US TikTok ban linked to pro-Palestine content rather than China threat, insiders reveal
US TikTok ban linked to pro-Palestine content rather than China threat, insiders reveal
US officials and lobbyists say the push to ban the Chinese-owned application gain momentum during the war on Gaza
The main reason behind the United States' push to ban social media application TikTok is due to Israel’s image rather than fears of Chinese infiltrations, congressional insiders have revealed.
At the Munich Security Conference, US Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, said he wished to reveal what he called the “real story” behind the recent legislations to restrict the Chinese-owned application.
“So we had a bipartisan consensus,” Gallagher said. “We had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of antisemitic content on the platform and our bill had legs again.”
A memo produced by the State Department for its Near East Affairs diplomats, which Klippenstein obtained, describes how Israel's deputy director general for public diplomacy at the foreign ministry, Emmanuel Nahshon, blamed the youth’s opposition to the war on Gaza on TikTok’s algorithm.
“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature,” he said in May. “If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites - it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”
Nikki Haley, another former Republican presidential candidate who last year infamously signed an Israeli bomb meant for Gaza with “finish them”, said she believed that simply watching videos on TikTok would make a user antisemitic.
The word "antisemitic" is being misused in a disgusting way here. The victims of the Israeli genocide are also a Semitic people.
Also a fair critic of Israeli government action isn't antisemitic just like a fair critic of Iranian governments isn't islamophobia.
While there is an antisemitic critic of Israel, raising concerns regarding human rights isn't antisemitic nor supporting the hamas.
There are also antisemitic supporters of Israel. The Christian Nationalists want somewhere to banish the US's Jewish population to.
There is no such thing as a semitic people.
It's a language family. How the fuck did you manage to think of biology.
Race and people are different things though.
There's no such thing as any cleanly delineated race or ethnicity, save for maybe some people who've been isolated on an island for a thousand years. But it is a natural response to the weaponized term "antisemitism" being used against defenders of Palestinians, to point out that both groups are described as "semitic".
By that logic, there's no such thing as "golden retriever" and "cocker spaniel" either, since both are canis familiaris.
Words mean things. Use them properly.
Shocking no one but the most dense apologists of the move.
The implication here seems to be that Chinese state interests are promoting content related to Palestinian liberation. Is there actual evidence for this or is it just conjecture? Is it even true that there is more Palestinian content on TikTok than other platforms? Has anyone measured this?
I don’t really trust anyone involved in this fight to speak truthfully.
My guess was that it wasn't boosting Palestinian content but wasn't suppressing it like a lot of other American platforms and news outlets tended to do.
I use tiktok quite a bit and anecdotally tiktok definitely promoted Palestinian content. Especially as a lot of it was quite vile and tiktok censor is super sensitive for example Ukraine content never became as big even when it's a much bigger geopolitical issue. Seeing more Gaza watermelons than Ukraine flags while living in Eastern Europe was such a proof for me thag tiktok is manipulating this.
I feel like we shouldn't accept or trust any closed source algorithm that can't be audited. Period. It's all manipulation because why wouldn't it be? Who on earth could resist such power? Especially when there's basically zero risks. Literally no one ever got in trouble for it. Ever.
I agree with you regarding platforms that lack transparency. However a lot of these algorithms are so complex that it’s not clear to me how easily they can be manipulated. I’d like to see actual evidence of this before jumping to conclusions, especially since the people making these claims are very untrustworthy.
There are suggestions that that the algorithm is imbalanced on the subject, though 'why' it is is pure conjecture.
https://cybersecurityfordemocracy.org/getting-to-know-the-tiktok-research-api
Can you explain a bit more what you mean by this? This article in my understanding of it does not suggest the algorithm is favoring pro-Palestinian narratives. If anything, the extreme imbalance of post count between the two sides suggests a preexisting pro-Palestinian viewpoint among the userbase rather than one that was artificially boosted.
"We had a bipartisan consensus that this needed to be done, but there wasn't enough enthusiasm until Israel was threatened"
It was obvious to everyone and their cat.
The internet is a massive US PSYOP for which it's going to fight with all its might to not lose control over.
Its probably one of the factors, but its not like that was the sole reason.
trump already tried that in his first term, way before the gaza genocide. The goal is to force them to bend the knee and become a right wing propaganda machine. Suppressing info on israeli warcrimes is just an added bonus
Most big bills have multiple factions profiting from it. But what pushed the TikTok ban over the bipartisan bill was definitely their stance of (non) censorship on Palestine.
What was also telling is that right after Trumps election TikTok was allowed to stay but it started banning the phrase "free Palestine"
Not going to say I told you so but...ah fuck it I told you so.
Makes perfect sense. Unfortunately.
Why not both?
Yeah, I'm sure all the other countries that banned it also banned it for the same reason. Absolutely nothing to do with the Chinese commies trying to take over the world. /s
I'll believe it wasn't being "banned" because of China when Felon Musk removes his Tesla Swatstikar giga factory out of China. I have an easier time seeing this as a greed driven distraction run by the multi billion dollar disinformation campaign China has been putting on for decades.
Though it wouldn't surprise me if Palestine was an afterthought considering Israel is an ally of the US considering we were one of, if not, the first to recognize it.