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I tried to make the original statement very fair. I think facebook is definitely a propaganda tool. It's a propaganda tool of its high-level employees and moder

I tried to make the original statement very fair. I think facebook is definitely a propaganda tool. It's a propaganda tool of its high-level employees and moderators, founders and, more recently, US government agencies. The twitter files [1] document pressure from employee culture and various government agencies on twitter, I assume the US government puts the same kind of pressure on facebook. There is absolutely bias. That isn't to say that the bias is bad necessarily, just that it obviously exists and this is isomorphic with it being propaganda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files (I know linking wik as a source is lame but lots of additional links here)

RhodesianHunter 3y ago
The only thing the twitter files showed is that the US government sends requests to Twitter to take down illegal content and misinformation, and sends them "scoops" or other information as they would a news outlet or journalist. You can certainly argue that in this day and age what is "misinformation" has become politicized, but at the end of the day they were only requests. That that has become a conspiracy theory is a testament to the modern right's understanding of events and facts, as seen through the lens of the media they consume.
jrochkind1 3y ago
I agree your original statement was fair and open, btw, my question was meant to be honest too. (And I didn't downvote you!) I think every single institution that exists will have bias, so if we say having bias is isomorphic with being "a propaganda tool", then the term "propaganda tool" isn't very useful anymore, covering too much, and not what people think you are suggesting when you say the term. I guess the interesting thing with tik-tok might be how much influence the Chinese government specifically as an entity has over it's various policies that effect what people see there; but then, I think people discount the influence the US government has over similar US companies too, from overt and more implicit pressure both -- but to literally any company operating in the USA, this isn't meant to be a "conspiracy theory" about say Facebook specifically either. I appreciate you saying FB might indeed be similar... but generally if we say "TikTok is a Chinese propaganda tool" people think we are saying something different than "not too different from Facebook," and also something much more than "there are biases and interests of the people and organizations involved in decision-making, that necessarily effect what they do." Which I don't know, it's not obvious to me anyway, or clear to me that the people who think it's obvious actually know what they're talking about. That there's something much more than this, in any of those cases.

RhodesianHunter 3y ago

The only thing the twitter files showed is that the US government sends requests to Twitter to take down illegal content and misinformation, and sends them "scoops" or other information as they would a news outlet or journalist. You can certainly argue that in this day and age what is "misinformation" has become politicized, but at the end of the day they were only requests. That that has become a conspiracy theory is a testament to the modern right's understanding of events and facts, as seen through the lens of the media they consume.

jrochkind1 3y ago

I agree your original statement was fair and open, btw, my question was meant to be honest too. (And I didn't downvote you!) I think every single institution that exists will have bias, so if we say having bias is isomorphic with being "a propaganda tool", then the term "propaganda tool" isn't very useful anymore, covering too much, and not what people think you are suggesting when you say the term. I guess the interesting thing with tik-tok might be how much influence the Chinese government specifically as an entity has over it's various policies that effect what people see there; but then, I think people discount the influence the US government has over similar US companies too, from overt and more implicit pressure both -- but to literally any company operating in the USA, this isn't meant to be a "conspiracy theory" about say Facebook specifically either. I appreciate you saying FB might indeed be similar... but generally if we say "TikTok is a Chinese propaganda tool" people think we are saying something different than "not too different from Facebook," and also something much more than "there are biases and interests of the people and organizations involved in decision-making, that necessarily effect what they do." Which I don't know, it's not obvious to me anyway, or clear to me that the people who think it's obvious actually know what they're talking about. That there's something much more than this, in any of those cases.