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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

You still didn't explain the risks too clearly.

Let's grant that TikTok is under direct CCP control, and specifically targets kids. Targets them for what? Mind control?

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> Targets them for what? Mind control?

Attempts to change/form their views to be favourable towards dictatorships and antagonistic to democracies.

In the same way Shell targets[1] the youth and attempts to change/form their views to be favorable to fossil fuels.

I still don't understand how TikTok is doing anything worse than what any other popular American-based social platform is already doing today. If we're going to legislate TikTok, we should also target Facebook, Fortnite, Twitter, etc. equally.

1: https://www.techspot.com/news/100426-shell-using-fortnite-so...

For what it's worth, yes we should, it's time to show Big Capital that yes, they can't run rampant and fuck up our society.

But at least we can, in contrast to TikTok whose operations run outside of our reach.

You say we can, but history shows we can't.

If there was an easy way to reign in big oil then we would have found it by now. Whereas we (democracies) would have a fighting chance (literally) of seeing off a malevolant dictatorship.

> If there was an easy way to reign in big oil then we would have found it by now.

Shell for example was held responsible in Dutch courts for environmental contamination in Nigeria [1] and ordered to massively cut CO2 emissions [2].

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/25/africa/shell-oil-spills-n...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57257982

Stop arguing in bad faith.

It doesn't matter if Shell is worse it doesn't matter if a million other fucking things in the USA are worse. They are all accountable to the USA government. TikTok is not that is the issue.

I'm not arguing in bad faith here, every nefarious action that people in these comments suspect TikTok may do someday, is currently being done today, by American companies, in service of foreign interests and corporate interests.

> every nefarious action that people in these comments suspect TikTok may do someday

We already didn't prepare for Russia invading Ukraine despite obvious signs, we didn't prepare for wide parts of Africa and the Middle East to break down into civil war or climate change-caused mass emigration, we didn't prepare for Iran/Hamas massacring entire kibbutzim in Israel, we didn't prepare for the scenario of a global pandemic (despite multiple scares/near-misses), we didn't prepare for all of the multiple crises currently ongoing in this world that currently impact our population.

We have to prepare for the possibility that China is going to be at war with us very, very soon and will do anything they can to disrupt our lives - including spreading propaganda. Or otherwise it will go down just as bad as all the crises I listed.

> Attempts to change/form their views to be favourable towards dictatorships and antagonistic to democracies.

Rather than china, I'm more concerned about foreigners like you interfering in america and american social media.

What's your particular interest in this? You aren't even american.

> Attempts to change/form their views to be favourable towards dictatorships and antagonistic to democracies.

If that's the claim, the reality is they are doing the opposite.

You need to provide proof, not speculation.

> You need to provide proof, not speculation.

There won't be proof of war until the war happens, but it makes sense to prepare for war. And there will be war, make no mistake on that - tensions in the entire APAC regions are growing every day.

Or to quote an old Latin proverb: si vis pacem, para bellum - if you want peace, prepare for war.

> If that's the claim, the reality is they are doing the opposite.

You need to provide proof

Is that/should that be illegal?

It's a good thing the US has a strong, incorruptible democracy and fair criminal justice system to counterbalance that propaganda!

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