[oh_nice_marmot]

Genuine question: why is TikTok viewed as a risk? How does it differ from Facebook or Twitter with all the fake news, threats, etc.

Imo, the way that some have instrumentalized Western social media for disinformation is a bigger threat than allowing a competitor

[recursive]

A Chinese entity has a controlling interest. We want all of our manipulation to be domestic, thankyouverymuch.

[photochemsyn]

FB/IG will delete or downgrade content that's extremely embarrassing to the US government; TikTok will do the same for the Chinese government. It's amusing when a subject (e.g. US government funding for a Chinese virus lab doing bat coronavirus research right before the Covid pandemic) hits both triggers - but X does allow that content to some degree so perhaps X really is a bit more pro-free-speech than either FB/IG or TikTok.

[kredd]

FB/IG/Threads openly downrank any political content for good reasons nowadays. There was a thread from one of the execs that I saw a few months ago. I actually like that. Not everything has to be "rage bait of the day sprinkled with geopolitical drama". And whenever I have that itch to scratch, I can just doom-scroll through Twitter.

TikTok is a bit different though, I think they were able to capture the audience and put them in correct bubbles, so if you want to just watch your funny memes, you won't see anything else. But looking at my friend's feeds, they see the opposite - extremely polarizing political content from all the possible sides of the spectrum. It looks like IG Reels has started to eat their lunch, but time will show.