to the "hive mind" they can easily pursue any interest they like and make you believe that they align with your interests. And if you keep having doubts, they can easily label you as a dissident or a foreign agent, because no one will take your side, mostly for lack of tools and platforms to expose fabricated evidence.


> It's the opposite: if they can block any alternative to the "hive mind" they can easily pursue any interest they like and make you believe that they align with your interests.

It is definitely not the opposite. You have very recent cases where Russia has been caught financing US right-wing hate-speech "influencers" to spread extremist talking points fed by Russia's propaganda effort. Their purpose is to sow divisiveness and turn Americans on each other.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/01/russia-...

It was not the first time either. In 2016 Russia was caught actively trying to spark a race war in the US.

https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjrl/vol24/iss2/2/


> You have very recent cases where Russia has been caught financing US right-wing hate-speech "influencers"

So what?

You also have the same kind of "influcence" from the US, on a total different level though, given the disproportion of available budgets between the two.

OTOH that wasn't my assumption, I simply said that single minded propaganda will harm free people more than those who are not free.

Russia or not Russia (it is honestly ridiculous to compare Russia to the USA at this point of history).

> In 2016 Russia was caught actively trying to spark a race war in the US.

And you don't know what the US has done exactly because they do not allow platforms to speak about it, the "fact checking" was simply state censorship disguised as "war on fake news".

No one can seriously believe that Russia can outsmart US intelligence or outmaneuver them, unless you don't really think that the US are collapsing and are no longer the more powerful country in the World, with the more powerful military, with the more powerful and pervasive intelligence.

Which is frankly not credible.

But there are still people out there that with a straight face will tell you that the US elections have been rigged by Russia (or at least they tried).

Which would put the US behind even some small country like Luxembourg or The Vatican.


> So what?

If you can't or refuse to understand the danger of having totalitarian regimes destabilize your country, including calls for extreme violence against minorities, then no wonder you're trying to argue there is nothing wrong with having the likes of Russia and China screw you over.


> If you can't or refuse to understand the danger of having totalitarian regimes destabilize your country,

I happen to be born in a country where the US have controlled every single elections for 50 years, at least.

I know what happens when you refuse to obey to them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHXjO8wHsA

My "so what" should be read as: does this really sounds new to you? haven't you heard about stuff like "operation condor"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor


This is a nice narrative, but has not been consistent with how counter-disinformation has been applied in the contemporary US. It matters less what you say than who is making you say this. For example the founders of Tenet Media were indicted for allegedly conspiring with Russia. Those featured on the channel, such as Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, received millions of dollars from Russia sources for spreading narratives that happened to align exactly with Russian propaganda. This should have raised major red flags as their videos typically received modest viewership (in the order of 10k). The DOJ had every opportunity to indict them as well. However, because it's unlikely that it could be proven that they were knowingly conspiring with Russia, so they were free to go.


> because it's unlikely that it could be proven that they were knowingly conspiring with Russia

it's called innocent until prove guilty for a reason, it's the system working as intended.

And the US have exploited it too and are still doing it.

As an example, read the transcript of Victoria Nuland conversation about the future of Ukraine during the time President was someone NATO disliked for not being anti Russian enough.

Nuland: OK. He's now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, *Fuck the EU*.

Did Nuland pay for saying it? Of course not. On the contrary, she was awesomely compensated for her work.


Why should one be surprised that the US Department of State is involved in geopolitics?

Your example further reinforces my point that content matters less than who is saying this content. You quoted a phone call that was very likely to be have intercepted by Russian intelligence and quickly disseminated on Russian-owned media, yet you're freely posting this on an American website.


> Why should one be surprised that the US Department of State is involved in geopolitics?

It is absolutely not!

It is surprising to me that people believe the USA are victims and not the greatest instigators of geopolitical unrest of the past 80 years (at least).

> You quoted a phone call that was very likely to be have intercepted by Russian intelligence

Nahhh

The Russian intelligence simply put it in the open, but who actually intercepted Nuland is unknown.

The point is we perfectly know that the USA are waging wars to also punish Europe, but it cannot be said, because platforms are all from the US and follow US directives.

That's why people also followed in love with tik tok, it was a breath of fresh air, finally few things that we all know are true (Nuland transcription just prove it) could finally be said (again: never used the platform, that's what people I know have said to me and I know a lot of regular people, white collars, regular jobs, kids and all the rest. They simply understand that American social networks and American propaganda have become so unbelievably false that it's baffling)

> yet you're freely posting this on an American website.

Am I?

Have you noticed my name is a generated random string?

Do you ever wonder why people like me do that?


> it's called innocent until prove guilty for a reason, it's the system working as intended.

That principle applies to laws, in order to minimize the chance of abuse when investigating criminal and civil charges.

This is not the same. This is about national security, and specifically enforcing national security policies. You do not need presumption of innocence to determine if you should embargo a country, expell a diplomat, and ban a suspicious supplier from your critical infrastructure.


> You do not need presumption of innocence to determine if you should embargo a country

Are you saying that US decision makers are the ones to blame here?

> and ban a suspicious supplier from your critical infrastructure.

I don't think China controls through tik tok what country the US should or should not embargo...


Being conservative, marrying, raising children and being nationalistic does not align with Russian propaganda.

Similarly, all so called "far-right" parties that are supposedly financed by Russia in the EU ultimately are in favor of national interests.

Similarly, Ukrainian nationalists are in favor of Ukrainian interests.

If it came to a war between Russia and the EU, who would fight? Not the chicken hawks of the Green Party, but the "Deplorables" who vote "far-right".

The entire Russian influence narrative was concocted by the Neocons who had moved from the Bush era Republicans to the Democrat party. Now everyone realizes that perhaps China and Russia had financed culturally left organizations all along, which is entirely in line with the historic behavior of the Soviet Union. So everyone abandons ship now and pledges allegiance to Trump.

Regarding the division to the US population: That is in the interests of the established two parties, so no one looks too closely what is actually happening.


Yes! exactly. Post JFK and MLK assassination, there is no need to physically kill a physical being or movement. You just need to do character assassination of the person/idea. And with the fast moving nature of internet disinformation, once you kill the person's reputation that person is effectively neutered.

Post trump win people in elite circles started to realize and actually discuss (to my amazement) that maybe they should not have played all those games to derail Bernie Sanders. TikTok served as an interesting counterweight to the national narrative on many topics. What does not directly affect China negatively may also pose a threat to the US and that seemed to bubble to the top on TikTok from time to time.


on an ironic twist of events: the POTUS himself promised to save Tik Tok

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-goes-dark-us-users...

Is it because he his a collaborator of the CCP or because the accusation against China where just a ruse to move the attention away from the Dem losing the elections on their own incompetence? (I am in no way a Trump supporter, but honestly the Dems did everything in their power tho lose the elections)


This is 100% what it is. The establishment types are upset that they can’t just lean on a handful of major media organizations anymore to maintain a uniform narrative (e.g. Iraq having WMDs).


Isn't it funny how our "freedom of speech" is situationally optional?


You are trusting your “freedom of speech” to an entity controlled by a government which blocks US companies from penetrating the great firewall? Try googling tank man in China…you can’t because google is blocked and tank man is prohibited content.


Freedom of speech has nothing to do with a privately owned platform controlled by a communist country.


> The establishment types are upset that they can’t just lean on a handful of major media organizations to maintain a uniform narrative (e.g. Iraq having WMDs).

This is obviously false.

Go check TikTok to see what shows up in searches for Tiananmen square or Uighur genocide, or even anyone of the many small catastrophes that go against the CCP's narrative.

You're claiming that consuming propaganda from a totalitarian regime that actively engages against your security, stability, and best interests is somehow better than consuming hypothetical propaganda from your own democratically elected government. Make it make sense.


Americans have no reason to care what happened in Tiananmen Square. That’s Chinese domestic politics. But whether Iraq actually had WMDs does affect Americans, as the people who financed that war based on the failures of the U.S. government.

Foreign propaganda is much less dangerous than domestic propaganda because domestic propaganda is more likely to relate to issues that actually matter to citizens.


> Americans have no reason to care what happened in Tiananmen Square.

It's not about what you care or don't care. It's about using China's social media service to discuss the very topics that China wants to censor. Again, go to TikTok or whatever alternative service provided by China and try to refer to the Tiananmen massacre or Uighur genocide. See what your paragons of free speech treat that.


Some weapons are "NOBUS" (nobody but us). Imho you nailed it. When in Facebook and Twitter the content was manipulated, the US government did not complain, as they were (again, imho) manipulating the content (e.g. Hunter Biden laptop)(don't involve me in the politics, I don't have a care in the world on the subject, I merely find this very Stasi-ist that unnamed, faceless, unelected people lurking in the shadows, wearing black uniforms and black hoods, control what civilians are 'allowed' to watch).

Since TikTok became massive, US gov & agencies lost that oligopoly/monopoly and now China (or any other country for that matter) could define the narrative, form and destroy opinions.

Simple Porter's Five Forces model of analysis. People despised censorship (I will not debate whether this 'content moderation' and/or 'censorship' was good or bad). The "New Entrants" took over. And since it is clear that TikTok cannot be defeated in the foreseeable future, and it cannot be purchased, then it must die.

(q.e.d.)


Therefore, this power to influence younger generations should be restricted to US government and US big tech Corporation. They know what is best for them.


Nothing in your comment changes this:

"If China controls the recommendation system that decides what content people consume that, then they can influence the narrative of the country."


And China propaganda is so powerful that US propaganda cannot counter this, even within US borders, following rules chosen by their own country, US propaganda is losing.

What makes Chinese propaganda so powerful, even in the form of silly 30 seconds dancing? Or perhaps the real problem is not this? But the existance of a single non western source of consent manufacturing?


Strange take. Some kind of philosophical purity says that we should allow foreign adversaries to influence domestic audiences because we should be able to counter that influence with out own?

It’s like saying you should allow someone to punch you because you “should” be able to punch yourself harder.


Consider how this spat looks from the perspective of a European.

The US controls Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Reddit, Snapchat, Whatsapp.

Owner of Twitter has office space in the white house, and is calling for the overthrow of elected European governments and deliberately spreading misinformation.

Then the US sees one non-american-owned social media network and decides it's got to be banned.

Perhaps those Europeans should consider whether they want foreigners influencing domestic audiences?


>The US controls Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Reddit, Snapchat, Whatsapp.

Not in the way that the CCP controls ByteDance. ByteDance cannot win a lawsuit against the Chinese government.

China, Russia and Iran are designated adversaries and will be treated as such.

And I think Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Reddit, Snapchat, Whatsapp should be also be far more regulated.

Musk won't be in the White House for long.


Yes, they should.

The mistake here is seeing the US action as a universal moral statement and therefore hypocritical.

The US action was simply pragmatic. There is no claim of universality or morality.

I very much agree other countries should also look at US hegemony through a pragmatic lens: is this a net harm? It’s kind of funny that you raise it as a gotcha.


So, letting divergent opinions from other countries and from different entities is like being punched? You know that most world uses social media from foreign entities, right? Curious how until few years ago, when there were no relevant competitors outside US, the dominant discourse was that only tyranical countries would do this.


> What makes Chinese propaganda so powerful, even in the form of silly 30 seconds dancing?

TikTok is as much about silly 30 seconds dancing as Twitter was about posting 144 character messages or a prime time news program is about 2 minute clips with a voiceover.

The way you fail to even frame the problem suggests you either are oblivious about the problem or you're doing your best to avoid discussing it.


You are really arguing that US should improve on its propaganda game?

wtf

How about as little propaganda as possible?


Because it will not happen. And cannot be enforced.

No, im not arguing this because US already uses more propaganda than China. I was asking why americans are so afraid that chinese propaganda will be so more powerful than the Inês that they already have.


It got enforced today.


How? US propaganda, propaganda from big techs from US oligopolies will continue unchallenged and strenghtned, as they blocked a source that they apparently do not control.


The West does not have to tolerate the intolerant. When China opens its Internet to the world like it always should have, they can continue to play their little CCP “China good, Collective West bad” game in the West.

To really be fair, we should lock our Internet from China for 30 years and let the Chinese people have the full wide un-CCP-censored Western consent Internet you’re talking about. We can start with old favorite topics like T-square, Winnie the Pooh, that COVID doctor the CCP suppressed and then martyred.

Then we can sit down and have a frank discussion on what the terms of Internet use should be.

Until then, China should be grateful their State enterprises were allowed in at all.

But to answer your question, US propaganda isn’t countering because it just doesn’t exist. We have a free press. It can criticize the government, and does it every single day. The U.S. doesn’t do military parades, and its self marketing sucks because it’s not an imperative, unlike China.

Furthermore, China clearly thinks propaganda and intense censorship is the way to go. What else can explain the efforts to A. Block Winnie the Pooh B. Block the sale of TikTok? Profit clearly isn’t the motive now, which is very suspicious of such a large ostensibly for profit company.

The fact that the consideration to sell it to Trump/Musk in particular is floating around points to the political value of TikTok in the first place. Bribe the incoming admin, extract some favor in return, I.E. back down on Taiwan or relieve semiconductor tariffs.

It’s all obvious.


Sure, US propaganda do not exist. Not in Hollywood. Not in games. Not in social media and news sources. Makes one wonder then how people got so propagandized.


This is an excellent example of a Straw Man argument.


Why do you trust that an app based in China would actually comply with American rules? Facebook voluntarily disclosed that misinformation was spread on their platform. They cooperated with the DOJ to connect this misinformation campaign to thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian nationals. Would you expect the same cooperation from TikTok?


Anyone can influence those narratives. Owning the system just makes it more efficient than astroturfing, puppeteering and trolling.


Agreed.

But owning the platform makes influence far, far more efficient and that is why we should not allow our adversaries to do so.


"If the US controls the food system that decides what content people consume, then they can kill an entire country."

Hysteria or ban McDonald's/Pepsi/Coke/Subway/etc?


I think that this is an example of the Weak Analogy Fallacy.


It might come off as a "weak analogy" because it sounds weak to you ... to make the point that there are valid grounds (the epidemic of obesity & diabetes) for Xenophobic Asians to think addictive Coke / McDonald's are part of some sinister plot by the Americans to impoverish them. And that line of reasoning is ludicrous, or "weak" as you put it because it is (unless we are Xenophobic ourselves, then it isn't)!

If you desire a strong analogy, do Hollywood, YouTube, Netflix etc, which are banned by the other side citing similar reasons to TikTok, I am sure. But the other side is totally authoritarian and we aren't, right?


US government is literally accountable to US citizens. If it is not, you have a bigger problem.


Aspirationally yes. In practice US can't even rid itself of civil forfeiture or federal weed laws despite consistent majority against them. We can't get rid of overbearing housing regulations despite it destroying our youth. Hell the democratic party presidential candidate wasn't even chosen in a primary, just installed in without a public vote to ensure viability, handing a default.


We do have a giant problem with the policymaking community being very narrow, but the only way to solve it is by having communication platforms that aren't being influenced by that same community.

When I say narrow, I mean narrow. The toppling of the Guatemalan liberal democracy and subsequent replacement by a dictator was performed at the behest of a handful of people who wanted to and did retire to a sinecure at United Fruit, and without the full knowledge of the president.


They're a puppet for lobbies and businesses.


Hasn't been for a while now. Our government is only held to account by the Oligarchs that own our politicians.


And somehow a majority votes for the candidate that puts an oligarch in power of an 'unofficial' position/department. It was clearly vote for people with a lot of money.

Something about The government you elect is the government you deserve.?


"Vote for people with a lot of money" describes both parties for I don't even know how long. It's obscenely disingenuous to pretend that's new. Both parties have been bankrolled by corporate interests for longer than I've been alive for.

The Elon thing is way more brazen, yes. I also think many people would rather have than instead of two dozen faceless lobbyists sitting behind superPACs, at least you can point to the guy when he pushes for policy. If it was the norm that companies were completely public about showing up to influence politics that might make a better world, really.

Not a fan of the whole thing mind you, but if it's going to go down, I'm not sure this is actually worse.


Both parties have been bankrolled by corporate interests for longer than I've been alive for.

Sure, but this is quite a different scale. Apparently the net worth of Trumps (official) cabinet, so excluding Musk, is 7 billion. For comparison, the net worth of Biden's cabinet was 118 million dollar.

Source: https://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/amerikaanse-ambtenaren-...

(Sorry for the Dutch source, searching the numbers gives English sources as well.)

The Elon thing is way more brazen, yes. I also think many people would rather have than instead of two dozen faceless lobbyists sitting behind superPACs,

The super PACs will continue to exist as well. I am pretty sure this will give some of the PACs only more influence/power.

at least you can point to the guy when he pushes for policy

In the same way you can point to the guy when he tries to interrupts peaceful transition?

Which brings me back me to my original point, the majority of Americans voted for a crook (interrupting peaceful transition amongst other things) and oligarchs. We'll see where it ends.


The votes are following the propaganda, and Trump won the public opinion war. Democrats have been slow to learn this lesson and get their messaging and public relations under control.


If only we trusted in people to make their own decisions, but that's crazy talk.

Its widely known at this point that TikTok is a Chinese owned business and that the CCP has a history if forcibly influencing companies to do their bidding. If people still want to use TikTok I don't see what the real problem is.


> If only we trusted in people to make their own decisions, but that's crazy talk.

You're talking about people who say Haitians are eating pets and having the CCP dictate what content you consume is preferable than not having the CCP dictate what content you consume. Make it make sense.


Yes, plenty of people say crazy things. So what? If we want to uphold free speech we have to take the good with the bad. If we don't, Congress can cross the aisle and write a new amendment.

I don't want the CCP, or any government, dictating what I see. Thankfully they really can't. They can dictate what is online on various sites and apps, but they can't dictate what I consume. I've never used TikTok personally, the CCP hasn't dictated anything to me at least on that front because I can choose what I look at.


Propaganda works even if you know. Otherwise we wouldn't have the advertisement industry we have.


You can't effectively regulate away propaganda though, otherwise we wouldn't have the advertising industry we have.


The fact that we allow advertisement is a choice. Some countries choose to forbid advertisement for cigarettes, for example.

And yes, there is big difference between the US advertisement industry, which is at least in principle regulated by the US legal/government system and thus, US citizens, vs. the essentially unregulated propaganda-machine that is Tik Tok.

This is not to say that a ban is the only option here. But I am not convinced that other control options are effective, or less of a danger.


> This is not to say that a ban is the only option here. But I am not convinced that other control options are effective, or less of a danger.

We're definitely in agreement here, there are other options and all have their pros and cons.

The major risk I see with the TikTok ban is that it wasn't actually a TikTok ban, it gave the president new powers to unilaterally ban services in certain situations.

As far as TikTok goes the ban may be more effective. At a minimum I wish the law was specific to them though, and I can't support it simply for the new executive powers created.


Oh i can dream about a world without the advertising industry we have. It honestly seems to me that targeted advertising is the root of so many evils


It's widely known by Hacker News audience. A quick poll of 16 to 22 year old nephews, nieces and their friends around me is met with blank, completely uncaring faces.

(Not saying one way or another about banning the app, but discussion should start from a realistic assessment)


If it isn't well known that's a great reason for the government to focus on making that clear. Banning the app really doesn't help anyone long term, and giving the president even more power is always a risky game.


And these are mostly the same children given the right to vote a few decades ago. (I was one of them.) This has always saddened me.


It's the same with the US, haven't you seen how some topics were encouraged with the Biden administration and supported by our Californian "neutral" friends in LLMs and medias ? and suddenly there is Trump, and they all start to switch sides ?

It's the direct effect of political pressure.

You nicer you behave to the government, the more carrots you get.


Yeah, I totally expect a 14 y.o. girl who joins TikTok to check trendy dance move to be aware of dangers of CCP propaganda.

What percentage of population understands that propaganda can be subtle? Sneak some ragebait here and there to make it look like situation is worse than it is, exaggerate, radicalize people...


America is handing this opportunity on a platter by practically outlawing child independence.

A kid should be out exploring on their own, shooting squirrels, riding their bike to the next town, bailing hay for cash at the farm at the edge of town. I didn't become a staunch supporter of most American classical liberal principles because an app told me to, it's because it's how I lived when I grew up. If you shut me in or chained me to a parent all day, well maybe you grow up with whatever tiktok tells you since you see it as the only way to stretch your legs.


Well, it sounds like you may have grown up in the country. Personally i think it's a bad idea for children to have guns in densely populated cities, searching for small animals to kill in the one park within "dangerous but still walking" distance. Regardless of what you believe or how you grew up, it's simply impossible to replicate that kind of freedom and safety for a large majority of American children.

Our cities are run by cars, children are notoriously bad at sensing them. I'm sure there's things that could be done but nothing, nothing can give a kid in Brooklyn the opportunity to "bail hay at the farm on the edge of town".


The big city equivalent is closer to a bus pass, $5 for a hot dog, and see you at dusk. The danger of dodging cars arguably is less than being locked in with TikTok. Maybe kids hawk chicharones in the city instead of bailing hay, obviously it won't be a direct translation.


I had a CS grad student very confidently tell me that TikTok was not owned by a Chinese company.


Well they can believe that if they want, it won't hurt anyone. For better or worse, free speech means anyone can say what they want and free thought in general means people can happily be wrong about a fact that seems very easy to check.


This sounds like a libertarian idea of defense: we don't need an army, everyone can just buy a gun.

The idea that people can just choose to resist a foreign propaganda machine is just as comical.


a Chinese company, yes, but backed by some of the major investment funds in the west, the Chinese own 20%, Chinese government is under 1%.


> a Chinese company, yes, but backed by some of the major investment funds in the west, the Chinese own 20%, Chinese government is under 1%.

ByteDance not only blocked the sale of TikTok to a US company but also TikTok unilaterally decided to shut down operations in the US to strongarm the US government to prevent it's sale.

If the CCP actually had no control over TikTok and at most they only held a residual non-controlling position, then how do you explain the scorched earth strategy that is only aligned with the CCP's strategy and throws all other shareholders under the bus?


The Chinese government has a majority of the voting stock.

More importantly, the company based in China, and the engineers working on it's recommendation system are based in China, and both are subject to the laws of China.

From a national security perspective, it's controlled by the Chinese government.


This seems a bit like splitting hairs.

There is quite a bit of naivete regarding how the Chinese government controls Chinese companies.

It is very different from the US.


> There is quite a bit of naivete regarding how the Chinese government controls Chinese companies.

I happen to know how China works, have you got some example to present?

> It is very different from the US.

Actually, not really.

Can Facebook keep alive their "fact checking" program, now that Trump is president and not Biden, whose administration ordered it, probably more against Trump himself, than any other adversary of the USA?

Are Vanguard and BlackRock free to invest in whatever company they want?

For example: why are Vanguard and BlackRock backing Unicredit to buy Commerzbank, one of the few European banks not owned or heavily funded by American funds?


A Chinese company cannot take the CCP to court and win. There is no separation of powers in China. There is no constitutional protection held on place by a group outside the ruling party.

China has a faux free capitalist society. Chinese companies are the way they are because the government lets them be that way, not because they have the right to be that way.


> A Chinese company cannot take the CCP to court and win. There is no separation of powers in China

Why should a company take the CCP to court though?

They are in business together and have grown immensely in the past 30 years.

> There is no constitutional protection held on place by a group outside the ruling party

Where is that protection in the US though?

Call them parties, a faux bi-headed system instead of an honest one-headed one, and you get the same outcome.

> China has a faux free capitalist society

They never wanted US capitalism though, so it's business as intended.

> Chinese companies are the way they are

because the people of China like them like that.

Believe me, they do not want to be like you. The opposite is true in fact.


>Why should a company take the CCP to court though?

Someone's internet is monitored...


> Someone's internet is monitored...

Yeah! and it's 99% the NSA on this side of the World.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...

Has someone brought the US to court for that?

And why not?


US courts don't have jurisdiction over what happens in foreign countries.


> US courts don't have jurisdiction over what happens in foreign countries

Apparently, only when it pleases them

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/01/12/mohammad-abe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case


That sounds like a reasonable argument to create an age limit for social media.

It also sounds like an argument for parents to step in - every child is different and a parent should be doing the parenting rather than Congress and the White House.


Adults are also quite susceptible to propaganda.


Sure, I'm not arguing that propaganda is ineffective. I'm arguing that people should at least have access to the facts and be allowed to make their own decisions. In this case the important facts are simply that TikTok is a Chinese app and the CCP almost certainly influences them.

When it comes to children that is a different story, but the debate should be whether we enforce an age limit on social media. There is at least precedent (for better or worse) for an age limit on things we think children aren't ready or able to consume.


U.S. government isn't perfect, therefore we should let some other government just run wild in our country. I follow your logic.


The propaganda has worked perfectly.


In the long run it's better that both China and US have deep tentacles wrapped around each other. The more culture and dependencies merge and intertwine the more cooperation looks attractive over war.


At the cost of China controlling the recommendation system that decides what content US people consume?


The cost of free speech, including commercial or propaganda, is people get manipulated by it. Some including myself argue is you end up with even more nefarious control when censored, rather than having the option of which if any propaganda apps you want to consume.

There are some controls like certain pornography, but if these exist they should apply uniformly, not based on whether we like the person publishing it.


I am concerned that our elections could be and have been distorted by our adversaries using TikToc and other platforms.

I am not OK with that.


I'm concerned about this, too, but this law actually gives the nation's most powerful adversaries even more power by eliminating their competition.


Are you referring to Russia and Iran?


No, primarily Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and other big tech execs to a lesser extent.


Thank you for clarifying - I disagree with your point.

China is far, far more powerful than Zuck or Musk.


China can't directly influence US policy, and they mostly don't have any interest in doing so outside how it influences our trade relations. Sure, it's bad if they're doing that. But Musk, Zuckerberg, and the rest of the ultra-wealthy are directly creating US policy, both by serving in unelected advisory positions and by outright buying US politicians. Just like China, they are not working for America's interests, they are working for their own interests. They are removing hard-won safeguards for their employees, their customers, and Americans in general; and they are removing accountability for themselves so they can exercise that power over the people who live in the US with impunity.

US billionaires are far more dangerous to US residents than China is, and this law gives them even more influence than they already had by removing the only significant competitor that was not owned by a US billionaire. If this law had impacted all social media equally, I would be a huge advocate. But as it is, it's just another handout to the US's richest and most influential people. It's a bad law, and will make life worse for the people who live in the US.


>If this law had impacted all social media equally, I would be a huge advocate.

I would as well and it is unfortunate that we haven't/can't pass such a law. Hopefully someday we can.

I support the TikTok ban in the meantime.


You are basically saying American adults are impressionable children hence cannot be trusted to participate in elections held by US electoral institutions.


And you are basically saying that despite decades of focused high-stakes research into the matter, propaganda doesn't work at all on the masses, and that algorithmic manipulation of people is simply impossible? How could anyone take that idea seriously.. global advertising spend is approaching like a trillion dollars every year.


Why not call for the dismantling of the global advertising networks in the US rather than Tiktok since you think it is a giant propaganda machine?

Saying a foreign nation has the capability to brainwash your citizens into making a vote is propaganda by itself. It's not only cheap and imbecilic, it's a waste of everybody's time.


It’s not cheap, that’s the point.. ads as an industry moves more money every year than the pentagon. That’s a lot of people betting that algorithmic influence campaigns work. Are you saying everyone is wrong about this but you, or is your position is that influence campaigns work for brands but not for nation states? Or nation states would not try? Or what?


>Why not call for the dismantling of the global advertising networks in the US

Yes, we should do this also.


I am saying that but would prefer to state it this way:

Individuals are not equipped to recognized and counter the effects of highly sophisticated influence operations run by adversaries with enormous resources.


Americans are humans and all humans are susceptible to advertising/propaganda


so we ban all advertising/“propaganda”? who gets to decide what is or isn’t propaganda if we gonna ban it?


> who gets to decide what is or isn’t propaganda if we gonna ban it?

in a representative republic that would ideally be the elected representatives


this is the cost of free speech. it has to be, or free speech is meaningless. yes speech influences people.


The US could have just built a regulator and laws like we have for alcohol and drugs. It's not difficult. But banning the creepy Chinese thing is far easier.


It is very difficult - social media giants have very powerful lobbies.


the same argument was about Russia and west relationship with it in the last 20 years, look what we have now


Russia is far less a threat to us in the last 20 or 30 years than it was the 20 or 30 before that.


Better for everyone but american labor, you mean.


Billionaires chose to move our manufacturing overseas so they could make more money. The working class didn't stop them when we had the chance.


I think American labor is not so infantile they need paternal oversight over what apps they download, for one.


I see, you prefer jobs outsourced to a deeply intertwined china.


The easiest real example I'm aware of is that there was a scandal around the Houston rockets and China (years ago) and you could not find their content or content related to them on TikTok. (You could for every other NBA team)

In this example: who cares? But the problem is how implicit everything is.

Imagine that a major US ally (like Israel) were attacked by a globally recognized terrorist organization. Imagine if, for some reason, a high percentage of people on TikTok ended up being opposed to the US government's support of their ally. Imagine if there were protests across college campuses. And counter protests.

Would we know whether TikTok was behind the scenes, sowing discord? This is the kind of thing - weakening our alliances - that china would love to do. If china can reduce our willingness to defend our allies (think the Philippines in the south china sea, or Taiwan which.... there's explicitly a project 2027 in China to be ready to invade Taiwan)

Do we want the Chinese government to have the ability to do this?


Citation for the real example: https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/

Ben Thompson's 2020 piece about banning TikTok: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/

Note it's not a plan to invade, just a plan to be ready: https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/05/07/how-dc-becam...


The American voter shouldn't be treated like a mere link in a strategic chain of cause and effect. They're the legitimate authority in the US.


Sorry I'm confused by your comment. The American voter voted for Congress. A bipartisan majority passed this bill easily. The executive branch signed it. The judiciary branch confirmed it.

Where is the American voter being sidelined?


Congress has a "strained" relationship with the voter. On one hand, the voter put them in that position. On the other hand, the voter is a greater danger to the individual in Congress than any foreign adversary. As a result, politicians try to control the voter, the way an employee would try to manage their manager.

This is done in a number of ways. For example, because the media has a great influence on the voter, politicians seek to influence the media. Journalists who publish unfavorable information are denied valuable interviews, incentivizing them to stay close to the administration. Lobbyists with connections to major advertisers, which have a great influence on the media, are attended to with high priority.

Another method is to close off the voter's access to information that originates outside a politician's sphere of influence. This can be done by encouraging nationalist jingoism and a distrust of outside influence, by outright bans on foreign press, or in this case, by either banning or causing a transfer of ownership of a social media platform that had proven unhelpful to a past administration's intent for the media landscape. For TikTok, this was hosting middle east peace activism.


The American voter is sidelined the second their elected official is sworn in, and immediately reneges on everything they said they stood for in favor of their moneyed interests. 90% of politicians have no intent whatsoever of fixing problems, after all those problems are what got them elected.


It's obviously fine to be this cynical, but I think the particular shape your cynicism takes is incorrect^ and I also tend to think people who are overly cynical willingly reduce their ability to affect change

^ the description of campaign promises feels very 90s to me. We tend to have a lot of information about how our elected officials act. I think most of them believe more of what they're saying or advocating for (although the reasons why they believe those things are fairly widely varied)

Some people think Elizabeth Warren is pure evil incarnate, and I think she considers herself as a policy wonk who loves nuance and is trying to protect citizens from ruthless capitalist entities.

The same is more or less true on the other side (I'm not sure who the analog is exactly, but a republican Elizabeth Warren would imagine she is protecting companies and citizens from government overreach)


> Do we want the Chinese government to have the ability to do this?

yes. If too many people started reading aljazeera should we ban that too? Do we want the US government to have the ability to do this?


Those are very different things!


I agree they're different, but IMO they're on the same spectrum - "a difference in degree, not in kind". Where would you draw the line?

Bad - quietly manipulating social media recommendations for millions of Americans ... - a chinese company launches a Netflix competitor in the US. They don't create content but they can choose which shows and movies are "recommended" - a Chinese TV show series becomes popular in the US. They know it's popular in the US and not China. It slowly and subtly starts injecting plot points that are pro-China ... OK - foreign news sources


This specific law draws the line at social media. That seems reasonable!

As a rough heuristic, compare advertising on social media vs on traditional tv. Note: we've actually (intentionally) reduced the effectiveness of online advertising (you can no longer target as narrowly)

Imagine being able to make sure that a very specific person receives a very specific type of propaganda. These are power tools. It is not in the United States' interest to allow foreign adversaries (countries that specifically view the relationship as adversarial) to wield them

You can be cynical. You should say the power tools shouldn't exist. But given that they do exist and given that we have a very limited amount of agreement in the US, is it better to ban TikTok? Or not? We do not get to say "don't do it because there are better approaches." This is the approach we have. It's the first time in four years the political will had almost enabled something that was genuinely better for America.

It seems that [the executive branches of] both parties are happy throwing that away though


> China has long banned US social media for likely the same reason.

Sure, but most other countries haven't. Perhaps they should learn from these developments and start considering their options.


Most geopolitical rivals already blocked US social media - Russia, Iran, China. Brazil blocked and forced X to censor opposition Brazilian politicians. It's already happening.

EU/NATO members can't outright block US social media for obvious reasons (military protection is not free). They try to do sneaky things to control social media with DSA, etc.

India/Indonesia and a few other countries are already debating banning foreign social media companies. India was the first to ban TikTok (for the same reason that US is banning TikTok now). US and India are not really rivals and US can retaliate against India if US companies are blocked so math is that it's not worth it to block for now but it can change in future.

Most other countries are not capable/do not have economy and critical number of people to have viable clone of social media. They block social media from time to time during elections, etc.


To me, this whole thing just comes across as craven and excessively politically motivated by the US government. If they were really concerned with apps (whether or not they're owned by the Chinese government) collecting and selling user data, they would pass adequate and enforceable privacy laws. Banning one specific app is addressing a symptom rather than a root cause, and any solution to an issue like this ought to apply to the entire field more broadly. I don't necessarily think that banning TikTok is a bad thing, but to do so in such an obviously politically motivated way belies a lack of concern about the underlying issue (i.e. the mass harvesting of user data).


> If China controls the recommendation system that decides what content people consume, then they can influence the narrative of the country.

From Noah Smith:

> Second, the refusal to sell the app tells us that the Chinese government would rather see TikTok destroyed than see it fall into American hands. Notably, that same government put up little fuss back in 2020 when the U.S. forced a Chinese company to sell the gay dating app Grindr to an American company. Why shut down TikTok and leave untold billions of dollars on the table, instead of just selling the thing like Grindr was sold?

> One possibility is that it’s an attempt to make young Americans angry, in the hopes that they’ll demand that Trump and Congress repeal the 2024 law. But a simpler explanation is that Chinese leaders simply think that TikTok, unlike other apps, is so important that they would rather destroy it than see it escape their control.

> Why? Some supporters of the divestiture bill argue that TikTok will transfer Americans’ personal data to the Chinese government — something it has already admitted to doing in a few cases. Others are concerned with TikTok’s social harms. But the biggest concern is that by controlling the TikTok algorithm, the Chinese government might be able to propagandize America’s young people — and to silence Americans who say things it doesn’t like.

> In fact, there’s some pretty strong evidence that TikTok already does exactly this. Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute has produced a number of papers about TikTok’s manipulation of information to suit Chinese government desires. The standard methodology is to compare topics on TikTok to similar topics on Instagram and YouTube. The NCRI people find that content on the different platforms is broadly similar, except where China-related issues are concerned. […]

* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/tiktok-is-just-the-beginning


So you're telling me the US can't compete in the marketplace of things or the marketplace of ideas?


The argument seems a bit hysterical, it's not like everyone is forced to use TikTok, they can get hair tips, learn about Gaza, or get whatever views from TikTok, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Twitch or...

American's would have the freedom to choose what social media they want to consume, now they are forced to only have one controlled by a US billionaire.


the point is that US has clear and direct influence to twitter/facebook/instagram algorithms and recommendations and they can suppress one topic or another. it is not the case with tiktok, and this is primary reason for this ban


If that is the what happened, they made the best case for shutting down US owned social networks across the world. It is not a specific case of misbehaving, but the power they give to the American government that can collude with these oligarchs such as Elon Musk.


I wonder how much ByteDance got from the incoming administration to pull that stunt. Super shady. "We voluntarily shut down our service in your country (er, I mean, we HAD TO, for real!) but don't worry, a true hero is soon arriving to save the day!"


There are much bigger factors at play than a few billion dollars


probably not for the guy who gets the few billion dollars.


Haha fair. But I don't think any company should be strong-armed by another nation into selling. Meta would never be allowed to sell their "Chinese arm" to a domestic Chinese entity...part of the reason there isn't one


What about the principle of reciprocity?

China doesn’t allow US social media companies to operate there—why should the US unilaterally allow Chinese social media companies to operate here with no reciprocity?

Continuing to play cooperate over and over when the other player keeps playing defect is not smart.


> China doesn’t allow US social media companies to operate there.

This statement is not entirely accurate. It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements. For instance, LinkedIn operated in China until August 2023. However, it may ultimately prove unfeasible due to factors such as user preferences, the volume of censorship requests, or even perceived unfair competition. Since at least 2010, when Google faced demands for compliance with Chinese censorship regulations, the requirements for foreign companies to operate in China have been clearly outlined.

No comment on these policies, but it is undeniable that businesses operating in foreign markets must comply with local laws. However, by intervening in business activities, undermining corporate property rights, and contradicting its own stated principles of free market economics and international trade rules, the U.S. has demonstrated economic nationalism. I can't tell who is playing defect in this case.



You are comparing oranges to apples here.

Basically, there are 2 legislation in the world, legistlation and the China legislation. In China, there are laws on the surface and there are rules underneath. For example, the government never admitted that the GFW exists, yet it keeps blocking more and more sites. The government never bans online forums, yet it never grants license to open a online bbs, since like ten years ago.

During some political sensitive times, the government would send secret requirement to local companies like ByteDance and Tencent on how to censor the social media. Back when I worked at ByteDance, when the 19th Communist Party congress was open, the auditors would be in a war room, just for making sure that no negative news or comments would be released. American companies also work with the government on censorship, more or less, but that's another story.

It's very common for Chinese people who have been fooled by the government to say that, these western companys left by themselves. But it's not the laws that on the surface drives them away, it's the rules underneath.


I think Xi himself even calls it "rule by law" (as opposed to "rule of law")


I'm not against your ideas in general, but I have to point out that I have several friends in China running small online forums despite the obstacles. Yes, it is rather difficult to get the licenses; Yes, they have to censor themselves; Yes, they have to temporally shut down during congress.

My point is that China isn't selectively banning websites from a single country. I wouldn't criticize if US apply the reasons of banning TikTok to all foreign websites.


The orange grove is being cut down, sadly:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/politics/social-media-disinfo...

The US is taking more control over social media, more than the government ever had over traditional media. This is similar to how the switch to the digital medium has been used as an opportunity to weaken the fourth amendment.


I agree that the US is going to the wrong direction. I was just saying that what China did is a bad example, not a justification for other governments.


> > China doesn’t allow US social media companies to operate there. > This statement is not entirely accurate. It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter#China


>This statement is not entirely accurate. It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements.

Read about Google's search engine project in China aka Project Dragonfly[0]; it was a totalitarian dystopian nightmare where CCP wanted to know everything about people who use Google, like their queries and mobile phone numbers and plus they demanded from Google that millions of websites/webpages must be censored (removed from Google's China index).

Project Dragonfly was like Stalin's manifestation of perfect surveillance and propaganda tool.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)


Rest assured agencies in the U.S. can (and do) do all of that and more to U.S. Google today with a simple warrant or takedown notice.


> with a simple warrant

See the difference?


You are putting a lot of faith in the police and judges that issue those things.


Just a little bit more than my faith in “no oversight whatsoever”, yes.


and there is no transparency needed, warrants don't have to be public in most countries.



See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Americans have way more faith in America being the good guys than is warranted.


US is liberal democracy, China is not and how much information is censored on Google.com if any? And did US government use Google to target individuals or ethnic groups within US?


>how much information is censored on Google.com if any?

Is this a serious question? Google removes all sorts of content from its index.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#:~:text=G....


Majority of those removals are safety removals not ideological censorship based on some socialist or whatever ideology.


No its “intellectual property” “protection” based on some capitalist or whatever ideology

Same thing, different beneficiaries in power


Ok so US doesn't want "socialist" influence in US and China doesn't want "capitalistic" influence in China. Eye for an eye. Problem solved.


And Google gave the NSA direct connections into their data centers in order to spy on US citizens in secret.


Western companies operating outside China are often forced to agree with China's censorship requirements too. Look up the "great cannon" on wikipedia. Many such examples.



It is possible for a US social media company to operate in mainland China, provided it complies with local regulations, including hosting its servers in China and adhering to censorship requirements.

From experience I can tell you that also means handing over all encryption keys which is a violation of most companies compliance requirements. That means creating an entirely separate org for compliance in China with entirely different b2b and end-user contracts, terms, etc... I know of a few companies that get around this only because they are more totalitarian than China and have their own circuits bypassing the great firewall. Not naming them.


Well in theory one of those countries is "free" - it's why you could buy Pravda at news stands in NYC but could not buy the New York Times in Moscow.


But we didn’t allow Moscow to edit the New York Times.


> What about the principle of reciprocity?

This sounds good on the surface, but China and the US have very different regimes. Full reciprocity would mean turning the US into a China style dictatorship. For instance, if China censors western press in their country should we be censoring Chinese press here?


I don't want reciprocity between limitations on the rights of Chinese citizens and the rights of Americans. Our government should be defending our freedoms, not imitating Communism.

We're supposed to be a democratic republic with safeguards for our rights, not a mercenary war machine that can be reprogrammed at will by a few people lucky enough to influence policymaking.


Does China have a first amendment restricting the abrdigment of all press and ? Was there are special carve out in the American first amendment for issues of reciprocity or for foreign media? No.

My biggest fear isnt China or Russia (like Im told it should be) but becoming like China and Russia. It's happening faster every day.

When the first and the fourth amendments are shredded then Putin and Xi Jinping get to say, with increasing truthfulness, "America is no better than us".


Things get a little weirder when they're mass media. A lot changed when the 'fairness doctrine' got thrown away… essentially you're arguing that adversarial powers should get to run mass propaganda operations with all the technological means we've learned, on the grounds it's 'speech'.

No citizen has comparable power to influence (and hide their tracks/sources) no matter how manically they post. It's rapidly becoming 'giant computer farms full of AI following scripts' and that still counts as 'speech', but rather than an individual's opinions it's targeted influence operations towards indirect goals.

It can be as close to 'crying fire in a crowded theater' as you like, except it's methods to coordinate teams of people all crying fire, knowing there's no fire, but intending to cause a mass casualty event through their actions.

Speech?


So many people think the freedom of speech means a right to your speech being amplified.

It does not.


There is no First Amendment issue here. The Supreme Court already determined that:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf


The Supreme Court also determined that Long Island isn’t an island — that doesn’t mean they’re right.


The supreme court ruled that banning it because of "the risk that user data stored on American servers might be exfiltrated" didnt fall under the first amendment.

The head of the FBI (among many others) said the ban needed to happen because China could use it to spew propaganda.

When Russia is heavily critical of what one of its media outlet says and then bans it because of tax irregularities or something, only Putin supporters are under any illusions as to why it happened.


The 1st Amendment does not apply to Chinese companies operating in the US.

And even if it did it isn't a suicide pact that forces the US to do very stupid things like let the CCP use TikTok to manipulate US citizens to the benefit of the CCP and detriment of the US.


The first amendment applies to US citizens using TikTok to communicate.


The first amendment applies to the communication of US citizens. If TikTok is found to be unlawful for non-free speech reasons and its distribution is outlawed, 1) Americans can still use it for communication and 2) Americans can use any number of other things for communication.


It wasn’t even the manipulation that was the NatSec concern, it was the amount of sensitive data they were pulling of not just TikTok users but any friends or family of theirs that they had in their contacts. This means they have data on people who work in sensitive departments, military bases, etc. and they had already been established as providing that data up to the Chinese Government. It’s the same reason India banned it, it was being used as an espionage tool.

Now the other problem is that Meta will sell much of the same data to anyone who is buying. We need to do something about surveillance capitalism from private industry too.


You shouldn't care what China or Russia say. The first amendment works only for American citizens, not for foreign subversion agents.


It's more nuanced than that.

Foreign nationals have at least some First Amendment rights in the US. Foreign agents or countries may have restrictions on some other grounds.

<https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-am...>

<https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/aliens/>

TikTok tends toward foreign country / agent as I read it.


Yeah sure, let’s copy the censorship tactics of a dictatorship


You know that there is no Facebook in China? The same for Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Even Google Search is not available in China. And not because those companies didn't want to work in China, simply China forbade them to do it. Funny thing, even TikTok in China is blocked... Chinese audience have Douyin from ByteDance. So it isn't like this that "bad US is doing something to poor Chinese company"


There is no Facebook in China for the same reason there will be no TikTok in the United States. Both Meta and ByteDance won't let another country run their business. Facebook was given the chance to operate in China if they complied with China's rules


The “Chinese arm” of ARM wasn’t even sold; it just went renegade and stole everything from the parent.


The Chinese don't really use facebook in the first place do they though? And facebook's utility to China is the same as TikTok's, just less direct: manipulating Americans and other non-Chinese users of Facebook. It seems like people want to be manipulated though.


Some people just hate their own government so much, they think any other government would be better. Including the known bad guys of the era.

Usually this does not work out that well. Point in case - Central Europe after WWII.

Chinese astroturfing is a thing too, but in many cases it is legit naive people.


"Some people just hate their own government so much, they think any other government would be better. Including the known bad guys of the era."

Yep. I call it "Chomskyism"


i don't understand your point if there is one


I think Activision Blizzard did.


Word, I imagine there are all kinds of shenanigans at play, I'm just not spending that much effort thinking about it. We'll never know the complete story on any of this stuff. Maybe in tens of years, if ever.


Yes, but really, not much more than what a cult leader will demand for access.


This message about Trump saving TikTok is just wishful thinking from TikTok.

1.) It's pointless, TikTok is officially banned in US. Even if trump decides to find a US buyer for it, it will go under strict ownership investigation. So there's no way Chinese government has any influence anymore.

2.) This means that any future Chinese apps that get popular will get banned, and no need to go through any court challenges since there's precedent and law

3.) A lot of people already left TikTok and will not come back - why would they when they know the app could be gone at any minute? The traffic from the original TikTok will just keep getting split and syphoned, until the magnificent seven claims most of it


I think 3 is a weak point. I've left multiple social media platforms several times and got sucked back in days or months later. That was when I was actively trying to not use them.

Edit: I think all it needs is a link from a friend to some TikTok content and they are back in.


I read the message as more as being an ego stroke to someone that everyone else is ego stroking right now - seeing as Trump has a lot of influence over people further down in his party's org chart, there might be enough reason.

Trying to argue about legality is unlikely to hold much sway given how other legal issues ended.


That was my first thought as well, but do you have any reason to say it's wishful thinking rather than the result of a conversation with Trump's team?


You mean more money?

Because in the end it's always about money.

Well about power really, but money is the main means to get that.


Definitely power... bought by billionaires. A few government officials outright said they want to be able to control the narrative.


I’m sure they expect the issue to be resolved by paying the incoming president.


That's a lot of confidence, you must know something I don't. I'm but a bystander Canadian without much of a dog in this race, but it's a pretty serious allegation to suggest that tomorrow's World's Most Powerful Man is on the ByteDance/TikTok payroll.

Are you able to expand a bit?


> it's a pretty serious allegation

Is it, now? He’s a corrupt convicted felon who brags about lying, which despite that was elected president. Do you think he gives a shit about anyone’s allegations? He’d sell your mother for a pack of peanuts. And why not? From his point of view he can do anything he wants and there will be no serious consequences.

I recently learned, thanks to another HN comment, that more than half of the USA population has a literacy level below the 6th grade. Suddenly it answered so many questions.

https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s...


And don't forget that 7% of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/15/seven...)

Kinda says it all.


Is it "7% selected such option in a poll" or is it "7% actually believe this"?

People in polls repeatedly select stupid answer either due to confusion, trolling, bad poll design, not caring about what they select and so on.

See https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... ("Lizardman’s Constant Is 4%")

> (a friend on Facebook pointed out that 5% of Obama voters claimed to believe that Obama was the Anti-Christ, which seems to be another piece of evidence in favor of a Lizardman’s Constant of 4-5%. On the other hand, I do enjoy picturing someone standing in a voting booth, thinking to themselves “Well, on the one hand, Obama is the Anti-Christ. On the other, do I really want four years of Romney?”)


People have been accusing Trump of this or that for almost a decade, but where is it? 90% of lawyers are partisan democrats who have hated Trump from day 1 because he is a threat to the professional managerial class. They have been digging for nearly a decade to find something to use against him.

What did they find? He was convicted for paying with his own money to pay a pornstar to hide an affair, in a case that CNN’s own head legal analyst said “contorted the law.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-...

At a certain point you gotta put up or shut up.


> but where is it?

Where is what?

> 90% of lawyers are partisan democrats who have hated Trump from day 1 because he is a threat to the professional managerial class.

That is clearly a conspiratorial statistic taken out of nowhere.

> He was convicted for paying with his own money to pay a pornstar to hide an affair

He was convicted of falsifying business records with intent to defraud and conspiring to “promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means”.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-charges-conviction-guilty...


> That is clearly a conspiratorial statistic taken out of nowhere.

95% of law firm contributions in 2019 went to Biden: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/snubbing-trump-law.... This support wasn’t out of economic interest. The overwhelming majority of lawyers are ideologically captured and hate Trump at a visceral and irrational level for not subscribing to that ideology.

> He was convicted of falsifying business records with intent to defraud and conspiring to “promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means”.

Why quote the statute instead of the facts, which aren’t really in dispute? After he had already won the election, he reimbursed his lawyer for paying off a pornstar through his family business, and booked the reimbursements as “legal expenses” instead of “pornstar payoffs.”

Brilliant minds came over from top law firms to fit those facts into to a clever legal theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carey_R._Dunne. They figured it out, just like the figured out how to make Google’s profits magically all materialize in Ireland. But the underlying conduct remains a politician covering up an affair. That’s the best the legal industry could do after eight years of digging.


Let's back up a bit. Ancestor comments are saying "I wouldn't put it past Trump to take money to bring TikTok back." That's what's being discussed here. I'm not sure why you're on some personal crusade to make Trump seem unjustly persecuted. It's a bit strange, even, since that wasn't even the main contention here.


Yes, that's what's being discussed, and the argument that's being made in this discussion is that Trump has so far apparently never done anything like that before.


Yes but 34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US. It seems to me that this is more a reflection that the US has the highest percentage of immigrants of all countries on earth.


Edit: The parent comment completely changed what it said, making all replies look out of context. I’m leaving my original reply, which includes a verbatim quote of the parent, below.

> It may be you who lacks the critical reasoning skills. Did you happen to think about the fact that 23% of the population is actually younger than age 12, meaning they wouldn’t even be in 6th grade yet?

This is incredibly ironic. It’s 54% of the adult population, which is abundantly clear by the provided link (in a bullet point, it’s hard to miss). It only takes a minimum of good faith and critical reasoning skills to:

1. Realise that of course the statistic will not include people younger than the level used as the threshold.

2. Click through and at least skim the link to steel man someone’s argument.


> 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).

From the link.


GP’s quote was taken from directly below yours.


> GP’s quote was taken from directly below yours.

They completely changed their post after the Tronno reply, which made the replies look out of context.

Their original post, quoted verbatim in my other comment¹, was:

> It may be you who lacks the critical reasoning skills. Did you happen to think about the fact that 23% of the population is actually younger than age 12, meaning they wouldn’t even be in 6th grade yet?

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42757642


Adult population is obviously implied. Love when the universe gifts us this level of irony.


The comment said payment, that does not neccesarily mean money. There are things that tiktok can do for him and the money is least of it.


It's hard to find definitions of payment which don't relate to money. There's no doubt in anyone's minds that geopolitical positions benefit some states over others, it's a completely different premise to prescribe real direct compensation.

The waters get pretty muddy if we're willing to suggest that American presidents are "paid" by other nations to enact policy which benefits said nations, it's not unreasonable to ask for clarity about such claims.


Money is simply debt; an IOU to hand in for something of value in the future. If it helps to have the money abstraction in mind, imagine the debt being called immediately, whereby the thing of value is delivered immediately.


Most people I know treat money as fiat, something concrete and exchangeable.

What I think you’re describing is political favor, something entirely different from what was originally presented.


> Most people I know treat money as fiat, something concrete and exchangeable.

Exactly. Money is the decree – the concrete representation of debt. A recognizable token that can be given to someone that says "I owe you something", which can subsequently be exchanged back by the recipient to get the something of value that they are owed. Which you already know if you've ever used money before, and no doubt you have.

But, as it pertains to the topic at hand, in cases where there is no reason to delay delivery of the actual value, you can skip holding the debt. You could go through the motions of receiving money, and then giving it right back in exchange for the thing of value that you are owed, but there is no practical difference between that and cutting money out of the picture and simply accept the thing of value as payment.

> What I think you’re describing is political favor

Money might be a tool used in offering political favor, I suppose, but that is well beyond the content of my comment about the function of money. How did you manage to reach this conclusion?


> How did you manage to reach this conclusion?

I think it's fairly obvious, no? The originally presented case was that Trump had received payment for assuring TikTok's survival. I've noted a few times in this thread that this is a really poor framing, and that it's more likely his actions were motivated by politics, not fiduciary gain.


Again, what does that have to do with our discussion about money?


you mean the same dude that's currently doing a crypto rug pull based on his presidency ?


Yep, the very same!


It's called donation, not payroll. All of big tech seems to be doing it.


You wanna play coy about the guy who shot beans commercials in the oval office?


I think on HN it's easier to just be clear about what we're positing; I'm not really sure what you mean by playing coy.

Do you think Trump's being paid by ByteDance to lift the ban?


Trump will apply a basic principle. Could this thing manipulate my voter base at scale and in the wrong direction? Yes -> kill


Trump has displayed a disturbing pattern of changing his opinions and actions after meeting with monied or powerful people who have vested interest in said change.

Often this is accompanied by a public message of flattery or a donation to his "political" coffers.


Totally agree on that, public flattery's a very common tribute in international politics. So I'll ask again, are we of the opinion that Trump is being paid by actors, foreign or domestic, to enact change here?


I do believe that. We are talking about the admin that launched Trumpcoin which soared to tens of billions in market cap in the last few days.


So, just to make it very clear what I implied, yes. I believe he and his organisations receive benefits, directly or not, in money or other forms, for him steering policy towards what’s convenient to whoever is paying.

An easy way is for TikTok to just promise to algorithm away any criticism of him in the US.


Like every other politician. Trump is just less subtle about it.

Politicians take political decisions, not logical ones.


> Do you think Trump's being paid by ByteDance to lift the ban?

There is never a need to be that direct. Republican and Democrat donors tell politicians what positions to take. Trump doesn't need to take money directly from a company. He takes it from his donors, who in turn take it from the company in some form.

In this case, the theory is that billionaire Jeff Yass (an investor in Tik Tok) has "persuaded" Trump to flip his position.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/jeff-yass-billionaire...


rbanffy's comment was exactly as direct as I specified, and I'll reiterate their comment for posterity - "I’m sure they expect the issue to be resolved by paying the incoming president".

My understanding now is that now we've shifted from "ByteDance pays Trump to flip" to "American businessman Jeff Yass meets with Trump and convinces him to flip"

I hope you can understand that as a non-American observer I see a lot of distance between those two claims and find myself confused when they're treated with equivalency.


The only difference is that the money given is laundered through donors. I am an American, and I am very cynical.


How out of touch with general politics are you? This is how things are done, globally, in every democracy, since forever, you just need to look close enough. I can see similar type of corruption all over Switzerland for example where I live, mostly in public projects and decisions. Locals mostly don't see anything, so everybody is happy. You just have to have a keen eye for corruption, which is easy for somebody coming from eastern Europe since there its ingrained in the system(s) and permeates every aspect of societies.

Non-democratic places have more direct path for bribes but otherwise its same.


I’d say I’m generally fairly in touch with global politics, it’s a bit inflammatory for you to ask, truthfully.

I think that local level corruption in my small town in Canada or in yours in Switzerland is pretty markedly different from what’s been originally presented, which is that DJT was paid directly by ByteDance to adjust his position.


I said that ByteDance expects that paying Trump will make everything go away. From his comment on an executive order, it seems clear he’s willing to go over a law passed by the Congress.


It doesn’t even need to go through Jeff Yass. It can just be a new Trump resort and casino getting expedited approval in Hong Kong, or some other place. Imagine the business opportunities being POTUS will bring to him and his family. The possibilities for corruption are endless.


It doesn't take much imagination; he spent 4y as POTUS and most people agree it was to his personal benefit. I'm not aware of this leading to expedited approvals for Trump resorts in other countries, but it seems you're more familiar with his dealings than I am.

I'd still love your clarification though - do you still stand by the claim that Trump is being paid to reneg on his position re. TikTok, as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42755872 ?


Yes. It's not going to be hard 'traceable' cash, but it'll be favours and other permits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_Moscow


I'm a bit confused by the connection you're trying to make - it sounds as if the project never went anywhere?


He never loses his own money - he gets paid for licensing his name and brand and for his "expertise". It's the investors who get defrauded.


I am amazed people are staying so calm and civil in this comment thread.


I can’t speak for everyone, but personally it’s normalized in my Canadian upbringing to exchange this way.


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Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are, so please don't post like this to HN.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: it looks like we've had to warn you about this kind of thing more than once before, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26742673. However, the good news is that it seems to be rare in your otherwise very good commenting history (for which, thank you!) so it should be easy to avoid in the future.


That’s just fine! I’ve met a lot of Americans and their demeanors are pretty varied. I’m open to any kind of dialogue here :)

Do you have some insults you’d like to sling?


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By all means say what you mean John, we're all adults here and no one's impressed by tiptoeing.


I think that the message put up by TikTok today is already, at least in part, its own payment. "The bad guys blocked your favourite app, luckily you'll have to wait just one day for President Trump to fix this regrettable mess" is a powerful message to send to more than one hundred million Americans. Stupid as you want, but powerful. Same as for the Gaza ceasefire (which will be ignored as soon as the inauguration is over and focus has moved onto other matters).


I think it's fair to demonstrate a pattern of behavior without speculating on specifics. Similarly, Trump did not collude with Russia in secret, but he did openly ask them to help him run the election on national TV. What did Russia get for that? Maybe nothing. Maybe goodwill.


Much of Trump's decisionmaking in his first term was erratic and generally unwarranted, but I still I think it's totally fair to ask for clarification about claims of that level of severity.

To my knowledge, if I'm understanding rbanffy's position correctly, this would be the first time in history US president was directly being bribed by a foreign actor, so I still maintain it's worth seeking clarification.

Am I wrong in holding skepticism here? I don't doubt there are political points to be gained for Trump here, especially given the domestically controversial nature of the ban, but I'd really love for someone to hold true to the original notion under question that someone (ByteDance, CCP, etc.) is "paying the incoming president", as rbanffy suggseted.


> Am I wrong in holding skepticism here?

As somebody coming from a third-world country, it’s a matter of fact that the people view politicians as a corrupt group. They think they are better than the people they represent, they are multiple times richer than the population and campaigns range from distorted truths to clear lies.

Proven or unproven, a claim that a given politician received bribes to influence something is not met with skepticism, but a mere “yeah, of course”!

Some say the US is a rich third-world country, or becoming one.

Why do we bother with the farce that elected representatives are better than us? They are looking for their own interests.


See the inauguration fund. Money completely unaccounted for and that his team is saying pay to get exclusive access to Trump. It’s pay to play and it’s legal (at least for Americans).


> Am I wrong in holding skepticism here?

Certainly. The whole corruption setup is always done in such a way that there is never direct proof, only some more or less well hidden ones. So if you expect somebody here will post a recording of their bribe negotiations, that won't ever happen, Trump would directly order CIA to eliminate such person with extreme prejudice, and that's how it would have been done.

Look, he is crook, smart, properly fucked up man baby with issues that no psychologist could ever fix, but he is a crook at the core. These are facts. Enough evidence with few seconds of googling to condemn 10 such persons of highly amoral and sometimes also criminal behavior. And everybody knows it, even here. So folks understand how to deal with such currently most powerful person, so they do.

I don't get where your doubts come from. Facts are out there, you only need to connect few dots.


Certainly this is not the first time that's happened. Trump has been President before. What he got up to is indeed the first time in history that happened, but not because he was directly bribed by a foreign actor: that's most likely already happened. The case of Trump is entirely stranger.


They have literally nothing to lose so stunt is relative.


Exactly. It's in their best interest to offer the incumbent a free political win


What? The incumbent is on his way out, and it is the incoming guy that has the opportunity for the win by bringing it back afternoon tomorrow (Jan 20th).

This is eerily similar to the Carter/Regan hostages situation


There's still some cost to shutting down now like this.


Other way round: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/jeff-yass-billionaire...

Yass has paid in tens of millions of dollars, he's going to call that in to get an unban.

I really don't know which way to bet on this though. The Trump presidency is going to be consistently unpredictable.


Decisions will be consistently made in favor of the highest bidder.


Yeah I was thinking that too! Plus the "look how we made you look like the hero" aspect. Shady stuff all around.


> the “look how we made you look like the hero” aspect

They know exactly what they are doing. That message is going to be effective and the person it’s targeted at doesn’t understand that it can be spun any way the CCP wants to spin it. How does he not see how risky letting a foreign government run something like TikTok in the US?


What do you mean voluntarily? The SC upheld the law.


The law does not disallow Americans from accessing this service. It only disallows Apple and Google from distributing the app on their stores. This shutdown of the service is a publicity stunt.


They didnt have to shut down the app.


They probably got promises saying that they could continue to operate if they agreed to this Trump marketing campaign. That's enough?


In which case, the question is: what were other Republicans told that they didn't sign off on this plan? It seems quite a bit like a coordinated arrangement between China and ONE guy who was running for office.

Since he was running as a Republican, why are they not also signing off on all this? Why is the completely Trump-friendly Supreme Court not signing off on all this?


Probably nothing. That was their last hope...


And it's ironic because this is a perfect example of what the law is intended to prevent -- a Chinese-owned company boosting Trump in front of a hundred million Americans.

If that's not foreign influence, I don't know what is.


Cam you detail exactly what conspiracy you are alleging without evidence?

This is the corporate version of "he quit before they could fire him".


There's plenty of evidence, it's just circumstantial - but that doesn't make it any less obvious that there is something going on between TikTok and DT.


Bytedance didn’t get anything. They likely posted this message without Trump’s knowledge to create social pressure on him by setting up an expectation. It’s a manipulation technique, which is exactly why this app needs to go away.


Exactly, Bytedance/Chinese government wants Trump to look bad, if TikTok stays dark. Nevermind that Trump was the one that tried to ban TikTok in the first place. And never mind that everyone from house to senate to Biden to Supreme Court voted to ban TikTok.

And never mind that the majority of users on TikTok are far left woke democrats.


The Supreme Court did not vote to ban TikTok. They voted that Congress had the power to do so.


I mean, if I was bytedance I would do that free of charge to make the outgoing administration look like muppets :)


> ByteDance got from the incoming administration

Why do you assume conspiracy instead of unilateral political maneuvering?


But you repeat yourself


Unilateral political maneuvering is not a thing.


I have a feeling the ban is likely the result of "special interest" groups as opposed to a "classified briefing"


"major major major generational problem … We have a TikTok problem, we have a Gen-Z problem." https://www.liberationnews.org/israels-pinkwashing-task-forc...


Circa 1968 America:

We have a TV problem, more specifically, lots of coffins on TV problem.

Circa 2003 America:

We have TV problem, a media problem, specifically coffins all over the media problem


Worth noting: > In a phone call leaked by the Tehran Times


It's a recorded audio file, not an opinion or hearsay, so I don't think the leaking organization matters.

Would you feel better if an anonymous user uploaded it to Reddit/Twitter/Tiktok?


I don't doubt he said it, because I think it's pretty plain to see it's a correct analysis - antisemitism is rife with the new generation to a degree that, to me at least, is quite scary. I just think it's quite instructive that a hostile state is trying to use this to sow discord.


> antisemitism is rife with the new generation

Is there an example one could provide of this which shows members of the new generation criticizing Jewish people for being Jewish? Surely it wouldn’t be examples of people voicing criticism of the actions of people who happen to be Jewish.


Oh sweetheart. Just search twitter for “jews”.


Yeah but what was the prevalence of anti-Israeli sentiment prior to the 40k civilian massacre?

I wasn’t even paying attention to the news one day and CNN was casually interviewing a Palestinian father holding a dead baby corpse in his hands, with the head covered in a blood soaked bag. On CNN, at 10am.

You don’t have to be particularly impressionable to be affected by this.

History is going to be unmerciful in its documenting of this, no one is going to forget the sin here.


Yeah, fair enough; it was a mistake to ask for examples, I realize that now. One could probably go to twitter and search “chemtrails” and find a lot of words written seemingly without preceding critical thought. I don’t think many people would assert that chemtrail conspiracy theories are rife with the new generation, however.


Sure, it's an old trope to sit back and ask for examples, pretending your epistemic standard is whether someone on a forum can muster up the examples, and then when nobody does or you wave them away, you've proved that something isn't happening. You've done the investigation.

https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-infected-antisemitism-spreadi...


There's an extent to which that word was used to mean criticism of the previous administration's foreign policy. Politicians are generally not known for their honor, and will try to hide behind anything, no matter how sacrosanct.


Anyone who actually cares the tiniest bit about antisemitism would have the decoupling of Israel and the Jewish identity as the first order of business. Nothing comes even close.

A state consistently using Jews to excuse its actions, behavior which is validated by US policymakers, it's just orders of magnitude worse than anything else, Israel has promoted antisemitism more in a year than every other group in the last 50 years put together.


I would.

10 years ago, no. Today? An audiofile is really easy to make with or even just a couple people in a studio.


It's also really easy for Greenblatt to issue a denial.

That is, of course, unless it is true.

A denial wouldnt necessarily indicate that it is false (he has every reason to deny it, but lying is a risk) but the lack of a denial is very strong evidence that it is, in fact, true.

There is a very low cost to denying lies, so the absence of a denial (unlike its presence) is a very good indicator.


"No rumour is true until it's categorically denied" -- Otto Von Bismarck.

> There is a very low cost to denying lies.

So people can just lie.

See: Clinton and Lewinski, the Profumo affair, Russian troop buildup on the Ukraine border 2022, Russian attacks on Ukraine 2014+, claims by NSA execs prior to the Snowden leaks, etc.


NYT, WaPo, etc would disclose whether they had been able to verify the source or authenticity of the recording in some way.

A state-controlled newspaper in an autocratic county? It could be something they did verify as true and just happens to align with their agenda - or it could be nonsense and they know it. Or they couldn't just shrugged and said "makes the US look bad, run it."

I think most people don't appreciate the levels of internal review and fact-checking that go on when a national paper in the US ends up with a big story in its lap.


> Schwartz said as much in an interview with Israeli Army Radio on December 31. “The New York Times said, ‘Let’s do an investigation into sexual violence’ — it was more a case of them having to convince me,” she said. Her host cut her off: “It was a proposal of The New York Times, the entire thing?”

> The bigger scandal may be the reporting itself, the process that allowed it into print, and the life-altering impact the reporting had for thousands of Palestinians whose deaths were justified by the alleged systematic sexual violence orchestrated by Hamas the paper claimed to have exposed

https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schw...

Surely the NYT would verify, right?

And of course the WaPo has no conflicts of interest being owned by Bezos either


NYT, WaPo, etc aren't very likely to publish it. It'd be in the same bucket as Jeff Epstein - politically toxic and the majors aren't going to take the lead drawing attention to it even if it is plausible. Facts would need to be in the public sphere for a while and gaining traction before they pick it up.

It might be the Iranians making stuff up, although realistically that sort of activity is what should be expected without any leaks at all. It has been obvious since around 2016 that the corporate media doesn't have the ability to single-handily dominate the narrative any more and that will impact national security propaganda because, you know, what military would be stupid enough to leave that sort of messaging to chance?


> NYT, WaPo, etc would disclose whether they had been able to verify the source or authenticity

Oh yeah, like the verification of their stories of the oven babies

If anything, this whole ordeal has shown that all media is at some level censored and controlled by special interests behind the scenes

We’ve been living in a post-truth world for a long time, way before AI


Who lived in a world with no lies, Adam?


Great point. Ever since we’ve had language, we’ve had lies

My comment just points to the naïveté of thinking that somehow big media are big sources of unbiased truth that we can all trust


So you’re admitting that the call was real, we should just ignore it because it’s inconvenient to your beliefs?


You shouldn't ignore it, you should listen carefully, and you should ponder why an enemy state wants it to outrage you.


They know their argument is bolstered by the truth being widely known in this case, so it benefits them to leak it.

Why is it so important to you that the truth is suppressed?


Only worth noting if Greenblatt has denied the phone call.

E.g when Russia stopped denying the presence of North Korean troops, it was pretty much cast iron proof that Ukraine's recent videos of the prisoners were not fakes.

A denial wouldnt necessarily mean it wasn't true, but the lack of a denial is very strong evidence that it is.


Whenever the Russian government denies something like you're suggesting, I take it to be an admission. I'm usually right.

You're naive and wrong.


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Why are you conflating Jews and Israel?

That's extremely antisemitic given that Jewish groups have been some of the most public and vocal opponents of Israel's genocidal actions.


Israel is the only Jewish state globally, and its efforts to counter Iran-backed proxy groups have contributed to broader regional and global security. While there are some Jewish groups that dissent, they represent a minority. The majority of Americans, Israelis, and Jewish communities support Israel's actions against Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian proxies.


Your 3 other posts were flagged and removed for glorifying genocide, and now you're back for a 4th attempt with a softer tone.

I already mentioned this in your other comment, but these Hasbara talking points come off like they're written by a corporate PR department and are getting stale.


[flagged]


ooo what a fun game! Good guess on my age.

Now estimate the age of the International Court of justice, the United Nations, and dozens of international aid organizations who have called Israel's actions as a genocide? lol or do you consider them to be Iranian proxies too?


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You seem to operate solely in terms of propaganda: iranian, russian, israeli. The inability to see beyond a few narratives and denying agency to other people make it impossible to have a conversation

It's like talking to a finite state machine that emits duckspeak


Yawn.. Same old Hasbara talking points. You guys really need to update your guide books to include some more creative talking points. These ones are overused and stale.


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Your last two replies here were flagged (most likely for glorifying war and genocide), so you have deleted them and tried again with a softer message. Hasbara is out in force this morning!


Please don't conflate Jewish people with this genocidal state. Thank you.


It’s very telling that the TT ban was not a standalone bill, but rather just one item of a bill that included $26 billion in aid for Israel, $13b for Ukraine and $8b for Taiwan

Congress can’t even agree on the federal govt budget, but they can almost unanimously agree to support war, and banning TT


If ByteDance's interest in TikTok was purely commercial, they would have made the commercial decision to spin out the US market into a US-listed public company or sold it to a US buyer.

The fact that they chose to shut down instead, strongly suggests, that they have interests in TikTok beyond financial.


Google also opted to pull out of China instead of selling their Chinese operations to a domestic company. Does it imply that Google had interests beyond financial when operating in China?

I think it's more likely that they don't want the brand name dilution that comes from having a separate TikTok US that's probably going to be a shittier version of the original since it doesn't have the original algorithm (which isn't allowed to be exported) or the original TikTok engineers working on it.


> Google also opted to pull out of China instead of selling their Chinese operations to a domestic company. Does it imply that Google had interests beyond financial when operating in China?

Yes. At the time Larry & Sergey still ran the place and did have a somewhat idealist approach to running Google. When it turned out that it was impossible to bring an uncensored search engine to China, they shut it down.


The TikTok branding and user base are already firewalled from ByteDance's Chinese operations.

Their Chinese variant of TikTok is called Douyin, so there wouldn't be any brand dilution from spinning TikTok off.

I also have doubts that the technology behind TikTok would be difficult for a western engineer to understand. It's a relatively straigtforward algorithm, and it's details have been shared in a public paper.


Could it be that the straight forward algorithm which empowers the user is exactly the problem with tiktok in the US?


Douyin has the exact same logo - how is that "firewalled?"


Douyin isn't available outside China.

TikTok isn't available within China.

There's no risk of brand dilution.


I just watched Douyin yesterday on their site for numerous hours without a login to try and understand the differences.

Douyin is very much "available."


That doesn't follow. A third option is: shut down, wait for the pushback and for things to return to how they were before. And it might just be working.


There's no guarantee that will happen, and even if it does, TikTok will likely have lost marketshare by being unavailable for a period of time.

A financially motivated actor would have avoided the damage by spinning it out. They likely could have even kept a large minority share.


Alternatively, it's a single national security bill.

But actually, it is a standalone peice of legislation - the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.


Thanks, I hate it


Of course. TT is to China as WMDs were to Iraq

No real anything presented to the American public, just handwaving and finger pointing

It just barely needs to make sense and it becomes the center of the conversation, derailing any meaningful or real discussion

Very effective propaganda


If what you say is true then we should've expected a buyer to come forward, or at least signal some interest in buying the platform, surely?


Not sure why it would imply that

However, there’s been a lot of people not just signaling but openly announcing they are vying for the purchase. Like Kevin O’Leary, who said he’s offering $20b in cash to buy TT


The new president is populist. Once the rage of the TikTokrs is overwhelming, he's going to find a way to reinstate it.


He is populist second, and transactional first and foremost. He always has put himself, namely his vanity, first.


I don't know how you think other politicians operate, but their self-interest always comes before the interests of their constituents (maybe there is the odd exception).


Vanity first, then wallet.


And loves being the hero. When the app was taken down, there was a generic message about the ban. Then 1 hour later, it was changed to include:

“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”

I wonder what happened behind the scenes. This gives me flashbacks of the signed stimulus checks


Carter, Reagan, and some hostages, for example.


Not familiar with that. Could you elaborate?

It seems to imply he’s not the only one who’s done something like that. In that case, I totally agree, political figures are masters of political posturing and taking credit

And that goes for any party and probably every country in the world


Look up Iran hostage situation and how unelected presidential candidate undermined an active president.


A special interest group called Meta.


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That is certainly tipping the scales in this case


Special interest groups that spend a huge amount of money to unseat representatives who go against their interests: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/16/cong...


It's obvious the app is being banned because for once we had unbiased news about Israel/Palestine and the ongoing genocide.

A media outlet not easy to censor is unacceptable to the Israeli lobby, and therefore unacceptable to our politicians.


It baffles me that people can seem to comprehend that only the United States government has interests in its media outlets, and the authoritarian second to the US in the global stage don’t. 1. TikTok in the westernized form is banned in China. 2. When some people tried to move to rednote (the in the open Chinese app), they were getting banned in the first few hours for being gay and other ideas that came with them, so it’s very entirely plausible that also TikTok is heavily regulated from the officials of a foreign actor.


US is the only state that pretends to champion absolute freedom of speech, to the point of citing violations of it when imposing sanctions on other nations.


There's plenty of openly gay Chinese RedNote influencers, as there have been for years now [1]. I don't know why you're pushing disinformation. The Americans getting banned probably just violated their ToS, since they were in Chinese and they couldn't understand them.

[1] https://www.xiaohongshu.com/search_result?keyword=gay (requires log-in)


He’s not pushing disinformation.


For those who don't know, Mitt Romney said this.

"Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."


Sure. Everyone reads the 100 page TOS for every site and app they use, right?


Just to add on:

I don’t imagine discussion of what’s happening to the Uyghurs is getting much traction in TikTok either.

Movement against TikTok started started with the Trump admin well before Oct 7, 2023 [1].

I think this is less Israel / Palestine and a better explanation lies elsewhere. Namely, that anti-China sentiment has been growing for a while now and Meta has plenty of money to burn (on the Metaverse, Lobbyists, etc.)

The actual law was passed after accounts of spying on Hong Kong citizens were made public [2].

———

1 — https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...

2 — https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-china-bytedance-user-data-...


The effort to ban tiktok stalled for a few years due to public backlash.

Only after the strong shift in sentiment by younger Americans on Israel's genocidal actions did the effort renew with vigor.


This reminds me of the Al Jazeera America (“AJAM”) news channel. They weren’t banned per sé, but it’s obvious they were doomed from the start. An Arab news network operating in the United States… if you think TikTok had a target painted on its back for being Chinese-owned… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_America


They arent "just" an arab media. They are financed and controlled by the dictatorship of qatar. That is like claiming Russia Today was domed because it was a "slavic" network. No it was domed because it is propaganda financed and controlled by a dictatorship.


Technically the BBC is a state broadcasting service subject to King Charles who, AFAIK, nobody voted for.

State run propaganda networks are actually a pretty good source of information; they are well resourced and have a vested interest in being perceived as high-credibility so they can tip the scale on a small number of issues critical to the state. And good propaganda is mostly done by omission and careful fact selection, although a lot of the bit-player dictatorships aren't competent enough to handle good propaganda.


It always rub me the wrong way that YouTube puts a "this is a state actor" disclaimer on a video uploaded by the well-known public media corporation of a western democracy, but put zero disclaimer whatsoever on a random video uploaded by an anonymous account created 2 minutes ago.


I thought it was normal to take media with whatever slant it had and look for evidence supressed by others, check a few opposing outlets and piece together a narrative as close as possible to neutral. When thise outlets aren’t available we’re likely to get a much more distorted story.


UK is millions of times better than Qatar but BBC is not too great. Somethings are great with BBC not everything. Fox news? Qatar doesn't micromanage everything.


And Al Arabiya isnt banned because...?


TikTok wasn't banned. It was required to be sold but ByteDance refused to do so, probably because the CCP won't let them.


Even the Palestinian authority banned Al Jazeera

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-authority-...


Because they were leaned on by Israel.


Citation needed.

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas are not exactly friends, they don't need much convincing to ban Al Jazeera.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict


The process to ban it was started years earlier.


It was, but why did the ban only succeed now?

Edit: to be honest, it is an honest question.

My guess is that the uniparty can’t afford a popular platform they don’t fully control and where there is significant dissent.

On Russia-Ukraine, the voices against US propaganda didn’t gain enough traction for them to worry about it. With Israel-Palestine, the opposition was for the first time reaching people who they previously never could.


> It was, but why did the ban only succeed now?

This has been going on for years now. The Navy banned TikTok because of security concerns in 2019.

Then in 2020, the US announced it was considering banning them. ByteDance planned to divest by selling to an American company. The Chinese government disagreed.

TikTok sued and that took a while to go through the courts.

Then TikTok tried negotiating to avoid having to divest for a couple years by placing all private user data in the US, but later leaked recordings made it clear that Chinese employees still had access.

A law to ban TikTok on US government devices was then passed.

Then a law to ban TikTok unless they divest was drafted, but it took a couple years to pass and then that had to wind its way through the courts.


because the election campaign has already ended?


"unbiased" as in: maximally biased to serve Chinese interests.


I'll go against my better judgment and ask: What are China's relations to Palestine and Israel? I genuinely do not have the slightest clue about that dynamic.


For that matter, what are China's interests regarding Russia/US? It seems like China would lose a lot of money in the event of America taking a major dive, but they could be preparing to make the case that they are a more stable regime with a more stable currency. I feel like that would be aligned with China's interests.


> For that matter, what are China's interests regarding Russia/US?

"If these two get into a fight, we can move on with our Taiwan agenda."

That's why Trump is pushing the EU to properly finance their defense, so the US can concentrate on Asia Pacific. He signalled this during his Notre Dame meeting with Macron, France being the only European NATO ally with a reliable army and interests in the region. To Trump, China is the new US rival, Russia is merely a bigger Iran with nukes and more advanced tech. I don't see him giving Tiktok a break.


Possibly none. But the logic goes like this - China sees that amplifying positive Palestinian stories serve to destabilize US discourse so they put their thumb on the scale to push those over positive Israeli stories.

And we know this type of thing works because we see it everyday with US internal propaganda. The last thing the US needs is an adversary with a direct line to the US populace controlling what they see. Also, I'm not even talking about misinformation, just pushing what stories are seen and not seen. Once you add in misinformation and bots it's pretty wild how easy it appears to control the population.


Ok but doesn’t that cancel out with other platforms that push the thumb in the other direction of the scale? What just happend reeks of supression of information to me.


TikTok already suppresses information in ways that furthers Chinese interests. Those interests can be as direct as promoting China or as nuanced as simply making people in the US dislike each other.


> Ok but doesn’t that cancel out with other platforms that push the thumb in the other direction of the scale?

The point is not to push Americans towards Israel or Palestinians, the point is to push Americans apart from each other, so that each half of the political divide sees the other as supporting baby-murderers, as people you cannot be friends with, compromise with and shouldn't even try to talk to.

I am not exaggerating, each of these things I have seen being explicitly pushed.


Any power, worth its salt (and China is most certainly one of those), will be acutely aware of conflict which involve opposing powers.

If something can be done through the Israeli/Palestinian conflict which damages the US, you can be sure China is working on it.


What evidence do you have that preexisting news coverage was biased regarding Israel/Palestine? From many Israeli perspective, much of MSM is biased against Israel! And funny enough, I can see that repeating pattern for every interest group. Left-Wingers say MSM is all Right-Wing and biased against them, Right-Wingers say MSM is taken over by the Woke Mob.

There are dozens of contradictory narratives depending on who you ask, what makes your paticular narrative more compelling than the competing narratives?


People will downvote you for revealing this, but it's the truth. I saw it on TikTok, after all.


Leading politicians said it explicitly. It's been discussed in the news since the conflict started.


It’s not. The effort started earlier. It’s just a convenient narrative.


Based on what do you say it's not? How is it a convenient narrative?

The ban both could have started earlier and been pushed to completion based on more recent factors.

Lawmakers talked about propaganda potential relating to Palestine directly, multiple times.

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-ban-israel-palest...


The whole TikTok legislation was not created to suppress Palestinian views, even if that may have been a side effect of it, and repeating that does not make it true.

It’s a convenient narrative because it sounds like „the government“ or „they“ want to conceal the truth, and suppress the honest rebels. It’s a trope.

Again, it may well be that some parts of the government feel like the side effects are beneficial, and I’m not commenting on that. But spinning the story to say this was the whole purpose of the law is simply not the truth, and instead pushing a certain narrative.


The choice doesn't have to be binary. There can be multiple factors, which should all be discussed.

Dismissing a frequently reported on factor that mentioned by officials requires a higher burden than vague commentary on narrative shaping. Trying to minimize it despite factual statements is its own narrative.


I don't disagree with you, and I don't dismiss any factor, but oppose the altered storyline of events offered by GP, which is simply not factually true. Subtly twisting history into a more convenient version may be presidential territory now, but that doesn't mean we should let a proper discussion devolve into shallow, black-and-white stories just because those are easier to understand.


In the second paragraph of the link you posted this is said:

> But in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, conservatives have become hyper fixated on policing pro-Palestinian messages on the app, accusing TikTok of influencing young Americans to “support Hamas” and favoring pro-Palestinian content.

If you follow the link attached to "influencing young Americans", you'll find Palestine isn't mentioned once, but Hamas is.

Of course there's bias everywhere, and we should have by now ways to follows stories to their source automagically by now. But anyhow.


The article and the poll it is based on is wild. Questions like, "do you think all Palistinians are anti-Semitic or just the Hamas terrorists" and similar push poll style nonsense offering limiting answers to slanted questions.

However at least one question is about whether the attacks on Israel...

Can be justified by the grievance of Palestinians

So while most questions force them to pick sides between Hamas and Israel with no option to say they support Palestinians they do get at least one chance to say whether they think the Palestinian people have legitimate grievances (though still only in context of supporting an attack).

And the Intercept article is very clear when they link that they think Palestinian and Hamas support are being intentionally conflated, just as you've tried to do again here.