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Regardless of where you stand on American politics, it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions. This is not a left
by xp84 11mo ago
Regardless of where you stand on American politics, it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions.
This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West. They are not “the good guys.” You’re free to see both parties as ‘neutral’ in alignment, but you still don’t want to have to be the losing party when they come into conflict. My point is China is not going to be sharing any of what they gain with Americans, even the ones who cheer for them - it’ll in fact be coming at your expense.
The CPC having a direct feed into the brains of every Gen Z and younger American is trivially easy to exploit - and there is a 0% chance that they won’t do so next year when they will likely invade Taiwan. If China is in control of TikTok, they’ll boost a ton of propaganda, supposedly people “from Taiwan” who greet the PLA as liberators, explaining how Taiwan being independent is actually oppression, and how they’ve always considered themselves part of the PRC, only evil politicians were keeping them apart. And they’ll make sure to suppress all media that exposes the violence on the ground. Finally, they’ll boost content urging Americans to protest US involvement and to sabotage the military, such as by chaining themselves to ships, etc.
Ryan McBeth has made a ton of videos laying out how this will work, and he does a better job than I have of explaining this.
TikTok is a cyberweapon.
- azemetre 11mo agoI'd buy these arguments if America was a place that cared about its citizens and not a country that lets a small group of very elite, very rich, people ruin the lives of tens of millions of Americans subjecting them to poverty to make a buck. The last war China was involved with was 1979 compared to America, today mind you, that is on the cusp of invading Venezuela because Rubio has a moronic axe to grind. It's really hard to not see the facade for what it is: rich people are upset that their world order is collapsing. Frankly who care? Give me universal medicare, universal childcare, and public higher education then maybe, just maybe, I might start to care about all this stuff that only seems to make people lives worse not better.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- downrightmike 11mo agoChina has used resources to buy alliances with developing countries, like pretty much all of Africa, which they leveraged at the UN to have the communist party recognized. Sadly you have to start caring for things to get better first.
- azemetre 11mo agoAmerica has used this same time period to sell out jobs to the lowest bidder, decimate its manufacturing industry to make a quick buck, is willing to sell "critical" tech to "enemies" to make a buck, make billions off of profiting from people's misery. Why am I suppose to care that people in Africa are pushing for better worker rights and decolonialization? Because the executives as Nestle might make slightly lower money? That big tech can't extract more blood minerals? Boo hoo, it's not like this has ever benefited American citizens writ large. Also the UN is worthless, if this is suppose to scare people you might lose your hat come election night in 2026.
- b3ing 11mo agoThe companies sold out the jobs, not our government, but it hasn’t done much but make us keep blaming the poor or “colored” folks.
- spencerflem 11mo agoWe used to do that too until they decided USAID should be ended. And I’ll take recognizing a communist party over dropping napalm on em.
- nebula8804 11mo agoThat will only work as long as the check clears. Anyone relying on those 'friends' better hope China never stops sending those checks. Ask the US or the USSR how that goes.
- biophysboy 11mo agoI guess my first question is: why would taking control of TikTok prevent bad faith state actors? X, for example, has a lot of issues with foreign accounts spreading propaganda. It seems more like a “moderation at scale” issue to me.
- overfeed 11mo agoIt also of ingores the cases where state actors' and some wing of domestic politics have aligned interests (USSR & Communist parties in the early o mid 20th century, or Russia sponsoring/infiltrating rightwing countries in Western Europe & America in the 21st century)
- Aunche 11mo agoX and Meta do try to uncover and scrub malicious state actors, like the investigation of the 2016 Russia misinformation campaign. Maybe, they could have done more, but there is no reason why they wouldn't put an earnest effort as they have nothing to gain from faking compliance. A social media platform owned by a foreign adversary does have this incentive.
- cramsession 11mo agoX is basically a propaganda arm for Israel at this point. It’s obviously under control of a nefarious state actor.
- criddell 11mo agoWhich is odd considering how much of X is owned by the Saudis.
- estearum 11mo agoX of today is, quite obviously, not the same thing as the X of 2016. Can't be taken seriously if you're going to elide that "detail".
- Aunche 11mo ago
- overfeed 11mo ago> This is not a left versus right thing. China being unchallenged in the world will spell a quality of life decrease for us in the West. America's incompetent leadership is self-inflicted. Biden's 2020 campaign strategy was pro status quo ante - which I find similar to your appeal to "normalcy". Unfortunately (for future American global primacy), this message did not resonate with voters in 2024. I suspect "getting back to normal" is not enough for Gens Y & Z, who have already lost a class war whose existence they may not be aware of.
- biophysboy 11mo agoYoung people have legitimate gripes w/ housing and higher education. I would not describe this as having “lost a class war”.
- overfeed 11mo agoI would describe the over-fiscalization of housing and education loans designed to increase profits for shareholders as different fronts in the same class war that young people have already lost.
- throwway120385 11mo agoThe language of class war precludes any sort of repair of the situation. I see a ton of young people at work outside of my group within the org who should be getting paid better. When we're in management we have a responsibility to try to argue for narratives that lead to that outcome. And when we vote we need to remember that things that look bad for us homeowners like allowing big development companies to come in and raze all of our houses and build townhomes and apartments for rent might be necessary to keep the bad situation from getting worse. I think in the end what will save us is the big demographic crunch that's going to happen in the next 15 years, because there will be a lot of housing stock suddenly on the market with no buyers. We're all going to get an opportunity then to fix a lot of these problems. Or, if we do nothing and let the status quo reign, our kids will suddenly find themselves renting everything they use for the rest of their lives.
- 11mo ago
- johnnyanmac 11mo ago>it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions. In Gen Z's eyes, America is bad for Americans. That's what happens when you build a low trust society. America spent decades trying to build up a strong rapport among citizens and they tore it down and sold them out in a single generation. Maybe china will be worse. But the appeals to nationalism simply will not work among our youth. We abandoned them, they will see the village burned to feel its warmth. Already happened in 2024.
- kjkjadksj 11mo agoRecognizing that our tech leaders are attempting to march us into a sort of technological feudalism is not an inherently gen Z take.
- newspaper1 11mo agoI don’t think this is exclusively a Gen Z thing. I’m Gen X and could not agree more with this assessment.
- johnnyanmac 11mo agoYes, this was a good 30 years in the making, so anyone still in a career will feel it. Even some younger boomers would feel the after effects of tbis, especially those who didn't get to own a house. Gen Z is simply unique as the "full immersion" generation. It's uniquely hard to ignore the youth unemployment for kids who are spending more than ever to be educated, or being hard locked out of minimum wage jobs our parents would scare us with because they lack a bachelor's degree.
- bloppe 11mo agoI certainly don't envy young people entering the job market rn. But China's youth unemployment rate is far higher than America's. To come away from this thinking American capitalism is bad and "communism" (which doesn't really exist anymore on a large scale) would be better would be pretty misguided.
- saubeidl 11mo agoNot everyone here is American. From a European standpoint: The ideal outcome is a stalemate between China and the US, with us as the kingmaker. We could basically do the same thing as Yugoslavia did during the Cold War and play both sides against one another, extracting concessions from both.
- echelon 11mo agoEvery country wants to be in that position. Y'all've got a lot of headwinds, and America should be helping you with them instead of posturing and pretending to be friends with our enemies. America needs to get closer to Europe and India, democratic East Asia, Mexico, Vietnam ... not this bullshit we're doing right now.
- saubeidl 11mo ago> Every country wants to be in that position. I agree. But not many are one of the largest economies in the world and the world's most prolific regulator. > America should be helping you with them instead of posturing and pretending to be friends with our enemies. I also agree, but unfortunately the American electorate and its elites have proven deeply untrustworthy. I wish it wasn't so, but that's what happened. With that in mind, the best outcome for us is to hope for American power to decrease relative to China to increase our own leverage.
- disgruntledphd2 11mo agoThat only works in a world where Europe can replace all of the US forces in NATO. I'd like to see that, but it's gonna take a long while and a big commitment, so I'm sceptical.
- newspaper1 11mo ago[flagged]
- ericmcer 11mo agoJesus lol, is this sarcasm? I thought the first part was a bit unhinged but then I read the second one.
- newspaper1 11mo ago[flagged]
- SauntSolaire 11mo agoIf you don't like "war, freeways, genocide, propaganda", it's a bit incoherent to be backing China.
- newspaper1 11mo agoWhy? We’re significantly worse on all of that than China.
- SauntSolaire 11mo agoI would argue no on genocide, but mixed on war (if you include China's occupations) - I can see the argument for it though. I'm not clear where you stand on freeways, but it seems like a weird one to sandwich between 'war' and 'genocide'. As for propaganda, that can go unmentioned.
- newspaper1 11mo agoOur entire country was formed via genocide and we’ve killed millions of innocent people in the past 80 years alone.
- 11mo ago
- tarsinge 11mo ago> it is just plain bad for all Americans for China to advance its geopolitical ambitions And what says has China on the advances of Americans geopolitical ambitions? I’m not saying they are the good guys obviously, but at this point as an European between China maybe invading Taiwan and the US openly threatening to take control of allied territory (Greenland) or on the verge of starting another war for oil control (Venezuela), I’m not sure what’s worst for "the west". And that’s not even talking about climate change, science, etc. Who is more aligned with a sustainable future for the world? > TikTok is a cyberweapon I’m far more concerned by the YouTube, Twitter/X and Facebook cyber weapons that have been radicalizing and destroying our societies for more than a decade. Just the other day a fake video about a coup in France trended on Facebook and not even our President could have it removed. Have you also see the plan of the US to weaken the EU by targeting countries to make them leave the EU? Again not saying China are good guys, but it’s time Americans freaking out about China have a hard look in the mirror.
- rainonmoon 11mo agoAs an Australian, this is broadly my take too. People may have explicable concerns about TikTok but at least China can’t systematically deny a foreign citizen access to digital society entirely as the US has done to Nicolas Guillou. If young people are open to anti-American propaganda it’s only because America has created that opportunity.
- kakacik 11mo agoIts harder and harder to see US from outside (aka 95% of the world) as force of any good, apart from some amount of self-serving. So what you claim is largely invalid, like it or not. Maybe it will change in 3 years, but nobody is holding their breath. Its just another side, with its own motivation, these days backstabbing and insulting those few friends that stubbornly still linger around for historical reasons, changing opinions frequently. Unreliable as are its sophisticated warfare products. Morals what?
- guizadillas 11mo agoAmerica this america that, it's called US! You are US citizens! What's good for America? for the US to stop forcing every other country in America to add tariffs for any product coming from China I'm tired of this "China is exploiting Gen Z", the US is a propaganda machine and has been for decades. Now they are mad that China is taking their space.
- squigz 11mo agoIn what way will China "being unchallenged" result in a QOL decrease for us in the West? You didn't actually say why that is.
- disgruntledphd2 11mo agoBecause they're official plan is to be entirely self sufficient and export to everyone. This will decimate the remaining industry in the West.