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TikTok’s Pro-China Tilt
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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I would worry about this more if the American social media networks didn't have a pro-corporate tilt.
I think there's a pretty strong argument that a pro-corporate tilt doesn't result in a difference in content promotion regarding Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, and/or Uyghur.
You could argue the US military industrial complex might push South China Sea, pro-Taiwan, pro-Ukraine, and pro-Isreal content; that seems distant enough from (e.g.) Facebook, but I'm not sure how we'd tell. We don't have a major social media platform in a place like (e.g.) Switzerland to study (granted, the way Proton is expanding they might try).
In any case, I do think it's pretty damning for TikTok's claims of independence that China's direct conflicts, Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong are basically suppressed to the point of being nil (EDIT: Tibet is also a direct conflict of sorts but isn't talked about as much from what I've seen on "western social media" and could be conditionally filtered ... there's still probably a fair bit of "Tibet" content that exists outside of the "bad for the CCP" space).
How about a difference in content promotion regarding Israel? You know, the country the MiC makes a huge amount of money supporting?
Read past the first paragraph...
I did. My apologies, I saw pro-Taiwan, but somehow missed the pro-Israel next to it.
Okay, then yeah; I think we're in agreement more research would be needed (and difficult!).
I can't dissuade or dismiss your point ... but I am personally less convinced there is a correlation.
We also need to take into account how addressable the problems are in the current climate. To tackle pro-corporate biases, we're looking at a long quest that runs counter to the underlying fabric of our society. It's a fundamentally anti-capitalist proposition and we live in a capitalist society.
This issue with a foreign power is much smaller, and thus easier to crack. It's much less far-reaching, it's less important. But it should still lead to small gains in the improvement of the information sphere.