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Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on Ti

by kelnos 2y ago

Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.

Fornax96 2y ago
Who says the US isn't controlling the narrative on US social media?
- corimaith 2y ago
  Sure are alot of people insinuating they are
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Half of US social media (and more than half of Twitter) is saying US controls the narrative on US social media and something should be done about it. describe logical knots required to explain why that is the narrative if US controls the narrative? As a Russian people from the West saying how it's total censorship and totalitarianism amuse me. And I see how totalitarian and censored regimes are using of the lack of censorship with great success.
berdario 2y ago
> any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms That wholly depends on what are the other platforms. Meta's platforms for example are pretty heavy handed in their censorship: 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/... And Youtube is not that much better. To be fair, some of the same voices that get censored on US platforms are also getting censored on TikTok (though I currently cannot find the posts or articles that highlighted the issue)
rightbyte 2y ago
> Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. My take is that the elite was shocked the American youth is vaning in their Israel support and that they want algorithmic feeds that are sionist. Simple as that.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Well thankfully that ship has sailed. Tiktok has nothing to do with it either, America's youth by in large cast off the zionist evangelical brand of Christianity the babyboomers love so much. This has been going on for decades, tiktok isn't responsible for it. Anyway, I don't think this is the reason for the tiktok ban. The zionists have lost control of the narrative on American platforms too, they know it, and they have no actionable plan for getting it back. I think the tiktok ban is instead motivated by concerns for what a PRC controlled tiktok could do to military recruitment. Military recruitment hinges on appealing to teenagers, making tiktok a particular threat to the American government. Sending teenagers videos of drones dropping grenades on helpless wounded soldiers can't be canceled out by flying cool military jets over sportsball games.
- pixelsort 2y ago
  Any evidence potentially supporting that? To me it seems that every time a congress critter gets briefed behind closed doors they come out resolved to ban TikTok. Therefore, most likely, the Chinese probably have some insidious goal like profiling every American to ever post online.
- shlant 2y ago
  I really need to coin the phenomenon of when people attribute the reasoning for something happening as being due to the current thing they care about. I see it so often. Some sort of specific confirmation bias.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Are you refering to me or 'the elite'? I think some sort of 'bias' is the term. Narrative bias? Opportunity bias? 'China' was the main reason but Gaza tipped the scale, I would say.
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
>any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. That's the arguments right wingers make about why flag burning should be a crime as there are other ways to express displeasure with the country it represents. IIRC, Robert Bork was a proponent of this line of thinking.
franczesko 2y ago
"any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms" Tiktok is not banning certain topics, as other platforms do The elephant in the room, is that content on Tiktok is served algorithmicaly, so if majority of population prefer to watch brainwash content, it's due to their choice, not algorithm's
- Retric 2y ago
  It was intentionally designed to have 15 second clips competing for attention, which is the path to brain rot. The’ve slowly increased video length, which will impact what’s on the platform over time. Also, Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about.
  - Cookingboy 2y ago
    >Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about. If you can show evidence of that you should give it to the U.S. government, because it has repeatedly said there is no evidence of such and any threat remains hypothetical.
    - Retric 2y ago
      I’ve read it in a few places ex: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-The-CCPs-Digital-Charm-Offensive.pdf https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-... Not sure how creditable their research is, but I’d place it above random news articles.
      - Cookingboy 2y ago
        There research is not credible because their only "evidence" is that when using certain keywords, Instagram and YT returned more "anti-China" content than TikTok. So instead of arguing the U.S. social media has an anti-China bias, they argued that it's the evidence of TikTok being more pro-China. Using American social media as the control group for neutrality on China is absolutely insane. The most likely cause is that TikTok is just a lot less political and more international than YT and Instagram. For rest of the world, people do not automatically associate words like "Xinjiang" to "Chinese government oppression", the fact that they expect that to be the top result can be argued that American media is the one manipulating information.
nullifidian 2y ago
Tiktok algorithms could be considered a form of editorial position(be it foreign government influenced one, or just the type of content they elevate / not remove), and in this sense it is similar to banning a newspaper(which would obviously be censorship) -- journalists could publish in other newspapers. Therefore banning TikTok absolutely is censorship. >This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control This is literally like this, and done precisely due to the lack of control due to the illegality of overt/direct speech regulation, and the fears that China would elevate content that isn't in the interest of the US in the broadest sense, but that is still legal according to the 1st amendment. The US Government has tremendously more influence on the local/western platforms, and on people who work there. (There is already an appeals court decision about Biden administration overstepping in communicating with online platforms about what content they don't like). The logic goes "We can't regulate speech like we want to, order what we like and what we don't like, but at least we can remove/censor individual owner-editors that we suspect might harbor some harmful intentions. That means no owners from 'evil' countries". That's about it.
- pas 2y ago
  This is a pretty short, but significant list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversar... It's censorship and also import controls and also turning off one propaganda faucet. > On December 6, 2024, a panel of judges on the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's claims about the constitutionality of the law and upheld it. Let's see whether SCOTUS barks at it.
coldtea 2y ago
>Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. Not really, which is the whole point of censoring TikTok.
crawfordcomeaux 2y ago
The Free Palestine movement has grown on TikTok in ways it hasn't on American-owned platforms because it's so heavily censored on American apps. It is the censoring of genocides across the world that TikTok bypasses. Why this is doesn't matter. The end result is populations being kept in the dark about what their governments are complicit in or actively contributing to.
Cookingboy 2y ago
>No speech or information is being suppressed; Except the whole reason for the TikTok bill is that information/speech will be under Chinese government control on TikTok and that can be weaponized. So make up your mind, if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed. If you say it's not about information suppression, then you can't use the "Chinese propaganda" argument, which is used by pretty much all ban supporters. >This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about. That's exactly what it is.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  > … if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed Eliminating weaponized propaganda is not even a little bit close to suppressing freedom of speech. Your argument falls apart there, like completely.
  - Cookingboy 2y ago
    Except it is. The Supreme Court has actually ruled that the First Amendment rights for Americans to receive foreign propaganda, even during the Cold War: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-general/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-... I don't think you know what the First Amendment is. Not only does it guarantee freedom of expression, but also freedom to receive other's expression and speech. The U.S. government is not allowed to ban any foreign books, movies, or even propaganda. I really wish people like you do a little bit research before making such a confident statement like that.
    - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      They may not legally be allowed to ban it, but that doesn't mean it has to be easy to access it. This is probably also why banning Tiktok was / is such a challenge and couldn't just be done with Trump's exective order after Zucc whispered it in his ear in 2019, and why they can't just block it, but have to subpoena the app stores to delist it.

by kelnos 2y ago

Fornax96 2y ago

Who says the US isn't controlling the narrative on US social media?

corimaith 2y ago
Sure are alot of people insinuating they are
throwaway290 2y ago
Half of US social media (and more than half of Twitter) is saying US controls the narrative on US social media and something should be done about it. describe logical knots required to explain why that is the narrative if US controls the narrative? As a Russian people from the West saying how it's total censorship and totalitarianism amuse me. And I see how totalitarian and censored regimes are using of the lack of censorship with great success.

berdario 2y ago

> any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms That wholly depends on what are the other platforms. Meta's platforms for example are pretty heavy handed in their censorship: 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/... And Youtube is not that much better. To be fair, some of the same voices that get censored on US platforms are also getting censored on TikTok (though I currently cannot find the posts or articles that highlighted the issue)

rightbyte 2y ago

> Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. My take is that the elite was shocked the American youth is vaning in their Israel support and that they want algorithmic feeds that are sionist. Simple as that.

lupusreal 2y ago
Well thankfully that ship has sailed. Tiktok has nothing to do with it either, America's youth by in large cast off the zionist evangelical brand of Christianity the babyboomers love so much. This has been going on for decades, tiktok isn't responsible for it. Anyway, I don't think this is the reason for the tiktok ban. The zionists have lost control of the narrative on American platforms too, they know it, and they have no actionable plan for getting it back. I think the tiktok ban is instead motivated by concerns for what a PRC controlled tiktok could do to military recruitment. Military recruitment hinges on appealing to teenagers, making tiktok a particular threat to the American government. Sending teenagers videos of drones dropping grenades on helpless wounded soldiers can't be canceled out by flying cool military jets over sportsball games.
pixelsort 2y ago
Any evidence potentially supporting that? To me it seems that every time a congress critter gets briefed behind closed doors they come out resolved to ban TikTok. Therefore, most likely, the Chinese probably have some insidious goal like profiling every American to ever post online.
shlant 2y ago
I really need to coin the phenomenon of when people attribute the reasoning for something happening as being due to the current thing they care about. I see it so often. Some sort of specific confirmation bias.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Are you refering to me or 'the elite'? I think some sort of 'bias' is the term. Narrative bias? Opportunity bias? 'China' was the main reason but Gaza tipped the scale, I would say.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago

>any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. That's the arguments right wingers make about why flag burning should be a crime as there are other ways to express displeasure with the country it represents. IIRC, Robert Bork was a proponent of this line of thinking.

franczesko 2y ago

"any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms" Tiktok is not banning certain topics, as other platforms do The elephant in the room, is that content on Tiktok is served algorithmicaly, so if majority of population prefer to watch brainwash content, it's due to their choice, not algorithm's

Retric 2y ago
It was intentionally designed to have 15 second clips competing for attention, which is the path to brain rot. The’ve slowly increased video length, which will impact what’s on the platform over time. Also, Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about.
- Cookingboy 2y ago
  >Ticktock content is curated to fit CCP’s narrative not simply an algorithmic reflection of what its users care about. If you can show evidence of that you should give it to the U.S. government, because it has repeatedly said there is no evidence of such and any threat remains hypothetical.
  - Retric 2y ago
    I’ve read it in a few places ex: https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-The-CCPs-Digital-Charm-Offensive.pdf https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-Report_-... Not sure how creditable their research is, but I’d place it above random news articles.
    - Cookingboy 2y ago
      There research is not credible because their only "evidence" is that when using certain keywords, Instagram and YT returned more "anti-China" content than TikTok. So instead of arguing the U.S. social media has an anti-China bias, they argued that it's the evidence of TikTok being more pro-China. Using American social media as the control group for neutrality on China is absolutely insane. The most likely cause is that TikTok is just a lot less political and more international than YT and Instagram. For rest of the world, people do not automatically associate words like "Xinjiang" to "Chinese government oppression", the fact that they expect that to be the top result can be argued that American media is the one manipulating information.

nullifidian 2y ago

Tiktok algorithms could be considered a form of editorial position(be it foreign government influenced one, or just the type of content they elevate / not remove), and in this sense it is similar to banning a newspaper(which would obviously be censorship) -- journalists could publish in other newspapers. Therefore banning TikTok absolutely is censorship. >This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control This is literally like this, and done precisely due to the lack of control due to the illegality of overt/direct speech regulation, and the fears that China would elevate content that isn't in the interest of the US in the broadest sense, but that is still legal according to the 1st amendment. The US Government has tremendously more influence on the local/western platforms, and on people who work there. (There is already an appeals court decision about Biden administration overstepping in communicating with online platforms about what content they don't like). The logic goes "We can't regulate speech like we want to, order what we like and what we don't like, but at least we can remove/censor individual owner-editors that we suspect might harbor some harmful intentions. That means no owners from 'evil' countries". That's about it.

pas 2y ago
This is a pretty short, but significant list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_foreign_adversar... It's censorship and also import controls and also turning off one propaganda faucet. > On December 6, 2024, a panel of judges on the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's claims about the constitutionality of the law and upheld it. Let's see whether SCOTUS barks at it.

coldtea 2y ago

>Your argument is predicated on the idea that banning TikTok is censorship. It's not. No speech or information is being suppressed; any speech being made on TikTok can instead be made on other platforms. Not really, which is the whole point of censoring TikTok.

crawfordcomeaux 2y ago

The Free Palestine movement has grown on TikTok in ways it hasn't on American-owned platforms because it's so heavily censored on American apps. It is the censoring of genocides across the world that TikTok bypasses. Why this is doesn't matter. The end result is populations being kept in the dark about what their governments are complicit in or actively contributing to.

Cookingboy 2y ago

>No speech or information is being suppressed; Except the whole reason for the TikTok bill is that information/speech will be under Chinese government control on TikTok and that can be weaponized. So make up your mind, if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed. If you say it's not about information suppression, then you can't use the "Chinese propaganda" argument, which is used by pretty much all ban supporters. >This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about. That's exactly what it is.

dgfitz 2y ago
> … if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed Eliminating weaponized propaganda is not even a little bit close to suppressing freedom of speech. Your argument falls apart there, like completely.
- Cookingboy 2y ago
  Except it is. The Supreme Court has actually ruled that the First Amendment rights for Americans to receive foreign propaganda, even during the Cold War: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-general/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-... I don't think you know what the First Amendment is. Not only does it guarantee freedom of expression, but also freedom to receive other's expression and speech. The U.S. government is not allowed to ban any foreign books, movies, or even propaganda. I really wish people like you do a little bit research before making such a confident statement like that.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    They may not legally be allowed to ban it, but that doesn't mean it has to be easy to access it. This is probably also why banning Tiktok was / is such a challenge and couldn't just be done with Trump's exective order after Zucc whispered it in his ear in 2019, and why they can't just block it, but have to subpoena the app stores to delist it.