Geroge Orwell - Proposed preface to Animal Farm, first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
I don’t get how can Americans be so insecure about themselves and have such fragile trust in what they can achieve as a country. This idea that foreign authoritarian regimes should be respected as much as their own people and system is just baffling.
The country is constantly on a knife edge. It takes only a tiny shift to cause a radical change in the power structure, and good reason to think that power structure will be used against you.
It is indeed remarkable that the country has achieved anything at all when it spends so much time cowering. Nor is that new, but modern media seem to give it more immediacy.
I disagree based purely off of my own life and experiences. The shift rightward over the past 10 years is palpable. It's not surprising historically at all - the US has always been composed of almost entirely conservative, individualistic attitudes and then little pockets of progressiveness here and there. They never last, rather the hope is just to get as much done as fast as possible in that time frame.
Certainly, policy that would be unthinkable 15 years ago is par for the course now. I think that's just undeniable, and speaks to the radicalization of the US.
Take a deep breath, we're all gonna be okay.
While you are preparing brisket they are expecting to lose rights and have friends taken away. For them it is not going to be ok.
Everything will be okay, nobody is losing their rights. Try getting out of California/NYC some time.
Moving the goal post there isn't it?
I believe it's arguably clear the right to privacy and freedom of movement have been attacked/stripped though and those are constitutional rights.
Maybe you should try to get out of the technofacist mindset?
Fuck right off about "gonna be okay", asshole.
Let's be specific:
In the "Gender" executive order, Sec 2(a) and Sec 3(d), the administration has set it up so that the passport, global entry, social security, or other identity document of any transgender American citizen can be scrutinized, denied in the future, or in an expansive reading, retroactively revoked.
Since all such changes require documentation, there is almost certainly a list of all such people, unless the previous administration was clever enough to destroy it.
For example, a valid document for this man https://www.uri.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/news/sites/16/20... (picked at random, a picture of an openly trans man who has stated as such on a website), can no longer list an M. A document with an M on it is subject to government scrutiny, for example at any border crossing or other location where identity may be verified. The government may now argue that such a document is not valid. If he has no documents with such an M marker, he can no longer obtain them. Additionally, he must use the women's room, per sec (4).
"We're all gonna be okay!" The federal government is simply subjecting trans people to increased scrutiny, limiting their freedom of speech and expression and their freedom of movement. "Nobody's gonna lose their rights."
But hey, enjoy your brisket, right? How's the price of milk doing?
There's no laws in America about how one dresses and presents themselves as long as its not a false identity.
Anyways, weren't you just arguing that IDs shouldn't even be required for trivial inconsequential stuff like voting?
I mean, descriptive information on an ID isn't used for like tying someones appearance to their name or anything, right?
So it makes sense for the news to say something like "the police are searching for a female suspect 5'9" " despite them looking similar to the person in rpearl's example.
That description will really help the public identify or be on the look out for that female, right?
Respect doesn't mean that you have to agree. If you believe that something is wrong, use arguments, educate, inform... It's hard to implement pathological behaviour in well informed and educated society. Fragile society, however, is easier to be manipulated with and lead to hate, violence and wars.
What's wrong with this solution?
An example of an anti-solution is lowering crime by making something that was illegal no longer illegal (see: public transit vs automobiles). Or, reducing the incidence of something by making it illegal while simultaneously increasing it's necessity (see: abortion). Or, solving wage inequality by protesting minimum wage increases.
I think imposing certain limits on various freedoms, including speech is required for a functioning democracy. I also believe that there are deeper issues if the populace of a nation no longer respect the decisions made by its highest court of law.
We've got the whole world wearing blue jeans and listening to our music, mostly communicating on our tech platforms. English is the default language for international business. One Chinese social media company and its game over? Have some faith in your culture.
Every bad thing we’ve been taught to believe about China or Russia, it turns out we do too and often worse. So what loyalty should we have? What has democracy and capitalism done for us but bankrupt our seniors with medical debt and addict our children to iPads and amphetamines?
I’d love to be able to trust my government and the American ideal again, but don’t tell me I’m weak for second-guessing the whole con game this century is turning into.
Radicaly increased wealth. I guess you have access to drinking water, food, place to sleep and be warm at cold sessions. It wasn't a standard few decades ago and still it is not fot most in the world.
"I’d love to be able to trust my governmen..."
Do you really believe that government solve your problems?
“Radically increased wealth”, for who? Government has never solved my problems, only created more. My point is that I would have been doing better under China’s system than ours.
I’m not sure how you can say this with a straight face. China hit rock bottom after the cultural revolution and they had a lot of “the only place left to go is up!” going on. This is like someone saying their salary increased 5X from $10k to $50k and calling that better than someone’s salary only going up by a third from $200k to $300k. Yes, the improvements have been great, and while your life would have improved more under Chinese rule (velocity), do you really think your position would be better off? (And imagine only making $50k or $100k/year and houses still start at a million bucks!)
If you don’t like government meddling, China probably isn’t the place for you. Yes, they might not pay attention that you aren’t following some rule for awhile, but the rule exists and they will eventually hit you with non-compliance.
Years of TikTok usage
Let's be honest: "Democracy" in the USA is and always has been a game for the rich, especially since the 1908s when Reagan and Thatcher decided that China should be the top dog in the world order.
People just want to live happily. Simple as that. TikTok gives a lot of people a feeling, a snippet, of a little bit of freedom and connection with others. All US media makes people fearful - FOX "news" is literally just fearmongering for boomers and their children who can't afford homes of their own. CNN and MSNBC is just fear mongering against boomers who watch FOX "news". Facebook/Meta/IG/WhatsApp is an extension of these fears into the virtual world and TikTok offers something better.
Jokes on the USA though. RedNOTE is gonna close the cultural divide between America and China and Americans will realize just how far the boomer generation and those who have been elected to uphold boomer beliefs really left younger/current generations behind.
China has won technologically and now begins the cultural victory.
I can foresee, sadly, that there will be an unnecessary loss of lives in the short term however for both the USA and BRICS nations. Hopefully I wind up being wrong.
TikTok is not some bastion of freedom, they did win with critical mass and a vastly superior algorithm. All media makes people fearful, you speak so highly of China but have you consumed mainland Chinese media before? It is like Fox on steroids, packed full with stories that paint China as the victor and America as a dangerous and silly country.
Calling a victory in technology is laughable, mainland manufacturing is incredible, one of the best in the world. Products in China have caught up and in some spaces exceeded western brands. China is still missing out on innovation in high-tech, thats why they have been caught so frequently trying to steal corporate secrets.
RedNOTE is not going to prove anything to americans except the disdain the Chinese have for Americans joining their social network and the level of censorship that exists in a mainland app.
It is like you are a propaganda machine and ironic enough it reads just like a mainland Chinese news article. If there was a conflict everyone would lose out. I am surprised anyone would foreshadow it. China unlike Russia seems to still think through the lens of economic interests, I suspect nobody in the current regime would want any type of conflict. While they may have a military its entirely untested both equipment and men.
It is only when a system is failing that it becomes susceptible to destruction by indifference.
You might have a point, though. With the new administration and its explicit focus on short term populism, it’s hard to stand up for anything.
Similar story with Huawei.
The politics of this are exactly the opposite of that you're saying. This is about restricting democratic rights.
Senator Mitt Romney put it very bluntly [0]:
> "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites - it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."
Or maybe Mitt Romney is just another conspiracy theorist?
0. https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...
The people who formulated the ban failed a few times previously, both because they couldn't gain enough political support to push it through and because it was legally shaky. The Gaza issue was what led to overwhelming support for a ban in the US Congress and Senate (as Romney says), and the ban was intentionally formulated in such a way as to try to legally sidestep the First Amendment question (in a highly dubious manner, but the SC isn't going to overrule Congress here).
> mentioning democratic rights for a CCP app is hilarious.
It's the most popular app in the United States. Calling it a "CCP app" is just braindead. Of course banning the most popular means of expression in a country because the people are expressing themselves in ways that political leaders disapprove of is anti-democratic.
I sympathize with you and agree the initial support definitely utilized the conflict in Gaza but it goes beyond the conflict and centers itself around the ability for the CCP to influence how the algorithm works. To not understand how much control the CCP has over mainland entities is surprising.
This completely depends on the company. There's no evidence that TikTok has been used as a Chinese propaganda vehicle, and the issue that led to TikTok being banned in the US was TikTok's refusal to bow to pressure to toe the line on Palestine/Israel. Unlike Facebook, TikTok did not suppress pro-Palestinian content, and that led to broad Congressional support for a ban.
You keep latching on this idea of Palestinian content. You do realize this is much larger than that conflict?
I have absolutely no direct line to them, never given them any kickbacks, and I visit the country once or twice a year.
I have no doubt that there are businesses that do have significant dealings with the CCP, I would never believe otherwise, but the idea that every company has to have a direct line to them is objectively untrue. I know many other people who also do business with China and its mostly the same story, none of us deal with the government and frankly I would be very uncomfortable if ever I had to.
It’s likely you have and didn’t know it. The “political officer” or otherwise-embedded party official often has another title or “non-official cover” as they say. Communist governments have operated this way since 1918.
The people pushing the ban say it's about Israel. Other Senators and Congresspeople say that's why they and their colleagues supported a ban. There were always some people who wanted to ban TikTok, but they were never able to get majority support in Congress until the issue of Israel came into play. Banning the most popular social media platform in the United States, a platform that more than half of Americans use, is a big deal.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn: "It would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content"
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.: "We’ve seen TikTok used to downplay the Uyghur genocide, the status of Taiwan, and now Hamas terrorism"
And of course, Romney's explicit statement as well, when in context, it's actually far worse because it seems he is very concerned about lax fact checking on TikTok (which American social media platforms announced they are doing away with): https://xcancel.com/ggreenwald/status/1880979821901332773#m
I fundamentally disagree with all of these representatives. Americans are allowed to view all sides of every geopolitical issue and make up their own minds and vote according to their own beliefs. We should never ever be "shielded" from propaganda because we are smart enough to vote for and lead democracy, so we should be trusted as smart enough to ingest any geopolitical information existing in the world.
If 999/1000 tiktoks you see are of one particular viewpoint, you don't think the audience is going to draw specific conclusions? Our species now has mis-information tools that we couldn't have possibly imagined even just a decade ago. We're in the midst of a real struggle to work out how your average person can identify it. It's disheartening how little progress has been made in this area.
So what? If you watch InfoWars all day you'll also draw specific conclusions. If you watch PressTV all day you'll also draw specific conclusions. The point is that Americans can draw whatever conclusions they want, and that limiting info to only "approved" sources is authoritarian
Of all the social networks, Twitter is currently the most concerning, given the far-right sympathies and political connections of its owner.
Would you allow an unfriendly adversary to buy up your ports, critical infrastructure, and food/water supply, or would you block certain transactions in the name of national security?
People being convinced to change their countries geopolitical policies seems to me a perfectly legitimate thing to do in a democracy.
If the american people would like closer relations to china and vote accordingly that seems to me to be the whole point of democracy.
China engaging and supporting that is also a perfectly legitimate means of achieving its goals, no? Or would you prefer that instead of convincing the american people of that, they should instead bribe or coerce their politicians behind closed fdoors?
Unanimous decision to ban TikTok from a divided Supreme Court, 2025.
- Meta - Facebook et al
- Stasi (an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit), was the state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive police organisations in the world, infiltrating almost every aspect of life in East Germany, using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent
The privacy / data protection angle on TikTok is a red herring.
There are other ways China, or anyone else, including any one of us, can get their hands on vast amounts of personal data about anybody. It just costs more than operating a profitable social media platform.
All you need to do is flash a few bucks and talk nicely to a data broker, or Meta (remember Cambridge Analytica?) and there's nothing the US Government or you can do about it, because it's entirely legal. The minimal barriers that are in place to protect the data going into "wrong" hands are trivial to bypass.
And if that doesn't work, the next level up in difficulty is hack the same organizations. China has made an industry out of that.
Yes, all domestic media has also been corrupted by various agencies that wish to psychologically manipulate the masses. Some of this manipulation is to get you to buy things, while other wants to get you to think, act or vote a certain way.
The difference is that when a foreign adversary has the ability to do the same, it becomes a matter of national security. Allowing that adversary to also control the platform itself is beyond unsafe.
The tricky thing is that the US built these tools, and opened them up for everyone to use. This libertarian position is what will ultimately be its downfall. They can't just go and block access to these tools for everyone outside the US, or heavily regulate them, as it will cause an internal uproar, but that is what they must do in order to survive this war. China is in a much better position in this conflict since the government has total control over the media its citizens consume (barring the rampant use of VPNs, which they can shut down at any point). They have no external but massive internal influence.
I feel like everyone should watch this 1985 interview of an ex-KGB agent[1]. It's more relevant today than ever before, and explains the sociopolitical state of not just the US, but of many western countries as well.
Can you understand how others might disagree with this assertion? It doesn't matter if a foreign adversary has the ability to say words. They're just words. Democracies run on words. If our society is going to fall apart because the Chinese say words, it's going to fall apart anyway.
Can you understand that many of us see state steering of narratives on the Internet as a fundamentally illegitimate activity for a government to be undertaking?
I can understand it, but it doesn't make it any less true.
> It doesn't matter if a foreign adversary has the ability to say words.
It matters when those words cause internal social division to the point where it starts destabilizing the nation. This is what we've been seeing in the past decade+, particularly in the US. One of the effects of information warfare is confusion in the victim, where they're not even certain if they're under attack, let alone by whom.
> They're just words.
Words are never "just" words. They're powerful and in the Information Age they can be weaponized at a massive scale thanks to the global platforms the US pioneered.
> Democracies run on words. If our society is going to fall apart because the Chinese say words, it's going to fall apart anyway.
Perhaps. But not at the rate it's falling apart as the subject of these attacks.
> Can you understand that many of us see state steering of narratives on the Internet as a fundamentally illegitimate activity for a government to be undertaking?
You can think of this however you want. But the fact of the matter is that those same freedoms you enjoy and require from your government have put you in a worse position geopolitically than countries that don't have them. Maybe it's time to rethink your priorities as a nation and sacrifice some of those personal freedoms for the greater good. Is watching silly videos really worth witnessing your country tear itself apart from the inside out?
I'm not taking sides in this matter, BTW. The US has been the perpetrator of many atrocities around the world, some of which have impacted me personally, but I think the world would be in a far worse position if other countries were policing it. I'm just pointing out that from this outsider's perspective... you're screwed.
> sacrifice some of those personal freedoms for the greater good
No. That's not what this country has been about and it will never be what it's about.
Really? How has that approach worked for us so far on the open internet? Do you feel that societies have been able to converge on the truth? We can't even agree on what that means. When everyone has the ability to spew their version of "the truth" with equal reach, what you get is a cacophony of signals that makes it impossible to separate the signal from the noise. And if that wasn't enough, we're in the process of adding generative AI to this mix. Insanity... But I digress.
I'm not arguing for censorship, mind you. I'm with you in spirit in this argument, even though I don't really know what the solution might be. What I'm saying is that the utopia of an open and connected world that the internet, web, and, later, social media companies have promised us is clearly not working. Instead, it has allowed interested parties to propagate their agenda for personal, financial, political, etc. gain, playing the masses as pieces on a game board, which has only served to further drive us apart. It might be time for people to realize this, and actively reject this form of manipulation, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen anytime soon. It just seems silly to me to fight for the freedom to consume digital content on specific platforms, without even considering the global picture of what might be at stake.
> There are no information weapons --- only narratives inconvenient for this faction or that faction.
That's a very naive perspective. If inconvenient narratives can't be censored, then counter-narratives can be just as—if not more—effective. With the ability to reach millions of eyeballs via influencers or by just running ad campaigns, anyone with enough interest and resources can shape public opinion however they want. We know how powerful this is because we know that advertising and propaganda are very effective, and we've seen how democratic processes can be corrupted by companies like Cambridge Analytica. So, yes, information can indeed be weaponized.
Information warfare is nothing new and has existed long before the web and the internet. The internet has simply become its primary delivery method, and is the most powerful weapon of its kind we've ever invented. I urge you to read up on the history and some of its modern campaigns. Wikipedia is a good start.
> No. That's not what this country has been about and it will never be what it's about.
Great. Enjoy it while it lasts. :)
Nope. Unanimous decision that the First Amendment does not prohibit banning TikTok.
The fundamental issue is ByteDance ownership. Forced divestiture due to legitimate concern for potential abuses is perfectly acceptable whether by a financial or national security rationale.
———
1 - https://www.axios.com/2024/04/27/biden-tiktok-sale-grindr
All data that they collect are given by user voluntary, by agreeing with their terms of use. Instead of banning, educate about how data harvesting works and why it matters. No one is learning from censorship.
0: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
While it does contain some criticism of the the UK, quite expected as Orwell was a socialist, it also doesn't claim that Animal Farm was really about UK, European, or US governments.
EDIT: I found the primary source[1] of the unpublished preface, it does list Orwell as its author.
0: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
1: https://archive.org/details/TheTimesLiterarySupplement1972UK...
Here’s one that flies in the face of the Orwell’s:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
- Karl R. Popper
In practice we’ve seen both ways play out badly. So clearly we can’t just hope that full freedom is good, and good guys will win.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/yes-you-do-have-to-tolera...
Lots of respect for this guy and his writings but it’s naive to believe people are thinking independently because they can watch TikTok. It just becomes a different propaganda vehicle; the thoughts will still be dependent on the messages they see.
Sure, but even you would agree that if you have even less venues to discover said messages, it'll get more and more heterogeneous?
Maybe TikTok isn't "The last standing beacon for Freedom of Thoughts" exactly, but banning it certainly doesn't get you closer to plurality of opinions.
I think keeping it around is worse. While we’re at it, we need to go after American social media, including entertainment news. People should commune in person and get their opinions from interacting with their community.
It's weird to me that that idea could be such an important part of culture as to become a common saying yet have so little impact on actual discourse.
Not all of it. Just some of it. No need to see everything in such a black and white way.
Also Orwell was obviously not talking about major entities run by other countries. Do you think he would have opposed stopping newspapers directly run by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union from operating inside Britain?
Let’s JUST invent practical nuclear fusion and sentient AI while we’re at it. Both would be probably significantly easier to achieve..
How are you supposed to manufacture consent if it works?
Massive part of YouTube is about teaching critical thinking for those who can’t attend for many reasons.
Still doesn’t work because of the many roadblocks and mostly laziness in general.
Critical thinking is somewhat more subjective and harder to evaluate (i.e. I wouldn’t give a passing mark for your comment).
For starters me and you (let alone other people) probably have a very different of what “critical thinking” even means besides the very basic stuff.
It’s like “world peace”…
Which is the problem. You can’t just impose your understanding of “critical thinking” (based on your personal context, experience, ethical/moral/social views, prejudices and biases) on everyone and expect it to solve anything. In fact if you did it would likely lead to something truly terrible..