8 ms·

Tiktok's content/users is strongly favorably towards Palestine/against Israel. That's all you need to know to understand why they are trying to ban tiktok now.

hayst4ck 3y ago
During COVID there was the whole ivermectin thing. It turns out ivermectin actually really does statistically improve COVID outcomes, but only in places where it is common for people to have parasitic infections. So there is a truth, but there is also a greater more true truth. It might be true that TikTok was drumming up support for Israel and that's "why" it was banned. On the other hand, the genocide that is definitely happening in Gaza is (rightly) de-legitimizing to the ruling party in Washington and threatens to demoralize their voters, opening up the US to a candidate who has been very clear about ending democracy and constitutional rule. So while it could be that china supports Gaza in a meaningful way (which I very much doubt given their own genocides), it could also be that China is attempting to further agitate political divides and cause chaos. I find it much more believable that China is promoting those stories to hurt the US than to help Gaza.
- nemothekid 3y ago
  >it could also be that China is attempting to further agitate political divides One thing that always seems to be a given, and never challenged (in this narrative) is that China is "boosting" pro-palestine content. However, it seems to me that TikTok is working neutrally, "as designed", and that pro-palestine content is actually popular among TikTok's demographic. China isn't boosting pro-palestine content anymore than they do Love is Blind. I say this because Meta has been accused by the Human Rights Watch[1] of censoring palestine content, and banning TikTok here has subtle big brother vibes here. ByteDance may not "get with the program" and that spells trouble for American soft-power. It's interesting to frame American censorship this way; it's not that America is "censoring" anything, it's that $COUNTRY is "boosting" $CONTENT. [1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
  - kelipso 3y ago
    I think TikTok is the only big social media platform that's not banning (or soft banning) pro-Palestine content. The content is all likelihood is organic and the bans basically result in TikTok being the platform that contains most of the pro-Palestine content.
- arandomusername 3y ago
  > China is promoting those stories to hurt the US than to help Gaza. Can you tell me why you think China promoting stories of Gazan citizens suffering, hurts the US?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    The question isn't why the action would hurt the US, the question is what is the motivating ideology behind the action. I am open to believing it's to provoke engagement and therefore profit which makes TikTok no better than American social media and an agent that profits from the suffering of Gazans. I am open to believing it's to try to further drive dissatisfaction with our government that is wrongly supporting Israel (likely for realpolitik reasons that can't be openly discussed, which still don't justify our support of genocide). I am not at all open to believing it's because China has any empathy for Gazan citizens or belief that genocide is wrong. The "One Israel" policy robs Gazans of statehood. Lack of statehood is a key ingredient to genocide. China has the One China policy explicitly to rob Taiwanese of statehood and therefore make them vulnerable to genocide and/or justify their colonization efforts (as seen in tibet, xinjiang, and hong kong). It very well might be that the US government wants to be able to force their support for genocide and see TikTok as an agent of resistance. That is the small truth. The big truth is that TikTok is a credible threat to American security, a threat China sees as so big that they enacted a ban on foreign social media within their borders with a major and society effecting piece of engineering. The point is that TikTok is like a gun, it is a gun in our enemies hands. It is a gun in the hands of an enemy that is building an army to be used against us. It is a gun in the hands of an entity that has repeatedly and openly said they are willing to do the same thing Israel is doing to Gaza, to Taiwan. I strongly do not believe that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
zrn900 3y ago
What's even hilarious is that those who push this ban are the same people who sanctioned everyone and their dog with the Ukraine war and caused the dollar to lose its foreign exchange currency status. Now they think that by banning TikTok, the content they dont like will go away. Because other networks or proxies dont exist...
_tik_ 3y ago
Are you trying to say this is good or bad? Reddit's worldnews community seems to have a significant number of Israeli supporters, to the point where fake news.
- CommanderData 3y ago
  Reddit is pretty easy to game, a small organised group can push things to the front page with ease, pressure or elect pro-Israel mods, admins and use the anti-Semitism or pro-Hamas card. Israels professional misinformation arm works well on those platforms but for some reason has not been as effective on TikTok evident by how big the pro-Palestine plight is amoung US teens.
  - gbanfalvi 3y ago
    This is because IDF soldiers have been posting extremely disturbing content and it has spread very quickly. A lot of the evidence from the ICJ ruling came from soldiers’ own posts. Israeli leadership has recently met with TikTok and ads have been put up looking for Hebrew-speaking moderators. A guess would be that it’s _not_ to censor pro-Palestinian activists as much as it is to regulate Israeli content that might “give a bad look”.
- arandomusername 3y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
givemeethekeys 3y ago
There has been a movement against Tiktok for longer than the current iteration of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. UK, Canada, Australia, India, among others, have all had some sort of a ban in place for a while.
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  > have all had some sort of a ban in place for a while ... exclusively on government devices.
  - leosanchez 3y ago
    Except India where it is blocked nation wide
- vinnyvichy 3y ago
  See the following report by WSJ that says that the latest bill was initiated by the ADL: https://archive.ph/W9qJr https://archive.ph/W9qJr
- rchaud 3y ago
  Yes, and that 'movement' went absolutely nowhere bill-wise. For the longest time in the US, the proponent of a ban was the DJT administration, which saw it as a threat to their election chances. Suddenly Congress' 500+ members come together like a bipartisan Voltron to draft, vote and pass a bill about Tiktok, matching the speed and urgency of military aid bills for foreign countries? When there is a much more domestically significant border security bill that's been stuck for months, in an election year? It doesn't add up. Congress can make a case for the military aid, it hasn't made one for TT.
  - vinnyvichy 3y ago
    See the following WSJ report to get a picture of how this bill passed so quickly: https://archive.ph/W9qJr https://archive.ph/W9qJr "While the ratio fluctuated, he found that at times it ran 69 to 1 in favor of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags."
latency-guy2 3y ago
That makes sense, Trump in particular had the foresight a few years back in an attempt to enforce a ban, it only got enough through to be banned from government devices and networks. Trump in particular knew that a few years later, Palestine favored users would absolutely seeth in preparation to this news, but not before, strictly because of this. Years in the making, Trump really telegraphed those people. It's never that your unsubstantiated claims are wrong, its that you can never, ever, ever, be wrong, isn't that right?
- arandomusername 3y ago
  And why do you think they are banning tiktok now and not before, when Trump tried?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - latency-guy2 3y ago
    There goes that never ever ever wrong point
CommanderData 3y ago
Other US platforms are doing a pretty good job at suppressing Palestinian voices. Seeing a Israeli lobby group mention TikTok in November last year correlates well with the sudden heightened interest in shutting Tiktok down and replacing it with a pseudo Tiktok. The organic support amoung teens for Palestine is a national security threat.
vinnyvichy 3y ago
The latest bill is exactly this. For substantiation of this point, see the following report by WSJ: https://archive.ph/W9qJr https://archive.ph/W9qJr "While the ratio fluctuated, he found that at times it ran 69 to 1 in favor of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags."

hayst4ck 3y ago

During COVID there was the whole ivermectin thing. It turns out ivermectin actually really does statistically improve COVID outcomes, but only in places where it is common for people to have parasitic infections. So there is a truth, but there is also a greater more true truth. It might be true that TikTok was drumming up support for Israel and that's "why" it was banned. On the other hand, the genocide that is definitely happening in Gaza is (rightly) de-legitimizing to the ruling party in Washington and threatens to demoralize their voters, opening up the US to a candidate who has been very clear about ending democracy and constitutional rule. So while it could be that china supports Gaza in a meaningful way (which I very much doubt given their own genocides), it could also be that China is attempting to further agitate political divides and cause chaos. I find it much more believable that China is promoting those stories to hurt the US than to help Gaza.

nemothekid 3y ago
>it could also be that China is attempting to further agitate political divides One thing that always seems to be a given, and never challenged (in this narrative) is that China is "boosting" pro-palestine content. However, it seems to me that TikTok is working neutrally, "as designed", and that pro-palestine content is actually popular among TikTok's demographic. China isn't boosting pro-palestine content anymore than they do Love is Blind. I say this because Meta has been accused by the Human Rights Watch[1] of censoring palestine content, and banning TikTok here has subtle big brother vibes here. ByteDance may not "get with the program" and that spells trouble for American soft-power. It's interesting to frame American censorship this way; it's not that America is "censoring" anything, it's that $COUNTRY is "boosting" $CONTENT. [1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
- kelipso 3y ago
  I think TikTok is the only big social media platform that's not banning (or soft banning) pro-Palestine content. The content is all likelihood is organic and the bans basically result in TikTok being the platform that contains most of the pro-Palestine content.
arandomusername 3y ago
> China is promoting those stories to hurt the US than to help Gaza. Can you tell me why you think China promoting stories of Gazan citizens suffering, hurts the US?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  The question isn't why the action would hurt the US, the question is what is the motivating ideology behind the action. I am open to believing it's to provoke engagement and therefore profit which makes TikTok no better than American social media and an agent that profits from the suffering of Gazans. I am open to believing it's to try to further drive dissatisfaction with our government that is wrongly supporting Israel (likely for realpolitik reasons that can't be openly discussed, which still don't justify our support of genocide). I am not at all open to believing it's because China has any empathy for Gazan citizens or belief that genocide is wrong. The "One Israel" policy robs Gazans of statehood. Lack of statehood is a key ingredient to genocide. China has the One China policy explicitly to rob Taiwanese of statehood and therefore make them vulnerable to genocide and/or justify their colonization efforts (as seen in tibet, xinjiang, and hong kong). It very well might be that the US government wants to be able to force their support for genocide and see TikTok as an agent of resistance. That is the small truth. The big truth is that TikTok is a credible threat to American security, a threat China sees as so big that they enacted a ban on foreign social media within their borders with a major and society effecting piece of engineering. The point is that TikTok is like a gun, it is a gun in our enemies hands. It is a gun in the hands of an enemy that is building an army to be used against us. It is a gun in the hands of an entity that has repeatedly and openly said they are willing to do the same thing Israel is doing to Gaza, to Taiwan. I strongly do not believe that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

zrn900 3y ago

What's even hilarious is that those who push this ban are the same people who sanctioned everyone and their dog with the Ukraine war and caused the dollar to lose its foreign exchange currency status. Now they think that by banning TikTok, the content they dont like will go away. Because other networks or proxies dont exist...

_tik_ 3y ago

Are you trying to say this is good or bad? Reddit's worldnews community seems to have a significant number of Israeli supporters, to the point where fake news.

CommanderData 3y ago
Reddit is pretty easy to game, a small organised group can push things to the front page with ease, pressure or elect pro-Israel mods, admins and use the anti-Semitism or pro-Hamas card. Israels professional misinformation arm works well on those platforms but for some reason has not been as effective on TikTok evident by how big the pro-Palestine plight is amoung US teens.
- gbanfalvi 3y ago
  This is because IDF soldiers have been posting extremely disturbing content and it has spread very quickly. A lot of the evidence from the ICJ ruling came from soldiers’ own posts. Israeli leadership has recently met with TikTok and ads have been put up looking for Hebrew-speaking moderators. A guess would be that it’s _not_ to censor pro-Palestinian activists as much as it is to regulate Israeli content that might “give a bad look”.
arandomusername 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

givemeethekeys 3y ago

There has been a movement against Tiktok for longer than the current iteration of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. UK, Canada, Australia, India, among others, have all had some sort of a ban in place for a while.

h0l0cube 3y ago
> have all had some sort of a ban in place for a while ... exclusively on government devices.
- leosanchez 3y ago
  Except India where it is blocked nation wide
vinnyvichy 3y ago
See the following report by WSJ that says that the latest bill was initiated by the ADL: https://archive.ph/W9qJr https://archive.ph/W9qJr
rchaud 3y ago
Yes, and that 'movement' went absolutely nowhere bill-wise. For the longest time in the US, the proponent of a ban was the DJT administration, which saw it as a threat to their election chances. Suddenly Congress' 500+ members come together like a bipartisan Voltron to draft, vote and pass a bill about Tiktok, matching the speed and urgency of military aid bills for foreign countries? When there is a much more domestically significant border security bill that's been stuck for months, in an election year? It doesn't add up. Congress can make a case for the military aid, it hasn't made one for TT.
- vinnyvichy 3y ago
  See the following WSJ report to get a picture of how this bill passed so quickly: https://archive.ph/W9qJr https://archive.ph/W9qJr "While the ratio fluctuated, he found that at times it ran 69 to 1 in favor of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags."

latency-guy2 3y ago

That makes sense, Trump in particular had the foresight a few years back in an attempt to enforce a ban, it only got enough through to be banned from government devices and networks. Trump in particular knew that a few years later, Palestine favored users would absolutely seeth in preparation to this news, but not before, strictly because of this. Years in the making, Trump really telegraphed those people. It's never that your unsubstantiated claims are wrong, its that you can never, ever, ever, be wrong, isn't that right?

arandomusername 3y ago
And why do you think they are banning tiktok now and not before, when Trump tried?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- latency-guy2 3y ago
  There goes that never ever ever wrong point

CommanderData 3y ago

Other US platforms are doing a pretty good job at suppressing Palestinian voices. Seeing a Israeli lobby group mention TikTok in November last year correlates well with the sudden heightened interest in shutting Tiktok down and replacing it with a pseudo Tiktok. The organic support amoung teens for Palestine is a national security threat.

vinnyvichy 3y ago

The latest bill is exactly this. For substantiation of this point, see the following report by WSJ: https://archive.ph/W9qJr https://archive.ph/W9qJr "While the ratio fluctuated, he found that at times it ran 69 to 1 in favor of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags."