As far as I know, tiktok's services are deployed on Oracle servers in the United States and are subject to supervision. It was banned just because it comes from China. Look how many times the CEO of Singapore was questioned if he is Chinese. Maybe the Congressman thinks Singapore is also a part of China.
74% of Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese. The Congressman's questions are not unreasonable in questioning if the CEO has some ties with mainland China.
I read both Chinese and English, and I read both the opinions of within GFW and without. If anything, I've critically analyzed every idea from both sides. I can't fathom the hubris of someone who has ever lived on one side yet believes his truth is the ultimate truth and anyone disagreeing must not be thinking critically.
It's ignoring international laws with neighbors, instead of using weapons, it's using water cannons against fishers and Philippines coast guard.
China is a "friend without limits" of Russia, who started a war on European soil lately.
I think it's safe to say that the west is decoupling from China.
It has nothing to do with "freedom of speech", most voters agree with that decoupling.
I have never heard of a pro China argument before from a politician party and it seems that most democracies nearby China think the same, even with the BRI initiative.
( Note: I'm not from the US)
My deeply held belief is that we should allow speech from even the most hostile foreign countries. Do you know that every administration of China, starting from Qing Dynasty, resisted the idea of freedom and democracy by painting them as plots of foreign governments to destabilize China?
I am being called a sock puppet of China here, and I have been accused of being agents of US propaganda in China. That is how the future holds. Every thought deviating from mainstream is labelled as propaganda from a foreign government, ergo not subject to the protections of freedom of speech.
The tracking/propaganda dangers of TikTok are unrelated to freedom of speech, as banning TikTok doesn't affect freedom of speech.
People can spread their opinion on any other app.
Note : I'm responding and sharing my opinion for the following you mentioned:
> The China's own social media is full of posts ridiculing people like me who have believed in the American ideology, espoused the virtues of freedom of speech and rallied against the GFW. They call us naive and credulous. And I can't refute them.
The real reason you can't "espouse the virtues of freedom of speech in China" is because they will arrest you. Let's not mince words here. The Chinese government would shoot their citizens before they would let them protest or speak their mind freely.
After those happened, they still think that the government intervention of speech is a good idea. The only problem is that a small group of officials not handling the regulating power correctly. But if they were to adopt the American model, how could they be protected from the evil influence of foreign adversaries? You know, like me, an agent of US propaganda. Or Tencent, whose major shareholders are actually not Chinese.
I really can't maintain a straight face hearing Americans repeating that same argument.
I just don't see how this law will affect your ability to converse with others on Chinese social media.
This is very different from the GFW, and many orders of magnitude less restrictive.
This issue isn't about speech and censorship, but media ownership. These rules has always been in place in many Western countries precisely because of the impact it has on society (even beyond geopolitics).
That's true, but when I had a hard time convincing them when the US were the *perfect* model of no speech restrictions, it's much harder when US is just less restrictive. They will just dismiss such difference in quantity as cultural difference, rather than different principles when China and US had qualitative differences.
This is what most people don't know, that TikTok itself is banned in China.
Freedom of speech applies to humans living within US borders not to entities controlled by a foreign government.
(Unless China is within US borders, freedom of speech argument doesn't stand).
We want freedom of speech because we can never know that our opinions are the ultimate Truth, so we need to ensure that everyone can speak their mind, and so can the real Truth be propagated and preserved. And that everyone includes foreigners and foreign governments.
Every time China's governments (including the past ones, like the Qing Dynasty) rejects the idea of freedom and democracy, it demonizes them by painting them as plots of foreign governments trying to overthrow and destablize China. So you can see why I am so wary of the argument that it is OK to silence the words if those come from a foreign government.
Smart philosophers have studied this. You may not like the answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
> we can never know that our opinions are the ultimate Truth
Oh yeah, but we can easily spot propaganda/bias from CCP from miles away.
For the principle of freedom of speech to survive, it can never be absolute.
The same way how the Chinese people can smell the propaganda of capitalist reactionaries.
I'm being sarcastic. You share the same school of thought with CCP.
Also, TikTok has never intolerant. CCP is quite intolerant of its own people's views, but it strictly segregates TikTok and Douyin to avoid trampling on the toes of non-Chinese. Therefore the argument of "tolerance of intolerance" isn't applicable.
Plus, freedom of speech is about protecting American Citizens from being censored by American Government. Banning an ungovernable, foreign owned business does not stop you from freely expressing yourself on the internet.
Your education was not a lie, but you should still get a refund on your failed education. You clearly did not learn to think critically.