1115
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
1115 points (100.0% liked)
Political Memes
5454 readers
2413 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Again, Tiktok ≠ China.
While it can certainly be argued that its ties to the government are problematic, it's not Tiktok banning US platforms.
If Tiktok WAS banning platforms for xenophobic reasons (demonstrating intolerance), banning it for that would be prudent as per the paradox of tolerance linked above.
That isn't the case, though. The US ban is an intolerant and oppressive violation of the freedom of expression of the users of Tiktok and, yes, even the owners.
Even if the oppressive Chinese government has a big influence on the platform, that influence hasn't been proven to cause Tiktok to behave in an intolerant manner, so it's basically a case of declaring guilt by association.
The US government could and SHOULD introduce regulations to minimize the amount of data collection and -sharing that Tiktok, Facebook, Twitter, Google and others currently get away with and then punish all transgressions against those regulations.
AKA regulate and punish bad behavior from anyone doing it, not banning a popular platform guilty only of what congress refuses to try to stop them and others from doing.
Point to where I said TikTok = China lmao
I also never said TikTok is banning U.S. platforms, either…
Yes.
What you DID say was that it's ok to ban Tiktok because of the actions of China, namely the banning of some American platforms. That would only make any kind of legal sense if Tiktok indeed WAS China.
Dude, what?
You claim that banning TikTok would make sense if TikTok was China. How would the U.S. “ban” China if not for banning Chinese private enterprises from U.S. markets?
Since you're slow on the uptake, let me try an equivalent example.
Imagine that a UK-based social media based platform is banned im the US for some reason or the other.
Would that justify the UK banning Google?
The actions of the Chinese government are not the fault or responsibility of Tiktok and as such punishing Tiktok for them is by definition grotesquely unjust.
…Yes? It’s called a trade war, they happen all the time, and that’s exactly what would go down. What else do you expect them to do, nothing? (They usually end when a bilateral free trade agreement is established between the two parties that covers the industries in question.)
Oh no, my poor little $200 billion corporation! I must spend my days fighting for your justice!
Seriously, how do you expect people to react to that? How could anyone possibly give the smallest fuck about a faceless, soulless corporation unless they have a significant stake in it?
I don't give a fuck about Tiktok the corporation. I do, on the other hand, give a fuck about the users of the platform. Especially the ones using it for activism.
I’ve thought about that too, and to be honest, I can’t identify what makes TikTok special in that regard. TikTok’s moderation policies aren’t substantially different from other platforms (except maybe Twitter… fuck Twitter), and I don’t see how it became known as a hub for activists.
In either case, relying on a hyper-capitalist platform that is controlled in no small part by an a authoritarian, imperialist, and hostile foreign government through so-called “golden shares”, was always a bad idea.
Also, since you claim to care about the users rather than the corporation, you should be happy to know that the U.S. isn’t banning TikTok! They’re banning ByteDance from owning it. TikTok will live on.
Demographics. Tiktok has more Gen Z people than the other platforms and Gen Z are just a much better generation than the others at activism. As a left wing anti-authoritarian pacifist elder millenial, I'm frankly in awe about how much ass they're kicking compared to my generation, Gen X and Boomers.
Gen Z goes where other Gen Z are and if we scatter them by letting some xenophobic politicians close down their main platform for activism, we lose a shitload that's much more important than appearing "tough on China" in an election year.
That's just the thing, though: Tiktok activists have invented am enormous glossary of code words and other tricks to get around the censorship and other suppression of the platform.
Anti-authoritarian Tiktok activists are beating the hypercapitalist corporation and the oppressive government and American politicians want to shut them up just as much as they want to score cheap political points by pretending that China is any more of a danger to democracy and free speech than Facebook and Google.
Yeah, they can't do that. They can't just tell an officially private company that hasn't broken any existing laws "you don't own it anymore. Sell it to someone we approve of* or we shut it down"
If any country tried to do that to an American company, they'd be treated like Cuba 2.0.
*read: someone who pays us more in legal bribes