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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

When they do it, it's totalitarian. But when we do it, it's merely sensible policy.

I'm really tired of arguments like this. The US (and West as a whole) are not a bunch of angels, of course. But the kind of censorship, state-mandated propaganda, and market control you see from China is not even remotely comparable to the situation in the West. Equating the two is at best uninformed, at worst disingenuous or actively malicious.

Not yet, but this is an obvious step in the same direction, "banning" a social media platform to prevent exposure to foreign ideas. It's difficult not to assume the motives are similar, a need to control political narratives and manufacture consent for American policy.

I don’t need TikTok for foreign ideas. I see them everywhere.

For example while I don’t buy them I have absolutely heard the Russian arguments for Ukraine. You can find complete texts of every Putin speech online, not to mention thinkers like Alexandr Dugin.

The Internet is absolutely boiling over with both pro and anti Israel arguments and propaganda too. You almost can’t even avoid it.

If the powers that be don’t want me seeing arguments against US policy they are doing an awful job.

The TikTok thing is about two things: trade unfairness and how it leverages addiction to push propaganda.

Both points are valid, but the latter applies just as well to all modern social media.

To add to this: owning the platform and controlling what gets amplified is very different than posting information on someone else's platform which also is different from posting the information and disclosing your affiliation. I'm pretty sure we could easily get a strong consensus that there is zero issue in an official CCP account posting official CCP positions on Twitter or Facebook.

Isn't that just a slippery slope fallacy in its most pure form?

Arguments to the effect that TikTok gives the Chinese government direct control over the minds of millions of Americans and that they plan to use it to corrupt and destroy America seem far more slippery and fallacious to me.

No one cared about any of this until recently. I remember when the consensus on HN was that TikTok was a quirky platform that reminded people of the authenticity and creativity of the old web. Now all of a sudden people are talking about TikTok with the dreadful hyperbole they might use for nuclear bombs or chemical weapons.

My instinct is to assume I'm being manipulated, and not by the red menace everyone tells me to fear.

No one cared about it until TikTok got really popular around 2018, then it’s been in out of the news ever since. I doubt also TikTok is manipulating anyone, simply because the content is mostly apolitical and simply guys or girls teasing or doing some trend dance. But if America’s concerns are moot, Chinese concerns about American internet companies are almost certainly more moot. This is just the pot calling the kettle, but I think they are both wrong.

It's not about foreign ideas. It's about a foreign, arguably hostile, government having control over what gets amplified and what gets hidden. I don't think anyone would have an issue with an official CCP account posting CCP positions on social media platforms they don't control. Those things are very, very different!

Unless you're arguing the CCP is going to force TikTok's algorithm to amplify Chinese propaganda, the algorithm is probably going to work the way it does everywhere, by optimizing for engagement by showing content similar to what a user already prefers. I'm not aware of evidence of that, though, beyond the circumstantial evidence of people claiming American leftist activism must the result of CCP brainwashing through the platform.

While social media algorithms can (and does) lead to filter bubbles and radicalism by exposure to extremist content, that just makes TikTok no more or less dangerous than all other social media platforms in that regard, and that remains the case under American ownership. And those algorithms and that extremist content are more often than not protected by American free speech rights, as are the rights of platforms to police content as they wish (this includes the right to propagandize.)

Singling out TikTok because it's owned by China, and might do things it has every legal right to do in the US anyway, seems specious. Social media is already a hotbed of disinformation and propaganda, and TikTok's influence is a drop in the bucket compared to Twitter (which is going full Nazi and the moment) and Facebook and Google, with their deep ties to the American military and intellegence services.

> Unless you're arguing the CCP is going to force TikTok's algorithm to amplify Chinese propaganda

Yes, that's my concern. We don't know the algorithms and IMO the risk is too high, given China's other efforts at propaganda. At least Twitter added community notes, but that's somewhat secondary given the algorithms potentially controlled by a hostile government.

To add to my response, it looks very much like TikTok is in fact suppressing specific topics and boosting others in a way that strongly correlates to CCP preferences: https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/17839541809708159...

What foreign ideas? All I see from Tik Tok are increasingly bizarre bids for attention primarily by Americans themselves.

> But the kind of censorship, state-mandated propaganda, and market control you see from China is not even remotely comparable to the situation in the West.

In West it is not state-mandated. Just state-sponsored and state-suggested.

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