I don’t understand this argument that China couldn’t possibly use the app to influence public opinion. The TikTok algorithm works by tagging a bunch of features onto a video. How positive is it, political bent, comedy, cat, depressive, anything. And the people running these apps can then pull levers as they see fit to change the distribution of content shown to users.

In fact in a very real sense I think it’s impossible to be neutral. Similar to running a newspaper and picking which articles are on the front page. There is no neutral outcome: the owners of a feed inevitably make editorial choices on what gets shown.