That’s one way to spread the message to the world that you’ve given up on freedom and democracy. It’s as if TikTok is a monster that eats the brains of our children, and the problem they have with it is that the wrong person is holding its leash.
I am not advocating for the “alternatives” (i.e. Instagram and the likes), however I think banning a Chinese PSYOP indoctrinating a whole generation with far-right ideas can only be positive for society. Hopefully the EU does something similar.
EFF sent out a campaign to their mailing list this morning about how banning it is a bad move for free speech and a better option would be to create actual data privacy laws that companies have to follow to do business in the US, but of course that would just put more money in politicians pockets to ensure it never sees the light of day.
I like the though of enforcing regulations on certain permissions such as location, network info, contacts, etc so apps can’t just data mine it. I’d also like laws to make these apps function with certain access restricted by the user. My car app for example pops up with permission requests saying it can’t function without getting location data in the background. I just want to remote start my damn car.
everybody is pro capitalism until someone else beats them.
I don’t use the platform so I’m not as familiar to if this is general nationalist issue or about specific practices in TikTok. I do think this is a slippery slope, though. Im afraid our elected officials are just too far behind on Technology to look at the broader issues on privacy and technology - this might pass simply because they can slap “not US = bad” on a campaign bus. It likely will boost VPN usage and/or drive people to less mature and even less privacy concerned services.
As a conservative I generally hate the idea of Chinese software collecting all our national selfie secrets, but I hate the idea of banning companies even more.
If there’s a problem about national security as it relates to Chinese social media, we need to address that with education not banning apps.
A classic authoritarian tactic is to make people think that other governments are worse and that only giving away your freedoms and giving power to them is the way to fight it. TikTok became to risky for the government not because of China’s propaganda, but because China didn’t want to ban or deprioritize posts against genocide in Palestine funded by the US government. When any government feels treatened they censor the media and call it propaganda from another country. This is prime example that US is not better then China or Russia when it comes to it, only that so far it was their companies that were more popular, so they didn’t need to.
I find it interesting that you’re implying the CCP is better than the US. You’re implying you’re a TikTok user. You’re also implying that the US government is somehow censoring Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc to suppress information and TikTok is the lone bastion of free information.
The last time I heard someone talking about something being the lone bastion of free information, they were talking about Fox News. A network that directly interacted with them and spoon-fed them right wing talking points.
So you’re assuming you haven’t been affected just like the Fox News supporting folks I’ve struggled with for years. However, you’re out here advocating on China’s behalf… Because let’s face it, it’s not an anti-TikTok bill, it’s an anti-CCP bill. The ownership and control of TikTok and control over its recommendation algorithm are the central issue.
We’ve already accidentally had US tech companies create radicalization algorithms called social media algorithms, YouTube as an example. There’s been a lot of work done to stop YouTube from promoting right wing radicalization content. What exactly is stopping TikTok from intentionally implementing a recommendation algorithm that both benefits the CCP and targets the most vulnerable to its influence campaigns?
It is 100% possible to look at folks viewing habits, find content creators that have messaging that benefits you, then test that content and observe the response. If they don’t take the bait and engage back off. If they do take the bait, turn the knob a little more, slowly add more politicized content. If they’re following a farming content creator that’s a US liberal… Maybe see if they’ll follow a leftist… Maybe see if they’ll follow a pro-CCP leftist… etc. then promote the content in their subscriptions that more closely aliens with your goals.
You don’t even need to have your message be the one that wins to have a win. You literally just have to create arguments and division. You can promote both arguments at the same time. You’ll get some additional mind share and you’ll get more people arguing on your platform and other platforms … no press is bad press after all.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042915/why-facebook-banned-china.asp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube
It’s almost like the CCP understands the threat of algorithmically spoon-fed promoted propaganda.
CCP is better than the US. You’re implying you’re a TikTok user Not even close. Never used TikTok in my life, I have no reason to believe CCP is any better then US either. I don’t think you should assume that when someone is critisizing one group is automatically support another, this is exactly what everyone in power is using as propaganda to discredit any critique of them.
