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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32178 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Would the situation be different in the slightest if it were an American company?

If the American company is showing the same general material to all parties (at least where it's allowed) then yes, obviously. It would not be asymmetrical where one group of people are apparently being made marginally worse as a matter of government policy in a way that demonstrates that they know this harm is being done and they can apparently easily avoid doing said harm (i.e. they don't do it to their own people)

It would also mean that the company is - like TikTok is in China - more likely to be subject to the pressure of the American government, which gives Americans some leverage (well...insofar as you think Americans determine government policy).

If the complaint is that China is somehow causing massive psychic damage to the West, then one notices that we're also causing a lot of the damage TO OURSELVES.

This doesn't seem to challenge the original point. The bone of contention that kicked off this thread was:

IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects

There's no reason to grant this; IME the concern about TikTok has never, ever been solely about psychological effects so the argument falls flat.

This also presumes that I'm not worried about things like porn. I'm not sure why: my criticism of liberal learned helplessness applies even more to US-produced porn and social media sites (since I've already argued that the US has more agency there)

So I'm unmoved that US media is bad too (I simply bite the bullet on that)

So it seems like we're agreeing that Tiktok poses more danger than just being psychologically poisonous.

I'm just not sure that banning Tiktok is an 'antidote,' especially with the difficulty inherent in enforcing a ban/preventing some CCP-controlled replacements from arising.

To be clear, my position is basically that it's way easier to justify a ban on Tiktok if it is based on the concept of removing an attack surface that is controlled by a (potentially) hostile party.

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