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Comment by llm_trw | Hacker News Reader

If your democracy is so rotten that a few teens dancing can bring it down I have bad news.

TikTok is much more than “a few teens dancing”, for a huge swath of population it’s how they get their news and how they find stuff.

And if their lives weren't a end stage capitalist hell scape those news would have as much effect as Radio Moscow did during the cold war.

It is only when a system is failing that it becomes susceptible to destruction by indifference.

Two fantastic comments (yours and GP[lim_trw])- accurate summing of the state of affairs.

Another plausible theory is that the literal billions that have been invested into optimizing content for hyper attention have led to improvements in propaganda methods since Radio Moscow.

So, in summary, you believe that since the USA is on its way down, it should not bother fighting back anymore?

You might have a point, though. With the new administration and its explicit focus on short term populism, it’s hard to stand up for anything.

In summary the Us government should spend its time improving the lives of Americans, and not find better ways to lie them about the quality of their lives.

or you just think it’s a hellscape because you’re bored and on your phone where people make money by telling you it’s a hellscape

I though TikTok algorithm won't let you choose what to find.

If you get news primarly from Tiktok you are ill-informed and should reconsider your information diet.

Oh man have I got some bad news for you

There was a classified briefing on Tiktok presented to Congress last year about why it is a threat to national security. No doubt the Intelligence Community had a good look inside Tiktok/Bytedance's network and determined it is not something we should allow to operate in this country.

Similar story with Huawei.

There was one about Iraq too. Mushroom clouds in 45 minutes I believe was the highlight.

That's strawman that has nothing to do with this topic. If you follow this line of thought, everything that is discussed in classified briefings is being done in bad faith, which I agree is easy to argue for, because we tend to pick and remember only bad examples, lack of trust in the system probably doesn't help much either. So even if you're right about trusting Gov in general, your argument is still wrong.

If you follow your line of thought we could never point out that processes have made mistakes in the past. Yours is the only strawman.

any classified briefings on X/Twitter being controlled by an immigrant? :)

Why only to the Congress, does not the American people have a right to know? Why be tight-lipped about it, certainly it's not some military or nuclear technology matter.

Yes I also trust the federal government unequivocally and without question. They didn’t tell me any details but I don’t need any, their word is good enough. In fact I will tell others so they are aware of the new gospel.

Yes, especially the same people who said Iraq had WMDs. Trust them implicitly.

Are you really so dense as to not understand how social media is used to influence elections, and how that is significantly different from any media format that has previously existed?

You don't believe that. So don't try and use that as justification. Alternatively if you do believe that you don't understand how power on media platforms works.

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