A society's strength comes from its unity of will and resolve. Social media can be used to attack that unity... and has, not just by China.
So just like the other platforms, but for China instead of the US? (aka: "It's bad when you do it, not when we do it").
All social media with attention management may be weaponized and has generally proven to be unhealthy for society. TikTok happens to be actively worse for a number of reasons, one of them being that it is designed to be so.
If Xi wants to show you ponies, you'll see them all over tiktok tomorow.
One exmaple of many. If Biden doesn't want you seeing something, the white house will put pressure on social media companies to censor it.
Also: The 5th Circuit panel found that the White House coerced the platforms through “intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences” and commandeered the decision-making processes of social media companies, particularly in handling pandemic-related and 2020 election posts.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/09/08/biden-adminis...
To say they were free to refuse is disingeneous.
If a cartel member comes up to you and tells you to give him your wallet or there might be "consequences", do you think you are free to refuse him?
However, this is contrary to China, who has never really pressured any Chinese organization to do anything. This is because they don't need to use pressure. They can just do it. Because there is no concept of "private organization" in China. The state has all the power.
It's so tellingly naive when people try to equivocate the US to China.
About one half (!) of all UNGA emergency special sessions are about its conflicts, for crying out loud. :) This nothingcountry of <10 million people entertains the whole UN for the last 80 years or so almost constantly.
The world has grown by 4 billion people during that time, lol. Most of that time social media did not even exist.
The level of direct control the US Government has over US Social Media platforms pales in comparison to the control China has over TikTok.
This has to be substantiated, because it seems blatantly absurd on its face. Are you saying TikTok is an anti-western platform? That, in and of itself, justifies the divestment, considering the owner, no? Furthermore, what "pro-western" platforms are you talking about? I haven't seen anything from TikTok that wouldn't fly on discord or reddit, for example.
You only need to compare TikTok to it's US rival Reels. A majority of the pro-palestine is suppressed on Reels. The loss of TikTok is the destruction of Americans to access content that isn't filtered through US hegemony.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
Meta's arcane moderation decisions apply to other platforms than their own? Go to reddit, to youtube, or to twitter, and you can find the most vile, unfiltered opinions on Israel and Palestine known to man.
Americans aren't missing out on any content at all. The only thing that will be destroyed is China's fast lane to American eyes.
My feed is repeatedly missing these things. And then i have to manually revisit them. It starts up again. And then ceases.
So far, China doesn’t control the feed algo. They control what content is uploaded. Imagine putting work into a video yet it never seeing the light because it was shadow banned. Now imagine it not allowed to be seen. The former is the western world. The latter is china.
That said, my point isn't that "I can't watch pro-palestine content". TikTok presents the first major news platform used by Americans that wasn't created for Americans. For all the whining about how $social_media_platform doesn't offer diverse view points, that goes out the window when the owner isn't American.
I don't believe that China is better than America. I personally don't think it's a good thing that the US can just decide ban any content platform that isn't controlled by a US interest. I don't think it's good for the country and I think the security issues are overblown - any realistic security issue you can have with foreign interference, Meta has already committed and any legislation that does not address this just means the legislation doesn't really give a shit about security.
I don't think any Chinese viewpoint is inherently good, but the fact that millions of Americans cannot view content from a diversity of platforms is a problem.
[1]:https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
As I have mentioned above and in other replies. Meta platforms has quietly introduced a filter for certain political topics that was pushed to their user base with no notification.
[2]:https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/meta-limit-some-fa...
This is bigger than China for a lot of people. TikTok has given an alternative voice to groups typically marginalized on pro-Western platforms. We typically see hypocrisy from the West when it comes to Israel and current times are no different. Tiktok has allowed nearly more access to whatever footage is capable of sneaking out of the warzone whereas Meta platforms tend to suppress. (ex: they recently auto-defaulted a restriction on political content without informing their users).