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If you are concerned about the content that American's consume, there is no reason to single out TikTok. Instagram has been shoving the same garbage into the fe

If you are concerned about the content that American's consume, there is no reason to single out TikTok. Instagram has been shoving the same garbage into the feeds of teenagers for nearly a decade and Reels is nearly exact clone of TikTok. There is little "educational" content on Instagram Reels. The solution would be regulate all the social media companies, like how China does. If the problem is solely TikTok, then it most likely stems from the fact you don't like TikTok is owned by the Chinese (and you are more likely to believe nefarious claims that Xi Jinping personally told the TikTok CEO to make America dumber) which is sinophobic. You don't like TikTok just because it's a chinese company serving you the same garbage as an American one. I believe there are valid reasons to ban TikTok, especially on state-owned devices, given the amount of data they exfiltrate, but "they are poisoning the American youth" is not a good one.

philliphaydon 4y ago
I live in Taiwan. I sometimes look at Facebook reels and Instagram. I never come across anti China or anti US content. I tried tiktok for a day and was bombarded with anti US content. Videos blaming the US for covid. Videos saying that covid started in the US, created by the US, etc. Videos that the US is using Taiwan to start a war with China. I deleted tiktok and have it blocked. You can defend China all you want. But it doesn’t change the fact that the CCP is using it to spread propaganda.
- b345 4y ago
  Anecdotal evidence. Maybe it's what you were recommended based on your watch history or other data points. YouTube recommends me anti-China content all the time.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    YouTube has a lot of anti China and anti US content. But you can block channels and subjects and clean it up. But the difference is anti. US content tends to be fake propaganda. Like claiming covid started in the US and was designed to kill people in China? That’s blatant propaganda. That’s anti US. Talking about the US spending money on gain of function research in Wuhan? That’s just reporting on facts. But I don’t consider that anti US. Anti China content is just facts. If a video comes out saying there’s protesting in China due to zero covid. That’s not fake news. It’s not propaganda. It’s just something happening and CCP bots will scream “anti China anti China” You can’t do that on tiktok. I specifically called out Facebook and Instagram. It’s not flooded to death with propaganda.
    - blackoil 4y ago
      > anti. US content tends to be fake propaganda. > Anti China content is just facts. And you are surprised, you don't find Sinophobia.
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        So what you’re saying is. If it’s not positive then it’s Sinophobia.
- snehk 4y ago
  I just tried it using a VM and a VPN and I cannot reproduce your claim. Searching for "covid" and "corona", for example, literally shows me the current videos about China's crackdown on recent protests from Vice, FlashNews Australia and Sky News (as well as citizen videos from those events) as the top result. Nothing that would paint China in a positive light in any way.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    I tried in… October 2021 just after I moved to Taiwan. Friend sent me some video of food fuckup (someone cooking turkey in oil annd setting everything on fire) and so I signed up. Scrolling through i had random videos of one (Chinese) person saying covid originated at fort detrick and blaming China was a US coverup. Another video (Chinese) person saying it originated in deer in the US. Another (Chinese) person saying it started in the US in august 2019 and they took it to China to try kill the Chinese. I deleted tiktok about an hour after signing up so obviously my claim isn’t based on any significant data. And I also don’t claim to say this is prevalent. But I never searched anything. I’m not from the US. And while on YouTube I do watch some content in relation to what’s happening in the US, China, Ukraine, Iran. It’s not a playlist. 98% of what I watch is movie trailers and tech videos. Even on Instagram and Facebook 99% of what I watch is food related. So I don’t expect my experience to be taken as absolute fact that China is spreading a propaganda through tiktok. But it’s my experience and based on the propaganda on YouTube (videos of YouTubers being escorted around the exact same areas in Xinjiang as “proof” there’s no genocide) I think it’s likely that there is some propaganda to paint the US in bad light.
andsoitis 4y ago
> The solution would be regulate all the social media companies, like how China does. Twitter and Facebook are both banned in China, isn’t it? Is that because the CCP is afraid of western ideals if freedom? Or is it protectionism? Put differently, is it because of ideological or because if commercial reasons or perhaps both? Because, to follow your thinking, why does the CCP not simply regulate them using the same rules as is uses for homegrown companies like TikTok?
- yorwba 4y ago
  > why does the CCP not simply regulate them using the same rules as is uses for homegrown companies like TikTok? They do, which is why TikTok is blocked. Only Douyin, a separate content silo with shared codebase, is allowed to operate. Products by American companies like Facebook or Google Search that are now blocked used to censor the content they made available in China, but then stopped. Other products by American companies, like Microsoft's Bing and Google Ads, continue to censor and continue to operate. People on the English-speaking internet often seem to think that American companies' difficulties operating in China stem from them being specially and unfairly singled out, but the thing is that Chinese companies operating in China have to fight the same obstacles. And the majority of companies trying to make it big in China are Chinese, so they bear the brunt of the burden. When a company building a platform for user-generated content gets more users and more content, that would usually be something for them to celebrate, but in China it also means they need to spend more resources censoring content to remove everything that might displease the government. E.g. HelloTalk, a language-exchange app made by a Chinese company, restricted their Chinese users' accounts in 2020, most likely because some were using the app to talk about censored topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/glf14q/whats_going_on_with_hellotalk_block_against/ https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/glf14q/wh... Other Chinese companies abandon the Chinese market completely and focus on the rest of the world while blocking Chinese users from accessing their product so they don't have to fear getting shut down by the government over lacking censorship.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
It's not that it's owned by Chinese, it's that it is based in China with demonstrated links to the Chinese communist government. It's not sinophobic to distrust the Chinese government. Are the Chinese protestors sinophobes?
- s5300 4y ago
  >> with demonstrated links to the Chinese communist government. Isn’t this the same for quite nearly anything a Westerner would’ve heard of that comes from China? Genuine question. I thought that was a sort of common knowledge type thing.
- nemothekid 4y ago
  If you want TikTok banned in the US because they don't have proper data hygiene and you believe that data could be used by the CCP in the future that is fair. If you want TikTok banned in the US because you believe that they promote dumb content as part of some strategic Chinese plot and you conveniently ignore Meta and Google, I'm going to assume that your reasoning comes from irrational fear of the Chinese. It doesn't make sense to distrust the Chinese when they are doing the same thing as Americans (unless you don't like them just because they are Chinese).
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    The first one. I agree with your second point.
    - babypuncher 4y ago
      I would argue that the better solution to the first problem is to set strict data hygiene standards to which all social media companies must adhere. The fact that TikTok has ties to the CCP is simply another data point supporting the need for such regulations.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    You seem to try to make everyone sound racist by calling everything Chinese rather than single out the government. People here don’t hate Chinese people. They hate the CCP.

philliphaydon 4y ago

I live in Taiwan. I sometimes look at Facebook reels and Instagram. I never come across anti China or anti US content. I tried tiktok for a day and was bombarded with anti US content. Videos blaming the US for covid. Videos saying that covid started in the US, created by the US, etc. Videos that the US is using Taiwan to start a war with China. I deleted tiktok and have it blocked. You can defend China all you want. But it doesn’t change the fact that the CCP is using it to spread propaganda.

b345 4y ago
Anecdotal evidence. Maybe it's what you were recommended based on your watch history or other data points. YouTube recommends me anti-China content all the time.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  YouTube has a lot of anti China and anti US content. But you can block channels and subjects and clean it up. But the difference is anti. US content tends to be fake propaganda. Like claiming covid started in the US and was designed to kill people in China? That’s blatant propaganda. That’s anti US. Talking about the US spending money on gain of function research in Wuhan? That’s just reporting on facts. But I don’t consider that anti US. Anti China content is just facts. If a video comes out saying there’s protesting in China due to zero covid. That’s not fake news. It’s not propaganda. It’s just something happening and CCP bots will scream “anti China anti China” You can’t do that on tiktok. I specifically called out Facebook and Instagram. It’s not flooded to death with propaganda.
  - blackoil 4y ago
    > anti. US content tends to be fake propaganda. > Anti China content is just facts. And you are surprised, you don't find Sinophobia.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      So what you’re saying is. If it’s not positive then it’s Sinophobia.
snehk 4y ago
I just tried it using a VM and a VPN and I cannot reproduce your claim. Searching for "covid" and "corona", for example, literally shows me the current videos about China's crackdown on recent protests from Vice, FlashNews Australia and Sky News (as well as citizen videos from those events) as the top result. Nothing that would paint China in a positive light in any way.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  I tried in… October 2021 just after I moved to Taiwan. Friend sent me some video of food fuckup (someone cooking turkey in oil annd setting everything on fire) and so I signed up. Scrolling through i had random videos of one (Chinese) person saying covid originated at fort detrick and blaming China was a US coverup. Another video (Chinese) person saying it originated in deer in the US. Another (Chinese) person saying it started in the US in august 2019 and they took it to China to try kill the Chinese. I deleted tiktok about an hour after signing up so obviously my claim isn’t based on any significant data. And I also don’t claim to say this is prevalent. But I never searched anything. I’m not from the US. And while on YouTube I do watch some content in relation to what’s happening in the US, China, Ukraine, Iran. It’s not a playlist. 98% of what I watch is movie trailers and tech videos. Even on Instagram and Facebook 99% of what I watch is food related. So I don’t expect my experience to be taken as absolute fact that China is spreading a propaganda through tiktok. But it’s my experience and based on the propaganda on YouTube (videos of YouTubers being escorted around the exact same areas in Xinjiang as “proof” there’s no genocide) I think it’s likely that there is some propaganda to paint the US in bad light.

andsoitis 4y ago

> The solution would be regulate all the social media companies, like how China does. Twitter and Facebook are both banned in China, isn’t it? Is that because the CCP is afraid of western ideals if freedom? Or is it protectionism? Put differently, is it because of ideological or because if commercial reasons or perhaps both? Because, to follow your thinking, why does the CCP not simply regulate them using the same rules as is uses for homegrown companies like TikTok?

yorwba 4y ago
> why does the CCP not simply regulate them using the same rules as is uses for homegrown companies like TikTok? They do, which is why TikTok is blocked. Only Douyin, a separate content silo with shared codebase, is allowed to operate. Products by American companies like Facebook or Google Search that are now blocked used to censor the content they made available in China, but then stopped. Other products by American companies, like Microsoft's Bing and Google Ads, continue to censor and continue to operate. People on the English-speaking internet often seem to think that American companies' difficulties operating in China stem from them being specially and unfairly singled out, but the thing is that Chinese companies operating in China have to fight the same obstacles. And the majority of companies trying to make it big in China are Chinese, so they bear the brunt of the burden. When a company building a platform for user-generated content gets more users and more content, that would usually be something for them to celebrate, but in China it also means they need to spend more resources censoring content to remove everything that might displease the government. E.g. HelloTalk, a language-exchange app made by a Chinese company, restricted their Chinese users' accounts in 2020, most likely because some were using the app to talk about censored topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/glf14q/whats_going_on_with_hellotalk_block_against/ https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/glf14q/wh... Other Chinese companies abandon the Chinese market completely and focus on the rest of the world while blocking Chinese users from accessing their product so they don't have to fear getting shut down by the government over lacking censorship.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

It's not that it's owned by Chinese, it's that it is based in China with demonstrated links to the Chinese communist government. It's not sinophobic to distrust the Chinese government. Are the Chinese protestors sinophobes?

s5300 4y ago
>> with demonstrated links to the Chinese communist government. Isn’t this the same for quite nearly anything a Westerner would’ve heard of that comes from China? Genuine question. I thought that was a sort of common knowledge type thing.
nemothekid 4y ago
If you want TikTok banned in the US because they don't have proper data hygiene and you believe that data could be used by the CCP in the future that is fair. If you want TikTok banned in the US because you believe that they promote dumb content as part of some strategic Chinese plot and you conveniently ignore Meta and Google, I'm going to assume that your reasoning comes from irrational fear of the Chinese. It doesn't make sense to distrust the Chinese when they are doing the same thing as Americans (unless you don't like them just because they are Chinese).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  The first one. I agree with your second point.
  - babypuncher 4y ago
    I would argue that the better solution to the first problem is to set strict data hygiene standards to which all social media companies must adhere. The fact that TikTok has ties to the CCP is simply another data point supporting the need for such regulations.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  You seem to try to make everyone sound racist by calling everything Chinese rather than single out the government. People here don’t hate Chinese people. They hate the CCP.