At its core free speech is about the freedom from government influence and the complaint is about government influence.

It’s one thing to allow the CCP to say whatever it wants, it’s something else to allow them the ability to manipulate of what other people can say. Allowing such a highly restricted platform seems like it hurts free speech more than it helps.

> https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/24/shadowbanning-...

Maybe you disagree with the viewpoint or message, but it seems awfully paternal for such wide spread censorship.

This is why we can't trust only the US to provide us our social media and even if we don't like who is offering it.

TikTok also has an enormous shadowbanning problem so your complaint here is moot.

>Allowing such a highly restricted platform

Tiktok was and still is banned in China by the way.

Yea it’s banned in India, Afghanistan, China and a few others. It’s kind of an odd list, including democracies and autocratic governments.

It's not a highly restricted platform at all, there were literally videos of translated Hitler speeches trending with hundreds of thousands of likes, even though the CCP absolutely hates western nationalism.

This is the platform that led to the proliferation of newspeak terms like "unalive" to circumvent content restrictions. Such speech restrictions were never a thing on FB, IG, X, or YT, yet this form of self-censorship has spread to those platforms anyway, because TikTok users have become so used to it.

While there aren't direct speech restrictions in platforms like YouTube, you're leaving out the crucial detail that mentioning words like "suicide" gets your video demonetized, which directly causes similar self-censorship.

YouTube pays creators based on advertising deals making some topics far more valuable, while other topics have become very sensitive to advertisers. That’s related, but different from censorship.

Creators are still free to use YouTube as a platform to discuss sensitive topics with a very large audience without paying per viewer, unlike say advertising or standing at a street corner talking to passersby. As such YouTube is still supporting the discussion and distribution of said content.

Sure! Yet creators choose to censor themselves in similar ways to keep ad revenue coming in.

Restrictions become more effective when they are less obvious.

When as has been demonstrated their algorithm ignores the number of upvotes in favor of massively promoting viewpoints it cares about, that’s also vast suppression of opposing viewpoints but in a way o get creators to quietly comply rather than try and push the boundaries.

China probably doesn't care about Hitler. How about Tiananmen Square? Do you see a lot of trending coverage on Hong Kong protests?

Here is a list on what restrictions Chinese citizens live with

- Workers in state sectors can be banned from traveling out of China https://www.scmp.com/news/article/3265503/chinas-expanding-t.... Also, non 1st tier city citizens can have a hard time getting passports, essentially a ban of travelling

- banned from using trains or airline if they are on the social credit score ban

- banned from moving money out of China for more than $50k a year

- banned from accessing foreign websites. VPN is technically illegal, and using it can get you into trouble

- banned from accessing porn

- banned from using a long list of restricted words on social media, from Winnie the Pooh, to "support Xinjiang people"

- banned from using TikTok

- banned from protesting against lost wages from state enterprises

- banned from group protesting

the list goes on and on and on

Ok, that’s their country what does it have to do with us? Also why do we do this:

> https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/24/shadowbanning-...

This is why it’s good to have a social media company free of US control.

> Ok, that’s their country what does it have to do with us?

I mean, nothing really. You could say the same about Israel and Palestine, or Saudi Arabia and Iran, or China and Hong Kong. Human rights abuses are perfectly acceptable in today's society, as long as they're out of sight and out of mind. He who controls visibility into human suffering controls the way people perceive his control. Hasbara, in Israeli vernacular.

> Also why do we do this:

Because Zionist lobbying exerts disproportionate control over both the US tech industry and the legislative apparatus regulating it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws

You're not going to drive a wedge between people by repeating the Israel stance, though. If you tried to expose China's same abuses for working slave labor to death or suicide, you'd be suppressed in exactly the same way America suppresses your anti-Israel content. From a national security perspective, TikTok's existence is about whether another country can impose their own double-standard on top of America's own populist opinion. Today it's the war in Gaza, but tomorrow it will be about suppressing democracy in Taiwan for the "betterment of global peace" et. al. You can't deny China's plans to use TikTok for war with a straight face - by many accounts it's already started.

Yes it's great to have chinese companies on american soil that prevent people from saying "taiwan number one" in games like marvel rivals.

So much freedom!!!!

Do you hear yourself? Are you insane?

With or without Tiktok, the USA is nowhere near as restrictive as the CCP. The users who tried RedNote discovered that very quickly.

People trying to act like this Chinese controlled vehicle supports free speech is so weird to me. They're not "censoring" anything - they're using it as a straight unimpeded funnel to subvert the west.

> they're using it as a straight unimpeded funnel to subvert the west.

And Fox News is also a foreign-owned straight unimpeded funnel used to subvert democracy, which sows division and conflict in our society.

It's done orders of magnitude more harm to it than TikTok ever has.

When are we banning it?

Rupert Murdoch got US citizenship because of foreign ownership rules. From his wiki page:

> On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.

I am pretty sure a Chinese-American owner would be considered Chinese for the conversation about foreign control over TikTok.

China doesn’t allow for or recognize dual citizenship, so it doesn’t matter unless they also gave up their Chinese citizenship (rumor has it the CPC relaxed this rule for a certain snowboarder). But ya, that Murdoch is also Australian is probably benign.

Nothing about Murdoch's politics is benign. They've done more damage to democracy worldwide, but particularly in the US, than China ever will.

Speaking of hostile foreigners, a prominent South African was just giving the crowd a few Nazi salutes at the inauguration. Is that also benign? At what exact point do we start observing that the enemies to democracy are inside the house?

Ok, Murdoch’s Australian citizenship would be seen as benign, unless you are going to tell me that Australians are as dangerous as Murdoch in general?

They are about as dangerous as Chinese Americans, which is to say, not at all.

Particular people are problematic. But you can only judge that by actions, not by their country of birth.

Which is what makes this foreign manipulation rhetoric and ban rubbish. It refuses to identify what the bad actions it's trying to protect us from are, it's just a lazy, prejudiced rubric that gives the most egregious ones a free pass, because they have the right color stripes on their pin.

I already mentioned that dual citizenship isn’t possible for Chinese. There is no person over 18 that holds Chinese and American citizenship, but you keep somehow ignoring that. Any Chinese can get American citizenship, get rid of Chinese citizenship, and buy a tv station in the states, the process is straightforward, and they won’t deny you because your ethnicity is Han or Hui or whatever.

I doubt China's unwillingness to recognize dual citizenship would be the problem.

The US does not need to showcase anything, they are magnitudes more free in speech than mainland China. To suggest otherwise is strange.

Or it’s a chance to be “fair”

The United States used to claim we had a laissez-faire market. We don't claim that anymore.

In founding of the United States lies tariff stories. The United States does not reject government and nations as entities at all. It just asserts rights for its citizens which doesn't include everyone on the planet.

What defence remains against an autocratic government who will use that very freedom as an attack vector for their nefarious goals.