Seems to me it’s only guilty of the same data scraping for marketing purposes that Meta is… maybe even less so as I always found TikToks advertising less gross than Instagrams.
Both suck but TikTok is slightly less suck.
Is it really a security thing or is it a “We are getting pressure from US companies to remove competition” thing?
Your comment makes the most sense to me. Surveillance seems like the bigger issue. Maybe I’m naive, but censorship and State propaganda seems to give the US government too much credit. US politicians can’t even protect their own constituents from systems that spread misinformation. The best they can do is exploit those systems to get elected. People can call that propaganda, but it gives me a coordinated central-power vibe and seems to miss a more obvious, individualistic, self-interested, capitalistic framing.
The ban is probably because politicians only want American companies exploiting American data for American profit. Not for increased tax revenue-- as they never pay their fair share-- but increased donations/lobbyist/campaign financing/perks, etc.
A US company can probably participate and benefit more easily than a Chinese company. Hence why they’re going after tiktok when they should’ve been going after meta, google, amazon, etc this whole time. That’s my 2 cents anyways. I’d be curious what the donations of each company looked like.
I never said anything about state propaganda. The “state” doesn’t spread propaganda directly through social media like it does through mainstream media. US propaganda does exist on these platforms though but it comes from different interest groups, PR firms, etc.
They’re not really trying to because a lot of that comes from in-house and isn’t seen as a threat to the state. Something like ivermectin disinfo isn’t perceived as a threat to the state but too many Luigi memes are. “Protecting US citizens” is not a priority. US censorship regimes on social media however, absolutely do exist but they take the form or cooperation of the business with the state to deprioritize certain content.
Yeah that’s probably the main reason for the ban but that’s not why it’s being given the “national security” excuse. If Temu was actually capable of competing with Amazon in the US then there would absolutely be talks about banning it too and probably come up with other excuses.
Sorry, I mentioned the State as a generalization of other comments, not yours. I agree with what you’re saying about PR and interest groups being the dominant form of US propaganda, and politicians not stopping the spread of misinformation because they’re benefactors. [edit: formatting]
exactly this, a lot of the crystal mom ivermectin flat earth secret chinese training grounds shit juxtaposed with conspiracy theorist as pejorative encourages an ideological years of lead dynamic that contributes to the political incoherence of the average disinterested american which is very much to the benefit of the military-industrial complex. as you said, the only perceived threats in this mind melting discourse are those which accurately point to capital as complicit in the average person’s lack of well-being
That makes sense to me. I’m a little fuzzy on “an ideological years of lead dynamic,” what do you mean by that?
yeah I stream of consciousnessed that but essentially where the greater political sophistication of the italian blocs during the years of lead required the actual physical manifestation of the strategy of tension in the form consistent low-level violence, the american political landscape requires significantly less effort. the state has already successfully neutralized any nascent organization with any promise. now, a constant conflict between largely incoherent parties is waged across media, and any left-wing attempt to point to the material reality of things is easily dismissed either as fantasy or conspiracy respectively by the predominant “sides” of the captured discourse.
Understood. Thank you for the added context. I was not familiar with the “years of lead” phrase. I agree. It does not take a lot of effort to neutralize opposition. You reminded me of the Steve Bannon quote to “…flood the zone [the media] with shit.” Attention algorithms have only accelerated it. It has made it very difficult for Americans to focus on a core issue and organize around it. A new insane thing is pushed out before the previous one can be digested.