Not just trade reciprocity, but ideological reciprocity. The argument that the US should allow TikTok because “free speech”—while China bans American platforms because of censorship and also dictates content on TikTok because of censorship—seems obviously broken. Seems like the rule should at least be something like “Europe is welcome to blast propaganda at our teenagers for as long as we get to blast propaganda at their teenagers.”
That isn't even a remotely realistic propaganda threat, while tick tock arguably is.
I mean, Chinese people should be allowed to post videos for Americans, the issue is editorialization.
Like how newspapers and other media can use editorial discretion to create the impression that “all reasonable people” hold some opinion X by only publishing the voices of reasonable people who believe X (manufactured consent), social media platforms can do the same thing, but x1000 thanks to automation and personalization (“the algorithm”)
So editorialization, including the algorithmic editorialization of social media platforms, is a form of speech separate from the speech of the authors on these platforms. If the editors are independent, and part of the same public discourse as their readers and authors, then you wind up with a diverse media ecosystem where the liberal machinery of people working out complex issues through public discourse can hopefully still more or less proceed.
If one part of the ecosystem isn’t letting outside voices in, the feedback mechanisms are broken and you don’t have a healthy public discourse anymore. And growing and maintaining a diverse media ecosystem in a society that does still have a healthy public discourse is slow and fragile (as the posts below comparing the risk of books to TikTok observe).
> So editorialization, including the algorithmic editorialization of social media platforms, is a form of speech separate from the speech of the authors on these platforms.
I certainly agree that editorial discretion is speech. I'm an adult and I think it is my prerogative to participate in as many broken ecosystems I want. Nor do I trust you or 300 million of my peers to accurately assess what is a broken ecosystem.
Not at all the same thing.
Comparing books to TikTok algo is like comparing rifles to ICBMs.
This is what people seem to be ignoring: the algorithms are damned near mind reading, and these algos put members of society into separate realities. We would be better off if they were all banned, but at least it should be agreeable that a hostile foreign government should not be allowed to deploy this on Americans without oversight.
> hostile foreign government
I don't take this as a given and I believe the US government has caused more harm to its own people than China has today; US spies on its citizens, unfairly enforces laws against people, create laws that benefit 1% of its citizens to the detriment of the rest, forces its people to go wars they doesn't support, create rules that target certain genders and races, and so on.
Importantly, the US government is able to enact more harm on its citizens than China when it feels like.
> the US government has caused more harm to its own people than China has today; US spies on its citizens, unfairly enforces laws against people,
Maybe, maybe not. But when the PRC decides the time is right to take Taiwan, it will have prepared the ground by making sure lots of Americans saw TikToks (made by other Americans) saying basically this.
we should probably start banning books from China too, for the same reason