Technology

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

That is clearly whataboutism.

It's not a story about the USA, and there are other countries affected, including all of Europe, some middle eastern countries, and most of Asia (and many countries that do not have an adversarial relationship with China, such as lendees of the BRI).

You're free to criticize the USA. US News outlets are also free to do so, and do it all the time; they also don't, or may honor or not honor a request from the white house to publish or hold back a story. They are publishers and allowed to do that (NPR included).

This story is specifically about an accusation of the Chinese government influencing articles seen (not moderation of ToS breaking, or illegal content) on the U.S. version of TikTok.

NCRI said in its report that “our findings, which, while not definitive proof of state orchestration, present compelling and strong circumstantial evidence of TikTok’s covert content manipulation.”

TikTok has repeatedly said the Chinese government has no influence over its U.S. app, and proving otherwise would be difficult — something that the Department of Justice has acknowledged in discussions over a law that could ban the app.

Meta is another story; they are free to moderate/censor content, but if they start curating content, and not letting an algorithm decide what to show users based on their behavior, then that is another story. It is still legal for them to do, but they may also be determined to be responsible as a publisher.

If Meta advertised themselves to users as a curation of 'conservative news', or 'US propaganda', and that's what their users are signing up for, then that is fine. They advertise themselves as social media, with what people see being based on user behavior and posted content. If Meta was US Government owned, or funded, then they are welcome to do that in other nations as well, as long as they follow that nation's laws regarding the matter, otherwise foreign governments are welcome to act on it in their nation has appropriate. (Meta is not US government owned, they actually have quite a few legal battles and inquiries by the US government, and are a self-interested greedy corporation).

The same applies of TikTok. If they advertised themselves as a Chinese propaganda source and registered as a foreign agent (as is necessary when a foreign government has content control of the medium in question in the US for political purposes), then that would be fine; they explicitly denied that though, and push the value of their algorithm, and that they are social media.

The US famously does have foreign state funding TV networks, and US Citizens are allowed to watch it if they so choose, just that they need to register as such:

The Justice Department announced the registration just hours after RT’s chief editor said the company had complied with the U.S. demand that it register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The move doesn’t restrict the channel’s content, but the network is required to publicly disclose details about its funding and operations as well as mark certain content distributed in the U.S. with labels.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/69e84148c8a44512bdc648b1bcac4f34

China has also had such TV Networks in the US since the 1990s.

Hey look, the classic "America bad" comment on a post critical of China!

Are these people bots or something? It's possible to be critical of both at different times.

If you have the impression that there's a dominant, homogeneous "mass" sharing the same opinion, you are right there in the middle of an information bubble and a victim of those "algorithms".