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It’s your people who decide to see it, not a foreign govt. Chinese media like cnn and nyt exist, no need to imagine either that or the situation where China buy
by wruza 2y ago
It’s your people who decide to see it, not a foreign govt. Chinese media like cnn and nyt exist, no need to imagine either that or the situation where China buys cnn and nyt and gosh now you have to watch their propaganda.
The essence is, by denying agency of your country’s users, you deny the whole set of ideas it bases on. If that’s a natural vulnerability of the ideology, addressing it by banning media is a patch over a bleeding wound.
Canadian teens will simply learn about VPN, like they always do in other countries which ban internet resources. Not a single one of them will leave tiktok.
- a123b456c 2y agoYou might reasonably be describing the current TikTok algorithm, but companies often modify algorithms over time.
- octacat 2y agoSure, so ban when they change the algorithm. But for some political powers even a current algorithm is a threat, because they cannot control it (like they could do with the local media).
- throw-the-towel 2y agoBut how would the gov't know they changed the algorithm? It's not like TikTok sends newsletters to the House of Commons.
- octacat 2y agoThey could request an audit (and ban if tiktok refuses). They could monitor the results they are getting in the recommendations based on specific list of criteria. They could propose moderation rules tiktok would have to follow (kinda similar to how it operates in China - they have a different algorithm there). They could request tiktok servers to be in Canada.
- wruza 2y agoI think you're misreading my comment. I find the threat real and probably already in action. My key point is that hard-banning a popular resource in a country without a DPI-like firewall is just a national security theater with no effect. Take an example from Russia - instead of banning youtube, they just make it crawl and stutter, so fully controlled rutube/dzen/etc start to seem more viable, but it's not too bad to decide to go full VPN. Non-technical people don't even realize that it happens and write it off as some youtube-related network issues. Of course that is an awful attack on freedom, but you can get real or get rekt.
- gruez 2y ago>It’s your people who decide to see it, not a foreign govt The threat is that it silently engages in manipulation, rather than something like RT or New York Times where the bias is well known ahead of time.
- wruza 2y agoChinese political bias is well-known ahead of time.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoBut it's manipulation by showing Americans stuff other Americans are saying. If Americans want to see that, they can. If they didn't want to, it wouldn't be popular. And why is the government allowed to restrict popular narrative sharing between Americans?
- lukan 2y ago"But it's manipulation by showing Americans stuff other Americans are saying. " I do not consume TikTok, but I believe it works international? Also I don't see the point, because there are americans saying, we should be friends with communist china and become like them. By giving those ideas more room - whenever they want, they can shape the discourse. Shape what people think what the majority thinks. (Most don't actually think much themself, but try to figure out, how to think like the group - they are the targets and their vote counts the same)
- aprilthird2021 2y ago> Also I don't see the point, because there are americans saying, we should be friends with communist china and become like them. By giving those ideas more room - whenever they want, they can shape the discourse. That's called free speech. Horrible, terrible ideas are given room, and we trust people to figure it out. Hell, many many Americans became vaccine skeptics because they were drawn into RFK talking points. That's dangerous too, but free speech is more important than forcing everyone to be good or have good, safe opinions