Trudeau government bans TikTok from operating in Canada

Let's take this one step further, then, and ask why we should allow private media ownership if it's this important. Why should some malevolent billionaire be able to own CNN or NYT and decide what stories they could publish? Does it matter if the billionaire has a US passport or not?

This is one of the main reasons we're seeing the legacy media lose legitimacy. People want to hear authentic voices and go to where the new ideas are.

I really don't see why there's this cognitive dissonance. Limiting enemy states' government broadcasting power inside your territory is pretty low on the controversial things a gov can do.

What's an "enemy state"? We're not at war with China.

They're conducting active cyberattacks on our infrastructure and allying themselves with states (Russia, North Korea) that are actively at war with our friends.

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

Yes, as long as the same government doesn't bully other countries when their own propo^H^H^H^H^H social media platforms are blocked on the same grounds.

"authentic" voices are sometimes not so authentic. And sometimes they start out authentic and end up being paid by foreign interests (some high profile cases of this earlier this year - "we didn't know the $100,000/week was coming from Russia")

Sure, but at least you have options and get to choose.

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 you want the capacity to ban state-owned, or even partially state-owned, media from any country who has "allied" with a country actively at war with "our friends"? All of BRICS, anyone part of the BRI, just as the tip of the iceberg?

China is known to be actively spying and meddling in Canadian domestic politics in ways that are not legal or the normal diplomatic channels.

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

You reminded me of a fun fact.

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.

Since when is China my enemy?

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.

All fair complaints, but are those the standards you want to set for "banning any state-owned media from that country"? We're not enemies but I wouldn't call them our friends?

I'm an old-ish person (61). I started watching the news when I was about 12. I think we were better off as a society when there were basically 3 TV/radio networks (ABC,CBS and NBC) each dispensing basically the same dull, boring (by today's standards) newscast. There were newspapers, of course, and they tended to be where you'd find the more opinionated stuff, but there were limits on how many newspapers an entity could own in any particular market. The fairness doctrine reigned over broadcast news, so you wouldn't have stuff like Fox news and probably not even a lot of what's on MSNBC. It just feels to me like we had a more cohesive national vision and weren't nearly as divided as we are now. I'm sure this will be unpopular here, but I'm not sure more options has helped us in terms of being able to live together. So many families can't even meet for Thanksgiving dinner anymore, for example, because of the arguments that break out. People are living in completely different truth bubbles now which makes it almost impossible to communicate.

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.

When I read comments like yours I can't but think that we are being brainwashed.

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.

I respectfully disagree. That state of affairs made people more “united” - perhaps, but it was at the expense of knowledge about the true nature of our reality.

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.

<< When I read comments like yours I can't but think that we are being brainwashed.

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.

Canada didn’t ban non state-owned media. It didn’t even ban any media. TikTok is still allowed, RT is still accessible, private news sources, foreign annd domestic, exist at all levels through Canada.

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?

> We are “divided” now because we are basically in a battle for what is consensus reality

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 the "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.

In guess it comes down to: on what terms?

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.

> 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.

And where was that 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 (China even delivered food to the people they welded into their apartments, so not even them), certainly not in the US.