Where I'm at in Europe, the app is rife with anti-American & pro-Chinese & Russian propaganda. I think that even if the Americans ban the app, it's too late, the entire world is now addicted to this app and it'll have negative consequences for the U.S. for many years to come.
German here: plenty of pro America, anti Chinese and pro Ukraine propaganda in my feeds. Lot's of it full of AI bits, mixed videos with AI and real footage, partially from other wars and or years old mixed into current, potentially staged bits (it's mostly clusters of facial expressions and gestures that make me doubt but also environment, intensity and location of sweat and dirt and positioning of items and vehicles and stuff, in 'artificial(learned actually, semi-professional) relation' to buildings). It's horrible.
Probably the reality is that the internet is filled with propaganda. Every site. Every forum. Even HN is filled with anti-(put pretty much anything here) propaganda.
Try to ignore the noise and tune in more of the signal. That's about all you can do really.
I'm not sure banning websites will do much for you, as you two are rightfully pointing out. You ban a website in Brazil? Well, OK. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in Brazil, but the rest of the world keeps getting the anti-Brazil propaganda. You ban a website in China? Well, OK. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in China, but the rest of the world keeps getting plenty of anti-Chinese propaganda. You ban a website in the US? Same thing. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in the US, but the rest of the world keeps getting plenty of anti-US propaganda.
The word propaganda itself has been a bit bent out of shape in the last century. It just means to spread information. Information itself is more-or-less inherently biased (as in, not objectively neutral in an omniscient way) and so everything is basically propaganda, although not in the scary obvious way that word usually implies.
Dead Internet Theory in action. Bots spamming garbage to other bots, mostly, with the goal of squeezing into the cracks to hit a tiny handful of vaguely receptive users.
The problem with banning things is actually a bit more subtle than just that. Propaganda in isolation isn't necessarily a good or a bad thing. If Big Vegetable embarks on a multi-billion dollar campaign to push pro-vegetable propaganda, that is probably a win for the rest of us. But if Big Tobacco does something similar it is more of a loss.
So we need a mechanism to decide if a specific type of propaganda is acceptable or not. And, if governments get involved, typically they will start restricting propaganda that is truthful but threatening to their chances of holding power (ie, people pointing out the flawed nature of the powers that be). It is better force people to fight propaganda with counter-propaganda and let individuals make their own mistakes.
> It is better force people to fight propaganda with counter-propaganda and let individuals make their own mistakes
The problem is information flow. Propaganda vs propaganda, nowadays, is in-group information and desires fighting against other in-group information and desires.
The lack and importance of truth, facts, the bread and butter of journalists, investigators and scientist, gets out of focus because of governments and other actors blocking access to data, events, locations, partially because often enough, people asking for access tamper with the evidence or start to run all kinds of narratives that would impede an investigation and results that could be 'useful'. There is, of course, much more to all that.
The tiktok algorithm famously feeds people what they want and what they most engage with.
If all you are seeing anti-American & pro-Chinese & Russian propaganda, it is on you. If all you are seeing is teenage girls doing provocative dances, it is on you.
Yes, it's wise to be aware of how fickle the public's attention can be. TikTok will not be around forever, and likely won't be prominent enough to bother discussing a decade from now.
The parent comment also has a point, though, because stale trends generally manage to limp along around 60 years or so. Ideas tend really to win out conclusively once the opposing side has died off.
So the "culture" that, at Facebook's height of popularity, Facebook fostered, in fact will live on in a certain generation.
And all the nonsense that TikTok seems to foster today will, sadly, affect the world for decades after TikTok turns into a nonentity.
I think the popularity of TikTok is already declining and I always question the effectiveness of such propaganda attempts. Investing in education is the best antidote in my opinion, state level blocking of services just opens a few cans of worms.
To make TikTok unpopular more quickly, governments should probably mandate that parents make an account too.
It was a joke suggesting that young people tend to think a platform becomes less cool if their parents are on it too. Not that parents can stalk the online life of their kids or other things that actually do make them uncool.
A constant AI generated feed, in and out of fully immersive, no swiping, just eye tracking (incl. pupil dilation) and face tracking to guide. Though some in congress who promoted the ban thought it already worked kind like that.
One example is loads of videos from John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs about how what's happening in Ukraine is really NATO's fault. I don't get why these rather niche academics are all over. Also loads of videos about how democracy in general is just really inefficient and we'd be better of copying China's model. Things like that. I never engage with such videos, actively click things like "don't show me content like this" but it's never ending.
That's just a glimpse of reality you're witnessing for the first time. It can be quite disorienting after decades of indoctrination on US social media. I'm just so sick of all the pro-war propaganda we're getting here in the EU from the US.
There is indeed plenty to criticise the USA for. But there's a genocide in Xinjiang and a war in Ukraine. Neither of these things seem like far lesser magnitude crimes to me.
I think turning a fledgling democracy into a kleptocratic dictatorship and starting an unjust war that has caused 500k casualties is at least on par with the worst the US has done in recent history like Iraq.
The United States and its allies have dropped at least 326,000 bombs and missiles on countries in the greater Middle East/ North Africa region since 2001.
People 30 and under in the region have barely known a day when the US were not bombing them or their neighbouring countries - that is bound to have a pretty strong effect on how you view a country.
326 000 is 5 days' worth in terms of Russian invasion of Ukraine at its peak intensity. Those who are 30 and under have seen only a one year when Russia has not been at war - during the economic crisis that followed Asian financial crisis of 1997. But this does not get even remotely as much attention as wars involving the US, because there are no paid shills flooding every imaginable place with stale copypastas about foreign wars, skewing people's sense of proportion.
> there are no paid shills flooding every imaginable place with stale copypastas about foreign wars
This is not true. All sides have literal "paid shills" producing propaganda online, on our (and their) TVs and in the Cinemas. If you are unaware of this, or truly believe "only the other side does that" then the propaganda has worked extremely well.
The West also has paid shills promoting is propaganda - this is very true of course.
But it's usually either comparatively benign (promoting fluff films like Top Gun), or quite transparent (like RFE/RL which makes no effort to hide the fact that it is government supported). And it usually doesn't lie outright, but prefers to use much more subtle forms of manipulation (e.g. "nation-building" and all that).[0]
Russian/Chinese propaganda meanwhile is incredibly blatant, and has no compunction at all against straight up lying, or saying the sky is blue when it's actually orange. Or in Russia's case, that a war of naked aggression that was very much optional for them is really a defensive war that was forced on them, and so forth.
The point is here is not that one side is "good" and the other is "bad". But to suggest (as you seem to be doing) that there's some kind of basic equivalence at play, in terms of the scale and kinds of propaganda used by the respective parties is very naive.
[0] The insane lies and other propaganda used to promote the 2003 Iraq war were a major exception to this general tendency, of course. In that sense, they were much closer in spirit to Russian/Chinese-style propaganda.
There is an unheard population of Ukrainians who want the war to stop and for there to be peace with their Russian cousins.
It is the Western powers who are sacrificing Ukraine in order to put Western weapons systems on Russias borders. Not the Ukrainian people.
And, in the context of what was done to Iraq (5% of its population murdered for the purposes of the USA's racist, elitist ruling classes), it is no wonder that this silence is perpetuated.
There is an unheard population of Ukrainians who want the war to stop and for there to be peace with their Russian cousins.
Actually, they are very much heard from, and their views are carefully studied by public opinion researchers.
However (1) they are a minority and (2) you are definitely misrepresenting their views to suggest that favoring an early ceasefire means "wanting peace with their Russian cousins", per your disingenuous choice of phrasing there.
It is the Western powers who are sacrificing Ukraine in order to put Western weapons systems on Russias borders. Not the Ukrainian people.
As if the solid majority in Ukraine who wishes to continue the fight (along with all of those who foolishly sign up to go the front) were just puppets, with no idea as to why the fight was really being waged, and no ability to see through this gigantic sham that has been foisted upon them, which should be as plainly obvious to them as it is to you.
Western public opinion researchers == propagandists for the military industrial complex.
No one said they were "Western" in this case. Strange that you jump to that assumption.
Solid majority? Post your sources
The research is very easily findable. The numbers also resonate with my own impressions from countless discussions with actual, real Ukrainians, both in and outside the country.
Normally I'm happy to provide sources asked, but from the tone and content of your responses on this and related threads, I don't think you actually care.
From what you just said, above, whoever is doing the research -- if their data doesn't support your highly jaundiced and moralistic worldview, you've already decided that must be because they're propagandists for the military industrial complex, end of story.
So, rather than resorting to ad hominem on the basis of fallacies, post the details. Lets see your sources.
I speak with Ukrainian refugees every single day, as I live within hours of Ukraines borders, and have volunteered with refugees from the Wests' wars for decades, helping them rebuild their tattered lives - from Iraq to Afghanistan and Syria, to Ukraine and now Palestine.
So if that makes me jaundiced, so be it.
>Normally I'm happy to provide sources asked, but from the tone and content of your responses on this and related threads, I don't think you actually care.
I've dried the tears of countless mothers and their children, and helped many of them move to safer parts of the world. Perhaps, I care too much.
But I've seen the products of callous disregard, too many times.
How about you provide your sources in response to a recent situation in which you made a highly untenable, and also quite provocative assertion -- yet, when asked to provide sources in a perfectly polite and unassuming manner (very much unlike your own formulation in this case, which was full of innuendo and sarcasm from the get-go) -- you simply bailed:
You may not like it, but the USA has called for Irans' destruction a hundred times.
And then perhaps we'll talk.
Note please the special emphasis on "the USA", meaning an official, governmental statement or policy (not just the throwaway pronouncements of 1 or 2 of its windbag politicians). And the number "a hundred", as in, you know, 10x10, or heck, any number of roughly similar magnitude.
Being as these were, after all, the words you chose to use for some reason.
Perhaps, I care too much.
Thats great, and I'm sure you're a great person too, on the whole. I've actually upvoted a lot of your other postings (there was one in particular about "catharsis" that I stumbled on while searching for something else, which seemed right on the money and which I really liked).
It's just that, given various indications -- such as the blatant exaggeration followed by blatant evasiveness highlighted above, and the weirdly propagandistic phrasing you seem to like to use to a conspicuous degree -- I'm just not sure that, in regard to geopolitics at least, this whole factual accuracy thing is really your "bag".
I have learned a lot, like, a lot a lot, from tiktok. I devolve to simple fun, but some stuff sticks. I've also learned about political corruption and breaking news. I think that lots of people find similar value in addition to cat videos and dance offs.
It's akin to slot-machine gambling. Once in a while you strike gold (a genuinely useful or entertaining post), so you keep pulling the lever, over and over.
It’s hard to remember here are a few off the top of my head:
Pete Holmes God is nothing. Supposed to be comedy but really clicked for me.
A couple series where people just strike up conversations with strangers. It started to feel normalized after a while and I started doing it in my own life.
Maybe not life changing but a pickleball tip on something I’d been struggling with that finally made it click. (Judging which balls are going out)
There are lots of other things but those jump out at me.
I wont quote the 5% number, but I have changed multiple ways of doing things in my (daily!) life from tiktok: how i tie my shoes and a bunch of other knots, how I prepare some of my daily food like eggs and potatoes has changed, how I interact with my phone (unknown shortcuts and features). I literally can't enumerate all the things I have learned and used. Two weeks ago, I had to pull a t-post out of the ground and I used a technique I saw a week or two earlier and it made it so damn easy.
Why? A city council member was removed for good reason. A get updates from a congressman on tiktok, even though he voted for the ban. I first learned of the attempted Trump assassination on tiktok, way before it was anywhere on any news site.
I have also heard propaganda. I try to look into things as it makes sense. Someone says something odd or enough videos come my way that I look more into something.
What I absolutely do not trust is any single source, especially any single big publication. Gell-Manning effect.
My problem with TikTok is not that it's a Chinese company per se, but that China won't allow an equivalent US (or EU) company to operate in China. TikTok itself is even banned in China.
Why isn't the discussion more about general ban of cancerous social medias for people who are not yet mentally developed and fall ridiculously easily into proper addiction for it? It would be wonderful if state/society protected vulnerable, but when thats not the case its each parent's responsibility.
The hell will freeze sooner than I will allow any form of this for my kids below maybe 15 years old. Its so sad to see rather small kids glued to screens, parents by their negligence and laziness fucking up their most important people in their lives, for life.
Where is the threshold just that they can get a bit more time off from parental duties to slouch on couch, meth or crack? Or course I don't expect miracles from adults who are themselves deep in addictive behaviors themselves, then its just a sad story all the way down the line.
Children need tons of time off any screen for proper development, not just early years. Social skills, anxiety, self worth, mental stability and resilience. None of this happens in front of screen, in contrary a lot of harm in not only these areas are very frequent. Very happy to be part of society (Switzerland) where similar values are shared by most peers around us and also whole public education system.
Maybe it's just my TikTok feed being in a bubble, but my impression is that there's not nearly as much content being produced for the platform anymore because of the poor monetization strategy. There was a time where it could keep showing you new content regardless of how long you were swiping, but now it has started to show me posts that are often multiple months old. Sometimes I'll watch a handful of videos and the timeline just loops back to showing me stuff it has already shown me previously.
Their monetization strategies also just kinda suck in general. You can either make an ad demonstrating some product which you sell on their shop, or you're part of the revenue-share program which doesn't pay out much and which includes a limitation on how frequently you can participate before getting capped.
It definitely feels like we're past "peak" TikTok.
Honestly... As I was writing this post I started to think more critically about the kind of content I'm being shown and it definitely seems like propaganda when scrutinized more closely. I don't really get any obvious anti-American content, but they sneak in an awful lot of pro-Chinese cooking videos.
Edit: thinking more about anti-American propaganda, I do get recommended a decent number of Trump parodies... And as for anti-UK propaganda, it has also shown me lots of videos of people taking down ULEZ camera poles. Admittedly, I hadn't really connected the dots until writing this, but I definitely feel like I was slowly being brainwashed and nudged without realizing. So as of writing this update I'm deleting TikTok and shifting my position against the platform.
I witnessed a pretty alarming situation on TikTok surrounding the story about the Dalai Lama asking a young boy to "suck his tongue." Traditional news outlets ran the initial story, and then followed up shortly after to provide important cultural context, as well as the Dalai Lama's apology.
My girlfriend's TikTok For You Page, on the other hand, only showed her stuff about the initial story and then she never heard anything else about it. We both walked away from this news story with completely different views of reality.
Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.
> Maybe it's a coincidence or caused by some less nefarious reason, like an algorithmic bias towards newer news, but it seems very suspicious given China's relationship with Tibet.
My SO who is of Vietnamese origin noticed a similar issue.
VN and China have a very acrimonious relationship, and there definitely is a push in Vietnamese language TikTok to both rehabilitate China's image which has been perilously bad since the 2014 standoff [0], as well as to rehabilitate Trump's image.
It's hard to ascertain how much of it is manipulated via the algorithm, but either way there is a lot of content that is generated and posted on TikTok with a pro-Russia or pro-China slant and to a level incomparable to other platforms.
