It is, but the relevance to the discussion is that China getting american's data isn't the reason for the ban. Nor is China influencing Americans because they tend to derank politically spicy videos. If China was controlling the algo to make the US look bad, videos tagged BLM wouldn't have been deranked.
That failed and Trump was mocked. 4 years later, it was used to counter zionist propaganda, and that got the democrats on board. Here's Blinken admitting as much.
Or or or, hear me out: Trump knows that 170 million Americans use tiktok and banning it is unpopular. It also helps that his billionaire buddy owns 15% of bytedance and tiktok's CEO has been sucking up to Trump.
You don't need conspiracies to explain a politician doing something that helps their public perception.
Those aren't mutually exclusive; “American indoctrination.” is the reason so many lemmitors disagree with such extreme views as "sending weapons that prolong war is bad for the people who will suffer the effects of those weapons, mostly civilians", "supporting al-nusra is bad", "we shouldn't put tariffs on EVs and solar panels", or "the chinese government having your data is less of a threat to you than the american government having your data"
They won in 2020 on the wake of protests and low-information voters who thought they'd be freeing the immigrant camps, defunding the police, codifying roe, and getting free healthcare.
They got wiped out in 22 by being moderate and getting fuckall done by trying to compromise with republicans for 2 years.
In 06 and 08, they were finally coming about against the Iraq war and promising things, unlike in 2004 where they simply said they would do the war more competently.
It won't happen. Every election in the last 25 years, including midterms, where the democrats tried to play to "moderate republicans", they got wiped out.
That's the thing, every post on rednote like "do you guys want us here" has hundred of responses from chinese IPs like "Yeah, you guys are great", the only criticism I see is that some influencer don't like that the long-form videos they spend 8 hours a day making are getting out-competed by shitposts directly reposted from tiktok, sometimes without even a translation.
Looking it up, it's unclear how much jesters were respected for having political competency that kings and court would listen to vs how much they were were entertainers who were permitted much greater liberty with content because he was non-threatening and affected nothing.
We are also controlled by 1 party with total dictatorial control, but in typical American extravagance, we have two of them; the party of capital, and the other party of capital.
Americans have jesters privilege. We can say anything we want as long as it doesn't matter. As soon as the government thinks it might matter, they have a million tools to silence you.
obvious that he had not even a basic understanding of the game’s mechanics, essentially proving to everyone that he paid someone to grind up a character for him.
It is, but the relevance to the discussion is that China getting american's data isn't the reason for the ban. Nor is China influencing Americans because they tend to derank politically spicy videos. If China was controlling the algo to make the US look bad, videos tagged BLM wouldn't have been deranked.
Tiktok also wouldn't have hired a bunch of state department spooks if they weren't intending to keep amplifying US narratives.