Reader’s Note - There has been no evidence submitted showing any of the allegations towards TikTok are true. In fact TikTok publicly embarked on a project to silo all US Data.
Lol, fair play, I editorialized the titles too. But really once you click into them it’s super obvious these guys have an axe to grind. For example, (from the relevant paper) they state that serving up less Anti CCP content is a bias. But they compare it to YouTube and Instagram. Two services pretty famous for taking people down far right tracks if you let their algorithm auto play. So in this case even a neutral position is going to have less Anti-CCP propaganda.
And the entire paper is flawed in this way. The baseline they establish is itself flawed. They also claim causation but can only show correlation with their skewed baseline.
The team next looked at engagement to see if this explained why anti-CCP content was performing less well. But it found that TikTok users “liked or commented on anti-CCP content nearly four times as much as they liked or commented on pro-CCP content, yet the search algorithm produced nearly three times as much pro-CCP content”. This didn’t happen on Instagram or YouTube.
Yes. I already said it was censorship. Again: how is this pro-CCP propaganda? Do you understand the difference between censorship and propaganda?
If you don’t think that suppressing content that goes against a point of view whilst simultaneously boosting content that agrees with a point of view is propaganda, I suppose you must think Twitter’s recent developments over the past two years (or so? Time is getting fuzzy) are not a propaganda effort either.
My point is that propaganda is not necessarily evil. I dislike propaganda from the CCP as much as the next non-tankie. But claiming “this platform is spreading propaganda, therefore evil” is ignorant as best and condoning the other imperialist propaganda at worst.
Know it’s from China and don’t believe anything Tiktok says on the CCP. Done.
I happen to like the Palestine propaganda on Tiktok and dislike the imperial core censoring dissidents, that’s all.
My point is: if we all would use a more broad definition of the term propaganda, instead of calling nothing but political messaging we didn’t like propaganda, we’d all live in a more politically literate society.
I think this meme actively reduces media literacy.
“It’s okay that the CCP pushes propaganda because billionaires do it too” - Tiktok defenders
Lol, I don’t give a shit about tik tok, I’m more worried about the First Amendment implications.
They could just declare Lemmy instances to be “foreign propaganda” and ban every instance they don’t like.
(there are several people in this thread who would not mind banning certain lemmy instances on this basis)
OK, but find me an exact quote that actually says that. Not something that sorta sounds like that, but that exactly.
Reader’s Note - There has been no evidence submitted showing any of the allegations towards TikTok are true. In fact TikTok publicly embarked on a project to silo all US Data.
What kind of propaganda is the CGP pushing, exactly? Is it with us in the room, right now?
This is not news,
This has been known for years.
I promise, the CCP does not need you to play devil’s advocate; they advocate plenty well for themselves.
The first one is NCRI and the second one is paywalled.
NCRI is known for hit songs like -
Colleges that deplatform conservatives are anti-semitic;
DEI causes violence, and my favorite;
Luigi Mangione’s support means the left are digital insurgents
The paper referenced gives an overview of its methodology and its data.
The three ‘hit songs’ you cite appear to actually be:
Foreign funding decreases democracy and increases antisemitism in universities
Some DEI programs are instituted in a counterproductive way
and
Use https://12ft.io/ to bypass the paywall if you’re interested in past discourse on the matter.
Lol, fair play, I editorialized the titles too. But really once you click into them it’s super obvious these guys have an axe to grind. For example, (from the relevant paper) they state that serving up less Anti CCP content is a bias. But they compare it to YouTube and Instagram. Two services pretty famous for taking people down far right tracks if you let their algorithm auto play. So in this case even a neutral position is going to have less Anti-CCP propaganda.
And the entire paper is flawed in this way. The baseline they establish is itself flawed. They also claim causation but can only show correlation with their skewed baseline.
Yea, they were comparing tiktok to other american-owned social media sites, which are guilty of exactly the same thing themselves.
Any site that doesn’t explicitly push anti chinese content is going to look like a pro-chinese bias
Umm, that’s not really propaganda, homie. That’s simple censorship. There’s a difference.
The very next thing said in the article:
Yes. I already said it was censorship. Again: how is this pro-CCP propaganda? Do you understand the difference between censorship and propaganda?
If you don’t think that suppressing content that goes against a point of view whilst simultaneously boosting content that agrees with a point of view is propaganda, I suppose you must think Twitter’s recent developments over the past two years (or so? Time is getting fuzzy) are not a propaganda effort either.
Dude is just arguing semantics, that “propaganda” necessarily has to be a misleading message in favor of its sender.
Of course, tailoring of information by omission is also propaganda.
My point is that propaganda is not necessarily evil. I dislike propaganda from the CCP as much as the next non-tankie. But claiming “this platform is spreading propaganda, therefore evil” is ignorant as best and condoning the other imperialist propaganda at worst.
Know it’s from China and don’t believe anything Tiktok says on the CCP. Done.
I happen to like the Palestine propaganda on Tiktok and dislike the imperial core censoring dissidents, that’s all.
My point is: if we all would use a more broad definition of the term propaganda, instead of calling nothing but political messaging we didn’t like propaganda, we’d all live in a more politically literate society.
I think this meme actively reduces media literacy.
It’s subtle propaganda via algorithm manipulation