Comment by whatevaa
4 days ago
I just want to remind everyone that China/Russia is doing everything you dislike the West doing right now. Please talk when China/Russia opens up. Right now they spew propaganda into our societies with no way for us to retaliate. I don't like censorships but these one-way attacks are a weakness to democracies, not strengths.
Open internet only works as long as everyone is friendly. The world is increasingly becoming not friendly.
Yes, but at least in the USA, I constantly have to hear shouting about how "free" everything is whenever I ask for sane regulations (guns), or something like universal healthcare.
If USA was actually so free, that would at least be consistent. But now I don't get TikTok, AND kids have to run around with bullet proof vests? I get all the bad, none of the good.
Every voting citizen should remember that this TikTok ban was bipartisan. That means they all cared more about this than ANY other sensible legislation. Banning child marriage? Nah! Protecting the childrens physical bodies in school was not as important as a hypothetical "mind attack" from TikTok.
They've literally said "Better a dead kid than a red kid"
This is real though- the only other bipartisan bill they passed was the "Crucial Communism Bill" ie. a mandate to teach anticommunist propaganda in schools
> But now I don't get TikTok, AND kids have to run around with bullet proof vests?
WTF? In no way do kids have to wear bullet proof vests. That is a very odd statement.
> They've literally said "Better a dead kid than a red kid"
They have not literally said that.
They have passed a law to force every schoolkid to:
(B) understand the dangers of communism and similar political ideologies; and
(C) understand that 1,500,000,000 people still suffer under communism.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5349...
And yet nothing is being done for school shootings. Make of that what you will
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.
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.
> 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?
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You know the whole idea of “oh, all of our problems are actually because X, Y, Z boogeyman!” thing? Yeah that. Watching from outside, it feels like political landscape of the US knows that they have lost the global competition and scrambling to get back on its feet. Everyone just keeps yelling “no, no, don’t look what’s happening inside, because everything is so much worse in other countries, they’re about to completely fall down! Those europoors with no ACs, China is about to collapse for the 50th time in the last 10 years, Japan is basically dead etc etc.”.