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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

TikTok substantiated it almost immediately with their little stunt that resulted in thousands of 10-13 year olds calling their congressmen.

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Notifying users that a service they use is about to become illegal does not sound like the covert manipulation congress was afraid of.

To be cynical that sounds exactly like the "manipulation" they are most afraid of.

Causing thousands of Americans to unknowingly act in the interest of the CCP is not the manipulation Congress is afraid of? In what universe?

Man you are just pushing one bad faith argument after another in this thread aren't you?

If the product wasn't something that people truly loved, would the callers have had that level of commitment to follow through?

Seeing the lack of political action in this country, I'd presume the answer to be NO.

Bad faith argument? It's not even an argument, it is a literal factual recounting of something that literally happened.

> Causing thousands of Americans to unknowingly act in the interest of the CCP

This is not a factual statement. It is a statement that contains something resembling a fact, however it is still just your subjective opinion.

I'll relent and admit that some of the people might knowingly have acted in the interest of the CCP, because you surely cannot be saying that it is not in the CCP's interest to avoid TikTok's divestment.

You are displaying a level of paranoia about the Chinese government that is clearly unhealthy. When US apps are facing legislation abroad that would ban them or regulate them in unfavorable ways they also notify their users. Take a step back and ask yourselves what the multinational company TikTok would do when facing a ban in one of its most profitable markets. Probably rally their users to oppose it.

The Chinese government and the US government exert their influence over companies in the same way -- regulation, backdoor conversations asking them to kill/mute stories, and NSL type requests. There's not some government propagandist sitting at a switchboard. In fact it's the "West" that goes above and beyond with an entire technical apparatus to real-time mass censor social media to "protect democracy." If you don't consider every US company to be a direct arm of the US government but do for China then it's because your feeling about China than your feelings about social media manipulation.

It is in China's interest to avoid divestment because TikTok is a successful company making China money. And now it's in their interest to avoid divestment to not get bullied by the US gov't. If TikTok had the power you and others in this thread ascribe to them they would be more successful at swaying public opinion.

>If you don't consider every US company to be a direct arm of the US government but do for China then it's because your feeling about China than your feelings about social media manipulation.

I do. I live in the EU, and our laws arguably don't allow sharing data with US companies for that exact reason (Schrems II judgement)

It doesn't matter why TikTok does anything. They have shown they can influence their users en masse, and they're legally obligated to do it if the Chinese authorities demand it.

Then you agree that it does not prove your point, its just another fact like "Today is Thursday" :)

If I were a tech company who's service was about to be made illegal, I would certainly tell my users about it before I was shutdown. It would be pretty rude to suddenly cease function on them without letting them know why, and I think most users would like to know in advance of the service shutting down.

This could be interpreted as CCP manipulation, but what else did you expect them to do?

It doesn't worry you that china already has that much sway over people, especially children?

No, in this case it was OVERT manipulation, not covert. The important word, however, is: manipulation.

I am so floored by comments in this thread either denying or not caring about literal brainwashing by a foreign adversary of the US.

"literal brainwashing"

Do you really believe this?

Show me another company that convinced thousands of young teens to call their representatives, about anything. [0] If your rebuttal of that is that it’s a good thing kids called their representatives, my response would be, TikTok has proven to have enough influence to get kids to call congress. Think about that for a second. A singular entity controlled by China influences thousands of children to pass along the concerns of TIKTOK THE COMPANY.

Wonder what their next concern will be?

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/14/tikt...

It will be "watching funny dance videos", because that is what they were calling about this time, because it's what they care about.

You might believe that the next thing will be, "let China take over the Senkaku islands", but if so, you have not been around children in several decades.

By this logic then almost every other country should ban US social media companies.

So the great harm is that Congress gets called when they pass a bad bill?

I think the fear goes: today this is high-urgency spin about a bill which is demonstrably capable of affecting the behavior of hundreds of thousands. Tomorrow this is high-urgency spin about whatever TikTok wants, who can be more-or-less coerced to publish lots of things that would be detrimental to the US.

This supposes that teens care about East Asian border disputes as much as they care about the funny dance app, which I find doubtful.

Teens? It has over 170 million users in the US.

I was referencing this upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40146326

They learned from Musk and his "If X dies because of advertiser boycotts the world will know and they will judge". Ironically the world knew and did not care in that instance haha.

Wild that they didn't attempt to age gate that push to call congress to 17+.

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