> the Chinese government has direct control over the content shown to users.
Was this actually proven in specific incidents?
Is this the only media outlet this applies to?
Was this actually proven in specific incidents?
Is this the only media outlet this applies to?
No - and certainly not on any appreciable or meaningful scale.
The bill's proponents claim that intelligence agencies have found proof of this, and that the proof is classified and therefore cannot be shown to the public. (If you're over the age of 30, you're almost certainly getting early 2000s flashbacks reading that sentence).
> Is this the only media outlet this applies to?
No. The ban applies to TikTok, but as pointed above, not to Chinese (or Russian) state media, which do directly control the content shown to users.
(I'm sure it is; there have been plenty of people disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/china-disappea... , but I'd just like to have a little evidence rather than do an Iraq war again)
In the US, the government has control over the content too, it just so happens that it mostly concerns itself with combatting certain moral vices (from prostitution to bootleg fireworks) - although to be fair, it also lightly pressured big tech into combatting political "misinformation".
In China, the same mechanisms exist, except the controls on speech are much tighter and the punishments more severe. Every other tech company operating there has a story of officials showing up with demands or threatening employees. I worked at two places where this happened. In addition, most businesses operate as formal or quasi-formal public-private partnership, where the CCP has officials within the corporate management structure. Again, ask anyone who tried to start a foreign-owned business in China.
You can make a reasonable argument that having an oppressive and geopolitically adversarial foreign government effectively in control of the most popular youth social media platform in the country is not great. Or you can make a reasonable free-trade argument. Free trade works only if all participants follow the rules; if Western social media can't operate on their market, they don't get to operate on ours.
There are things to dislike about the US government, but I really don't get the contrarian takes on TikTok. China is objectively worse and its government's legitimacy and lasting power is built in the bodies of tens of millions of victims. We're not getting along right now. This doesn't require cynicism to explain.