You could argue that the perceptions of TikTok as a CCP tool of propaganda is an indirect foreign aid to Taiwan
God knows how much Russia tries to use social media to turn sentiments against Ukraine
Ultimately I think short form content encouraging platforms at large need to go down anyways so sucker punching the current biggest offender is right by me!
Facebook literally conducted social experiments on a million of their own users and didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. Banning TikTok had absolutely nothing to do with security or stopping propaganda. Anyone that thinks otherwise is a gullible fool.
Short form content platforms aren’t going anywhere, Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts are just a carbon copy of tiktok. No problems with them, of course, because they’re American.
I was against banning TikTok despite never having even used it. I still think the fact that’s it’s CCP controlled is a valid point so I get why this doesn’t affect reels or shorts but I still think it’s naive to ignore them. They’re bad for mental health and political division the exact same way TikTok is and just like TikTok there are foreign countries using them for propaganda purposes just aswell.
The propaganda really isn’t anything different or special though. I’ve been using TikTok for years and it’s no different than any other social media. You interact with what you’re interested in and so you see what you want to see. Just like lemmy and reddit and whatever else. I’d argue that TikTok is a bit better for not having US corporate fingers all over it tbh.
If propaganda is valid criticism of the way our government is behaving by our own citizens on their own channels then I guess you could call it that lol. But banning TikTok is already proof that our government is full of fuckery and not working for us. They tried twice before this and the people unequivocally said NO both times. So they shoved it through in a way that makes it more difficult for anyone to hold them accountable. Because of course they did. Even people that don’t like the idea of TikTok should be more like you and against this obvious power grab. They don’t want to protect us. They want our data back in the US markets and our eyes back on our own homegrown propaganda that they can control. It really is outrageous if you consider it at anything more than surface level.
