Are you really trying to contend that ByteDance, the owners/developers of TikTok, are not a Chinese based company?

I see more pro China anti American content in one day on Lemmy than I have in my entire existence on TikTok and RedNote combined.

I don’t have a reason to doubt this, although I don’t see this (any I’ve never used TikTok). Lemmy being an open platform means that it’s rife for propagandists to spread their views. No one said pro-CCP and anti-American content was exclusive to TikTok or RedNote. But Lemmy is far more neutral than most other platforms, which means both pro and anti anything content has an equal chance. It just comes down to the userbase.

And with that openness comes the possibility for people employed to promote pro-CCP content also.

You are running off imagination, assumptions and vibes.

You dropped a comma there.

But no, I’m not running off of imagination or assumptions.

Otherwise, without that info, you just stay in a bubble - which was precisely the intention of the ban.

Maybe this is an American-centric thing, but then the rest of the world does see the US as a strange place with strange ideas

The funny thing though, is that China is an even bigger bubble with thicker walls.

TikTok is a Chinese owned product, it’s developed by people who live in China, and the Chinese government has a direct influence on the content and how it’s presented to users. This isn’t hearsay or an opinion. It’s a fact.

Another fact, that people seem to always gloss over or ignore, is that TikTok isn’t even allowed in the country that develops it. They have their own internal version called Douyin, which is the same as TikTok, and people outside of China aren’t allowed to use it.

If China had one platform for everyone, this discussion wouldn’t even be happening.

We see the problem with FOX viewers

Only a subset of Americans see Fox as trustworthy, and everyone outside the US (myself included) sees Fox as pure propaganda.

people using TikTok for news (myself included), there’s actually strong media literacy because they’re learning about what deceit looks like.

This hurts my soul so much. I think this just says a lot more about American education than anything else.

I think we’re already seeing how…

I’m not American

The goal wasn’t to stop the communist Chinese government, but ensure that Americans maintain a stranglehold over these vices so that they can benefit from them.

Both. It can be both. And the influence by the CCP is absolutely real.

people would rather have their personal data stolen by the chinese government than the US who poses much more of an immediate threat.

Oh sure. Chinese living in the US telecom network for years isn’t a threat. China compromising critical US infrastructure isn’t an immediate threat.

And the issue is less about stealing your data (although that is an issue), it’s about being shown pro-CCP and anti-American content by a Chinese app. It’s about direct foreign influence by an adversarial county (the government, not the people, apparently that distinction needs to be pointed out to people here).

How good their infrastructure is.

and benefiting from their government instead of being repressed

Had my there for a second. I thought you were being serious.

I have spent some time on RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and all I have seen is friendly cross-cultural exchange and discussion between these supposed ‘adversaries’.

Do you really not understand the difference between “Chinese people” and “Chinese government”?