What makes Chinese propaganda so powerful, even in the form of silly 30 seconds dancing? Or perhaps the real problem is not this? But the existance of a single non western source of consent manufacturing?
It’s like saying you should allow someone to punch you because you “should” be able to punch yourself harder.
The US controls Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Reddit, Snapchat, Whatsapp.
Owner of Twitter has office space in the white house, and is calling for the overthrow of elected European governments and deliberately spreading misinformation.
Then the US sees one non-american-owned social media network and decides it's got to be banned.
Perhaps those Europeans should consider whether they want foreigners influencing domestic audiences?
Not in the way that the CCP controls ByteDance. ByteDance cannot win a lawsuit against the Chinese government.
China, Russia and Iran are designated adversaries and will be treated as such.
And I think Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Reddit, Snapchat, Whatsapp should be also be far more regulated.
Musk won't be in the White House for long.
The mistake here is seeing the US action as a universal moral statement and therefore hypocritical.
The US action was simply pragmatic. There is no claim of universality or morality.
I very much agree other countries should also look at US hegemony through a pragmatic lens: is this a net harm? It’s kind of funny that you raise it as a gotcha.
TikTok is as much about silly 30 seconds dancing as Twitter was about posting 144 character messages or a prime time news program is about 2 minute clips with a voiceover.
The way you fail to even frame the problem suggests you either are oblivious about the problem or you're doing your best to avoid discussing it.
wtf
How about as little propaganda as possible?
To really be fair, we should lock our Internet from China for 30 years and let the Chinese people have the full wide un-CCP-censored Western consent Internet you’re talking about. We can start with old favorite topics like T-square, Winnie the Pooh, that COVID doctor the CCP suppressed and then martyred.
Then we can sit down and have a frank discussion on what the terms of Internet use should be.
Until then, China should be grateful their State enterprises were allowed in at all.
But to answer your question, US propaganda isn’t countering because it just doesn’t exist. We have a free press. It can criticize the government, and does it every single day. The U.S. doesn’t do military parades, and its self marketing sucks because it’s not an imperative, unlike China.
Furthermore, China clearly thinks propaganda and intense censorship is the way to go. What else can explain the efforts to A. Block Winnie the Pooh B. Block the sale of TikTok? Profit clearly isn’t the motive now, which is very suspicious of such a large ostensibly for profit company.
The fact that the consideration to sell it to Trump/Musk in particular is floating around points to the political value of TikTok in the first place. Bribe the incoming admin, extract some favor in return, I.E. back down on Taiwan or relieve semiconductor tariffs.
It’s all obvious.