It’s like the West left their children alone in a room with The Chinese Communist Party
Is there a more perfect propaganda weapon?
The CCP own TikTok and they use it to serve up polarizing addictive trivia to Western teenagers while they serve up scientific achievements to Chinese youth. At the same time the CCP collects locations, contacts, files and aps. Frighteningly it can copy the content of the clipboard, even storing passwords.
It’s not just children but adults too. It is so addictive, there are claims it has a billion users. Many use it daily and for as much as 5% of all their waking hours. With algorithms to control the content delivered and an army of bots to amplify whatever sentiment they want, the CCP can shape public opinion, change norms, and feed dissatisfaction and even violent protest — as Kane points out, the #blacklivesmatter hashtag on TikTok generated a crazy 4.9 billion views.
Near the end of his time in office, Trump must have realized the grave threat it posed. He gave the owners of Tiktok just 45 days to spin it off to a US company or face being banned in the US. But the owners — Bytedance — had already spent millions lobbying Capitol Hill, and immediately after Biden took office he signed an executive order undoing Trump’s directive.
By Carlisle Kane of Equedia Investment Research
China’s Biggest Weapon Against the West: Your Teen’s Phone
This year, TikTok became the most downloaded app on the internet, beating even Instagram and Facebook.
Over a billion people use it every month—that’s one-quarter of all adults outside of China.
TikTok is so engaging that nine out of 10 users visit the social network daily. And on average, they spend around 5-7% of their all waking time on this app.
If those numbers don’t say anything to you, let’s just say that this Chinese social media beats all addictiveness records that Facebook, Instagram, or any other Western social network has ever achieved.
The secret sauce?
It doesn’t let users choose what they want to see, for the most part.
Instead, its secret algorithm serves you an infinite reel of videos tailored to your likings based on all the data they acquire…
TikTok is a data collection machine for the CCP:
…as soon as you download the app, ByteDance—and by extension, the CCP—can see your location (at hourly intervals), contacts, all apps, files, and active subscriptions.
And here’s the most terrifying part: TikTok has 100% visibility into your clipboard. It can monitor and store your keystrokes, including passwords you type out on the phone.
So, not only can the CCP feed whatever it pleases to people across the world, it can rally its army of bots to engage with its content to shape public opinion in its favor – very much like Twitter has been used for spreading Chinese propaganda and spreading COVID news.
“… what China possesses today is even more dangerous than Cambridge Analytica. Because they don’t just have the data of a billion people, they also control the media they consume.”
TikTok serves different content in China than in the U.S.
But it’s not just about the language and cultural customs. The content is of a whole different nature and serves opposite purposes.
In China, TikTok shows educational clips about science and achievements. At the same time, American kids are fed the shallowest, mind-numbing entertainment, such as funny pet videos, comical mishaps—as well as extremist political content.
Before long, they’ll polarize our society to the point that we’ll slit each other’s throats ourselves.
h/t David E
Photo by By Surprising Shots.