POV: It's January 19th

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And how was the situation in the rest of the world?

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Tiktoks have a comment section, and people can reply to comments.
There is a char limit, and while that makes nuance difficult, it also inhibits unhinged rants

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I mean yeah the US absolutely is much more democratic than North Korea, but it's the lowest of bars

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Thank god for bold platforms like TikTok that refuse to push US propaganda. Really smart of them to not censor valuable information as a way of fooling the US government into exposing its evil censorship ways. TikTok's fate in the US was never a topic before the current wave of pro-Palestinian activism started. It certainly wasn't one of Trump's main talking points ten years ago. Good thing he changed his mind after getting his hands on ~~some Chinese money~~ lucrative investmenet from Chinese citizens that are not at all connected to Tencent.

None of this discourse on combatting foreign information manipulation started over a decade ago, its all about censoring pro-Palestine voices here and now. TikTok and China in general are known for their calm, collected attitudes toward Muslims. They certainly would never weaponize a contentious topic every which way imaginable in pursuit of financial and geopolitical goals. We need more of these open and bold platforms.

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In essence the optics here look an awful lot like the US simply doesn’t like other nations mining their citizens data that they want for themselves, and having foreign control of the type of news being fed by their algorithm.

Well duh? Why do you think China blocks a lot of the US social media?

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They're suspiciously selective about what foreign interference they're ok with.

Count Regal Inkwell

Russia is a menace to US's peasantry, as they might drag the US to a(nother) proxy war.

Whereas China is a menace to the US's aristocracy, in the sense that China is currently richer than the US of A, and despite thousands of articles about how "CHINA'S ECONOMY WILL COLLAPSE TOMORROW!" for the past 15 years, it has yet to happen.

Ergo, the US government won't do shit about Russia, but will bend over backwards for anything related to China.

Count Regal Inkwell

Right now and you're cheering for it, genius.

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Of course it's more worrying to the American government when it's a foreign government spying on their citizens. It's not really a double standard but rather just sensible from the gov's pov.

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even banned the use of vpns to get to foreign sites

Do you have a source for this?

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I guess they're not banned, but they're blocking them.

Count Regal Inkwell

I did, but then I realised I'm wrong about the VPN thing.

I was thinking of the RESTRICT act from 2023, which did ban the usage of VPNs (and was the "Original" Tiktok ban law)

Apparently in the year and change I spent not really caring (look, this is an American problem, y'all slam your metaphorical penises in the car door at least three times a day. And I have my own country's dick-slammings to care about. I only hear about it when it's particularly egregious or when I see a meme like this that is cheering for the dick-slamming) the RESTRICT act got shot down, and another one was quickly drafted.

The one that was approved does not ban VPNs. So. That's on me. My b.

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Yea but we're not getting anywhere with "tolerance 100%"

The Chinese government is a tyrannical undemocratic dictatorship and I'm OK with not tolerating them or their propaganda wing.

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I'm not American though.

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TikTok singlehandedly got a neonazy elected in eastern Europe.

Count Regal Inkwell

Replace the yous for theys. Same thing.

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False dichotomy. They could’ve been banned on legitimate pretenses AND other reasons threatening power.

If they were legitimately only banned for “tracking the location in the US and gathering large amounts of data”, then just about every single social media service would be under investigation for the same reason. But do we currently see that happening?

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Shut up alien

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Have you tried actually comparing the content on Tiktok vs other social networks? Or are you just regurgitating some talking point?

From the few years I've been on Tiktok, it is by far the least toxic and bigoted social network I've seen, Lemmy included.
I'm no fan of China, but if we're considering "being less bigoted" to be commie propaganda, then we need to take a look in the mirror. Absolutely throwing the baby out with the bath water here

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Someone ban this man NOW