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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

Besides the obvious concerns about tracking/spying, TikTok has great potential as a propaganda tool to gain subtle influence over America's youth. For example, its algorithm could be tweaked to elevate content that is favourable to the Chinese Communist Party.

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I think their strategy is more insidious than that. Chinese social media inside China is actively directing youth towards vigorous / productive / pedagogical endeavours, whereas ticktock outside China heavily promotes pointless endless innane naval gazing such as pranking, gaming, influencers etc. They seek to create a generation of feckless know nothings in The West.

Yep, shore up your own and undermine your enemy. Promote strength, work ethic, and achievement at home and promote idleness, listlessness and parasitic attitudes for the enemy.

> Chinese social media inside China is actively directing youth towards vigorous / productive / pedagogical endeavours, whereas ticktock outside China heavily promotes pointless endless innane naval gazing such as pranking, gaming, influencers etc.

This would be interesting if true. Do you have any sources for this or is it just an observation?

It's hard to call this a strategy when the reason TikTok operates the way it does in China is due to regulation. Instagram reels promotes the same garbage, does the CCP direct Meta as well? If you tried to push for the same kind of social media regulation in the US, the internet would shut down in protest.

> social media inside China is actively directing youth towards vigorous / productive / pedagogical

I have a fair number of friends/relatives living in China and at least from what I've seen this is a pretty laughable claim. Very curious where you heard this from?

TikTok in China is different than the US in that it is increasingly inundated with various "get rich quick" schemes. It's essentially turned into large scale social advertising platform where everyone is trying to pitch some angle to make a quick RBM.

I'm sure there exist some "vigorous / productive / pedagogical" accounts, but there are plenty of this in the US as well. There are a lot of accounts in the US that focus on learning, exercise, getting a software job etc.

Again, would love to hear your source of this information, especially if it's first hand experience, because based on the people I talk with in mainland China this comment sounds like a very off the mark hot take.

> ticktock outside China heavily promotes pointless endless innane naval gazing such as pranking, gaming, influencers etc.

Have you ever seen the type of content that's popular on Instagram and Youtube? The CCP doesn't need some "insidious plan" to push that to the top.

"Hey guys, it's Mr. Beast about to fight Jake Paul in a boxing ring made of ferraris!"

The YT Algorithm is much more spammy when it comes to influencer content that I never click on.

Whereas my Tiktok is chock full of interesting art, design, music, and programming.

> naval gazing such as pranking, gaming, influencers etc

Yes surely none of this existed in western entertainment before TikTok and was all concocted by the the Chinese in a grand conspiracy to bring down the US. At this point I’m trying to figure out who’s better at contrived cartoon supervillain plans according to HN: Musk or China.

> They seek to create a generation of feckless know nothings in The West.

We’re doing that just fine on our own.

I wonder why when China does this it’s always a bad thing. Isn’t the inverse also true i.e. western media influencing and nudging narratives, except that we can actually observe this happening right now. Where do you stand in that case?

This one's pretty simple: China is a totalitarian regime that is in direct conflict with western constitutional values. So if influence is aimed at democratic foundations, of course it's a bad thing.

Doesn't banning a social network undermine the democratic principles you mention?

Not if it’s a psy op tool of an adversary.

Not in principle. Practically all democratic systems have provisions to defend against subversion of their core principles. Those provisions may be designed to safeguard institutions, processes such as elections and regulate information flow.

It's important to remember that the US concept of "free speech" as an absolute right is very untypical, and that it also has limits due to being narrow in its scope.

Of course, banning a social network due to arbitrary or without reasons would be against democratic principles. But following democratic and legal principles to openly apply laws and procedures designed to safeguard the state - that's not undermining at all, to the contrary!

Collapse of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in XVIII as form of proto-democracy can be here good case study. It show us how authoritarian systems can exploit democratic system.

No. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

Wow, thanks! I didn't know this phrase [1], but it really nails the concept of self-balance in constitutional democracies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...

I don't see why those principles should apply to a foreign country with malign intentions, they aren't a person nor do they represent a populace given that China is authoritarian.

The spying seems secondary to the influence they can wield by pushing certain stories while burying others.

China is under the rule of the CCP, an authortarian party to which you cannot challenge.

For all democracy's failings, for the mess the US is in, and rise of populist parties in Europe, it is still freedom.

Does the US public have any genuine, identifiable democratic power over the FBI?

Absolutely. The FBI head must be appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. Oversight is performed by Congress. He can be fired.

I don't disagree that it is possible in theory, but are there any substantial examples of initiatives genuinely spawned at the general public level changing policy of the FBI? This would be required to upgrade the binary (True/False) proposition from a belief to a fact...but then only as a binary (the FBI could still be 99% beyond the will of the people).

This is technically true, but I wonder in practice. Like, the King of England absolutely has the power to withhold consent on acts of parliament. How accountable is parliament to the King? But replace the King with Congress, and parliament with the FBI.

Ironically, right wing parties in the EU rose thanks to disinformation on american social media. Following this discussion's logic, Facebook and Twitter should have been banned in the EU a long time ago.

> right wing parties in the EU rose thanks to disinformation on american social media.

Citation needed. Last I heard it was mostly attributable to migration over the last couple decades.

If China were pushing a WEF narrative, everything would be okay. Instead they have their own separate agenda that does not dovetail. Look at it this way, if it were Japan or SKorea, we would not be hearing about this from that PoV. That said, even if it were a purely American company, setting aside tracking and all that, it is not a psychological net-positive. It's manipulative and induces poor choices on some. That some is on this side of too much.

For the record, I also think nudging in and of itself is a bad thing and incompatible with democracy. Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi have a great essay on that [1].

[1] https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/23/cognitive-democracy/

I mean, yes, but there’s no communist bogeyman to blame, just our own vanities.

It would not be that blatant. They look more to add ambiguity and instability. They may be interested in amplifying police brutality in the eyes of users as well as lawlessness and looting simultaneously to sew discord, as an example. Or, spying isn't so bad, the US does it, why shouldn't China, etc.

TikTok can't do anything worse than domestic advertising/marketing firms already do. The idea that the CCP wants American youth for any purpose that doesn't already align with American businesses--who depend on the slave-labor priced cheap stuff from China to sell to them--is ridiculous.

China wants internal conflict that weakens the country or destroys democracy. Social media can be weaponized to do this. Foreign media ownership limits are not novel.

> TikTok can't do anything worse than domestic advertising/marketing firms already do.

Can't it?

This is the biggest issue; they are already controlling the media for large population of young Americans.

Or by radicalizing people to try to destroy democracy.

Or to shape what the youth value: science or twerking/vaping.

What is this ? China ? This is a free country, twerking and vaping are valid life plans !!! /s

Is there concern that other platforms could do the same thing? Or is biased propaganda acceptable so long as it's American in origin?

I mean yes, that's a scary made-up scenario. I'd be in favor of banning the app if that made-up scenario ever becomes a non-made-up scenario.

Sure, but so long as any manipulations are kept subtle, it's hard to prove whether or not they're actually happening.

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