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If that's sufficient for a ban, then most or all the rest of social and mass media would qualify as well.

What does it tell you that the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people from the influence of TikTok?

Absolutely nothing?

This is a country that has incredibly authoritarian laws on the books regarding the internet because it doesn't want it's people reading """""western propaganda"""", why would we assume it's reason for continuing that behaviour isn't the same as it's always been: bullshit

Douyin content is very similar to TikTok content. There are many popular douyin creators whose content gets copied to TikTok. There's loads of makeup, cosplay, cooking, skit, DIY, etc. Mukbang style content is very popular there as well. Their makeup and fashion content, like on TikTok, is sponsored by huge international brands like Mac and Gucci and others along those lines. Also super popular is pet content, like people who run cat shelters and dog walkers and stuff. There is also no age verification to use the app unless you want to post or comment yourself, and there is no time limit to use it. Some TikTok creators get reposted to douyin as well, but the overwhelming majority of people in china do not speak English, and to post on it, you need to be a citizen of China. Not that there aren't ways around it, but it's harder than it's worth.

I get that you're paranoid about Chinese international political interference, rightfully so in some ways. But this is just blatant lies and fear mongering. I've used the app extensively myself to follow some makeup content creators from China. It's functionally identical to TikTok. Censorship does exist, but it's based around specific events, mostly from what i can tell. I don't use to find political content, but I wouldn't be surprised if they censored content based on stuff like the Honk Kong protests. Propaganda is also on there, most likely, but I never encounter it in my feed.

it limits the content to educational instead of entertainment and the time spent to maximum 2 hours for people under 18

That sounds WAY too nanny state restrictive to me and I'm SCANDINAVIAN!

the Chinese government itself wants to protect their people

Good one 😆

It's simply a propaganda tool to influence people and it keeps them addicted using an algorithm. It's a highly specialized psy ops tool. It makes the world dumber

Same has been truthfully said about Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The behavior of Meta and Musk aren't any better and your data isn't any more safe from ending up in the hands of hostile and/or totalitarian governments such as those of India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Israel.

The REAL reason why politician want to ban Tiktok is that it's the only serious competitor to the other radicalization machines whose parent companies and key people "just happen to" donate a lot more money to those same politicians than ByteDance does. The official reasons are just a smoke screen.

I'd be fine with it if they were actually honest about it and banned the aforementioned American competitors too, though. Short of that, banning Tiktok doesn't really solve any problems without exacerbating others.

Oh, and for all its censorship on behalf of the Chinese government, Tiktok is also the only major social media platform that doesn't heavily censor legitimate protest against the fascist apartheid regime of Israel.

I'm sure that the push has NOTHING to do with the fact that most if not all of the politicians in favor are taking a ton of blood money from AIPAC and other de facto Israeli government entities badly disguised as American nonprofits either! 🙄

Oh yeah my brother loves his TikTok and so does my dad. I watched my brother he will just endlessly scroll and watch the dumbest shit you can imagine. That not even all the alt right shit he consumes on there. Hell I had to do a quick google search to prove a post as fake. Some rando says the tiger king was pardon or Biden was rounding up trump supporters and my brother bought it. I prove both post wrong and tried to explain that it was a propaganda tool to keep him stupid and in the dark. Still uses it.