If Tiktok doesn’t push this kind of social divisiveness in their own country, it’s because they regulated it in their home country. They’re simply exploiting the fact that the US has basically zero regulations in place, so they’re allowed to promote socially destructive content. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not like what they’re doing is materially different than what Xitter, Meta/Facebook, Reddit, and so on do. Honestly, it’s already happening at Bluesky because we have no rules and rely almost exclusively on site moderators enforcing social decorum rules. If Tiktok in China is “better” it’s because the government there forces it to be, like maybe we ought to consider doing maybe.
The US government just doesn’t like it when it’s not their guys propagandizing and dividing the populace. They want to enjoy the fruits of that, not a foreign actor. The mask is truly off, they really do think their own poverty-striken citizens are the enemy. The government speaks out of both sides of its mouth about backdoors in encryption, with one part of the FBI saying you need to use encrypted services to safely communicate, and another part saying we need backdoors in encryption even though Salt Typhoon literally saw hackers exploit US telecom backdoors that which the hackers still persist in exploiting.
Not meaning this in defense of Tiktok, but…
If Tiktok doesn’t push this kind of social divisiveness in their own country, it’s because they regulated it in their home country. They’re simply exploiting the fact that the US has basically zero regulations in place, so they’re allowed to promote socially destructive content. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not like what they’re doing is materially different than what Xitter, Meta/Facebook, Reddit, and so on do. Honestly, it’s already happening at Bluesky because we have no rules and rely almost exclusively on site moderators enforcing social decorum rules. If Tiktok in China is “better” it’s because the government there forces it to be, like maybe we ought to consider doing maybe.
The US government just doesn’t like it when it’s not their guys propagandizing and dividing the populace. They want to enjoy the fruits of that, not a foreign actor. The mask is truly off, they really do think their own poverty-striken citizens are the enemy. The government speaks out of both sides of its mouth about backdoors in encryption, with one part of the FBI saying you need to use encrypted services to safely communicate, and another part saying we need backdoors in encryption even though Salt Typhoon literally saw hackers exploit US telecom backdoors that which the hackers still persist in exploiting.