As TikTok grows, so does suspicion

We dont all want to live in a theocratic bi-party corporatist paradise, crushed by personal loans to cure grandma s broken leg, to exgaerate a bit. I live in China and while I dislike the communists just as much as the next guy, I'm quite unsure what's so good about the US.

It's just as much a giant country blabbering all day long about how we should be their protectorate (I'm French), a lot like China...

But yeah let s not be afraid to say China, Xi in particular, are in an endless dictator trap, covering the crimes of the past with the crimes of the present. I just wouldnt put all my bets on the US evolving better just because God wrote their constitution or whatever else they think make them so virtuous.

> I don’t know why anyone would be afraid to say this.

Probably because it's not that they are afraid, they simply don't agree. For many people around the world, the US and Europe have inflicted far greater problems over the past 0-100 years.

TT isn't unique in parasocial relationships though. Most of the discourse around those relationships actually center around yt and twitch for a reason (and to a lesser extent twitter and onlyfans). If anything tiktok is better than streaming platforms because there's less of that illusion of familiarity; you only see the content creator for minutes at a time before another's there to replace them (twitch you see them for hours at a time and often people only identify strongly with a few streamers).

I'd also argue against the utility argument. Tiktok has allowed for both information and misinformation to spread on its platforms, but that's a non unique argument. Small business accounts on tiktok have also flourished, a commonly repeated piece of advice currently is for small business owners to create accounts and just record their daily routines. Businesses like specialty stationers have exploded in recognition due to this.

The much stronger case against tiktok over other social media's is your communication point. There's little opportunity there for people to actually, you know, socialize with each other. It's content and only content, and even YouTube comments have more meaningful opportunities for educated discussion. It's more similar to twitch chat in that regard but even on twitch content creators regularly engage in discourse publicly. Tiktok enables this through its reply system, but because of its content delivery system you might never see that.

Sure you can. You just have to conduct your business in China under the same rules that Chinese businesses in China have to follow.

Most countries or pseudo-countries work this way. For example the EU is about to tell US companies conducting business in Europe that they have to use USB-C for device charging ports and impose a bunch of limits on what exclusive feature hardware makers can include on their devices.

But those same rules apply to European businesses operating in the EU and to Chinese companies operating in the EU and to anyone else operating there, so it is fine.

This is one of the reasons international businesses often set things up so that they have separate companies in different countries. You set up BigCorp USA, BigCorp China, and BigCorp Germany as separate companies incorporated in those jurisdictions, with the latter two handling all your Chinese and EU customers respectively.

Same happens with non-tech businesses. If you wanted to open a chain of international bookstores, you'd face all kinds of restrictions on what books you can sell in various countries. A lot of books that would be fine in your San Francisco store might get you in serious trouble if you carried them in Saudi Arabia. But they would also get a Saudi owned bookstore in trouble too, so you aren't being treated differently.