12 ms·

TikTok says it's not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine

86 points by hypeit 3y ago

temurb 3y ago
66% of us voters want a cease fire not just teens. https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2023/10/19/voters-agree-the-us-should-call-for-a-ceasefire-and-de-escalation-of-violence-in-gaza https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2023/10/19/voters-agree...
spaceman_2020 3y ago
Young people are pro underdog - color me surprised!
skymast 3y ago
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cscurmudgeon 3y ago
[flagged]
- Podgajski 3y ago
  I don’t know about you, but I’m capable of lovingthe Jewish people and the Palestinian people at the same time.
  - uxp8u61q 3y ago
    You don't even have to love any of them. Just have a bit of compassion.
    - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      Trust me: you can be compassionate to all and yet question TikTok.
ketzo 3y ago
I mean, young people have been dramatically more pro-Palestine since long before social media. Grain of salt and all, but I don’t think it’s a wild claim on its face, especially once you account for the nature of network effects / filter bubbles.
- wk_end 3y ago
  The problem is that, while young people have been more pro-Palestine for a long time, historically a much smaller percentage were immersing themselves for hours a day in increasingly sensationalist, often misleading pro-Palestinian content; there historically was far less of an incentive to produce or disseminate it. So we quickly go from “pro-Palestine” to “pro-Hamas” to “pro-Osama Bin Laden” to “holocaust denial”. This isn’t exclusively a TikTok problem, or an Israel/Palestine problem, or a young people problem, or a left/right problem. Algorithmic suggestions are extremism generating machines.
  - lalajollyton 3y ago
    Israel is bombing and murdering thousands of Palestinians. That is why people are supporting them, not an algorithm "problem".
    - op00to 3y ago
      Why do teenagers care about this particular tragedy and not Syria or any of the horrors in Africa? Surely it can’t be the scale of killing since there are far worse civilian death tolls in conflicts around the world.
      - lalajollyton 3y ago
        Probably because their president isn't on tv endorsing those horrors, funding them with their tax dollars and in general having their mainstream media champion them.
        deleted 3y ago
gustavus 3y ago
Major Ayn Random vibes from that statement https://xkcd.com/1277/ https://xkcd.com/1277/
everdrive 3y ago
I don’t trust TikTok, but that’s not the same thing as saying they’re never capable of telling the truth. I find this claim plausible on its face, but I’m not sure any of us have any way to confirm or deny it.
- tehjoker 3y ago
  frankly, given the major media is in the tank for Israeli war crimes, I wouldn't care if TikTok was biased in the opposite direction, but they probably aren't. Youth are far more sympathetic to Palestine on nearly every survey.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Didn't BBC have a bunch of retractions when they were caught lying against Israel. BBC is probably the most influential media globally. https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/bbc-apologizes-israel-hamas-war-misreporting-shifa-target-medical-staff-1235791281/ https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/bbc-apologizes-israel-ham...
  - catlover76 3y ago
    Not to mention a lot of us are in the US, and the international perception of deliberately bombing a civilian population, turning off its water supply, etc., in retaliation for a terrorist attack (however brutal and big) is much more dim than most American media outlets and power-holders want people to believe. I think the rest of the world is looking at the situation a lot more realistically, and is fully aware that a lot of the civilian deaths in Gaza are part of the point, and not mere collateral damage. By American standards, thinking that the life of a Palestinian child has equal moral worth to that of an Israeli child is a non-mainstream opinion.
    - stillwithit 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - catlover76 3y ago
apwell23 3y ago
makes sense. ppl root for the underdog.
- viraptor 3y ago
  That's a shallow take. How about: people learned about the situation between Palestine and Israel and root for human rights and ability to live in safety.
  - evantbyrne 3y ago
    The entire conflict has been a staging ground for juvenile takes. From people demanding one side agree to a ceasefire that the other side never even offered to others calling for indiscriminate attacks on civilians on both sides. At best it is a lot of tough talk from ignorant people with zero skin in the game. The IDF and Hamas are just going to do whatever they think gives them maximum advantage while the world remains hands-off.
    - aae42 3y ago
      The world has devolved into juvenile takes.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      > while the world remains hands-off The world is not hands-off right now. Or specifically, there's a number of countries involved in effectively helping Israel's aggression.
      - evantbyrne 3y ago
        The international community has been nurturing the dysfunctional status quo for some time in hopes of a two-state solution. With one hand providing weaponry to Israel–usually but not always defensive equipment like AA–and with the other billions in humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile other foreign actors have been funding the insurgency in Gaza to disrupt peace efforts. It's a very messy situation where the state of Israel has both committed crimes against Palestinians and is simultaneously presently unable to just go hands-off as foreign actors have demanded.
variant 3y ago
[flagged]
xyzelement 3y ago
It’s about the same as saying “kids just want to drink Tide pods nowadays.” There’s definitely something wrong with kids who do it but you can’t deny that TikTok is where it gets coordinated. If your kid is on TikTok all day and gets all their information there, you can’t really separate their belief from the contents they see.
- lalajollyton 3y ago
  Supporting Palestinians is nothing like the Tide pod challenge. Anyone who cares about human right should be extremely concerned about what Israel is doing right now.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    It’s actually quite simple. Israel was out of Gaza for years prior to Oct 7. On Oct 7, Hamas targeted over 1.5 thousand civilians including babies and the aged for slaughter and kidnapping. Resulting in a military operation to suppress Hamas. So yes if your level of nuance on this is “Israel is hurting human rights, ceasefire now” and you are oblivious to who broke the ceasefire and how, then it’s not that different than making you drink Tide.
    - explaininjs 3y ago
      Can you identify data that supports your claim? Here’s a good site to start: https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/ https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/
      - xyzelement 3y ago
        Sure look at the chart in your link called people killed per year. That number was very low between 2014 and 2023 until the ceasefire was shatters by hamas this October
        explaininjs 3y ago
proxiful-wash 3y ago
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some-guy 3y ago
It’s not just young teens generally: my wife is involved in left-wing Jewish organizations in the United States and young Jews are increasingly more skeptical of Israel’s importance to their Jewish identity. I wouldn’t say it’s quite a majority at this point but it’s a sizable enough chunk that they’re starting to become noticed by mainstream media outlets.
- Der_Einzige 3y ago
  The least isreal supporting senator in the USA is coincidentally the only ethnically Jewish one as well, Bernie Sanders. The Jewish left has always been isreal skeptic, including the Jewish left within isreal.
  - naveen99 3y ago
    Makes sense, the skeptics went to the new world, the believers to the promised land. Glad to have the skeptics on the team.
  - nkurz 3y ago
    It is an interesting point about Sanders, but are you sure he is the "only ethnically Jewish" senator? This site seems to say there are about a half-dozen other Jewish senators currently serving: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-senators-in-the-united-states https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-senators-in-the-.... Are you using a definition of "ethnically" that makes your statement true?
- dillydogg 3y ago
  This is so interesting to hear. I am not Jewish, but am interested in asking my Jewish colleagues what they think about the war. But not interested--or close--enough to them to ask them about this. I think I'll search for more young Jewish perspectives around the web. It is complex in some ways, though to be clear the nature of the assault on Gaza seems hard to justify from my view.
- scythe 3y ago
  The last time that Israel was seriously threatened by the Arab countries was in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Anyone old enough to remember that clearly is also old enough to retire. Since then the pattern has been that Israel retaliates massively to losses of a handful of people — until October 7 at least. If your understanding of the situation starts in medias res like that it's practically impossible to have sympathy for the Israeli argument that they live under the constant threat of destruction.
bparsons 3y ago
This may be true, but we have no idea until these companies open up their algorithms for scrutiny. The ability to press a button and cause social, political and economic chaos around the world is too much power to entrust to anybody.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
How could any empathic person not be pro-5.2 million refugees? Downvote me to death, I don't care, but have the courage to explain why you're downvoting.
- insanitybit 3y ago
  That's not an argument, it's an emotional appeal. Hence downvoting.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    And the other upvoted commenters saying the refugee (their intl-recognized status) population are terrorists, is that just cold facts rather than emotion?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - insanitybit 3y ago
      Who cares? I'm telling you why your low-effort, low-content emotional appeal is getting my downvote.
  - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    Are emotions not a valid reason for caring about things, or doing things? Why care about genocide at all if you don't consider emotion? It's just sacks of meat getting destroyed, like cows, pigs, lambs. Why should we care if any living creature is killed, oppressed, suffers? Emotion. It drives us to reason one way rather than another. Emotion drives us to make killing dogs illegal, while killing fish, birds, other mammals, etc is done by the millions every day. There's no logic to religious debate as all religion is made up superstition. There's no logic to allowing one group of people to keep some land and not others other than the rationale that whoever has the bigger gun is allowed to keep the land. There's no logic to retaliation at all, because it's circular reasoning. So, yeah, it's an appeal to emotion. Otherwise what the hell is the point of caring about any death? Logic will never stop the killing. Logic will never be able to come up with "a solution" that is acceptable to the human psyche. But emotion can.
lehi 3y ago
"TikTok was slammed for its pro-Palestinian hashtags... But Facebook and Instagram show the same imbalance." - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-facebook-instagram-gaza-hastags/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-...
- mrtksn 3y ago
  It may indicate that the hashtags are created by the users and not by the platform. Needs further research. /s
  - JackRumford 3y ago
    Concerning /s
fimdomeio 3y ago
What do you see on social media? On Instagram, I only see pro Palestinian posts. I might have seen 2 pro Israel posts since this whole thing started. Just for reference I'm from Portugal and my network surely skews a lot towards left-wing people.
- explaininjs 3y ago
  On X I went through and blocked a bunch of popular accounts that I previously had no real attraction to but was fine with seeing in my “For You” page every now and then, after they went full pro-Israel (Growing Daniel, Eigenrobot, some others probably). After that the feed was generally pro-Palestinian. But I also just grew sick of seeing all the war in general and logged out of X on all my devices and deleted the credentials from my password manager. I feel better off without it.
firefoxd 3y ago
That's like saying young people being against the Vietnam war was a product of media bias. Maybe it was true, and it was a good thing.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Many here would have said it's a complicated both sides issue (such as framing it as terrorists vs colonizers) and that neither side can be supported, given their current stances evident in this thread. Do you condemn the Viet Cong? Did their choice to use violence justify America's violence against them?
  - flandish 3y ago
    America’s entry into Vietnam was based on manufactured consent and lies like the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Heck, Laos wasn’t ever involved as a “bad actor” yet ended up the most bombed country in the history of the world. You can thank Kissinger for that. In short: America was the bad guy.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      No kidding lmao. That’s my point. But even with how bad a reputation that war has, growing up in America I seemed to learn points that demonized the resistance, painting their tactics as evil terrorism, their government as corrupt terrorist-leaders, their civilians all implicated as terrorist fighters, etc
      - flandish 3y ago
        Indeed, all of that is part of the formula of which you speak. It is, in my mind, all the more reason to take with distrust anything any nation state says about its needs, goals, and “self defense.” Palestine, for instance, is an invaded nation. If one can claim Ukraine deserves to defend itself, one has to also claim Palestine has the same rights. But… marketing and prop/agitprop makes one believe otherwise.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
Been remarkable to see various political commentators freak out about this, lunging to conspiracy theories that Tiktok is brainwashing people, then immediately pivot to attacking the US government for not being in control of its own brainwashing social media service. The polling is pretty clear. The public, especially the young public, has moved on this issue and is out of step with the positions of the elderly political class. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/israel-hamas-gaza-canadians-polling-1.7022927 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/israel-hamas-gaza-canadians...
- op00to 3y ago
  [flagged]
- xk_id 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hypeit 3y ago
    > muslims' characteristic style of graphic violence I think it's this type of rhetoric and thinking that young people are generally against. You malign an entire religion and call them violent. It's also hypocritical considering how many people the west has violently murdered.
    - xk_id 3y ago
      [flagged]
- hbt 3y ago
  hard to call it self defense when they turn 65% of the city into ruble and show zero humanity by cutting off food, water and electricity etc. the level of inhumane treatment approved and supported by the west is what woke a lot of people up.
mrtksn 3y ago
People are not pro Palestine or pro Israel, most people are simply not psychopaths and young don't carry the crystallised opinions of the older generations that "know" who is right and resort to denial when exposed to contradicting information. In social media we have bubbles but these bubbles leak because they form by huge number of categories, that is, someone in the pro-gay rights bubble isn't necessarily in the pro-immigratin bubble for example. This results in people having exposure in multiple types of propaganda, so even if you are huge Shapiro fan you end up listening to Bassem Youssef too. The media needs all the views, not only the libertarians and they actually put them on the same screens. The scary part for me is that in the West, once claiming to be the epicentre of freedom of speech and human dignity, now expects people to be exposed only to the "right" kind of propaganda and its considering the alternative opinions a danger and looking how to limit it. Isn't this McCarthyism 2.0? Those who are only pro-Palestine or pro-Israel are the extremist minority as far as I can tell. Most people are anti human suffering. Now that I feel scared of backlash or getting my account limited once again, I can't even express freely my opinions on the conflict even though I'm very fond of the Jewish culture and even the country of Israel. I feel like I have to make a choice between genocidials and the terrorist. There are active institutions going after people for having the wrong opinion and people who no longer aspire to do great things but to preserve what they own are feeling scared of it. Young people don't feel that.
- catlover76 3y ago
  > most people are simply not psychopaths This. It's not like Emmanuel Macron and the President of Singapore, who have been critical of Israel's actions here (mostly the former), are weird radical lefties, for example. They just recognize the killing of Palestinian civilians for what it is: revenge and retaliation, and a deliberate violation of the kinds of human rights that don't really "exist" unless countries make some attempt at respecting them. Most people, if being honest, and if the victims weren't Palestinian, would recognize that a military action that is basically along the lines of "for every one of our people they killed, we will kill 10 or 20, and won't care if they are old, young, woman, child, and anyone who rejects this is a terrorist sympathizer and wanted our people to be killed", is simply logically and morally unhinged. And if the victims weren't Palestinian and mostly Muslim, and if Hamas wasn't an Islamic extremist organization, people would be less susceptible to the gaslighting about how anyone who is against the killing of Palestinian civilians is "pro-Hamas"
deleted 3y ago
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scottLobster 3y ago
Honestly as a mid-30s millennial I'm pretty "pro-Palestine" when it comes to ending the illegal (by Israeli law no less) settlements in the West bank and ending the open-air prison that is Gaza. Both of those things are just slow genocide, without even a hint of subtlety. Hell multiple authorities in the current Israeli government have made it quite clear that they'd be committing fast genocide if they were allowed. Worth remembering that a sizeable portion of Israel is of Russian origin, and Jewish or not they bring a very culturally Russian approach to problems like this. We can all agree that the leaders of Hamas and those who committed the attacks should burn alive, but frankly the Israeli-imposed conditions in Gaza make the rise of such groups inevitable. Hell it was Netanyahu's stated strategy to "control the height of the flame" of Hamas, an implicit acknowledgement that their existence was inevitable. And I still don't get our outsized military support for Israel. We just deployed two carrier battle groups and an Ohio class sub to their defense at the drop of a hat, no questions asked or concessions demanded. For what? Does anyone seriously think Hezbollah and some lightly armed Iranian proxy groups are an existential threat to Israel? Sure they could do serious damage, but they'd almost certainly lose in a stand-up fight. Honestly it just doesn't make any sense to me. At best we should be imposing strict conditions for our aid to create better conditions for Palestians on the other side, and at worst we should just stay out of it. It's anecdotal but these aren't uncommon opinions among people I know. The only "unconditional support for Israel" people I've met are all over 50.
deleted 3y ago
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tonetheman 3y ago
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CivilWart 3y ago
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sumthingsumthng 3y ago
It's a hype train (am I using the term correctly here?), a trend. Would be nice to trace it back to it's origin. This Hasan-Abi Streamer comes to mind. I only watched like 2 x 5 minutes on two different occasions, on one of which he talked about 9/11 [1], the potential conspiracies of which were a long debated topic back in my Uni days. In those days I learned a bit about the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and since then, for over a decade, watched the media and politicians distorting the history AND the narratives quite a bit. It's easy to create a trend here and it feels very much like the goal is again, polarization. [1] https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/12/09/was-the-now-forgotten-murder-of-one-man-on-september-9-2001-a-crucial-pre-condition-for-9-11/ https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/12/09/was-the-now-forg... "A Force of Distortion: Effects of Media Bias on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpolations/fall-2013spring-2014/force-distortion-effects-media https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpo... "The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, And The Media" https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvddzjvr https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvddzjvr "Media Bias in Covering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: With a Case Study of BBC Coverage and Its Foundation of Impartiality" https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1296&context=honors_capstone https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1296&con...
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Was the massive wave of support for Ukraine a hype train? I mean, I guess so but my point is that it still has nothing to do with some sort of conspiracy theory. Maybe there's no narrative distortion, people really just do support them?
2-718-281-828 3y ago
tiktok is used by the chinese gov to influence western society - why? because they can. but in this case i'd argue that successful pro-israeli propaganda would be more destabilizing and in china's favor.
GoodJokes 3y ago
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parineum 3y ago
There are 3 distinct positions one can take in this situation that all get wrapped up together and cause people to talk past each other. You can support Israel. You can support Palestine. You can support Hamas. Not wanting Palestinians to die by the hands of Israelis is conflated with Pro-Hamas by Israel supporters. I categorically don't support Hamas while also being incredibly skeptical of Israel's current actions but I'm also familiar with the various bad faith efforts at peace from both Israel and Palestinians that have bolstered Hamas. The people that leave a bad taste in my mouth are the ones all in for any if those three groups that fail to see their shortcomings. Luckily I don't think there are that many of those but I do think that the Hamas/Palestine side of that is primarily the young left and the Israel side is primarily older but still, both are a vocal minority.
- xk_id 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ADuckOnQuack 3y ago
    Your link is dead... but the idea that the "vast majority" of Palestinians support a group that was elected way back in 2004, then immediately dismantled elections violently attacks any dissenters is laughable, Palestinians were bravely publicly protesting hamas (again, a group known for executing dissenters) just 4 months before the attacks, internal support for hamas is not high. https://apnews.com/article/gaza-hamas-demonstration-israel-blockade-palestinians-306b19228f9dd21f1036386ce3709672 https://apnews.com/article/gaza-hamas-demonstration-israel-b...
    - xk_id 3y ago
      Link fixed. The source actually adds the nuance you mentioned. I guess it's possible they might oppose the Hamas rule, but also support the graphic violence of Oct 7th.
- hbt 3y ago
  people tend to simplify things too much. you can support post zionist voices in the Israel Knesset advocating for reform while still condemning Israel apartheid state and the zionist lobby influence in western countries. You can support the Palestinian Resistance against the military occupation while still condemning terrorist tactics.
codewiz 3y ago
Why was this flagged?
Ajay-p 3y ago
Youth is easily impressionable. That is not to say pro-Palestine is a bad thing, but young minds are easily impressionable, for good and for bad.
vpastore 3y ago
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bayat 3y ago
I think, in his recent podcast, Ezra Klein eloquently explained why young Americans have a less favourable view of Israel: “Maybe I’ll start here. I think something we’re seeing in the politics in America around Israel right now, I think it reflects three generations with very different lived experiences of what Israel is. You have older Americans, say, Joe Biden, who saw Israel as the haven for the Jews and who also saw Israel when it was weak and small, when it really could have been wiped off the map by its neighbors.” “We also knew an Israel that was an occupying force, a country that could and did impose its will on Palestinians, and I don’t want to be euphemistic about this, an Israel in which Palestinians were an oppressed class, where their lives and their security and their freedom were worth less. But we also knew an Israel that had a strong peace movement, where the moral horror of that occupation was widely recognized. We knew an Israel where the leaders were trying imperfectly, but seriously and continuously, to become something better, to become something different, to become in the eyes of the world what Israel was in its own eyes, a Jewish state, but a humane and moral one.” “And so now you have this generation, the one coming of age now, the one that has only known this Israel, Netanyahu’s Israel, Ben-Gvir’s Israel.” “There is this Pew survey in 2022 that I find really telling. It found that 69 percent of Americans over age 65 had a favorable view of Israel, but among Americans between ages 18 and 29, young Americans, 56 percent had an unfavorable view. As it happens, American politics right now is dominated by people over 65, but it won’t be forever” “And there are many of us who warned of this exact thing happening, who said, if you lose moral legitimacy, you will not have the world’s good will when you need it most, who said it is a problem for the Jewish state to not be seen, to not be a moral state.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-sharon-brous.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...
- jjj123 3y ago
  Wow, I really disagree with this framing! I find the mass media (Ezra Klein included) like to frame things in terms of this big bad far-right government that’s making Israel do bad things. To me, that’s a totally separate issue from the Israeli apartheid. I admittedly am young, but my introduction to this topic was through Chomsky’s writing from the 80s and 90s. The Israeli oppression seemed exactly as bad back then as it does now under this far right government. If somehow Netanyahu gets replaced by a “sensible centrist” leader who still practices apartheid in exactly the same way, I guarantee you Ezra will be fawning over the new guy and the media will try and frame it as a “new era for Israeli-Palestinian relations”.

86 points by hypeit 3y ago

66% of us voters want a cease fire not just teens. https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2023/10/19/voters-agree-the-us-should-call-for-a-ceasefire-and-de-escalation-of-violence-in-gaza https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2023/10/19/voters-agree...

spaceman_2020 3y ago

Young people are pro underdog - color me surprised!

skymast 3y ago

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cscurmudgeon 3y ago

[flagged]

Podgajski 3y ago
I don’t know about you, but I’m capable of lovingthe Jewish people and the Palestinian people at the same time.
- uxp8u61q 3y ago
  You don't even have to love any of them. Just have a bit of compassion.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Trust me: you can be compassionate to all and yet question TikTok.

ketzo 3y ago

I mean, young people have been dramatically more pro-Palestine since long before social media. Grain of salt and all, but I don’t think it’s a wild claim on its face, especially once you account for the nature of network effects / filter bubbles.

wk_end 3y ago
The problem is that, while young people have been more pro-Palestine for a long time, historically a much smaller percentage were immersing themselves for hours a day in increasingly sensationalist, often misleading pro-Palestinian content; there historically was far less of an incentive to produce or disseminate it. So we quickly go from “pro-Palestine” to “pro-Hamas” to “pro-Osama Bin Laden” to “holocaust denial”. This isn’t exclusively a TikTok problem, or an Israel/Palestine problem, or a young people problem, or a left/right problem. Algorithmic suggestions are extremism generating machines.
- lalajollyton 3y ago
  Israel is bombing and murdering thousands of Palestinians. That is why people are supporting them, not an algorithm "problem".
  - op00to 3y ago
    Why do teenagers care about this particular tragedy and not Syria or any of the horrors in Africa? Surely it can’t be the scale of killing since there are far worse civilian death tolls in conflicts around the world.
    - lalajollyton 3y ago
      Probably because their president isn't on tv endorsing those horrors, funding them with their tax dollars and in general having their mainstream media champion them.
      - deleted 3y ago

gustavus 3y ago

Major Ayn Random vibes from that statement https://xkcd.com/1277/ https://xkcd.com/1277/

everdrive 3y ago

I don’t trust TikTok, but that’s not the same thing as saying they’re never capable of telling the truth. I find this claim plausible on its face, but I’m not sure any of us have any way to confirm or deny it.

tehjoker 3y ago
frankly, given the major media is in the tank for Israeli war crimes, I wouldn't care if TikTok was biased in the opposite direction, but they probably aren't. Youth are far more sympathetic to Palestine on nearly every survey.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Didn't BBC have a bunch of retractions when they were caught lying against Israel. BBC is probably the most influential media globally. https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/bbc-apologizes-israel-hamas-war-misreporting-shifa-target-medical-staff-1235791281/ https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/bbc-apologizes-israel-ham...
- catlover76 3y ago
  Not to mention a lot of us are in the US, and the international perception of deliberately bombing a civilian population, turning off its water supply, etc., in retaliation for a terrorist attack (however brutal and big) is much more dim than most American media outlets and power-holders want people to believe. I think the rest of the world is looking at the situation a lot more realistically, and is fully aware that a lot of the civilian deaths in Gaza are part of the point, and not mere collateral damage. By American standards, thinking that the life of a Palestinian child has equal moral worth to that of an Israeli child is a non-mainstream opinion.
  - stillwithit 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - catlover76 3y ago

apwell23 3y ago

makes sense. ppl root for the underdog.

viraptor 3y ago
That's a shallow take. How about: people learned about the situation between Palestine and Israel and root for human rights and ability to live in safety.
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  The entire conflict has been a staging ground for juvenile takes. From people demanding one side agree to a ceasefire that the other side never even offered to others calling for indiscriminate attacks on civilians on both sides. At best it is a lot of tough talk from ignorant people with zero skin in the game. The IDF and Hamas are just going to do whatever they think gives them maximum advantage while the world remains hands-off.
  - aae42 3y ago
    The world has devolved into juvenile takes.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    > while the world remains hands-off The world is not hands-off right now. Or specifically, there's a number of countries involved in effectively helping Israel's aggression.
    - evantbyrne 3y ago
      The international community has been nurturing the dysfunctional status quo for some time in hopes of a two-state solution. With one hand providing weaponry to Israel–usually but not always defensive equipment like AA–and with the other billions in humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile other foreign actors have been funding the insurgency in Gaza to disrupt peace efforts. It's a very messy situation where the state of Israel has both committed crimes against Palestinians and is simultaneously presently unable to just go hands-off as foreign actors have demanded.

variant 3y ago

[flagged]

xyzelement 3y ago

It’s about the same as saying “kids just want to drink Tide pods nowadays.” There’s definitely something wrong with kids who do it but you can’t deny that TikTok is where it gets coordinated. If your kid is on TikTok all day and gets all their information there, you can’t really separate their belief from the contents they see.

lalajollyton 3y ago
Supporting Palestinians is nothing like the Tide pod challenge. Anyone who cares about human right should be extremely concerned about what Israel is doing right now.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  It’s actually quite simple. Israel was out of Gaza for years prior to Oct 7. On Oct 7, Hamas targeted over 1.5 thousand civilians including babies and the aged for slaughter and kidnapping. Resulting in a military operation to suppress Hamas. So yes if your level of nuance on this is “Israel is hurting human rights, ceasefire now” and you are oblivious to who broke the ceasefire and how, then it’s not that different than making you drink Tide.
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    Can you identify data that supports your claim? Here’s a good site to start: https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/ https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/
    - xyzelement 3y ago
      Sure look at the chart in your link called people killed per year. That number was very low between 2014 and 2023 until the ceasefire was shatters by hamas this October
      - explaininjs 3y ago

proxiful-wash 3y ago

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some-guy 3y ago

It’s not just young teens generally: my wife is involved in left-wing Jewish organizations in the United States and young Jews are increasingly more skeptical of Israel’s importance to their Jewish identity. I wouldn’t say it’s quite a majority at this point but it’s a sizable enough chunk that they’re starting to become noticed by mainstream media outlets.

Der_Einzige 3y ago
The least isreal supporting senator in the USA is coincidentally the only ethnically Jewish one as well, Bernie Sanders. The Jewish left has always been isreal skeptic, including the Jewish left within isreal.
- naveen99 3y ago
  Makes sense, the skeptics went to the new world, the believers to the promised land. Glad to have the skeptics on the team.
- nkurz 3y ago
  It is an interesting point about Sanders, but are you sure he is the "only ethnically Jewish" senator? This site seems to say there are about a half-dozen other Jewish senators currently serving: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-senators-in-the-united-states https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-senators-in-the-.... Are you using a definition of "ethnically" that makes your statement true?
dillydogg 3y ago
This is so interesting to hear. I am not Jewish, but am interested in asking my Jewish colleagues what they think about the war. But not interested--or close--enough to them to ask them about this. I think I'll search for more young Jewish perspectives around the web. It is complex in some ways, though to be clear the nature of the assault on Gaza seems hard to justify from my view.
scythe 3y ago
The last time that Israel was seriously threatened by the Arab countries was in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Anyone old enough to remember that clearly is also old enough to retire. Since then the pattern has been that Israel retaliates massively to losses of a handful of people — until October 7 at least. If your understanding of the situation starts in medias res like that it's practically impossible to have sympathy for the Israeli argument that they live under the constant threat of destruction.

bparsons 3y ago

This may be true, but we have no idea until these companies open up their algorithms for scrutiny. The ability to press a button and cause social, political and economic chaos around the world is too much power to entrust to anybody.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

How could any empathic person not be pro-5.2 million refugees? Downvote me to death, I don't care, but have the courage to explain why you're downvoting.

insanitybit 3y ago
That's not an argument, it's an emotional appeal. Hence downvoting.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  And the other upvoted commenters saying the refugee (their intl-recognized status) population are terrorists, is that just cold facts rather than emotion?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - insanitybit 3y ago
    Who cares? I'm telling you why your low-effort, low-content emotional appeal is getting my downvote.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  Are emotions not a valid reason for caring about things, or doing things? Why care about genocide at all if you don't consider emotion? It's just sacks of meat getting destroyed, like cows, pigs, lambs. Why should we care if any living creature is killed, oppressed, suffers? Emotion. It drives us to reason one way rather than another. Emotion drives us to make killing dogs illegal, while killing fish, birds, other mammals, etc is done by the millions every day. There's no logic to religious debate as all religion is made up superstition. There's no logic to allowing one group of people to keep some land and not others other than the rationale that whoever has the bigger gun is allowed to keep the land. There's no logic to retaliation at all, because it's circular reasoning. So, yeah, it's an appeal to emotion. Otherwise what the hell is the point of caring about any death? Logic will never stop the killing. Logic will never be able to come up with "a solution" that is acceptable to the human psyche. But emotion can.

lehi 3y ago

"TikTok was slammed for its pro-Palestinian hashtags... But Facebook and Instagram show the same imbalance." - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-facebook-instagram-gaza-hastags/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-...

mrtksn 3y ago
It may indicate that the hashtags are created by the users and not by the platform. Needs further research. /s
- JackRumford 3y ago
  Concerning /s

fimdomeio 3y ago

What do you see on social media? On Instagram, I only see pro Palestinian posts. I might have seen 2 pro Israel posts since this whole thing started. Just for reference I'm from Portugal and my network surely skews a lot towards left-wing people.

explaininjs 3y ago
On X I went through and blocked a bunch of popular accounts that I previously had no real attraction to but was fine with seeing in my “For You” page every now and then, after they went full pro-Israel (Growing Daniel, Eigenrobot, some others probably). After that the feed was generally pro-Palestinian. But I also just grew sick of seeing all the war in general and logged out of X on all my devices and deleted the credentials from my password manager. I feel better off without it.

firefoxd 3y ago

That's like saying young people being against the Vietnam war was a product of media bias. Maybe it was true, and it was a good thing.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
Many here would have said it's a complicated both sides issue (such as framing it as terrorists vs colonizers) and that neither side can be supported, given their current stances evident in this thread. Do you condemn the Viet Cong? Did their choice to use violence justify America's violence against them?
- flandish 3y ago
  America’s entry into Vietnam was based on manufactured consent and lies like the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Heck, Laos wasn’t ever involved as a “bad actor” yet ended up the most bombed country in the history of the world. You can thank Kissinger for that. In short: America was the bad guy.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    No kidding lmao. That’s my point. But even with how bad a reputation that war has, growing up in America I seemed to learn points that demonized the resistance, painting their tactics as evil terrorism, their government as corrupt terrorist-leaders, their civilians all implicated as terrorist fighters, etc
    - flandish 3y ago
      Indeed, all of that is part of the formula of which you speak. It is, in my mind, all the more reason to take with distrust anything any nation state says about its needs, goals, and “self defense.” Palestine, for instance, is an invaded nation. If one can claim Ukraine deserves to defend itself, one has to also claim Palestine has the same rights. But… marketing and prop/agitprop makes one believe otherwise.

Tiktaalik 3y ago

Been remarkable to see various political commentators freak out about this, lunging to conspiracy theories that Tiktok is brainwashing people, then immediately pivot to attacking the US government for not being in control of its own brainwashing social media service. The polling is pretty clear. The public, especially the young public, has moved on this issue and is out of step with the positions of the elderly political class. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/israel-hamas-gaza-canadians-polling-1.7022927 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/israel-hamas-gaza-canadians...

op00to 3y ago
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xk_id 3y ago
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- hypeit 3y ago
  > muslims' characteristic style of graphic violence I think it's this type of rhetoric and thinking that young people are generally against. You malign an entire religion and call them violent. It's also hypocritical considering how many people the west has violently murdered.
  - xk_id 3y ago
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hbt 3y ago
hard to call it self defense when they turn 65% of the city into ruble and show zero humanity by cutting off food, water and electricity etc. the level of inhumane treatment approved and supported by the west is what woke a lot of people up.

mrtksn 3y ago

People are not pro Palestine or pro Israel, most people are simply not psychopaths and young don't carry the crystallised opinions of the older generations that "know" who is right and resort to denial when exposed to contradicting information. In social media we have bubbles but these bubbles leak because they form by huge number of categories, that is, someone in the pro-gay rights bubble isn't necessarily in the pro-immigratin bubble for example. This results in people having exposure in multiple types of propaganda, so even if you are huge Shapiro fan you end up listening to Bassem Youssef too. The media needs all the views, not only the libertarians and they actually put them on the same screens. The scary part for me is that in the West, once claiming to be the epicentre of freedom of speech and human dignity, now expects people to be exposed only to the "right" kind of propaganda and its considering the alternative opinions a danger and looking how to limit it. Isn't this McCarthyism 2.0? Those who are only pro-Palestine or pro-Israel are the extremist minority as far as I can tell. Most people are anti human suffering. Now that I feel scared of backlash or getting my account limited once again, I can't even express freely my opinions on the conflict even though I'm very fond of the Jewish culture and even the country of Israel. I feel like I have to make a choice between genocidials and the terrorist. There are active institutions going after people for having the wrong opinion and people who no longer aspire to do great things but to preserve what they own are feeling scared of it. Young people don't feel that.

catlover76 3y ago
> most people are simply not psychopaths This. It's not like Emmanuel Macron and the President of Singapore, who have been critical of Israel's actions here (mostly the former), are weird radical lefties, for example. They just recognize the killing of Palestinian civilians for what it is: revenge and retaliation, and a deliberate violation of the kinds of human rights that don't really "exist" unless countries make some attempt at respecting them. Most people, if being honest, and if the victims weren't Palestinian, would recognize that a military action that is basically along the lines of "for every one of our people they killed, we will kill 10 or 20, and won't care if they are old, young, woman, child, and anyone who rejects this is a terrorist sympathizer and wanted our people to be killed", is simply logically and morally unhinged. And if the victims weren't Palestinian and mostly Muslim, and if Hamas wasn't an Islamic extremist organization, people would be less susceptible to the gaslighting about how anyone who is against the killing of Palestinian civilians is "pro-Hamas"

deleted 3y ago

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scottLobster 3y ago

Honestly as a mid-30s millennial I'm pretty "pro-Palestine" when it comes to ending the illegal (by Israeli law no less) settlements in the West bank and ending the open-air prison that is Gaza. Both of those things are just slow genocide, without even a hint of subtlety. Hell multiple authorities in the current Israeli government have made it quite clear that they'd be committing fast genocide if they were allowed. Worth remembering that a sizeable portion of Israel is of Russian origin, and Jewish or not they bring a very culturally Russian approach to problems like this. We can all agree that the leaders of Hamas and those who committed the attacks should burn alive, but frankly the Israeli-imposed conditions in Gaza make the rise of such groups inevitable. Hell it was Netanyahu's stated strategy to "control the height of the flame" of Hamas, an implicit acknowledgement that their existence was inevitable. And I still don't get our outsized military support for Israel. We just deployed two carrier battle groups and an Ohio class sub to their defense at the drop of a hat, no questions asked or concessions demanded. For what? Does anyone seriously think Hezbollah and some lightly armed Iranian proxy groups are an existential threat to Israel? Sure they could do serious damage, but they'd almost certainly lose in a stand-up fight. Honestly it just doesn't make any sense to me. At best we should be imposing strict conditions for our aid to create better conditions for Palestians on the other side, and at worst we should just stay out of it. It's anecdotal but these aren't uncommon opinions among people I know. The only "unconditional support for Israel" people I've met are all over 50.

deleted 3y ago

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tonetheman 3y ago

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CivilWart 3y ago

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sumthingsumthng 3y ago

It's a hype train (am I using the term correctly here?), a trend. Would be nice to trace it back to it's origin. This Hasan-Abi Streamer comes to mind. I only watched like 2 x 5 minutes on two different occasions, on one of which he talked about 9/11 [1], the potential conspiracies of which were a long debated topic back in my Uni days. In those days I learned a bit about the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and since then, for over a decade, watched the media and politicians distorting the history AND the narratives quite a bit. It's easy to create a trend here and it feels very much like the goal is again, polarization. [1] https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/12/09/was-the-now-forgotten-murder-of-one-man-on-september-9-2001-a-crucial-pre-condition-for-9-11/ https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/12/09/was-the-now-forg... "A Force of Distortion: Effects of Media Bias on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpolations/fall-2013spring-2014/force-distortion-effects-media https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpo... "The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, And The Media" https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvddzjvr https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvddzjvr "Media Bias in Covering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: With a Case Study of BBC Coverage and Its Foundation of Impartiality" https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1296&context=honors_capstone https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1296&con...

mardifoufs 3y ago
Was the massive wave of support for Ukraine a hype train? I mean, I guess so but my point is that it still has nothing to do with some sort of conspiracy theory. Maybe there's no narrative distortion, people really just do support them?

2-718-281-828 3y ago

tiktok is used by the chinese gov to influence western society - why? because they can. but in this case i'd argue that successful pro-israeli propaganda would be more destabilizing and in china's favor.

GoodJokes 3y ago

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parineum 3y ago

There are 3 distinct positions one can take in this situation that all get wrapped up together and cause people to talk past each other. You can support Israel. You can support Palestine. You can support Hamas. Not wanting Palestinians to die by the hands of Israelis is conflated with Pro-Hamas by Israel supporters. I categorically don't support Hamas while also being incredibly skeptical of Israel's current actions but I'm also familiar with the various bad faith efforts at peace from both Israel and Palestinians that have bolstered Hamas. The people that leave a bad taste in my mouth are the ones all in for any if those three groups that fail to see their shortcomings. Luckily I don't think there are that many of those but I do think that the Hamas/Palestine side of that is primarily the young left and the Israel side is primarily older but still, both are a vocal minority.

xk_id 3y ago
[flagged]
- ADuckOnQuack 3y ago
  Your link is dead... but the idea that the "vast majority" of Palestinians support a group that was elected way back in 2004, then immediately dismantled elections violently attacks any dissenters is laughable, Palestinians were bravely publicly protesting hamas (again, a group known for executing dissenters) just 4 months before the attacks, internal support for hamas is not high. https://apnews.com/article/gaza-hamas-demonstration-israel-blockade-palestinians-306b19228f9dd21f1036386ce3709672 https://apnews.com/article/gaza-hamas-demonstration-israel-b...
  - xk_id 3y ago
    Link fixed. The source actually adds the nuance you mentioned. I guess it's possible they might oppose the Hamas rule, but also support the graphic violence of Oct 7th.
hbt 3y ago
people tend to simplify things too much. you can support post zionist voices in the Israel Knesset advocating for reform while still condemning Israel apartheid state and the zionist lobby influence in western countries. You can support the Palestinian Resistance against the military occupation while still condemning terrorist tactics.

codewiz 3y ago

Why was this flagged?

Ajay-p 3y ago

Youth is easily impressionable. That is not to say pro-Palestine is a bad thing, but young minds are easily impressionable, for good and for bad.

vpastore 3y ago

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bayat 3y ago

I think, in his recent podcast, Ezra Klein eloquently explained why young Americans have a less favourable view of Israel: “Maybe I’ll start here. I think something we’re seeing in the politics in America around Israel right now, I think it reflects three generations with very different lived experiences of what Israel is. You have older Americans, say, Joe Biden, who saw Israel as the haven for the Jews and who also saw Israel when it was weak and small, when it really could have been wiped off the map by its neighbors.” “We also knew an Israel that was an occupying force, a country that could and did impose its will on Palestinians, and I don’t want to be euphemistic about this, an Israel in which Palestinians were an oppressed class, where their lives and their security and their freedom were worth less. But we also knew an Israel that had a strong peace movement, where the moral horror of that occupation was widely recognized. We knew an Israel where the leaders were trying imperfectly, but seriously and continuously, to become something better, to become something different, to become in the eyes of the world what Israel was in its own eyes, a Jewish state, but a humane and moral one.” “And so now you have this generation, the one coming of age now, the one that has only known this Israel, Netanyahu’s Israel, Ben-Gvir’s Israel.” “There is this Pew survey in 2022 that I find really telling. It found that 69 percent of Americans over age 65 had a favorable view of Israel, but among Americans between ages 18 and 29, young Americans, 56 percent had an unfavorable view. As it happens, American politics right now is dominated by people over 65, but it won’t be forever” “And there are many of us who warned of this exact thing happening, who said, if you lose moral legitimacy, you will not have the world’s good will when you need it most, who said it is a problem for the Jewish state to not be seen, to not be a moral state.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-sharon-brous.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...

jjj123 3y ago
Wow, I really disagree with this framing! I find the mass media (Ezra Klein included) like to frame things in terms of this big bad far-right government that’s making Israel do bad things. To me, that’s a totally separate issue from the Israeli apartheid. I admittedly am young, but my introduction to this topic was through Chomsky’s writing from the 80s and 90s. The Israeli oppression seemed exactly as bad back then as it does now under this far right government. If somehow Netanyahu gets replaced by a “sensible centrist” leader who still practices apartheid in exactly the same way, I guarantee you Ezra will be fawning over the new guy and the media will try and frame it as a “new era for Israeli-Palestinian relations”.