Authoritarians have been relentlessly strengthening their fists as technology (dogs) gets increasingly good at herding the masses (sheeps).
And with all surveillance tech they still fear the masses. During the very rigid covid lockdowns in China people started to become more actively frustrated, prompting Xi to finally reverse his policies.
But the biggest threat to dictatorships is their own organization, as power transfer is often chaotic and violent. The workings of those states are best compared to maffia power dynamics.
Here's a video about the differences:
TikTok in China versus the United States | 60 Minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j0xzuh-6rY
Douyin is much healthier. Chinese children cannot use Douyin for more than 40 min a day, and it promotes positive content like science experiments you can do at home.
American kids can use TikTok as much as they want, and so are addicted. I don't use it, but I'm almost certain it doesn't just show prosocial educational content to kids, but mostly mindless entertainment and influencer ads.
The result is the most popular career Chinese kids saw they want to grow up to be astronauts, but American kids want to be social media influences.
Moreover, this is always a speculative argument. There is no direct evidence I'm aware of that TikTok’s content is directly controlled by the CCP. If you can’t prove it with a paper trail, you basically have carte blanche to censor software from any country you happen to dislike.
Freedom of communication is freedom to express oneself for individual humans. It is not the right for a totalitarian state to promote itself and weaken democracies.
TikTok works completely different in China vs other countries. Outside of China we have to deal with a highly addictive algo that promotes content of extreme right nuts, anti-vaccination hustlers, and content that over paints any negative information about China.
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Totalitarian states fear their constituents, as they could rise to take their destiny in their own hands. A rule based order and the existence of successful democracies are always a threat to any dictator circle, because their iron fist is fragile.