Comment by loeg
4 days ago
It's like the non-addicts banning heroin. You don't have to be a Tik Tok user to understand that it's bad for it to be PRC-controlled!
4 days ago
It's like the non-addicts banning heroin. You don't have to be a Tik Tok user to understand that it's bad for it to be PRC-controlled!
I'd rather be able to choose to consume propaganda than for than the government to be able to decide what I should and should not consume.
Yeah, the heroin addicts say the same thing about heroin though.
And yet the systems where addicts get actual heroin instead of even worse alternatives usually work better. See Switzerland
That is a fine take, but the assumption that all other forms of media masses of people are exposed to aren’t also propaganda is a foolish one to make. We have an entire advertising industry in this country. Something like $300 billion in ad spend a year in the US. Ad spend is literally propaganda lest we forget.
> aren’t also propaganda
It's not that other propaganda doesn't exist, it's that a likely intended effect of Chinese propaganda is destabilization and/or delegitimization of hostile governments. Ad spend is more about destabilizing consumers' savings.
I don't think that people are arguing that. What kind of propaganda one is exposed to matters.
Why is it bad when China (supposedly) creates propaganda on tiktok but it’s good when the US creates propaganda on facebook?
You’re not a government, you’re a person. Either way you’re being manipulated, and the US government definitely doesn’t have your best interests in mind.
Because we live in a world of Sovereign States, where the point of discrimination very much is between Citizen and Non-Citizen? You free to renounce your citizenship and live without the Protections of the Government, there are many who would be quite happy with that to take your wealth freely then :)
The only people thinking in such a arrogantly privileged manner ironically are Westerners, try saying this crap in China or India and people will laugh at you all day. Or I doubt this poster has the best interests of Americans in mind either.
Do I have to adopt the government line of the country I was born in if I want to maintain citizenship? Am I not allowed to think for myself?
How exactly is that different from a dictatorship?
Is this a serious question? China has its best interests in mind, the US government has its best interests in mind. Which one of those two adversaries are more likely to align with your interests?
Why do we have to choose one? I'm not going to trust US-owned media on the topic of Israel and Palestine, I'm not going to trust Russian media on Ukraine, or Chinese media on Taiwan.
By stifling freedom of expression under the guise of "national security" you're creating blind spots that allow atrocities to go unchallenged. I thought we learned from history but maybe I was wrong.
Considering that my country has a history of CIA sponsored coups and election meddling by the US, China definitely has been better to me
I honestly believe the answer is China—by living in the US, its interests and my own are more likely to come into conflict, whereas China’s interests are more likely irrelevant to me.
3 replies →
> Why is it bad when China (supposedly) creates propaganda on tiktok but it’s good when the US creates propaganda on facebook?
Because this imaginary world where the US somehow equally controls Facebook on the level that China directly influences TikTok isn’t one that exists?
This low resolution view of the world is grating. “Facebook is a US based social media company so it’s exactly the same as China and TikTok” is completely devoid of the context of reality.
Not only does Facebook actually have 1st amendment speech rights with a judicial system empowered to enforce them. But even the slightest appearance that the US government was attempting to influence speech on Facebook would be a career ending scandal.
Compared to TikTok where the CCP literally has a seat on ByteDance’s board by law and has for its entire existence had its algorithm nuke political topics that China does not want discussed.
It’s not the same thing.
Honestly, I don’t believe China has as much control over TikTok as you claim, and I believe the US government has much higher control over FB than you.
So from where I’m standing it’s the same thing.
And to give you some perspective, there’s plenty of content critical of China on TikTok even though that stuff gets banned on DouYin.
yeah because they wont censor gaza information