TikTok says it's not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine | Hacker News Reader

TikTok says it's not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine

vice.com

86 pointshypeit147 comments

I mean, young people have been dramatically more pro-Palestine since long before social media. Grain of salt and all, but I don’t think it’s a wild claim on its face, especially once you account for the nature of network effects / filter bubbles.

The problem is that, while young people have been more pro-Palestine for a long time, historically a much smaller percentage were immersing themselves for hours a day in increasingly sensationalist, often misleading pro-Palestinian content; there historically was far less of an incentive to produce or disseminate it. So we quickly go from “pro-Palestine” to “pro-Hamas” to “pro-Osama Bin Laden” to “holocaust denial”.

This isn’t exclusively a TikTok problem, or an Israel/Palestine problem, or a young people problem, or a left/right problem. Algorithmic suggestions are extremism generating machines.

Israel is bombing and murdering thousands of Palestinians. That is why people are supporting them, not an algorithm "problem".

Why do teenagers care about this particular tragedy and not Syria or any of the horrors in Africa? Surely it can’t be the scale of killing since there are far worse civilian death tolls in conflicts around the world.

Probably because their president isn't on tv endorsing those horrors, funding them with their tax dollars and in general having their mainstream media champion them.

To take another brutal war affecting civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Saud... sure sounds like it had the endorsement of two US Presidents both from ends of the political spectrum, and it was a money sink for over $50bn in US tax dollars in 6 years (see https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105988).

I'm not sure if those teens even know how to spell Yemen.

I totally hear you and think it's messed up too, but I'm not sure this line of argument makes sense.

First, it's factually inapposite, because we don't have a bunch of disproportionately pro-Saudi American companies and billionaires trying to intimidate people speaking in favor of Yemeni civilians, considering ad blitzes to gaslight and obfuscate the issues, etc. We don't have a significant pro-Saudi bias in the media such that it views the conflict there as worthy of constant reporting and also as a relatively black-and-white struggle where Yemeni civilians either are getting what they deserve or are merely unfortunate collateral damage for justifiable military actions. We don't have a strong contingency of people in this country trying to act like speaking out against the killing of Yemeni civilians is being "pro-terrorist".

Second, it's logically inane to say that someone's criticism of something is invalid because they didn't speak out or criticize some other thing that they most likely don't even know about.

What if that criticism isn't actually because of the conflict, but because of prejudices against one of the parties? There are strong anti-Islam and anti-Jewish forces at play. That sort of racism generally invalidates an argument.

So you believe that there is no valid basis to criticize Israel's actions here, and that anyone who is critical thereof must certainly be acting out of bigotry and you won't hear otherwise?

And nothing I pointed out about how differently the war in Yemen is situated in the Western consciousness (i.e. basically not at all) versus this one matters?

There are all manner of reasons to criticize Israel’s actions.

I believe that most American teens opinions on this matter are influenced by either anti-Islam or anti-Jewish messaging they read through social media, and not a genuine interest in the conflict.

I have no doubt that anti-Muslim/Arab and anti-Jewish sentiment influence a lot of peoples' views, but you seem to be taking the view in this thread that it's appropriate to assume that's the case the first time you hear of anyone's views, to speculate it's the case that "most" American teens are influenced by those lines of thinking for some reason.

> it's logically inane to say that someone's criticism of something is invalid because they didn't speak out or criticize some other thing that they most likely don't even know about.

I'm not saying the criticism of Hamas and/or Israel is invalid, I just found it worth pointing out that there are conflicts that teens somehow can make up their mind on (that's TikTok's claim, not mine) and strong enough that they take to the streets for that, while they likely haven't heard of other somewhat comparable conflicts (support by "their government", civilians dying, half the world away, ...) at all.

Maybe it's just the general media circus (Yemen _isn't_ very present in the media, after all), but "algorithm" or not, I'm considering TikTok part of that media circus.

As such, "the kids are just voicing their opinion" seems a rather shallow excuse to me: They pick up what gets amplified. Having no idea about Yemen but strong opinions on "who's the baddie" in Gaza (since folks like to talk colonialism: it's clearly the UK) doesn't sound like an independently formed opinion at all, and so I'm not willing to let TikTok (et al) off the hook.

I take that you care deeply about the civilian toll in Yemen, and aren’t just bringing it up to cynically deflect away from them main discussion here then.

Even if we take what you’re saying at face value, the notion that you can’t speak out about something that is wrong because there are other things that are also bad is preposterous.

We are talking about teens here, you basically chastising children for not taking to the streets when they were 10 years old, when the Yemen conflict started.

“Care” about a tragedy is entirely meaningless. Protest of your government’s policies to perpetuate a tragedy is slightly more meaningful. Not by much, granted. But slightly more.

Never saw a single protest when Obama was dropping a bomb every 20 seconds in 2016. I guess the noble peace prize made it okay.

“I don’t think people should care about government funded genocide now, after all they didn’t care before” isn’t really the dunk you think it is.

How many civilians died in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan? Where were the protests? Israeli leadership is seen as right wing. If they were seen as left no one would even blink an eye. Obama was wholesale slaughtering people in 7 countries.

What’s your point?

Is there something specific about Israel/Palestine that isn’t present in those other conflicts? Something about the religion of one of the belligerents, perhaps?

Again, what’s your point? Don’t beat around the bush. Make a claim and provide a rational argument to support it. If you aren’t willing/able to do that, there’s no point debating you.

> How many civilians died in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan? Where were the protests?

There definitely fucking were protests against the Iraq war o_O

Really, for all of the examples you provided, the situation is either that a) our government wasn't among the bad actors or allied therewith (e.g. Syria--do you want people to protest ISIS or the Asad regime or something? What would be the point?); b) there were protests, and there was criticism, and there was condemnation, and you seem to be ignorant of them so you assume nobody else cared either

There were definitely Syria war protests here in Seattle, 10 years ago. Substantial enough for ~1k people or so to block 2nd Ave

are you suggesting there has been a year in US history devoid of protests -- or that people were unanimously happy with Obama and every one of his strategies?

neither are true.

How dare these teenagers not protest against war 7 years ago!

Sure they care now, but where were they when they were 8???

Probably because it’s received far more widespread coverage since Israel - a wealthy, prominent country - is involved.

Syria is an old conflict and nothing has changed in many years. This particular tragedy has been stewing for a long time, and recently exploded. So, right now, the reaction is fairly well proportional to the rate of change.

It's also one where the US government and military has been itself in opposition to Assad's forces. What then would be accomplished by rallying over it?

People tend to get up in arms and out in the streets when their concerns aren't being addressed. They tend to be a lot quieter, even if they have major concerns, if they are. Sort of the concept behind "silent majority."

at least because one is one is cared more about by the media than the other. The Syrian stuff has always been a "side story" even though it's been terrible and ongoing for some time.

The Syrian stuff really started during a different media era.

Why did people care more about Ukraine than Iraq? Who cares?

Sure, and if you read what I wrote carefully, I didn’t say anything about the algorithm having anything to do with why young people are pro-Palestine.

Ww2 Japan was bombed by the United States and thousands died after they launched a surprise attack which killed thousands of Americans including hundreds of civilians.

Palestine launched a surprise attack killing thousands and now they face the same thing.

Terrible example, since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also extremely unethical

A lot happened before those two bombs were dropped, so how would you articulate your stance about those I wonder? Axis and Allies were bombing each other all over the place. Plenty of cities (in Japan, since you hyper focused on the nuclear bombs) were devastated and wrought with bombings before.

The US didn't bomb Japan in retaliation for Pearl Harbor, but to accomplish a military objective. Also, past errors, to the extent there were any, are not valid reasons for current ones - otherwise we'd quickly have no laws or morality at all.

The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), which is taken very seriously by militaries, requires distinguishing between military and civilian people and assets, only pursuing military targets and objectives, and when civilians will be harmed, requires that it be in proportion to the military benefit.

Here are a couple of links. The first is the authoritative International Committee of the Red Cross's very usable LOAC page, and the second is the application of it to the Gaza war by leading experts:

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1

https://www.justsecurity.org/89489/expert-guidance-law-of-ar...

Tiktok has a very real algorithm problem that pushes terrorism & antisemitism to millions of people. They have started to crack down since the Osama thing, but prior to that tiktok refused to remove hate and calls for violence from their platform.

#freepalestine and #standwithpalestine (as mentioned in the article) are not terrorism or anti-semitism.

No, I would say some ideological lines of thought are intrinsically leading to repeatable, predictable outcomes — parting and opposition to the society.

Take communism. There were many grassroots communist regimes in the 20th century, and certainly not all controlled by Moscow, but they all degraded into very tyrannical regimes, caste societies by following very similar paths.

Do you have any data to back up that assertion? As a teenager of the 90s, we were not all that globally conscious.

As a teenager of the 80s, we were conscious of apartheid in South Africa and the boycotts thereof, and of the starvation in Ethiopia ("We Are The World").

I remember reading the newspaper about the Shining Path in Peru, and about the Iran-Iraq War.

The Falkland Islands War was a big one. The school librarian had a map open showing where the British Navy was on their way down.

Right! Glasnot, and perestroika in Russia, and the Solidarity movement in Poland. And the German teen who flew into Moscow and landed on Red Square.

Ferdinand Marcos going into exile, and his wife's bajillion shoes.

Tienanmen Square.

Oh, and of course the fall of the Berlin Wall back in 1989.

Israel has had a larger prominence in the US mind because of it being the Holy Land. I know people who went there to see where Jesus lived, for example. We also had some teens from a kibbutz visit our high school and talk about their life.

In addition to the newspaper, and the TV news shows, my family subscribed to National Geographic, and well remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl , a refugee from the Soviet-Afghan war.

How much more global do you need?

Congratulations on your wonderfully diverse and globally conscious upbringing. I do not think it was representative of most Americans experience in recent history. I remember reports in the news after 9/11 that most American children surveyed were unable to locate Afghanistan on a map, with only 17% being able to find the country. Similar abysmal numbers for identifying Israel and Iraq. America was next to last, Sweden had the highest geographic literacy. Basic geographic literacy is key to understanding world events.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography...

Geography knowledge is a very different topic.

Most people in the 1980s couldn't have pointed to Ethiopia on a map, but they knew of the starving children there.

Most people in the 1980s couldn't have pointed to Afghanistan, but they knew Rambo went there in Rambo III, and that Reagan supported the "freedom fighters" there.

Most couldn't have pointed out South Africa on the map, but they knew who Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were.

Why do you need to know where Palestine and Israel are on a world map in order to be aware of what's going on there?

> I do not think it was representative of most Americans experience in recent history.

Is your understanding of the global consciousness of the 1980s based solely on your perception of geographical knowledge of the era?

Do you really think modern geographical knowledge is significantly better?

Just an anecdote, but I was a teen in the 00s. I became aware of the conflict my freshman year of college and my impression was that while complicated, among my peers (even Jewish ones) the greater balance of sympathies laid with the Palestinians.

I believe you. But the problem is, young people are mistaken, what this attack is really about. Free Palestine is a myth, Hamas does not care about Palestine, they have not asked for a seperate state, but the destruction of Isreal. I do not advocate the brute beat down by Isreal either

I think things changed a lot after 9/11. At all the anti-war rallies it was common to hear "From Iraq to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime." Also, in the 90s, being globally aware was a LOT harder than even 10 years later, even if you set out to do so. These days, kids may well have played online games with folks in Palestine, or at least neighboring countries.

The world has changed a fair bit in the last 30 years.

Well, our brains don't exist in vats. A storm of information is flowing through our heads constantly. They're pro Palestine because of their exposure to that information, increasingly curated by these algorithms.

I think they're probably right, in that it's not just their algorithm that has had this impact. It's all the algorithms, their social circle, the propagandistic media that's not fed by an algorithm but designed the old fashioned way such as TV, and of course their faculty of reason which is often discounted when we talk about this sort of thing.

Been remarkable to see various political commentators freak out about this, lunging to conspiracy theories that Tiktok is brainwashing people, then immediately pivot to attacking the US government for not being in control of its own brainwashing social media service.

The polling is pretty clear. The public, especially the young public, has moved on this issue and is out of step with the positions of the elderly political class. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/israel-hamas-gaza-canadians...

hard to call it self defense when they turn 65% of the city into ruble and show zero humanity by cutting off food, water and electricity etc.

the level of inhumane treatment approved and supported by the west is what woke a lot of people up.

"TikTok was slammed for its pro-Palestinian hashtags... But Facebook and Instagram show the same imbalance."

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-...

It may indicate that the hashtags are created by the users and not by the platform. Needs further research. /s

Concerning /s

That's like saying young people being against the Vietnam war was a product of media bias.

Maybe it was true, and it was a good thing.

Many here would have said it's a complicated both sides issue (such as framing it as terrorists vs colonizers) and that neither side can be supported, given their current stances evident in this thread. Do you condemn the Viet Cong? Did their choice to use violence justify America's violence against them?

America’s entry into Vietnam was based on manufactured consent and lies like the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Heck, Laos wasn’t ever involved as a “bad actor” yet ended up the most bombed country in the history of the world. You can thank Kissinger for that.

In short: America was the bad guy.

No kidding lmao. That’s my point. But even with how bad a reputation that war has, growing up in America I seemed to learn points that demonized the resistance, painting their tactics as evil terrorism, their government as corrupt terrorist-leaders, their civilians all implicated as terrorist fighters, etc

Indeed, all of that is part of the formula of which you speak. It is, in my mind, all the more reason to take with distrust anything any nation state says about its needs, goals, and “self defense.”

Palestine, for instance, is an invaded nation. If one can claim Ukraine deserves to defend itself, one has to also claim Palestine has the same rights.

But… marketing and prop/agitprop makes one believe otherwise.

Imagine cheering and thanking the US for a ceasefire in Vietnam without sending anyone home

I don’t trust TikTok, but that’s not the same thing as saying they’re never capable of telling the truth. I find this claim plausible on its face, but I’m not sure any of us have any way to confirm or deny it.

frankly, given the major media is in the tank for Israeli war crimes, I wouldn't care if TikTok was biased in the opposite direction, but they probably aren't. Youth are far more sympathetic to Palestine on nearly every survey.

Didn't BBC have a bunch of retractions when they were caught lying against Israel. BBC is probably the most influential media globally.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/global/bbc-apologizes-israel-ham...

Not to mention a lot of us are in the US, and the international perception of deliberately bombing a civilian population, turning off its water supply, etc., in retaliation for a terrorist attack (however brutal and big) is much more dim than most American media outlets and power-holders want people to believe. I think the rest of the world is looking at the situation a lot more realistically, and is fully aware that a lot of the civilian deaths in Gaza are part of the point, and not mere collateral damage.

By American standards, thinking that the life of a Palestinian child has equal moral worth to that of an Israeli child is a non-mainstream opinion.

It probably doesn't hurt that this is basically exactly what America did following the 9/11 attacks, which while certainly horrific, brutal, and warranted a response, launched us straight into an armed conflict that afflicted somewhere between 200 and 600 thousand deaths on a completely unrelated populace while plunging an entire middle eastern state into near total anarchy that it has yet to entirely recover from, and we did eventually get the man most responsible for the attacks... in Pakistan, years later, a country we did not invade, that is in fact, an ally.

Fighting terrorism is difficult. Encouraging it in foreign nations with boondoggling military action is easy. Far too often the west engages in the latter.

And I know hindsight 20/20 etc. but it isn't like the fact that going to war with another nation on shit intelligence was going to create metric assloads of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment and stoke further growth of terrorist groups was a fringe view at the time. Tons of people came out against Operation Iraqi Freedom and basically ALL of their predictions have come true.

Arguably Bin Laden got a great ROI on 9/11, what was his budget to train 20 terrorists, and the Dubya/Cheney/Rumsfeld response was lots of trillions of dollars, sending a lot of young Americans to death and disability, and a world that grew to hate the US even more (not just the Muslim world; Europe too, remember "Freedom Fries"?). And damn, 20 years later who runs Afghanistan? Taliban, with surplus Humvees.

So yeah, Hamas is probably happy right now with the IDF response, they don't care about the Palestinian civilians...

> Arguably Bin Laden got a great ROI on 9/11

Arguably? If anyone argues against that they're wrong. Bin Laden accomplished his objectives and beyond.

The US objectives weren't to deny Bin Laden his though, they were to kill Bin Laden (and topple Sadam, for some reason). Both of which we also accomplished.

The half hearted nation building was a facade and led to the quagmire and chaos that ensued.

Don't forget the massive domestic government spending on defense projects and general war materiel. Wars are expensive, and the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, etc. made BANK off of it.

> The US objectives weren't to deny Bin Laden his though, they were to kill Bin Laden (and topple Sadam, for some reason).

That's true, the Cheney admin didn't want to waste a crisis and they thought they'd bring a new century of American dominance[1]. It's kind of sad they didn't dare to do nation-building, unlike the Marshall Plan, although it was probably politically indefensible. (Wait until Americans hear that Iraq has universal healthcare.) I must admit I've read more than I care about the topic, like "Imperial Life in the Emerald City"[2] or Sarah Chayes' chapter about Afghanistan in her book about corruption, discussed in length in this article[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Life_in_the_Emerald_C... [3] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/19/corruption-rev...

> the major media is in the tank for Israeli war crimes

I don't see that, or not the major media that I see. Which sources? The NYT, for example, has covered all aspects and its opinion page has been critical and skeptical of Israel.

TikTok is a cultural weapon aimed at the heart of Western civilization. There's a reason it's banned in China, even though China runs it.

There are 3 distinct positions one can take in this situation that all get wrapped up together and cause people to talk past each other.

You can support Israel.

You can support Palestine.

You can support Hamas.

Not wanting Palestinians to die by the hands of Israelis is conflated with Pro-Hamas by Israel supporters.

I categorically don't support Hamas while also being incredibly skeptical of Israel's current actions but I'm also familiar with the various bad faith efforts at peace from both Israel and Palestinians that have bolstered Hamas.

The people that leave a bad taste in my mouth are the ones all in for any if those three groups that fail to see their shortcomings. Luckily I don't think there are that many of those but I do think that the Hamas/Palestine side of that is primarily the young left and the Israel side is primarily older but still, both are a vocal minority.

people tend to simplify things too much.

you can support post zionist voices in the Israel Knesset advocating for reform while still condemning Israel apartheid state and the zionist lobby influence in western countries.

You can support the Palestinian Resistance against the military occupation while still condemning terrorist tactics.

People are not pro Palestine or pro Israel, most people are simply not psychopaths and young don't carry the crystallised opinions of the older generations that "know" who is right and resort to denial when exposed to contradicting information.

In social media we have bubbles but these bubbles leak because they form by huge number of categories, that is, someone in the pro-gay rights bubble isn't necessarily in the pro-immigratin bubble for example.

This results in people having exposure in multiple types of propaganda, so even if you are huge Shapiro fan you end up listening to Bassem Youssef too. The media needs all the views, not only the libertarians and they actually put them on the same screens.

The scary part for me is that in the West, once claiming to be the epicentre of freedom of speech and human dignity, now expects people to be exposed only to the "right" kind of propaganda and its considering the alternative opinions a danger and looking how to limit it. Isn't this McCarthyism 2.0?

Those who are only pro-Palestine or pro-Israel are the extremist minority as far as I can tell. Most people are anti human suffering. Now that I feel scared of backlash or getting my account limited once again, I can't even express freely my opinions on the conflict even though I'm very fond of the Jewish culture and even the country of Israel. I feel like I have to make a choice between genocidials and the terrorist. There are active institutions going after people for having the wrong opinion and people who no longer aspire to do great things but to preserve what they own are feeling scared of it.

Young people don't feel that.

> most people are simply not psychopaths

This. It's not like Emmanuel Macron and the President of Singapore, who have been critical of Israel's actions here (mostly the former), are weird radical lefties, for example. They just recognize the killing of Palestinian civilians for what it is: revenge and retaliation, and a deliberate violation of the kinds of human rights that don't really "exist" unless countries make some attempt at respecting them.

Most people, if being honest, and if the victims weren't Palestinian, would recognize that a military action that is basically along the lines of "for every one of our people they killed, we will kill 10 or 20, and won't care if they are old, young, woman, child, and anyone who rejects this is a terrorist sympathizer and wanted our people to be killed", is simply logically and morally unhinged. And if the victims weren't Palestinian and mostly Muslim, and if Hamas wasn't an Islamic extremist organization, people would be less susceptible to the gaslighting about how anyone who is against the killing of Palestinian civilians is "pro-Hamas"

It's a hype train (am I using the term correctly here?), a trend.

Would be nice to trace it back to it's origin. This Hasan-Abi Streamer comes to mind. I only watched like 2 x 5 minutes on two different occasions, on one of which he talked about 9/11 [1], the potential conspiracies of which were a long debated topic back in my Uni days. In those days I learned a bit about the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and since then, for over a decade, watched the media and politicians distorting the history AND the narratives quite a bit. It's easy to create a trend here and it feels very much like the goal is again, polarization.

[1] https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/12/09/was-the-now-forg...

"A Force of Distortion: Effects of Media Bias on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"

https://english.umd.edu/research-innovation/journals/interpo...

"The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, And The Media"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvddzjvr

"Media Bias in Covering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: With a Case Study of BBC Coverage and Its Foundation of Impartiality"

https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1296&con...

Was the massive wave of support for Ukraine a hype train? I mean, I guess so but my point is that it still has nothing to do with some sort of conspiracy theory. Maybe there's no narrative distortion, people really just do support them?

66% of us voters want a cease fire not just teens.

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2023/10/19/voters-agree...

Youth is easily impressionable. That is not to say pro-Palestine is a bad thing, but young minds are easily impressionable, for good and for bad.

It’s about the same as saying “kids just want to drink Tide pods nowadays.” There’s definitely something wrong with kids who do it but you can’t deny that TikTok is where it gets coordinated.

If your kid is on TikTok all day and gets all their information there, you can’t really separate their belief from the contents they see.

Supporting Palestinians is nothing like the Tide pod challenge. Anyone who cares about human right should be extremely concerned about what Israel is doing right now.

It’s actually quite simple. Israel was out of Gaza for years prior to Oct 7. On Oct 7, Hamas targeted over 1.5 thousand civilians including babies and the aged for slaughter and kidnapping. Resulting in a military operation to suppress Hamas.

So yes if your level of nuance on this is “Israel is hurting human rights, ceasefire now” and you are oblivious to who broke the ceasefire and how, then it’s not that different than making you drink Tide.

Can you identify data that supports your claim? Here’s a good site to start: https://israelpalestinetimeline.org/

Sure look at the chart in your link called people killed per year. That number was very low between 2014 and 2023 until the ceasefire was shatters by hamas this October

So is your argument that Palestinians should have been fine with hundreds of their people being killed by Israelis every year from 2015-2022, because it was less than the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israelis in 2014?

And furthermore that none of those deaths gave justification for the 1200 Israelis killed by Palestinians this year, but those deaths somehow justify the 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israelis this year?

I don’t see this as an eye for an eye bullshit so not sure what “justification” you are talking about. There was calm then there was an incursion that targeted civilians followed by military operation to root out Hamas.

Non Hamas Palestinians are obviously caught in the crossfire

This “calm” “ceasefire” of your imagination was in fact a period where hundreds of Palestinians were being killed by Israelis each year, the real horror is that this was indeed less than before. You seem to think that’s below the threshold of importance?

The situation has no good answers, and Hamas committed murder, but this part is not the truth:

> Israel was out of Gaza for years prior to Oct 7

Israel has conducted military actions in Gaza, but more significantly, they've blockaded Gaza, turning into a ghetto, since the 2000s. They control the Gaza economy and much more. It's not like the Sinai Desert that Israel left decades ago and has no influence in.

Gaza was not a ghetto by any stretch of the imagination. Check their HDI before the war. It exceeds that of many countries.

If Gaza was a ghetto, from where does Hamas get the money to stockpile vast amounts of arms? Couldn't that money have been used to improve living conditions.

Gaza had areas that were described as "wealthy". I wonder how that is possible in a "ghetto"

That differs from every credible source I've read for many years. Do you happen to have any credible sources that support that depiction?

Check these links:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_Palestine_b...

- https://blog.kurby.ai/the-10-best-neighborhoods-in-gaza-pale...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimal

Thanks. Not your job to provide them, but Wikipedia, especially about a white-hot topic, is not reliable in my book. I will keep an eye out.

Still, if you want to persuade people of extraordinary claims, you'll of course need very strong evidence.

There are references for the HDI figures. You really think Wikipedia is cooking HDI figures?

An editor could be, but regardless, Wikipedia has many risks, especially in this scenario.

> It’s about the same as saying “kids just want to drink Tide pods nowadays.” There’s definitely something wrong with kids who do it

Supporting Palestinians is like drinking Tide pod? WOW, what an incredibly inhumane and racist take.

I don’t think that’s what the parent poster meant at all. They are comparing the people who complain about tide pods to the people who complain about kids seeing pro-Palestinian content on TikTok.

Between 2012 and 2013, poison control centers reported over 7,000 cases of young children eating laundry pods.

TikTok was released 2016.

So yes, any truth-pursuing individual would deny that. But the media wants to blame TikTok, and people like you are are happy to buy it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumption_of_Tide_Pods

From the link you gave:

> During the popularity of Tide Pods as an Internet meme, in the month of January 2018, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) "recorded 606 exposures in children less than 5 years old," in addition to an increase in teenage exposures. In January 2018, there were more teenagers exposed to pods than in all of 2016 or 2017.

It sure sounds like the internet memes did in fact lead to a big increase in consumption of pods. Also, note that the 2012 and 2013 numbers were for young children. Internet memes would be more likely to be seen to older children and teens.

The vast majority of tide pod consumption has always been young kids. And TikTok isn’t to blame for that. There may have been a small uptick in consumption by older kids “for the lulz” at some point, but that doesn’t make TikTok the culprit for tide pod eating at large.

To tie it back, some demographics might have had their antigenocidal views dictated by tiktok, but to claim the bulk of people would not have reached for them without tiktok’s influence is absurd.

Yes, condemning hospital bombings and a state that blames civilians for their own deaths ("should'nt have voted for Hamas 17 years ago lol!") while killing more of them than even Russia did in Ukraine, is just like eating tidepods.

makes sense. ppl root for the underdog.

That's a shallow take. How about: people learned about the situation between Palestine and Israel and root for human rights and ability to live in safety.

The entire conflict has been a staging ground for juvenile takes. From people demanding one side agree to a ceasefire that the other side never even offered to others calling for indiscriminate attacks on civilians on both sides. At best it is a lot of tough talk from ignorant people with zero skin in the game. The IDF and Hamas are just going to do whatever they think gives them maximum advantage while the world remains hands-off.

The world has devolved into juvenile takes.

> while the world remains hands-off

The world is not hands-off right now. Or specifically, there's a number of countries involved in effectively helping Israel's aggression.

The international community has been nurturing the dysfunctional status quo for some time in hopes of a two-state solution. With one hand providing weaponry to Israel–usually but not always defensive equipment like AA–and with the other billions in humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile other foreign actors have been funding the insurgency in Gaza to disrupt peace efforts. It's a very messy situation where the state of Israel has both committed crimes against Palestinians and is simultaneously presently unable to just go hands-off as foreign actors have demanded.

One needn’t even go as far as “the international community”, Hamas was funded by Israel itself as a perceived counterweight to the secular PLO. Divide and conquer is what kept the Israeli settlers moving outwards, and that necessitated funding and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and later Hamas.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http:/online.wsj....

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...

> That's a shallow take.

deep takes are automatically superior ?

If they account for more details, sure. They usually are.

Take the comment originally responded to. Hamas is more of an underdog than Palestine, yet the public opinion we're discussing here is pro-palestinian, not pro-hamas.

> They usually are.

No they are not. I can very easily come up with even more convoluted take than yours and call your shallow. Doesn't mean my convoluted take is superior. eg: it unlikely that american teens on tiktok can enumerate human rights.

https://www.newscientist.com/definition/occams-razor/

"Occam’s razor is a principle often attributed to 14th–century friar William of Ockham that says that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one."

But that is Ockham's opinion. Doesn't mean it is some unassailable universal truth. The keyword here is "should"; it is a prescriptive opinion, nothing more

At the very least they demonstrate more than a bare minimum of insight and effort.

But if you prefer to contribute nothing but low-effort snark to what should be a serious conversation, go off?

> At the very least they demonstrate more than a bare minimum of insight and effort

sure but that doesn't automatically imply outcome is superior. Occam’s razor.

> low-effort snark

what snark. maybe try reading without a lot of emotion.

You're going to have to give us your parameters for "superior," and we can compare notes. I consider an informed opinion superior to an uninformed one, and a comment that displays insight to one without insight, and effort superior to a lack thereof.

I don't know why you're going through this much effort to defend your comment. You couldn't even be arsed to write the word "people" out entirely. I have to assume you're just here to troll.

> You're going to have to give us your parameters for "superior."

You should ask the person who implied shallow takes are inferior. Not me.

> root for human rights and ability to live in safety

That plays both ways, but the way people take sides doesn't seem to.

This may be true, but we have no idea until these companies open up their algorithms for scrutiny.

The ability to press a button and cause social, political and economic chaos around the world is too much power to entrust to anybody.

Why was this flagged?

I think, in his recent podcast, Ezra Klein eloquently explained why young Americans have a less favourable view of Israel:

“Maybe I’ll start here. I think something we’re seeing in the politics in America around Israel right now, I think it reflects three generations with very different lived experiences of what Israel is. You have older Americans, say, Joe Biden, who saw Israel as the haven for the Jews and who also saw Israel when it was weak and small, when it really could have been wiped off the map by its neighbors.”

“We also knew an Israel that was an occupying force, a country that could and did impose its will on Palestinians, and I don’t want to be euphemistic about this, an Israel in which Palestinians were an oppressed class, where their lives and their security and their freedom were worth less. But we also knew an Israel that had a strong peace movement, where the moral horror of that occupation was widely recognized. We knew an Israel where the leaders were trying imperfectly, but seriously and continuously, to become something better, to become something different, to become in the eyes of the world what Israel was in its own eyes, a Jewish state, but a humane and moral one.”

“And so now you have this generation, the one coming of age now, the one that has only known this Israel, Netanyahu’s Israel, Ben-Gvir’s Israel.”

“There is this Pew survey in 2022 that I find really telling. It found that 69 percent of Americans over age 65 had a favorable view of Israel, but among Americans between ages 18 and 29, young Americans, 56 percent had an unfavorable view. As it happens, American politics right now is dominated by people over 65, but it won’t be forever”

“And there are many of us who warned of this exact thing happening, who said, if you lose moral legitimacy, you will not have the world’s good will when you need it most, who said it is a problem for the Jewish state to not be seen, to not be a moral state.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...

Wow, I really disagree with this framing! I find the mass media (Ezra Klein included) like to frame things in terms of this big bad far-right government that’s making Israel do bad things. To me, that’s a totally separate issue from the Israeli apartheid.

I admittedly am young, but my introduction to this topic was through Chomsky’s writing from the 80s and 90s. The Israeli oppression seemed exactly as bad back then as it does now under this far right government.

If somehow Netanyahu gets replaced by a “sensible centrist” leader who still practices apartheid in exactly the same way, I guarantee you Ezra will be fawning over the new guy and the media will try and frame it as a “new era for Israeli-Palestinian relations”.

I agree with your point about mass media’s coverage of the conflict and I’m constantly reminded of Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” when watching how US media is covering it. I would not put Ezra in the same bucket at all though and I don’t think this framing contradicts the view you mentioned. I imagine Ezra’s read aligns a lot more with Chomsky’s interpretation of the conflict and the amount of oppression each side has received or exerted. I think his critique of Israel’s policies over the years is well documented. This Vox video from a few years ago comes to mind as well

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYZjOuUnlU

What do you see on social media?

On Instagram, I only see pro Palestinian posts. I might have seen 2 pro Israel posts since this whole thing started.

Just for reference I'm from Portugal and my network surely skews a lot towards left-wing people.

On X I went through and blocked a bunch of popular accounts that I previously had no real attraction to but was fine with seeing in my “For You” page every now and then, after they went full pro-Israel (Growing Daniel, Eigenrobot, some others probably).

After that the feed was generally pro-Palestinian. But I also just grew sick of seeing all the war in general and logged out of X on all my devices and deleted the credentials from my password manager. I feel better off without it.

It’s not just young teens generally: my wife is involved in left-wing Jewish organizations in the United States and young Jews are increasingly more skeptical of Israel’s importance to their Jewish identity. I wouldn’t say it’s quite a majority at this point but it’s a sizable enough chunk that they’re starting to become noticed by mainstream media outlets.

This is so interesting to hear. I am not Jewish, but am interested in asking my Jewish colleagues what they think about the war. But not interested--or close--enough to them to ask them about this. I think I'll search for more young Jewish perspectives around the web.

It is complex in some ways, though to be clear the nature of the assault on Gaza seems hard to justify from my view.

The least isreal supporting senator in the USA is coincidentally the only ethnically Jewish one as well, Bernie Sanders.

The Jewish left has always been isreal skeptic, including the Jewish left within isreal.

Makes sense, the skeptics went to the new world, the believers to the promised land. Glad to have the skeptics on the team.

It is an interesting point about Sanders, but are you sure he is the "only ethnically Jewish" senator? This site seems to say there are about a half-dozen other Jewish senators currently serving: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-senators-in-the-.... Are you using a definition of "ethnically" that makes your statement true?

The last time that Israel was seriously threatened by the Arab countries was in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Anyone old enough to remember that clearly is also old enough to retire. Since then the pattern has been that Israel retaliates massively to losses of a handful of people — until October 7 at least. If your understanding of the situation starts in medias res like that it's practically impossible to have sympathy for the Israeli argument that they live under the constant threat of destruction.

tiktok is used by the chinese gov to influence western society - why? because they can. but in this case i'd argue that successful pro-israeli propaganda would be more destabilizing and in china's favor.

Honestly as a mid-30s millennial I'm pretty "pro-Palestine" when it comes to ending the illegal (by Israeli law no less) settlements in the West bank and ending the open-air prison that is Gaza. Both of those things are just slow genocide, without even a hint of subtlety. Hell multiple authorities in the current Israeli government have made it quite clear that they'd be committing fast genocide if they were allowed. Worth remembering that a sizeable portion of Israel is of Russian origin, and Jewish or not they bring a very culturally Russian approach to problems like this.

We can all agree that the leaders of Hamas and those who committed the attacks should burn alive, but frankly the Israeli-imposed conditions in Gaza make the rise of such groups inevitable. Hell it was Netanyahu's stated strategy to "control the height of the flame" of Hamas, an implicit acknowledgement that their existence was inevitable.

And I still don't get our outsized military support for Israel. We just deployed two carrier battle groups and an Ohio class sub to their defense at the drop of a hat, no questions asked or concessions demanded. For what? Does anyone seriously think Hezbollah and some lightly armed Iranian proxy groups are an existential threat to Israel? Sure they could do serious damage, but they'd almost certainly lose in a stand-up fight.

Honestly it just doesn't make any sense to me. At best we should be imposing strict conditions for our aid to create better conditions for Palestians on the other side, and at worst we should just stay out of it. It's anecdotal but these aren't uncommon opinions among people I know. The only "unconditional support for Israel" people I've met are all over 50.

Young people are pro underdog - color me surprised!

Major Ayn Random vibes from that statement

https://xkcd.com/1277/

How could any empathic person not be pro-5.2 million refugees?

Downvote me to death, I don't care, but have the courage to explain why you're downvoting.

That's not an argument, it's an emotional appeal. Hence downvoting.

And the other upvoted commenters saying the refugee (their intl-recognized status) population are terrorists, is that just cold facts rather than emotion?

Who cares? I'm telling you why your low-effort, low-content emotional appeal is getting my downvote.

Are emotions not a valid reason for caring about things, or doing things?

Why care about genocide at all if you don't consider emotion? It's just sacks of meat getting destroyed, like cows, pigs, lambs. Why should we care if any living creature is killed, oppressed, suffers?

Emotion. It drives us to reason one way rather than another. Emotion drives us to make killing dogs illegal, while killing fish, birds, other mammals, etc is done by the millions every day.

There's no logic to religious debate as all religion is made up superstition. There's no logic to allowing one group of people to keep some land and not others other than the rationale that whoever has the bigger gun is allowed to keep the land. There's no logic to retaliation at all, because it's circular reasoning.

So, yeah, it's an appeal to emotion. Otherwise what the hell is the point of caring about any death? Logic will never stop the killing. Logic will never be able to come up with "a solution" that is acceptable to the human psyche. But emotion can.

This isn't saying "emotions aren't valid" it's saying that this is an attempt at reducing the conversation to something emotional to distract from anything else. Your entire post is moot.

If Canada surprise attacked your hometown and killed your entire family would you have empathy when the United States declared all civilians must clear out of Montreal before a retaliatory strike takes place? It’s amazing how the slaughter of innocents is justified because they were being oppressed. If the Japanese in internment camps massacred the nearby town would you have empathy for them then when they were punished or would you say well look at what the US did! It put them in camps. They had no choice.

> If Canada surprise attacked your hometown and killed your entire family would you have empathy when the United States declared all civilians must clear out of Montreal before a retaliatory strike takes place?

....of course I would have empathy then? How could I not? My family isn't the only family capable of suffering. If anything, my suffering would make me care more about the suffering of others. I would never want to inflict that pain on other families. It makes no sense.

I had assumed initially that when you were referring to the sympathetic refugee population, you were referring to the Palestinians.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com