Trudeau government bans TikTok from operating in Canada

Perhaps the way to get anti-regulation politicians on board with this is for someone to do what was done to Robert Bork and legally disclose lots of personal info on members of Congress/Parliament, obtained from data brokers and de-anonymized.

Like imagine if China owned CNN and the New York Times and decided what stories they could publish.

The essence is, by denying agency of your country’s users, you deny the whole set of ideas it bases on. If that’s a natural vulnerability of the ideology, addressing it by banning media is a patch over a bleeding wound.

Canadian teens will simply learn about VPN, like they always do in other countries which ban internet resources. Not a single one of them will leave tiktok.

Our local billionaires goals are not in the same category.

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.

The threat is that it silently engages in manipulation, rather than something like RT or New York Times where the bias is well known ahead of time.

If you're going to cry foul, maybe you shouldn't block the other party in the first place.

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 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.

We're not "at war" but that doesn't mean much.

It is happening on our local platforms here. Meta, based in the US, is systematically censoring Palestinian content that would otherwise be available here in Canada.

Details:

* https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...

* https://theintercept.com/2024/10/21/instagram-israel-palesti...

For a very recent example, one of the few remaining prominent Palestinian journalists, with a following of over 1M on Meta, was banned today:

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/11/7/al-jaze...

They booted TikTok corporate from the country as a threat to national security.

Given how China operates globally and especially in Canada, I’m completely fine with them getting told to beat it

Long form content, unrestricted by executives telling people how to run their show, all that makes a big difference. There is no need for corporate bureaucrats to try to run things.

So, thanks for the charity, but I would rather prefer them to pay that as taxes.

Describing them as an enemy might be too far, but you certainly wouldn’t describe China as a friend.

But since Bytedance doesn't dance at NSA's tune, different rules apply.

When the Elkann family (which owns majority stake in Stellantis, Juventus, Ferrari and many others) got pissed off by the largest newspaper in Italy reporting on them (despite their businesses impacting the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Italians) they simply bought the newspaper and the major critical voice of them disappeared.

I've always been terrified to think about how much of my data is out there, but I don't understand enough about how it can be used, and the potential risks.

If there is a major nation on this planet that has never done anything bad to mine in its history I can think of is China.

I can remember American, British, French troops raping and humiliating that country, I can't remember a single time the opposite happened.

While China does not always play fair and there's plenty of despicable things they do I don't like, I just don't see them as my enemy and see no valid reason to do so.

Tiktok's Canada-based offices must have been up to some other form of skulduggery for them to have been shuttered while leaving Canadian use of the platform completely status quo.

[1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

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.

Yes, he "avoids" taxes by using every legal strategy available to him, as does every single person who pays taxes. This is called "paying the correct amount of taxes you legally owe".

> Anything that maximizes his personal wealth could very well be hostile to the well being of the country.

Let's look at the things that have maximized his personal wealth:

Paypal - made online payments popular and safe. Enabled millions of people to start online business.

Tesla - made electric cars popular. Reduced C02 emissions. Gave thousands of Americans good jobs. Made many employees and investors rich.

SpaceX - re-ignited space exploration. pioneered re-usable rockets. Dramatically reduced the cost of launching satellites.

Starlink - brought Internet access to rural areas.

Please tell me, which of these personal wealth maximizing activities has been hostile to the US?

Chinese social media is pretty vibrant with the exception that you can’t agitate for the fall of the government.

I'm don't want to be completely pollyannish about the past - there were probably things we weren't hearing about from those fewer outlets. But I'm also not sure how we move forward as a society in a situation where there are so many different shattered views of what is true.

The biggest foreign meddler and spy in Canada is the southern neighbor.

We know for a fact through leaks that US has put all Canadians under mass surveillance both in communication and movement (like the wifi hacking at airports leaked by Snowden) since more than a decade, or the 2023 Pentagon leaks that were quickly scolded as "but they were trying to find Russian activity in Canada", and don't forget the AT&T whistleblower which also exposed mass surveillance on Canadians by US intelligence.

And yet..nobody cares..even though we know for a fact it happens, we don't care let alone call the US an enemy.

So, what is the difference? The media and politicians calling 24/7 China your enemy (something nobody would've done before 2018/2017), but ignoring or pretending that the real spy of all spies which hacks and spies on all of its allies, even the personal phone of the German chancellor is cool.

I find those double standards not only mind blowing, but dangerous.

We're letting the White House to dictate globally who can play by the rules and who is an exception.

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.

The law should be against general bad behavior by social media companies, but it isn't because the unsaid reasoning is too impolite to speak: we can compromise with Western companies' spying, manipulation, and exploitation of us, but it's unacceptable if a Chinese company does the same.

These sorts of movements gain a life of their own at some point, but the cynical side of me suspects the TikTok ban animus started with big tech lobbyists, not a grassroots movement from concerned citizenry.

Well, this is Canada we are talking about. All of the countries in OP's list are foreign.

Not foreign, but we already have that problem with Sinclair and local TV affiliate stations.

People talk about Rupert Murdock and Jeff Bezos all the time. Who else do you feel we should talk about? There is that one conservative owner of most radio stations in the US.

> People don’t like Musk owning Twitter/X, that’s a start

After Elon took over, he deleted my Twitter account. Still not sure why, but it happened around the time reporters who retweeted #Elonjet had their accounts deleted. And I did retweet it.

Media consolidation is an issue, but Musk with Twitter is so petty, racist, and blatantly self serving. I refuse to be associated with it.

> but start reading about who owns the rest (especially traditional media).

traditional media != social media. The potential for manipulation is much greater with social media.

Or Pooh Bear.

Or South Park entirely after one episode of joking about China influencing Disney about Pooh Bear.

Or failures of the central government.

There are a lot of things banned online in China; this is so not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China

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.

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."

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

You can still follow individual reporters posting their own content. For example I can access both https://www.instagram.com/wizard_bisan1/ or https://www.instagram.com/clarissawardcnn/, etc.

But I can not access the organization pages like https://www.instagram.com/cnn/

I frequently see it mentioned in Chinese social media.

We are “divided” now because we are basically in a battle for what is consensus reality, and the only way to have a satisfying answer to that question is to have unfettered access to the underlying facts and knowledge of who is who.

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.

Sadly, and I think I called that out few years ago, there was a notable turn in US foreign policy. In effect, it means establishment expects actual confrontation with China. This, naturally, means uptick in anti-China propaganda. It is a difficult position to take now in a pragmatic way given events in Ukraine and Israel, but that is clearly the direction. Hence, comments like those of OP.

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.

But what is happening here is different. We are saying: we don't Z company so we are going to treat them differently from the other companies in the same space.

And I am saying this as a person with minimal social media footprint.

We banned a single corporate entity from operating offices inside the country in response to credible intelligence that those offices pose a national security threat. That corporate entity is directly linked with an adversarial government with active election subversion campaigns.

Is there some reason you are twisting the actual circumstances around this?

I'm concerned we're going to get to the point where people are willing to kill each other over what they consider to be their view of "consensus reality". That's happened often at other points in history. In many cases it was due to religious differences over what constituted "reality". I'm not so sure that many of these current squabbles over what constitutes "consensus reality" aren't religious in nature. Social media already seems to be pushing the limits of human nature in some destructive directions such that politics now is like holy war.

I think we need to focus more on the "consensus" part (including peacemaking and bridge building) instead of the "battle" part. I'm not seeing a lot of that happening. That requires a lot of humility as in we're all like blind people groping our way to figure out reality and none of us has the complete picture. Until we're ready to take on that kind of humility on a societal level, I think this "battle" you refer to can be a very dangerous endeavor.

https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2024/2024-121.htm https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/industr/info.htm

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.

Its not about who has the data, although that is important. Its not about subversion of a population by a foreign state, although that is important too.

The crux of the issue is reciprocity.

China does not let any CAN or US companies into China markets, without first demanding local factories, forcing local production, requiring equity control and even IP. And if you dont share it, bohoo they will steal it anyway. And, there's no recourse.

The chinese govt has abused free trade for so long. Its time to demand fairness.

They dont give us access into their markets? OK! We close our markets to their corporations.

Its as simple as that. The golden rule.

The second part, well, I guess I can read a book, and maybe children should, too.

It wasn’t long ago that we regularly witnessed rhetoric hinting at putting people into camps and denying them access to food because they didn’t buy into the official narrative about vaccines.

Is that a better option? I don’t think so.

I do agree that there is a basis for building bridges and finding common ground but this is better done at the local level between people vs. trying to force it from on high. And definitely, in my opinion, not via some controlled medium.

The majority of Canadians share the majority of Americans' view of China.

Neighbors in Asia and Europe often have completely unaligned political politics due to a language and media barrier. Even the US and everything south of Texas don't align as much as the US and Canada.

And where was that rhetoric happening? On social media. Outside of China (and maybe some similar regimes), I don't recall any government official suggesting anything about camps or limiting access to food (even China delivered food to the people they welded into their apartments, so not even there), certainly not in the US.

On the other hand pretending that the CCP and the US are meddling at the same level or with the same consequences, or that the CSIS isn’t in on half of what the US is doing is also silly.

I can condemn China and recognize that they pose a serious threat, while also condemning the US and recognizing that the threat is different.

Okay. Now imagine CNN and NYTimes and Fox News being coerced into publishing or not publishing info because a US gov agency demands it. Or how about the US gov pressuring Meta and Twitter to change their algos around very specific topics? You don't need to imagine it actually.

So why is that less of a concern than China controlling a media delivery service?

US Government likes US Government control because it's themselves.

They don't want an adversary to have control. Is the distinction not obvious??

Unrelated question: How many enemy-manufactured products do you use daily? How many enemy products are in your home?

Or simpler, domestic companies having foreign workers developing and implementing the algorithm itself???

Ask them to check how much their own Ad spend is increasing every year.

And ask them to check how much New Content they need to produce everyday. And how much that has increased over the last year.

Basically Politicians, instead of being on the ground dealing with people issues, are turning into Content Factories and Fund raising machines to keep the content factories running.

Human Attention is finite. If its not treated as such, we trap everyone in an Attention Capture arms race to nowhere.

Platform profit, content factories profit, fund raising machines profit - https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/digital-ad-market-boom-big-...

The us is already one of the most propagandized nations on earth and our own government only benefits from this, despite ostensibly being criticized from sanitized angles.

I don't know what life is like in canada, but what i surmise from friends is that the experience is similar.

> US Government likes US Government control because it's themselves.

I know. That doesn't tell me why China controlling a social media algorithm is inherently any worse from yours or my perspective.

> They don't want an adversary to have control.

Is the "adversary" claim not undermined by them being a primary trade partner?

Take an example from Russia - instead of banning youtube, they just make it crawl and stutter, so fully controlled rutube/dzen/etc start to seem more viable, but it's not too bad to decide to go full VPN. Non-technical people don't even realize that it happens and write it off as some youtube-related network issues.

Of course that is an awful attack on freedom, but you can get real or get rekt.

(Proving that he's not really an anarchist.)

Of course, he couched it terms of plausible deniability but anybody with the ability to read between the lines knew exactly what he was saying.

This was during the environment in which small and family-owned businesses were being destroyed (yes, in America) and people were losing their jobs as well. It happened to a number of personal friends.

There were far worse excesses in other Western nations too, not just in China. The only reason things didn't go further in the US here is because Americans have fewer vulnerabilities than citizens in other countries do in the face of this sort of oppression.

And it was all cheered on by those who believed themselves to be on the right side of the establishment at that time. It was a regular thing to see and hear people fantasizing about the idea of forced injections, online and in real life.

And we learned about all this on, yes, social media (which was heavily censored at the time too).

The legacy media outlets were not telling the truth.

All this was only three years ago.

Things are a little different now, I'm sure you will find in many cases that forgiveness is possible in light of true apologies, but there will not be a forgetting.

And these things need to be honestly discussed if we are ever to achieve anything resembling national cohesion again.

I suppose this would be easier to rationalize if domestic interests were democratically controllable.... but they're not. And they certainly aren't by canadians, which makes this action doubly confusing.

I've always found the EU and India’s data regulations somewhat superficial. Sure, it’s a start that my data is stored in the EU, but how does that really help if the CCP can just call a ByteDance executive and ask them to run a SQL query on demand?

I am not saying those laws shouldn't exist, but don't protect against the threat model of other side being China

An analog to address the abuses of controlling how users read information from databases would be anti-trust regulation that unbundles client software from hosted services. "The algorithm" should be under control of the client software, for which there should be a competitive market, based on well-documented APIs for communication between the two. Then everyone can choose what "algorithm" they want, rather than having one singular one pushed on them by the service provider abusing its captive audience.

It wasn’t offensive or even off the mark but it felt like I was being served low grade propaganda.

Basically, to enforce border controls on the internet, you have to break the internet.

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’s hard to not be cynical about it.

But right now, today, we have a media delivery service, controlled by China, that millions of Americans use. That's a real, present concern.

Nonetheless, this underlines the hypocrisy of punishing TikTok but not western corporations. By any standard (except for foreign control, which is of dubious merit when domestic control is equally harmful) Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc are equally of deserving of restriction as TikTok is.

No, because there's more nuance in the world than you seem to suggest.

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.

> But right now, today, we have a media delivery service, controlled by China, that millions of Americans use. That's a real, present concern.

Again, I am being told that it's a "concern" but without an explanation. What are the material, concrete harms that can come from China directing the content algo?

>> US Government likes US Government control because it's themselves.

> I know. That doesn't tell me why China controlling a social media algorithm is inherently any worse from yours or my perspective.

Why is it less of a concern to you if you control your bank account than if I do?

If we're not making obvious distinctions today, you should give me your bank account credentials, since we're all the same.

>> They don't want an adversary to have control.

> Is the "adversary" claim not undermined by them being a primary trade partner?

It is not. I have difficulty imagining your question is not founded on feigned ignorance.

China is an adversary of the US. Some optimistic and naive Western politicians in the 90s thought making them a "primary trade partner" would cause political changes that would eliminate the rivalry. They were wrong, and weakened their countries in the process. That's been clear for like ten years. Now their mistake needs to be dealt with.

> Unrelated question: How many enemy-manufactured products do you use daily? How many enemy products are in your home?

Ah, it's perfect, the enemy of the good. Greetings!

Oh, and I wouldn't say that FB is much better. The EU should probably ban both.

before anyone says "free speech" - views or comments that are not aligned with the CCP and its allies get taken down when reported. several of mine were taken down.

i owe the rising antisemitism among young people to TikTok and its lack of action towards misinformation and hate speech.

i'm quite happy with Meta handling the moderation on the conflict.

If the division is a result of the platform exposing people in that nation to information that they previously didn't have access to, due to the government censoring it, then it's absolutely a good thing for the people of the nation. The government of the nation state can get fucked when its interests go against the interests of its people. A divided people is a much better thing than a people united by ignorance and belief in falsehood.

How is this comparable to the media you're consuming?

You just can’t use it as a coded way to agitate against the government.

Specifically what happened in Canada is:

* A national security review found Tiktok's operations in Canada to be a risk to national security

* Tiktok's operations in Canada are being closed down but Canadians are still able to use and post on Tiktok

* This type of review is pretty opaque by nature so more details are probably unavailable at this stage

If Canadians are still able to use and post on Tiktok I'm not sure there is a speech/censorship issue here. Maybe Tiktok Canada was harboring spies or something, or maybe this is a roundabout way to push Tiktok out of the country later, but I don't think we have any solid public info.

But it consists of people with feelings - and they can have feelings of care towards the governed, or just feelings of care for themself.

I do not consume TikTok, but I believe it works international?

Also I don't see the point, because there are americans saying, we should be friends with communist china and become like them. By giving those ideas more room - whenever they want, they can shape the discourse. Shape what people think what the majority thinks. (Most don't actually think much themself, but try to figure out, how to think like the group - they are the targets and their vote counts the same)

If you can't see the point without tedious hand-holding, I can't help you.

Do people think China wants Trump? Because everyone on tiktok apparently thought this was going to be a Harris landslide victory.

If tiktok is allowed to do business in the country, then they can buy allegiance via the creator fund which makes it harder to get citizens to realize (and leave it) once they start deploying active measures.

I love how this is not censorship but when non-western countries do it, then it is.

Absolutely not. Japan was a primary trade partner going into WW2. The US is actively preparing for wars over Taiwan.

All mainstream articles about the trucker protests were horrific lies (except for the honking, which was indeed disruptive and stupid).

I don't care about TikTok, since there is nothing of value there. But will Canada also ban globaltimes.cn now?

(The value of the Global Times is to find out what the party in China thinks, not that it is unbiased.)

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.

Almost 50% of Canadians believes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza: https://www.readthemaple.com/polls-show-gap-between-canadian...

I'm sure the impact was fully unintentional. Very welcome after the fact. But still unintentional

"instead of focusing on China, we should limit the issue as a whole"

"It is not about the data. It’s about a foreign government controlling the algorithm that decides what millions of people see"

"it's not only China - we do it to ourselves to. Instead of focusing on China, we should limit the issue as a whole"

"this muddies the issue"

you know what? instead of focusing on China, we should limit the issue as a whole

I know this is a US-centric site, but globally, you're a minority that pushes the most propaganda around.

...especially since the article is about canada, so US is a foreign government, and meta/x are foreign companies.

Using this definition other enemies or certainly not friends of Canada include; Russia, Mexico, UK, Europe and USA.

Also, what some people dismissed at the time is that from a European perspective it makes perfect sense to consider any foreign power a potential future threat. That seemed less plausible a few days ago but with the person running the site formerly known as Twitter now likely becoming part of the US government and the foreign policy/trade course the president elect has been advertising throughout his campaign, European leaders seem to be waking up to the possibility that US vendors should no longer simply be considered neutral by default.

Keep in mind European intelligence services have literally watched American intelligence happily infiltrate friendly governments (e.g. the German-American joint venture operating from Switzerland selling fraudulent encryption that Germany abandoned when they saw the US selling to allies, ostensibly to avoid raising suspicions from the real targets) and even wiretap heads of state (cf. Snowden revelations), you'd think people would have wisened up to this earlier but as a German I'm just happy to see any progress at all.

I don't know about others but to me the NYT and CNN are quite the propaganda machines already.

There's nothing resembling actual journalism ongoing at these places.

It seems censorship is indeed being conducted, as described here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42072050

That's called free speech. Horrible, terrible ideas are given room, and we trust people to figure it out. Hell, many many Americans became vaccine skeptics because they were drawn into RFK talking points. That's dangerous too, but free speech is more important than forcing everyone to be good or have good, safe opinions

You know, China hit a lot of these problems before we did and the ir platforms are "nicer" because they are more regulated.

Rather than ban tiktok and suffer the same problems with meta's Reels, what if we borrowed some of thier regulation?

The right way to stop bad behavior is to write a specific description of the bad actions and the penalty for doing them into the code of law. The wrong way is to declare specific entities guilty of bad behavior you can only vaguely describe.

There is a very good reason the US constitution bans bills of attainder: they become a way of going after individuals for reasons that if properly articulated could not withstand public scrutiny. Canada would do well to uphold the same taboo.

Note that I'm not registering a position on TikTok itself. It could be run by turbosatan for all I care. I object to the lawless mechanism through which western governments are trying to go after TikTok in particular.

We get a lot of propaganda about Chinese social media apps that's just wrong. I was told Xiaohongshu is a propaganda app that sends quotes from Mao's little red book, and it's Chinese Instagram.

Adam Curry opined that this was the excuse and it's really about protecting domestic (or at least Western in the case of Canada) social media companies. Seems plausible.

I don't use TikTok so I'm not sure what the feed looks like, but it seems like a bunch of people doing silly stuff and mugging for the camera.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...

This is creating the illusion of a free speech, where people think they can listen to the other opinions, but in reality they only get to see a distorted part of it. But if you like that, I won't support banning that.

You can argue that this was a predictable response by Meta or that it was a stupid law, but it was not a ban.

Sure, just like there is no terrorism in the middle east. We said it, so that makes it true.

Honestly though, I believe the rising islamophobia and anti-Palestinian attitudes owe to the proliferation of such content online. There is simply no denying an extremely disproportionate amount of hate speech and misinformation coming from the pro-Israel movement, backed by Israel and Israeli media, and directed towards Palestinians and those who oppose the genocide of them. I say this as a jewish person.

I'm just suggesting we remove the noise surrounding the conflict, by curbing the systemic spread of non-truths and hate speech by Israeli-backed disinformation campaigns. Just scroll through any social network or news post with comments. For every one mild post you see describing Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and The West Bank, you will find ten extremely islamophobic comments directed towards Palestinians who had nothing to do with the conflict.

I'll just copypaste what I said in another thread to be as direct as possible:

I am being told that it's a "concern" but without an explanation. What are the material, concrete harms that can come from China directing the content algo?

What exactly do you take issue with? Your naked and hurtful assertions not being taken on blind faith? The fact that I, a person of jewish faith, see significantly less hate directed at me for it, than I do directed towards Palestinians and those who oppose the genocide of them?

trade partner does not exclude adversary. Look at US-Japan trade in the 30s up until just before WW2 when the US decision to embargo exports to Japan (to try to force Japan to stop its occupation of China) led to WW2. It was a pretty quick flip from major trading partner to war.

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.

I remain unconvinced that people aren't shaping their own opinions by continuing to pursue similar content to what they typically agree with already. And as we all know, at this current time TikTok's algo is indistinguishable from US competitors in the obvious way it buckets people into like-minded feeds + comments.

At minimum we should be consistent in what we claim is the bad behavior. If the algo is really the problem, start regulating all of them and do it now. To do otherwise is hypocrisy.

> who knows how that might be used in the context of an AI-driven future

I'm not sure we want to legislate and set rules based on a "who knows". If the outcome is bad you need to define that bad outcome.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/par...

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

You could probably get by with the cliff notes version.

You have not the slightest clue whether this is true or not.

Why does China block all foreign social media access within its own borders?

Wouldnt it be wonderful if we in the West could advocate for our own interests inside China the way the Chinese can participate in our conversations.

I made a pretty simple and straightforward analogy, which you didn't get. Maybe you don't get the geopolitical relevance of media control, but I'd really hope you'd understand bank account control. You = the US polity, Me = China, Bank account = something an adversary could harm you by controlling.

> I'm actually being genuine here...but I would like my questions to be answered....

> I am being told that it's a "concern" but without an explanation. What are the material, concrete harms that can come from China directing the content algo?

If you're being truthful, I think you might be at the point where you have to do some basic reading first, because you seem to need more hand-holding and explanation than it's reasonable to expect. You may also have some conceptual deficits that are so basic they come off as feigned.

So, no.

But I do appreciate the honesty of at least admitting the hypocrisy.

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

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".

You are making the claim, you should be able to back the claim up. You're actually writing very many words to avoid a direct explanation, which is even more confusing.

In a theoretical direct democracy that would be true. But we’re talking about Canada and the US here.

It’s like billboard on the highway vs someone whispering things to you for 2 hours every day.

It's also pure nonsense that TikTok is somehow "misleading" the American youth. It's basically a recommendation engine. And what's the job of a recommendation engine? To give you whatever content you might be interested in. Just go to youtube and start clicking all the garbage content (if they are not censored already), you will end up with a lot of garbage in your feed. Because if you spend a lot of time watching garbage, the algorithm will think you like garbage and will push garbage onto your frontpage.

Yes, China banned Facebook, X etc for national security reasons, too. The Chinese government wants Chinese data to stay in China, and all of these social media platform would have to comply with Chinese law, including some requirements regarding censorship. Now it becomes more and more obvious that the west is not that different from China, the country it keeps bitching about on a daily basis. Censorship has been there for a long time, and now you have outright banning of a social network because it has roots in China.

You can accept one of these two things but not both:

A. National security is above freedom of speech B. Freedom of speech is a fundamental value of an open society and should in no scenario be given up

If you accept A, you have to be honest and admit that the banning of Facebook etc in China is completely justified. If you accept B, you have to just let TikTok operate normally as any other social network.

Apple [2], Nike [1], Tesla [3] , Intel [4], MS [5], Cisco [6] etc

[1] https://shoeeffect.com/where-are-nike-shoes-made-in-china/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wikhttps://insideevs.com/news/71542...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...

[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/deandebiase/2024/08/30/why-comp...

[6] https://community.cisco.com/t5/routing/where-are-cisco-route...

Oops.