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this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Technology
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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.