Comment by next_xibalba

> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to [...] americans

Apparently, American users want this? Approximately 700k users have joined RedNote, a Chinese platform. It's out of the frying pan and into the fire for Americans.

> Does the US really want a (hostile?) foreign govt to have clear direct access to influence 170m americans, an entire generation - completely unfettered?

As the SCOTUS said itself:

“At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC

Russia illegally spent something like $100,000 on political ads. Thats basically nothing compared to aggregate political spending.

1. This was a scandal for FB, not a feature.

Cambridge Analytica had zero effect on the 2016 elections. It was the mother of all nothingburgers. I encourage all who see this comment to dig into the truth of that case.

The huge difference is that while foreign adversaries run influence networks on other social media platforms (and are opposed and combatted by those platforms) TikTok (the platform itself) is controlled by the foreign adversary (the CCP).

Americans are already quite free to seek a broad range of domestic and foreign viewpoints. Chinese citizens, on the other hand, are not. At all.

The key point here is that an algorithm can invisibly nudge those viewpoints, and a foreign adversary controls the algorithm.

Insofar as your claim is that powerful people and institutions care most about power, I agree. It’s very telling that TikTok would shutdown instead of divest. (Meanwhile, U.S. companies have routinely taken the other side of the deal in China: minority stake joint ventures in which “technology transfer” is mandated. AKA intellectual property plundering.)

> More to the point: it removes the ability of the existing American establishment to monopolise the viewpoints presented to Americans.

There is no evidence this exists.

It doesn't have to be either /or. You should be skeptical of US spy agency behavior, and still recognize the threat of Chinese influence via psyops algorithm to the United States.

Much like Google was eating the lunch of everything in China and the CCP, in response, made it essentially impossible for them to operate.

This is not new behavior between the two countries, the only thing new is the direction. US is finally waking up to the foreign soft power being exercised inside our own country, and it isn't benefiting us.

This is just a different bias on point 3, reciprocity. BYD benefits from state subsidies and state sponsored intellectual property theft on an industrial scale. See again, point 3.

That certainly plays some role in why domestic social media companies haven't stirred up resistance to the ban, but is more like #50 in terms of geopolitical strategy.

The domestic companies lost some attention share to TikTok sure, and a ban or domestic sale would generally be in their interests, but it's not like they were about to be Myspaced. They've remained among the most valued companies -- presently and in forecasts -- even while it was "eating their lunch"

I won’t say that isn’t relevant; when you’re building a coalition you don’t say no to allies. But it was a cherry on top of a well-baked pie. Not a foundational motivation.

>Meta can't make a psyop as dangerous

We should treat social media as the addictive, mind altering drug it is, and stop acting like a free market saturation of them is a good thing.

China having their more potent mind control app pointed at the brains of hundreds of millions of people is not something to celebrate.

It's not even about them:

> If, for example, a user allows TikTok access to the user’s phone contact list to connect with others on the platform, TikTok can access “any data stored in the user’s contact list,” including names, contact information, contact photos, job titles, and notes. 2 id., at 659. Access to such detailed information about U. S. users, the Government worries, may enable “China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf

It seems farcically ridiculous to me to ban the app because it somehow could let china blackmail CEOs.

In response, Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, 80% civilians, 70% women and children, have destroyed more than half of their buildings residential or otherwise, displaced millions, refuse aid. Disproportionate does not begin to cover it

to say it started on October 7th is beyond being misinformed or a misrepresentation.

>that the side that brutalized innocent young people

…

It looks like you are comparing a specific terrorist group to Israel as a society. Be aware that there is a large propaganda machine which uses this tactic to dehumanize Palestinians in order to justify a genocide against them.

Now if you wanted to compare atrocities—which honestly you shouldn’t—you would compare the Palestinian children that were brutalized both in the Gaza genocide, and in any one of the number of IDF incursions into Gaza and the West Bank before and after oct 7. That is compare victims to one side, to the victims of the other side.

But people generally don’t pick sides like that. They don‘t evaluate the atrocities committed by one armed group to the atrocities committed by the other and favor one over the other. And they certainly don‘t favor one civilian group over another based on the actions of their armed groups. People much more simply react to atrocities as they happen. And Israel has committed enough atrocities during the Gaza genocide that social media will be reacting—both in anger and horror—for a long time to come.