Item — HN Reader

It is maddening to see people who usually are pretty serious and mature turn into zombies parroting whatever political propaganda the state decides to push out this year.

Some key facts:

1. Tiktok isn’t allowed to sell because their AI models and algorithms are trained on Chinese citizenry data. These items have been marked as non-exports for some time now, and this is a well known fact by the people pushing for the bill.

2. The bill was only passed since it was shafted into a bundle of other more urgent bills that have to pass.

3. Not all American media companies are banned in China. Some refuse to comply with local laws and pulled out. For example, Apple and Microsoft complied. However the competition in China is immense and not every business can survive the capitalistic competition.

4. While there were talks about the ban, it was not until the overwhelming amount of Pro Palestinian content that led to the heavy push for the ban.

5. The US is a relatively tiny market for tiktok, so tiktok is likely to just pull out.

What I think:

1. The date set for the sale is highly political, and IMO its meant to weaponise Gen Z against the democrats.

2. Pro Palestinian content is highly searchable on tiktok, and that made a lot of people unhappy and uncomfortable.

5 comments

Agree strongly w/ this post. The irony of the comments claiming that TikTok is a Chinese propaganda tool is that TikTok is one of the only major social platforms that isn't totally controlled by Western propaganda. Reddit, Facebook, X etc. will all ban and downrank you for anti-Western wrongthink.

It's genuinely remarkable to witness the Democratic Party spurn their base of young people for no discernible gain. Who exactly is the constituency for this legislation other than China hawks?

Israel, who is mad that there exists a major social media app which does not censor pro-Palestinian content.

I disagree with all of these points except the first one. #3 is particularly misleading: 1) Apple and Microsoft are not media companies, and 2) cute how you said "local laws" instead of "government censorship". This reads right out of a CCP handbook.

I agree with the palestine point but good spot on the “local laws.” Pretty sus.

1. Doesn't matter, the law is the law and you have to comply even if it's hard. 2. It already passed (the House) in a separate vote this year. It would have passed anyway. If anything, I would guess the Ukraine part of the package was the most controversial. 3. Absurd. 4. No evidence of this. 5. Perhaps, we don't really know the future. How is this a "fact"?

Don't really see what any of this has to do with the core objection that via TikTok a foreign nation, a global power, has the ability to directly and completely opaquely manipulate american voter at an unprecendented level.

Would be insanely easy to identify swing counties/demographics and slightly tweak their algorithm to influence votes. You can be sure some chinese data scientist has already run the numbers on this (if not already experimented on it at a state/local level). I don't really feel comfortable with the CCP having that level of control.

> Pro Palestinian content is highly searchable on tiktok, and that made a lot of people unhappy and uncomfortable.

Not saying that the popularity of pro palestinian content is a psyop. But if it were, how would you even know? Maybe it's not a psyop today but they pulled the right levels to make it go viral, and now it's an organically driven flywheel? Maybe it's all organic and I'm fearmongering. The point is there is no way to know, or ever find out. Chinese datacenters can't be subpoenaed.

Both major presidential candidates are very anti-China. What exactly would they gain from election interference?