Like the short videos in Google-owned YouTube Shorts, Meta-owned Reels and Instagram, and Musk-owned Twitter/X, TikTok offers a person some short bit of content. If I am interested, I watch it. If not, I scroll down to the next bit of content. On TikTok, I can push a heart-shaped button if I liked it, or flick to the right to get more content by the same content-creator.
My son is a TikTok content creator. He puts up short video posts about the NBA. I watch those. I also watch short clips from movies and TV shows (especially Saturday Night Live and Breaking Bad), some political videos (mostly people criticizing Trump), athletic highlights, presentations of sleight-of-hand tricks with cards, divorced women taking two minutes to complain about lousy dates, dashcam and police body-cam videos of police stops, and athletic women doing jump-rope routines.
I get those types of videos because I have watched them in the past and TikTok notices. I hear about a secret TikTok algorithm, so apparently the inventors in China do a better job of doing exactly the same thing that FaceBook, Twitter/X, YouTube, and every other social media site, sales person, or merchant does. That is to notice what the customer or audience likes and see if they want more of it. How capitalistic.
Supposedly, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, being owned by the Chinese and headquartered in China, makes it different from a company owned by investors from around the world and headquartered in California. ByteDance might try to influence my political opinions and ultimately American elections.
I find that laughable and hypocritical. I still visit Twitter/X a little, and it is owned by Elon Musk, who attempts to influence my politics by sending me relentless messages. He still warns about Hillary Clinton being ugly, Biden being senile, and Mexican immigrants being criminals. If the Chinese attempted to influence our 2024 election through TikTok they were subtle about it, hiding it amid the jump rope routines. Twitter/X wasn't subtle and still isn't.
Of course, internet sites track us. We all know that. Google reads my G-mail letters, keeps track of my searches, and notices which videos I watch. So does Meta/Facebook. So does Amazon, which greets me with reminders of my last searches and purchases. So does Netflix, which recommends movies. So does Albertsons, which sends me coupons. Social media tracks us. So do our phones. We know that.
Four years ago Trump got the ball rolling on the effort to ban TikTok as part of his anti-China orientation. The Biden administration and a bipartisan Congress decided that a Chinese-headquartered company knowing what Americans found interesting was more dangerous than California-headquartered companies knowing it. But then, this summer, Jeff Yass, a GOP mega-donor with a multi-billion-dollar stake in ByteDance, talked with Trump. Trump switched his position on TikTok, and his campaign began posting there. So did Trump personally. Trump found a huge audience -- some 15 million followers. He now asks, "Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?"
TikTok aligns perfectly with the Trump style: A GOP donor owns part of it; Trump profits politically from it; and it fits the populist we-the-people outlaw message of right-populism. The out-of-touch elites in Congress and the Biden administration want to shut down something people like. Trump is now the people's rescuer.
I will miss TikTok if it disappears on Sunday. So will lots of Americans. If Trump brings it back, it will be a big popular "win" for him. Democrats should recognize that.
I am more concerned about the influence of billionaire oligarchs on American government than I am the influence of the Chinese.
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12 comments:
I also love TikTok and want the world to know I follow science, politics,sports, the Big Bang, Friends, Seinfeld, Roy Casagranda- a really interesting historian, history of the world, various sports commentators, various movie clips, a biblical scholar, and yes, some attractive women. I hope it can be replicated in another app if this app deteriorates with time as is predicted. Lord help me as I agree with Trump!
TikTok isn't going anywhere. The U.S. government just said that it couldn't be owned by the Chinese government because it is guilty of communist propaganda and it spies on Americans. TikTok can still exist, as long as it's sold to an American buyer.
I couldn’t care less what happens to TikTok or any other social media. What can the internet reveal about Americans that the world doesn’t already know? We claim to be the world’s oldest democracy, so we must be getting senile. Our solution to all those pesky “elites” we claim we don’t like is to elect the most blatantly criminal one as president and watch him stuff his administration with others.
I’m with Peter: Our oligarchy is a greater threat than any media, even if our billionaire-in-chief has declared media that contradict his lies to be “the enemy of the people.”
Allowing the Chinese Communist Party a way to influence the minds of Americans is so wrong that it amazes me that anyone doesn’t see the danger of it. Try to put up a video about the Uighurs or Tibet or Tiananmen Square and see what happens.
A war with China is very likely in our future. They are already our enemy. Giving them a propaganda lever into the minds of Americans is stupid beyond belief.
Woke progressives try to stifle politically incorrect speech in colleges. I disagree with that.
Some colleges tried to stifle pro Israel speech on colleges. Some gtried to stifle anti Israel speech on colleges. Both sides accused the other of some form of genocide.
Some websites (Twitter/X now) immediately stifle anti Trump and anti Musk posts. People who like Musk and Trump defend that because they like the direction of the speech -- evan as they oppose the owner of TikTok stifling talk of Tiananmen Square.
Some Democrats wanted suppression of scientifically invalid speech about Covid. The public seems to have decided that it is okay with a free-for-all.
Truth Social is hugely biased toward Alex-Jones-style conspiracy posts. Very biased.
Fox, the Washington Examiner, One America all stifle speech that doesn't fit their agenda. Lots of people are okay with it. Freedom of the press . On the other side people are OK with MSNBC and Pod Save America.
I would have an easier time getting a story of Tienniman Sq onto TikTok than I would have a story about Trump's crimes on January 6 broadcast in prime time on Fox.
People who are ok with Musk and consider him a national treasure tend to be ok with his thumb on the scales of Twitter/X . That is their right. It is also their right to be unhappy with TikTok. But my observation of both sites is that TikTop is open to showing both Trump and anti-TRump stuff, pro-Musk and anti-Musk stuff. If they curate the site, they are subtle about it. But Twitter/X is heavy handded. My own bias is toward seeing the hypocrisy of the people who fear TikTok but not Twitter/X . China is not an Amerian defense contractor; SpaceX is.
If Cjhina wants to know about the mood of spouses of servicepeople, they don't need TikTok to do it. Just go to Facebook. Or got to Cambridge Analitica and buy data from Google.
Whether or not TikTok remains legal, the Chinese can influence the minds of Americans the same way the Russians do. Maybe Republicans can put up some kind of protective shield that blocks everything but Truth Social and X.
It’s true that the Chinese and Russians can post propaganda to our social media. But allowing the to Chinese control the algorithm that determines what most people see is a whole other level of danger.
It is not “hypocrisy“ to keep China from having a propaganda lever into the minds of the American people. It’s one thing for American media companies to slant their algorithms in some direction. At least it’s being done by Americans.
It’s quite another thing to allow an enemy like China to impose their slant. When you are engaged in a conflict that could easily become a war, it’s stupid beyond belief to hand that enemy a weapon.
The greatest weapon we could ever hand a foreign adversary is to elect a president like Trump. If you’re worried about China, here are just a couple of his comments from 20220:
“One of the many great things about our just signed giant Trade Deal with China is that it will bring both the USA & China closer together in so many other ways. Terrific working with President Xi, a man who truly loves his country. Much more to come!”
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/trump-china-coronavirus-188736
In other words, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Those quotes are actually from 2020, of course.
Yes, it’s too bad the Democrats didn’t present the country with a better and more politically effective choice than Kamala Harris.
Yes, Harris is female, she’s Black and she honors her oath of office – three strikes. Democrats should have known that more Americans would prefer a psycho.
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