Comment by mathgorges | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mathgorges | Hacker News Reader

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I suppose that depends on what you mean by “propaganda”. Personally I think it can be convincingly argued that any message transmitted to you from a State is propaganda

(Note: that means that I don’t believe that all propaganda is inherently evil, sometimes your interests align with a State. For example governments paying for advertising to discourage smoking is a great thing, IMO!)

I’ve never lived in China, but I’ve spoken with many people that have and my understanding is that allegiance to the State (eg, the State’s sole stewards the CCP) is a big part of life there. I’ve even been told that staying in the good graces of the State’s only official political party is important if you want to do things like buy property or start a business.

TikTok is administrated by humans, many of whom live in China.

Those humans are, I assume, ambitious and want to do well for themselves and therefore likely want to appease the State.

Therefore, when I read articles about how the administrators of TikTok can effectively decide what goes viral it makes me fear what I’ve begun calling ‘incidental’ propaganda.

Probably those China-based administrations at TikTok don’t want to actively harm American society, but it’s certainly true that America and China have different interests in the world. I assume that any administrators in China will never choose to make something go viral if it is critical of the Chinese State or its interests.

You can see how that might skew things for those that only get their news from TikTok, right?

(This is my understanding and thinking on things right now given the information I have. I gladly welcome any new information if someone reads this and disagrees. But please be kind :))

I am a Chinese that has been living in the West for a few years.

> I’ve never lived in China, but I’ve spoken with many people that have

IMO, these opinions are a bit biased. 1) those are probably the people who chose to stay in the West; 2) Chinese people (incl. me) sometimes talk extravagantly about life in a "communist country", since to some degree it pleases the Western audience and adds some fun to the talk.

Maybe a CCP member has to show their allegiance from time to time, but I am not and I can not recall I was asked to do so in any form. Probably asked to sing the national anthem every morning when I was in the school? And despite the censorship, people, especially young netizens, invent all kinds of altered words mocking domestic politics, often to my surprise how much they are aware of, given that I already live in the West out of the bubble, that people usually think Chinese internet is.

Taking a particular different mindset as unconscious propaganda and thinking it's harmful seems to support the Chinese internet firewall project and the opinion that people are not able to make "correct" opinions on their own.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.

Discussions like this are why I love HN <3

I think I’ll be chewing on your final paragraph for some time. Thank you!!!

Having lived there for several years I didn't find the state some ever-present aspect of life - but it doesn't seem particularly relevant

Your line of reasoning seems fine, but it basically applies to any "other". If some European decides what goes viral, he is going to subject poor stupid american viewers to their nefarious European biases - and those biases may harm our society!

Furthermore the biases of US based company executives may harm our society as well. I'll grant you that they may be less inclined, but gosh, rage bait and selling sweets to children does make them a whole lot of money.

So the logic isn't wrong, but it seems to be applied selectively in cases that just happen to benefit large American tech companies - who are incapable of providing US consumers a product that's nearly as good as Tiktok

Maybe biases in algorithms need to addressed.. But that should be done in a thoughtful unbiased holistic that applied equally to everyone - instead of this embarrassing kneejerk "the commies are taking over" kind of way

That is a fair critique of my current thinking :)

I’ll certainly agree that the ‘red scare’ vibe to this bill makes me uncomfortable — even if I agree with the action overall.

I certainly am biased towards companies that operate in a way that I’m familiar with. In the companies I’ve worked in delivering value to shareholders trumps all else at the end of the day. (I don’t love it but it’s predictable)

As you allude to that causes some quite nefarious behavior, but it’s predictable to me for the most part.

To me, this is in contrast with what I see happening in the Chinese market. Again, this is colored by my experience. From the outside looking in it appears that companies based in China bend much further to appease their government than in the markets I’ve worked in (US, UK and Japan) and that makes me less inclined to trust them.

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