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Comment by wyldberry | Hacker News Reader

This isn't rocket science. What's going on is having the keys to the kingdom with regards to serving videos to influence the mind of a user with extremely precise targeting.

China doesn't want USA doing that, and banned their social media. USA doesn't want China doing it because they've been doing it all over the world to everybody since Radio Free Europe, and likely before.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Radio-Free-Europe

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The timing of this with the Israeli crimes in Gaza is clear.

https://www.thefp.com/p/tik-tok-young-americans-hamas-mike-g...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/13/tiktok-...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/16/tiktok...

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/09/tiktok-ban-israel-palest...

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-listening-post/2024/3/...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/business/tiktok-israel-ha...

Israel's practices are historically so insidious. The more I learn about that state the more disturbing it is.

People have said it before but the clear internet is increasingly under Israel's influence. X's have silenced so many Palestinian accounts.

Western social media have platforms that allow states to censor content, and they have to comply. Under the guise of misinformation ofcourse.

Lots of countries have made it illegal to listen things like Radio Free Europe. I'm guessing you can't in North Korea. On the other hand, a US citizen that wants to get the Chinese perspective on anything has lots of ways to legally find that and repeat it. I am not saying a lot of people in the US are interested in a foreign point of view, or that the US doesn't have tons of propaganda. But I don't think you can convince anyone that the two countries treat speech the same way.

> On the other hand, a US citizen that wants to get the Chinese perspective on anything has lots of ways to legally find that and repeat it.

What do you mean by "Chinese perspective"? Do you mean people's genuine opinion or the official government talking points?

Is that distinction material to the point the GP is making?

Radio Free Europe is nothing like TikTok. Not only is broadcast media not able to be pinpoint targeted in real time to individuals, but the connection of who was behind RFE and other similar propaganda is pretty obvious, unlike tiktok.

Feels a little bit like the Chinpokomon episode of South Park - innocent kids being brainwashed and whatnot. (I know the target in that ep is Japan, but still)

I think that China is working to control left-wing activism in the U.S and TikTok is the perfect trojan horse to split the Democratic party and elevate their bribed proxies. I'd rather not go into how they're doing it, but certainly massive focus on the Gaza war in TikTok did do a number on the unity of the Democratic party.

Speaking of China influence I keep getting these stories on my social media feeds: Isn't this overpass, road, or this building, or this city in with lots of LED lights in China just great? China is the future, and so on!

...except that the "extremely precise targeting" is a new thing.

microtargeting specific to individual psychological metrics is indeed a new thing.

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