Comment by reliabilityguy
Comment by reliabilityguy 5 days ago
> the rest of the world have easy access to.
Except for China, where TikTok is nothing like the TikTok for the rest of the world
Comment by reliabilityguy 5 days ago
> the rest of the world have easy access to.
Except for China, where TikTok is nothing like the TikTok for the rest of the world
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Case-in-point of why we shouldn't have approached China like we did over the last few decades. It normalized totalitarianism in some segments of Western society.
America: does the usual American thing Americanly
Commentators: What are we, some kind of Asians?
That's... not what I'm saying?
The US has traditionally had at least some counterweight to the state, in the form of a free press, free speech, opposition parties, checks and balances in branches of government, and an armed populace. The effectiveness of these measures has varied over time but there has never been a point when any single institution had control over the United States to the point that the CPC has control over mainland China.
People are concerned that the US is taking an authoritarian bent under Trump, and many of the tactics being used would lead to a state far more similar to the PRC than the historical US.
I lived in China as an American a while back and had a similar take. Their ability to grow successfully and manage their populace definitely presented a new model to a lot of countries.
> presented a new model to a lot of countries.
that is a common mistake. it is called the "If China can do it, I can do it too" symptom, which has been discussed like a million times on Chinese social media. interestingly, the biggest obstacle for other countries to repeat it is the fact that there is a country called China.
What does their treatment of the Uyghurs present to other countries?
Why blame China? This dire situation is not on foreign nations seeking to destroy US democracy, it's entirely on domestic robber barons capturing the State for their own gains. China has very little soft power among the general population, while Musk, Ellison and the other propagandists run the show.
Our domestic robber barons are building the capacity to monitor and control Americans in ways similar to those used by China to monitor and control their population.
China isn't to blame, but they are a frightening example of where things are headed and they're giving the robber barons screwing us a blueprint to follow.
> Case-in-point of why we shouldn't have approached China like we did over the last few decades. It normalized totalitarianism in some segments of Western society.
An interesting thought I read a couple days ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/trump-carney-chin...:
> Finally, and most controversially, I suspect the same “if not America, then China” logic applies to political ordering as well. The United States under Trumpian conditions has allowed populism to come to power, bringing chaos and authoritarian behavior in its train. Recoil from that by all means — but recognize that it happened through democratic mechanisms, under freewheeling political conditions.
> Meanwhile, the modes through which Europe and Canada have sought to suppress populism involve harsh restrictions on speech, elite collusion and other expression of managerial illiberalism. And what is China’s dictatorship if not managerial illiberalism in full flower? When European elites talk about China as a potentially more stable partner than the whipsawing United States, when they talk admiringly about its environmental goals and technocratic capacity, they aren’t defending a liberal alternative to Trumpian populism. They are letting the magnet of Chinese power draw them away from their own democratic traditions.
China is not publicly espousing conquering Canada and Greenland (Europe). Who would you choose, the people threatening to invade you, or the other guys?!?!
Besides fear of populism, I think it reveals a genuine contempt for the United States on the part of Canada and Europe, one that past US presidents and policy makers have long overlooked and downplayed. Note that besides all of the territory China claims (as other responses have noted), including the entirety of the Taiwanese archipelago and islands within the territorial waters of the Philippines and Vietnam, China is the single largest purchaser of Russian energy, and it supplies Russia with drone parts and other restricted components, and also provides Russia with intelligence to better plan and execute strikes on Ukraine.
If a large outside power is intent on screwing with your populace I think the only way to really stop it is with diplomacy or a crackdown on free speech.
Authoritarianism has been starting to become normalized because China and Russia are increasingly able to mess with our society in the same way our leaders always messed with theirs.
True, true, so true. Actually when a large outside power is screwing with your populace you gotta crackdown on the whole constitution. Yep, that's the only solution i think, sign of the times, I guess!
> Which used to be seen as "Ew, China has their own version? Crazy censorship"
It used to be marketed as that by "China evil" people. Western politicians have always seen this as an arms race. They claim infinite brutal censorship and suppression in China in order to claim that not having it here is a strategic disadvantage. Meanwhile, China's "social credit" is just like a US credit score, which in most countries is an illegal thing to do.
This is completely bipartisan, both US parties take turns shitting on their two greatest enemies: the Bill of Rights and (almost completely defeated at this point) antitrust law. Those are painted as China's advantages: that they don't have to respect anyone's rights and that their government directly runs companies. 1) Neither of those things are true, and 2) they just ignore that China manufactures things and invests in infrastructure (which US politicians as individuals have no idea how to do because they are lawyers and marketers), and pretend that everything can be reduced to gamified finance and propaganda tricks.
It's the "missile gap" again. The US pretended and marketed that Russia had an enormous amount of nuclear weapons in order to fool us into allowing US politicians to dedicate the economy to producing an enormous amount of nuclear weapons.
The result, the child of the Oracle guy owns half the media, and uses it for explicitly political purposes that align with the administration (whichever it may be.)
> This is completely bipartisan, both US parties take turns shitting on their two greatest enemies: the Bill of Rights
Ignoring the magnitude to draw a false equivalence is a great way to discredit your position. Neither party is perfect but only one of them is denying the full personhood of over half the population, having armed men threaten the public with lethal violence over constitutionally-protected activities, or saying that the executive should be able to direct private industries for profit. Debates about things like how much the government should ask private companies to enforce their terms of service are valid but it’s like arguing over a hangnail while you’re having a heart attack.
Police in all states systemically violate it. MAGA ramped it up to 11 though.
"The result, the child of the Oracle guy owns half the media"
I guess in 90ies version of polymarket nobody would have had that result on their bingo sheet. But, well, they probably also didn't have "something like polymarket could exist in the free world" on those bingo cards, either...
Most of the country is genuinely committed to the bill of rights. The Trump administration is determined to ignore every single amendment, but even a lot of the Republican party I don't really think wants this. People are genuinely worried about Chinese media control. But Trump obviously wants to control the media and censor things. I hope the right turns around. Assuming that everyone in politics is working in bad faith is how we become an authoritarian country like China. It is hard when the leadership is obviously working in bad faith and the entire Republican party deliberately chooses bad faith and lies over any reasonable alternatives.
> Most of the country is genuinely committed to the bill of rights.
I'd like to see evidence of that. A third of the country voted to burn the bill of rights, and another third voted they don't care but they'd be ok with it happening.
TikTok is different in China, but the rest of the world isn’t getting a completely free TikTok.
TikTok is known for tipping the scales on political keywords everywhere. In the past they haven’t outright censored because that’s too obvious, but uploading videos on the wrong side (according to TikTok, of course) of a political topic will result in very few views.
I wouldn’t be surprised if as part of the transition they’re struggling with the previous methods of simply burying topics, so the obvious ban was their intermediate step.
The comments claiming this is specific to the US are simply wrong. TikTok has always done this everywhere.
> TikTok is known for tipping the scales on political keywords everywhere.
All social media does this. Even HN (through its users flagging articles). This article will be flagged by users and removed from the front page very soon, just as a similar one[1] was already.
A bunch of people around the world used 小红书 for months when they were worried about a twitter ban.
They got the same version of the app that people in China got. I haven't seen any formal studies but my impression, at the time, was that Chinese people were far better informed about the US than Americans were about China.
Well, yes, China doesn't have open media for its citizens. Chinese people will on average be less well informed about China, even accounting for the extent of Americans who choose trashy propaganda channels.
(reminded of ex-tech influencer Naomi Wu, who basically went dark with a post along the lines of "the police have told me to stop posting")
western arrogance is truly astounding. somehow people who consume 0 chinese media and cant speak a lick of the language somehow are intricately aware of not only chinese media, but chinese society.
but of course. the benchmark is minor influencer and HN darling naomi wu.
Well you could say that every educated country is far better informed about the US than vice versa.
You could even say that many foreigners are better informed about the US than US citizens are about the US, but that's not a high bar... I mean, 38% still approve of the current administration so that's already over one in three who don't understand the basic functioning of government or the economy.
I think foreigners tend to be better informed than the locals wherever you go.
As a baseline, they have experience living in about twice as many countries as the locals. They picked up their lives, often learned a second language, and established a home with minimal social support. They tend to be highly motivated people.
In many cases, they know more about the country than the locals do because they've traveled all over said country while the locals never left their home town.
edit: I just realized this might be confusing. By "foreigner" I mean someone who is from a place other than where they currently live. I'm not referring to people who only know about a country through hearsay.
Yeah, it took me a moment to clue in, but I think maybe "expat" is the more common term there.
In any case, I think it also applies to some degree to people who live outside the US just purely based on media diet. We all see clips of CNN and MSNBC and Fox on YouTube, but a person elsewhere will have the additional perspective of BBC, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, The Guardian, etc.
Knowing is not enough.
We all know that advertising and marketing is manipulation, yet even the most contrarian among us are still influenced it.
Out of curiosity. What do those videos mean to an average Chinese person?
What are the opinions of illegal immigration over there? How do they police it? (If at all).
Does this look like normal government activity? Or are they appalled at the lack of “freedoms” in America?
I am truly naive on their culture or politics around this and how they would use it to show the US as boogeymen government and how their government is better. Is it a grass isn’t always greener type thing for them or is it a way to actually think we’re evil and should be stopped.
Don't forget that the regular operation of Chinese policing is already much less free than what Americans are used to, plus the restrictions on internal freedom of migration (Hukou, less onerous than it used to be, plus the two SAR of Macao and HK). Mandatory state-issued ID, linked to your phone and bank account and so on.
As well as racial profiling. There's not that much immigration to China in the first place, legal or otherwise.
How so?
My experience in China was that the police were a bit on the bureaucratic side but otherwise far less obtrusive than in the US.
They divide their police forces into civil police and armed police. The civil police tend to be bored looking middle aged guys lounging around in guard booths at museums. They don't have weapons. The only armed police I saw stood at attention at the airport except when they had a changing of the guard ceremony.
As near as I can tell, China only allows immigration if they think that will benefit China. They've been pushing hard on academic scholarships and, in recent years, they've managed to shift net visits from the US to China.
They also seem to be pushing really hard on increasing the number of visiting African scholars. That's likely straight out of the US playbook; they see China as a rising power and want to make sure that their emerging leaders were educated in China and have ties to China.
> Do you think anti-ICE videos are being blocked in China?
Of course not, but other stuff is.
Interestingly, my understanding is government pressure forces Douyin to be more "positive" and "encouraging" than Tiktok (i.e. outrage is an easy way drive engagement with obvious negative externalities, and that path is blocked).
probably not, in fact, the CCP likes to promote content that shows the "US in disarray", while simultaneously censoring and suppressing any content that is critical of the CCP or that exposes its bad actions
At least the Chinese are not pretending to be a free democracy.
The population of the DPRK think they are, and it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
To be fair, they're not really allowed to show any evidence that they think otherwise...
Which used to be seen as "Ew, China has their own version? Crazy censorship" but after some time it seems like the US is aiming for the very same thing. Classy.