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Comment by DiogenesKynikos | Hacker News Reader

Many American politicians, including the people leading the charge for the ban, have openly said that this is the reason.

Senator Mitt Romney put it very bluntly [0]:

> "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites - it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."

Or maybe Mitt Romney is just another conspiracy theorist?

0. https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...

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None of those 1A arguments held up and the SC decision did not use "count of Palestinians" AFAIK. I am sure some of the initial support was drummed up for reasons like what you mentioned but ultimately that is not why its being banned. But going back to your point, mentioning democratic rights for a CCP app is hilarious.

That's why Mitt Romney thinks it was banned.

The people who formulated the ban failed a few times previously, both because they couldn't gain enough political support to push it through and because it was legally shaky. The Gaza issue was what led to overwhelming support for a ban in the US Congress and Senate (as Romney says), and the ban was intentionally formulated in such a way as to try to legally sidestep the First Amendment question (in a highly dubious manner, but the SC isn't going to overrule Congress here).

> mentioning democratic rights for a CCP app is hilarious.

It's the most popular app in the United States. Calling it a "CCP app" is just braindead. Of course banning the most popular means of expression in a country because the people are expressing themselves in ways that political leaders disapprove of is anti-democratic.

All major corporations in mainland China have direct ties to the CCP. To think otherwise is foolish, their business and government are intertwined. At the end of the day all ByteDance china had to do was divest their ownership in the company.

I sympathize with you and agree the initial support definitely utilized the conflict in Gaza but it goes beyond the conflict and centers itself around the ability for the CCP to influence how the algorithm works. To not understand how much control the CCP has over mainland entities is surprising.

> their business and government are intertwined

This completely depends on the company. There's no evidence that TikTok has been used as a Chinese propaganda vehicle, and the issue that led to TikTok being banned in the US was TikTok's refusal to bow to pressure to toe the line on Palestine/Israel. Unlike Facebook, TikTok did not suppress pro-Palestinian content, and that led to broad Congressional support for a ban.

So have you done business in China or are you just guessing? I have and in China and other single party communist countries and absolutely all business, especially at large size have direct lines to the party. I am not sure how you can be so confidently incorrect. You can be some small time manufacturer and you are still beholden to your local governing party members with at the very least annual kickback gifts.

You keep latching on this idea of Palestinian content. You do realize this is much larger than that conflict?

I've spent plenty of time in China and know how things work there, in general. The idea that everything is run through the Communist Party is just a lazy, scaremongering generalization that's become increasingly popular in the US since 2016. There is such a thing as "Trump Derangement Syndrome," and it's the anti-China derangement that has become the bipartisan consensus since Trump took office in 2016.

The people pushing the ban say it's about Israel. Other Senators and Congresspeople say that's why they and their colleagues supported a ban. There were always some people who wanted to ban TikTok, but they were never able to get majority support in Congress until the issue of Israel came into play. Banning the most popular social media platform in the United States, a platform that more than half of Americans use, is a big deal.

So you do business in China or you have visited China? You totally skirt the topic but it’s clear you lack knowledge of how business is done in China.

I don't have much of a horse in this race, and I wouldn't consider myself pro or anti-China but I do a significant amount of business in China just shy of 9 figures annually in terms of revenue and I have never once dealt with their government in any way shape or form.

I have absolutely no direct line to them, never given them any kickbacks, and I visit the country once or twice a year.

I have no doubt that there are businesses that do have significant dealings with the CCP, I would never believe otherwise, but the idea that every company has to have a direct line to them is objectively untrue. I know many other people who also do business with China and its mostly the same story, none of us deal with the government and frankly I would be very uncomfortable if ever I had to.

> I have never once dealt with their government in any way shape or form.

It’s likely you have and didn’t know it. The “political officer” or otherwise-embedded party official often has another title or “non-official cover” as they say. Communist governments have operated this way since 1918.

You can also read that as an example of his opinion that TikTok is selectively amplifying anti-Western sentiment. You _can_ go for "it's all about Israel", but you really don't have to.

Or you could just read the statements of various politicians of our government:

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn: "It would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content"

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.: "We’ve seen TikTok used to downplay the Uyghur genocide, the status of Taiwan, and now Hamas terrorism"

And of course, Romney's explicit statement as well, when in context, it's actually far worse because it seems he is very concerned about lax fact checking on TikTok (which American social media platforms announced they are doing away with): https://xcancel.com/ggreenwald/status/1880979821901332773#m

I fundamentally disagree with all of these representatives. Americans are allowed to view all sides of every geopolitical issue and make up their own minds and vote according to their own beliefs. We should never ever be "shielded" from propaganda because we are smart enough to vote for and lead democracy, so we should be trusted as smart enough to ingest any geopolitical information existing in the world.

It's one thing to be exposed to varying viewpoints, it's another thing to have a nation state wage propaganda campaigns against you on your home turf.

If 999/1000 tiktoks you see are of one particular viewpoint, you don't think the audience is going to draw specific conclusions? Our species now has mis-information tools that we couldn't have possibly imagined even just a decade ago. We're in the midst of a real struggle to work out how your average person can identify it. It's disheartening how little progress has been made in this area.

> If 999/1000 tiktoks you see are of one particular viewpoint, you don't think the audience is going to draw specific conclusions?

So what? If you watch InfoWars all day you'll also draw specific conclusions. If you watch PressTV all day you'll also draw specific conclusions. The point is that Americans can draw whatever conclusions they want, and that limiting info to only "approved" sources is authoritarian

On that topic, Twitter/X is now heavily pushing InfoWars.

Of all the social networks, Twitter is currently the most concerning, given the far-right sympathies and political connections of its owner.

Maybe, but I think Americans have the right to watch Infowars all day if they want to. And X has the right to push it all they want, imo

Is it not so much the exact topics but the control of a recommendation engine that’s at the hands of a government that is a general adversary to the West?

So what? Recommendation engine is just the same thing as a newspaper editor who picks and chooses what is read by everyone in circulation and what's not. But we allow foreign adversary newspapers to circulate in the US (and did during the height of the Cold war too)

Would you give the same freedom to an opponent in a hot war? I.e. if there had been widespread TVs during WW2, would you allow NaziTV to televise their content to your population totally uncontrolled?

Would you allow an unfriendly adversary to buy up your ports, critical infrastructure, and food/water supply, or would you block certain transactions in the name of national security?

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