Comment by tmnvdb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok

All the usual trigger topics like Tiananmen and Tibet are suppressed on Tiktok at the behest of the CCP.

I can never really tell, but I hope it's not malicious. When I was in college, a dorm neighbor told me that Obama had said/did something bad. I don't remember what, but it was incredibly dubious. I told him I didn't believe it and asked him to prove it; I'd even accept a Fox News article as evidence. He was red in the face because he couldn't find any article suggesting anything close to what he had said. Looking back on it now, I realize he genuinely believed what he had heard, but he had fallen for well-crafted language that created a new reality. It was so well-crafted, all that remained was the idea he was propagandized to believe rather than even a remnant of the title of the original article.

This same thing has happened to me over the years - I read an article and then it becomes relevant in some future discussion. I find the article (which is hard to find, because I'm searching by what the author[s] wanted me to think, not the actual article content) and read it again, only to find out that, upon a more critical reading, it doesn't say what I thought it said at all! Or the conclusion is much weaker than I had originally thought.

It's pretty amazing to see, though. Weak evidence used to support very strong American propaganda about seemingly weak Chinese propaganda. The goal posts inevitably get moved too - oh we have strong evidence of it, but we might tip off the Chinese! Like, huh? What does it matter if they're tipped off if you're going to force the sale?

I also don't think TikTok was ever a national security threat, at least not any more than any other social media platform. What are (were?) all the DoD recruiters and other military influencer accounts on TikTok like Nikko Ortiz (a counter intelligence agent from '18-'23) doing on TikTok? It was wild to see how during certain recruitment pushes, my FYP would be like a direct view into a platoon headquarters. (And yes, before anyone responds, US military social media policies like being aware of adversaries using social media predates the popularization of TikTok, no need to speculate about them not knowing that TT was a threat, especially not after the first ban attempt during the Trump administration)

I think the question is actually asked incorrectly in the reverse.

Maybe start with the not at all controversial position that China is effectively an authoritarian dictatorship who is well known to use censorship and public manipulation as one of its key levers of control and then ask if you have any evidence whatsoever that for some reason they wouldn’t include TikTok in that mix?

The way actual professionals in the field look at this problem is through a lens of:

1. Do they have the capabily to take this specific action? (A resounding yes)

2. Do they have the intent to take this action? I mean this is where you would look at literally all of the other instances where they did choose censorship over free expression and also come to a resounding yes.

3. Do they have the opportunity to take this action? Which is also a clear yes as defined by their own national security laws and other methods of control over what TikTok does.

Thats how people have come to the conclusion that it’s a legitimate threat even in the absence of some smoking gun where people wrote everything down and then conveniently leaked it for you.

At some point you have to be able to make decisions in the absence of perfect information and this is specifically how threat modelling works just to provide some context because some of the comments here are incredibly low quality.