> I worry less about the data and more about how a lot of kids, teens, and young adults get their news from TikTok (and social media in general).

Fox News* is America's most watched television news source. Is this the kind of alternative you are envisioning?

*Also owned by a foreign national

If you're under 40 years of age Fox is "owned" by a US national who's been a citizen longer than you've been alive.

I just find this line of argument incredibly ironic because it is fundamentally an anti-free speech argument in defense of both the US and Musk while making the defense of the Chinese app with strong censorship a pro-free speech position. That doesn’t necessarily make the argument invalid, but it certainly makes it feel a little disingenuous to the general public.

IMO the same argument holds for both Musk/X and the CCP/TikTok: social media networks upon which the US public has become heavily dependent, should not be under the absolute control of some unaccountable person/entity with a strong personal agenda -- this applies to both Musk and the CCP.

If there was a way to force Musk to sell X or ban it, I would support that 100%. But that's unlikely to ever happen especially now with co-President Musk. But in the meantime, either breaking TT free of CCP control, or banning it, would be at least one battle won.

> social media networks upon which the US public has become heavily dependent, should not be under the absolute control of some unaccountable person/entity with a strong personal agenda -- this applies to both Musk and [...]

...Benjamin Franklin? This country was built on mass media being in the hands of "unaccountable" persons with strong personal agendas. Projecting the right of American citizens to own and control media like this is precisely what the First Amendment is for.

Foreign owned media isn't nearly so cut and dry, but trying to act like the first ammendment doesn't cover Elon Musk just because his politics got you bent out of shape is absurd.

controlling the algorithm that promotes or demotes content on a social network is the issue, and 1A does _not_ cover that

and the reason it doesn't is because unlike traditional media -- which by the way is regulated in the US (FCC) -- X, FB and the rest go to great lengths to say that they are _not_ publishers and are _not_ responsible for the content. therefore it's not a 1A issue

Perhaps the privacy and free speech absolutism that prevail among hacker forum commenters are not the values to run a civilization by.

I am a fairly active consumer of TikTok content. It's a huge app with many many different niches that have their own little communities. Mostly, the algorithm has decided that what I need to see is woodworking videos, car videos, and some dad jokes. But there certainly is a very interesting undercurrent of "information". One really interesting wave was when the TikTok ban passed Congress. Suddenly my feed was filled with absolutely random people saying how bad this is and how it just doesn't make sense, etc. Like if you are an influencer on a platform that just got banned, of course you'll have some feelings about it. But interestingly most people who do regularly show up (the woodworkers, car guys, etc.) who do have big followings pretty much didn't talk about it. Even this week when the ban is about to happen, the popular and established accounts that aren't politics-focused are not talking about it. But now there is a new wave of completely random people talking about "how much is the US government freaking out that we are all moving to Red Note?" And at this point I don't trust that all of them are actual humans, let alone humans who haven't been paid, or if they are AI-generated personas meant to really overtly drive people like me to the new app.

My point isn't that there is some grand conspiracy here, just that if you wanted to have outsized influence on people who are there just for entertainment, you could do it and make it look organic. Inception has to be the target's idea and all that.

In a similar vein I see talking heads of people in their kitchens contemplate world issues. Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, life in China: you can get in-depth opinions on all those issues from a hairdresser in Nebraska or a mechanic in Michigan, and they all will present them well enough. So I think there is something there.

But the clear damn solution is to pass laws that prohibit a bunch of this stuff across the board. The fact that Instagram Reels can do exactly what TikTok is doing but with ties to a different world power makes this ban seem shameless. Ban them all. Or none. Or regulate them like they should be regulated. But don't pretend like this security theater is somehow going to fix anything meaningful.

A sibling of mine who gets a significant portion of their income through their Tiktok following confessed to me recently that they completely understand why they are shutting it down.

Apparently influencers get a lot of unsolicited pressure to take stances on things like Palestine even if they're just a crafting influencer.

Unsolicited pressure from whom and what form does it take?

Other accounts on the app. Mostly comments from my understanding.

i.e. peer pressure that exists absolutely everywhere and is in no way exclusive to TikTok.

They don’t get this kind of pressure on YouTube or IG.

So what are you actually claiming here? Do you think these comments are coming from fake accounts?

There is an undercurrent of opinion on the platform that happens to align with Chinese worldviews that is strong enough to make politically neutral (or at least abstaining) influencers on the platform uncomfortable.

It really feels like you are repeatedly trying to imply something nefarious without actually making any accusations of nefarious behavior. All you have really said here is that some of the people who use the platform don't have the right opinion and therefore it is understandable to ban the app. That seems like an incredibly hypocritical argument to make in defense of the actions of the American government.

I'm not sure how you arrived at that interpretation of my comment but it does seem to be the one you were trying to goad out of me with your responses so you could reply with this.

>I'm not sure how you arrived at that interpretation of my comment but it does seem to be the one you were trying to goad out of me with your responses so you could reply with this.

What a weird comment. I goaded an interpretation out of you? I was just trying to get at why you seemingly think TikTok is different than any other social network and your response was that "There is an undercurrent of opinion on the platform that happens to align with Chinese worldviews". But I guess the bad faith alarm has already been triggered so not much point continuing from here.

After the Holocaust, some wondered "whether there can be poetry after Auschwitz", and here we are being told that condemning genocide -- and being uncomfortable with people who fail to do so -- is a "Chinese worldview".