Trudeau government bans TikTok from operating in Canada

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.

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.

That's fair, as long as you (as in country) won't cry foul when somebody blocks your outlet because they want to control your messaging.

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

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.

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.

The US political system is very undemocratic and most of us Americans have no more means of influencing it than we do China's.

The Succession quote, “ I love you, but you are not serious people” comes to mind

But what is out there on TikTok that's so dangerous to the state? Dance videos?

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.

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.

Important to note that they didn’t ban TikTok in Canada.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

How is that fundamentally different from Reels and Shorts and whatever Facebook has cooking?

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.

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

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

Meta is not fundamentally better than Bytedance. Their business model is addiction combined with accumulating and misusing user data.

That's is an interesting question.

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.

Facebook should also be regulated by western governments as they see fit

Facebook only started cooking those after they saw what tiktok posts were doing and how popular they were.

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.

> 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."

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

There is a Winnie the Pooh ride in Shanghai Disney.

I frequently see it mentioned in Chinese social media.

I don't think having a state run equivalent is much better from a users perspective. The ability to snoop without warrants would be too great.

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.

I think most people in western society trust their own government to care for their welfare way more that they trust the Chinese government.

> 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.

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.

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.

You can't compare Pooh to Xi or you'll go to jail. You can do this in the US.

Social media is already regulated by the CRTC.

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.

One of your fellow Canadians really dislikes the idea of control. I also do dislike media being owned by few rich bastards.

Doe it make FB any better? The asshole is an asshole.