Comment by dns_snek

Comment by dns_snek 4 days ago

Where's the evidence that TikTok is being used by China to spew propaganda?

Conversely there's a mountain of evidence which strongly suggests that US officials are going after TikTok specifically because they're not in control of the truthful narratives that paint the US in a bad light.

> Please talk when China/Russia opens up.

Careful with this sort of rhetoric. China's constitution enshrines freedom of speech as a constitutional right, just like the US, but they're both taking this freedom away by invoking "national security".

Why would we wait until we're as oppressed as the people of China before we speak up? By then it's going to be too late.

0x5f3759df-i 4 days ago

TikTok has repeatedly shown to nuke political topics on TikTok that China doesn’t like.

Videos about Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet all get black holed by the algorithm.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

> Why would we wait until we're as oppressed as the people of China before we speak up? By then it's going to be too late.

Why would we wait for TikTok to continue to have greater and greater social influence before we cut off their propaganda tool? Do we have to wait until Taiwan has been leveled by China? And TikTok is being used to push the narrative that the US must not come to the aid of a peaceful nation being brutally conquered? By then it’s too late.

Reply View 4 replies

dns_snek 4 days ago

> Videos about Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet all get black holed by the algorithm.
None of those threaten US national security - that's what the supporters of this ban are claiming is at stake. US social media companies nuke topics that the US doesn't like, that's not news.
How do you feel about US media suppressing opposition of the genocide happening in Gaza? Where should US citizens express those views if every popular non-US owned/aligned platform is banned on the grounds of national security?

Reply View | 3 replies
- 0x5f3759df-i 4 days ago
  
  > None of those threaten US national security - that's what the supporters of this ban are claiming is at stake. US social media companies nuke topics that the US doesn't like, that's not news.
  Read the last paragraph of my comment again and you’ll find your answer.
  > How do you feel about US media suppressing opposition of the genocide happening in Gaza? Where should US citizens express those views if every popular non-US owned/aligned platform is banned on the grounds of national security?
  This isn’t a reality that exists. Did you spend any time at all on Twitter in the last year? You literally could not go a day without hearing about it. It was front page news on US news sites constantly. Protests against both Biden and Harris were constantly in the news and all over social media. The student protests were all over the news and social media. I don’t know what world you’re living in where you think Americans can’t talk about Gaza because it’s all I’ve been hearing about for a year. And here you are, talking about it on an American social media website.
  
  Reply View | 2 replies
  
  dns_snek 3 days ago
  
  > This isn’t a reality that exists.
  I'll just go ahead and quote my sources. The suppression and narrative shaping are very real, but doesn't mean that nobody on the internet has said anything about it.
  Isn't this exactly what you're worried about with TikTok - that an adversary is going to shape the conversation by purposefully biasing the conversation? I'd appreciate it if you applied the same standard to both sides.
  > Of the 1,050 cases reviewed for this report, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine that was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed, while one case involved removal of content in support of Israel. The documented cases include content originating from over 60 countries around the world, primarily in English, all of peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways. This distribution of cases does not necessarily reflect the overall distribution of censorship. Hundreds of people continued to report censorship after Human Rights Watch completed its analysis for this report, meaning that the total number of cases Human Rights Watch received greatly exceeded 1,050.
  https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
  > The CNN staff member described how the policy works in practice. “‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the person said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”
  https://theintercept.com/2024/01/04/cnn-israel-gaza-idf-repo...
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  0x5f3759df-i 3 days ago
  
  And where is the United States government directing any of this? Nowhere.
  Even your own source says
  “Despite the censorship documented in this report, Meta allows a significant amount of pro-Palestinian expression and denunciations of Israeli government policies.”
  Just because you dislike the way CNN is covering a conflict doesn’t somehow mean the shadowy US government is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
  The Intercept is also an American news organization that is clearly not being censored on this topic, so I’m not sure you’re really making your point here.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies