This is not correct. The article states that Tik-Tok went above and beyond Turkish or Chinese laws with their guidelines. This puts the burden on TikTok to justify it's tactics. It seems more likely that they want a platform that does not offend the sensibilities of its target users. This is fine but they can't hide behind local laws and it is fairgame for them to be labelled as a bad actor for helping trample people's rights. Clearly not well-intentioned and deserving of backlash.

But that’s why they called “guidelines” and not “rules”. It’s just a guideline for the local moderator to make a decision on enforcing, it’s not a rule.

What happens to you at your job if you don't follow the guidelines?

The bad government that most likely has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in a company like tiktok to push their social and ideological ideals on the rest of the world?

>This isn’t a tiktok problem

This is a tiktok solution - a kid-friendly platform designed to for political "serenity".

Leave activism to western social media platforms with their trail of failed revolutions, genocide and death. Compare notes in a few years and see which model is preferable.

Likely a combination of the two. People complain about increased divisiveness, toxicity and extremist in social media. This is the Chinese solution refined post Urumqi riot in 2009. Almost prescient witnessing western social media platforms converge on Chinese style filtering in the last couple years.

> Leave activism to western social media platforms with their trail of failed revolutions, genocide and death.

The last (failed) revolution in America was 150 years ago. China has not once gone 50 years without a revolution in the last 400 years. [1]

I support different countries trying different things, but Revolution is not a western problem. (And someone else can make claims about the definition of Genocide.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_China

I'm referring to Arab Spring, Rohingya genocide, NZ shootings etc, all the recent western social media fueled events that have backfired spectacularly. The response has been to curtail speech like China has done 10 years ago when the problem was first identified.

But their moderation guidelines are significantly more repressive than is required by law. From what I read in the article, they banned same-sex couples holding hands in countries where there are no laws against same-sex relations

They're a private company. They have the right to decide what they do and do not want on their platform. If you don't like it, you can always build your own pro-LGBT tiktok.

It’s not illegal for gay men to hold hands in Alabama either, but you’d be wise to avoid that activity if you went there. That’s why these are guidelines - because the local community is known to be touchy about these things.

There's a critical difference between choosing not to do something, and being prevented by someone else from doing it.

Also, how dare you insinuate that gay people are not part of the local community in Alabama?

I didn’t insinuate that? All I said was that a gay couple might not want to hold hands in public in Alabama. Wikipedia has my back: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Alabama

The article is reporting Tiktok voluntarily taking responsibility for pushing for social change in a country, by banning content that is appearing in that country.

you're right this is a China issue.

This isn't a problem at all.