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Senate passes TikTok ban bill, sending it to Biden, who has already committed to signing it
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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Cool, now let's ban Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and every single social media platform that does the same exact thing as TikTok. I have never used TikTok, but this is fucking bullshit. Facebook literally ruined elections and lives around the world.
Only the US is allowed to ruin elections.
Technically true of any country: only China is allowed to influence CCP elections, only Russia is allowed to fix Russian elections, only the US is allowed to ruin US elections...
They still try to influence each other's ones, but they aren't openly "allowed" to...
Eh, I'll take what I can get. The CCP is a far, far worse influence than the US, their global influence should definitely be restricted wherever possible until the regime changes.
Anyone who has problems with US geopolitical behavior should easily be able to recognize the CCP as a path to an even darker fascist future for humanity.
I like how you pretend people weren't sharing their experiences and politics on the million other forms of social media that exist before TikTok. As if everyone was in the dark ages. I've seen all the ugly things happening in the US and I don't use chinese spyware.
China is not just a "boogie man", it's literally a technofascist state that tightly controls all information coming into, out of and circulating within its country. It disappears a million Uyghurs into hundreds of concentration camps and its own population is literally the only one on earth that doesn't realize its happened. The brutalization of peaceful Hong Kong protestors was broadcast around the world and yet mainland chinese still think it was some violent uprising. People there don't even know the truth about Tinanmen or Tibet.
But somehow that's all a gap in your knowledge of the world...hmmm, weird must just be a coincidence that the dude who gets all his info from TikTok doesn't understand that China has the most developed censorship and social engineering apparatus on the planet...surely they suddenly give all that up when operating TikTok in the west.
And it can take a far more dangerous and intractable form in one place compared to another.
You are vastly, vastly understating the degree of fascist control in China, you'd have to in order to try and even begin to try and compare the US and China. You may as well try to claim that downloading Russian spyware gives you better info on the US affairs because they're our adversary as well so they must be a better source of information than anything in the US, it makes no sense.
China has a pointed interest in deceiving you, they do not have any interest in ensuring you have accurate information about the US and its history, you're foolish to believe that they would.
There is no true information about the US on TikTok that is not available to me outside of China's information ecosystem. Yes, you're not going to get reliable information from corporate media or far-right outlets, but that has not stopped me from learning about the black spots in American history. In fact I was taught many of those black spots in American schools. Go ask a person in China what actually happened in Tienanmen or in Hong Kong, or Tibet or what is happening to the Uyghurs as we speak.
Here's the difference that you are keen to ignore; The US information ecosystem is not a monolith. It's why I can go and find sources that are reporting accurately about events in Palentine, or the protests on Columbia campuses. It's why I learned about the Trail of Tears, the Tulsa Massacre, or The Battle of Blair Mountain in school, why I can find that kind of information freely on the Internet. There are many independent media and journalism outlets that, if I practice some basic media literacy, are not difficult to find.
By contrast, the Chinese information ecosystem is a monolith, by design. It is built so that the state has control over all information and can censor at will. They are far ahead of the US in this regard, and when you carry water for the CCP by equating them to the US, claiming they're better or "just as bad" you are pushing us further into fascism, not out of it.
Uh huh, no shit and eugenics was essentially born in the US. All information I learned here in the US.
History doesn't change the fact that China still represents the next step towards a higher, more all-encompassing form of fascism and that your apologetics only further humanity's movement in that direction by normalizing it.
China not having the geopolitical power to act on all of their worst inclinations does not mean those inclinations don't exist.
Except that I did learn about that in high school.
I think it is deeply unwise to take that to heart.
I grew up deep in the American Midwest, surrounded by Evangelical-leaning Christian fundamentalism. Out there, committing one sin was considered as bad as committing a hundred (see also: Matt 5, James 2:10). They dropped the whole "lesser of two evils" thing, and you know what happened? They treated gays the same way they treated murderers, because the two sins were equally easy to condemn. They put rapists in pulpits because in their eyes, molesting a child was just as easy to forgive as ogling an adult.
When you tell people to reject nuance in ethics, that there is no "greater evil," you remove 90% of their moral compass. They become pliable and easily manipulated by whoever can seize power or respect (see also: Trump).
Every person has flaws, and every system, government, or ideology created by people is likewise flawed. If we refuse to judge the severity of those flaws, refuse acknowledge that there are lesser evils in government, then we claim our own ideologies are no better than fascism -- after all, both have their sins, and we just claimed that all sins are equal.
This comment was brought to you by the US State Department.
Tell me, how many countries' governments has China knocked over in the last century as compared to the US CIA?
How many countries did the US drop bombs on in the last decade, and how many did China?
It's not even close. In terms of physical violence the US is the world's #1 exporter.
Oh, whoops, you thought I was defending the US. Not what I said, but it's the only way you can deflect from what the Chinese government is.
China being economically destitute for the last century thanks to terrible CCP domestic policies doesn't somehow change the fact that they represent an even darker path forward for humanity than the US. It's not really a point that can be argued. China has hundreds of concentration camps, forced mass relocation of Tibetans and other minorities to place them in dormitories they literally can't leave except during work hours, a national information firewall to control everything their populace sees.
Like, Xi Xinping had fucking execution vans in his lead up to power. Your brain would have to be scrubbed bloody to think China and the US represent the same thing.
The history speaks for itself. China is less of a threat to other countries in the world than the USA is. Your idea that they're some international boogeyman that's going to take over the entire world and doom humanity is just you repeating "China bad and scary" State Department propaganda.
Even with China's human rights record being what it is, they don't export war across the entire world.
Who said anything about physically taking over the world? Like, yes, obviously China has imperial ambitions to expand their borders (limited only by the wests hegemony and the now undermined and faltering rules-based order) but that's not the influence I'm talking about. I'm talking about the normalization of anti-democracy and the technologically driven hyper-fascist state. The more power and influence China gets, the more fascism thrives wherever it has roots.
North Korea also hasn't been able to bomb a bunch of countries either, that doesn't mean anyone but an idiot would argue they should be given more influence.
Just like Russia, there's no global benefit to the CCP gaining more geopolitical influence, they aren't going to "moderate" the fascist elements in the west, they're going to inflame them in the interest of destablizing any kind of democratic norms.
Why would the American government ban companies based under their own jurisdiction? They can make use of all those other companies just like the Chinese government can make use of TikTok.
Sounds good.
the internet was a mistake