TikTok says it’s not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine — The company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion::In a blog post, the company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion.
It’s almost like teens see something like a genocide being committed, think it’s wrong and say something about it.
Yeah I don’t think teens are particularly pro-Palestine or anti-Israel.
Teens throughout history have just been anti-war and anti-killing-children.
Imagine being a teenager and being against teenagers getting killed. What is this world coming to?
The sheer audacity
Obviously the teenagers are being mind-controlled
I don’t understand why so many stop doing so.
As you get older you learn that things are never black or white, and everything is grey. Global politics are complicated. The world is a giant chess board and Gaza is a pawn.
I’ve heard arguments that Israel should have essentially done nothing if they were good guys, but not retaliating sends a message to those funding Hamas that they should do it again.
Making matters worse, they are surrounded by people that constantly advocate for their eradication, they’ve already experienced such an event in their history, so to say they are more sensitive to it than other groups may be an understatement.
This was their 9/11. And back then the vast majority of Americans wanted to retaliate against Al Qaeda.
And to clarify further there is no “peace” between Israel and would be Palestine. You’re talking about 1 piece of land that three different religions have ancient ties to, with little desire to coexist on it. Chalk it up to just another failure of western powers dividing up the Middle East after WWII.
Short of some scenario where they can emigrate to Egypt or something, I don’t know what the answer is. They’re all bad options.
I am 29 and i only seem to become more radical of a pacifistic absolutists. Sure the world is grey, twisted dark sometimes even. But global politics are much more off a chaotic mess then they are complicated, and they are indeed complicated. There is no excuse to murder innocent people left and right for neither party or country.
It is naive to believe that we can just get rid of borders and become tolerant enough to let people live where they want without some issues but i much rather see us attempt that then maintain whatever we are doing right now.
I don’t think it’s healthy to be an absolutist about just about anything. The unattended consequences start to outnumber your ideals. If Israel hadn’t done after Hamas, Hamas would be empowered to keep doing it. The net effect would be more Israelis killed. Who knows, they may have been invaded by one of the several neighboring countries that would like nothing more than to destroy the country.
I think Ukraine is a better example though. I can’t fathom telling them they should try to get along with Russia. There’s the idea of being anti-war in general, and then there’s allowing a foreign aggressor to come in and take your country.
I think that you really did a good job summing up an incredibly complex issue in a fairly neutral way. No matter how smart you are as a kid/teen, there’s only so much you’re ever going to see play out, and it takes some time to get all the “data points” to start seeing the bigger picture.
As for Israel/Palestine, it’s literally one of the single most complex issues in geopolitics, and while it’s easy for someone reading articles and watching TikToks to just say “if Israel just gave them their land back and everything would be good!”, it’s ignorant of a much, much, MUCH bigger picture.
This is not saying I support any of what’s going on. I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that conflicts of any sort are fucking awful, but the reality is that if Israel just did pull out of the West Bank and ceded all the claims, there would be so many knock-on effects that are effectively impossible to predict, with none of them being particularly good.
Realistically, the only way you could ever hope to come to a “simple” solution that doesn’t result in a massive loss of life would be with a time machine.
Exactly. I think you’d have to go back to pre-Hitler to get any sort of major change, but then the butterfly effect comes into play heavily. What does Europe look like if Germany never escapes the grasps of their quite terrible post-WWI restrictions? Maybe all we do is flip the script and Jews are treated like the Palestinians but still in Germany? There’s no way of knowing.
I agree that it’s all awful. I don’t think there is a solution that leaves everyone happy and safe and that’s just the reality of life.
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IDK, both can be true. Teens might be right in saying something and tiktok might be amplifying that kind of content because it helps China geopolitically. A highly upvoted post on Lemmy literally yesterday was this - https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/13/us/china-online-disinformation-invs/index.html
Tiktok also didn’t censor the major protests in France like Facebook and Twitter did at the time.
Theres only a handful of social media outlets. Tik tok is just not suppressing the Pro Palestine content like Western owned media outlets have been.
We speak lots of " free speech " in the West, but look how quick, German, British, American, Canadian government and media spheres are united in calling Palestine protestors terrorists and supporting hamas.
Its just our lack of free speech being exposed when it goes against the powers that be.
That proves nothing, it might equally be in China’s geopolitical interest to support discontent and protests in the West. A more interesting question is if TikTok would promote content about the Uyghur genocide the same way.
Well we know for a fact that China has it’s own Douyin (Tiktok) app and that it prioritises stopping any inkling of random social movements/organisation through social media.
So this isn’t really a mystery at all. Within China they are subject to their laws. Elsewhere they follow global norms.
I actually think all the furore about China and Tiktok was really not about Chinese control over Tiktok in the West, but about the West’s own control over Tiktok. Much like how Huawei was booted for not allowing US intelligence agencies to put in backdoors, rather than actually enabling spying itself (this came out last year iirc).
Ironic seeing as Huawei was founded with IP they stole from Nortel. They can fuck off as far as I’m concerned.
From Nortel, Ericsson, Alcatel…
Its how innovation happens. I’m pretty sure the Americans did the same to the British.
Came out where?
There’s a ton of support for the Palestinian people out there. It would strongly appear to be suppressed on commercial social media sites. I can’t say that Tiktok isn’t amplifying it, but as you poke around on open social platforms that tend to censor less, you see a lot more Pro-Palestine news and content. If you go through twitter or facebook and find specific regional bloggers, the content is out there but if doesn’t seem to pass the algorithm
The issue is not censorship, it’s disinformation and Hamas is all over it when allowed.
And conversely the Israeli government is known for its commitment to accuracy and preventing misinformation right?
I agree disinformation is an issue, but it’s an issue across the board on both sides of any issue
I’m skeptical that hamas has the resources to spread much misinformation to us. This doesn’t feel like a “both sides” time.
They literally have the government platform in Gaza and are for some reason believed at face value despite being more wrong than right. They are also amplified by multiple Arab states and their state run news organizations.
Right. I don’t think the Palestinian government has the propaganda resources to match the combined Israeli and US governments.
They absolutely do and they place no limitations on themselves.
Maybe the U.S. upvoted that to discredit China /j
China gains nothing by Mideast conflict.
Israel - clearly does not care about things like democracy and human rights.
I can see them drawing closer to China.
Russia arguably gains via ties with Iran and decrease of U.S. influence in the region. But, as far as news, reporting, information are concerned, it’s pretty irrelevant, if there’s actual propaganda then let it be shown and debunked, and even Iranian RT right now is barely saying anything surprising to anyone who’s been watching what’s happening on the ground.
“You’re crazy to believe your own eyes!”
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When the October 7 attack happened my teenagers noticed the one sided media and hamfisted pro Israel propaganda asked what’s really going on. Today’s kids are getting constant propaganda and advertising. They’re not immune but they recognize it and bristle.
When I was a teenager and Yitzhak Rabin was murdered i bought the anti palastine rhetoric that followed for an embarrassingly long time. And we knew that it was Netanyahu. Well, I don’t think we knew until later that he was aware that night of what he was doing. But we knew it was his follower who pulled the trigger.
Israel has already killed 10-20x as many people as died in the Hamas attack, and they’re just getting started.