[j0ba]

The nice thing about Tiktok is we can totally trust the CCP to show brainwashing content to the children of foreign adversaries.

China banned Instagram et. al. because they're not stupid. They don't want foreign influence on their children.

US politicians are both corrupt and stupid.

[stemlord]

I don't disagree that US politicians are corrupt and stupid but as an American citizen I want to be able to access the world's information in order to establish an accurate perspective for myself. Banning media from certain countries is exactly how you develop a delusional worldview and ironically become more susceptible to propaganda.

[acchow]

If you want to avoid a delusional world view, I think targeted social media is probably what you want to avoid.

Maybe if TikTok could only serve content sorted by newest, or if you get a direct link URL from someone else.

[appplication]

Exactly this. There is quite a bit of hubris to thinking to that you can consume the media of a propaganda state and be intentional about understanding what is and is not propaganda. It works because it’s subtle. And it works at individual, population, and network levels. So even of you identify and maintain the noble truth, you will have no one in your network to meaningfully corroborate it.

[rolandog]

The "beauty" of the plausible deniability in these systems is the hidden reward mechanisms that are in place: you can get a whole country to kick themselves in the groin if the algorithm rewards it and people think they can monetize the attention.

[dj_mc_merlin]

I'm personally quite interested in propaganda and TikTok let's you see both American leftist/rightist propaganda, European leftist/rightist propaganda and pro-Russian/pro-Chinese propaganda. Now there's a lot more on Palestine and Israel obviously. On Reddit it's largely leftist American, although the European right has had a recent resurgence due to refugees.

Weird hobby, I know, but it is actually a great place to look at all the different ways propaganda is done. Everyone is doing it..

[birksherty]

These days all news channels send paper sites are doing the government propaganda, even nyt, wp.

[acchow]

Yes, propaganda will always exist. With traditional media (assuming you have cookies and tracking disabled) you are the on that decides what propaganda (which articles) to consume.

With social media like TikTok, they decide what propaganda to feed you.

[gardenhedge]

How about each public video is accessible but not in the algorithm scroll structure?

[TotoHorner]

> Banning media from certain countries is exactly how you develop a delusional worldview and ironically become more susceptible to propaganda

You think banning propaganda machines from other countries makes you more susceptible to propaganda?

[averageRoyalty]

It's not banning media from a country though, it's banning an app that is country run and can select specific media to show you.

[Dah00n]

It is no more country run than Facebook.

[xkqd]

That is simply not true of any Chinese enterprise.

Party is inextricably linked to any large commercial or corporate entity, by law but also culture.

[Dah00n]

If you believe the NSA has less to say about Meta's data than CPC has to say about TikTok's data, then I got an old bridge for sale.

[TotoHorner]

Yeah you're completely uneducated on the topic.

Several media outlets did a dive on the connections the CCP has into TikTok.

Their security auditors implied that they have backdoors.

[Akronymus]

Per the HN Guidelines:

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

It is quite unnecessary to hear you call everyone you disagree with uneducated or similar.

[rayiner]

Have you seen the CCP propaganda on Tik Tok though? It’s quite wholesome. Like there’s one where this guy randomly helps poor kids and old people he encounters. It paints Chinese society in a positive light, probably making the standard of living seem better than it is. But in a way it’s not unlike what many Americans wish their kids were watching.

[sidewndr46]

Show the one where the guy gets caught up in an obscure non-state approved religion, falls down on his luck, but the government steps in & sends him to a retreat to get better. Then he enjoys the rest of his life manufacturing goods in a factory as part of his rehabilitation.

[toasted-subs]

They show what they wants to people. Seems extremely scary and suspicious to any parent with half a brain.

[thesuitonym]

Why do you think Tiktok is brainwashing children (why is it always children?) and Facebook, Twitter, etc aren't?

Why do you think Tiktok is the only vector for foreign influence, when it's been documented many, many times that domestic social media sites are rife with foreign misinformation?

What do you think Tiktok will do? Destabilize the US? Our politicians are already doing that. No need to worry about a boogyman from the other side of the globe. It's just a distraction.

[Ialdaboth]

On the long term, anthropological warfare is a clever idea... but it's probably a little too optimistic to think you can implement with just one app. The CCP/tiktok hysteria feels overblown to me - public education is what constituents should feel concerned about.

[toasted-subs]

Says a person who hasn't had to deal with direct harassment by these organizations.

In my opinion these apps should be banned immediately.

[flkenosad]

You think they should ban HN too? Or twitter?

[toasted-subs]

I think it depends, my experience on hacker news has been extremely positive with the exceptions of malicious posters who downvote my cries for help. These are obvious and not depend on the platform but the user's in question. The experience I have with Twitter (X) has been people trying to help me.

There's a difference between malicious users and malicious platforms.

[kvgr]

This, china has access to "weights" that push content to people and pushes some content to background.

[vasdae]

Tiktok has been scrutinised so much that if they were showing "brainwashing content" to Western children we would've heard about it already.

[TotoHorner]

Are you joking or are you just completely uneducated on this topic?

There's been several outlets that have dived into the difference between the chinese version of TikTok and the western versions.

Also, they can affect public sentiment with slight nudges and those would be completely undetectable.

[lossolo]

There is a difference between Chinese society and western society. Chinese do not allow kids to play video games for too long because they know effects of games on the youth, they also restrict what can be viewed by children on Chinese version of tik tok for the exactly same reason. They restrict freedom of their kids because they believe it's more productive and better for society. In west we do not do that because freedom is important for us. What you need to understand is that there is no free lunch, freedom has a cost that you need to pay, and we are paying for it.

[toasted-subs]

So while the US pacifies its citizens China tried to make foreign solders to send to the US. TikTok being a tool to "slow down" Americans while enabling foreigners. Seems pretty Sus to me.

[fshr]

Please stop telling people they’re uneducated on the topic in response to one comment. You’ve done it multiple times and it’s unnecessarily aggressive. Ask clarifying questions or provide counterfactuals.

[getwiththeprog]

You need to provide links to the content you claim exists. Otherwise your claims seem foundless.

[local_crmdgeon]

I made a new account last week – totally blank, new device everything. The default FYP so far is all anti-Jewish – not anti-Israel, anti-Jewish – and far left-wing anti-American stuff. it intersperse with really low brow celebrity stuff.

Pretty intense stuff. Lots of “Jews run the world, and hate you” stuff that reporting doesn’t seem to work on. Lots of “America is a nightmare place” aimed at teenagers.

Pretty sure thats the CCP whipping up internal unrest here.

[milesvp]

Shit I’ve had youtube try to brainwash me. I clicked on one lecture, that I watched and thought was generally good, if not slightly contrarian. Turns out his later work was hugely influencial in the red pill nonsense. Needless to say, just watching this one lecture led my entire feed to be filled with red pill nonsense.

I have no doubt if I had clicked on similar content on tiktok I would have deluged with similar nonsense.

[DrThunder]

We have heard about it.... you're just not getting your news from sources that mention it. There are multiple things they allow on American TikTok that they do not allow on Chinese TikTok. They allow these things because they know it helps with social decay in America.

[dragonwriter]

> They allow these things because they know it helps with social decay in America.

They allow them in America not China because the government allows them in America and not China.

The “leads to social decay” thing is the argument of people who disagree with freedom of speech in favor of authoritarian content controls.

[Spivak]

What are you talking about?! Listen to yourself dude, you've completely fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole. If the US exerted that level of control over private media you would call it a dystopia and a violation of 1A. China also has a policy that limits teenagers to 1hr of online video games a day, surely you wouldn't look at that and jump straight to Activation being a government psyop to stunt education.

TikTok would have to be doing something anything unique in this situation and they aren't. YouTube is the OG radicalization pipeline, Tumblr is more pro-communism than TikTok will ever dream to be, Facebook and IG pioneered doomscrolling before it was cool, and Twitter/Reddit ruined an entire generation of men with the enlightened technoconservatarian nonsense.

I promise you if there is one thing that is absolutely completely certain in America is that we need no help whatsoever in destroying the fabric of our own society and to say otherwise is an affront to American exceptionalism.

[skeaker]

Not sure about "corrupting America's youth," but TikTok has been proven to selectively show content to different regions to promote only certain kinds of thought: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30917474

This was enough for me to resolve to never use it. And you're right that other social media isn't much better, though I don't think that was being called into question in the first place.

[dragonwriter]

> Not sure about "corrupting America's youth," but TikTok has been proven to selectively show content to different regions to promote only certain kinds of thought

The example cited there seems a lot like it is to conform to local censorship policies, not to manipulate thought around some centralized objective of TikTok or the CCP.

[skeaker]

As if that's any better? Not to mention, being capable of one means they are capable of the other.

[vasdae]

I agree with you in principle but there's no difference between that and what's allowed in other American platforms. Degenerate content is everywhere in all platforms.

For tiktok to be special in this regard they would have to allow something different that went way beyond what American platforms allow, and that's thus far not happening.

[autoexec]

> For tiktok to be special in this regard they would have to allow something different that went way beyond what American platforms allow

I'm not sure that's true. There's a big difference between "Some amount of degenerate content exists on American platforms which are constantly fighting to identify and remove it" and "Adversarial foreign platform intentionally creates/curates degenerate content to push it to American audiences while keeping it from their own users"

Even if you're talking about content that both platforms fully allow, if one platform targets a group and floods their feeds with certain content with an intent to harm that group that is itself a problem. The fact that it is possible to find harmful content on youtube doesn't make it the same as a platform that intentionally and relentlessly shoves harmful content in your face. I can't say how guilty tiktok is of doing that however.