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If you already acknowledge that China (the CCP really; the average Chinese citizen is not complicit) is doing "evil" things — then do you not also acknowledge t

by derefr 3y ago

If you already acknowledge that China (the CCP really; the average Chinese citizen is not complicit) is doing "evil" things — then do you not also acknowledge that one of the "evil" things the CCP does, is to suborn/coerce private Chinese individuals and companies into temporarily acting as foreign propaganda arms for CCP messaging? Even in a country with near-total freedom of speech, why would you knowingly permit a state-backed influence tool from such a known-"evil" country, to have a stranglehold over much of the attention of your civilian population? (Compare/contrast: the Canadian government's inquiry[1] into suspected foreign-state-led tampering of Canadian elections as executed through social-media marketing and psy-ops. Same question: why would any government knowingly permit this, if they had the tools to block it?) [1] https://apnews.com/article/public-inquiry-canada-foreign-interference-china-a630eef29379e8c93a5a52caa3ddd059 https://apnews.com/article/public-inquiry-canada-foreign-int... China is a dystopia, because the CCP combines internal propaganda against the West, with strong filters on Internet, news media, etc., such that it's very difficult (and often illegal) to "be informed" — i.e. to get any idea of what Western thought about China actually is, without the tainted lens of the CCP viewpoint. It's not just that you can't access "US propaganda mouthpieces" in China; you can't access any foreign media reporting about the US in China. Banning one foreign propaganda mouthpiece does not create a dystopia; and in fact, depending on what that propaganda vehicle is stating, can make your own state less dystopian. For the US to become "like China" in how it is manipulating the views of its citizens, it would have to be banning not only all Chinese-owned media (which it is not doing), but also banning any reporting on China from any neutral-third-party country — such that the only way to hear about China would be through US news media that the US government could suborn. Which is... not happening. Also, for the comparison to be valid, the US ban on Tiktok would have to be somehow analogous to China's ban on US news media. Which it's not, because Tiktok is not Chinese news media. (You could say that Douyin is Chinese news media of a sort — insofar as you might call Twitter "American news media." But Tiktok is not Douyin; no Douyin content is accessible on Tiktok.) Tiktok does not give Americans access to a bunch of Chinese-sourced information about China that the US government would want to suppress. Tiktok just does the same thing Instagram or Snapchat does — give Westerners a place to share their short-form content — but with the CCP being able to step in at any point and inject psy-ops or "tune the algorithm" toward their ends, because of their ultimate control over the platform. Rather than thinking of Tiktok as "Chinese news media", I think a more apt way to think about it, is as one of those scam apps that you find on app stores, that has stolen the (decompiled or FOSS) code from a popular app; injected a backdoor into it; and reuploaded it. Tiktok is the higher-effort version of this — it hasn't stolen anything, but instead independently implemented a (basically fungible) competitor to the other apps in its space. But, from the CCP's perspective, it's to the same end: like scam apps, Tiktok redirects Western civilian engagement and attention from apps that the CCP can't touch, into an app that the CCP is able to "nudge" at will.

nemothekid 3y ago
This is only an opinion you can hold if you view the US as exclusively a pious organization that can do no wrong. It's completely bizarre that anyone would use the treatment of the Uyghurs as the beacon of immorality for the chinese, while the US currently bombs more muslims with the efficiency that the CCP could ever dream of. If the China is evil for suppressing all social media for the purpose of spreading propoganda, what do you call what the US is doing with TikTok. Why does the TikTok ban suddenly have so much support when they were the only platform to not explicitly mute pro-palestine voices? With your standard, couldn't the US also be considered a dystopia? I view banning of TikTok as dangerous, especially considering the political climate. Is my "freedom of choice" really freedom if my only choices are thouse controlled US hegemonic powers? If it was instead China that ruled world, and Douyin, WeChat and Weibo were used world wide, would it seem that China is the "free" society, and that America in banning TikTok was the autocratic one? You could even imagine them using Trump as "proof" of dysfunction in our system.
- derefr 3y ago
  > This is only an opinion you can hold if you view the US as exclusively a pious organization that can do no wrong. No? I think you're engaging in very black-and-white thinking yourself. The spectrum from "utopia" to "dystopia" is very wide. I don't think the US is anywhere near the "utopia" side; but China is much further toward the "dystopia" side. A country is an effective dystopia, to the degree that, among other things, its citizens are: • manipulated by the state into not realizing the bad things the state does (both locally and on the world stage); • manipulated by the state into developing a negatively-biased view of countries that oppose that country in conflicts (usually involving many entirely-false beliefs about those countries), where countries neutral to those conflicts would not support those views; • and controlled + influenced by the state into not visiting other countries where they could "learn the truth." China does all three of these things, in the strongest and most active sense. News companies are state-owned or coerced. Citizen journalists are arrested. Individuals sharing things they shouldn't are arrested. People have low social credit scores and can't leave the country by default, and have to earn their way out by presenting as brainwashed. Etc. The US, meanwhile, does some of these things, but in much weaker senses: • the US very well probably manipulates its own mainstream media; but it does nothing to prevent access to foreign news sources (where, again, Tiktok is not a foreign news source — you can't learn anything about China on Tiktok. But you can still read CCP-mouthpiece Chinese MSM outlets like https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ just fine.) • the US suppresses virally-disseminated citizen journalism in the sense of telling social-media services to blacklist keywords in their recommendation algorithms; but they aren't arresting the people who post those things. There is no risk in the US to spreading samizdat — in fact, there is no concept in the US of samizdat, because there is no news or fact that will get you arrested by sharing it. Anyone who wants can join a group chat (even one hosted on a US-based service!) about these topics, and spread info there without a problem. People can put up posters or even run billboards calling for people to join these meetings, and the government won't go around tearing them down. (This is what your much-underappreciated right to "freedom of assembly" gets you!) • Random US citizens have no trouble visiting other countries — even the countries the US doesn't like. You can buy a plane ticket to Beijing right this moment if you like. A US citizen can also legally visit Russia, despite the global sanctions (though you'll have to fly to a neighbouring country and come in via land.) In neither case will this get you in trouble with the US government. It won't even disrupt an application for security clearance. (Also, if you're curious, I'm not American. I'm Canadian. Here in Canada, we have things like hate-speech laws. We believe that there is such a right as "freedom of speech", but that it can come into opposition of other rights — such as the right to one's own safety. Or the right to a fair election.) > Why does the TikTok ban suddenly have so much support when they were the only platform to not explicitly mute pro-palestine voices? Past performance is not indicative of future results. Especially when the past performance is in peacetime, and the future results are in wartime. Which is to say: IMHO the CCP has not yet done any kind of real manipulation through Tiktok. In fact, they've likely encouraged ByteDance to be perfect little boy-scouts and build up as much social trust among Gen Z and Gen Alpha as possible. (Whereas Facebook et al likely were told by the US government to suppress certain sentiments.) The thing the US government fears — the thing any US citizen should fear — isn't any already ongoing manipulation on Tiktok. The thing you should worry about, is what Tiktok would be able to be used as by the CCP, the moment the US starts shooting at China. Tiktok is the corporate equivalent of a sleeper agent. And anyone who believes that a war between the US and China is inevitable, wants to get that sleeper agent out of the room before they wake up.

by derefr 3y ago

nemothekid 3y ago

This is only an opinion you can hold if you view the US as exclusively a pious organization that can do no wrong. It's completely bizarre that anyone would use the treatment of the Uyghurs as the beacon of immorality for the chinese, while the US currently bombs more muslims with the efficiency that the CCP could ever dream of. If the China is evil for suppressing all social media for the purpose of spreading propoganda, what do you call what the US is doing with TikTok. Why does the TikTok ban suddenly have so much support when they were the only platform to not explicitly mute pro-palestine voices? With your standard, couldn't the US also be considered a dystopia? I view banning of TikTok as dangerous, especially considering the political climate. Is my "freedom of choice" really freedom if my only choices are thouse controlled US hegemonic powers? If it was instead China that ruled world, and Douyin, WeChat and Weibo were used world wide, would it seem that China is the "free" society, and that America in banning TikTok was the autocratic one? You could even imagine them using Trump as "proof" of dysfunction in our system.

derefr 3y ago
> This is only an opinion you can hold if you view the US as exclusively a pious organization that can do no wrong. No? I think you're engaging in very black-and-white thinking yourself. The spectrum from "utopia" to "dystopia" is very wide. I don't think the US is anywhere near the "utopia" side; but China is much further toward the "dystopia" side. A country is an effective dystopia, to the degree that, among other things, its citizens are: • manipulated by the state into not realizing the bad things the state does (both locally and on the world stage); • manipulated by the state into developing a negatively-biased view of countries that oppose that country in conflicts (usually involving many entirely-false beliefs about those countries), where countries neutral to those conflicts would not support those views; • and controlled + influenced by the state into not visiting other countries where they could "learn the truth." China does all three of these things, in the strongest and most active sense. News companies are state-owned or coerced. Citizen journalists are arrested. Individuals sharing things they shouldn't are arrested. People have low social credit scores and can't leave the country by default, and have to earn their way out by presenting as brainwashed. Etc. The US, meanwhile, does some of these things, but in much weaker senses: • the US very well probably manipulates its own mainstream media; but it does nothing to prevent access to foreign news sources (where, again, Tiktok is not a foreign news source — you can't learn anything about China on Tiktok. But you can still read CCP-mouthpiece Chinese MSM outlets like https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ just fine.) • the US suppresses virally-disseminated citizen journalism in the sense of telling social-media services to blacklist keywords in their recommendation algorithms; but they aren't arresting the people who post those things. There is no risk in the US to spreading samizdat — in fact, there is no concept in the US of samizdat, because there is no news or fact that will get you arrested by sharing it. Anyone who wants can join a group chat (even one hosted on a US-based service!) about these topics, and spread info there without a problem. People can put up posters or even run billboards calling for people to join these meetings, and the government won't go around tearing them down. (This is what your much-underappreciated right to "freedom of assembly" gets you!) • Random US citizens have no trouble visiting other countries — even the countries the US doesn't like. You can buy a plane ticket to Beijing right this moment if you like. A US citizen can also legally visit Russia, despite the global sanctions (though you'll have to fly to a neighbouring country and come in via land.) In neither case will this get you in trouble with the US government. It won't even disrupt an application for security clearance. (Also, if you're curious, I'm not American. I'm Canadian. Here in Canada, we have things like hate-speech laws. We believe that there is such a right as "freedom of speech", but that it can come into opposition of other rights — such as the right to one's own safety. Or the right to a fair election.) > Why does the TikTok ban suddenly have so much support when they were the only platform to not explicitly mute pro-palestine voices? Past performance is not indicative of future results. Especially when the past performance is in peacetime, and the future results are in wartime. Which is to say: IMHO the CCP has not yet done any kind of real manipulation through Tiktok. In fact, they've likely encouraged ByteDance to be perfect little boy-scouts and build up as much social trust among Gen Z and Gen Alpha as possible. (Whereas Facebook et al likely were told by the US government to suppress certain sentiments.) The thing the US government fears — the thing any US citizen should fear — isn't any already ongoing manipulation on Tiktok. The thing you should worry about, is what Tiktok would be able to be used as by the CCP, the moment the US starts shooting at China. Tiktok is the corporate equivalent of a sleeper agent. And anyone who believes that a war between the US and China is inevitable, wants to get that sleeper agent out of the room before they wake up.