Comment by autoexec

"Their own platforms" is the flaw. Countries and companies shouldn't "own" the means of mass communication to begin with.

How the feed is filtered should be a fungible commodity that anyone can swap out for themselves or offer to others without sacrificing the network effect, because the network itself shouldn't be owned.

Notice that the US doesn't censor bbc.co.uk, because the web is a decentralized system. But then ordinary people end up on Facebook or TikTok, which isn't.

I mean, you're not wrong, but there isn't very much nuance here.

I think there are a number of things occurring all at once and it's going to lead to the destabilization of most democracies (which China is a big winner if this occurs).

Democracy has never really been as free as the people living in democracies believe. The rich and large media entities have always controlled the vote with much more impact than the actual issues individual voters had.

If you believe this previous statement to be true this leads to a number of issues in the modern world.

One is that previous to now most countries demanded some kind of local media ownership, so the message would be more aligned with someone living in the country rather than some other entity (not perfect, but still better than nothing).

Another is media groups tended to be smaller and more fractured. They may hold conflicting opinions on things.

Which bring us to now, with huge foreign media organizations holding massive sway over gigantic audiences. This isn't just about China over the US, it's just as much about the US over many EU entities. These are potential powers that can change course of the world and they have governments behind them directing them where to go.

Also don't forget the US absolutely loves to control what gets in the media. The right in the US didn't just start brining up socialism and communism yesterday, it's been a control mechanism on what can be published and what you can see for over 100 years.