this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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I can agree with that, but it becomes muddier when it's a social media platform where your participation on the platform lends it credibility. As an example, the Hong Kong protests were supressed on TikTok at the behest of the CCP. You could argue that by creating the content that ByteDance's algorithm used to bury the videos being posted on TikTok, regular unwitting Americans were assisting the CCP in covering up the protests.
It'll be on ByteDance to prove those kinds of concerns invalid, just as it will be the US' job to demonstrate the threat posed by TikTok to Americans.
The same can be said of any us based social media company.
Idk this just feels like red scare propaganda
Yeah, except China has been committing a genocide and would gladly commit an atrocity on the scale of Israel x Palestine to Taiwan if the U.S. blinks.
Yes, the U.S. is evil as hell, and yet China is still worse. The U.S. doesn't have citizen reeducation camps, people don't get disappeared for talking out against dear leader. If you can't understand why giving an adversary like that unfettered access to people's minds is a security risk, I've no interest in arguing geopolitics with you.
I'm not making a comparison between china and the us, I'm simply pointing out that banning chinese control over social media doesn't address the vulnerability of social media being manipulated against users by other parties.
If you have a problem with china owning a social media platform because they could potentially scew public perception through manipulative practices, then I would imagine the core of the issue isn't chinese ownership but the manipulative potential of social media algorithms generally.
I think most people would much prefer more transparent practices and user choice, such as what federated social media protocols provide. We shouldn't simply ban the one we fear, we should regulate them all so that users have more choice and control themselves.