> Not anything blatant of course. Blatant stuff does not change peoples opinions anyway. Just subtly bump some reels that has been proven to shift a demography in a certain direction.
> TikTok has the means to do it -- all the data about what reels cause what effect on what demographic, if they just wanted to.
> If TikTok is doing propaganda by subtly promoting some reels over others -- who would know? Why would they not be doing it and how can anyone know they are not already doing it?
> I am not saying this is definitely happening. But any discussion that isn't treating all the social networks as weapons of mass propaganda that CAN be used is awfully naive.
Sure. But that's something that applies to every social network. Do you think e.g. Instagram doesn't subtly adjust which videos it shows you? They openly acknowledge that they limit the spread of videos that they consider "hate speech", and of course which videos they classify as hate speech is a politically dependent question. Or maybe you think Zuckerberg's interests are more aligned with what's good for you personally than the CCP's?
Like with your examples of Fox News or The Daily Show or Pravda, if I can see all the networks then I at least can compare and consider. Closing my eyes to one of them makes me worse off, especially when it's the only one that's not run by a handful of very similar people with very similar interests.
My point was that the free speech discourse around this is naive. The "speech" in question is providing ammunition for the owners of the algorithms, who are doing the most important expression through how those algorithms are tuned.
My point was that social media should be discussed more like nuclear weapons are discussed.
It makes strategically sense for US to not have Chinese nuclear weapons/social media deployed on its soil/in the heads of its citizens; regardless of whether US nuclear weapons/social media is morally superior.