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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

TikTok is the main place pro-Palestine viewpoints went viral. I don't know whether this is because of the demographics of users, or because US platforms were putting their thumb on the scale, or because TikTok was putting its thumb on the scale, or just randomly, but it is in fact the case.

So that's one quite mainstream opinion that would be suppressed if the government banned TikTok. No, you wouldn't be arrested for posting pro-Palestine stuff to Facebook (at least not under Biden...) but that's not the only way for the government to curtail speech.

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Just so you know, the whole world except USA is pro palestine.

A lot of the US population is as well despite how our media frames it.

But a ban on TikTok isn't a ban on pro-Palestine speech. How does banning TikTok stop people from being able to say something in support of Palestine?

Of course you can shout whatever you want alone in your bedroom — this is true even in North Korea or Iran. If the government goes out of its way to make it difficult to publicize certain opinions, it is widely considered to be an infringement on freedom of speech.

Imagine if they shut down CNN and MSNBC for being the most anti-Trump major TV stations. Wouldn’t you think that was an infringement, even if it wouldn’t stop individuals from speaking their mind on the topic?

> If the government goes out of its way to make it difficult to publicize certain opinions, it is widely considered to be an infringement on freedom of speech.

Banning a specific platform would only be making that difficult if there weren't other options. TikToj is one of many social media platforms, and given that industry's tendency to steal each others features and engagement models it isn't even particularly unique in what it offers.

All that said, I'm not a fan of almost any government involvement and would much rather them stay in their lane. I just see this one as an overreach problem rather that a violation of free speech.

Why didn’t you respond to my hypothetical question?

Probably because it TikTok is a video first platform? Text doesn't really do it justice.

Could also just be a demographics thing

If TikTok didn't exist, wouldn't you expect those Pro-Palestine viewpoints to appear somewhere else? The whole thing is unverifiable because we have no test/control, but it seems implausible that the platform was the only avenue for this particular speech.

The companies themselves have free speech. It doesn't really matter how those viewpoints ended up highly-ranked on TikTok, it's their right to choose what they want to display, same with Facebook. And given what happened here, I don't expect Facebook to allow this stuff high-up even if they wanted to before.

Another thing we know is that the White House under Biden was pressuring FB and others to downrank anti-covid-vaccine content until a judge ordered them to stop.

> we know is that the White House under Biden was pressuring FB and others to downrank anti-covid-vaccine content

Kind of quaint in 2025.

> If TikTok didn't exist, wouldn't you expect those Pro-Palestine viewpoints to appear somewhere else

Not necessarily. It depends why they were primarily successful on TikTok, which we don't know. If it's because American platforms tend not to highly rank content that goes against the US's geopolitical ideology, then no, I wouldn't expect that.

TikTok isn’t the only non-US social media platform. Why wouldn’t it show up elsewhere?

It is the only one that's widely used in the US, as far as I know.

Social media platforms rank content based on how profitable it is to them. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Maybe it would be unprofitable to resist censorship requests on behalf of US government, but the exact same pressure would be applied to TikTok.

We forgot the Twitter files already?

If the pressure is a direct bribe, then TikTok could get in hot water with China for accepting that bribe. With a US corp, the US government can make any criminal liability go away.

A company has to follow the local rules of a country. Was Microsoft bribed to censor the Tiananmen Square Massacre on Bing?

> If TikTok didn't exist, wouldn't you expect those Pro-Palestine viewpoints to appear somewhere else?

Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655603

Meta: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content - https://text.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorshi...

Facebook has severely restricted the ability of Palestinian news outlets to reach an audience during the Israel-Gaza war, according to BBC research - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c786wlxz4jgo

This is the smoking gun of actual free speech violation rather than the US government banning a particular platform wholesale.

To be a first amendment violation this would technically have to involve the US government working to censor American's speech over Palestine. Functionally, though, this is a government censoring specific speech and feels very much like a free speech issue.

Free speech is a broader concept than just the first amendment, or any one specific legal code.

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