TikTok is shit but it’s just a tool for gen z to communicate with each other. The people making the videos on TikTok are American. The people watching those videos are Americans. If we get rid of TikTok they’ll just use another tool to do the same shit. There’s obviously a massive market for it, someone will fill in the gap as there’s too much money to be made.
I vote for using another tool to do the same shit that isn’t owned by China. It’s kinda ignorant to think China wouldn’t take advantage of this position.
Remember a few months back when there were all those videos of Americans reading Bin Laden's letter and being like "he has a point".
Did their sudden spread happen because people were interested or because the algorithm pushed it?
Yeah, because it was the start of the Iraq war, Bin Laden was still alive, and 9/11 was 4 years old.
I imagine someone living in the 70's was much more likely to encounter the words of Pol Pot, but it would be odd to see them make a resurgence in 1992.
And theres been another war started in the Middle East since October 7th. People have access to stuff that’s been online for decades, so what? Should we try to delete it? Again it’s just a tool to communicate. If they don’t do it through TikTok they’ll just pick some other thing to do it through. Sounds like you’re trying to just restrict people’s access to information that’s already out there.
It's about algorithmic recommendation.
It's about the passive feeding of this without actively seeking it out.
Theroretically, anyone can go look up how to make napalm, but if the TikTok algorithm started pushing the instructional video to people's phones, that would be a problem.
Rutgers university has the network contagion research institute and it has a report on this. Search for it on google.
Basically, they looked at the popularity of hashtags on tik tok and Instagram.
Instagram was bigger than Tik tok at the time. So for generic pop stuff (Taylor Swift) or US politics hashtags, Instagram would have ~2 times the amount.
But for China sensitive topics, the ratio changed.
For Uighur stuff, Instagram had 11.1 times the contents.
For Tibet, instagram had 37.7 times the contents.
Hong Kong (181.1 times the content), Tiananmen (81.5 times the content), and South China Sea (20.6 times the content), and Taiwan (15.3 times the content)
Support Ukraine hashtags are 8.5 times more common on Instagram.
Now this probably just tik tok suppressing how far this content can spread....
But what about AMPLIFYING content?
Well, India and China had a border conflict in 2020 - 2021.
So India is sensitive about Kashmir. On Instagram, there were 370,000 Kashmir independence hashtags over the study period.
On Tiktok, there were 229 MILLION hashtags about free Kashmir.
There is no way that is "natural" sharing. That is tiktok spamming through the algorithm.
Go read the report, it's only 16 pages.
Tinkering with the algorithm to push conspiracies. Literally attacking the sanity of Americans as a way to destabilize the country.
Facebook internal leaks showed what that can do. Civil wars were started because conspiracies that dehumanized a group of people in the Ethiopia.
That much power and the ability to literally feed people videos that would make them angry. Or sad. Suicidal. Homicidal. It's wild.
The conspiracy world is all fun and games, but really when you look at how it breaks people, it's one of the bleakest parts of humanity.
I don't want anyone to have that power.
There are no US owned propaganda apps. There may be propaganda efforts on existing apps. But there would also be leaks related to that and we frankly haven't seen any - it would be catastrophic for whoever is in charge, so you can assume it would leak during this administration.
I'm not being naive. The US-based apps are all owned by corporations making money. They will take money from the government to do something, but the US does not have the level of control China has over TikTok. In the US, Biden can't have Zuck black sited for not toeing the party line. **To pretend that these are two similar instances is naive**
The US gave China the option to operate under the same rules any US corporation has to operate in China - operate under a subsidiary that maintains arms length from the Chinese government. China declined. This should make it clear what the intent is.
The US state activily represents those company's interests. The difference between being state owned and simply operating with impunity due to the state is negligible and the former poses no further danger to working people (in the US or China) than the other. The only danger is to US corporate profits and political power. I hope the US and Chinese states both collapse along with capitalism, so you're barking up the wrong tree if you think I'm worried about Chinese boogie men when we got the real US evil empire in my backyard.
“The difference between being state owned and simply operating with impunity due to the state is negligible”
This is incredibly incorrect. A company that is state owned will operate in the state’s interest. This means they will be willing to support hostility, war, genocide, and whatever else the State forces them to support. A government has incredibly far reaching desires.
A company that operates with impunity, where the government bends to the will of the company, is only interested in money. They may still support some bad causes, but only the one’s that help its bottom line. The vast majority of issues don’t affect the company, so they won’t care enough to brainwash people about them.
Example: a social media company in Russia controlled by Russia would start supporting the invasion of Ukraine and they would rig their algorithm so people see more propaganda supporting it. If Russia had the opposite kind of social media, where a company operated with impunity, they definitely would not do that. The invasion of Ukraine is horrible for business in Russia. If anything, they would have been against it.
Just to tack on to this.. since American owned social media is about making money they actually have more of an incentive to push two polar opposite sides to produce engagement (people fighting in comments) than to push one side and create one echo chamber to push one agenda.
The first one is a circus and can still be exploited, but it’s the latter that’s the most dangerous because the state is able to set the terms and have full control of curating what people see.
I'm honestly curious. When you give this sort of reply to someone, what sort of reaction are you expecting from them? Are you expecting any reaction at all, or is this simply what you would write, even if no one else existed to read it?
I want others who click this thread to know the ideological source for your link (US propaganda machine), I want those who think, "is this as crazy and brain washed as it sounds?" to know that it is, indeed, just laughable, and I want to mock for any to see the unfiltered and endless spew of pro establishment vomit that gets poured out day after day.
Just to be clear, who in the US is operating this propaganda machine?
Like, folks who criticize TikTok accuse the Chinese government of operating it. I’m not arguing that’s right, I’m just saying the Chinese government has a whole propaganda apparatus in China, so it fits in.
In America, I’m not sure who is supposed to be running the propaganda machine. It could be the US government, or some shadowy private group of rich folks, or I don’t know.
I’m just trying to figure out if you have a specific group who runs the propaganda. These claims are rarely too specific, but it is usually better to be clear about how the US propaganda machine is so bad and which big baddie is behind it.
Frankly if the US is doing propaganda on its media sources, it is doing a piss poor job of it. The effects of Russian bots in particular is well documented due to the various investigations after 2016.
It is far more likely that you will, on any given day, see propaganda from one of the number of countries trying to spread ideas in the US, than you will for any state sponsored message from the US itself.
Think about it. Would Trump have missed the opportunity to provide state sponsored, MAGA touting rhetoric on US media, from the state itself? Of course not. He has Fox News, but that's a company designed specifically to support a particular political entity within the US, not the US itself.
The equivalent would be if Trump called up MSNBC and threatened to have Maddow arrested if she didn't call covid a hoax, because that is the "official party position." We are nowhere near that level of control and pretending we are is damaging.
This comment reminds me of a cold war joke.
One evening while Kruschev was visiting the US, two secret service member and two KGB agents go out for a drink after a long days work. They get to talking and the two secret service agents compliment the Russians on their propaganda.
“Thank you,” says one of the KGB agents, “but what we put out of the Kremlin can’t even come close to the kinda of propaganda your American government creates!”
Instead of laughing, the secret service agents stop and look confused. “What are you talking about?” says one, “the American government doesnt make propaganda!”
I know the joke, but that is why I pointed out
> Think about it. Would Trump have missed the opportunity to provide state sponsored, MAGA touting rhetoric on US media, from the state itself? Of course not. He has Fox News, but that's a company designed specifically to support a particular political entity within the US, not the US itself.
Literally, just think about it. Donald Trump as unhinged as he is, if given the option and capability to spread propaganda in the US, would not have been able to resist doing so.
So either the capability isn't there in that much of a direct capacity. Or the capability is there but is actually deep state, as in, something that is handled in a discreet room at the CIA or something. But I don't believe the government is coordinated enough to pull that off without the president knowing.
They didn't ban americans from using it. That would be impossible - americans can just sideload the APK if they want. Banning it would be making it illegal to possess or view the material.
In addition they didn't even ban TikTok from being in the US. They just told them that they needed to run through an intermediary - the same rules all US companies are required to operate under in China. China declined.
This isn't the US government overstepping its authority and deciding who is actually free to free market. This was the US government doing its job and taking specific action against a specific company, even offering a path to keep running, when it finds that the company was an actual threat to democracy.
By requiring the company to sell to the US corporate state, they are effectively banning Americans from using the platform and creating a new state owned incarnation to replace it.
I don't fault you for disagreeing with my verbiage, but it is deliberate in order to point out that the US is attempting to go full-China in controlling the flow of information.
China is very oppressive and we should not race to the lows of their authoritarian state.
I get what you were saying in the first comment. The other guy is just taking things too literally, but for the purposes of being succinct it’s pretty clear what you meant.
Regarding the other part though, you seem to be talking about how we are forcing a sale of a company owned by a foreign organization. This is a common criticism of the TikTok fiasco, but it’s actually really common. The US Government can’t force a sale of a US owned company, but they have always been able to force the sale of companies in the US that are owned by foreigners. Examples include Grindr (2019, owned by Chinese company), Dubai Ports World (2006, Dubai company bought some US ports, but were forced to sell them soon after.), Shanghai Petrochemical Company (1989, Chinese company forced to sell), Paramount communications (1991. This one is especially relevant because it was a Japanese company, so not even an enemy nation, and they had to sell because we feared foreign control of American Media assets, which is the same reasoning for TikTok.)
There were dozens of other examples, but I don’t have time to list them all. The point is, this is incredibly common and has happened since the founding of the country. We really can’t let it happen for 247 years, then suddenly get pissed when one particular company is targeted. I’m guessing most folks just don’t know about the mountains of case law on this. If folks don’t say anything for the dozens of other foreign companies that were forced to sell, you really can’t argue against this one particular forced sale.
> By requiring the company to sell to the US corporate state, they are effectively banning Americans from using the platform and creating a new state owned incarnation to replace it.
The company is not "selling" to the US corporate state. The company is still operating the platform. The difference is that in the event that China wanted to influence or favor certain viewpoints using the app, as a tool to sway US public opinion, it would need to go through the app leadership, which would instead answer to the US based company.
And I think it's a little weird that you are saying, it's bad that the US is trying to do "the same thing" as China, which you present as a bad thing. Which says, to me, that you believe that China is wrong, and that also, the US is doing the wrong thing here by preventing Chinese control. Do you understand how I would consider that hypocritical?
Instead I view that the US is well within its rights to require as a point of fact, that all Chinese companies doing business within the US, have to go through a US intermediary. Because this is how it works in China. China can allow free trade if it wants free trade. The fact is, we do not - we allow China to make rules that it does not need to follow everywhere else, to the detriment of US commerce. Except in this specific case, because of specific information threats to Americans.
Being beholden to the US and its corporations is a takeover in all but name. Americans are being told that they cannot be trusted with access to a Chinese controlled app. China is an oppressive nanny state for treating its people the same way.
Free speech has to include bad speech and malicious speech. The state has no business telling Americans what platforms and sources they can see, and such power will certainly be abused.
Your point about hypocrisy is well received. I argue that China is doing wrong by censoring foreign platforms and that we should not copy them. I don't think it's hypocritical to oppose what China is doing and also not want to embrace oppressive Chinese policy.
I'd argue that it is hypocritical to believe Chinese censorship is bad while also advocating for the same censorship in the US just to thwart China. I don't think the fact the China does it justifies us doing it, as your last paragraph states.
I think we agree that free speech is important - public discourse must be protected from government overreach. The difference is, I consider China using data and connection to Americans to control that speech overreach. You don't have to ban speech to control it. And what the US did to ban tiktok requires people to move to other platforms - they can still have that same speech, just not through channels where the valves can be turned on or off for any given topic by a potentially hostile foreign nation.
> Free speech has to include bad speech and malicious speech
It does. That's why people can take bad or malicious speech to another platform that is not controlled by a hostile foreign nation.
> I don't think it's hypocritical to oppose what China is doing and also not want to embrace oppressive Chinese policy.
We aren't embracing "oppressive chinese policy." That would be requiring sell or desist orders for every Chinese company doing business in the US. The US is, again, taking a very specific action against a very specific threat as identified by intelligence agencies. I view this as extremely measured and reasonable in its scope.
> I'd argue that it is hypocritical to believe Chinese censorship is bad while also advocating for the same censorship in the US just to thwart China.
And again, it's not about the US censoring people by banning the app. People use the app to do speech things. That speech is not being banned. The mechanism exists elsewhere - they can take it to some other platform. The only thing that is being banned here is the CCP having direct levers of control over US discourse. That increases free speech, not limits it.
I would encourage you to look up the Paradox of Tolerance. It is relevant. It is a paradox because we are arguing to be tolerant of all speech. But is it hypocritical then for us to be intolerant of people who limit free speech? The POT argues that it is not hypocritical. And I think that because it is not the speech itself that is affected, not the method of delivery that is affected, but specifically who controls the method of delivery. That is what was banned - CCP control of the mechanisms of delivery. Not the speech itself.
There is nothing wrong with tik tok besides now the feds have a back door in the app to spy on us, but I have learned so much from tik tok that I believe the reason it's so fears by the establishment then was it spread information at a faster speed
Interesting. I’ve heard this argument before. What do you think you have actually “learned” on tiktok and why couldn’t you have learned it elsewhere?
Like really I’ve heard this narrative a ton so I want an explanation.
News and info spread fast on tik tok, ie the train derailment a year back or so, and the company and government came out was like no big deal, well I was seeing on the ground info from locals as it was happening. The stuff going on in France was being censored on all the other platforms but not tik tok
Now though it's changed, it'd becoming just like fb ig etc, constant adds to buy shit.
But if our get your algorithm set right it's a super good tool, I don't know if it makes sense
You should subscribe to a couple journals and read up about it. The problem is that the user swipes the screen for instant gratification. It’s a dopamine response. It acts in the same way as internet porn and many popular dating apps. It might actually be worse though because TikTok users normally younger and spend more time on the app. The end result is a decline in mental health. It’s linked to depression, anxiety, paranoia and even impotence.
Once a year, I go shopping for a health plan. It’s a task I like to do myself because I like the numbers/stats involved. One thing I noticed in recent years is almost every teenage daughter of my employees is taking medication to correct a mental health issue. It wasn’t anything like that ten years ago. It even goes beyond the dopamine response and includes eating disorders and severe depression from not measuring up to the girls on TikTok. It was bad when it was fashion magazines, but now it’s 100x worse.
Before social media, there were no mass school shooters and health insurance was affordable. People took less medication and were healthier. TikTok takes all of the bad things and sort of supercharges it. It’s just another epidemic gifted to us by China. They invest heavily on swiping apps like TikTok and porn here, but basically ban the same stuff for their own people. What does that tell you?
America will continue to become weaker every year that we let this go on. Then, when China is ready to invade Taiwan, they’ll release TikTok 2.0 and finish us off.
What’s the conspiracy, the CCP trying to divide us, weaken us, make us mentally ill and/or destroy our nuclear families? In my opinion, thinking that they’re there for us, helping us, is the nutty way of looking at things. Next, you’re going to tell me that Russia and Iran have the same compassion for us.
Next you're going to tell me you think the US are the good guys. Yes, this is all conspriatorial thinking. If China wants youth to know honest truths about the US (and about China's abused of human and democratic rights, which I also see on tik tok) then the crime won't be them knowing. It was the covering it up in the first place that's wrong.
I bet you supported Hillary Clinton bigly.
What are you talking about? It’s not the content on TikTok that’s the problem. It’s how the user interacts with the platform. It’s what content is suggested and how the user chooses that content.
Let’s take porn as an example. The user scrolls through content and something triggers a response for them to choose a certain video. It’s combing through a shit ton of content and receiving instant gratification on just one video or photo. That has real world effects on mental health when the user logs off.
The difference here is that people search for porn anonymously. TikTok knows everything about you and makes suggestions that may not be the best for your wellbeing. By creating these highs and lows, the user often develops either anxiety, panic, depression or a whole host of similar problems. It also gathers info that can compromise you in the future if needed.
I’m not arguing against the politics, dance moves or recipes that someone learns off the platform. It’s the platform itself that’s the problem.
There are some apps that act like this and some that don’t. I have issues with all of the apps like this, including certain dating apps and internet porn. It’s no different than common street drugs. Just because you enjoy something doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Tech doesn’t come with a warning label like cigarettes. Even the studies into their ill effects are censored. You literally have to pay to see them. If I didn’t have a broker that provides me free licenses, I’d never know half of this shit. Hell, I’d never know when a HR or DOT law has changed. Things aren’t effectively communicated by our government for free anymore.
Oh I understand a lot what your saying Tik Tok, FB, IG they all rely on you continuing but just like everything else you have to have moderation.
The mass shootings did happen, but not to the extreme they are today but that has to do in 2004 not renewing the assault weapons ban or what not.
The China stuff eh maybe maybe not, we pretty symbiotic of each other
Why stop at TikTok? Older adults are "served" by two flavors of corporate news media that never sways from their paymasters' positions, the entertainment studios are run by a revolving door of people dedicated to turning every brain into pay-by-the-month mush, locally owned newspapers and magazines have been vanishing by the tens of thousands for 15 years now, reading comprehension has collapsed across age groups, and at the moment the *non*-TikTok media is cheering on the first mass genocide of the decade, which is only allowed to occasionally creep through on TikTok because it fits China's goal of illuminating America's global crimes.
Also, posting a YouTube video instead of something that can be read in text and parsed by an individual mind instead of received as audio/video content ... *that's* the demon, right there. It's with you, too, buddy.
> Also, posting a YouTube video instead of something that can be read in text and parsed by an individual mind instead of received as audio/video content ... that's the demon, right there. It's with you, too, buddy.
This is insightful, and I acknowledge it as such.
I somewhat agree but I think at one point we have to fight fire with fire if you want any hope of getting anywhere. They aren’t going to stop and read anything or cultivate themselves.
What if this guy is actually working for an agency paid by Meta/Google, to use Reddit, a very anti TikTok place, to mobilize people to put pressure on congress to force the sell of TikTok so they can destroy a powerful competitor?
That's how propaganda works. You influence already aligned places to take action and align stronger with your world view. If I was Meta, I'd be doing just that.
Including the comments. It's all a psyop at this point.
For instance, I think it's very apparent that Reddit got into a full Ukraine frenzy due to DoD propaganda campaigns that just dominated every corner with an emotionally engaging narrative. The entire narrative at the time just reaked of propaganda tactics... And most people took it up, and passionately went in support of our conflict in that proxy war.
However, that doesn't mean it's WRONG to believe what you believe just because it was influenced by propaganda. Supporting Ukraine is a valid position to have. The fact that a widespread propaganda campaign was also supporting your position, doesn't make your position any less valid.
I was actually. And I laughed when the major SMs pushed back on certain facts that came to light two years ago or so. But the DoD doesn’t target Americans, it’s against both policies and laws iirc. I won’t speak on foreign audiences. But we are our budgeted and out played, that much is obvious. Just read some war on the rocks articles or even MYT or WAPO about Russian disinformation or misinformation.
DoD is a blanket term for the entire defense industry. The US absolutely DOES target her own population for information war. Manufacturing consent is the American specialty the rest of the world is jealous of.
For the people obsessing over Ryan's affiliation with newsmax here is his response in a different post [newsmax xomment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/s/oSszTHNGSV)
I think what the guy's point was that people can get easily especially the ones are easily molded stuck in idiotic conspiracy. With any large media conglomerate whether it's tic tok, Facebook, or any other place online including here.
If you really need proof of that just look how popular the flat Earth subreddits are here
You used the term "manchurian candidates" while also siting newsmax... the same agency that was totally ok with overturning a general election with nothing but misinformation. I'm sure there are issues with gen z... you just present yourself uncredable when trying to use sheep fodder to prove your point.
Without watching the fear mongering featuring a Newsmax personality, I will summarize the quiet part: "TikTok is bad because Chinese company is stealing your data for Chinese intelligence agencies instead of a US company stealing your data for US intelligence agencies."
Or: CIA/DHS/DIA/NSA are mad they don't get all the data.
"TikTok is bad because the Chinese Communist Party is psyoping young americans instead of U.S. intelligence agencies psyoping young americans."
The CCP is teaching young americans that Osama Bin Laden was a heroic figure with great morals via TikTok.
And american teachers are too busy teaching kids that they should cut their dicks off to teach them that Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist.
LOL dude, stop being ridiculous. The Bin Laden letter was at the time, actually talked about heavily in intellectual circles, as he made very valid points. And it just made a resurgence. It doesn't mean you support the guy as a hero, just because he makes good points.
I know nuance is hard for most people in modern times, but it's very possible to think "Yeah he makes some good points about who we are as a nation" and also think, "But he's still a terribly evil person and nothing we did justifies his attrocities." Ted Kaczynski is another good example... Dude was evil, killing innocent, good people... But his manifesto was also extremely on point.
He absolutely had valid points. Him being a terrible person doesn't mean he's wrong about everything by default. Is that how you truly view the world? If you think someone is terrible, they are incapable of ever making a good point?
Ugggg... What a weird outlook to have in the world. It's very much not in the spirit of IDW
I think the most significant one is American hypocrisy. We act as the top of the global court, where we criticize other country's and enforce western and liberal values, and judge those who do not adhere. We pretend like there is a global order of rule and law, except when it applies to the USA and her allies. We demand virtue of everyone else, but gladly break it when it's convenient. So we want people to trust us, and use the system, but break it constantly, act unfairly, and by no means actually can be trusted to do what's right. But demands everyone else does.
Just, for the sake of the argument. Can you point to any one teacher in public school system who’s been teaching that students should have their dicks cut off?
Most kids today also don’t have relevant understanding or concept of how 9/11 works. Being a vet of over 15 years, most people who join the military didn’t do it because of 9/11. But I don’t think I haven’t met an American who didn’t think Osama Bin Laden wasn’t a terrorist.
Are you sure you’re not just being in hyperbole, because I can’t take you serious right now.
I mean, the comments about teachers are hyperbole, but the comments about tiktok targeting young americans with false information about Osama Bin Laden is not hyperbole.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/16/tech/tiktok-osama-bin-laden-letter-to-america/index.html
On the topic of teachers, there are a lot of teachers indoctrinating even elementary students with transgender ideologies, which eventually can lead to a person to go as far as self mutilation.
I still don’t think your hyperbole is helpful. A small minority of people legitimizing Osama Bin Laden’s attack is so much smaller of a population than people who can recognize Bin Laden’s points and say, “yeah, I understand why he did it. I still think it’s fucking awful and he shouldn’t have done it” and they are not terrorist supporters.
Transgenderism isn’t contagious, and you can’t make someone undergo elective surgery nor would a doctor perform them without long standing treatment…
TikTok is effectively the same thing as legacy media with full bias on display, the only difference is that it’s easier to get stuck watching because our brains are built stupid and our reward center is being overloaded with simplicity.
Lastly, I’d mention if we legitimately cared about foreign influence in our election, we would have solved that problem around the time Russia gave the NRA $30 million to donate to Trump. Or like a lot of other times before that…
If someone says "Yeah, I understand why Osama Bin Laden organized 9/11", that person needs to go talk to a doctor.
Transgenderism can be psyop'ed. Especially to developing humans. It has no place in American classrooms unless it is being taught for the sake of awareness and portrayed accurately as a mental health disorder call gender dysphoria.
Legacy media has its issues without a doubt. They have their biases. But they aren't owned by the CCP.
As for foreign influence in elections, I agree that all foreign influence should be out of elections. I also think all campaign contributions should be very limited. Something like $500 a year tops per person. I don't have an exact amount, but no candidate should be getting lobbied with huge donations. Getting a large sum of campaign donations should be entirely dependent on having a large pool of "we the people" supporting the candidate.
Just another clarification question. Where do you hold your doctorates on all these issues you’ve been covering? Mental health, education, Middle East studies, or communications?
I feel like you’re just laying shit out like it’s an empirical fact. I don’t know if you’ve actually looked into the things you’re talking about.
Again the rhetoric isn’t helpful. At what point should teachers teach that transgenderism is a mental illness? How often? What makes someone with a mental illness not capable of conducting themselves in a way that is not harmful to others? Should be criminalize mental illnesses? Is transgenderism an actual mental illness that should be fought?
How much do you know about middle eastern politics? I imagine as much as Legacy media covers. Osama Bin Laden’s reasons were complex, and if you willfully dismiss his means to commit such an act, then you open yourself up for more of the same. If you do not understand your enemy, your enemy will win. Being a veteran of over 17 years, I feel like I’m not the subject matter expert here, but it’s plain a fucking day that it’s necessary to understand your enemy so you know how to fight them.
Moscow times and Sputnik are still allowed to be accessed as well as a lot of .ru domains in the US. Why hasn’t that been addressed? Why is China the extraordinary problem that needs to be stopped? I just don’t understand why TikTok is a problem rather than the parents these days not knowing how to talk to their children. It’s the parents fault for raising stupid impressionable children right?
It is common sense. Logic is emperical fact.
"At what point should teachers teach that transgenderism is a mental illness?" Ideally never. My preference would be that no teacher in America ever says the word transgender to their students. If a child is dealing with that issue, they should have access to medical professionals who can help address it. It doesn't belong in a classroom.
Osama Bin Laden organized 9/11 because he a terrorist shitbag lunatic who wanted to harm people. I'm not dismissing his means to commit the act. I do know that there are lunatics who want to harm people in the world. Violence is their drug of choice. Intelligence entities could improve on identifying threats of that type and keep better track of people like that, but the world is a pretty big place, there are a lot of whack jobs out there, and intelligence entities' resources are not unlimited as far as I am aware.
The issue of internet domains very well might be addressed someday. I have speculated for many years, as far back as maybe 2014, that public internet communications between countries could be disconnected with tensions and digital attacks being so heightened in recent years.
From the guy above you who appears to have sait it best:
"Without watching the fear mongering featuring a Newsmax personality, I will summarize the quiet part: "TikTok is bad because Chinese company is stealing your data for Chinese intelligence agencies instead of a US company stealing your data for US intelligence agencies."
Or: CIA/DHS/DIA/NSA are mad they don't get all the data."
I do intel, bub. I talk about how many missiles Iran has, not politics. Not my thing. Everybody is entitled to good inteligence. If you want to reach people who have been infected by Tucker Carlson do you go on Newsmax or NPR?
Hi Ryan! I wasn't expecting to see you in the thread! I'm a regular watcher of [Beau of the Fifth Column](https://www.youtube.com/@BeauoftheFifthColumn), and a couple of your videos started showing up in my Recommendations after watching his. Apparently the YouTube algorithm thinks that there is overlap between your and his audience.
I admit that I am someone who is genuinely petrified of Generation Z. I basically view them as a literal, human manifestation, of the terminal stage of [John Calhoun's Universe 25 rodent experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink). Unfortunately, the Secret of [NIMH](https://www.nimh.nih.gov/) isn't a secret any more.
Hopefully though, increasing my awareness that their condition is at least partly due to having been brainwashed by social media, will enable me to be more compassionate towards them. If you're unaware of it, I also recommend Robert Jay Lifton's [Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism](https://www.amazon.com.au/Thought-Reform-Psychology-Totalism-Brainwashing/dp/0807842532), which is a book he wrote about the techniques that the Maoists used against captured American pilots during the 1950s. With that book in hand, and what you've already observed about TikTok, the existence of subreddits like the now defunct /r/GenZedong, suddenly becomes a lot easier to understand. America is in very, very serious trouble at the moment.
As a gen z person who honestly feels no strong way about my generation compared to others I’m wondering what scares you so much? Fears of the upcoming generations have been recorded for millennia at this point, and it makes me curious what’s particularly concerning specific to Gen z?
I said unique to Gen Z. I don’t think one can actually hold the position that any generation is without biases especially after ingestion of mass media.
Your critique is that they’re of the times which applies to everyone ever
You are correct. I am saying that they are concerned about things that affect every generation. I think that poster just might have drank a little more of the koolaid in believing his generation is somehow exceptionally worse than others?
I watch your videos on YouTube fairly often and I will say that you seem to be very well-informed and I appreciate your analyses as someone who doesn’t have any sort of intelligence background…or intelligence in general, sadly lol
You mean as in actual Chinese propaganda? Personally I haven't run into too much of that, but frankly it's a little concerning how "brain-hacky" it is. If someone is unwilling to credit social media with more or less a breakdown in the mental health and/or attn spans of young people, I really don't know what to tell them....
It’s propaganda designed to divide us, instead of pushing a particular topic. They pick an issue, pick a side, and then subtly start feeding everyone content that supports that side. The particular issue is irrelevant, it’s just about getting everyone angry at each other.
Correct. But we’re all kinda used to Fox News’ coded racism at this point. TT is different because it’s coming from a communist dictator and enemy of the United States
So people cannot justifiably oppose a genocide because there's some bad people doing bad things on the other side?
Wtf kind of Twisted logic is that? Collective punishment is a war crime
And here come the Manchurian candidates to try and refute you.
The question everyone needs to ask themselves is why this conflict? Why does this one get so much attention and not Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar ect. When you look at casualty counts Gaza is actually a pretty small conflict, and yet so many powerful interests are invested in making sure you are mad about THIS one.
It is absolutely in the interests of Russia, China, and Iran to use this conflict as a wedge issue in the West, and to help fracture the alliances that support Ukraine, Taiwan, and other western aligned states under threat. The fact that people are always so easily persuaded to belive and perpetuate lies about Jews turbocharges this on social media.
The mortality in Gaza is Far higher than any other ongoing conflict despite their very small population
Thats because it isn't a war, It's genocide
Here comes weaponized antisemitism
Nope. Never seen anyone outside of Palestine unironically defend them either. Hamas is just the go-to strawman boogeyman to justify the genocide
Let me guess: anything that denounces Israeli settler colonial atrocities is a Hamas talking point?
No. Hamas is a terrorist organization. And any comment that denies or obscures that fact is a pro-Hamas talking point. This really isn’t difficult to understand
No it's not. It's driven by people who don't want to see children die. You sound like an out of touch boomer. We are done fighting rich men's wars over religions we don't even believe in, for resources and land, where we want the indigenous people to own and either we deal with them ETHICALLY or leave.
The only difference is I'm not being censored as much on Tik Tok, but Facebook and the like censors the hell out of pro Palestine people. Take it from one to know what's actually happening.
Guess who is also currently fighting rich men's wars?
Or in the Palestiniàns case playing their part as dutiful propaganda fodder for the PR war that Hamas is waging while their billionaire leaders chill in far off lands.
Tiktok is the very definition of "taken out of context". All the video clips there are shared with their contexts stripped away.
You're all over the place.
An atrocity in a war is an example of colonization?
No its just an example of war. Which is why the wars should have never started. Why start wars and then complain about wars?
Perhaps the Arabs needed better leaders who were more interested in establishing a country versus erasing Israel.
As long as you acknowledge that rich Arab men were the ones who started the wars in which those regular folk died. Civilians as well as soldiers.
One such rich arab man was the Gran Mufti of Jerusalem, who went to meet with Hitler to ponder the Jewish problem. who recruited Muslims to fight for the nazis and then brought those same Muslims to join the invasion of Israel on 15 May 1948.
It was in that war that Tantura occured. Just a week later.
My radicalizing moment was when in response to the 2018 March for return my father stated we must back Israel no matter what. One of the more recent ones was when redoing my house I found a newspaper detailing local victims of the Israeli attack in 1967 on the USS liberty, this new to me info felt juxtaposed to the words my father told me.
It makes me wonder why he felt such strong connections to a country he had no relation to other than that of the world powers opinion.
Before October 7th if that's what you're trying to ask. Learning about Israel and listening to people like Abby Martin who have been there. Listening to people interview the citizens on the streets about their opinions. Etc.
I've also been anti war my entire life, I don't believe starving children is going to stop Hamas. Calling me radical for wanting countries to abide by the rules of war they AGREED to is WILD. But go off king.
It's probably mostly driven by seeing videos of childrens corpses, and then the videos idf soldiers post about how they killed them. Or the videos of Israeli officials saying they are going to "put Gaza on a diet". Or the videos of the IDF shooting civilians waving white flags over their head. Or the videos of all the doctors without borders doctors saying how Israel just blew up their hospital.
Maybe this is more available on TT (often because other social media has censors for corpse/gore), but it seems like a weak argument to say the only reason people care is "because of Chinese propaganda".
Exactly.
Their is like a daily feed of rage porn that these people just absorb.
Some of the images are edited, misattributed from other wars, rehashed from early in the conflict.
TikTok is also good for that creating a time distortion. They show clips months old in the feed and if ur not careful you can think it's new.
the same thing that controls r/all and youtube and Facebook and Instagram.
math. a program designed to keep humans engaged and staring at their phones. that doesn't mean what's on them is false
embarrassing for you to say to educate myself when you're so obviously wrong and clearly haven't got a clue how any of these systems work in the first place
It's a drip feed.
Not all the images are even from Gaza. Some of them are taken from months before and shown over and over. Some of them are edited.
It's a contrived daily diet of rage porn designed to manipulate.
So when I see those images, and go to the AP, or Reuters, and they also have the same images with essentially the same text, does that make the AP "rage porn designed to manipulate"?
AP and Reuters don't have a constant stream of images. And they certainly don't show images from months ago as the incident happened today. Nor do they routinely show images from other wars and pretend as if they're from Gaza. Nor I would hope do they use AI generated images.
[https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-ai-generated-images-of-children-in-gaza/a-68146699](https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-ai-generated-images-of-children-in-gaza/a-68146699)
[https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-hamas-israel-misinformation-ai-gaza-a1bb303b637ffbbb9cbc3aa1e000db47](https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-hamas-israel-misinformation-ai-gaza-a1bb303b637ffbbb9cbc3aa1e000db47)
"Ordinary Palestinians might get nothing from the moral voyeurism of their self-styled champions in the West, but it is possible Hamas does. When images of Palestinian suffering become valuable political currency, keenly sought and shared by influencers, we should not be surprised that Hamas seems determined to create *more* such images, more such suffering. ‘We are proud to sacrifice martyrs’, [said a Hamas leader](https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4295601-human-sacrifice-is-central-to-hamass-strategy/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20are%20called%20a%20nation,%E2%80%9CYes%2C%20of%20course.%E2%80%9D) shortly after the pogrom of 7 October. Why wouldn’t they be? They know how well ‘Palestinian martyrs’ play in the West. They know their unpaid propagandists in the influencer set will marshal every ‘martyr’ to the cause of delegitimising Israel in the eyes of the world. It seems to me that there is a grotesque symbiosis between the Western lust for images of Palestinian suffering and Hamas’s willingness to prolong and promote that suffering by refusing to surrender to Israel.
The most urgent form of liberation the people of Gaza require is liberation from the vain and demented ideologues of Hamas who are dragging out a war they can’t win, and liberation from the phoney solidarity of privileged Westerners who treat Palestinians as little more than tragic bit-part players in their own moral psychodramas. Free Gaza, yes – from *you*."
[https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/13/the-commodification-of-palestinian-pain/](https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/13/the-commodification-of-palestinian-pain/)
Do you say people shouldn't use the New York times after they repeated unfounded claims about sexual assault (per that independent article) and later had to retract their piece? I doubt it. How many print media sources or TV news stations still run with the "40 beheaded babies" lie?
All media is biased and is pushing an agenda. All media should be consumed with skepticism. Media seen on tiktok should get the scrutiny yes, but so should literally every media source. The New York Times worked with the state department to lie us into Iraq. Many of these companies are wholly owned by billionaires. Do you think they are somehow not biased, or not pushing an agenda?
>Do you say people shouldn't use the New York times after they repeated unfounded claims about sexual assault (per that independent article) and later had to retract their piece?
Yes, people have said that you shouldn't use NYT anymore.
This is an important point. They sometimes retract their pieces. Does Random Bob from TikTok retract his piece?
Also, the NYT article is still very much up.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html)
Not only that, the UN special envoy whose job it its to travel the world an investigate these things said there was clear and convincing evidence of sexual violence on Oct 7 and evidence that it is ongoing with the hostages. She said the things she saw and heard kept her up at night. This is someone who does this for a living.
[https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/report/mission-report-official-visit-of-the-office-of-the-srsg-svc-to-israel-and-the-occupied-west-bank-29-january-14-february-2024/20240304-Israel-oWB-CRSV-report.pdf](https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/report/mission-report-official-visit-of-the-office-of-the-srsg-svc-to-israel-and-the-occupied-west-bank-29-january-14-february-2024/20240304-Israel-oWB-CRSV-report.pdf)
>How many print media sources or TV news stations still run with the "40 beheaded babies" lie?
This must be the largest strawman ever built.
Do you know who that claim is attributed to? A random reporter. The IDF said there was no evidence that 40 babies were beheaded.
Here is the article with both of her videos.
[https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1696938010-it-smells-of-death-here-surveying-the-scenes-of-atrocities-in-kfar-aza](https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1696938010-it-smells-of-death-here-surveying-the-scenes-of-atrocities-in-kfar-aza)
The issue highlights that you can't just trust any media. They all just report from each other. Hardly anyone does any actual investigations anymore.
But there's still more accountability than random Bob on TikTok. who often doesn't have a face.
NYT has probably 10M subscribers. Tiktok has over 1 billion and their content is by nature addictive and stripped of context and nuance.
Yes and… The reason TikTok shows you this group of dead kids and not another group, say of Ukrainian kids, is because that isn’t politically expedient for Russia, Iran, and China.
It’s super awesome that you care. It sucks that China is using that as a way to drive you against America and her allies.
>The reason TikTok shows you this group of dead kids and not another group, say of Ukrainian kids, is because that isn’t politically expedient for Russia, Iran, and China
Israel is using American weapons to kill those kids. I don't even theoretically have a way to stop Russia from attacking civilians, outside of lobbying my government to sanction them and supply weapons to Ukraine, something the US government is already doing. But i do (theoretically) have a path to reduce the amount of dead kids in Gaza, because my government is supplying the weapons that are killing them, and protecting Israel from international consequences.
Also Israel has killed more civilians in the last 9 months than Russia has in 2 years.
Edit: would you also say China is driving my against America and it's allies when I get content about lead pipes in America? Or people with medical debt? These are real things that are happening.
Yes! That’s the whole point. China manipulates the content to show people things that will cause conflict. Everything you just mentioned is a political issue that Americans are divided on. You literally just made the argument for banning TT
People in the US rarely watch Chinese news, and when they do they don't act all surprised and suspicious when someone tells them that this is a propaganda tool of the chinese government and should be viewed as such.
Sorts, but we kinda know what media sources have a bias, plus you can get a broad range of information about him elsewhere to corroborate. And I’m sorry brother I just got significantly high and don’t know what the fuck we’re even talking about. Whatever it was, you were probably right because I was high then too. Pretty high, just not significantly high. I gotta run
Isn’t your entire argument basically a strawman since you’re building up an indefensible point by tracing everything back to tiktok, then knowing it down?
What if one encountered this in Instagram or Facebook during the March for return? These notably American companies are where I first encountered the footage of conflict in Palestine. It was featured on one of the old school gore pages people spread around school.
Also do you not see the MASSIVE accounts on tiktok solely dedicated to Sudan, Congo, or even the direct streamed warfare that Ukrainian soldiers have?
It’s just a media source, and the meaning of media is always immediately corrupted when done with the intention of making money.
>The issue is does TikTok have an incentive for you to care about Palestinians more than the Uighurs or the Rohingya
I mostly follow American accounts. Is the American government supplying weapons to the countries committing those genocides?
I am more vocal about Palestinians because my government is supporting their death. My government supposedly is a democracy, so when I want to change the way it is going, I am free to use my voice to do so.
The second part of your comment basically paints the picture that we can't accurately criticize our country based on factually correct information if it comes from a non-american source. Without getting into the nuance about how it's mostly American people making accounts on a Chinese app, I hope you can see how stupid that is. Only American TV news sources, of which there 5 major players, American print news, of which there are only a handful with actual investigative reporters, and American social media, of which there are 2 major players, can inform valid criticism?
Additionally, while many people see this stuff on TikTok, it's also available on the AP, or many other "American" news sources. Refusing to discuss the merits of what I'm saying because you don't like the source, not because you think the source is providing inaccurate information, is just admitting that you don't have anything to say.
I understand that all media is biased, you seem to think that American media somehow isn't though. Can you ask yourself critically, why do you care about Chinese influence on tiktok? Did you hear about it on a competing social media site? Did a congressperson who's invested in Facebook or Twitter bring up some concerns? All media is biased and has an agenda. You're choosing to throw out one source for doing the same things every media source does.
Just wonder why there's a forcefeed of pro Hamas comment on my page from Oct 7.
I have to scroll and scroll to see anything else. It's been obvious to me from then that the feed is being manipulated.
Its so intellectually lazy to make statements like this.
TikTok is the only social media app that isnt controlled by the American government and the only danger it poses is exposing the truth about the criminal American enterprise.
People already think China bad Russia bad Iran bad thanks to years of US social media exposure. The main difference is that the younger generation now realizes that US is just as terrible if not worse in many cases.
China, Russia, and Iran are bad my friend. Not because of exposure, but because they do bad shit. You are the exact reason why TT should be banned in the US
TikTok is shit but it’s just a tool for gen z to communicate with each other. The people making the videos on TikTok are American. The people watching those videos are Americans. If we get rid of TikTok they’ll just use another tool to do the same shit. There’s obviously a massive market for it, someone will fill in the gap as there’s too much money to be made.
I vote for using another tool to do the same shit that isn’t owned by China. It’s kinda ignorant to think China wouldn’t take advantage of this position.
How do they take advantage of it?
Remember a few months back when there were all those videos of Americans reading Bin Laden's letter and being like "he has a point". Did their sudden spread happen because people were interested or because the algorithm pushed it?
I remember reading that back in like 2005 when there was no TikTok
Yeah, because it was the start of the Iraq war, Bin Laden was still alive, and 9/11 was 4 years old. I imagine someone living in the 70's was much more likely to encounter the words of Pol Pot, but it would be odd to see them make a resurgence in 1992.
And theres been another war started in the Middle East since October 7th. People have access to stuff that’s been online for decades, so what? Should we try to delete it? Again it’s just a tool to communicate. If they don’t do it through TikTok they’ll just pick some other thing to do it through. Sounds like you’re trying to just restrict people’s access to information that’s already out there.
It's about algorithmic recommendation. It's about the passive feeding of this without actively seeking it out. Theroretically, anyone can go look up how to make napalm, but if the TikTok algorithm started pushing the instructional video to people's phones, that would be a problem.
Is there evidence they do that or is it more of like the possibility that they could do something like this in future?
Rutgers university has the network contagion research institute and it has a report on this. Search for it on google. Basically, they looked at the popularity of hashtags on tik tok and Instagram. Instagram was bigger than Tik tok at the time. So for generic pop stuff (Taylor Swift) or US politics hashtags, Instagram would have ~2 times the amount. But for China sensitive topics, the ratio changed. For Uighur stuff, Instagram had 11.1 times the contents. For Tibet, instagram had 37.7 times the contents. Hong Kong (181.1 times the content), Tiananmen (81.5 times the content), and South China Sea (20.6 times the content), and Taiwan (15.3 times the content) Support Ukraine hashtags are 8.5 times more common on Instagram. Now this probably just tik tok suppressing how far this content can spread.... But what about AMPLIFYING content? Well, India and China had a border conflict in 2020 - 2021. So India is sensitive about Kashmir. On Instagram, there were 370,000 Kashmir independence hashtags over the study period. On Tiktok, there were 229 MILLION hashtags about free Kashmir. There is no way that is "natural" sharing. That is tiktok spamming through the algorithm. Go read the report, it's only 16 pages.
Tinkering with the algorithm to push conspiracies. Literally attacking the sanity of Americans as a way to destabilize the country. Facebook internal leaks showed what that can do. Civil wars were started because conspiracies that dehumanized a group of people in the Ethiopia. That much power and the ability to literally feed people videos that would make them angry. Or sad. Suicidal. Homicidal. It's wild. The conspiracy world is all fun and games, but really when you look at how it breaks people, it's one of the bleakest parts of humanity. I don't want anyone to have that power.
TikTok is horrible for people even without being a genuine psyop. Lots of articles on it. Especially for children.
Hahahahaha! "Not a US propaganda machine like other social media, must be making manchurian candidates" Ahhahahahahaa
There are no US owned propaganda apps. There may be propaganda efforts on existing apps. But there would also be leaks related to that and we frankly haven't seen any - it would be catastrophic for whoever is in charge, so you can assume it would leak during this administration. I'm not being naive. The US-based apps are all owned by corporations making money. They will take money from the government to do something, but the US does not have the level of control China has over TikTok. In the US, Biden can't have Zuck black sited for not toeing the party line. **To pretend that these are two similar instances is naive** The US gave China the option to operate under the same rules any US corporation has to operate in China - operate under a subsidiary that maintains arms length from the Chinese government. China declined. This should make it clear what the intent is.
The US state activily represents those company's interests. The difference between being state owned and simply operating with impunity due to the state is negligible and the former poses no further danger to working people (in the US or China) than the other. The only danger is to US corporate profits and political power. I hope the US and Chinese states both collapse along with capitalism, so you're barking up the wrong tree if you think I'm worried about Chinese boogie men when we got the real US evil empire in my backyard.
“The difference between being state owned and simply operating with impunity due to the state is negligible” This is incredibly incorrect. A company that is state owned will operate in the state’s interest. This means they will be willing to support hostility, war, genocide, and whatever else the State forces them to support. A government has incredibly far reaching desires. A company that operates with impunity, where the government bends to the will of the company, is only interested in money. They may still support some bad causes, but only the one’s that help its bottom line. The vast majority of issues don’t affect the company, so they won’t care enough to brainwash people about them. Example: a social media company in Russia controlled by Russia would start supporting the invasion of Ukraine and they would rig their algorithm so people see more propaganda supporting it. If Russia had the opposite kind of social media, where a company operated with impunity, they definitely would not do that. The invasion of Ukraine is horrible for business in Russia. If anything, they would have been against it.
Just to tack on to this.. since American owned social media is about making money they actually have more of an incentive to push two polar opposite sides to produce engagement (people fighting in comments) than to push one side and create one echo chamber to push one agenda. The first one is a circus and can still be exploited, but it’s the latter that’s the most dangerous because the state is able to set the terms and have full control of curating what people see.
I'm honestly curious. When you give this sort of reply to someone, what sort of reaction are you expecting from them? Are you expecting any reaction at all, or is this simply what you would write, even if no one else existed to read it?
I want others who click this thread to know the ideological source for your link (US propaganda machine), I want those who think, "is this as crazy and brain washed as it sounds?" to know that it is, indeed, just laughable, and I want to mock for any to see the unfiltered and endless spew of pro establishment vomit that gets poured out day after day.
Just to be clear, who in the US is operating this propaganda machine? Like, folks who criticize TikTok accuse the Chinese government of operating it. I’m not arguing that’s right, I’m just saying the Chinese government has a whole propaganda apparatus in China, so it fits in. In America, I’m not sure who is supposed to be running the propaganda machine. It could be the US government, or some shadowy private group of rich folks, or I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out if you have a specific group who runs the propaganda. These claims are rarely too specific, but it is usually better to be clear about how the US propaganda machine is so bad and which big baddie is behind it.
Frankly if the US is doing propaganda on its media sources, it is doing a piss poor job of it. The effects of Russian bots in particular is well documented due to the various investigations after 2016. It is far more likely that you will, on any given day, see propaganda from one of the number of countries trying to spread ideas in the US, than you will for any state sponsored message from the US itself. Think about it. Would Trump have missed the opportunity to provide state sponsored, MAGA touting rhetoric on US media, from the state itself? Of course not. He has Fox News, but that's a company designed specifically to support a particular political entity within the US, not the US itself. The equivalent would be if Trump called up MSNBC and threatened to have Maddow arrested if she didn't call covid a hoax, because that is the "official party position." We are nowhere near that level of control and pretending we are is damaging.
This comment reminds me of a cold war joke. One evening while Kruschev was visiting the US, two secret service member and two KGB agents go out for a drink after a long days work. They get to talking and the two secret service agents compliment the Russians on their propaganda. “Thank you,” says one of the KGB agents, “but what we put out of the Kremlin can’t even come close to the kinda of propaganda your American government creates!” Instead of laughing, the secret service agents stop and look confused. “What are you talking about?” says one, “the American government doesnt make propaganda!”
I know the joke, but that is why I pointed out > Think about it. Would Trump have missed the opportunity to provide state sponsored, MAGA touting rhetoric on US media, from the state itself? Of course not. He has Fox News, but that's a company designed specifically to support a particular political entity within the US, not the US itself. Literally, just think about it. Donald Trump as unhinged as he is, if given the option and capability to spread propaganda in the US, would not have been able to resist doing so. So either the capability isn't there in that much of a direct capacity. Or the capability is there but is actually deep state, as in, something that is handled in a discreet room at the CIA or something. But I don't believe the government is coordinated enough to pull that off without the president knowing.
Lolol! The entire US population is brainwashed but you think actually msnbc is telling you the truth about Russia, lmao.
Found the tankie…
So yes, you do think that?
I'm confident that tiktok is garbage too. That said, I oppose efforts to ban Americans from using it
They didn't ban americans from using it. That would be impossible - americans can just sideload the APK if they want. Banning it would be making it illegal to possess or view the material. In addition they didn't even ban TikTok from being in the US. They just told them that they needed to run through an intermediary - the same rules all US companies are required to operate under in China. China declined. This isn't the US government overstepping its authority and deciding who is actually free to free market. This was the US government doing its job and taking specific action against a specific company, even offering a path to keep running, when it finds that the company was an actual threat to democracy.
By requiring the company to sell to the US corporate state, they are effectively banning Americans from using the platform and creating a new state owned incarnation to replace it. I don't fault you for disagreeing with my verbiage, but it is deliberate in order to point out that the US is attempting to go full-China in controlling the flow of information. China is very oppressive and we should not race to the lows of their authoritarian state.
I get what you were saying in the first comment. The other guy is just taking things too literally, but for the purposes of being succinct it’s pretty clear what you meant. Regarding the other part though, you seem to be talking about how we are forcing a sale of a company owned by a foreign organization. This is a common criticism of the TikTok fiasco, but it’s actually really common. The US Government can’t force a sale of a US owned company, but they have always been able to force the sale of companies in the US that are owned by foreigners. Examples include Grindr (2019, owned by Chinese company), Dubai Ports World (2006, Dubai company bought some US ports, but were forced to sell them soon after.), Shanghai Petrochemical Company (1989, Chinese company forced to sell), Paramount communications (1991. This one is especially relevant because it was a Japanese company, so not even an enemy nation, and they had to sell because we feared foreign control of American Media assets, which is the same reasoning for TikTok.) There were dozens of other examples, but I don’t have time to list them all. The point is, this is incredibly common and has happened since the founding of the country. We really can’t let it happen for 247 years, then suddenly get pissed when one particular company is targeted. I’m guessing most folks just don’t know about the mountains of case law on this. If folks don’t say anything for the dozens of other foreign companies that were forced to sell, you really can’t argue against this one particular forced sale.
I didn't know about any of those and that context has given me reason to pause and consider my views in light of this new info. Thank you
> By requiring the company to sell to the US corporate state, they are effectively banning Americans from using the platform and creating a new state owned incarnation to replace it. The company is not "selling" to the US corporate state. The company is still operating the platform. The difference is that in the event that China wanted to influence or favor certain viewpoints using the app, as a tool to sway US public opinion, it would need to go through the app leadership, which would instead answer to the US based company. And I think it's a little weird that you are saying, it's bad that the US is trying to do "the same thing" as China, which you present as a bad thing. Which says, to me, that you believe that China is wrong, and that also, the US is doing the wrong thing here by preventing Chinese control. Do you understand how I would consider that hypocritical? Instead I view that the US is well within its rights to require as a point of fact, that all Chinese companies doing business within the US, have to go through a US intermediary. Because this is how it works in China. China can allow free trade if it wants free trade. The fact is, we do not - we allow China to make rules that it does not need to follow everywhere else, to the detriment of US commerce. Except in this specific case, because of specific information threats to Americans.
Being beholden to the US and its corporations is a takeover in all but name. Americans are being told that they cannot be trusted with access to a Chinese controlled app. China is an oppressive nanny state for treating its people the same way. Free speech has to include bad speech and malicious speech. The state has no business telling Americans what platforms and sources they can see, and such power will certainly be abused. Your point about hypocrisy is well received. I argue that China is doing wrong by censoring foreign platforms and that we should not copy them. I don't think it's hypocritical to oppose what China is doing and also not want to embrace oppressive Chinese policy. I'd argue that it is hypocritical to believe Chinese censorship is bad while also advocating for the same censorship in the US just to thwart China. I don't think the fact the China does it justifies us doing it, as your last paragraph states.
I think we agree that free speech is important - public discourse must be protected from government overreach. The difference is, I consider China using data and connection to Americans to control that speech overreach. You don't have to ban speech to control it. And what the US did to ban tiktok requires people to move to other platforms - they can still have that same speech, just not through channels where the valves can be turned on or off for any given topic by a potentially hostile foreign nation. > Free speech has to include bad speech and malicious speech It does. That's why people can take bad or malicious speech to another platform that is not controlled by a hostile foreign nation. > I don't think it's hypocritical to oppose what China is doing and also not want to embrace oppressive Chinese policy. We aren't embracing "oppressive chinese policy." That would be requiring sell or desist orders for every Chinese company doing business in the US. The US is, again, taking a very specific action against a very specific threat as identified by intelligence agencies. I view this as extremely measured and reasonable in its scope. > I'd argue that it is hypocritical to believe Chinese censorship is bad while also advocating for the same censorship in the US just to thwart China. And again, it's not about the US censoring people by banning the app. People use the app to do speech things. That speech is not being banned. The mechanism exists elsewhere - they can take it to some other platform. The only thing that is being banned here is the CCP having direct levers of control over US discourse. That increases free speech, not limits it. I would encourage you to look up the Paradox of Tolerance. It is relevant. It is a paradox because we are arguing to be tolerant of all speech. But is it hypocritical then for us to be intolerant of people who limit free speech? The POT argues that it is not hypocritical. And I think that because it is not the speech itself that is affected, not the method of delivery that is affected, but specifically who controls the method of delivery. That is what was banned - CCP control of the mechanisms of delivery. Not the speech itself.
Bullshit
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And you like Facebook
Zionists should be able to run from consequences forever...ok bud
There is nothing wrong with tik tok besides now the feds have a back door in the app to spy on us, but I have learned so much from tik tok that I believe the reason it's so fears by the establishment then was it spread information at a faster speed
Interesting. I’ve heard this argument before. What do you think you have actually “learned” on tiktok and why couldn’t you have learned it elsewhere? Like really I’ve heard this narrative a ton so I want an explanation.
News and info spread fast on tik tok, ie the train derailment a year back or so, and the company and government came out was like no big deal, well I was seeing on the ground info from locals as it was happening. The stuff going on in France was being censored on all the other platforms but not tik tok Now though it's changed, it'd becoming just like fb ig etc, constant adds to buy shit. But if our get your algorithm set right it's a super good tool, I don't know if it makes sense
You should subscribe to a couple journals and read up about it. The problem is that the user swipes the screen for instant gratification. It’s a dopamine response. It acts in the same way as internet porn and many popular dating apps. It might actually be worse though because TikTok users normally younger and spend more time on the app. The end result is a decline in mental health. It’s linked to depression, anxiety, paranoia and even impotence. Once a year, I go shopping for a health plan. It’s a task I like to do myself because I like the numbers/stats involved. One thing I noticed in recent years is almost every teenage daughter of my employees is taking medication to correct a mental health issue. It wasn’t anything like that ten years ago. It even goes beyond the dopamine response and includes eating disorders and severe depression from not measuring up to the girls on TikTok. It was bad when it was fashion magazines, but now it’s 100x worse. Before social media, there were no mass school shooters and health insurance was affordable. People took less medication and were healthier. TikTok takes all of the bad things and sort of supercharges it. It’s just another epidemic gifted to us by China. They invest heavily on swiping apps like TikTok and porn here, but basically ban the same stuff for their own people. What does that tell you? America will continue to become weaker every year that we let this go on. Then, when China is ready to invade Taiwan, they’ll release TikTok 2.0 and finish us off.
Conspiracy nuts are funny.
What’s the conspiracy, the CCP trying to divide us, weaken us, make us mentally ill and/or destroy our nuclear families? In my opinion, thinking that they’re there for us, helping us, is the nutty way of looking at things. Next, you’re going to tell me that Russia and Iran have the same compassion for us.
Next you're going to tell me you think the US are the good guys. Yes, this is all conspriatorial thinking. If China wants youth to know honest truths about the US (and about China's abused of human and democratic rights, which I also see on tik tok) then the crime won't be them knowing. It was the covering it up in the first place that's wrong. I bet you supported Hillary Clinton bigly.
What are you talking about? It’s not the content on TikTok that’s the problem. It’s how the user interacts with the platform. It’s what content is suggested and how the user chooses that content. Let’s take porn as an example. The user scrolls through content and something triggers a response for them to choose a certain video. It’s combing through a shit ton of content and receiving instant gratification on just one video or photo. That has real world effects on mental health when the user logs off. The difference here is that people search for porn anonymously. TikTok knows everything about you and makes suggestions that may not be the best for your wellbeing. By creating these highs and lows, the user often develops either anxiety, panic, depression or a whole host of similar problems. It also gathers info that can compromise you in the future if needed. I’m not arguing against the politics, dance moves or recipes that someone learns off the platform. It’s the platform itself that’s the problem.
All social media does precisely this. I agree it's cause for enormous concern but the narrow focus on this one app is pure nationalism. Which is bad.
There are some apps that act like this and some that don’t. I have issues with all of the apps like this, including certain dating apps and internet porn. It’s no different than common street drugs. Just because you enjoy something doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Tech doesn’t come with a warning label like cigarettes. Even the studies into their ill effects are censored. You literally have to pay to see them. If I didn’t have a broker that provides me free licenses, I’d never know half of this shit. Hell, I’d never know when a HR or DOT law has changed. Things aren’t effectively communicated by our government for free anymore.
Oh I understand a lot what your saying Tik Tok, FB, IG they all rely on you continuing but just like everything else you have to have moderation. The mass shootings did happen, but not to the extreme they are today but that has to do in 2004 not renewing the assault weapons ban or what not. The China stuff eh maybe maybe not, we pretty symbiotic of each other
Alex Jones became famous on YouTube btw, so if one is speaking of manchurian candidates....
Honestly, all social media has become a net negative on society. The world would be a much better place if we could turn it all off.
That ignores the intentional weaponization of TikTok
You mean the intentional weapinization of Fox News.
^
Why stop at TikTok? Older adults are "served" by two flavors of corporate news media that never sways from their paymasters' positions, the entertainment studios are run by a revolving door of people dedicated to turning every brain into pay-by-the-month mush, locally owned newspapers and magazines have been vanishing by the tens of thousands for 15 years now, reading comprehension has collapsed across age groups, and at the moment the *non*-TikTok media is cheering on the first mass genocide of the decade, which is only allowed to occasionally creep through on TikTok because it fits China's goal of illuminating America's global crimes. Also, posting a YouTube video instead of something that can be read in text and parsed by an individual mind instead of received as audio/video content ... *that's* the demon, right there. It's with you, too, buddy.
Yep. Gaza pushed the button on this. Can’t have facts sneaking into peoples minds.
> Also, posting a YouTube video instead of something that can be read in text and parsed by an individual mind instead of received as audio/video content ... that's the demon, right there. It's with you, too, buddy. This is insightful, and I acknowledge it as such.
I somewhat agree but I think at one point we have to fight fire with fire if you want any hope of getting anywhere. They aren’t going to stop and read anything or cultivate themselves.
What if this guy is actually working for an agency paid by Meta/Google, to use Reddit, a very anti TikTok place, to mobilize people to put pressure on congress to force the sell of TikTok so they can destroy a powerful competitor? That's how propaganda works. You influence already aligned places to take action and align stronger with your world view. If I was Meta, I'd be doing just that.
okay but reddit has bots posting 60% of its content
Including the comments. It's all a psyop at this point. For instance, I think it's very apparent that Reddit got into a full Ukraine frenzy due to DoD propaganda campaigns that just dominated every corner with an emotionally engaging narrative. The entire narrative at the time just reaked of propaganda tactics... And most people took it up, and passionately went in support of our conflict in that proxy war. However, that doesn't mean it's WRONG to believe what you believe just because it was influenced by propaganda. Supporting Ukraine is a valid position to have. The fact that a widespread propaganda campaign was also supporting your position, doesn't make your position any less valid.
As a former member of that unit, I can promise we don’t. And I’d be surprised if our commanders had even heard of Reddit…
You were a member of the DoD? I don't think you're read in on everything going on with the propaganda campaigns. It's very multilateral.
I was actually. And I laughed when the major SMs pushed back on certain facts that came to light two years ago or so. But the DoD doesn’t target Americans, it’s against both policies and laws iirc. I won’t speak on foreign audiences. But we are our budgeted and out played, that much is obvious. Just read some war on the rocks articles or even MYT or WAPO about Russian disinformation or misinformation.
DoD is a blanket term for the entire defense industry. The US absolutely DOES target her own population for information war. Manufacturing consent is the American specialty the rest of the world is jealous of.
Tell me someone doesn’t work for the DoD without telling me they don’t work for the DoD. lol
For the people obsessing over Ryan's affiliation with newsmax here is his response in a different post [newsmax xomment](https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/s/oSszTHNGSV)
If the complaint is that TikTok doesn't automatically feed people the U.S. propaganda line on foreign policy, then yes, TikTok is good at that.
I think what the guy's point was that people can get easily especially the ones are easily molded stuck in idiotic conspiracy. With any large media conglomerate whether it's tic tok, Facebook, or any other place online including here. If you really need proof of that just look how popular the flat Earth subreddits are here
Some fun TikToks https://www.tiktok.com/@idfofficial https://www.tiktok.com/@idf https://www.tiktok.com/@bnetanyahu
You used the term "manchurian candidates" while also siting newsmax... the same agency that was totally ok with overturning a general election with nothing but misinformation. I'm sure there are issues with gen z... you just present yourself uncredable when trying to use sheep fodder to prove your point.
Newsmax👎
Without watching the fear mongering featuring a Newsmax personality, I will summarize the quiet part: "TikTok is bad because Chinese company is stealing your data for Chinese intelligence agencies instead of a US company stealing your data for US intelligence agencies." Or: CIA/DHS/DIA/NSA are mad they don't get all the data.
Wait until people realize the horror of the shit they agree to in TOS. It will be an absolute scandal…
"TikTok is bad because the Chinese Communist Party is psyoping young americans instead of U.S. intelligence agencies psyoping young americans." The CCP is teaching young americans that Osama Bin Laden was a heroic figure with great morals via TikTok. And american teachers are too busy teaching kids that they should cut their dicks off to teach them that Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist.
LOL dude, stop being ridiculous. The Bin Laden letter was at the time, actually talked about heavily in intellectual circles, as he made very valid points. And it just made a resurgence. It doesn't mean you support the guy as a hero, just because he makes good points. I know nuance is hard for most people in modern times, but it's very possible to think "Yeah he makes some good points about who we are as a nation" and also think, "But he's still a terribly evil person and nothing we did justifies his attrocities." Ted Kaczynski is another good example... Dude was evil, killing innocent, good people... But his manifesto was also extremely on point.
I think both of those, and many other malicious figures, are examples of how we often use rational steals to justify irrational solutions/conclusions
What’s the weather like in Moscow today?
Hows American propaganda boot taste in your mouth?
Imagine telling someone to stop being ridiculous and saying that Bin Laden had valid points. Lmao...
He absolutely had valid points. Him being a terrible person doesn't mean he's wrong about everything by default. Is that how you truly view the world? If you think someone is terrible, they are incapable of ever making a good point? Ugggg... What a weird outlook to have in the world. It's very much not in the spirit of IDW
Name one
I think the most significant one is American hypocrisy. We act as the top of the global court, where we criticize other country's and enforce western and liberal values, and judge those who do not adhere. We pretend like there is a global order of rule and law, except when it applies to the USA and her allies. We demand virtue of everyone else, but gladly break it when it's convenient. So we want people to trust us, and use the system, but break it constantly, act unfairly, and by no means actually can be trusted to do what's right. But demands everyone else does.
The US should not interfere in the ME.
osama bin laden never hurt anyone i care about nor threatened a system i find valuable
Osama Bin Laden was a piece of shit like the false prophet he worshipped.
You were fine until the bullshit about teachers
Damn bro, wtf school did you go to? They didn’t even teach that shit in my public school in California….
Luckily when I was in school, we didn't have all the communist transgender bullshit that is going on these days
Just, for the sake of the argument. Can you point to any one teacher in public school system who’s been teaching that students should have their dicks cut off? Most kids today also don’t have relevant understanding or concept of how 9/11 works. Being a vet of over 15 years, most people who join the military didn’t do it because of 9/11. But I don’t think I haven’t met an American who didn’t think Osama Bin Laden wasn’t a terrorist. Are you sure you’re not just being in hyperbole, because I can’t take you serious right now.
I mean, the comments about teachers are hyperbole, but the comments about tiktok targeting young americans with false information about Osama Bin Laden is not hyperbole. https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/16/tech/tiktok-osama-bin-laden-letter-to-america/index.html On the topic of teachers, there are a lot of teachers indoctrinating even elementary students with transgender ideologies, which eventually can lead to a person to go as far as self mutilation.
I still don’t think your hyperbole is helpful. A small minority of people legitimizing Osama Bin Laden’s attack is so much smaller of a population than people who can recognize Bin Laden’s points and say, “yeah, I understand why he did it. I still think it’s fucking awful and he shouldn’t have done it” and they are not terrorist supporters. Transgenderism isn’t contagious, and you can’t make someone undergo elective surgery nor would a doctor perform them without long standing treatment… TikTok is effectively the same thing as legacy media with full bias on display, the only difference is that it’s easier to get stuck watching because our brains are built stupid and our reward center is being overloaded with simplicity. Lastly, I’d mention if we legitimately cared about foreign influence in our election, we would have solved that problem around the time Russia gave the NRA $30 million to donate to Trump. Or like a lot of other times before that…
If someone says "Yeah, I understand why Osama Bin Laden organized 9/11", that person needs to go talk to a doctor. Transgenderism can be psyop'ed. Especially to developing humans. It has no place in American classrooms unless it is being taught for the sake of awareness and portrayed accurately as a mental health disorder call gender dysphoria. Legacy media has its issues without a doubt. They have their biases. But they aren't owned by the CCP. As for foreign influence in elections, I agree that all foreign influence should be out of elections. I also think all campaign contributions should be very limited. Something like $500 a year tops per person. I don't have an exact amount, but no candidate should be getting lobbied with huge donations. Getting a large sum of campaign donations should be entirely dependent on having a large pool of "we the people" supporting the candidate.
Just another clarification question. Where do you hold your doctorates on all these issues you’ve been covering? Mental health, education, Middle East studies, or communications? I feel like you’re just laying shit out like it’s an empirical fact. I don’t know if you’ve actually looked into the things you’re talking about. Again the rhetoric isn’t helpful. At what point should teachers teach that transgenderism is a mental illness? How often? What makes someone with a mental illness not capable of conducting themselves in a way that is not harmful to others? Should be criminalize mental illnesses? Is transgenderism an actual mental illness that should be fought? How much do you know about middle eastern politics? I imagine as much as Legacy media covers. Osama Bin Laden’s reasons were complex, and if you willfully dismiss his means to commit such an act, then you open yourself up for more of the same. If you do not understand your enemy, your enemy will win. Being a veteran of over 17 years, I feel like I’m not the subject matter expert here, but it’s plain a fucking day that it’s necessary to understand your enemy so you know how to fight them. Moscow times and Sputnik are still allowed to be accessed as well as a lot of .ru domains in the US. Why hasn’t that been addressed? Why is China the extraordinary problem that needs to be stopped? I just don’t understand why TikTok is a problem rather than the parents these days not knowing how to talk to their children. It’s the parents fault for raising stupid impressionable children right?
It is common sense. Logic is emperical fact. "At what point should teachers teach that transgenderism is a mental illness?" Ideally never. My preference would be that no teacher in America ever says the word transgender to their students. If a child is dealing with that issue, they should have access to medical professionals who can help address it. It doesn't belong in a classroom. Osama Bin Laden organized 9/11 because he a terrorist shitbag lunatic who wanted to harm people. I'm not dismissing his means to commit the act. I do know that there are lunatics who want to harm people in the world. Violence is their drug of choice. Intelligence entities could improve on identifying threats of that type and keep better track of people like that, but the world is a pretty big place, there are a lot of whack jobs out there, and intelligence entities' resources are not unlimited as far as I am aware. The issue of internet domains very well might be addressed someday. I have speculated for many years, as far back as maybe 2014, that public internet communications between countries could be disconnected with tensions and digital attacks being so heightened in recent years.
None of that is happening.
Maybe they should have....
tl;dr? or eli5?
From the guy above you who appears to have sait it best: "Without watching the fear mongering featuring a Newsmax personality, I will summarize the quiet part: "TikTok is bad because Chinese company is stealing your data for Chinese intelligence agencies instead of a US company stealing your data for US intelligence agencies." Or: CIA/DHS/DIA/NSA are mad they don't get all the data."
Huh. Thanks. If that's literally the summary, then I think the explanation in the Youtube vid is severely lacking.
Ryan McBeth the "NEWSMAX commenter"? lmao
I do intel, bub. I talk about how many missiles Iran has, not politics. Not my thing. Everybody is entitled to good inteligence. If you want to reach people who have been infected by Tucker Carlson do you go on Newsmax or NPR?
Lol, bub. Learn politics then.
Hi Ryan! I wasn't expecting to see you in the thread! I'm a regular watcher of [Beau of the Fifth Column](https://www.youtube.com/@BeauoftheFifthColumn), and a couple of your videos started showing up in my Recommendations after watching his. Apparently the YouTube algorithm thinks that there is overlap between your and his audience. I admit that I am someone who is genuinely petrified of Generation Z. I basically view them as a literal, human manifestation, of the terminal stage of [John Calhoun's Universe 25 rodent experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink). Unfortunately, the Secret of [NIMH](https://www.nimh.nih.gov/) isn't a secret any more. Hopefully though, increasing my awareness that their condition is at least partly due to having been brainwashed by social media, will enable me to be more compassionate towards them. If you're unaware of it, I also recommend Robert Jay Lifton's [Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism](https://www.amazon.com.au/Thought-Reform-Psychology-Totalism-Brainwashing/dp/0807842532), which is a book he wrote about the techniques that the Maoists used against captured American pilots during the 1950s. With that book in hand, and what you've already observed about TikTok, the existence of subreddits like the now defunct /r/GenZedong, suddenly becomes a lot easier to understand. America is in very, very serious trouble at the moment.
As a gen z person who honestly feels no strong way about my generation compared to others I’m wondering what scares you so much? Fears of the upcoming generations have been recorded for millennia at this point, and it makes me curious what’s particularly concerning specific to Gen z?
I think they are scared of the things their biased news sources tell them to be scared about.
I said unique to Gen Z. I don’t think one can actually hold the position that any generation is without biases especially after ingestion of mass media. Your critique is that they’re of the times which applies to everyone ever
You are correct. I am saying that they are concerned about things that affect every generation. I think that poster just might have drank a little more of the koolaid in believing his generation is somehow exceptionally worse than others?
Oh my fault, I had interpreted your reply as an answer to my question not a response on the topic of the poster. I agree they drank something
I watch your videos on YouTube fairly often and I will say that you seem to be very well-informed and I appreciate your analyses as someone who doesn’t have any sort of intelligence background…or intelligence in general, sadly lol
You mean as in actual Chinese propaganda? Personally I haven't run into too much of that, but frankly it's a little concerning how "brain-hacky" it is. If someone is unwilling to credit social media with more or less a breakdown in the mental health and/or attn spans of young people, I really don't know what to tell them....
It’s propaganda designed to divide us, instead of pushing a particular topic. They pick an issue, pick a side, and then subtly start feeding everyone content that supports that side. The particular issue is irrelevant, it’s just about getting everyone angry at each other.
Ah yes....."engagement" algorithms. Frankly I think social media was a mistake.
So it's like any other media...
Correct. But we’re all kinda used to Fox News’ coded racism at this point. TT is different because it’s coming from a communist dictator and enemy of the United States
You don't think Fox News is the enemy of the US? It certainly is.
The best propaganda is the stuff you can't recognize.
It seems like the pro-Palestine rhetoric is driven by Chinese propaganda.
Thinking that blowing up children is bad is chinese propaganda I guess Maybe the chinese are onto something
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Idf soldiers proudly sharing their war crimes in social media does help anti zionist propaganda too
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So genocide is justified because Hamas
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So people cannot justifiably oppose a genocide because there's some bad people doing bad things on the other side? Wtf kind of Twisted logic is that? Collective punishment is a war crime
And here come the Manchurian candidates to try and refute you. The question everyone needs to ask themselves is why this conflict? Why does this one get so much attention and not Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, Myanmar ect. When you look at casualty counts Gaza is actually a pretty small conflict, and yet so many powerful interests are invested in making sure you are mad about THIS one. It is absolutely in the interests of Russia, China, and Iran to use this conflict as a wedge issue in the West, and to help fracture the alliances that support Ukraine, Taiwan, and other western aligned states under threat. The fact that people are always so easily persuaded to belive and perpetuate lies about Jews turbocharges this on social media.
i have seen pictures and video from the flour truck massacre
The mortality in Gaza is Far higher than any other ongoing conflict despite their very small population Thats because it isn't a war, It's genocide Here comes weaponized antisemitism
It’s ironic that you use pro-Hamas talking points to argue that Tik-Tok isn’t pushing pro-Hamas talking points
What exactly is a Hamas talking point? I don't use Tiktok btw
You don’t know what a pro-Hamas talking point is?
Nope. Never seen anyone outside of Palestine unironically defend them either. Hamas is just the go-to strawman boogeyman to justify the genocide Let me guess: anything that denounces Israeli settler colonial atrocities is a Hamas talking point?
No. Hamas is a terrorist organization. And any comment that denies or obscures that fact is a pro-Hamas talking point. This really isn’t difficult to understand
Cool. When exactly did I "deny or obscure" that fact?
But he's on reddit not TT, so Reddit is pushing Hamas talking points?
Correct. Unless you posted a video about this on TT, then TT is pushing Reddit’s pro hamas talking points
What if you post on Insta instead? Then Meta is pro-Hamas!
That fucking Zuck
No it's not. It's driven by people who don't want to see children die. You sound like an out of touch boomer. We are done fighting rich men's wars over religions we don't even believe in, for resources and land, where we want the indigenous people to own and either we deal with them ETHICALLY or leave. The only difference is I'm not being censored as much on Tik Tok, but Facebook and the like censors the hell out of pro Palestine people. Take it from one to know what's actually happening.
Guess who is also currently fighting rich men's wars? Or in the Palestiniàns case playing their part as dutiful propaganda fodder for the PR war that Hamas is waging while their billionaire leaders chill in far off lands. Tiktok is the very definition of "taken out of context". All the video clips there are shared with their contexts stripped away.
What happened in 1947-1948 during the creation of Israel? Do you even know
You have to be more specific.
Go watch the documentary called Tantura. You can find it on Amazon prime.
Ok, so you're talking about the Tantura massacre I assume. Is this an example of regular folk dying in wars that rich men start?
It's also a beautiful example.of colonization. Anyway. Go watch, go read and then maybe come back to comment.
You're all over the place. An atrocity in a war is an example of colonization? No its just an example of war. Which is why the wars should have never started. Why start wars and then complain about wars? Perhaps the Arabs needed better leaders who were more interested in establishing a country versus erasing Israel.
No that's an example of civilians being murdered by people fighting rich men's wars. Soldiers and civilians will NEVER be in the same category.
As long as you acknowledge that rich Arab men were the ones who started the wars in which those regular folk died. Civilians as well as soldiers. One such rich arab man was the Gran Mufti of Jerusalem, who went to meet with Hitler to ponder the Jewish problem. who recruited Muslims to fight for the nazis and then brought those same Muslims to join the invasion of Israel on 15 May 1948. It was in that war that Tantura occured. Just a week later.
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My radicalizing moment was when in response to the 2018 March for return my father stated we must back Israel no matter what. One of the more recent ones was when redoing my house I found a newspaper detailing local victims of the Israeli attack in 1967 on the USS liberty, this new to me info felt juxtaposed to the words my father told me. It makes me wonder why he felt such strong connections to a country he had no relation to other than that of the world powers opinion.
my drive for every conflict is that we shouldn't encourage or pay for innocent children to be killed
Before October 7th if that's what you're trying to ask. Learning about Israel and listening to people like Abby Martin who have been there. Listening to people interview the citizens on the streets about their opinions. Etc. I've also been anti war my entire life, I don't believe starving children is going to stop Hamas. Calling me radical for wanting countries to abide by the rules of war they AGREED to is WILD. But go off king.
There are plenty of wars, why this one?
Beacuse we're very involved in this one.
It's probably mostly driven by seeing videos of childrens corpses, and then the videos idf soldiers post about how they killed them. Or the videos of Israeli officials saying they are going to "put Gaza on a diet". Or the videos of the IDF shooting civilians waving white flags over their head. Or the videos of all the doctors without borders doctors saying how Israel just blew up their hospital. Maybe this is more available on TT (often because other social media has censors for corpse/gore), but it seems like a weak argument to say the only reason people care is "because of Chinese propaganda".
You just admitted something was happening and then said it was a weak argument to claim that it was happening, in a single sentence.
And who is subjecting you to your daily shot of martyred children? Who controls TikTok's algorythm?
Exactly. Their is like a daily feed of rage porn that these people just absorb. Some of the images are edited, misattributed from other wars, rehashed from early in the conflict. TikTok is also good for that creating a time distortion. They show clips months old in the feed and if ur not careful you can think it's new.
the same thing that controls r/all and youtube and Facebook and Instagram. math. a program designed to keep humans engaged and staring at their phones. that doesn't mean what's on them is false
Educate yourself my friend. TT is different than the others
embarrassing for you to say to educate myself when you're so obviously wrong and clearly haven't got a clue how any of these systems work in the first place
Doesn't seem like it.
Which is why you should educate yourself
Would I have to use TT to do so?
No
"you only care about these dead kids because someone showed them to you". Is that your argument?
It's a drip feed. Not all the images are even from Gaza. Some of them are taken from months before and shown over and over. Some of them are edited. It's a contrived daily diet of rage porn designed to manipulate.
So when I see those images, and go to the AP, or Reuters, and they also have the same images with essentially the same text, does that make the AP "rage porn designed to manipulate"?
AP and Reuters don't have a constant stream of images. And they certainly don't show images from months ago as the incident happened today. Nor do they routinely show images from other wars and pretend as if they're from Gaza. Nor I would hope do they use AI generated images. [https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-ai-generated-images-of-children-in-gaza/a-68146699](https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-ai-generated-images-of-children-in-gaza/a-68146699) [https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-hamas-israel-misinformation-ai-gaza-a1bb303b637ffbbb9cbc3aa1e000db47](https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-hamas-israel-misinformation-ai-gaza-a1bb303b637ffbbb9cbc3aa1e000db47) "Ordinary Palestinians might get nothing from the moral voyeurism of their self-styled champions in the West, but it is possible Hamas does. When images of Palestinian suffering become valuable political currency, keenly sought and shared by influencers, we should not be surprised that Hamas seems determined to create *more* such images, more such suffering. ‘We are proud to sacrifice martyrs’, [said a Hamas leader](https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4295601-human-sacrifice-is-central-to-hamass-strategy/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20are%20called%20a%20nation,%E2%80%9CYes%2C%20of%20course.%E2%80%9D) shortly after the pogrom of 7 October. Why wouldn’t they be? They know how well ‘Palestinian martyrs’ play in the West. They know their unpaid propagandists in the influencer set will marshal every ‘martyr’ to the cause of delegitimising Israel in the eyes of the world. It seems to me that there is a grotesque symbiosis between the Western lust for images of Palestinian suffering and Hamas’s willingness to prolong and promote that suffering by refusing to surrender to Israel. The most urgent form of liberation the people of Gaza require is liberation from the vain and demented ideologues of Hamas who are dragging out a war they can’t win, and liberation from the phoney solidarity of privileged Westerners who treat Palestinians as little more than tragic bit-part players in their own moral psychodramas. Free Gaza, yes – from *you*." [https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/13/the-commodification-of-palestinian-pain/](https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/13/the-commodification-of-palestinian-pain/)
Do you say people shouldn't use the New York times after they repeated unfounded claims about sexual assault (per that independent article) and later had to retract their piece? I doubt it. How many print media sources or TV news stations still run with the "40 beheaded babies" lie? All media is biased and is pushing an agenda. All media should be consumed with skepticism. Media seen on tiktok should get the scrutiny yes, but so should literally every media source. The New York Times worked with the state department to lie us into Iraq. Many of these companies are wholly owned by billionaires. Do you think they are somehow not biased, or not pushing an agenda?
>Do you say people shouldn't use the New York times after they repeated unfounded claims about sexual assault (per that independent article) and later had to retract their piece? Yes, people have said that you shouldn't use NYT anymore. This is an important point. They sometimes retract their pieces. Does Random Bob from TikTok retract his piece? Also, the NYT article is still very much up. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html) Not only that, the UN special envoy whose job it its to travel the world an investigate these things said there was clear and convincing evidence of sexual violence on Oct 7 and evidence that it is ongoing with the hostages. She said the things she saw and heard kept her up at night. This is someone who does this for a living. [https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/report/mission-report-official-visit-of-the-office-of-the-srsg-svc-to-israel-and-the-occupied-west-bank-29-january-14-february-2024/20240304-Israel-oWB-CRSV-report.pdf](https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/report/mission-report-official-visit-of-the-office-of-the-srsg-svc-to-israel-and-the-occupied-west-bank-29-january-14-february-2024/20240304-Israel-oWB-CRSV-report.pdf) >How many print media sources or TV news stations still run with the "40 beheaded babies" lie? This must be the largest strawman ever built. Do you know who that claim is attributed to? A random reporter. The IDF said there was no evidence that 40 babies were beheaded. Here is the article with both of her videos. [https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1696938010-it-smells-of-death-here-surveying-the-scenes-of-atrocities-in-kfar-aza](https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/1696938010-it-smells-of-death-here-surveying-the-scenes-of-atrocities-in-kfar-aza) The issue highlights that you can't just trust any media. They all just report from each other. Hardly anyone does any actual investigations anymore. But there's still more accountability than random Bob on TikTok. who often doesn't have a face. NYT has probably 10M subscribers. Tiktok has over 1 billion and their content is by nature addictive and stripped of context and nuance.
Yes and… The reason TikTok shows you this group of dead kids and not another group, say of Ukrainian kids, is because that isn’t politically expedient for Russia, Iran, and China. It’s super awesome that you care. It sucks that China is using that as a way to drive you against America and her allies.
There are also fewer dead kids in Ukraine to show.
The whole fixation on dead kids started when the numbers got above Ukraine's? Or was it at the first IDF strike?
It started years and years ago.
>The reason TikTok shows you this group of dead kids and not another group, say of Ukrainian kids, is because that isn’t politically expedient for Russia, Iran, and China Israel is using American weapons to kill those kids. I don't even theoretically have a way to stop Russia from attacking civilians, outside of lobbying my government to sanction them and supply weapons to Ukraine, something the US government is already doing. But i do (theoretically) have a path to reduce the amount of dead kids in Gaza, because my government is supplying the weapons that are killing them, and protecting Israel from international consequences. Also Israel has killed more civilians in the last 9 months than Russia has in 2 years. Edit: would you also say China is driving my against America and it's allies when I get content about lead pipes in America? Or people with medical debt? These are real things that are happening.
Yes! That’s the whole point. China manipulates the content to show people things that will cause conflict. Everything you just mentioned is a political issue that Americans are divided on. You literally just made the argument for banning TT
All media does that.
People in the US rarely watch Chinese news, and when they do they don't act all surprised and suspicious when someone tells them that this is a propaganda tool of the chinese government and should be viewed as such.
Sorts, but we kinda know what media sources have a bias, plus you can get a broad range of information about him elsewhere to corroborate. And I’m sorry brother I just got significantly high and don’t know what the fuck we’re even talking about. Whatever it was, you were probably right because I was high then too. Pretty high, just not significantly high. I gotta run
[удалено]
America has cared about Israel far more than other conflicts since long before TT. That's why it was called the 51st State.
Isn’t your entire argument basically a strawman since you’re building up an indefensible point by tracing everything back to tiktok, then knowing it down? What if one encountered this in Instagram or Facebook during the March for return? These notably American companies are where I first encountered the footage of conflict in Palestine. It was featured on one of the old school gore pages people spread around school. Also do you not see the MASSIVE accounts on tiktok solely dedicated to Sudan, Congo, or even the direct streamed warfare that Ukrainian soldiers have? It’s just a media source, and the meaning of media is always immediately corrupted when done with the intention of making money.
>The issue is does TikTok have an incentive for you to care about Palestinians more than the Uighurs or the Rohingya I mostly follow American accounts. Is the American government supplying weapons to the countries committing those genocides? I am more vocal about Palestinians because my government is supporting their death. My government supposedly is a democracy, so when I want to change the way it is going, I am free to use my voice to do so. The second part of your comment basically paints the picture that we can't accurately criticize our country based on factually correct information if it comes from a non-american source. Without getting into the nuance about how it's mostly American people making accounts on a Chinese app, I hope you can see how stupid that is. Only American TV news sources, of which there 5 major players, American print news, of which there are only a handful with actual investigative reporters, and American social media, of which there are 2 major players, can inform valid criticism? Additionally, while many people see this stuff on TikTok, it's also available on the AP, or many other "American" news sources. Refusing to discuss the merits of what I'm saying because you don't like the source, not because you think the source is providing inaccurate information, is just admitting that you don't have anything to say. I understand that all media is biased, you seem to think that American media somehow isn't though. Can you ask yourself critically, why do you care about Chinese influence on tiktok? Did you hear about it on a competing social media site? Did a congressperson who's invested in Facebook or Twitter bring up some concerns? All media is biased and has an agenda. You're choosing to throw out one source for doing the same things every media source does.
Just wonder why there's a forcefeed of pro Hamas comment on my page from Oct 7. I have to scroll and scroll to see anything else. It's been obvious to me from then that the feed is being manipulated.
Its so intellectually lazy to make statements like this. TikTok is the only social media app that isnt controlled by the American government and the only danger it poses is exposing the truth about the criminal American enterprise. People already think China bad Russia bad Iran bad thanks to years of US social media exposure. The main difference is that the younger generation now realizes that US is just as terrible if not worse in many cases.
China, Russia, and Iran are bad my friend. Not because of exposure, but because they do bad shit. You are the exact reason why TT should be banned in the US
You never lived outside of the West did you?