It's simply unbelievable to me that a sophisticated community like HN is against a ban in the context of all of the meddling our biggest rival, China, has done in our country to our direct disadvantage. Russia and China's main M.O. has been to divide us; to sow discontent. And they've been pretty successful. Who knows if Trump would have been elected without the Russian election interference. Trump has been a divisive figure who has reveled in destroying social order and he has done so successfully; the amount of hate and distrust for one's opposing political party is at an all-time high in the US, and it shows. This is to say that China and Russia have already been very successful in their attempts. In China Xi likes to say that "The East is rising, the West is falling". This is completely his M.O. and part of his plan.
And now Trump, aware of all of this, is attempting to bring Tiktok back. Knowing everything he knows about it's use and potential future use of a propaganda machine. And knowing full-well that this is good for the East, and bad for domestic civil peace of mind and social order. And in the most Trumpian way possible, he doesn't care. And he's doing it for the most selfish reason possible--to feed his hero complex. Full. Fucking. Stop. This is such a glaring advertisement that he will do whatever he can to put his interests and reputation first over our country's and it's absolutely sickening.
And the fact that there is actual debate and discussion around this issue on HN is just such a shocker. Again, this community should know better about how dangerous propaganda is, amplified by the fact that it's propaganda from our most rapacious, unethical and conniving enemy. An enemy that is planning wars of conquest, who's starving and torturing parts of its population. You want that enemy deciding what your kid spends an hour a day watching on their phone, while you're not paying attention? Yeah, good luck with that.
https://networkcontagion.us/reports/the-ccps-digital-charm-o...
you articulated it perfectly
the issue is not that tiktok harvests user data, not free speech, not that China is refuses to let US counterparts operate in China - the issue is, TikTok is an insidious propaganda machine that influences our your people, and entire generation, to abandon their values and replace them with views favorable to the CCP
daily, hourly, and each minute young people interact with TikTok, they're influenced by a foreign adversary.
it's telling them Ukraine is the actual aggressor, that Putin is "based", that China is a paradise, that the West is falling, that China has a valid claim on all the maritime disputes, among other things that are non-truths
i owe the rise of antisemitism among young people to TikTok. young people who otherwise do not hold a negative opinion towards Israel suddenly became anti-Israel and hold hatred towards Jews
i have experienced the above first-hand. my account doesn't interact with any current affairs, yet I am bombarded with anti-Israel narratives. there are thousands - yes, thousands - of antisemitic comments and replies under each video. and young people read them and think it's normal - that it's normal to think this way and say such things at loud
i reported hundreds of such comments. all my reports, according to TikTok, did not violate their "community standards". instead, my replies to those comments were removed for violating their "community standards"
(to the people who'll say it's not true, i have data to back it up, and i can send a link to a huggingface repo that contains the dataset)
it is clear pro-CCP and CCP-aligned views are promoted while others are supressed.
i live in a country with tensions with China, and my TikTok FYP page is flooded with pro-CCP narratives and narratives that suggest my country is weak and hopeless
TikTok is a national security issue. it's not enough the TikTok divests from China. it must be banned for the sake of the next century.
This word is incongruent with your use of this word:
>enemy
Especially in light of the fact that you consistently fail to identify which identity is doing this:
>An enemy that is planning wars of conquest, who's starving and torturing parts of its population.
Pop-quiz: which nations have been consistently at war since March, 2003? Which nations have established 1,000 torture dungeons around the globe? Which nations have portions of their populations, by design, living in desperate poverty, feeding a for-profit prison-industrial complex, every single day, with fresh meat?
The ability to identify propaganda is not as important as the ability to identify duplicity. One cannot have the former without the latter.
> this community should know better about how dangerous propaganda is
Bear in mind that a large part of this community is employed by the same companies that built the tools used to spread propaganda and disinformation. It wouldn't be in their interest to disclose that they're part of the problem, so it's easier to ignore that the problem even exists.