Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

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> Not sure why you're discounting the potential for foreign influence campaigns from reducing the accountability your government has to you.

I don't discount that potential. I'm certain it exists. I'm also certain that it exists on youtube and facebook and twitter and reddit and will continue to influence US politics long into the future. Yet the US government has never once spoken about banning facebook and youtube or any other platform doing exactly the same things as TikTok, they're focused only the threat of the one Chinese platform while allowing China, Russia and anyone else to influence Americans though US owned platforms. They're even fine with letting China influence Americans using TikTok as long as TikTok is owned by a US company.

I'm just not buying the argument that TikTok represents a threat to our democracy any greater than the threat posed by youtube or twitter. I don't see how taking away our freedom to access/use a Chinese platform that isn't violating any US law and isn't doing anything different than similar US platforms are doing is really helping to protect us here. Congress telling Americans what software we can have installed on our own devices, and preventing us from accessing platforms in other countries seems much more likely to lead us down a slippery slope than one Chinese owned social media platform being allowed to do what all the US owned platforms are doing.

You'd probably change your tune if you actually saw all the propaganda being pushed on Douyin and other Chinese social media.

I might if we saw that same propaganda being pushed on US users of TikTok but since we haven't... In fact, I suspect that the minute TikTok started feeding US users Chinese propaganda instead of whatever moronic thing is popular there currently US users would stop using the app and get the mind-numbing bite sized entertainment they crave on other social media platforms.

I don't think you've been paying attention then. It's already happening.

-For example, try saying something critical about China or something in defense of Taiwan. If the post gains traction, your account will get banned.

-Observe the amplification of r/latestatecapitalism type of content. https://www.businessinsider.com/capitalism-tiktok-america-pr...

-Whitewashing of life in China and China's accomplishments. https://apnews.com/article/china-tiktok-facebook-influencers...

I often see people online extol the virtues of China's progress, it's technological advancement, it's focus on the climate and equality for people, etc. I say this as someone who has lived in China, and I even like China, but people buy into the bullshit. China isn't some utopia. There are many good things about it, but there are a multitude of odious aspects that get glossed over.

This is about sowing dissent and creating doubt in our values.

I don't think you have any business making so many comments in this thread when you have no idea what is going on.

> I'm just not buying the argument that TikTok represents a threat to our democracy any greater than the threat posed by youtube or twitter.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMbYJYmU/

I looooove TikTok, but if I was running a regime, taking it down would be Job #1.

Ok, but if you agree it’s a problem and “why aren’t we also banning or more carefully regulating other social platforms”, I don’t disagree with you. Let’s. There’s broadly enough accepted truism that they do probably do pose a threat (not just to democracy, but in terms of harms).

But a foreign one that’s directly controlled by an adversary is certainly one we can tackle immediately and it’s easier to muster the political will. They don’t need to be connected. Of course it’s hard to trust the government when they have a history of lying, but there’s every reason to believe the threat they’ve been communicating out as real in the wake of the attacks the Russians launched on us in 2016 and given it’s an election year. It’s like all those people who didn’t trust when Biden said Putin was gearing to attack Ukraine imminently.

On the other hand, there is reason to be skeptical of that claim since the tiktok ban won’t happen until well after the 2020 election. So maybe it is the US trying to kill a major tech adversary that’s managed to dethrone our own oligopoly in the space. But that’s the starting point of the argument - is it really going to be used by the Chinese governments for election meddling or is it protectionism to hide the rot within the US regulatory framework that’s simply entrenched interests.

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