The shallow response here is that use is important. The hammer on your shelf is an effective tool for hammering in nails.
Is the hammer on your shelf an effective tool for influencing public opinion? It can be used for that -- you can smash statues of people you find objectionable and maybe have a greater effect on public opinion than you could by trying to tear down statues with your bare hands (although the nature of the public opinion change is not really that predictable). But it is not a tool for that because it cannot be directed to the general purpose of influencing public opinion. You cannot convince people that assisted suicide should be acceptable or that we shouldn't keep cats as pets or that we should not go to war to defend Taiwan using the hammer.
I'd call your reasoning shallow, but there isn't any. You state a bunch of stuff about a hammer and conclude "therefore TikTok cannot influence public opinion." It is manifestly obvious that many advertisers pay TikTok huge sums of money to literally influence not merely public opinion (of their products) but to incite action (buying those products).
The shallow response here is that use is important. The hammer on your shelf is an effective tool for hammering in nails.
Is the hammer on your shelf an effective tool for influencing public opinion? It can be used for that -- you can smash statues of people you find objectionable and maybe have a greater effect on public opinion than you could by trying to tear down statues with your bare hands (although the nature of the public opinion change is not really that predictable). But it is not a tool for that because it cannot be directed to the general purpose of influencing public opinion. You cannot convince people that assisted suicide should be acceptable or that we shouldn't keep cats as pets or that we should not go to war to defend Taiwan using the hammer.
Similarly, TikTok.
I'd call your reasoning shallow, but there isn't any. You state a bunch of stuff about a hammer and conclude "therefore TikTok cannot influence public opinion." It is manifestly obvious that many advertisers pay TikTok huge sums of money to literally influence not merely public opinion (of their products) but to incite action (buying those products).
Tiktok has incited action on its own behalf:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/business/tiktok-phone-cal...
https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/press-releas...
Your claims are ridiculous and your arguments are nonexistent.