this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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So there's an app that's operated out of an authoritarian country that's spewing propaganda from a terrorist organization that's making you hate your own democratic government.
You can't understand why people might have some concerns over this if Tik Tok is your only source of information. And that only adds to the concerns over Tik Tok.
How angry are is the Tik Tok crowd over how China treats the Uighurs? It's all ok as long as you don't witness it on Tik Tok, right?
To answer your question just about as angry as any other major social media is about it these days? Right now the sentiment on TikTok is very strongly anti Isreal and outrage over the current genocide. I don't know why you just assume they're all over there praising China or whatever. China doesn't come up there any more than here or other social media. China has their own version of the app where I assume their own censorship is applied.
Unless you want to pretend that lemmy or other social media is actively discussing the Uyghurs right now I don't think this is a very valid point. You're just using their suffering to feel superior when you probably haven't even thought about them in who knows how long before now. You can search for them in TikTok and there are plenty of videos criticizing China about it.
It's not hard to be informed and it's incredibly hypocritical of you when you couldn't even be bothered to fact check your own assumptions.
Yeah all social media sucks. They're all run by psychopaths. But a psychopath will do what's in their own best interests and therefore don't want to see the country they live in country brought down. You don't shit where you eat.
So which country do the psychos making the TikTok algorithms live in?
They have no incentive to ensure their algorithms don't cause political destabilization in the US or other western countries. In fact there may be incentives going the other way.
Top search result for "Uyghurs" on lemmy: https://lemmy.ca/post/5945175
Top Search result for "Uyghurs" on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alicerehemutula/video/7197149227728768298?q=uyghurs&t=1710720741130
If you understand anything about the internet you know there's too much information for a person to see everything. Which means that you don't have to explicitly remove content (though the Chinese government does a lot of that too) you just need to tweak the algorithm to so that no one sees it. Generally someone in the west searching for Uyghurs is likely to want to find out about how the Chinese government is mistreating them. Yet TikTok's algorithm conveniently de-prioritizes that kind of content.
We're starting to see a lot of young people have a similar level of distrust in news media to the MAGA crowd. Again it's not purely about having access to information on the internet, it's whether people will actually look at that information. If you've been conditioned to think that everyone is wrong if they disagree with the people you've formed unhealthy parasocial relationships with, then it's a serious problem. Especially since TikTok targets a very young demographic who are susceptible to these parasocial relationships.
The fact that you would compare the "young people" fed up with the ridiculous state of our news media to maga just shows me that you're out of touch. You can't just google this stuff or do a quick search on tiktok and magically know what you're talking about. It's so egotistical that you wrote all of that and you have clearly not spent a single solitary second experiencing most of the things your opinions are based on.
I'm not "young people" and I think you'd have to be willfully ignorant to not see where they're coming from in regards to the sorry state of our news media.
Lately if someone says they think the media is controlled by the Jews, I can't be sure if I'm talking to a MAGA type or a kid that's spent too much time on TikTok. Only real distinction is the TikTok crowd will tend to use the word "Zionist" while the MAGAs will use the word "Globalist" but it's ultimately the same antisemitic narrative.
My discussions with TikTokers and MAGAs have the exact same form. Basically it's like trying to deprogram someone that's been indoctrinated into a cult. The narrative that makes them feel righteous anger is more important than reality. Someone that's addicted to righteous anger will reject any information that doesn't conform to the narrative that keeps them angry.
Yeah it might hurt to hear that you're just a susceptible to the same kinds of narratives the MAGAs fall prey to. You're human just as they are, and emotional manipulation on social media is commonplace. You may be angry about different things than the MAGAs are angry about, but it's the exact same pattern.
Everyone that's addicted to righteous anger will say the same thing: "I'm differnet from the other angry people because what I'm angry about is true, I don't care what the mainstream media is saying!" The behavior of people getting their news from TikTok isn't really different from the behaviour of boomers that spread around racist memes on facebook. Only the target of their anger is different.
Zionist and Jewish are not the same thing, they're not even euphemism like (((globalist))). There are Jewish people protesting against Zionism, and Christian people fighting hard for it. It's not the same thing and no leftist thinks it is. Every now and then some Nazi tries to conflate them, and leftists do need to see it and shut it down, but that's a different issue.
Yeah and in the past Cosmopolitan Jew didn't mean all Jews. That is until the mask was dropped.
Zionist Jew is the same sort of thing. Many people won't go along with full on antisemitism so antisemites will trick people by saying it's not all Jews they're against.
The mask is starting to drop on this movement too. We're seeing Jewish communities, Jewish Hospitals, and Synagogues being targeted be the "Free Palestine" movement now. Not something you'll hear about on TikTok.
No, it's not. I get the feeling you're not very active in communities that are against the genocide if you actually think that.
Parent company is operated out of China, actually company is operated out of Singapore, US, Europe.
You referring to Hamas? They barely have Internet access, and they certainly don't get any special treatment on the app. The people criticizing Israel are not terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, and mislabeling them as such doesn't do you any favors. And TikTok has been allegedly suppressing any videos talking about that subject.
Wrong. The only people making me hate my government is my government. I actually realized that Republicans pushed me left, but it was mostly the left that pushed me so far left that I want my guns back.
You don't understand how many people are on the app and their demographics do you?
Where do they make decisions about the algorithm that decides what you're seeing on TikTok? That's what's relevant here.
Also Huawei played similar games, but we later found out how connected it was basically just a branch of the Chinese government. If you believe the shell company shenanigans, it's probably because you've spent a lot of time on TikTok.
I'm pretty sure the billionaire leaders of Hamas living in palaces in Qatar have internet access. Did Tik Tok not tell you that there are literal billionaires that are leaders of Hamas? Loses some of the appeal when you realize it isn't some rag tag group of freedom fighters but actually a fascist movement that wants to restore the ethnic makeup of a region to how it was in old maps. Something to think about when you see people cosplaying as Hamas at the protests.
Did you hear this on TikTok?
You don't even have a cohesive concept of any kind of politics, other than hating your own government. Where did that come from? You obviously don't put a lot of thought into political issues if you swing from one party to the next and you admit the only consistency you have is a hatred of your own government. You've just proven my point about TikTok influencing you into hating your government.
Somewhere between 150 to 170 million Americans get their news from TikTok. Do you think that if there's more people getting news from a source where the relevant news stories could be decided by an authoritarian country somehow makes it less of a concern?
We know a lot of people use TikTok, and we know that ultimately authoritarians decide what is shown to people on that site. We know that people on TikTok are being fed disinformation, we know that people are being pushed towards being sympathetic towards terrorist movements. It has all of the signs of a campaign to destabilize western countries. But maybe TikTok has influenced you towards wanting to destroy your own country.
You fundamentally misunderstood several of my points and I'm assuming it was intentional.
You don't know who makes decisions on algorithms, so you're speculating without evidence.
I'm not surprised Hamas leaders are rich, they've been funded by Israel. Also, good job proving my point that you see any criticism of Israel as Hamas sympathy. That's like assuming every Democrat that criticizes Biden is a secret Republican. That's delusional and undermines your argument.
TikTok censorship has been reported outside of TikTok. Just like other social media. Why even argue on that point? That's something you should latch onto that we actually agree on.
I don't swing from one party to the next. I have moved further and further left BECAUSE of my government. You intentionally missed my point again. I have an excellent understanding of politics and that's WHY I hate the government. TikTok is separate from that entirely. I hate the Chinese government, and the Russian government, and most governments tbh. And we could spend hours discussing my politics, but that's just distracting from my very obvious point.
Never seen a straw man so fragile. You don't know many of the things you claim to know, especially my motivations. But I can guess at your pro Israel intentions
From a third party perspective I think you sound pretty much like how that user has painted you.
Thank you for the third party perspective. Maybe I should edit my original comment to be more clear about what I'm trying to say
Do you criticize the people cosplaying as Hamas in the photos of basically every Palestinian protest I see? Maybe you should tell them that Hamas is funded by the Jews.
You've gone too deep. You've fallen prey to the old antisemitic ideas that the Jews are secretly puppeteering every bad thing that happens in the world. This is a very old pattern we've seen before. Keep people constantly angry so they can't think straight. Inject conspiracy theories about an ethnic group doing evil things. Tell people they can't trust anything that disagrees with the narrative because they're secretly in league with that evil ethnic group.
Kind of on the nose that you're going with the Jews being the secret puppet masters. I mean it should be obvious by now what those conspiracy theories lead to. Look at the photos of German cities at the end of WWII. That is the end result of this kind of rhetoric. Then when you look at the images of Gaza being blasted at you non-stop, you might start to understand the pattern that you're a part of.
It's not the Jews that made Hamas what it is, that's just an insane antisemitic conspiracy theory. It's hatred towards Jews that made it what it is. October 7 happened because of hatred towards Jews. You're witnessing the destruction caused by hatred. You should ask more questions about the hatred that they're creating within you.
There was hope that the younger generation wouldn't fall for this kind of thing. But the cycle just continues on. Maybe the next generation will understand that they aren't too special to not become a part of this cycle of hatred and will be able to break it.
History does not judge those that promote antisemitism well.
God damn. You want full crazy.
Here you go
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
I criticize Israel. Not the Jewish as a whole. I'll criticize any country that commits genocide.
By the way, by arguing with me (a gay person) that makes you homophobic. Does that seem silly? It's the same argument you just spent 5 paragraphs trying to make. Get a grip
The article is saying that it was a mistake to ever negotiate with Hamas. Are you saying you agree with that? There's currently a negotiation for a ceasefire with Hamas, by negotiating with Hamas that would be "propping them up" according to this article. So I'm concluding from this you're against there being a ceasefire. Is that correct?
I don't think it is. You're not thinking about anything rationally, you're reading everything you see as "Israel is evil" without any kind of critical analysis. You have no coherent position on anything other than you hate Israel. You're dog whistling antisemitism, and you may not even be aware of it because you're just repeating whatever you see in TikTok, certain that if you emulate the righteous anger you're seeing from those you have a para-social relationships with you'll be in the right.
Going along with the group on antisemitism isn't anything invented by TikTok. It's just concentrated it and made it much more addictive.
-_-
damn you got some long arms, never seen a reach like that before.
This conversation is spiraling. I'm not going to argue with someone who misrepresents my intentions or character. Or someone who blindly defends Israel despite obvious issues with its leadership. We could go in circles forever with your increasingly conspiratorial assumptions and accusations. I'm just gonna end it here before you sprain an ankle jumping to conclusions.
Uh, this is embarrassing but it's actually operated out of Singapore. The company that actually runs TikTok is owned by a Company with it's headquarters in China.
It's embarrassing that you think the existence of shell companies is anything meaningful.
Lol no.
TikTok was founded in California. Bytedance bought it later. TikTok still runs TikTok.
Seriously, I hate TikTok, yet I still recognize that everything you've said is bullshit. I get 0 news from TikTok and still know that none of your concerns are justified. Foreign countries can just buy your data from every other social media company. It's not uniquely spyware for the CCP.
There's no evidence that China has a secret backdoor to suppress evidence of their genocide, while Israeli and Christian fascists are openly manipulating social media to hide their genocidal actions and promote hate. TikTok is evil, but not a unique evil worth fighting in particular. They're evil as a social media company, not because of their ownership.
Democrats are ridiculous for supporting this, as they rely on the youth vote more than Republicans. If right wing billionaires take over TikTok to promote fascism, Democrats have shot themselves in the foot. If the app shuts down, they've shot themselves in the foot. This political theater will probably hurt them more than help, but they genuinely believe there are enough nationalistic liberals who give a fuck about banning TikTok to outweigh young people they'll dissuade. Nationalistic liberals aren't going to change their voting behavior much over this, while young people honestly might.
Edit: missing words
I've learned long ago from many conversations with MAGAs that the request for evidence is a tactic to get someone to waste their time. If I provided you evidence it would be rejected as being from a biased media or some other excuse. The indoctrinated cannot be convinced by words on the internet because you can always find other words on the internet that say the opposite.
But maybe take a moment to consider that you're behaving in the exact same way as the MAGA crowd when the sources of their narratives are questioned. Do you really want to be like the MAGAs? Not able to question the motives of people that are shoving out endless narratives that making you constantly angry? Is that who you want to be? Someone that's made to be constantly angry and just trusting that authoritarians would never try to manipulate you?
Do you think Xi Jinping is a good guy in the same way as the MAGAs think Vldimir Putin is a good guy? Yeah they're authoritarians but they'd never ever cross the line and use their power to manipulate you... right?
Crafting strawmen and equating me with American fascists and Chinese fascists? You're hilarious. I make the mistake of assuming people are bad faith actors sometimes. That's why I try to account for nuance in my responses, allowing geniuses like you to completely gloss over my actual arguments like cartoons stepping on rakes.
People just don't want to comprehend my arguments, as they might actually need to question their opinions if they do. It's not even indoctrination per say, your brain is just protecting itself from having to challenge your beliefs or identity.
China's government is bad. They are not socialists, but national socialists interested in their own power. I've seen no evidence of TikTok being manipulated behind the scenes at the moment, while Twitter is being openly manipulated by Musk to push fascism. Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram are a hive of manipulation that the owners refuse to moderate unless it pleases advertisers, allowing unscrupulous movements of tribalism and lies to spread unimpeded. The Democrats are making a TACTICAL blunder in banning TikTok, endangering democracy in the process.
Do you understand, or is this still too much for you to grasp?
I don’t think it’s about the data as much. If you can predict and influence the civilian population of your global competition, that’s immense power from abroad. I could see a national threat. It’s not an accident that hearts and minds are underlined when attempting to project power into a region.
And they already can, probably more effectively on other platforms as well. This bill will not address the issue. They'd need to target all social media companies instead of just one. If fascists unwilling to do basic moderation acquire TikTok, the problem will only become worse.
When all social media companies oppose a bill, maybe we'll actually have something effective.
Except that America can tell American companies not to do certain things. You can’t stop china from essentially causing instability here through tiktok, they own it. You could stop them if they were using Reddit, Facebook, etc. it’s not going to happen. But to pretend that a foreign owned mass media app is anything but a way to control a population, or narrative, is sort of funny. America does it with their shit. Why would we not be more threatened by something abroad. Why would a nation allow foreign propaganda?
We won't tell companies to do anything at the moment, and yet this is somehow a priority. It is a problem, but it isn't as pressing and they aren't addressing it well.
Well the Chinese communist party isn’t a US owned company. So, it is most definitely a priority. This isn’t the first time it’s almost been banned. It is a pressing concern. Why don’t you feel that it is?
We also fined the shit out of YouTube in 2019 for collecting and selling children’s data without consent. Can’t do that with the CCP. I’m actually shocked that I’m proud of the FTC for once.
Priority in comparison to every other national security concern? No, definitely not. Not even as far as keeping American data away from adversaries.
We need to focus on regulating who all social media companies sell their data to, not just who "owns" a single company. Twitter could sell extensive user data to Russia, yet not face the same repercussions as TikTok. Google probably sells more useful data to the Chinese government than TikTok could, all while not getting punished in any way. Banning TikTok does more harm to the Chinese shareholders than the Chinese military.
You think the $170 fine against YouTube stopped them targeting kids? That's just the cost of doing business. Do performative bullshit and pay a one time tax every decade or so. That's all fines can do. Unless the fine is ongoing and harsh relative to the company's size, it doesn't move the needle much.
The current YouTube algorithm demonetizes all videos with swearing or adult themes. Advertisers pay to target kids more than ever. That's a big motivation behind making videos "advertiser friendly." It's like how blockbuster movies push for a pg13 rating; to target impressionable kids with disposable income. Advertisers know kids have more free time and less fiscal responsibility. It's less about moral values that adults hold nowadays, and more about getting money from parents through their kids.
You don't seem to understand how tech companies actually operate, or what the government could actually do to keep Americans safe. The problems are actually worse than you think. The government doesn't make much of a difference because politicians are unwilling to take meaningful action.
There are Hollywood level propaganda ads being played on multiple platforms as well as the fkn superbowl. So I'm gonna assume the terrorist propaganda you are talking about is the Israeli government.