TikTok has been pushing Chinese propaganda to millions of users in Europe: analysis

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 611 points – TikTok has been pushing Chinese propaganda to millions of users in Europe: analysis
nypost.com

TikTok has been pushing Chinese propaganda to millions of users in Europe: analysis::More than 1,000 ads from Chinese state media outlets have run on European users' TikTok feeds since October 2022, according to the platform's latest ad library update that was analyzed by Forbes.

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What?

I'll simplify :

USA sharing propaganda via it's social media companies to Europe and others = good thing.

China sharing propaganda via it's social to Europe and others = bad thing.

In other terms : how dare they do the thing we've been doing ?

Who in the world said western state propaganda was a good thing? Military recruitment and political ads are pretty universally hated.

I might also add that western tech giants and media aren't directly owned by the state, nor is the state a dictatorship, so it's a little different? You think Elon's Twitter is on the same side as Bidens Executive is on the same side as the conservative Congress?

America not being a dictatorship doesn't a matter to anyone else besides it's citizens. All the fucking world want is for America to not invade, destabilize, destroy the economy of other countries, which surprise surprise it's been fucking doing none stop since the end of WW2 !!

Do you really think the gouvernement doesn't inject propaganda on social media ? Are you this naive ? It's how you call "corruption" and "buying politicians" as "lobbying". They don't control it like a dictatorship would but they do control media.

America not being a dictatorship doesn’t a matter to anyone else besides it’s citizens.

Most American allies depend on the US for defense, the US is the largest economy in the world, and the US is the largest ideological counterpart to countries like Russia - who want to use force to annihilate both dissent and opposition.

It absolutely matters to most well-informed citizens of any country the world over how we conduct ourselves because it does directly impact them. That's part of the reason we should be better than we are.

The... world want [sic]... for America to not...

I mean, you're preaching to the choir. Most folk here didn't want to send their kids to die in 'Nam or Afghanistan. Vets didn't sign up to risk their lives for opium fields. American citizens were duped too.

We're on the same side here.

Do you really think the gouvernement doesn’t inject propaganda on social media ?

I didn't say that, but they take out ad campaigns and use PR firms like a normal company. Twitter does not work for the US government and the US government does not rig the algorithm it uses for feeds. The Washington Post is not controlled by the US government. Amazon is not controlled by the US government.

The distinction between that and what China or Russia does is important. They own the media. They own the companies. They own every method of communication and every interaction between their people. And they leverage that direct power to control narratives to say things like "Taiwan belongs to China" and "Ukraine belongs to Russia" and "Tianemen Square never happened".

Meanwhile, you can see all the atrocities the US government did on Wikipedia. Sometimes even on the websites of the state itself. Reparations are discussed, sometimes won. Protesters fight with, yes, the risk of state violence, but not of tanks turning them into pudding that's washed down the gutters. And with that knowledge, we can shape our own future democratically. Putin and Xi cannot be voted out.

All this is a long-winded way to say:

  • The US government engages in propaganda.
  • The US government's propaganda, compared to authoritarian states, is heavily restricted and far more reliant on consensual participation. It's also widely criticized and (almost) universally hated.
  • The propaganda used by authoritarian states like China is actively leveraged to commit outright genocide and deny atrocities. It cannot be publicly criticized or opposed.
  • Therefore, the scale and impact of propaganda is different and that difference must be considered.

So all those ads that the government poured millions of dollars into which told people to get vaccinated were bad? Or are you saying that Chinese propaganda is good?

Do you realize how much effort the military puts into propaganda programs? They have an office in Hollywood specifically for controlling the portrayal of the military in films. They’re currently paying streamers to simp for them as a recruiting drive, look on kid YouTube and you see them, “I spent 100 hours training with the Army and it was so fun, war is awesome guys!”… Dragnet was literally designed to reform the image of the LAPD, and I’m certain all the procedural crime dramas that exist didnt only get green lit because middle age women like them. It’s everywhere and in everything. We’re constantly surrounded with and bombarded by state propaganda.

Do you think am like some brain dead American right winger or something ?

I meant military propaganda and most importantly the subtle and sometimes on the nose "this country bad and this one is good no matter what they do" type of media. Next time , take closer look at the wording of used in articles and especially the title. It's how you can shift the narrative into anything you want.

Propagandae is meant to control your political views and it's not a matter of whom it benefit it's the hypocrisy of " only us can do propaganda". Of course, your views are skewed toward your country so you'll say "they better have our propaganda than theirs".