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Comment by dogman144 | Hacker News Reader

To note - the platform’s content is steered for information operations shaped at the demographic of the scroller re: foreign policy goals from CN.

So what you’re seeing is a good content, but worth considering when you get shown policy-charged content - when and why is this in my feed.

Edit - or, to put it more simply, you should try to answer the second part of your comment - why is a state-sponsored social media company the only one showing me this right now?

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To increase distrust of the US Government, especially when it comes to warmongering. Great alpha for the country sitting at the top of many DOD lists.

That sounds like a cherible cause?

I think TikToks initial succes was mainly due to a "fair" feed with no algorithmic nudging.

Facebook used to be like that but somewhere around 2012 to 13 posts or articles could not go viral anymore, in the organic avalanche way it would earlier. Facebook wanted you to pay up for the reach I guess.

If TikTok nudge people they will lose their edge.

They’ve been nudging since 2019 at least and built an edge vs lost it.

There is a lot of politics around the TK bans but one true aspect is the Natsec angle. It’s as if FB’s newsfeed was optimized for patriotism, vs ads.

But bc TK pays well and Has a office in SV… blind eye. Blows my mind that westerners work there. There’s bad jingoism and then there’s considering your role in a global power struggle directly based on technology and these companies.

It’s a perfectly fine cause, entirely in line with what I’d expect from them.

Just as nudging their own youth into practicing guerrilla warfare techniques while nudging ours into questioning their gender is in line with what I’d expect from them.

To claim they don’t nudge is laughable.

> what you’re seeing is a good content, but worth considering when you get shown policy-charged content - when and why is this in my feed.

That's always a worthy, necessary even, consideration.

> you should try to answer the second part of your comment - why is a state-sponsored social media company the only one showing me this right now?

You may be right in this specific case, and I tend to agree - though mostly out of lack of knowlege.

But I gotta object the insinuation that private media is somehow more reliable. Every outlet has an agenda. Al Jazeera English is by far the best journalistic TV I know (disclaimer, haven't watched in a few years). Funded by the government of Qatar…

Last part is a fair point - making no claims in reliability across other media.

Specifically just making a claim on if you vet reliability by national security/global politics topics that we all see playing out in the news, then it’s worth considering your specific role in it as a user or tech employee of TK.

Whatever the platform's intent, the end result is that I get to see content that is censored on other platforms. If China's foreign policy goal is to help the Palestinians, then they're aligned with my views.

Worth considering that’s not all they’ll steer at you, and considering if you’d know it was happening.

Whatever they're doing is super benign compared to the propaganda I'm exposed to day in and day out as a US citizen with nearly every media outlet working to influence me either commercially or jingoistically. A single media platform with a different point of view is healthy, especially when it will host content the other platforms censor.

Social networking hasn't influenced my point of view, but it has allowed me to access voices that I've always wanted to hear from, there was just no way to get to them before.

There is a significant amount of research and public intelligence community discussion to indicate your points are incredibly misguided. Social networks have very likely influenced your point of view. Try spending a month off them and see if your views change, for instance.

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