So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours?
You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness.
As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy.
Sure. If censorship is wrong, then it is wrong. If censorship is just fine, the n it is just fine. It is the height of hypocrisy to engage in censorship in the name of stamping out censorship.
It feels like a tautology because the opposing viewpoint is a very simple hypocrisy. If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms.
This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
"any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms"
Tiktok is not banning certain topics, as other platforms do
The elephant in the room, is that content on Tiktok is served algorithmicaly, so if majority of population prefer to watch brainwash content, it's due to their choice, not algorithm's
> Tiktok is not banning certain topics, as other platforms do
Oh but they do, or at the very least carefully steer what you see by demoting certain subjects; don't forget that only in 2020 their internal moderator policies were leaked, telling them to suppress posts by ugly, poor and disabled people [0], or suppress streams that "harmed national order" or "defamed civil servants". Sure, this was the Chinese branch of tiktok, and the US / EU based version has distanced themselves from it - already mostly being its own platform. But this is where they came from barely four years ago.
The specific topic in question is Gaza. TikTok has been accused of spreading pro-Hamas content and leading the young population to support Hamas, whereas YouTube and Facebook ban it on sight.
Isn't the point that "choice" as you're defining it is a conscious, system-2 process, but the algo-served content is targeting much deeper, system-1 responses? If so can we say that people "prefer" to watch it, or that they've been conditioned to consume it? The question (to which I don't know the answer) is where does free will start?
It was intentionally designed to have 15 second clips competing for attention, which is the path to brain rot. The’ve slowly increased video length, which will impact what’s on the platform over time.
Also, Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about.
>Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about.
If you can show evidence of that you should give it to the U.S. government, because it has repeatedly said there is no evidence of such and any threat remains hypothetical.
> If you can show evidence of that you should give it to the U.S. government
Tens of millions of teenage Americans are addicted to it is the evidence. Chinese don't allow their kids to waste all day long on stupid douyin, Americans don't have such luxuries, as tons of red necks are going to jump up and label it as anti free speech if you want something similar. As a result, you see Chinese kids spend time on STEM subjects, building toy robots and learning how to code AI stuff while American kids are all dreaming to be the most popular influencer on social media.
The whole system is an algorithm carefully designed. Let's just be honest. btw, Chinese national posting from China here, you'd be seeing me protesting in the Tiananmen Square if some American social media apps manage to waste Chinese teens time while being carefully restricted in the US for their own kids. It is just shocking to see it takes almost a decade for the US to actually start doing something concrete.
> Tens of millions of teenage Americans are addicted to it is the evidence. Chinese don't allow their kids to waste all day long on stupid douyin, Americans don't have such luxuries, as tons of red necks are going to jump up and label it as anti free speech if you want something similar. As a result, you see Chinese kids spend time on STEM subjects, building toy robots and learning how to code AI stuff while American kids are all dreaming to be the most popular influencer on social media.
So it's Chinas fault that the US doesn't have the same laws restricting social media content and screentime for children? Or, if it is the red necks fault, then how does 'TikTok is spreading CCP propaganda' follow from 'US red necks oppose laws that are anti free speech'? It seems you're skipping some steps to get to that conclusion.
There research is not credible because their only "evidence" is that when using certain keywords, Instagram and YT returned more "anti-China" content than TikTok.
So instead of arguing the U.S. social media has an anti-China bias, they argued that it's the evidence of TikTok being more pro-China.
Using American social media as the control group for neutrality on China is absolutely insane.
The most likely cause is that TikTok is just a lot less political and more international than YT and Instagram.
For rest of the world, people do not automatically associate words like "Xinjiang" to "Chinese government oppression", the fact that they expect that to be the top result can be argued that American media is the one manipulating information.
The damming bits were 100% on Ticktock, no need for comparison.
On TickTock, views to likes ratio for anti China content was 87% lower despite higher upvotes on TickTock anti China content. Read page 4 suppression on anti China content.
That alone shows the algorithmic alone isn’t selecting results and they are instead engaging in propaganda. The credibility question in my mind is in regards to how they are classifying videos and other bits you don’t see, but that’s a deeper question than the methodology.
To be fair, some of the same voices that get censored on US platforms are also getting censored on TikTok (though I currently cannot find the posts or articles that highlighted the issue)
Except the whole reason for the TikTok bill is that information/speech will be under Chinese government control on TikTok and that can be weaponized.
So make up your mind, if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed.
If you say it's not about information suppression, then you can't use the "Chinese propaganda" argument, which is used by pretty much all ban supporters.
>This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.
Except it is. The Supreme Court has actually ruled that the First Amendment rights for Americans to receive foreign propaganda, even during the Cold War:
I don't think you know what the First Amendment is. Not only does it guarantee freedom of expression, but also freedom to receive other's expression and speech.
The U.S. government is not allowed to ban any foreign books, movies, or even propaganda.
I really wish people like you do a little bit research before making such a confident statement like that.
They may not legally be allowed to ban it, but that doesn't mean it has to be easy to access it. This is probably also why banning Tiktok was / is such a challenge and couldn't just be done with Trump's exective order after Zucc whispered it in his ear in 2019, and why they can't just block it, but have to subpoena the app stores to delist it.
>Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms.
Not really, which is the whole point of censoring TikTok.
Half of US social media (and more than half of Twitter) is saying US controls the narrative on US social media and something should be done about it. describe logical knots required to explain why that is the narrative if US controls the narrative?
As a Russian people from the West saying how it's total censorship and totalitarianism amuse me.
And I see how totalitarian and censored regimes are using of the lack of censorship with great success.
>any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms.
That's the arguments right wingers make about why flag burning should be a crime as there are other ways to express displeasure with the country it represents. IIRC, Robert Bork was a proponent of this line of thinking.
The Free Palestine movement has grown on TikTok in ways it hasn't on American-owned platforms because it's so heavily censored on American apps. It is the censoring of genocides across the world that TikTok bypasses. Why this is doesn't matter. The end result is populations being kept in the dark about what their governments are complicit in or actively contributing to.
Tiktok algorithms could be considered a form of editorial position(be it foreign government influenced one, or just the type of content they elevate / not remove), and in this sense it is similar to banning a newspaper(which would obviously be censorship) -- journalists could publish in other newspapers. Therefore banning TikTok absolutely is censorship.
>This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control
This is literally like this, and done precisely due to the lack of control due to the illegality of overt/direct speech regulation, and the fears that China would elevate content that isn't in the interest of the US in the broadest sense, but that is still legal according to the 1st amendment. The US Government has tremendously more influence on the local/western platforms, and on people who work there. (There is already an appeals court decision about Biden administration overstepping in communicating with online platforms about what content they don't like). The logic goes "We can't regulate speech like we want to, order what we like and what we don't like, but at least we can remove/censor individual owner-editors that we suspect might harbor some harmful intentions. That means no owners from 'evil' countries". That's about it.
It's censorship and also import controls and also turning off one propaganda faucet.
> On December 6, 2024, a panel of judges on the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's claims about the constitutionality of the law and upheld it.
> Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not.
My take is that the elite was shocked the American youth is vaning in their Israel support and that they want algorithmic feeds that are sionist. Simple as that.
I really need to coin the phenomenon of when people attribute the reasoning for something happening as being due to the current thing they care about. I see it so often. Some sort of specific confirmation bias.
Well thankfully that ship has sailed. Tiktok has nothing to do with it either, America's youth by in large cast off the zionist evangelical brand of Christianity the babyboomers love so much. This has been going on for decades, tiktok isn't responsible for it.
Anyway, I don't think this is the reason for the tiktok ban. The zionists have lost control of the narrative on American platforms too, they know it, and they have no actionable plan for getting it back. I think the tiktok ban is instead motivated by concerns for what a PRC controlled tiktok could do to military recruitment. Military recruitment hinges on appealing to teenagers, making tiktok a particular threat to the American government. Sending teenagers videos of drones dropping grenades on helpless wounded soldiers can't be canceled out by flying cool military jets over sportsball games.
To me it seems that every time a congress critter gets briefed behind closed doors they come out resolved to ban TikTok. Therefore, most likely, the Chinese probably have some insidious goal like profiling every American to ever post online.
But, it's not really censorship, per se. It's "your company, which is of <this country> cannot do business in our country; because we want to give that a company in our country". And, in that light, doing the reverse (not allowing the company from that country to do business in ours) doesn't seem unreasonable.
I'm not a fan of it, but I can understand the argument for it.
Adding Chinese censorship to the mix doesnt improve freedom of speech.
At some point we have to stop being naive and operating in the realm of frictionless theory.
Censorship is the suppression/prohibition of speech. Therefore, removing TikTok from app stores is not censorship, because it's the platform itself that's being targeted, not particular speech that's on it.
Either you knew that already and you're making a bad faith argument, or you don't understand the concept of censorship.
Chinese Tiktok is forcibly wholesome (by Chinese standards). They do not believe in absolute freedom of speech. Now Americans have just conceded that they don't believe in it either. It's good that we're all on the same page now.
If we were all on the same page the US would have reciprocally banned TikTok as soon as China banned Facebook, i.e., before it even existed, and would also ignore its constitutional guarantee of free speech (which the Chinese, like the Soviets, also have believe it or not) and control content on domestic social networks.
If we were even more on the same page generally, then the US would put its undesirable ethnic minorities in reeducation camps.
They just read the title, not the article, then confabluate an entire world view from three words that are entirely untethered from the actual constitutional meaning.
I have the freedom to read what I want. You're telling me I don't. If you support making it impossible for me to access Tik Tok. This isn't about freedom of speech.
> I have the freedom to read what I want. You're telling me I don't
You don't. This is not a legally protected right in any US jurisdiction. Period.
> This isn't about freedom of speech
Correct, because this isn't speech and "freedom of speech" does not mean what you think it does. The right to freedom of speech enumerated in the US constitution is generally interpreted to mean that the government cannot punish its citizens for speaking out against the government. That's really all you're guaranteed. This has nothing to do with censorship, and in fact censorship in general is quite accepted in US law. You quite plainly do not have the right to unrestricted access to any information you want. No law even suggests that. Just for starters, we regularly ban books at the state level. In some places, you can be arrested for possessing certain materials. Perfectly constitutional.
Freedom of speech does not mean you can say or print anything with no consequences. See libel.
Freedom of speech does not mean you can read or posses any information you want. See classified materials, state secrets, illegal materials such as CSAM.
Freedom of speech means that the government can't put three generations of your family in a concentration camp because you tweeted once that the president sucks.
> The right to freedom of speech enumerated in the US constitution
The problem is people switch between this definition of freedom of speech and the the more general version found in "on liberty" and other philosophical works. If youre talking about what the government is allowed to do sure use the first definition but this conversation started by talking about the second. By subtlety switching from "is this something that is good to do" to "is this something the government is allowed to do" youve derailed the conversation.
Philosophical freedom of speech is much more than what is enumerated in the constitution.
The general rule is in fact that you can read anything you can get your hands on, which is one reason people like Prince Harry who come from different legal traditions consider the First Amendment to be nuts.
"Just for starters, we regularly ban books at the state level."
We really do not. We sometimes ban them from public school libraries, more usually at the local than state level. A bookstore can sell you any book you care to read including those with written depictions of child sexual abuse, with the limited exception that a locality might try to declare things obscene as being contrary to local standards of decency (but in practice in modern America rarely does).
"See libel."
Libel of public figures requires knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth and even then is a civil offense. There are vestigial criminal libel laws but it's doubtful they're constitutional and no one gets convicted. You can't go to jail for it and no one gets in trouble for reading it.
"See classified materials"
Unless you have a security clearance, you can read all the classified material you want if it's published. You can be punished for disclosing it if you have legal access to it, but not in practice for publishing it in peacetime (see the Pentagon Papers) and you cannot be restrained from publishing it before the fact unless doing so presents a clear and present danger to American public, a standard almost impossible to meet in peacetime.
"illegal materials such as CSAM"
In general you can read all the CSAM you want. You can't look at pictures or video.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom of access to information though (idk if that's in any laws). That said, the basis of freedom of speech and information is that you will not get in trouble for accessing tiktok and co; it does not mean the US government or whoever has to make it easy for you. "Not illegal" does not mean "accessible". For example, a court ruled that it's legal to sell and trade digital purchases like games on Steam, but that does not mean Steam has to make it possible to transfer games to other people.
Anyway, there's ways and means around getting tiktok from the app stores - especially thanks to efforts in European law that force both Apple and Android to open up their platforms so that consumers can do what they want with their devices.
>Deliberately misinforming people, especially under a foreign state payroll, is illegal.
First of all if you have any evidence of TikTok engaging in it, you should present it since even our government have said there is no such evidence and that possibility remains hypothetical.
Secondly no, it's not illegal to spread misinformation, no matter the motive. The First Amendment absolutely guarantees that right.
> Secondly no, it's not illegal to spread misinformation, no matter the motive. The First Amendment absolutely guarantees that right.
Again, does NOBODY know what the first amendment covers???
If you yell FIRE in a crowded theatre (misinformation) that is not covered by the 1st amendment[1]. Please stop talking confidently about something you don't understand.
Edit:
Schenck v. United States was largely overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio but not completely, only limiting the scope. There are also many other examples that could be used to show that spreading misinformation is not blanket covered by 1a (defamation for example).
If you do understand First Amendment then you should also understand that foreign propaganda is protected speech, and is not treated as yelling fire in a crowded theater:
Correct, the mere act of spreading foreign propaganda, without more, is not illegal.
But spreading foreign propaganda is indeed illegal despite that precedent if one does it as an agent of a foreign government within the FARA legal definition (which is reasonably implied by being on their payroll) and does not register with the US government as a foreign agent, aside from certain exceptions.
>There are a bunch and they are very easy to find.
Really? Because the U.S. government, in their own court filing, have openly admitted that there is no evidence of TikTok's wrong doing in terms of manipulating information.
I don't think it gets much more authoritative than U.S. government's own court filing.
The link you provided has been debunked over and over again. It was a paid-for study aimed to generate certain conclusion.
And its methodology is silly at best, insane at worst (uses U.S. social media company as a control group for neutrality on China lmao).
> Secondly no, it's not illegal to spread misinformation, no matter the motive. The First Amendment absolutely guarantees that right.
Not accurate, no, assuming that by misinformation you mean information that the author knows to be false. To name just two quite legally clear examples with no inherent connection to foreign states, US defamation law and US product liability law often create civil liability and occasionally even criminal liability for certain categories of knowingly false statements.
But, sure, spreading misinformation is not always illegal, and a blanket ban on that would indeed violate the First Amendment even though more targeted bans have been upheld as passing the relevant judicial tests for laws affecting First Amendment rights.
Such as the two examples I gave in the comment you're quoting: US defamation law and US product liability law.
To be more concrete about the defamation example:
Imagine someone has a grudge against you for some reason that doesn't involve any history of illegal behavior, like maybe your business won a lucrative contract that they wanted for their business. Motivated by a desire to hurt your personal reputation and cause you social ostracism, they tell all your friends and neighbors that you're a convicted murderer, when they know you've never even been accused of any kind of wrongdoing in any court whatsoever.
To the best of my knowledge, this is illegal defamation in every US state, and it's criminal in some of them. Although it's rarely prosecuted as a crime, criminal defamation laws have been upheld as constitutional in certain situations including ones that would cover this scenario (if the available evidence meets the criminal standard of proof in court). Civil defamation lawsuits are commonly enough made across the US, and under scenarios like this one, are also commonly enough won (or settled between the parties).
To be more concrete about the product liability example:
Imagine that you are a business selling a product and you write "safe for all ages" on the box, when you know it has components that are small enough for young children to choke on, but you lie about it on the packaging because your product really appeals to young children and you don't want to lose out on the profits from selling to their parents. If a 2-year-old then proceeds to choke on one of the components in the box, yes indeed there are lots of courts across the US that would award damages to the affected family, and maybe some courts that would find criminal liability as well although I'm less sure of that question.
>It is illegal if it is paid for foreign state and undeclared.
Good. Because ByteDance has never tried to hide the fact that it's a Chinese company. So that argument wouldn't matter even if there are evidence of them pushing Chinese propaganda.
I think the point isn't that they're trying to hide the fact that it's a Chinese company, but that they control the algorithms that can be used to push undeclared foreign state-sponsored content.
Holy shit can you people stop with "every point that disagrees with me is a russian propaganda point" are you serious? Can you not conceive of anyone disagreeing with you in good faith without being a state actor? You're literally just declaring a specific kind of speech "not free speech" as if it's a fact and not your arbitrary opinion
Instead of attacking the poster with an ad hominem / character assassination, why not provide a counterpoint to their arguments, or ask them why they think it's Russian propaganda (burden of proof is with them after all)?
I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me, but I was very clear about the point, it wasn't "every point that disagrees with me".
Unless you don't think it's relevant to point out that a specific recurring point promoted by and paid for by Russian State media, under the disguise of "conservative free speech"?[0]
Right, i don't think that's relevant. You see how "bad person has that opinion therefore the opinion is invalid" doesn't lead to any kind of productive conversation right?
I think it's relevant, and that's why I commented to shed some light on it.
I never accused anyone of being good or bad, I can't know that.
But what I do know is that this angle is used quite often by the same people who push Russian propaganda, like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson.
How would you approach someone who has been misinformed into believing free speech protects foreign state interference and that's ok, for example?
Look in the mirror, you're the one convinced everyone disagreeing with you is a threat to the empire. Don't worry buddy, the CIA has plenty of propagandists you don't need to carry water for them
> Do they pay you to rabidly shill or are you just that far gone?
I am slightly on the side of the OP who originally made the claim but nobody should take anyone who throw's around the "paid shill" line seriously. You really are just labelling people you disagree with. Grow up.
This is a very common McCarthyite propaganda point, and I think it's important that we deconstruct it.
We presumably live in a Democracy but this democracies voters cannot be trusted to read, view or engage with content that might undercut the preferred narratives of the mother country. Therefore, anyone arguing for this right must be under the communist spell or worse on the payroll.
In Democracies, there are laws in place to protect voters.
Here's very simple example to help you understand this: if you have someone on a foreign state payroll, they have to disclose they're being paid for by a foreign state, and people have the right to know that.[0]
You have the example of Tenet Media being paid by Russia Today to hire American right-wing influencers to promote Russian talking points, covertly - that's illegal.[0]
It just looks like people have a fundamental misunderstanding of a very basic concept about what Free Speech is.
Free Speech isn't the freedom to dupe voters, because voters may have the capacity to discern misinformation from information. Even if you go by your caustic remark, yes, a lot of voters can't discern misinformation. That's why there are laws in place.
You can imagine it. But they'd be wrong. Facebook and YouTube aren't directly controlled by an enemy government, and likely aren't intending as part of their raison d'être to sow discord and chaos in China.
US government wasn't very supportive of the Arab Spring. Also, what FB does may at times may be in line with its government interests but that doesn't mean they are being compelled, just they are like-minded.
There is some influence of course but it's not like their existence is at the blessing of the President.
Here is the dividing line rarely discussed openly. I and many other Americans truly believe the United States government and it's oligarchs are their greatest threat to American citizens. Not China, Russia, Iran etc. The latter are certainly threats but they don't have anywhere near the capacity nor desire to limit my rights like the United States does.
Then why did all these sites comply with government directives on covid 'misinformation' or gaza? if they say "how high?" when the government says jump who cares what the official on paper corporate structures are?
I'd love to see it tbh, there's a lot of brainrot on those platforms too, to the point where the 2016 elections were in part swayed by stuff being mindlessly shared on facebook. They had to come up with new laws, regulations, and measures against "fake news" and everything, root out foreign influences, increase rules on political advertising, etc.
No government is not your friend. The do not care about you. Whether that is US or China or EU, they do not have your best interest at heart. As soon as they no longer need you, you will understand.
In general true, but some governments are better than others. For example, would you prefer to live in Xinjang (being Uigur) in China, or let's say in Europe?
Also a government of a country can change. Being raised in a communist Poland I was quite used to all government officials treating you quite famously badly. This was still pretty much in full swing around 2004 (many years after the all of Communism) when I emigrated to the UK. Then I went back, full time around 2019. Imagine my surprise when I had one of my first dealings with a tax office (I was registering my company for Vat online and I put in a wrong start date) and it wasn't through registered mail requesting I attend in person at so and so time (to wait 3 hours) and be told I'll be getting a fine. Nope, they rang me, on my phone, and asked if I can please amend it. So I thought, wow, they must have employed a new person who hasn't learned how to put people down properly yet. But then in the course of my business I dealt with social services and such and the same pattern repeated. Now, it is not all dancing cats and roses, the juidiciary is still pretty bad I'm told, but it's not so much about corruption these days, more about ineptitude, slowness and doing their own interpretation of the laws, which they aren't allowed to do in non-precedents system(they can continue mainly because of their independence - can't force people to actually obey the law if they are the law without turning it into a dictatorship, so waiting for them to retire seems to be the only option). So things are bit more nuanced than "all government is equally bad".
I'm not saying this like it's some huge deal but i think this comment illustrates my general frustration with discussion on China. Why would you compare the most marginalized group of one society with a normal person in another? Do you think that's fair? If we wanted to do comparisons wouldn't we need to pick the most marginalized groups of people in the West to compare Uigur in Xinjang?
Not saying this like China is perfect, i just don't understand why people who seemingly aren't professional propagandists seem to have this "everything china does is bad" narrative in their heads. Like any great country, many horrible _and_ wonderful things have been done there but in the US we only talk about the horrible things and it warps everyone's view
Yeah it's the lack of black and whiteness that makes me so confused as to why you would brand the government of a 1 billion person nation as an enemy rather than say, a competitor or even an ally that behaves in occasionally intolerable ways. Kind of like how a lot of nations continue to be allies with a nation that goes around invading other nations and deposing legitimately elected governments in the interest of ore and fossil fuel companies.
I think the useful model for this is that currently there's a competition between the naval powers and the land powers, which is rapidly heating up. (Due to the last decades of very high rate of economic growth of China.)
Maritime order (basically a trade alliance, if you join you have more chance to influence it, win-win) and the continental order (buffer zone, extractive/authoritarian, negative-sum).
Of course as the competition is getting fierce one seems to borrow from the other. (Russia is funding itself and its war from trade. And China sold market access in exchange for technology.) And the US is now transitioning from soft-power to pay up or you are out. (Balance of trade, NATO contributions, etc.)
Name one single other country that we trade with that has an official policy that it owns another country we trade with, and insists that if we say out loud the other country is a country it means immediate war?
> has an official policy that it owns another country we trade with, and insists that if we say out loud the other country is a country it means immediate war?
there is a cost for maintaining the US hegemony, Taiwan is being used as an excuse to maximize such cost for the US - China gets to choose when and how to increase tensions, the US has to react accordingly and spend more and more borrowed resources as responses. that is the official policy, a smart one.
Wouldn’t being a nice neighbor that people want to get along with be more effective at undermining US hegemony? This just seems like a convoluted rationale to avoid taking the Chinese government’s statements at face value: they think Taiwan is their property, intend to take and integrate it when they get a good opportunity to do so, and consider anything that might make this harder or undermine support for it to be a grievous national security threat.
This is hilariously a result of China's view. China's claim is that Taiwan is part of the still civil warring China, and should be re-integrated. Part of that strategy is an insistence that OTHER countries need to parrot this claim, including countries like the US that recognize Taiwan as an independent entity. The "oneness" of China is vitally important.
The claimed story is that Taiwan is worried if they abandon the "one warring China" policy and openly state they are Independent, that will aggravate China and cause them to push their claim harder, and maybe lead to war.
Taiwan having such a policy is directly because that's the policy China wants everyone else to claim. Notably, Taiwan has taken zero effort to produce a military capable of doing any over-water invasions, which would be absolutely necessary if they actually wanted to do that. Unless you think Taiwan would rely on the USA to invade China for it, which I do not think the US ever wants to do. Our explicit strategy is to own all the islands around China (including Taiwan) and basically blockade China in all but name.
China meanwhile DOES build a military to take over Taiwan, explicitly, including systems designed to sink our carriers and practice targets in the desert. Strictly speaking I'm not concerned about China wanting a viable means to sink our Navy, as China doesn't want to starve to death if we could blockade them, but the buildup around the capability to take Taiwan betrays that it is not a defensive posture.
No it really isn't, and it's certainly not hilarious. Taiwan's position is historic. The government of Taiwan literally used to be the government of the mainland.
every single one. please examine where you got the idea that everything china does is bad and if it's a useful belief for you to hold (and if not, who is it useful for?)
You put zzzzzzzz like this is a nothing burger but the United States has never legally prohibited citizens from viewing news, books and information from foreign countries. It's actually new.
I mean that last one doesn't mention any "legally prohibited" whatnots, but if you were suspected of being a commie because of for example being known to read the wrong thing by the House Un-American Activities Committee you'd be in trouble. Definitely chilling effects.
The reciprocity is between you and me. If you do something bad to me, I can do something bad to you. Is not that if you do something bad to yourself I need to do something bad for myself.
"Mistreat" is a bit unnecessarily dramatic. People in the US were fine (possibly even better off) before TikTok, and they'll be just fine if it goes away.
China's level of internet control and censorship does seem to rise to the level of mistreatment (in that they control and shape access to information, in ways that further the interests of state propaganda), but denying Chinese companies (and the Chinese government) market access to American consumers in some spheres seems fine. It's never been a two-way street with China, and I think we should be engaging in a bit of protectionism when it comes to allowing or not allowing Chinese companies to operate here.
If the US government were suppressing particular views or discussion of some topics (as the Chinese government does to their own citizens), then I would be alarmed. But that's not what's happening here; if the TikTok ban goes through, US citizens' free speech rights will not be meaningfully impacted, as there are other platforms that can and will carry the same content.
Banning a foreign company from doing business in your country isn't automatically censorship. There's nuance.
(And beyond all this, I do worry about the Chinese government using TikTok as a platform to influence Western citizens' thought, culture, and politics, for their own purposes. If they're not doing it already, I'd be astonished.)
> If the US government were suppressing particular views or discussion of some topics (as the Chinese government does to their own citizens), then I would be alarmed.
As someone mentioned above, several officials openly admittted the "ban" is related to palestine-related matirials on TikTok's platform, as opposed to some other platforms.
How the mighty have fallen. I remember the Arab Spring and all the excitement about media being in people's hands, safe from censorship... So finally, non-Arab people got the same opportunity too. And now, apparently, there's nuance.
The mask has fallen and the emperor is totally naked. This is a grab on Tiktok with national security justifications. Some gangoon politicians have already expressed interest to buy the thing.
Or, you know, the Arab Spring was actually a monumental failure in the vast majority of cases? And it turned out that yes, nascent technologies can be used by people to coordinate, at least until government fingers are thoroughly grown into the new system. All that optimism was wrong.
How many popular revolutions happened during Arab spring that long term lead to more democratic societies? Saudi Arabia learned to just get government employees hired to moderate twitter, and then had their wealth fund help Musk buy it outright.
I'm sick of this being repeated over and over until it becomes true.
We have had multiple studies at this point and not a single one concluded that there's any kind of particular manipulation on Tik Tok. Not one. They all conclude that the bias is not different from other platforms.
HBO run a segment on the ban and goes a bit more in depth:
When I see people looking at Tiktok videos in the bus, they usually look like possessed by something, a few seconds of gaze with glassy eyes, flip, flip, flip. It is so weird, I feel a bit sick in my stomach when I see it. Regardless of its potential as a brainwashing and manipulation vector, I personally completely banned it in my household (facebook/ instagram was always banned).
I don't think it's brainwashing, at least obviously (could be covert operations behind the scenes and we'd never know, like anything), but i will say it has pioneered a form of 'brain rot' that is simply leagues above all else. Not the freedom of expression, the dopamine dependance and impulsion of the infinite scroll. I'd much prefer we outlaw that specific technology, i think the world would be better for it. Stop the autoplay too. It almost feels sometimes like my eyes are being held open ala clockwork orange. People see so much shit in there that they don't remember ingesting that i can believe there's brainwashing experiments going on. You could do anything with that feed and no one would notice, but they would still see it. There's already discussions online about how "is everyone else getting these kind of videos now?", i see it about every 2 weeks. Some popular personality (to me) goes on and says, "have you seen this crazy looking homeless guy?" And everyone in the audience says "omg yes, he showed out of nowhere for me to and i can't stop seeing his vids". I've seen this play out around a dozen times now with thousands and thousands of people in agreement. So, i mean, no one controls their own algorithm. Maybe that's what we need. Let me see the code, let me alter it if i so choose, but let me see if you're changing my weights or pushing specific things to me. They'll never do that though unless it's an American company that can be forced to do so.
The US has soft invaded Europe's minds for a hundred years too, under disguise of "entertainment" and "news". Doesn't make it right, but just to compare.
Well if that's the problem, then maybe address that, perhaps by teaching people critical thinking skills?
But teaching people to ask critical questions risks unraveling the fabric of American capitalism ("Hey why is it that the government spends more on healthcare per capita than any other OECD country but with markedly worse outcomes?", "How can we call ourselves the greatest nation on Earth when we are simultaneously the wealthiest nation on the planet and still have such poor health, education and quality of life indicators?"), so we can't have that can we?
> Well if that's the problem, then maybe address that, perhaps by teaching people critical thinking skills?
We should do that, but reforming our education system will take years or decades. And in any event, any solution that requires everyone to learn or do something or act in a particular way is doomed to fail. Humans just don't work like that.
And even with robust critical thinking skills, people are still susceptible to psychological manipulation. That's never going to change.
> But teaching people to ask critical questions risks
How long will it take to do it on a meaningful scale, all while “free-thinkers” (read Chinese and Russian bots) beat the drum of “they’re brainwashing you”?
About five years, for Finland's critical thinking curriculum. (First results, to latest.)
However, that requires an education system that can be easily updated, and widely rolled out, without being shotgunned by anyone who has already lost their critical thinking ability, who may be in a position in government.
Yeah, i'd imagine one cycle of high school oughtta get everyone through at least one class, with the new life experience to have actually used and explored it. Teach it in homeroom where you teach the other mostly bs but sometimes valuable things, make em do 2-3 weeks on it and for gods sake have the curriculum written by experts and NOT BY POLITICIANS. I can't think of anything worse than a "bipartisan effort to design curriculum though congressional committee"
Sure, but I am perfectly fine with my own nation refusing to let other nations propagandize toward my fellow citizens. Especially when that other nation is a totalitarian dictatorship.
Whether or not we do that to other countries, and whether or not that's ok, is a completely different discussion.
I’ve lived for almost 30 years in post-Soviet space and never once I saw “we’re good, they’re bad” propaganda from the West. What I did see is an order of magnitude difference in income, quality of life and rights that people have.
So yeah, fuck Russia, fuck KGB and platforms that assist them with doing their dirty work.
The big difference is that China hoovers up a lot of information from cheap security cams and online appliances in the West, and I'm fairly sure the West doesn't do that to China.
As far as media management, PR, propaganda, whatever, I don't see a lot of difference between the regimes. The West profiles its own citizens for both commercial and political ends, and so does China.
The US doesn't want a state propaganda outfit monopolising "entertaintment" access to its under-35s? Fine. Whatever.
Meanwhile Russia hasn't had a problem buying the GOP and on-siding tech oligarchs in the US, and TikTok is a footnote compared to that.
>The big difference is that China hoovers up a lot of information from cheap security cams and online appliances in the West, and I'm fairly sure the West doesn't do that to China.
censorship schmensorship. This is more banal than that. China bans US companies from doing business in China. This is quid pro quo. Chinese companies, of the same industry, are getting banned in US.
Microsoft, Apple, Tesla are doing extremely well in China making hundreds of billions. Tesla even got free land and loans, aka Chinese government subsides.
Name a few Chinese tech companies doing the same in the US? Maybe you are suggesting that Chinese should ban Tesla, Apple and Microsoft as well?
Think often-mentioned tarifs. It's per sector. In this case, facebook, google, twitter/x are banned, thus tiktok gets banned too. That's how gvt operates; steel for steel, cars for cars, social media for social media... Aside examples of how its actually to own and operate a business in china vastly different than US (local partner with a significant share, board control, oversight..).
Yes, but under China's strict rules about doing business there; government oversight, Chinese senior management, party representative, etc.
I mean if Tiktok did the same thing in the US there probably would be less of an issue, but they are unwilling to allow the same restrictions / oversight as the US companies are subjecting themselves to in China.
probably because China is a larger market? for example, how many cars are sold in the US? it is a relatively small market compared to the Chinese market.
Sure, but how are you gonna enforce it? Proprietary codebases usually stay...proprietary. Even Telegrams open client doesn't prove shit when it comes to server-side decryption keys and logs. And this, from a black box systems perspective, is a hard thing to make transparent.
Given the history of cryptography we can't even rely on that anymore and have to assume a compromise in the future due to how those elliptic curves (and their seeds) are created.
Even just assuming that Qualcomm doesn't track you with their two GPS domains that are constantly pinged is very naive. And we've also uncovered a history of abuse in CPU backdoors (looking at you, Intel).
So where does transparency have to start? My theory is that without solving capitalism as the bug of democracy we can't have transparency. As long as there is financial incentives, there will be no transparency.
This way of thinking has been debated for a long time. It's not clear or self-evident doing it the way you describe is the best way to handle things. Sure, it's more self-righteous and sounds good on paper, but does it really hold? https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I think a ban that prohibits the distribution of a product is fine.
My understanding is that private citizens are still legally allowed to use TikTok if they want, but TikTok isn't allowed to market their product directly to US consumers via App stores. That seems pretty reasonable given China's position on US internet products.
Free trade and openness only works if all parties agree on the rules. If one party is open while the other exploits that openness by selectively opening up only when it benefits them then undermines the principles you believe in.
If we want China to be more open we have to ensure they're playing by the rules and they're not going to do that if we continue to allow them to exploit us.
> So… if China mistreats their citizens, reciprocity says we must mistreat ours?
This is such a silly strawman. A better example would be that reciprocity would say that if China mistreated our civilians then we should mistreat theirs. Reciprocity doesn't mean "we do whatever China does".
> You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness.
It's not censorship so this also doesn't make sense. They are being forced to be sold. TikTok can exist just fine, just not under control of ByteDance which is de facto under control of the CCP. The basic point here is that the CCP will not be allowed to control a major media arm in the US which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda. If you want to prevent CCP from owning a major media channel which can freely spread CCP propaganda, this is a completely rational means of doing that stands up perfectly to "cursory thought".
> As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy.
I hate violence but sometimes violence is required (see WWII). I don't think we (the US) became the enemy in WWII for engaging in violence.
>A better example would be that reciprocity would say that if China mistreated our civilians then we should mistreat theirs.
Good example, and thank god that is unconstitutional.
For example China can arrest American citizens in China without dual process. But we cannot arrest Chinese citizens, or anyone here in the U.S. and just put them to prison without dual process.
Americans in China have no freedom of speech. Should we ban Chinese citizens in the U.S. from speaking freely as well? Again, that is unconstitutional. U.S. constitution protects anyone within the U.S. not just U.S. citizens. Otherwise we can just send someone with a green card to jail without trial.
So your example only serves the counter-argument, which is that reciprocity is not something you should aim for when it comes to human rights.
> which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda.
Since not even the U.S. government has been able to provide any such evidence, and have admitted that the threat is hypothetical, if you have any such evidence you should present it.
>You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness.
There is literally no basis for this belief. Do you have a realistic solution to the gish gallop? Have internet comments proven to follow the most well reasoned with it's own uncertainties or the most rhetorically convincing?
That's a straw man argument and kind of a different thing entirely (moral / ethics / human rights vs corporations / entertainment) though.
Anyway while I do agree with your statement about censorship vs openness, I do think in the broader sense things need to be done about social media - that is, Tiktok is specifically singled out for being Chinese, but its target audience, addictiveness, usefulness as a propaganda tool, is very much not unique on the market. It was only after Zuckerberg and presumably the SV tech lobbyists raised the issue of Tiktok with Trump and the government that they pulled on the brakes.
But this is where the reciprocity argument comes in; US based services in China are under strict regulations and requirements, to the point where at best they can have a subsidiary in China under Chinese management. But while it's not trivial as a foreign entity to have a presence in the US either (e.g. you need to have or be a US company to be able to sell your software there), it seems more accessible and less restrictive than operating in China; in a sense this move levels the playing field.
I don't understand this position. It's not censorship, it's security. It's protecting USA from China. Why should we allow China to have access to all contacts, media, location, etc for half of all Americans? Would you agree on a limited ban for military or government employees?
As an American or someone who is interested in US security, this is illogical. China bans US software to protect itself and we should do the same. We should also ban most computer hardware as it's not possible to regulate. As Israel has shown with the pagers, supply chain attacks are pretty serious.
You don’t fight censorship with censorship. That doesn’t stand up to even the most cursory thought. You fight censorship with openness.
As soon as you find yourself arguing that you have no choice but to engage in the same behaviors you claim to dislike, you have literally become the enemy.