As someone who has used TikTok, I don’t hate the outcome, but hate the mendacity with which it was executed. TikTok is brain rot, a better way of describing it is digital crack. You can spend hours and hours on TikTok in a numb state, with no sense of what’s going on in the world around you. If the government decided, this addiction is not good, let’s treat it like a drug and ban it, I would be all for it. But claiming it is a tool of Chinese Propaganda is absurd.
Anyone who uses TikTok, knows China can’t really gin up any propaganda through it.
Propaganda only works if it seduces, not if it bludgeons and China as a country never seems to be able to seduce. It’s Hollywood that gets exported to China, Xi Jinpings daughter studied at Harvard, not the other way around. China is a fashion victim of US propaganda if anything. The worst China could do, was artificially boost “how cool China is” TikTok’s, crudely ban TianMen Square TikTok’s and this does not convince anyone. It only encourages even more subversive TikTok’s, weakening its power further.
In fact I would claim, China not only has no power over those that use TikTok, but in its current regime, it has no pathway to ever influence those that use TikTok, even in the future. The Chinese regime is practically capable but culturally uncool. All that the American Regime has succeeded in banning TikTok, is embarrass the American Regime and reveal itself to be equally uncool in the eyes of Gen Z. If you browsed TikTok recently, you have seen probably all the ironic TikTok’s of Americans saluting the Chinese National Anthem. This irony from the younger generation, itself shows how uncool Congress has become. A culturally dominant regime, would have no reason to worry about enemy’s propaganda, and America didn’t realize it but it was very culturally dominant, now however it’s own insecurity has harmed its prestige significantly.
I don’t understand this argument that China couldn’t possibly use the app to influence public opinion. The TikTok algorithm works by tagging a bunch of features onto a video. How positive is it, political bent, comedy, cat, depressive, anything. And the people running these apps can then pull levers as they see fit to change the distribution of content shown to users.
In fact in a very real sense I think it’s impossible to be neutral. Similar to running a newspaper and picking which articles are on the front page. There is no neutral outcome: the owners of a feed inevitably make editorial choices on what gets shown.
Think of it like parenting a teenager. If you be extremely disciplinarian, ban a bunch of stuff, have rigid rules, you don’t get an obedient child, you just get painful rebellion and if you quash it hard enough, you get a child ready to run away at the first notice.
The best way to deal with teenagers, is if you are cool in their eyes, then they will naturally try to copy you. This is hard for most parents, try too hard to be cool and you will be relentlessly mocked. In fact if you can’t be cool, it’s best to just be neutral and let them drift the way they drift, because if you try to impose too much, you just encourage their natural rebellious streak and get opposite results.
The Chinese government has always been in the position of the uncool parent who is trying to take control by being a disciplinarian. Thinking they can control US public through some hidden levers, is like thinking the parent secretly is making the teenager do his bidding by playing 5D chess. It is a fantasy. The US regime was more cool, maybe not as cool as actual Gen Z, but cool enough that they were not relentlessly mocked. Unfortunately this act, just exposes them as uncool after all, and makes them get relentlessly mocked. If the goal, is to win hearts and minds, US could not have scored a better own goal. That said, maybe this was going to happen anyway, the newer generation seems the most ironic and the quickest to mock existing social mores and ideals, and this act just sped up the process.
Yeah I mean idk what to tell you, your comment is 100% vibes and wavey metaphors. The reality is that China gets to control which videos get put in the FYP and there are plenty of good videos with "controversial political stance A" vs "B" to pick between based on their agenda.
You’re assuming that they only have the power to show the user propaganda, but I think the real power is in hiding content they don’t want people to see.
Your understanding of the situation is incredibly naive. TikTok can selectively suppress or emphasize viewpoints that are geopolitically advantageous to China that are not as overt as "China GOOD!" or whatever you imagine propaganda to be.
Oh there's plenty of Chinese seduction propaganda on TikTok. Literally every single tiktok users knows about the mountainous city Chongqing.
Just before the ban product price tiktoks were huge: 2 usd corn in China VS 6 usd in the US where comments pointing out that Americans have 5x on avg higher wages were clearly down ranked.
Anyone who uses TikTok, knows China can’t really gin up any propaganda through it.
Propaganda only works if it seduces, not if it bludgeons and China as a country never seems to be able to seduce. It’s Hollywood that gets exported to China, Xi Jinpings daughter studied at Harvard, not the other way around. China is a fashion victim of US propaganda if anything. The worst China could do, was artificially boost “how cool China is” TikTok’s, crudely ban TianMen Square TikTok’s and this does not convince anyone. It only encourages even more subversive TikTok’s, weakening its power further.
In fact I would claim, China not only has no power over those that use TikTok, but in its current regime, it has no pathway to ever influence those that use TikTok, even in the future. The Chinese regime is practically capable but culturally uncool. All that the American Regime has succeeded in banning TikTok, is embarrass the American Regime and reveal itself to be equally uncool in the eyes of Gen Z. If you browsed TikTok recently, you have seen probably all the ironic TikTok’s of Americans saluting the Chinese National Anthem. This irony from the younger generation, itself shows how uncool Congress has become. A culturally dominant regime, would have no reason to worry about enemy’s propaganda, and America didn’t realize it but it was very culturally dominant, now however it’s own insecurity has harmed its prestige significantly.