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Comment by wpasc | Hacker News Reader

TikTok is a Chinese company, how is that an instance of Western Values being pushed?

TikTok hosts "Western" content, doesn't it? China has Douyin (same app, different content) afaik.

TikTok is full of Asian content that it promotes: there is still so much Chinese, Korean, Japanese, even some Indian content on tiktok even in an average westerner's feed. Some of this is straight taken form Douyin (by content creators in those country who want to earn money on tiktok).

> Some of this is straight taken form Douyin (by content creators in those country who want to earn money on tiktok).

Having helped a Chinese friend taking down a couple of impersonating/infringing TikTok accounts, I believe the overwhelming majority of the content taken straight from Douyin is unauthorized, by people who think the original creators won’t notice and/or won’t do anything about it. It’s not like you can easily earn a meaningful amount from TikTok’s Creator Fund, so better focus on streaming or getting sponsorship deals for the Douyin market which is a lot larger and culturally aligned.

A lot of the cultural movement on TikTok is Korean driven, or multi cultural, like the popularity of that Vietnamese See Tinh in Korea via a TikTok remix. TikTok is incredibly Asian, and gets lots of air from non-PRC Chinese communities (like mainland Douyin content on TikTok with traditional Chinese comments).

India was the first country to ban TikTok iirc. Their situation was bad though

What was particularly bad about India's situation?

I believe children were killing other children /themselves based on TikTok trends (don’t remember full details)

Does "children are killing each other because of what they saw online" sound more like a real thing or more like a moral panic to you?

This isn't the 1990s. The majority of kids with access to smartphones are online now.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/tiktok-challenge-boy-h...

India had a military exchange with China and banned TikTok alongside several other Chinese apps in retaliation. Their official justification was "national security concerns". preciousoo is, charitably, just making things up for no reason.

I very much remember reading such an article around the time they banned TT, but maybe said article was fake news, as it's hard to find any mentions of it now.

Well National security isn't wrong considering the huge amount of data being siphoned off to the communist party.

that's a pretty bold statement, can we get a link backing that up?

The western value being a liberal media market, not the contents of the consumed media itself.

Is most of the content Chinese?

The content is ~~designed~~curated to destroy the minds of the consumers. There have been quite a few articles showing how content differs between the West and China.

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