6 ms·

It isn't so much as the rest of the world having easy access. It is what the Chinese want the rest of the world to see. If you are in a South American country u

It isn't so much as the rest of the world having easy access. It is what the Chinese want the rest of the world to see. If you are in a South American country using a residential IP in new incognito session, doom scroll, after the initial disturbing content, you will start to notice videos of the United States government physically attacking people born in the country of the residential IP address. The TikTok algorithm in South America. Content about Tiananmen Square and Tibet gets filtered out. Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. The most brutally honest propaganda is always the most effective propaganda.

potatototoo99 9mo ago
TikTok US it no longer controlled by the Chinese.
- falcor84 9mo ago
  Sounds like you're in agreement with the parent - outside the US, people see content that reflects poorly on the US, and which is blocked for US citizens
  - buran77 9mo ago
    The painful to answer question is whether the intention is to block the spreading of lies or the spreading of truth?
    - bgirard 9mo ago
      When you have a personality disorder like NPD, you'll believe to your core that every criticism of you is a lie. When you're in an abusive relationship they say intentions don't matter, only impact does. Because victims often focus on the intentions of their abuser and stay in the cycle of abuse. Let me repeat it, intentions don't matter, only impact does.
    - reactordev 9mo ago
      Both. It’s controlling the narrative. Project 2025.
    - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
      > The painful to answer question is whether the intention is to block the spreading of lies or the spreading of truth? What it should be about is preventing someone else from blocking the spreading of truth. "Block the spreading of lies" is something authoritarians say when they want to declare any criticism of themselves to be a lie and censor it. You can't block the spreading of "lies" without ordaining someone as the decider of truth and there is nobody you can trust to have that power. But if we were actually doing what we should then what we would be doing is developing censorship-resistant uncentralized systems rather than fighting over the keys to the censorship apparatus.
    - daveguy 9mo ago
      The intention is to block the spreading of anything that doesn't conform to dear leader's narrative. Accuracy has nothing to do with it.
mrexcess 9mo ago
>It isn't so much as the rest of the world having easy access. It is what the Chinese want the rest of the world to see. If your prosperity depends on using technocracy to deny 1.3 billion people the ability to communicate and share ideas with your citizens, a few things are true: 1) You have created a digital iron curtain 2) You are doomed because information wants to be free 3) If you succeed the result will be war, the only thing left when communication breaks down
- pixl97 9mo ago
  2) Why? I think some people live in movies where the bad guy always loses. Reality doesn't work this way. Bad situations where information is denied from people can last lifetimes. With modern technology we may be creating systems that end up imprisoning our minds for generations with no escape because you'll be killed the moment your technological monitor realizes you're going to fight back.
  - mrexcess 9mo ago
    "Information wanting to be free" is a concept less rooted in idealism and more in a cynical view of human nature. Even the most closely guarded secrets eventually leak, and as the utility of knowing the secrets increases, the pressure to leak also does. The physical universe itself appears to favor disclosure and abhor secrecy. >With modern technology we may be creating systems that end up imprisoning our minds for generations with no escape That has been the goal of authoritarians for a long time. Orwell's vision of it involved obliterating even the capacity to think or speak about anti-state themes.
direwolf20 9mo ago
We should let people know how bad politicians are. If everyone knows every time a politician is a mass murderer, it might provide an incentive for politicians to stop mass murdering people.
- AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
  The general problem is that people think based on relativity. Suppose there are thousands of law enforcement officials in the US, some minority of them are violent offenders and as a result of that some minority of police shootings are murders rather than legitimate self-defense or protection of the innocent, where the number of annual illegitimate police shootings is somewhere between 2 and 999, and the propensity for those people to be prosecuted is lower than it ought to be. Suppose further that China has over a million Uyghurs in concentration camps and is using them as slave labor and subjecting them to forced sterilization. Is the first one bad? Yes. Is it as bad? Uh, no. But you can present a distorted picture through selective censorship. Obviously what you want is for neither of them to be censored, but not wanting a foreign power to be the ones who decide what people see is fully legitimate.
  - autoexec 9mo ago
    > Obviously what you want is for neither of them to be censored, but not wanting a foreign power to be the ones who decide what people see is fully legitimate. It's less legitimate when you don't want a foreign power to be the ones who decide what people see on their own platforms. The US for example shouldn't dictate what US users see when they visit www.bbc.co.uk The just US got mad because a Chinese owned/operated social media platform got massively popular and they just wanted the ability to control and censor it.
    - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
      "Their own platforms" is the flaw. Countries and companies shouldn't "own" the means of mass communication to begin with. How the feed is filtered should be a fungible commodity that anyone can swap out for themselves or offer to others without sacrificing the network effect, because the network itself shouldn't be owned. Notice that the US doesn't censor bbc.co.uk, because the web is a decentralized system. But then ordinary people end up on Facebook or TikTok, which isn't.
anthem2025 9mo ago
Oh bullshit it’s entirely about controlling narratives around Israel, and now that they owe Trump it’s about censoring any opposition as well. The TikTok ban was always an egregious attack on free speech.
lbrito 9mo ago
That's some very obtuse thinking. The US has been applying soft power and hard power in South America - to put it euphemistically, as the most recent US intervention was just days ago - for close to a century. The Chinese... haven't. Why should people in South America give a shit about Tiananmen or Tibet and at the same time not give a shit about the escalating authoritarian grip of the US regime, which is infinitely more relevant to their lives?
- dylan604 9mo ago
  How can you say the Chinese "haven't"? They've been using soft power for some time with Venezuela. They've been importing Venezuelan oil. They have been making loans as well. The loans a are a huge part of "soft power". They've also replaced a lot of items impacted by Trump's tariffs from South America.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    Things the US could also do if it unsanctioned them. I threw my computer off the balcony. I look at a web design business. "No fair!" I think to myself, "if only I had a computer I could have a web design business too!" I smash the web designer's computer out of spite.
    - dylan604 9mo ago
      The US could? The US has used soft/hard influence for a long time. We've crop dusted Colombian fields attempting to eradicate cocaine. We've eliminated leaders in Central and South America. We've influenced elections trying to get specific leaders elected. We've sanctioned the shit out of one little island, we blockaded the island when it was allowing itself to be used/influenced by another government we didn't like. We've allowed US corps to invest and build infrastructure within these countries. We've given them millions/billions in various ways including straight cash injections. I don't know how much more would need to be done for you to think things are being done.
  - tw1984 9mo ago
    > They've been using soft power for some time with Venezuela. They've been importing Venezuelan oil. if someone goes to your local walmart and buy stuff from them, is that considered as using soft power on walmart? LOL
Fraterkes 9mo ago
You don’t think that there could be purely organic reasons why content showing US hypocricy might be immensely popular in South America?
- dataviz1000 9mo ago
  > TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. I am responding to the fact US TikTok does not show videos of an armored vehicle driving through a crowd of protesters standing in front of it like the lone man in Tiananmen Square. They are being removed. This ability to control what information TikTok users are presented with is the reason TikTok was originally banned in the United States. I am being objective discussion how TikTok is being used as a propaganda tool whether or not I personally agree with China influencing people in South America or whether or not what the United States government is doing to protestors is good or bad. I'm not putting a value on it. I'm pointing out that when I'm in South America and someone links a video in a text message and I start to doom scroll after a while I will start to be introduced to videos of the Unites States government committing violence against Spanish speaking people. > might be immensely popular in South America Objectively the current United States regime was hugely popular in Spanish speaking countries like it was in Spanish speaking Florida. Up until a couple months ago, people would tell me how much they support and admire the current regime in the United States. That has changed recently which likely has to do with the content they receive via TikTok which is controlled by the Chinese government which is why it was banned in the United States. After being sold, it is not surprising that the United States is using it the way they accused the Chinese of using it.
axus 9mo ago
> Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. Aren't these recent events? A better example would be showing US atrocities from the last 50 years, but not Chinese. Or hiding the suffering of Ukranian and Iranian peoples.
- dataviz1000 9mo ago
  I'm in South America. If I doom scroll TikTok without cookies from a residence in South America, after a while, I will be presented with anti American propaganda showing videos of recent events or people speaking in Spanish about the atrocities that the United States is committing against Spanish speaking people that is recent. I'm am describing objectively what I see. The United States didn't want TikTok controlling what is visible to people in the United States so they banned TikTok. Later the United States offered allowing it to be sold to an American company. Currently, there are two extremely influential forces for people under 25 years old in Spanish speaking Latin America, TikTok, a Chinese company, and an American music artist, Bad Bunny, who likely is the single most influential person in the Spanish speaking world. Let's stay tuned for the Superbowl.
  - brabel 9mo ago
    I think most media is talking about the mess the US is in with ICE right now. For what’s worth I am in Europe and on X more than half of what I see is about American cops and ICE , most against ICE but some in support of it.
fogzen 9mo ago
The U.S. government has not publicly presented any concrete evidence showing that TikTok has actually been used to influence US public opinion in line with CCP policy.
- autoexec 9mo ago
  Wasn't there something about the algorithm pushing brainrot to US audiences while Chinese users got more educational/high quality content? Turning Americans stupid might count.
  - text0404 9mo ago
    They said "concrete evidence". Have we also considered that US consumers seek out brainrot, so the algorithm gives them what they want? How is that different from any other US-owned social media?
  - Hikikomori 9mo ago
    >Turning Americans stupid might count. Don't need tiktok for that. Besides, a certain party prefers it that way.
    - timschmidt 9mo ago
      Tribalism is part of the brainrot. Divide and conquer. To paraphrase Carlin, wealth and power are are big club and we ain't in it.
  - somenameforme 9mo ago
    China has media laws that would make much of what appears on any sort of Western media platform illegal, so they're obviously going to get a very different experience in China. From anything that might violate social ethics, to clickbait titles - all illegal in China. They've even cracked down on overly effeminate men - 'girly guns' [1] and a million other things I'm not listing here. Basically Western style social media simply is impossible there. In any case, entirely Western oriented platforms also push brainrot to Western viewers, so I don't think there's any conspiracy so much as just cultural differences. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niang_pao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niang_pao
parthdesai 9mo ago
Does China go around the world invading countries in the name of freedom? > Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. None of this is propaganda, it's just facts.
- sneak 9mo ago
  Propaganda can be entirely factual. In fact, the best propaganda is.
  - parthdesai 9mo ago
    I think you're being sarcastic, but just in case you're not > Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic manipulation of information—including facts, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion, attitudes, and behaviors toward a specific cause, ideology, or agenda.
    - cheeseomlit 9mo ago
      >including facts
      - parthdesai 9mo ago
        > deliberate, systematic manipulation of information And, what are we doing with those facts? We're manipulating them lol
        fc417fc802 9mo ago
        It's using information to influence public opinion in a calculated manner. Said information can include facts. It can even be entirely factual. Manipulating the feed of a social media website for the purpose of swaying the viewer's opinion is a cut and dry example of propaganda. Doesn't matter who does it or whether the information displayed is factual or not. Those things make zero difference.
elektronika 9mo ago
> Content about Tiananmen Square and Tibet gets filtered out. Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. There's also the degree of relevance. Tiananmen was over a quarter of a century ago. The USA is killing protestors, bombing Venezuela, threatening Greenland now.
- kurthr 9mo ago
  The persecution of Uighurs continues apace. Even if it is not allowed to be called genocide on TikTok. The political elements to this are pretty obvious, but conflating two terrible Minneapolis ICE killings in 3 weeks to the horror that occurred in Xinjiang is beyond the pale. While we may go down the authoritarian path with a Clown King, we're still at least 10-15 years behind China. https://www.rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/11/05/uyghur-tiktok-censors-abroad/ https://www.rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/11/05/uyghur-tiktok-...
  - elektronika 9mo ago
    Radio Free Asia is USA funded propaganda.
    - atomic_reed 9mo ago
      [dead]
    - kurthr 9mo ago
      But since that's all been defunded by DOGE then by your own argument, it doesn't count any more. Ignoring history is a good way to repeat it, just because it didn't happen this year. Do you remember the last Vietnam War? Oh no, not the one you're thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War Several hundred thousand Chinese troops invaded Vietnam with 500 tanks in 1979.
      - urmackchually2 9mo ago
tech_hutch 9mo ago
> the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles I'm sorry, did I miss something? Is this something that's happened (ever)?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- garciasn 9mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbMRywfYiM8&t=105s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbMRywfYiM8&t=105s e: 1. tracking string removed per request. 2. it's a video of a WCCO news (local MSP TV station) segment which shows an armored vehicle pushing protesters out of the way.
  - wizzwizz4 9mo ago
    You may wish to remove the ?si=… tracking string from your URL. It might also be worth editing in some context: right now, it's a bare YouTube link (which I don't particularly want to click on). Is this footage? A video essay? A pop song?
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
  - elcritch 9mo ago
    Nice subtle twisting of words. There’s an enormous difference between driving slowly through a crowd of protestors with no injuries versus running over protesters with a tank.
    - garciasn 9mo ago
      I didn't twist anything. If anything, I would argue YOU are twisting words of the original comment to which I responded: >> the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles > I'm sorry, did I miss something? Is this something that's happened (ever)?
WheatMillington 9mo ago
I see people saying this a lot, but I've also seen videos demonstrating that you can easily post and search for Tiananmen Square content. I don't use Tiktok myself but it seems like this is basically untrue.
- rluna828 9mo ago
  key word is "search," tianamen square will never be recommended in a feed. This is the illusion of "choice." Most people think they can "train" their feed, this is not true.
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  This will likely depend on the country, I presume it wouldn't work in China. But this isn't new either, western services operating abroad will often comply with local laws, which includes country or region specific laws on acceptable content. Google pulled out of China for a good while because they didn't want to, but they eventually cracked and complied with their content laws. Of course, by then the competition was dominant already.
Joeri 9mo ago
On mastodon, with the non-algorithmic feed, following mostly accounts that aren’t particularly political, those things are still at the top of the feed. If you’re not seeing those topics at the top of your feed you’re probably being misled by your algorithm. Another reason why feed ranking algorithms should be published. If we can see the algorithm we can stop playing these yes/no games. The real enemies are social media companies, not the other side of politics.
freitasm 9mo ago
Using whataboutism doesn't negate the fact that the first amendment is being trampled over by the US administration. Buying TikTok to censor it is the move of a fascist government.
weinzierl 9mo ago
I'm confused. I thought there was Douyin in China and TikTok for the rest of the world. TikTok used to be under Chinese control but now is essentially under US control. Isn't western TikTok a single entity?
- pests 9mo ago
  The news only dropped about 5 days ago about the US partnership. Its still a Chinese app. Now the deal with Oracle will have them designing the algo, storing US users data, and doing US moderation. It wasn't this way before.
  - weinzierl 9mo ago
    Nah, the writing is on the wall for a long time and they nearly got shut down several times. I can’t imagine that the permission to continue operations came without major concessions.
  - tw1984 9mo ago
    no, it is an American company with Americans holding 80% ownership.
mktk1001 9mo ago
I think the more concerning thing here is the US government attacking people of different ethnicities.

potatototoo99 9mo ago

TikTok US it no longer controlled by the Chinese.

falcor84 9mo ago
Sounds like you're in agreement with the parent - outside the US, people see content that reflects poorly on the US, and which is blocked for US citizens
- buran77 9mo ago
  The painful to answer question is whether the intention is to block the spreading of lies or the spreading of truth?
  - bgirard 9mo ago
    When you have a personality disorder like NPD, you'll believe to your core that every criticism of you is a lie. When you're in an abusive relationship they say intentions don't matter, only impact does. Because victims often focus on the intentions of their abuser and stay in the cycle of abuse. Let me repeat it, intentions don't matter, only impact does.
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    Both. It’s controlling the narrative. Project 2025.
  - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
    > The painful to answer question is whether the intention is to block the spreading of lies or the spreading of truth? What it should be about is preventing someone else from blocking the spreading of truth. "Block the spreading of lies" is something authoritarians say when they want to declare any criticism of themselves to be a lie and censor it. You can't block the spreading of "lies" without ordaining someone as the decider of truth and there is nobody you can trust to have that power. But if we were actually doing what we should then what we would be doing is developing censorship-resistant uncentralized systems rather than fighting over the keys to the censorship apparatus.
  - daveguy 9mo ago
    The intention is to block the spreading of anything that doesn't conform to dear leader's narrative. Accuracy has nothing to do with it.

mrexcess 9mo ago

>It isn't so much as the rest of the world having easy access. It is what the Chinese want the rest of the world to see. If your prosperity depends on using technocracy to deny 1.3 billion people the ability to communicate and share ideas with your citizens, a few things are true: 1) You have created a digital iron curtain 2) You are doomed because information wants to be free 3) If you succeed the result will be war, the only thing left when communication breaks down

pixl97 9mo ago
2) Why? I think some people live in movies where the bad guy always loses. Reality doesn't work this way. Bad situations where information is denied from people can last lifetimes. With modern technology we may be creating systems that end up imprisoning our minds for generations with no escape because you'll be killed the moment your technological monitor realizes you're going to fight back.
- mrexcess 9mo ago
  "Information wanting to be free" is a concept less rooted in idealism and more in a cynical view of human nature. Even the most closely guarded secrets eventually leak, and as the utility of knowing the secrets increases, the pressure to leak also does. The physical universe itself appears to favor disclosure and abhor secrecy. >With modern technology we may be creating systems that end up imprisoning our minds for generations with no escape That has been the goal of authoritarians for a long time. Orwell's vision of it involved obliterating even the capacity to think or speak about anti-state themes.

direwolf20 9mo ago

We should let people know how bad politicians are. If everyone knows every time a politician is a mass murderer, it might provide an incentive for politicians to stop mass murdering people.

AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
The general problem is that people think based on relativity. Suppose there are thousands of law enforcement officials in the US, some minority of them are violent offenders and as a result of that some minority of police shootings are murders rather than legitimate self-defense or protection of the innocent, where the number of annual illegitimate police shootings is somewhere between 2 and 999, and the propensity for those people to be prosecuted is lower than it ought to be. Suppose further that China has over a million Uyghurs in concentration camps and is using them as slave labor and subjecting them to forced sterilization. Is the first one bad? Yes. Is it as bad? Uh, no. But you can present a distorted picture through selective censorship. Obviously what you want is for neither of them to be censored, but not wanting a foreign power to be the ones who decide what people see is fully legitimate.
- autoexec 9mo ago
  > Obviously what you want is for neither of them to be censored, but not wanting a foreign power to be the ones who decide what people see is fully legitimate. It's less legitimate when you don't want a foreign power to be the ones who decide what people see on their own platforms. The US for example shouldn't dictate what US users see when they visit www.bbc.co.uk The just US got mad because a Chinese owned/operated social media platform got massively popular and they just wanted the ability to control and censor it.
  - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
    "Their own platforms" is the flaw. Countries and companies shouldn't "own" the means of mass communication to begin with. How the feed is filtered should be a fungible commodity that anyone can swap out for themselves or offer to others without sacrificing the network effect, because the network itself shouldn't be owned. Notice that the US doesn't censor bbc.co.uk, because the web is a decentralized system. But then ordinary people end up on Facebook or TikTok, which isn't.

anthem2025 9mo ago

Oh bullshit it’s entirely about controlling narratives around Israel, and now that they owe Trump it’s about censoring any opposition as well. The TikTok ban was always an egregious attack on free speech.

lbrito 9mo ago

That's some very obtuse thinking. The US has been applying soft power and hard power in South America - to put it euphemistically, as the most recent US intervention was just days ago - for close to a century. The Chinese... haven't. Why should people in South America give a shit about Tiananmen or Tibet and at the same time not give a shit about the escalating authoritarian grip of the US regime, which is infinitely more relevant to their lives?

dylan604 9mo ago
How can you say the Chinese "haven't"? They've been using soft power for some time with Venezuela. They've been importing Venezuelan oil. They have been making loans as well. The loans a are a huge part of "soft power". They've also replaced a lot of items impacted by Trump's tariffs from South America.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Things the US could also do if it unsanctioned them. I threw my computer off the balcony. I look at a web design business. "No fair!" I think to myself, "if only I had a computer I could have a web design business too!" I smash the web designer's computer out of spite.
  - dylan604 9mo ago
    The US could? The US has used soft/hard influence for a long time. We've crop dusted Colombian fields attempting to eradicate cocaine. We've eliminated leaders in Central and South America. We've influenced elections trying to get specific leaders elected. We've sanctioned the shit out of one little island, we blockaded the island when it was allowing itself to be used/influenced by another government we didn't like. We've allowed US corps to invest and build infrastructure within these countries. We've given them millions/billions in various ways including straight cash injections. I don't know how much more would need to be done for you to think things are being done.
- tw1984 9mo ago
  > They've been using soft power for some time with Venezuela. They've been importing Venezuelan oil. if someone goes to your local walmart and buy stuff from them, is that considered as using soft power on walmart? LOL

Fraterkes 9mo ago

You don’t think that there could be purely organic reasons why content showing US hypocricy might be immensely popular in South America?

dataviz1000 9mo ago
> TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. I am responding to the fact US TikTok does not show videos of an armored vehicle driving through a crowd of protesters standing in front of it like the lone man in Tiananmen Square. They are being removed. This ability to control what information TikTok users are presented with is the reason TikTok was originally banned in the United States. I am being objective discussion how TikTok is being used as a propaganda tool whether or not I personally agree with China influencing people in South America or whether or not what the United States government is doing to protestors is good or bad. I'm not putting a value on it. I'm pointing out that when I'm in South America and someone links a video in a text message and I start to doom scroll after a while I will start to be introduced to videos of the Unites States government committing violence against Spanish speaking people. > might be immensely popular in South America Objectively the current United States regime was hugely popular in Spanish speaking countries like it was in Spanish speaking Florida. Up until a couple months ago, people would tell me how much they support and admire the current regime in the United States. That has changed recently which likely has to do with the content they receive via TikTok which is controlled by the Chinese government which is why it was banned in the United States. After being sold, it is not surprising that the United States is using it the way they accused the Chinese of using it.

axus 9mo ago

> Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. Aren't these recent events? A better example would be showing US atrocities from the last 50 years, but not Chinese. Or hiding the suffering of Ukranian and Iranian peoples.

dataviz1000 9mo ago
I'm in South America. If I doom scroll TikTok without cookies from a residence in South America, after a while, I will be presented with anti American propaganda showing videos of recent events or people speaking in Spanish about the atrocities that the United States is committing against Spanish speaking people that is recent. I'm am describing objectively what I see. The United States didn't want TikTok controlling what is visible to people in the United States so they banned TikTok. Later the United States offered allowing it to be sold to an American company. Currently, there are two extremely influential forces for people under 25 years old in Spanish speaking Latin America, TikTok, a Chinese company, and an American music artist, Bad Bunny, who likely is the single most influential person in the Spanish speaking world. Let's stay tuned for the Superbowl.
- brabel 9mo ago
  I think most media is talking about the mess the US is in with ICE right now. For what’s worth I am in Europe and on X more than half of what I see is about American cops and ICE , most against ICE but some in support of it.

fogzen 9mo ago

The U.S. government has not publicly presented any concrete evidence showing that TikTok has actually been used to influence US public opinion in line with CCP policy.

autoexec 9mo ago
Wasn't there something about the algorithm pushing brainrot to US audiences while Chinese users got more educational/high quality content? Turning Americans stupid might count.
- text0404 9mo ago
  They said "concrete evidence". Have we also considered that US consumers seek out brainrot, so the algorithm gives them what they want? How is that different from any other US-owned social media?
- Hikikomori 9mo ago
  >Turning Americans stupid might count. Don't need tiktok for that. Besides, a certain party prefers it that way.
  - timschmidt 9mo ago
    Tribalism is part of the brainrot. Divide and conquer. To paraphrase Carlin, wealth and power are are big club and we ain't in it.
- somenameforme 9mo ago
  China has media laws that would make much of what appears on any sort of Western media platform illegal, so they're obviously going to get a very different experience in China. From anything that might violate social ethics, to clickbait titles - all illegal in China. They've even cracked down on overly effeminate men - 'girly guns' [1] and a million other things I'm not listing here. Basically Western style social media simply is impossible there. In any case, entirely Western oriented platforms also push brainrot to Western viewers, so I don't think there's any conspiracy so much as just cultural differences. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niang_pao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niang_pao

parthdesai 9mo ago

Does China go around the world invading countries in the name of freedom? > Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. None of this is propaganda, it's just facts.

sneak 9mo ago
Propaganda can be entirely factual. In fact, the best propaganda is.
- parthdesai 9mo ago
  I think you're being sarcastic, but just in case you're not > Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic manipulation of information—including facts, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion, attitudes, and behaviors toward a specific cause, ideology, or agenda.
  - cheeseomlit 9mo ago
    >including facts
    - parthdesai 9mo ago
      > deliberate, systematic manipulation of information And, what are we doing with those facts? We're manipulating them lol
      - fc417fc802 9mo ago
        It's using information to influence public opinion in a calculated manner. Said information can include facts. It can even be entirely factual. Manipulating the feed of a social media website for the purpose of swaying the viewer's opinion is a cut and dry example of propaganda. Doesn't matter who does it or whether the information displayed is factual or not. Those things make zero difference.

elektronika 9mo ago

> Content about Tiananmen Square and Tibet gets filtered out. Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed. There's also the degree of relevance. Tiananmen was over a quarter of a century ago. The USA is killing protestors, bombing Venezuela, threatening Greenland now.

kurthr 9mo ago
The persecution of Uighurs continues apace. Even if it is not allowed to be called genocide on TikTok. The political elements to this are pretty obvious, but conflating two terrible Minneapolis ICE killings in 3 weeks to the horror that occurred in Xinjiang is beyond the pale. While we may go down the authoritarian path with a Clown King, we're still at least 10-15 years behind China. https://www.rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/11/05/uyghur-tiktok-censors-abroad/ https://www.rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/11/05/uyghur-tiktok-...
- elektronika 9mo ago
  Radio Free Asia is USA funded propaganda.
  - atomic_reed 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - kurthr 9mo ago
    But since that's all been defunded by DOGE then by your own argument, it doesn't count any more. Ignoring history is a good way to repeat it, just because it didn't happen this year. Do you remember the last Vietnam War? Oh no, not the one you're thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War Several hundred thousand Chinese troops invaded Vietnam with 500 tanks in 1979.
    - urmackchually2 9mo ago

tech_hutch 9mo ago

> the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles I'm sorry, did I miss something? Is this something that's happened (ever)?

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
garciasn 9mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbMRywfYiM8&t=105s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbMRywfYiM8&t=105s e: 1. tracking string removed per request. 2. it's a video of a WCCO news (local MSP TV station) segment which shows an armored vehicle pushing protesters out of the way.
- wizzwizz4 9mo ago
  You may wish to remove the ?si=… tracking string from your URL. It might also be worth editing in some context: right now, it's a bare YouTube link (which I don't particularly want to click on). Is this footage? A video essay? A pop song?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- elcritch 9mo ago
  Nice subtle twisting of words. There’s an enormous difference between driving slowly through a crowd of protestors with no injuries versus running over protesters with a tank.
  - garciasn 9mo ago
    I didn't twist anything. If anything, I would argue YOU are twisting words of the original comment to which I responded: >> the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles > I'm sorry, did I miss something? Is this something that's happened (ever)?

WheatMillington 9mo ago

I see people saying this a lot, but I've also seen videos demonstrating that you can easily post and search for Tiananmen Square content. I don't use Tiktok myself but it seems like this is basically untrue.

rluna828 9mo ago
key word is "search," tianamen square will never be recommended in a feed. This is the illusion of "choice." Most people think they can "train" their feed, this is not true.
Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
This will likely depend on the country, I presume it wouldn't work in China. But this isn't new either, western services operating abroad will often comply with local laws, which includes country or region specific laws on acceptable content. Google pulled out of China for a good while because they didn't want to, but they eventually cracked and complied with their content laws. Of course, by then the competition was dominant already.

Joeri 9mo ago

On mastodon, with the non-algorithmic feed, following mostly accounts that aren’t particularly political, those things are still at the top of the feed. If you’re not seeing those topics at the top of your feed you’re probably being misled by your algorithm. Another reason why feed ranking algorithms should be published. If we can see the algorithm we can stop playing these yes/no games. The real enemies are social media companies, not the other side of politics.

freitasm 9mo ago

Using whataboutism doesn't negate the fact that the first amendment is being trampled over by the US administration. Buying TikTok to censor it is the move of a fascist government.

weinzierl 9mo ago

I'm confused. I thought there was Douyin in China and TikTok for the rest of the world. TikTok used to be under Chinese control but now is essentially under US control. Isn't western TikTok a single entity?

pests 9mo ago
The news only dropped about 5 days ago about the US partnership. Its still a Chinese app. Now the deal with Oracle will have them designing the algo, storing US users data, and doing US moderation. It wasn't this way before.
- weinzierl 9mo ago
  Nah, the writing is on the wall for a long time and they nearly got shut down several times. I can’t imagine that the permission to continue operations came without major concessions.
- tw1984 9mo ago
  no, it is an American company with Americans holding 80% ownership.

mktk1001 9mo ago

I think the more concerning thing here is the US government attacking people of different ethnicities.