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Why is freedom of speech suddenly not worth preserving when it comes from somewhere we don’t like?

It's unfair trade practice that Chinese developers have direct access to Western consumers while Western developers access to Chinese consumers is severely limited by the Chinese regime.

It's unfair to ourselves we let foreign companies prone to be used as government spionage tools to be in American app markets.

It’s unfair that we can’t have an honest conversation about tic Tok because people chalk it up to free speech. The Chinese Government and its subsidiaries do not have first amendment rights, but there’s a handful of passages in the constitution about dealing with foreign adversaries: which China is.

Freedom of speech is not freedom of international trade.

100%. The lengths people will go to defend social media companies is ridiculous. Let alone a Chinese botnet.

Because the somewhere we don't like is one of the most censorious regimes on the planet. Free Speech needs to defend itself.

Isn’t the point of free speech that it can defend itself? Why do we need to police the content our citizens consume if that’s the case?

Freedoms can't defend themselves, because they're abstract and subjective. Human beings decide what freedoms other human beings have, collectively and by various means with varying efficacy, such as use of force, tacit agreement, etc.

People in China are certainly free to speak whatever they like. But if they say the wrong thing their genocidal dictatorship will stomp on them hard. Here in America we have means to defend free speech through the use of force, e.g., the courts, and a generally accepted social contract that some (many? I hope) are loath to break: and that freedom doesn't mean other individuals can't or won't react negatively (cf: Musk and Twitter).

The banning of speech will continue until free speech is defended, or something

Because TikTok the app is not speech. The content hosted on TikTok is speech. The speech could move somewhere else.

But every platform is editorialized by algorithm. Speech moving elsewhere means editing speech.

I truly see it as a Chinese campaign to dumbify our society.

We are swallowing it hook, line and sinker.

I keep hearing this and have been unable to find a shred of data to support it. Is this just a meme?

Well there are studies about the effects of TikTok. On sone level, it’s just common see sense. Whether it is a true campaign as such is questionable but it is clear the CCP tries to prevent its population being “dumbed down” from social media and other forms of entertainment and they are probably not unhappy to see the kind of content and its effects that TikTok has on the US population.

On the contrary, what I've seen of Douyin is no more substantive than what is on TikTok, it's just more compliant with CCP censorship. It is an entertainment medium first and has no pretensions about being anything else. This "common sense" you reference sounds like the same kind of "technology rots your brain" Luddite-ism that welled up for a while and then faded back into well deserved obscurity when radio and then television and then the Internet first proliferated.

I want to see the studies or even any kind of actual data substantiating this "dumbing down" or even "harm" that doesn't reduce down to teenagers saying and doing stupid shit, as has been done for a good chunk of our species' time on this rock.

You think recognizing the ill-effects of TikTok is just Luddite-ism? How nice for you. I mean, the evidence is on the Internet; here is one study[1]. I also think it is pretty clear that consuming TikTok regularly by children has a direct consequence on attention span, I don’t require the Cleveland Clinic to tell me that. I think there is a difference from mindlessly consuming TikTok than programming a C64 or playing an MMORPG with complex leveling/crafting/etc systems. Realizing that fact is not anti-technology.

1. https://movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/1...

What a garbage study! n=28? Self reporting? Uncritical acceptance of user profile info and video content with no verification? No mechanism of causation?

Salient quote: "64.3% of subjects cited were selling merchandise on their TikTok account related to their TikTok tics or could be contacted for paid appearances."

It's trash. It's not science. In fact, it's offensively not science. What's next, reporting on the supernatural stuff that we see on video sites? By this standard, I find the top 20 or so people on TikTok that report ghost encounters and can get a paper published about how ghosts are real.

Snark aside, if this is the quality of material you are basing your assumption of "ill effects" on, I feel more comfortable in both calling TikTok no different from any other media sharing platform, and characterizing this handwringing about it as tired Luddite-ism, than I did before reading your link.

You think it is equivalent to supernatural mumbo jumbo? It’s pretty early days for the research of this but there is also common sense. If you really think there is no difference between TikTok and other media platform then I am happy for you.

It is a parents responsibility to control and monitor what apps go on their child’s phone.

Agree. Content on Chinese tik Tok is very different.

If you want this, pass laws to force that kind of content.

So you’re saying freedom of speech is dangerous and should be curtailed? The same thing is happening locally.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

You're reeking of good faith /s

Your argument is like saying that jailing fraudsters is anti-freedom-of-speech.

Opium wars: revenge?

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