• 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.

    • I accidentally deleted my last response when trying to put in an edit but it doesn’t really matter. You are arguing in bad faith and it is clear you don’t want reason. So I will leave you with this:

      Fascism can exist in more than one place. I am aware that the US got its current citizen control playbook from the CCP. I am not defending china. But if all it takes for them to threaten our national security is to let people know the proper truth about america, then I ought to let them do it anyways. The primary difference between tiktok and the other SoMe platforms is largely that american billionaires and israeli special interest groups have no influence there. So important matters that affect the working class (anyone whos not rich) are less likely to be controlled and manipulated. Therefore, it is more likely for regular people to get real information/news straight from the source/people. It’s not that difficult to understand.

      • Fascism can exist in more than one place.

        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.

        • What you learned in highschool ain’t shit. Read more. US robber barons basically funded the third reich. Our oligarchs love that shit. There is a whole swathe of history they keep out of the textbooks.

          Your denial and downplay of fascism is exactly what allows it to fester in the states. Don’t be part of the fucking problem.

          • 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.