> Except we’re talking about a geopolitical rival that now has a lever to influence the minds and opinions via an opaque algorithm and moderation policies.

There are American companies that seem fine with influencing the minds and opinions of users via opaque algorithms and moderation policies (looking at you, Facebook). How does the fact that I'm an American and it's an American company (with a global reach, I might add) benefit me or us as a society?

If you have a problem with companies influencing minds and opinions, the nationality of the company is a really strange demarcation line, no?

I didn’t make any value statements of benefit.

I merely stated that the two aren’t comparable.

One can be used as a tool for subversion of a geopolitical rival, the other sells you things.

The thing is you can’t decouple large companies from their governments, especially not in China. It presents a very easy avenue for spreading propaganda and suppressing dissent

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...

> One can be used as a tool for subversion of a geopolitical rival, the other sells you things.

Facebook doesn’t just “sell you things”, that’s a gross oversimplification of their objective as a social platform. They’ve refused over and over again to police political speech on their platform coming from incumbents. What about that isn’t spreading propaganda?

You’re arguing that FB is just this place to see ads of things to buy when they’re constantly in the news for allowing race-baiting hateful political speech to spread. That’s absolutely comparable to some of what China does.

> The thing is you can’t decouple large companies from their governments, especially not in China.

Funny, I'd say the US is just as bad as china with respect to government having their grimy little laws in large company data. Let's not forget how FISA can sign a warrant for vague national security reasons, and immediately have full access to internal company data, and they can also prevent the company from disclosing anything about it.

But let's not stop there. The Cambridge Analytics problem, and Facebook's ridiculously hesitant response to it, shows that Facebook's data isn't just distributed to governments or even the highest bidder, but literally anybody who waves money in their face.

I would question the implied premise that Facebook does not want to subvert rival nation states (or subvert the United States government itself) to achieve geopolitical aims.

I didn’t read it as implied that Facebook isn’t used to subvert rival nations, I would fully expect it. Subverting rival governments is a part of life. Though I would imagine if Facebook wants to subvert the United States government they would be severely hamstrung.

How would they do that? Push to my stream more content made by the small userbase of young Trump supporters? Have you been on tiktok? Cause that doesn't not end up well for most of them as tiktok is INCREDIBLY woke. This isn't facebook with a bunch of older users reposting lies. If tiktok alienates their young userbase, they have nothing. Not to say that things cant change, but not by november 2020.

Simple, promote divisive content that sows discord with your rival society.

We saw Russia taking advantage of this with Facebook groups. The threat model exists. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/if-r...

Pushing divisive content is what social media does, regardless of owner. But I gotta be honest, the reason I use tiktok is that is does not do this. When I see content I dont like, I skip past it or even mark it as not interested. The algorithm adjusts. If it didnt, tiktok would not be as popular. It is a very happy place to be compared to any other social media app out there.

If it's anything like what Russia was doing on reddit in 2016, most of the activity is actually anti-Trump. They don't really care who wins, they just want the country to be divided and weak.

Yes, but it's video content, not text. So they would need to hire young pretty americans to produce and distribute political content. That is a much higher bar than a fake bot account reposting a link.

If they control the recommendation algorithm, they don't need to make their own posts, they can just recommend existing content that fits the message they want to promote.