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rayiner | on: TikTok goes dark in the US
This is 100% what it is. The establishment types are upset that they can’t just lean on a handful of major media organizations anymore to maintain a uniform narrative (e.g. Iraq having WMDs).
willmadden | parent | next
Isn't it funny how our "freedom of speech" is situationally optional?
jp_nc | root | parent | next
You are trusting your “freedom of speech” to an entity controlled by a government which blocks US companies from penetrating the great firewall? Try googling tank man in China…you can’t because google is blocked and tank man is prohibited content.
johng | root | parent
Freedom of speech has nothing to do with a privately owned platform controlled by a communist country.
motorest | parent
> The establishment types are upset that they can’t just lean on a handful of major media organizations to maintain a uniform narrative (e.g. Iraq having WMDs).

This is obviously false.

Go check TikTok to see what shows up in searches for Tiananmen square or Uighur genocide, or even anyone of the many small catastrophes that go against the CCP's narrative.

You're claiming that consuming propaganda from a totalitarian regime that actively engages against your security, stability, and best interests is somehow better than consuming hypothetical propaganda from your own democratically elected government. Make it make sense.

rayiner | root | parent
Americans have no reason to care what happened in Tiananmen Square. That’s Chinese domestic politics. But whether Iraq actually had WMDs does affect Americans, as the people who financed that war based on the failures of the U.S. government.

Foreign propaganda is much less dangerous than domestic propaganda because domestic propaganda is more likely to relate to issues that actually matter to citizens.

motorest | root | parent
> Americans have no reason to care what happened in Tiananmen Square.

It's not about what you care or don't care. It's about using China's social media service to discuss the very topics that China wants to censor. Again, go to TikTok or whatever alternative service provided by China and try to refer to the Tiananmen massacre or Uighur genocide. See what your paragons of free speech treat that.