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US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

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Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#91

Post by stjohnswarts »

takeda wrote: post #17
_23sd wrote: post #15

The evidence that TikTok is a mouthpiece for China, according to NPR's account of the Commerce Department memo (I still need to read it myself): 1. Bytedance employs 130 Party members. 2. The party members had a rally with Communist salutes and pledges and such. 3. Bytedance's CEO once apologized over an app that the authorities shut down because, as far as I can tell, the memes were too dank. The first two are norma…

Let's assume TikTok is the mouth piece of Chinese propaganda. Why aren't we doing anything about another mouthpiece that we already got confirmation that it is being used by both our and foreign intelligence. Is that one accepted because it benefits the president? What kind of leader of free nation would accept something like that?

What other mouthpiece/personal data sink is on 100 million American devices? You start with the 800lb gorilla not the 10 spider monkeys who are there for support and logistics.

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#92

Post by stjohnswarts »

justcuz00 wrote: post #22
takeda wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume TikTok is the mouth piece of Chinese propaganda. Why aren't we doing anything about another mouthpiece that we already got confirmation that it is being used by both our and foreign intelligence. Is that one accepted because it benefits the president? What kind of leader of free nation would accept something like that?

Just because they talk about it being a free country doesn’t mean much What’s the math of your time economy look like? You’re a servant of their economy. Any challenges to that, it’s slower police responses, more austerity, and strongman bashing figurative genitals on TV all day to prove his grit Why don’t we do anything about it? Because we’re entitled to our stuff! Technology is just your salon. The level headed ma…

Is this a free form poem?

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#94

Post by echelon »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #81
addicted wrote: post #25

Apparently bleating about Tik Tok is all this government can do to try and hide the fact that it’s been bleating about Tik Tok for months and not achieved anything besides having increased the deficit with China to record numbers while still paying Midwest farmers tens of billions for that privilege. It’s also failed to actually do anything about Tik Tok for months despite having committed some blatantly illegal acts…

I do wish they would show us some examples. I would not be hard to convince that CCP would like to brainwash Gen Z into being sympathizers. Some of the interviews I've see with protestors who don't have a clue about the real roots of what they're protesting for has me a bit skeptical of some of the white protestors for BLM. The black youth seem to be much more informed on what they're protesting for. A lot of the whi…

TikTok is filled to the brim with hate and, from my perspective, anti-American rhetoric.

My partner uses it and shows me a lot of these things. "All buildings matter" trended on 9/11, and yesterday there was a large group of young, voting-aged adults joining a pact to not vote.

I'm disheartened by a lot of the stuff I'm seeing on TikTok. Then again, I have the same reaction to Twitter.

If China can tweak the knobs and radicalize our youth, then this is extremely dangerous. I think it's impossible to say whether or not this is just emergent network behavior or if it's selectively being curated. If the administration had evidence, though, I think they'd be talking about it.

Edit: the repeated downvotes for saying anything about China don't give me confidence. Why not offer a rebuttal instead? I haven't said anything controversial.

Edit 2: Flagged too, huh? Is having an open and frank discussion dangerous? I'm an earnest contributor acting in good faith. This isn't the right way to go about things.

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#95

Post by shalmanese »

ericmay wrote: post #62
andrepd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the argument is that that's not a problem specific to tiktok, it's a problem of social media in general...

Which is 100% true! But the key difference here is... we’re sitting here talking about regulating Facebook and Google, and I think you can safely say the vast majority of people working at those companies don’t want to see bad things happen to the United States.

But if we assume that employees at FANG don't want bad things to happen to the US and verifiably bad things are happening to the US on those platforms, then the null hypothesis is that a Tiktok that also doesn't want bad things to happen to the US will also have an equally large number of bad things happening to the US regardless. To disprove the null hypothesis, you would have to demonstrate that Tiktok has a statistically significant increase in the amount of badness it's causing to the US per unit of attention which is difficult to do when the baseline amount of badness is already so high.

Maybe we should focus more on decreasing that baseline so we can actually figure out if foreign companies are doing bad things to the US out of malice or indifference?

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#96

Post by xoxoy »

Slartie wrote: post #57
xoxoy wrote: post #44

One of the claims I’ve read about is that there’s fear that Beijing could use TikTok to “brainwash kids”, which I thought was a crazy thought...until I read about how the FDA had to issue a warning begging kids not to do the “Benadryl challenge” they saw on TikTok because it was sending them to the ER.

Is the US also banning YouTube because kids did the Tide Pod Challenge and ended up in the hospital?

That isn’t what I’m saying at all. I’m just making an observation that kids that much more susceptible to “brainwashing” or at very least mimicking stupid things they watch online than I could have suspected.

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#97

Post by non-entity »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #82
xoxoy wrote: post #44

One of the claims I’ve read about is that there’s fear that Beijing could use TikTok to “brainwash kids”, which I thought was a crazy thought...until I read about how the FDA had to issue a warning begging kids not to do the “Benadryl challenge” they saw on TikTok because it was sending them to the ER.

Those types of stories are great fodder for the CCP propaganda engine on how stupid Americans are and we're just lucky to be the lead world power right now and are just talent-less yokels who got here randomly.

Stories like that have existed for quite a while without any need for the CCP.

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#98

Post by pandaman »

koonsolo wrote: post #76

I find this quite strange and short sighted. I see my kids look at TikTok all the time. I don't really see how you could spread propaganda through 5 second dances and jokes. Especially since peers are doing that. I would think the Party influence on Hollywood and other entertainment such as Computer Games would be way more disturbing. Injecting propaganda into a real story seems way more effective. Especially when yo…

Most communist propaganda I've seen is not 1920s "agitprop" style posters with workers and farmers waving red flags and inviting you to impale your capitalist boss on a bayonet. IMHO, that only exist to make the target audience believe that anything else is not propaganda or is not effective as such.

E.g. several people at my work (engineers with degrees) seem to absolutely trust everything they hear on "comedy" talk shows. And not only trust, but eager watch all new episodes and discuss between themselves at work. Those cannot be propaganda because it's just a joke, dude?

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#99

Post by aaomidi »

ericmay wrote: post #60
addicted wrote: post #25

Apparently bleating about Tik Tok is all this government can do to try and hide the fact that it’s been bleating about Tik Tok for months and not achieved anything besides having increased the deficit with China to record numbers while still paying Midwest farmers tens of billions for that privilege. It’s also failed to actually do anything about Tik Tok for months despite having committed some blatantly illegal acts…

It looks more and more like a negotiation battle. Trump can ban it within an hour for the most part but hasn’t. If you didn’t think this was true, all you had to do was watch college football on Saturday and see the numerous TikTok “download before Sunday” ads.

A judge put a stop to the ban.

Re: US government accuses TikTok of being a mouthpiece for the Communist Party

#100

Post by aaomidi »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #81
addicted wrote: post #25

Apparently bleating about Tik Tok is all this government can do to try and hide the fact that it’s been bleating about Tik Tok for months and not achieved anything besides having increased the deficit with China to record numbers while still paying Midwest farmers tens of billions for that privilege. It’s also failed to actually do anything about Tik Tok for months despite having committed some blatantly illegal acts…

I do wish they would show us some examples. I would not be hard to convince that CCP would like to brainwash Gen Z into being sympathizers. Some of the interviews I've see with protestors who don't have a clue about the real roots of what they're protesting for has me a bit skeptical of some of the white protestors for BLM. The black youth seem to be much more informed on what they're protesting for. A lot of the whi…

You can't expect only the oppressed to fight for their own freedom.

A lot of white people also recognize what a fucked system we've created for people. Centuries of injustice. The reactionary identity politics is extremely harmful.

As a PoC I'm happy to have non PoC allies in this fight. I welcome them. And will make this fight our fight.

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