As opposed to the domestic government controlling the algorithm that decides what millions of people see, and their ability to shape public opinion through that.
If you live in a democracy you have a vote and a voice to bring to the table. It’s wild to me that on this topic people seem to see their own governments as largely equivalent to an outwardly adversarial if not explicitly hostile foreign power.
I think it has been so long since the Pax-Americana West has dealt with an overtly hostile major power that we’ve collectively lost the concept that there can be real enemies with goals that run explicitly counter to our own.
"It’s wild to me that on this topic people seem to see their own governments as largely equivalent to an outwardly adversarial if not explicitly hostile foreign power".
Because governments are adversarial to their general population in many cases. People live in reality, not in imagination land where the salt-of-the-earth type of people's voices are at all considered.
It is a frustrating and often ineffectual system, but I simply cannot disagree more that I, as an American citizen, have equivalent powerlessness over the American government as I do over the Chinese government. There is a clear and storied history of people who cared about issues making real change to the American government and the lives of their fellow citizens. There are plenty of terrible things this country has done as well, but I’m not ready to give up on it yet and assume the Chinese government is equivalent.
Support for Israel reflects the broad support in the American public. You'll find that elected officials generally reflect the opinions of those that voted for them. They likely disagree with your opinions and think Israel is right to use force to defend itself against the aggression of its enemies.
That said these sorts of issues were way down the list in these elections and people have to compromise on some issues and vote on the aggregate. I do think that it's pretty clear the Republicans were and are a lot more understanding and publicly supportive of Israel vs. the Democrats. They didn't try to do a "both sides here" but clearly communicated who they consider to be the aggressor and who they consider to be defending themselves. That doesn't mean that every single republican voter feels that way but a lot of them do.
The US also supported and brokered quite a few peace initiatives in the middle east. It's not fair to say it only acts to support wars.
> You'll find that elected officials generally reflect the opinions of those that voted for them.
If you look into the data, you'll generally find that they don't.
"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."
This doesn't exactly contradict what I was saying. Just because elected officials hold similar opinions doesn't mean economic interests can't impact their policy decisions. Also in terms of methodology, skimming through the paper, the author uses "national survey of the general public" but my claim is whether a given official reflects the will of their voters - which is not the same thing. He does also look at what "affluent" people think as some sort of proxy for the power of money. Maybe there's something there.
I think it's an interesting area of research. However on many fundamental issues, let's say illegal immigration, foreign policy, or abortions, it's not immediately obvious that business interests hold power most of the time. If that was true then it really wouldn't matter if you have democrats or republicans in power but you see definite shift in policy when that happens.
It only serves to support wars, and most of the American public has historically been fine with it as long as the conflicts aren't on their own soil. However, they can no longer have that sense of security under Trump.
> For example, a vote for anyone is always a vote Israel and Israel's apartheid and wars.
This is provably false. The Green Party explicitly ran on support for Palestine and voters in parts of Michigan voted for the party in decently large numbers to split the Democrat vote.
Not enough voters saw the issue as big enough to switch their votes on a national scale but that’s not a failure of lack of choice, the people spoke with their votes that they don’t care about Israel and Palestine nearly as much as other issues.
I have plenty of beef with the American political system, but a loud group of motivated Americans absolutely has the ability to influence government decisions. If you, a citizen, decided you really cared about something, and gathered your like-minded fellow citizens to amplify your voice, you have a real chance at making an impact. That cannot be said in any way, shape, or form for a foreign power.
Lots of things change in China because people make a big stink about it. Probably the most notable are the lockdown protests, but there are countless examples of someone complaining about bad local governance and the national government coming in to fix it.
Chinese social media is pretty vibrant with the exception that you can’t agitate for the fall of the government.
> Chinese social media is pretty vibrant with the exception that you can’t agitate for the fall of the government.
Just because one criticizes or expresses anger at the central government does not mean that they want to induce mobs that will topple it like in Ukraine. I sincerely doubt China's future history books will talk about the Pooh Bear mobs that brought down Xi's government. More likely to complain about housing or jobs.
But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the possibility that Americans can change the policies and actions of the US government, vs. the possibility that Americans can change the policies and actions of the Chinese government. (Chinese citizens' ability to change the policies and actions of the Chinese government is irrelevant.)
The fact of the matter is that Americans do have the ability to change the policies and actions of the US government. It's hard to do, requires collective action, and can fail, but it's possible, and there are quite a few example of it happening.
No American can do anything at all, ever, about whatever the Chinese government has decided to do.
That makes sense for Chinese citizens, but I was talking as a foreign citizen, since we were discussing the differences between having your own government vs a foreign government involved in what content you see.
Making a whole generation unfit for qualified work is a serious threat for every nation.
Many of the Tiktok generation live in a world where reading for 3 minutes is a heavy effort they are unwilling to do. All information is supposed to be presented in short entertaining video clips.
In China online time for the youth has been strictly regulated years ago. But harming other nations is only in their interest.
The clearest way to look at this is through the lens of Althusser's Ideological State Apparatus(ISK). Media is one of the arms of the ISK. It's not necessarily that TikTok is foreign owned, it's that China's dominant ideology is incompatible with the western hegemony. The western ISK sees alternative ideologies as a threat and control over the arm of mass media is a concrete form of that threat. The ISK must have control over dominant forms of media in order to maintain ideological hegemony.
Actually, there is a lot more. About 30% people (of USA) use TT, ~60% under 30. You guess it, they don't to look only at dance videos. Social media had become a huge source of information for a big chunk of the population.
On TT, and on most social media (SM), what you watch is mainly determined by the recommendation algorithm. This algo can hide subjects the SM can't put ad on but also subjects the they don't like and boost the one they do (shadow ban). That how you politicize SM. That about, the first thing Musk did with Twitter (after firing people).
When it's a state controlled SM, it's more like foreign interference. There is a lot of books about that. It's documented, not a secret of something. Uyghurs for example, have been a subject of ban on TikTok, shadowing it heavily.
But it's not foreign interference, it's foreign media. Foreign media is permissible for Americans to choose to consume and guess what, young people lap it up. That's their right
It could have been if ByteDance wasn't totally state controlled. Also, since TikTok is banned on China, it's not like it exists in China as a media (the Chinese version is called Douyin and basically it's the same as TikTok but with contents from within China only, to not interfere with the Great Firewall).
Also, the concept of "choose to consume" is blurring with algorithm recommendation and optimizing dopamine reward to maximize screen time.
The CCP didn't control of ByteDance to interference with other countries but to be able to control what happens inside China. But now, it's different.
But none of that changes the fact that Americans have the right to consume foreign controlled media. Totally state controlled media is legal to consume and spread and even become super popular in the US. I really dislike the idea that if some content is popular in the US and the government thinks the content is bad, they can just ban it. "Algorithmic manipulation" is a red herring. If people like it, they can watch it. If they don't they don't have to. Doesn't matter who makes it or for what reason
I think I understand your point. Actually, it's a good point.I may have missed it before.
Nobody said that consuming foreign controlled media is prohibited. And banning TT isn't about that. It's about Foreigner Interference.
You said that it's foreigner media not interference. The difference is that media are verifiable and can be checked by anybody and everybody has the same information. That is not the case for social media.
The problem is for another country to be able to do mass manipulation. Like the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica manipulation scandal, where they push some "ideas" to a very specific population because the data they collected show that you will act or think in a certain way. Since when you consume media you don't know they do it AND nobody can prove they do it, it's now manipulative and so interference (can also be done over a long period, such as several months or years, to gradually modify your point of view and be less detectable).
If there was a message saying “We recommend this video because we think you'll react like XXX”, I might consider that ethical (there are other problems too, but that's a theoretical example).
You might say that people in the US (or any other country) still have the right to consume foreign-controlled social media because they know they can be manipulated. Even if I agree, I think it's normal that the state make it difficult to do so. I won't blame people who use opium but I will definitively blame the USA people (or state from any country, here it's USA) for facilitating opium use.
You might say also that the manipulation can be from within the USA (like with Cambridge Analytica), it's true. That is definitively a good point. And to defend the ban of TT, I will say that I don't have a perfect solution. I don't like the ban of TT either, but it was necessary because of the risk of mass manipulation. We have to come up with a better solution (that we don't have now). Because it may happen soon on X or Youtube and we can't ban every social media we suspect will do mass manipulation on the sly.
I hope you get my point because I think that is necessary for us to do so to come up with a better solution. One that will integrate your POV because it's entirely justifiable.
> The difference is that media are verifiable and can be checked by anybody and everybody has the same information. That is not the case for social media.
They can both be checked by everyone and verified. Just like any kind of social media, even Tweets that get quickly deleted by the creators, they still persist online and get analyzed and debated. Traditional media can also take down articles and videos quickly. I don't see the difference, and don't believe there is a legal difference.
> where they push some "ideas" to a very specific population because the data they collected show that you will act or think in a certain way
This is allowed, and attempts by the government to disallow it are against free speech. If a country has several state owned TV channels with differing views, and it advertises them online selectively using a platform like Facebook which connects the different channels to different likely to click audiences, and it's doing so with malicious intent, then thats basically another form of what you call "interference" but it's Americans' right to consume whatever media they want however they came across it.
Again, the intent of the publishers does not matter. The intent of the editors does not matter. Once we agree the government can ban media platforms because of what they push, free speech is seriously eroded.
> gradually modify your point of view and be less detectable
The trick is that you are saying "modify ones point of view" and pretending that it isn't the right of an American to form whatever view they want from whatever content they want. All content is designed to modify your view. Adding new information to your life will modify your view of the world. You are just using a feature of content to argue it should be banned.
> I think it's normal that the state make it difficult to do so. I won't blame people who use opium but I will definitively blame the USA people (or state from any country, here it's USA) for facilitating opium use
But content is not opium, and free speech is sacrosanct because it is the only lever to allow a free society. When you restrict content because you disapprove of the speaker or the message, you create a world where free speech dies. Banning opium doesn't have those consequences.
> I hope you get my point because I think that is necessary for us to do so to come up with a better solution.
I get your point, but I am fundamentally against anything whose goal is to avoid "mass manipulation" that is essentially saying we should ban things that get popular which we don't like. And that's not for the government to decide for me or anyone else. Thanks for hearing me out though. I appreciate that
> They can both be checked by everyone and verified.
No, that not what I mean. What you can't check is that they push something to someone specifically to make that person react in a certain way. That is not verifiable.
Regardless of whether the content is true or false (that doesn't matter actually, or should I say it's less important whether it's true or not, obviously fake news are a problem but less important than that).
> Adding new information to your life will modify your view of the world.
Yes. And you should be able to choose what you add to your life, what you watch freely.
Not a recommended algorithm that nobody understand how it works.
> You are just using a feature of content to argue it should be banned.
I'm sorry ? I don't understand what you are saying here. I read it many times, but I just don't understand what you mean.
> But content is not opium
It's debatable. Nearly 100% of TikTok traffic is recommended (it's an estimation) and as or some years ago(2015 ?), about 70% of Youtube was recommended (given by youtube). That mean people do not expressly choose what they watch and particularly, most of the traffic is compulsive. But it's debatable, you are right "content is not opium" but sometime it's consumed as if it were so how to deal with it ?
> and free speech is sacrosanct
Once again, yes. It's not about the content that is on TikTok, sorry if didn't make it clear. It's not about free speech. You can still say what ever you want. It's again too much power of TikTok.
> I am fundamentally against anything whose goal is to avoid "mass manipulation" that is essentially saying we should ban things that get popular which we don't like
That absolutely NOT my point. Effectively, my point promote to be against "mass manipulation" but absolutely not "we should ban things that get popular which we don't like". Remember that I also regret the ban. I think it was justified but I don't think it's a solution.
As a French, I learn early in life « Je ne suis pas d’accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai jusqu’au bout pour que vous puissiez le dire. ». Which can be translated "I don't agree with what you say, but I'll fight for you to be able to say it.".
We both agree on that and as I learned, our definitions of free speech are slightly different but the differences are not relevant here I think.
For example and to finish, a "not so good solution" but something that could have been done to not ban TT is to switch the recommendation algorithm to the one of (the old) Twitter (or the current one of Mastodon), where people could have followers and tweets were shown on a timeline from they followers.
Now, I will again take twitter as example. The fact that Twitter (the new one, X) have an Open-source recommendation algorithm make it not ban-able for example.
Not really, twitter/the-algorithm isn't up-to-date and the models must be shared along with the source code but it's an example. What I say is twitter doesn't have a lot to do to make it any ban unjustified, If someone say "there is too much power from the platform (twitter) and there is manipulation from it", Twitter just have to update the source code (and the models) and it's verifiable (with hard work, but not impossible). That the algorithm is biased is not the point, you have the right to consult media you know the algorithm is biased. The point is that the algorithm must be verifiable.
Thank you for the debate. If I don't respond quickly enough, please send me an e-mail at "ache-hn at ache.one".
For example, islamistic propaganda. It's a serious problem, at least here in Europe. You literally see 10-year-olds watching videos of beheadings in the subway.
Oh, and I wouldn't say that FB is much better. The EU should probably ban both.
TikTok is packed full of political propaganda. Controlling which narratives people think are popular is super powerful. It’s called manufacturing consent.
'Government' can't care. It's just an agreed upon idea, not a thing with feelings. It is a form of anthropomorphising to say it cares. 'Government' is the idea of a structure that many people believe and act as if it is true. This belief and consequent effort by so many allows it to take a material expression in our lives. Like a group of software engineers might envisage a game or solution, so for government - except way more people are involved. Neither government nor software cares though - they're not that type.
Well, yeah actually. If anyone is going to control it, it's best to be us controlling our own messaging.
As a citizen of a country, as much as I would love to believe in free exchange of information, it's better to limit what enemies are able to broadcast directly to our phones. that's a commons with a lot of tragedies in it.
This sounds good in theory but as a Canadian I often wonder how much our government's actions are on behalf of us the people as opposed to well financed or politically powerful special interests. It looks to me like many Canadians other are wondering that as well.
However, that said, I do agree with your broader point. I'm suspicious of Tik Tok and the Chinese government's intentions and I think banning it was a good move.
I am afraid that banning tiktok would make facebook a monopoly in this area.
And facebook has a long story of disregarding privacy, mental health and rights of their users.
Facebook/youtube imposes enough censorship, more than any democratic government can possibly ask for, without looking too weird to the voters. So, gov does not see the reason to regulate, if platforms already proactively implemented all their most wild dreams.
From a Canadian perspective, the CBC should have a social media equivalent that is publicly run, and all social media companies should be regulated under the CRTC
My gut reaction, also as a Canadian, is quite negative to this idea. Are you interested in expanding on the idea? I'm always looking for new perspectives and to understand how my fellow Canadians are looking at issues like this.
If you're pro C-11, you really don't realize how bad this would be to give the government to determine what is "hate speech" and command companies to take it down.
