TikTok CCP Propaganda Fears

One thing that sort of bothers me about this discourse is that, for one, there is no real evidence that the Chinese government is using Tiktok as a weapon to cause dissent through US population. All of it is based on fears that, because it is China, they might do it.On the other hand, companies like Facebook have and continue to do so all across the world! Not only that, but Facebook itself has been weaponised against americans! This is a problem, but to me, the reality is that companies with

People seem to forget that China is a fully authoritarian state. The fact is that China is an adversary and blocks virtually every western social network, including YouTube, Instagram, and Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...The CCP has absolute authority over internal companies to bend them to their will, and regul

I care a lot about TikTok spying on me because they can then use that information to manipulate speech in our society to serve the needs of the CCP. Speech and exchange of ideas is foundational for democracy and if it is corrupted through hard to detect algorithmic manipulation, it can be destabilizing.I ALSO think the lack of reciprocal market access and the differences between TikTok (its equivalent) in China and the US version are concerning. It’s telling that children in China have caps o

I'm not aware of this insidious Chinese propaganda supposedly controlling the minds of the American masses... Tik Tok just seems to be memes and nonsense as far as I can tell.I am aware that every other social media platform in the US is being weaponized by the same 'adversaries' as well as the American government and corporations. There's a much better argument for banning Twitter and Facebook than Tiktok on those grounds, yet people go to the mat to defend every troll, n

What young pretty American is making that subtle political content that china will start to slowly move me towards? I gotta be honest, the potential for abuse so much less than facebook as it is a video medium. Their best attack vector is to use that information outside of tiktok by trying to target ads on other American owned platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Google.

It's no coincidence that the anti-Tiktok rhetoric is ratcheting up at the exact same time as the Trump administration is fomenting a trade war, and possibly an actual war, with China.Every criticism you can make of Tiktok applies to Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Reddit, Twitter or Snapchat. So why single out Tiktok?Easy: because every other company is American-owned and operates in lockstep with American foreign policy. Social media is just an extension of mass media and both play a k

If the US goverment truly has plans to censor/control American social media at will, Then all of their arguments against Tiktok lose meaning.The whole argument is that China can influence TikTok to change content to hide truths and harm other nations, which is soon going to apply to the US too, if not already.imagine if the US removed anything against the Apartheid state(Facebook already does this, any news showing what's actually happening in occupied Palestine is removed), or i

It’s not about you and your kids’ usage, it’s about the general population. Let’s not be naive, TikTok is the 2020s version of “Radio Free X”, a state-backed propaganda tool where anyone can run targeted ads with pinpoint geo accuracy, and cause division and social unrest. And unlike Facebook or YouTube, you can’t hold a company owned by a near-peer geopolitical adversary liable in the US.

I don't think it is just about TikTok being capable of spying on foreign users; my opinion is that it is more about TikTok's propaganda potential, i.e. how it can be used to manipulate narratives in the most subtle way against U.S.'s national interest.Imagine the case where the U.S. government would like the (western) world to form certain sentiments on the current regional conflicts that are aligned with its own interests, and then imagine how TikTok's recommendations cou

The level of naiveté in this discussion is absolutely astonishing to me. People are seeming to forget that dysfunctional states (totalitarian, facist, the like) all are sprung from one common thread: control of the mind through propaganda. We already have evidence that the CCP or otherwise is manipulating Tiktok's algorithm to influence American minds [1]. This was one study, by one relatively small and underpowered organization. That's to say, there's probably a lot that we'