There's also the degree of relevance. Tiananmen was over a quarter of a century ago. The USA is killing protestors, bombing Venezuela, threatening Greenland now.

> Content about the United States government rolling through protesters in armored vehicles, killing people in Venezuela with bombs, and threatening Greenland, straight to top of feed.

None of this is propaganda, it's just facts.

Another reason why feed ranking algorithms should be published. If we can see the algorithm we can stop playing these yes/no games. The real enemies are social media companies, not the other side of politics.

Aren't these recent events? A better example would be showing US atrocities from the last 50 years, but not Chinese.

Or hiding the suffering of Ukranian and Iranian peoples.

If your prosperity depends on using technocracy to deny 1.3 billion people the ability to communicate and share ideas with your citizens, a few things are true:

1) You have created a digital iron curtain

2) You are doomed because information wants to be free

3) If you succeed the result will be war, the only thing left when communication breaks down

I'm sorry, did I miss something? Is this something that's happened (ever)?

The US has been applying soft power and hard power in South America - to put it euphemistically, as the most recent US intervention was just days ago - for close to a century. The Chinese... haven't.

Why should people in South America give a shit about Tiananmen or Tibet and at the same time not give a shit about the escalating authoritarian grip of the US regime, which is infinitely more relevant to their lives?

Buying TikTok to censor it is the move of a fascist government.

The TikTok ban was always an egregious attack on free speech.

TikTok is known for tipping the scales on political keywords everywhere. In the past they haven’t outright censored because that’s too obvious, but uploading videos on the wrong side (according to TikTok, of course) of a political topic will result in very few views.

I wouldn’t be surprised if as part of the transition they’re struggling with the previous methods of simply burying topics, so the obvious ban was their intermediate step.

The comments claiming this is specific to the US are simply wrong. TikTok has always done this everywhere.

They got the same version of the app that people in China got. I haven't seen any formal studies but my impression, at the time, was that Chinese people were far better informed about the US than Americans were about China.

I don't think the original intent of the tiktok sale was about censorship as much as it was about the chinese not allowing american platforms in china. Doesn't change that they're trying to use it to its 'fullest'.

Its been a conservative/zionist talking point for years now that "the youth are getting brainwashed by tiktok", and Ellison in particular seems to be in the "I've gone hard right due to the latest Israel conflict" camp. So of course they're not being subtle about it.

What that commenter means by easy access is that the information is in mainstream sources pushed to people such that you are likely to know about it without having looked.

For example I made a comment here on HN recently that immigrants commit crimes at fewer rates than US born people. That sends a segment of Americans into a flying rage even though they have access to that information, they were never going to hear it in their ordinary channels, even if they stick to "mainstream" media.

Whataboutism. You presumably know full well what the parent was describing, but if not:

TikTok presents users with feeds of videos. For many users, this is their primary news source.

An American oligarch and party loyalist now has de facto control of the app. Therefore, the regime has the capability to shape the narrative by boosting or hiding videos from the feed (whether or not they are doing so is an open question).

Could users still hypothetically find the same information elsewhere? Sure. But if this app is their primary source of information, would they even know they should bother doing so?