10 ms·

An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia - especially given there's no proof that TikTo

An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia - especially given there's no proof that TikTok is actually being used by the Chinese, whereas Snowden etc. has shown us that the USA already does stuff like this. I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos anyway...

foepys 4y ago
TikTok has massive reach and influence. Just look at the recent articles about teenagers thinking they have mental illnesses [1]. Misinformation campaigns are very powerful and this is especially worrisome when the most popular platform is controlled by an authoritarian regime with no regards to human rights, democracy, and free press. 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-diagnosis-videos-leave-some-teens-thinking-they-have-rare-mental-disorders-11640514602 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-diagnosis-videos-leave-s...
ralusek 4y ago
> has shown us that the USA already does stuff like this. Ya, you're right, China isn't known to collect or do much with population data. China and the US officially regard each other as adversaries. The CCP outright declares the US to be an enemy. The CCP is also not subject to the rule of law within its own borders, even in theory. Then you get into the economics of it. The liberal west is generally in favor of free markets, but to what degree do we remain free when dealing with a trading partner who doesn't operate as a liberal democracy? China has banned Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram...because they don't want their citizens giving business to foreign powers which they could be directing to their own growing businesses, and they don't want their citizens giving data to foreign powers. So please clarify, is the US banning TikTok "sinophobia" but China banning Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc just something else entirely?
- christkv 4y ago
  democraphobia ?
GekkePrutser 4y ago
I'm not American but I hate TikTok because it seems to be the source of all stupid memes and joke videos people share with me. I can't stand it. Even though I don't use it, it still causes people to dump that crap on me. I wish there was an auto filter to remove everything with a TikTok logo because if it has that it's certain I'm going to hate it :) This is mainly because they embed their logo into everything that's shared of course. It's like the tramp stamp of stupid memes. In this case it works out negatively but I guess there's a lot of people loving mindless entertainment so I guess this is why they still mark their stuff this way. So in my case it has nothing to do with China even though I'm admittedly opposed to their government. But that's a different thing. FWIW I hate Facebook and Twitter too (for other reasons, Facebook because their datamining, Twitter because of the huge amount of nonsense ("Look I just had chicken wings"). But I use Instagram to follow certain artists.
- luckylion 4y ago
  > I wish there was an auto filter to remove everything with a TikTok logo because if it has that it's certain I'm going to hate it :) I'd love for that to be an option. I've tried looking at Youtube Shorts and it's pretty much 500 TikTok videos being uploaded by dozens of channels and dumped on everyone. Making it possible to filter by "the TikTok voice", "the TikTok laugh" and the top 5 songs used for TikTok would improve the experience by a lot and I might actually see something I care about. Downvoting doesn't change anything either, they'll even start looping around and showing me Shorts I've downvoted before. Or maybe it's really not used by anyone and automated TikTok uploads are all there is, I don't know.
cudgy 4y ago
They could present videos of dogs that look like cats to influence your opinion to be more favorable about dogs. They could simply show addictive videos to school-aged children to reduce their time available to study or interact with other children to make them less intelligent or less socially prepared. Or, they could flood your child’s feed with videos from children their age discussing perceived mental illness self-diagnosis to encourage the youth of a nation to consider themselves mentally ill. They could flood young people of primary child-bearing age with videos of other children discussing their homosexuality in order to lower the reproduction rate within a country. They could flood videos that are critical of key practices or institutions within a country to promote dissent.
- stavros 4y ago
  > They could simply show addictive videos to school-aged children to reduce their time available to study or interact with other children to make them less intelligent or less socially prepared. This is what every US social media company has been trying to do forever, except they didn't focus on schoolkids, they focused on everyone. It's called "maximizing engagement".
- ok_dad 4y ago
  > They they they I’m, aren’t parents supposed to be keeping track of their own kids, not some company? The stuff you said in the last half there is insane to me, so I’ll assume you’re either trolling or perhaps we have a very different view of certain things.
  - dilap 4y ago
    Put more broadly, control the media and you'll control people's beliefs, at least to a certain extent. (I assume this is why US Gov has been going after TikTok -- it's the only major social site not more or less under their control.)
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    It's better to look at the world from a perspective of possible/impossible rather than sane/insane as there exist people inside governments who are paid to do insane-yet-possible things. I don't believe the theories around the Chinese government controlling children's minds through TikTok are likely to be true. It's probably just a dumb app. But there's nothing impossible about it.
matsemann 4y ago
Yeah, as an European it almost feels nice to diversify, so US agencies&companies don't know everything about me..
- soco 4y ago
  In this situation the diversification means also the CCP will know everything about you.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    1 superpower vs 2 superpowers both of questionable morality doesn't make a difference. Don't forget we talk about 6.5 billions humans that US already treats as sub-humans as in being entitled to less basic human rights than US citizens. If US wants rest of the world to actually give a damn lets start with this simple issue. Till then no, I don't care much if also chinese have my browsing data.
    - soco 4y ago
      If you're a civilian on the receiving end of some bombs, it doesn't make a big difference indeed. For everyone else it does, unless we are taking that high ground argument in which everything is doomed and everyone is a jerk.
  - severino 4y ago
    But the CCP is not our government, and at least it can mean that your government knows less about you. In the old East Germany, it wasn't a problem that the CIA knew everything about you. It was that the Stasi did.
    - throw_m239339 4y ago
      > But the CCP is not our government, But there are Chinese dissidents and Tibet independentists in your country which are at risk, so it's OK if China spies on those because "they are not your government"? https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/opinions/j-michael-cole-op-ed-taiwan-kenya/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/opinions/j-michael-cole-o...
Banana699 4y ago
I'm non American as well, I get what you mean, the hysteria can sometimes be tiring. And the hypocritical it's-only-okay-when-we-do-it exceptionalism is maddening. However, you shouldn't put too much weight on the absence of proof for Chinese invasion of your privacy. China is an authoritarian regime, what this translates to in practice is that, while a "democracy" like the US or a European country will spy on you and violate both your and its own citizens rights, it can be caught and its PR will then cry and act really sorry (for whatever good this does), while a regime like China or Russia will brutally lock away or assassinate anyone digging dirt, and in the rare case they do get caught they will just smirk smugly and ask you what you're going to do about it. Both of those options suck, I know, a sane man will get far away from both of them, but one of them is strictly worse than the other in a very clear sense. >I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos Why, they are going to breed feline supurr-soldiers and subjugate your people with them off course. Meowahahaha. Jokes aside, you're underselling the amount of power they have over you. Just off the top of my head, and I'm not remotely knowledgeable in security, smartphones put geotags and timestamps in photos and videos. The PLA and their friends are probably not interested in your Mr.ButterMeow, but they are interested in where you live and when you are glued to an app that monopolises your attention. What are they going to do with this ? I don't know, but it can't be a good thing. There is such a thing as a "I don't have anything to hide" fallacy, it's a fallacy because (1) you don't know your attacker's mind, anything you do could be something you would very much want to hide if you only knew what your attacker intends to do with it (2) Rights are defended on principle, if I broke into your home and stole all the garbage, then that is still a violation of your rights, even if 0 harm or even negative harm was done. A principle is like an algorithm, it has to be followed to the letter even if the circumstances are amenable to a special shortcut.
galoisgirl 4y ago
(Non-American too.) China may not have been proven to use TikTok data specifically, but their track record about human rights and privacy is what it is. > I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos anyway... Ah, the old "nothing to hide" argument.
- epups 4y ago
  No, but really: Facebook collects very private data, including personal messages. Google has even more sensitive information. I also don't see why suddenly TikTok is such a concern, except for sinophobia or pure misinformation.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    There's a large and substantial difference between "Google has your data" and "Google abuses your data". You might have doubts whether the limits set by Western authorities on Google's use of your data would be effective, or about the ability of those authorities to investigate and enforce, but I think we can all agree the odds are much better than for TikTok where no chance exists at all.
    - angio 4y ago
      Snowden showed 10 (!) years ago that american tech companies share data with the us government even when that's clearly against the law. That, in my book, is abusing my data. EU courts agree with me and are limiting how much data can be shared with us-based businesses.
  - runevault 4y ago
    This presumes people don't also have a problem with FB and/or Google. Speaking for myself I have concerns with all of them. I almost never interact with FB properties, Google I've sadly become attached to but I'm not one for Apple products so it is sort of hard to get away from the big G.
AinderS 4y ago
> the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia "It's so weird how scared people are of falling under the control of a foreign government. Don't they know their own government is just as or even more corrupt?" Granted social media have less influence than a government, but that doesn't make the risk go away. And yes, the same logic applies to US (social) media in other countries, though the relationship between countries should be taken into account when assessing that risk. Though that relationship is itself influenced by media..
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Well we know that US intelligence agencies reserve the right to access all data harvested by American companies. They have a law about that. Do I particularly agree with the CCP politically? No. But I want everyone to be equal to the law and I'm not going to delude myself that Americans give one flying fuck about the privacy of foreigners- or their own citizens even.
- npc54321 4y ago
- zaroth 4y ago
  I think the issue is more about influence than it is about privacy.
throw_m239339 4y ago
> An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird China, via a state sponsored outlet, just threatened to shoot the speaker of the house's plane if it went to Taiwan and you find USA's stance on TikTok, an extension of the CCP, "really weird"?
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  The US just bombed a dude in a foreign country they recently abandoned. As a different non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment still seems really weird.
  - infinitezest 4y ago
    The US government is a menace so the American people have no reason to feel threatened by a foriegn power? Am I understanding your argument correctly?
  - nimbleplum40 4y ago
    Bombed a dude that was cofounder and 2nd-in-command (at the time) of the organization that committed the worst terrorist attack on the US...
derbOac 4y ago
Snowden is sort of an unusual standard to apply for this sort of thing? Espionage and intelligence almost never meets a certain level of proof that's available to the public eye. I'm not really sure what to make of Chinese government involvement with TikTok but from the information available, it seems like whatever it is, TikTok isn't being forthright about it. You can distrust the US government and also think there's reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to TikTok for domestic or foreign intelligence.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > You can distrust the US government and also think there's reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to TikTok for domestic or foreign intelligence. I wish people would stop giving me permission to believe two things at the same time as a way of pairing a) the thing with overwhelming evidence that I'm worried about and they're trying to minimize, with b) the thing that there's little evidence for that they're trying to get me to believe. It's a marketing tactic. a) suffers by association with the innuendo and rumor of b), and b) is strengthened by being associated with the extensive documentation of a).
  - nsv 4y ago
    They're not giving you permission, they're defending their own beliefs. "You" here could be replaced by "one" or "a person", similar to the French pronoun "on".
pid_0 4y ago
wbsss4412 4y ago
That’s because it largely is sinophobia (or more reasonably on the American side, blind nationalism). That said, I would caution against the temptation to “grade on a curve” here. While it’s true what you said, that there’s no direct evidence of spying, the case of proven US spying should demonstrate that government are more likely to be spying and hiding it than not.
djohnston 4y ago
By any chance are you German?
- schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  No.
notacoward 4y ago
Have you considered that it's not the nationality but the actual toxicity of the platform/content itself that people dislike? It has largely displaced Instagram and YouTube as the epicenter of airbrushed/photoshopped "influencers" who are having calamitous effects on young girls' self esteem. It's full of "challenges" that range from the anti-social to the illegal to the dangerous. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/parents-beware-of-these-5-dangerous-tiktok-challenges-on-your-childs-for-you-page/2800166/ https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/parents-beware-of-these-... That doesn't even mention the one about stealing something from school, or the "fractal wood burning" stuff that has actually killed people. Their purely-algorithmic feed denies people the validation they seek from their own circle, encouraging them to dial up the outrageousness to get views from strangers instead, so these things are not accidents. There are lots of cool things on TikTok - I'm a fan of B Dylan Hollis and Amaury Guichon and just about anyone singing a shanty or covering a Pink Floyd guitar line - but overall "TikToxic" captures it pretty well. Why play the sinophobia card when an even simpler explanation is right there?

foepys 4y ago

TikTok has massive reach and influence. Just look at the recent articles about teenagers thinking they have mental illnesses [1]. Misinformation campaigns are very powerful and this is especially worrisome when the most popular platform is controlled by an authoritarian regime with no regards to human rights, democracy, and free press. 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-diagnosis-videos-leave-some-teens-thinking-they-have-rare-mental-disorders-11640514602 https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-diagnosis-videos-leave-s...

ralusek 4y ago

> has shown us that the USA already does stuff like this. Ya, you're right, China isn't known to collect or do much with population data. China and the US officially regard each other as adversaries. The CCP outright declares the US to be an enemy. The CCP is also not subject to the rule of law within its own borders, even in theory. Then you get into the economics of it. The liberal west is generally in favor of free markets, but to what degree do we remain free when dealing with a trading partner who doesn't operate as a liberal democracy? China has banned Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram...because they don't want their citizens giving business to foreign powers which they could be directing to their own growing businesses, and they don't want their citizens giving data to foreign powers. So please clarify, is the US banning TikTok "sinophobia" but China banning Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc just something else entirely?

christkv 4y ago
democraphobia ?

GekkePrutser 4y ago

I'm not American but I hate TikTok because it seems to be the source of all stupid memes and joke videos people share with me. I can't stand it. Even though I don't use it, it still causes people to dump that crap on me. I wish there was an auto filter to remove everything with a TikTok logo because if it has that it's certain I'm going to hate it :) This is mainly because they embed their logo into everything that's shared of course. It's like the tramp stamp of stupid memes. In this case it works out negatively but I guess there's a lot of people loving mindless entertainment so I guess this is why they still mark their stuff this way. So in my case it has nothing to do with China even though I'm admittedly opposed to their government. But that's a different thing. FWIW I hate Facebook and Twitter too (for other reasons, Facebook because their datamining, Twitter because of the huge amount of nonsense ("Look I just had chicken wings"). But I use Instagram to follow certain artists.

luckylion 4y ago
> I wish there was an auto filter to remove everything with a TikTok logo because if it has that it's certain I'm going to hate it :) I'd love for that to be an option. I've tried looking at Youtube Shorts and it's pretty much 500 TikTok videos being uploaded by dozens of channels and dumped on everyone. Making it possible to filter by "the TikTok voice", "the TikTok laugh" and the top 5 songs used for TikTok would improve the experience by a lot and I might actually see something I care about. Downvoting doesn't change anything either, they'll even start looping around and showing me Shorts I've downvoted before. Or maybe it's really not used by anyone and automated TikTok uploads are all there is, I don't know.

cudgy 4y ago

They could present videos of dogs that look like cats to influence your opinion to be more favorable about dogs. They could simply show addictive videos to school-aged children to reduce their time available to study or interact with other children to make them less intelligent or less socially prepared. Or, they could flood your child’s feed with videos from children their age discussing perceived mental illness self-diagnosis to encourage the youth of a nation to consider themselves mentally ill. They could flood young people of primary child-bearing age with videos of other children discussing their homosexuality in order to lower the reproduction rate within a country. They could flood videos that are critical of key practices or institutions within a country to promote dissent.

stavros 4y ago
> They could simply show addictive videos to school-aged children to reduce their time available to study or interact with other children to make them less intelligent or less socially prepared. This is what every US social media company has been trying to do forever, except they didn't focus on schoolkids, they focused on everyone. It's called "maximizing engagement".
ok_dad 4y ago
> They they they I’m, aren’t parents supposed to be keeping track of their own kids, not some company? The stuff you said in the last half there is insane to me, so I’ll assume you’re either trolling or perhaps we have a very different view of certain things.
- dilap 4y ago
  Put more broadly, control the media and you'll control people's beliefs, at least to a certain extent. (I assume this is why US Gov has been going after TikTok -- it's the only major social site not more or less under their control.)
- zarzavat 4y ago
  It's better to look at the world from a perspective of possible/impossible rather than sane/insane as there exist people inside governments who are paid to do insane-yet-possible things. I don't believe the theories around the Chinese government controlling children's minds through TikTok are likely to be true. It's probably just a dumb app. But there's nothing impossible about it.

matsemann 4y ago

Yeah, as an European it almost feels nice to diversify, so US agencies&companies don't know everything about me..

soco 4y ago
In this situation the diversification means also the CCP will know everything about you.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  1 superpower vs 2 superpowers both of questionable morality doesn't make a difference. Don't forget we talk about 6.5 billions humans that US already treats as sub-humans as in being entitled to less basic human rights than US citizens. If US wants rest of the world to actually give a damn lets start with this simple issue. Till then no, I don't care much if also chinese have my browsing data.
  - soco 4y ago
    If you're a civilian on the receiving end of some bombs, it doesn't make a big difference indeed. For everyone else it does, unless we are taking that high ground argument in which everything is doomed and everyone is a jerk.
- severino 4y ago
  But the CCP is not our government, and at least it can mean that your government knows less about you. In the old East Germany, it wasn't a problem that the CIA knew everything about you. It was that the Stasi did.
  - throw_m239339 4y ago
    > But the CCP is not our government, But there are Chinese dissidents and Tibet independentists in your country which are at risk, so it's OK if China spies on those because "they are not your government"? https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/opinions/j-michael-cole-op-ed-taiwan-kenya/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/13/opinions/j-michael-cole-o...

Banana699 4y ago

I'm non American as well, I get what you mean, the hysteria can sometimes be tiring. And the hypocritical it's-only-okay-when-we-do-it exceptionalism is maddening. However, you shouldn't put too much weight on the absence of proof for Chinese invasion of your privacy. China is an authoritarian regime, what this translates to in practice is that, while a "democracy" like the US or a European country will spy on you and violate both your and its own citizens rights, it can be caught and its PR will then cry and act really sorry (for whatever good this does), while a regime like China or Russia will brutally lock away or assassinate anyone digging dirt, and in the rare case they do get caught they will just smirk smugly and ask you what you're going to do about it. Both of those options suck, I know, a sane man will get far away from both of them, but one of them is strictly worse than the other in a very clear sense. >I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos Why, they are going to breed feline supurr-soldiers and subjugate your people with them off course. Meowahahaha. Jokes aside, you're underselling the amount of power they have over you. Just off the top of my head, and I'm not remotely knowledgeable in security, smartphones put geotags and timestamps in photos and videos. The PLA and their friends are probably not interested in your Mr.ButterMeow, but they are interested in where you live and when you are glued to an app that monopolises your attention. What are they going to do with this ? I don't know, but it can't be a good thing. There is such a thing as a "I don't have anything to hide" fallacy, it's a fallacy because (1) you don't know your attacker's mind, anything you do could be something you would very much want to hide if you only knew what your attacker intends to do with it (2) Rights are defended on principle, if I broke into your home and stole all the garbage, then that is still a violation of your rights, even if 0 harm or even negative harm was done. A principle is like an algorithm, it has to be followed to the letter even if the circumstances are amenable to a special shortcut.

galoisgirl 4y ago

(Non-American too.) China may not have been proven to use TikTok data specifically, but their track record about human rights and privacy is what it is. > I'm not really sure what the People's Liberation Army will do with all my cat videos anyway... Ah, the old "nothing to hide" argument.

epups 4y ago
No, but really: Facebook collects very private data, including personal messages. Google has even more sensitive information. I also don't see why suddenly TikTok is such a concern, except for sinophobia or pure misinformation.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  There's a large and substantial difference between "Google has your data" and "Google abuses your data". You might have doubts whether the limits set by Western authorities on Google's use of your data would be effective, or about the ability of those authorities to investigate and enforce, but I think we can all agree the odds are much better than for TikTok where no chance exists at all.
  - angio 4y ago
    Snowden showed 10 (!) years ago that american tech companies share data with the us government even when that's clearly against the law. That, in my book, is abusing my data. EU courts agree with me and are limiting how much data can be shared with us-based businesses.
- runevault 4y ago
  This presumes people don't also have a problem with FB and/or Google. Speaking for myself I have concerns with all of them. I almost never interact with FB properties, Google I've sadly become attached to but I'm not one for Apple products so it is sort of hard to get away from the big G.

AinderS 4y ago

> the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird, it really does just seem like sinophobia "It's so weird how scared people are of falling under the control of a foreign government. Don't they know their own government is just as or even more corrupt?" Granted social media have less influence than a government, but that doesn't make the risk go away. And yes, the same logic applies to US (social) media in other countries, though the relationship between countries should be taken into account when assessing that risk. Though that relationship is itself influenced by media..

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Well we know that US intelligence agencies reserve the right to access all data harvested by American companies. They have a law about that. Do I particularly agree with the CCP politically? No. But I want everyone to be equal to the law and I'm not going to delude myself that Americans give one flying fuck about the privacy of foreigners- or their own citizens even.

npc54321 4y ago
zaroth 4y ago
I think the issue is more about influence than it is about privacy.

throw_m239339 4y ago

> An a non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment seems really weird China, via a state sponsored outlet, just threatened to shoot the speaker of the house's plane if it went to Taiwan and you find USA's stance on TikTok, an extension of the CCP, "really weird"?

InCityDreams 4y ago
The US just bombed a dude in a foreign country they recently abandoned. As a different non-American the level of anti-TikTok sentiment still seems really weird.
- infinitezest 4y ago
  The US government is a menace so the American people have no reason to feel threatened by a foriegn power? Am I understanding your argument correctly?
- nimbleplum40 4y ago
  Bombed a dude that was cofounder and 2nd-in-command (at the time) of the organization that committed the worst terrorist attack on the US...

derbOac 4y ago

Snowden is sort of an unusual standard to apply for this sort of thing? Espionage and intelligence almost never meets a certain level of proof that's available to the public eye. I'm not really sure what to make of Chinese government involvement with TikTok but from the information available, it seems like whatever it is, TikTok isn't being forthright about it. You can distrust the US government and also think there's reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to TikTok for domestic or foreign intelligence.

pessimizer 4y ago
> You can distrust the US government and also think there's reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to TikTok for domestic or foreign intelligence. I wish people would stop giving me permission to believe two things at the same time as a way of pairing a) the thing with overwhelming evidence that I'm worried about and they're trying to minimize, with b) the thing that there's little evidence for that they're trying to get me to believe. It's a marketing tactic. a) suffers by association with the innuendo and rumor of b), and b) is strengthened by being associated with the extensive documentation of a).
- nsv 4y ago
  They're not giving you permission, they're defending their own beliefs. "You" here could be replaced by "one" or "a person", similar to the French pronoun "on".

pid_0 4y ago

wbsss4412 4y ago

That’s because it largely is sinophobia (or more reasonably on the American side, blind nationalism). That said, I would caution against the temptation to “grade on a curve” here. While it’s true what you said, that there’s no direct evidence of spying, the case of proven US spying should demonstrate that government are more likely to be spying and hiding it than not.

djohnston 4y ago

By any chance are you German?

schnitzelstoat 4y ago
No.

notacoward 4y ago

Have you considered that it's not the nationality but the actual toxicity of the platform/content itself that people dislike? It has largely displaced Instagram and YouTube as the epicenter of airbrushed/photoshopped "influencers" who are having calamitous effects on young girls' self esteem. It's full of "challenges" that range from the anti-social to the illegal to the dangerous. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/parents-beware-of-these-5-dangerous-tiktok-challenges-on-your-childs-for-you-page/2800166/ https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/parents-beware-of-these-... That doesn't even mention the one about stealing something from school, or the "fractal wood burning" stuff that has actually killed people. Their purely-algorithmic feed denies people the validation they seek from their own circle, encouraging them to dial up the outrageousness to get views from strangers instead, so these things are not accidents. There are lots of cool things on TikTok - I'm a fan of B Dylan Hollis and Amaury Guichon and just about anyone singing a shanty or covering a Pink Floyd guitar line - but overall "TikToxic" captures it pretty well. Why play the sinophobia card when an even simpler explanation is right there?