No one should get their news from any one source. You could replace “TikTok” in your sentence with almost any single mass/social media outlet and be correct. I wouldn’t advise anyone to get their news from just Fox, or just X/Twitter, or just MSNBC. Edit: Also, multiple major news organizations have TikTok accounts, and a lot of politicians including Biden. Even if you say, “I’d rather get my news from CNN”, well CNN has a TikTok account, but it exists alongside several other journalists, politicians, news outlets etc. TikTok actually has an advantage of being more diverse than many other single-outlet sites.
The blind spots created by funnelling news through a single filter is a big, often desirable feature of mass media conglomerates. Doesn’t matter if it’s CNN, Fox, TikTok, or Facebook - no one source is going to give you the full picture or be completely true all the time. TikTok has value as part of a diverse media in that it bypasses the need for corporate/government approval of discussion. Here’s Bernie Sanders talking about how a handful of corporations control what news makes it to people: “It is the limits of discussion, the kinds of issues that we are allowed to talk about. So I never get asked about income and wealth inequality.”
The meme is as much about hypocrisy as anything. Folks will accept misinformation/bias so long as it’s their brand of it. I mention Facebook for a reason - there are staunch conservatives among my family who post about vaccine hazards, LGBTQ+ agendas, how white Christians are persecuted in North America, God’s laws must be our laws, etc. Lawmakers will allow (and in the worst cases support) misinformation on many platforms, but figuring out why and which ones is a different discussion. People seem to accept that bad posts on say, X/Twitter, are something to be worked around without the need for a ban even though there’s vile stuff on there. I’m not arguing for censorship of them (which almost never works out). I’m talking about the clear dissonance in opinion where “this is ok here but needs to be banned here”.
Edit: if anyone wants, I list just a few of the MANY news organizations/journalists on TikTok just below this comment. The idea that TikTok isn’t a platform for news is provably false and I give specific examples.
It’s odd to be told that I’ll get the wrong news from TikTok, then be told it’s not a source of news (albeit by different people). Especially when one of the big arguments against TikTok is that China is using TikTok to put particular news in front of people. A 2-to-3 minute video can contain a lot of news info.
But how many people on tik tok giving you news are actually journalists and who is funding it? Tik tok is not paying them for their investigations so I assume what you are watching is not actual news but rather commentary on news that was done by journalists.
Winner of the British Journalism Awards Innovation of the Year 2021, Sophia Smith Galer shares on her profile breaking news and fun facts on a wide variety of topics. Her work on TikTok has been highly successful since 2020: she has almost 400.000 followers on the platform.
Reporters from all over the world share their experience through breathtaking content on nature, science and people on the National Geographic TikTok account. This profile offers some of the most visually appealing videos on the platform.
One of the most popular news accounts on TikTok remains The Washington Post. The profile offers engaging and creative videos that attracted more than 1.2 Million followers – and will likely keep growing in 2022.
CNN journalist Max Foster is very active on the platform, where he posts first-hand insights on hot topics – and shows his reporter life behind the scenes. His profile shows one of the best sides of information on TikTok, where he creates a strong connection with his public.
Would you say you are more or less informed than the people who read those sources rather than watching what the algorithm says will be most easily monetized for short form video?
I get it. There is too much news and its too expensive to consume all the news you actually need, but I think we can agree that getting the scraps from tik tok is not a long term solution.
I’m not going to agree with your original assertion that TikTok is not a news platform, and I notice you’ve switched from “it isn’t” to “it isn’t ideal”. I know I might eat downvotes the same way I am in all of this thread, but I care more about the excellent examples I’ve provided that prove it is than opinion. I care more about the fact that people ARE using TikTok as a news source to find out about world events and news. I care that organizations like the ACLU are condemning the TikTok ban as closing off avenues of free speech even if it appears some of the folks voting here don’t agree.
Well I believe the ACLU is wrong if they are asserting the Chinese government is a beacon of free speech.
They still banning all mentions of the Uyghur genocide and the decimation of the Tibetan Buddhist faith? If so, your own sources are censoring themselves for clicks.
Dude, that’s an aggressively worded strawman that makes serious assumptions with no evidence. The ACLU is not arguing China is a beacon of free speech nor are they advocating for Uyghur genocide or Tibetan suppression, which the rest of your argument proceeds from. Quite the opposite in fact, which is something I can prove. They are saying free speech is being meaningfully facilitated by TikTok, even if it’s a Chinese company. Honestly, just person-to-person, that was pretty bad and if you care I really think you should change at least that last post. Maybe you don’t, that’s fine…I don’t always care about internet opinions either.
If you want, you can read an article about debunking some reasons and suggesting others here, including how there’s no evidence to date that TikTok is artificially skewed pro-Palestine/progressive as opposed to other platforms (by China or otherwise), or how data privacy concerns are not either unique to TikTok by a long shot or solved by this bill. “The US government’s desire to ban TikTok instead of taking industry-wide action is a good indication that its campaign isn’t really about national security or data protection,” Marx points out, “but something much deeper: namely the preservation of American economic and geopolitical hegemony.”
I didn’t say they were advocating for those things. I said those things are the reason they are wrong.
I don’t believe China should have the power to shape US News, and if negative reporting of China isn’t allowed on the primary source for many Americans, that is shaping American reality.
Well I believe the ACLU is wrong if they are asserting the Chinese government is a beacon of free speech.
I can read what you’ve said. I’m not enraged by you, I’m not going to devolve into insults, but we clearly have different ethics when it comes to changing based on proof. I’ve proven that TikTok is a news source and it hasn’t affected your opinion or made you change your posts. You’ve gone from “it isn’t news” to “it’s not an ideal news platform” to “it’s unethical news” and I’m tiring of chasing moving goalposts. Journalists such as the one I linked have found no evidence that TikTok is skewing results period, much less because China says so. You believe what you will, as is your right.
Have those journalists attempted to discuss human rights violations against the Uyghurs or Tibetans?
Those topics used to be a very big deal for leftists. They aren’t anymore. It should worry us all that our empathy is being redirected based on who owns what platforms we use. Which… You are here on Lemmy instead of reddit, so you already to an extent agree, just not in the case of one specific state controlled corporation.
#uyghur on TikTok. The very first video at the top is about how we promised after the Holocaust it would never happen again and now it’s happening Uyghurs. There are videos about “save Uyghurs” and so on. You don’t seem evil or stupid or any other insult, but please consider looking.
Edit: Found a great video on TikTok from an account with 1.5 million followers about testing censorship by China regarding all their dirty laundry including Uyghurs, also among the top results. It’s been up for many weeks now.
It’s not about your participation. I never use TikTok. It’s about the fact that you make assertions that I then disprove with specific evidence within minutes of looking. Yet you still seem to believe everything you did at the start of the conversation when you began with “Except tik tok isn’t a news source. It’s a short form video app.” and then went through multiple changes of argument. That’s why I said you and I have different approaches to changing our minds based on evidence, because as near as I can tell that’s true. You haven’t changed any of your posts for instance - the one about not being news is still unaltered in spite of proof to the contrary.
You informed me that they now allow discussion of the Uyghur genocide and I thanked you for that information.
I also essentially stated that while it may be a source for many, it doesn’t give the depth of knowledge that those journalists’ actual work gives, and that you are bound to an algorithm telling you what is important.
They should publish the code so you can verify your trust in them.
Not one of your posts is modified to reflect a change on stance. There are many points you haven’t conceded even in the face of evidence. You still appear to criticize TikTok for the same things you did previously - primarily suspicion of direct Chinese manipulation in spite of no proof of said direct manipulation.
Now the bar to bypass your suspicion is them to publishing code, which is a demand NO other major companies are asked to meet. Here’s “11 Decentralized, P2P and Open Source Alternatives to Mainstream Social Media Platforms Like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Reddit”. Not a single of the largest companies are on that list. Similarly the major search engines aren’t open-source. For your position about wanting people to stay away from TikTok for code reasons to be consistent you’d have to be refusing to go on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or to use almost any search engine because none of them are open-source.
You’ve moved the goalposts multiple times until now they’re out of reach and you’ve finally found the excuse that justifies the same position (TikTok is dangerous/inadequate/harmful) you’ve held the whole time. From it’s not news -> it’s not serious news -> it’s not unbiased news -> it’s censored by China -> it’s not open source.
I’ve shown you that there is no evidence of tampering! I’ve even proven to you that China being a totalitarian regime does not = censorship on TikTok! It’s the ONLY point you actually caved on! Do you hate things just because they’re Chinese? Because your argument now is no longer a fault on merit, just on nationality. To quote an article I linked to you before: "The US government’s desire to ban TikTok instead of taking industry-wide action is a good indication that its campaign isn’t really about national security or data protection,” Marx points out, “but something much deeper: namely the preservation of American economic and geopolitical hegemony.” Your latest argument falls in with that last line.
Do you hate Chinese cars, electronics, and other consumer goods? You may argue that media is different, but I proved TikTok isn’t censored for being Chinese and there’s no evidence that it’s skewed because of China.
Congrats. You’ve found the goalpost that can’t be reached. A goalpost that no policymaker seriously demands of any of the major companies, including, I’m positive, many of the corporations creating products and services you use all the time. You gave no indication that it was your basis for condemning literally every major platform (something you only began once all other arguments were dismissed), but it’s your endpoint. For all that you say it’s completely necessary, you certainly didn’t start with it, or say it should apply to domestic companies until I pointed out the hypocrisy of demanding it from just TikTok.
This floor of “required to be open-source” we’ve hit after your different demands and assertions is why I say you give every indication of concluding something and working backwards to justify it as opposed to changing based on evidence. I am pretty sure if I could somehow satisfy this latest condition you’d find yet another reason to hold onto your original belief, and I say that based on the proof of having done so several times today.
While true, I think your statement is misleading. No one should get all their news from one source, but Facebook is particularly bad, and TikTok is many times worse than that again. Facebook will show you the misinformation of the highest bidder. TikTok will do that but also be beholden to the Chinese government. Not sure if the content is worse than that of Fox News or the Daily Mail (that’s a low bar to squeeze in under), but they’re at least sneakier.
TikTok content is, right now, showing people the truth of how Palestinians are suffering at a time when respected outlets like the New York Times are specifically telling their staff to avoid words like “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, and occupied territory". TikTok content is showing the truth of ceasefire/pro-Palestine marches, and Jewish participation in those events, at a time when officials and media outlets are calling them violent and anti-Semitic. Videos on TikTok are providing unfiltered on-site coverage and interviews of the campus protests.
I don’t use TikTok because I hate the format. But I see value in a platform where the general population can share news without it having to get approval from an editor. It’s the same reason I’ve never said Facebook, Twitter/X, etc. should be banned, even when I see there are lots of posts I know are harmful.
It’s an issue of freedom of press/speech in modern times and organizations like the ACLU agree. “We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that. We strongly urge legislators to vote no on this unconstitutional bill.”
With regards to Chinese control/manipulation, I’d like to add that in the course of debate with another person I’ve discovered just today that:
I can’t locate actual evidence from journalists that shows that TikTok skews results at the behest of China or otherwise. “There is no concrete evidence supporting the idea that political ideas shared on TikTok are more progressive or pro-Palestine than what you find on other platforms or that it skews more progressive than the overall population — with nearly 70 percent of voters now supporting a cease-fire in Gaza. It’s unclear how TikTok’s algorithm handles political content. But one of lawmakers’ greatest concerns is that the platform has offered a new avenue for people to virally spread political messages outside of traditional media.”
Topics that China REALLY wants censored are freely available on TikTok. Here’s #uyghur on TikTok - the first result at the top is a video about how the world said “never again” after the Holocaust yet now we let it happen to Uyghurs in China. Here’s a video from an account with 1.5 million followers that tests Chinese censorship by going through all of China’s dirty laundry, including Uyghurs, Tibet and political suppression. It has been up since March 13th, has 187,500 likes, and shows up in the first 10 results (so right near the top). There are 42,700 posts that come up with #uyghur and top results are condemnations of China’s genocide.
Saying China doesn’t commit cyberwarfare or propaganda would be a ridiculous position. We should definitely be paying attention to what stands between the public and facts, although that applies to many more platforms than just TikTok. However, people should know the facts of censorship or skewing (China-mandated or otherwise). Burden of proof is on the accusers, and I can’t find said proof. In the case of censorship, what I can easily find first-hand on TikTok itself is evidence that contradicts the claims about banning Uyghurs, Tibet, etc.
Edit: To those downvoting, why? I’m not asking because I need you to justify disagreeing with me. I want to see the evidence I couldn’t find after spending all afternoon looking for actual proof that China maliciously censors TikTok or disproportionately skews results as is being alleged. I stepped up with evidence, please do the same.
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