And what is the evidence for it being a Chinese spying platform? Is it owned by a Chinese company? Is there any hard evidence? Why is it so controversial?
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the US government doesn’t like how little control they have of the information flowing over there
This is the best answer.
Appealing to an out of touch, jingoistic voting base and cracking down on a social media platform where “the youths” are exposed to “woke commie socialist propaganda”. Also, yes it is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.
In short: Culture war
AIPAC wants it gone because Gen Z can’t easily be manipulated into thinking Israel is a peace-loving democracy surrounded by savage terrorists.
A motivation that hasn’t been mentioned yet:
Every successful attempt so far by the US government to control what Americans may and may not access on the internet has been rooted in pre-existing legal restrictions on the content, or on access to it. It’s just been things like piracy, CSAM, drug trafficking and the like - things that are illegal in and of themselves, so banning sites that are involved with them has just been a response to thecrxisting illegality.
This is the first time that the US government has succeeded in banning a site without pointing to violations of any existing laws, but simply because they’ve decided to do so.
That’s a significant precedent, and to would-be tyrants, an extremely useful one.
Tiktok is owned by a Chinese company, so all of the data harvesting that’s perfectly fine for Facebook and Twitter to do suddenly became a problem for the US government.
Seems like the most honest answer so far. The U.S. doesn’t trust the CCP with its citizens’ data. No surprise there.
Except FB and Twitter sell their data to the highest bidder. If China wanted American’s data, they can just buy it.
Good point. Seems like another issue of concern. As usual, the issue seems to be data privacy laws overall.
It is, but the relevance to the discussion is that China getting american’s data isn’t the reason for the ban. Nor is China influencing Americans because they tend to derank politically spicy videos. If China was controlling the algo to make the US look bad, videos tagged BLM wouldn’t have been deranked.
It depends on the manner in which said “politically spicy videos” are being censored. If it’s being done in a manner that promotes Chinese narratives while demoting American narratives, that’s an entirely legitimate concern for the U.S. and I don’t really see why not demoting BLM videos is not in the CCP’s interest; videos that make America seem racist seems entirely in the interest of an Anti-American country.
I also don’t see why hiring former American intelligence operatives demonstrates a pro-American stance, as their motivations for doing so could be to learn about American intelligence-gathering methods while promoting Chinese interests.
If it’s being done in a manner that promotes Chinese narratives while demoting American narratives
Spicy in this case means protests, police misbehavior, stuff the US wouldn’t want amplified. The big waves of censorship came in 2020 and 2022. You can search news articles from the time with lots of people wondering why they’re no longer getting that content in their FYPs and content creators getting <1/10th of the views. FB and reddit do the same thing.
I don’t really see why not demoting BLM videos is not in the CCP’s interest; videos that make America seem racist seems entirely in the interest of an Anti-American country.
Amplifying the videos that show America’s response to antiracist movements would make America look like the racist country it is. Demoting them conceals that.
I also don’t see why hiring former American intelligence operatives demonstrates a pro-American stance, as their motivations for doing so could be to learn about American intelligence-gathering methods while promoting Chinese interests.
CIA agents living in America who disseminate intelligence-gathering methods while promoting Chinese interests get charged with treason.
They were hired to help identify and amplify US state department narratives, same reason CNN and Fox hires them.
Amplifying the videos that show America’s response to antiracist movements would make America look like the racist country it is. Demoting them conceals that.
No, that doesn’t make sense. Amplifying shows of division in a country promotes the view that said country is flawed and weak, in this case along racial lines. China has plenty to gain by showing that.
And America is no less racist than China, btw. I would argue far less so.
They were hired to help identify and amplify US state department narratives, same reason CNN and Fox hires them.
That seems entirely speculative. There are plenty of other reasons to hire them. Can you provide evidence for your claim?
It’s because it pissed off the wrong people. The initial push to ban tiktok was by Trump and republicans after TTers organized a mass RSVP of one of Trump’s events and he spent a lot of money on extra staff and ended up performing in an empty stadium.
That failed and Trump was mocked. 4 years later, it was used to counter zionist propaganda, and that got the democrats on board. Here’s Blinken admitting as much.
Additionally, Insta is TT’s biggest competitor, and FB, which owns Insta, lobbys to the tune of 20M/year.
