What exactly is stopping the Chinese from buying that same data? Name one hindrance they will face, please.
The delusional jingoism on HN is painful to fight.
You’re also ignoring the fact that they can use their apps to easily spread propaganda and influence elections. They’ve already censored videos that criticized the Chinese government. And inside the app then they have a very prominent “Covid-19” button where they can cherrypick what information to display.. they’ve for instance chosen to omit the fact that the Wuhan Virus originated in China.
Any social media platforms using the term "Wuhan Virus" would be a bigger sign of governmental propaganda than the lack is.
This trick is very effective in erasing the obvious link between the virus and its origin.
See https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/20/coronavirus...
Nobody is trying to erase "history" or anything. Anybody actually interested can always read about the origin location of the virus in Wikipedia. This is all about keeping things straightforward for the otherwise uninformed.
Note that this is a standard virus naming methodology. The Ebola virus was similarly intentionally named to avoid unintentionally creating a target for discrimination.
It shouldn't matter whether you think Wuhan virus or COVID is the propaganda-name, a company just defaulting to the most common term for their market is not a useful sign of propaganda.
Using Tik Tok's Covid information as proof of propaganda is just looking at noise and pretending it's data.