this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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i really think you are minimizing how bad this is. This is the government weaponizing social media, much like elon musk weaponized twitter. Only this time, the social media is directly owned by a fascist government regime. This is a massive massive conflict of interest which is going to 100% turn tik tok into a propaganda machine.
TikTok was run by a fascist regime: China. It's just, most Americans are not of much interest to Beijing. Their intelligence probably wants to know what is trendy in America so it can better appeal to us and influence our elections to serve their interests, but Beijing is probably not concerned at all with you or I as individuals. But if they can get us to vote for a candidate they support by showing us the parts of that candidate that we agree with, we can be used as a tool by Beijing. Now Washington wants that power.
I don't like it either way.
At least China builds infrastructure. At least China has near universal healthcare. China seems to actually give a shit about its people to at least some extent.
I'm not saying Washington/the US is better than China. But, the devil you know. Also, the devil we know (the west) has probably lied to us in a few ways about China. I remember as a kid I believed children in China were starving. I also remember hearing that they kill female babies (and often not humanely) because of their one child policy. My dream when I was a kid was to save all those girls and educate them and teach them basic fighting skills... may have been like a Charlies Angels kind of thing going on in my head.