It doesn’t sound like you’ve ever used TikTok. I assumed the same thing going in and found quite the opposite. I’m way better informed since I started using it. In some cases by people that were actually involved in whatever event was newsworthy.
For a US example you can simply count the minutes of coverage Fox News and CNN give to various stories for the same basic effect. How much coverage you gives the Russia- Ukraine war can be just as impactful as if you refer to it as a Russian invasion or not.
I don't use TikTok, but I use Facebook and Google's short video versions. I find just as many anti-CCP as pro-CCP content on it, and...I guess these are mostly TikTok videos because many of them still have TikTok watermarks.
I'm legitimately terrified to know what this means.
Let me not even get started on the deep fakes lurking on the platform.
The effect is less informed with higher certainty, and terrible combination for training citizens for actual civil discourse.
Same thing with propaganda used by social media.
This video illustrates the effects of it: https://youtu.be/pB7WzqUq4Nk?t=324