> US citizens do not want this
Ha ha, I guess you are discovering, many many people do want this.
Ha ha, I guess you are discovering, many many people do want this.
It's not that other propaganda doesn't exist, it's that a likely intended effect of Chinese propaganda is destabilization and/or delegitimization of hostile governments. Ad spend is more about destabilizing consumers' savings.
You’re not a government, you’re a person. Either way you’re being manipulated, and the US government definitely doesn’t have your best interests in mind.
The only people thinking in such a arrogantly privileged manner ironically are Westerners, try saying this crap in China or India and people will laugh at you all day. Or I doubt this poster has the best interests of Americans in mind either.
How exactly is that different from a dictatorship?
By stifling freedom of expression under the guise of "national security" you're creating blind spots that allow atrocities to go unchallenged. I thought we learned from history but maybe I was wrong.
I'm confused why you think China's interests are irrelevant to you, unless you truly believe geopolitics is a zero-sum game. We compete in markets, militarily in the indo-pacific, and technologically in ways that are not mutually beneficial.
Because this imaginary world where the US somehow equally controls Facebook on the level that China directly influences TikTok isn’t one that exists?
This low resolution view of the world is grating. “Facebook is a US based social media company so it’s exactly the same as China and TikTok” is completely devoid of the context of reality.
Not only does Facebook actually have 1st amendment speech rights with a judicial system empowered to enforce them. But even the slightest appearance that the US government was attempting to influence speech on Facebook would be a career ending scandal.
Compared to TikTok where the CCP literally has a seat on ByteDance’s board by law and has for its entire existence had its algorithm nuke political topics that China does not want discussed.
It’s not the same thing.
So from where I’m standing it’s the same thing.
And to give you some perspective, there’s plenty of content critical of China on TikTok even though that stuff gets banned on DouYin.
> "lower primate improv troupe"
> "No one who actually uses it or understands it wants this."
"Everyone's generalizations are stupid, except mine."
Many things aren't that democratic when you look at it like that!
Tiktok US users of voting age are already accounted for in that process, they don't get extra sway just because they use the app.
A majority of American citizens want affordable healthcare, housing, and education, net neutrality, an arms embargo vs Israel, an end to illegal forever wars, stronger environmental protections, cleaner water, less fossil fuel use and an end to fracking, etc - and there's still bipartisan resistance in our politics and media against all of those.
Congress doesn't actually represent us, it represents capital. Been like that for a long time. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Either it's a dictatorship or it's listening to the majority. There is nothing democratic about acting against the majority. Never was
The polls on all the above are pretty clear. There's no need to rely on your own viewpoint.
> otherwise they would have implemented a government where the majority is heard, but they didn't.
May I suggest reading some Chomsky, or at least watching Manufacturing Consent.
> Either it's a dictatorship or it's listening to the majority.
It's a plutocracy, and this has never been more obvious.
> There is nothing democratic about acting against the majority.
Well, there you go. Do check out those polls.
If everyone is so outraged and there's so many TikTok users, they can rally and vote out the people who voted for this.
I for one support this ban fwiw. You'll find out a lot of people do too. So in this instance and quite a few others, my representative has voted in my favor.
It is possible that every single candidate on the ballot is in agreement on a topic that every single non-candidate voter has the opposite view on. That doesn’t mean nobody gets elected.