TikTok has been pushing Chinese propaganda to millions of users in Europe: analysis
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.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/27/tiktok-has-pushed-chinese-propaganda-to-millions-of-europeans/Open linkView original on lemmy.world624
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The NYPost (low-quality tabloid) is just echoing an actual article at Forbes, which can also be accessed in archive form here.
In general, when a low-quality tabloid site merely reports on the existence of research done by actual reporters, it's better to follow the links and post the researched article instead of the tabloid one.
Spread the gospel! Cite the primary sources as much as possible.
That's something we're supposed to learn in High School.
Though the secondary sources are equally important (adding some commentary can be very helpful), the secret is to be critical of whatever you read.
NYPost is owned by the same company that owns FOX News.
I have been seeing some really low effort propaganda that verges on trolling from Forbes on YouTube.
Downvote everything from that fuckin rag. Don't post NYPost here. If there's a story, find a news source that doesn't itself have an outrageous history of propagandizing.
Where do you find these?
Breaking news! Chinese company runs ads paid for by Chinese government! Did anyone think otherwise? All governments pay for ads. Who in their right mind would think a Chinese company would refuse their government as an ad customer?
Ads are one thing but state propaganda is something different. In a US political context this would be like the State of Florida running "Ads" on Facebook discussing how slavery was actually beneficial to the slaves. Get it now?
Right. It certainly happens to the West. But the governments in Western democracy have to be a bit more subtle when it comes to their propaganda and not run this stuff directly.
Arguably, more effective, due to their subtlety
I think they're sadly quite effective on us. But I think the Chinese "Communist" regime's propaganda is quite effective within China. It just doesn't work well on us.
Same with twitter, instagram, facebook and linkedin.
Do…people use Tiktok ironically?
Jokes aside, I’m going to go against the grain a bit. I liked having Tiktok during the pandemic, it probably saved my mental health. The algorithm showed me videos of people having the same experience as me with the lockdown, or just stuff about my hobbies (I never got the horny stuff people always complain about).
But I uninstalled it after social distancing rules were relaxed in my country because I started getting more and more polarizing and political videos, even though I wouldn’t engage with them.
It could honestly be a great social media platform if it was based in a more privacy respecting country and we didn’t live in a capitalist hellscape where everything has be for profit.
It's not that special is the thing. Any tech company can replicate what tik-tok is doing it's just that they don't have inertia that tik-tok does.
See that other article on the NYPost next to this one? A guy turned himself into a border collie? He's a dog now and it only cost $20,000.
Great news source. No problems here. Not click bait garbage at all. Nope, not meant for maximum sharing. Thanks L4sBot for your contribution.
$20,000 to become your fursona would be a fucking steal to most furries, they would sell everything for that.
In the first paragraph:
I'd still object to NYPost being used as source for anything outside shitpost or a degen meme community like NCD.
Good thing we have a legit Forbes article to back this up!
TikTok is garbage, but perhaps we should look at all the ridiculous right wing propaganda pushed by YouTube, Facebook and Twicough X
YouTube is absolutely dreadful for it. I have literally zero interest in American politics, I'm interested in world events but frankly couldn't care less about another country's domestic politics yet it's pushed almost every time I load the site.
I mostly watch things like travel vlogs and trip reports, yet get endless spam about right wing American politics. There's nothing in my search history that would suggest I'd care about it.
The advertisers cater adverts to target demographics and search/web history. While you may not be interested in them, they are certainly interested in you for some reason. They could be bad at their jobs, but it's more likely there is some overlap there.
It's the YouTube algorithm that's pushing this garbage and it's blatantly obvious, the actual adverts largely line up with my interests. If I don't watch a YouTuber for a couple of weeks they disappear from my reccommed. I never watch anything about American politics, barely watch any American YouTubers yet there it is every single time without fail.
Exactly. It’s all propaganda, and to say “oh well Facebook is ok, so why pick on TikTok” is the hottest of takes.
They’re all garbage and we should ban all of them.
Only use Twitter reddit. I’m getting pissed off eith both. More shit. I understand they are all “free”, but I still want a basic standard.
Yeah well Orwell's 1984 was way off then. The government does not even have to force people to install devices in their homes that blare government propaganda 24/7. They are doing it willingly, enthusiastiacally even, and they don't even have to be citizens of that government lol
Who would have thought?
Aldus Huxley?
George Orwell
Aldus Huxley?
Propaganda is alive and well in the USA too, especially if you consider it in the most liberal sense.
There's an incredible amount of advertising in the media telling me what I need to think about any issue you can imagine. Most people just ignore it, but it annoys the crap out of me. I'll make up own damn mind, thank you.
This is a modern development, you never saw that crap forty years ago. I'm old enough to remember the before time. Most of it I can avoid simply by not watching commercial TV and blocking ads on the internet. Though sometimes it squeaks through on the TV and it makes me want to throw a chair at it.
When I do have the misfortune of seeing that garbage it's usually on TV and has an Ad Council logo on it. Who are these people and how are they able to egregiously spend the large amounts of money it takes to repeat ads on TV like that. That's a lot of money consumed in a futile attempt to brainwash me through repetition.
They could take that same ad money and actually use it to provide relief for some important social issues, like starving children. Instead they'd rather use it to try and influence my opinion in a futile way. Man that is really fucked up when you think about it.
Mobile gaming is also up there, with in app purchases, Gatcha addiction mechanisms which are basically modern day gambling, and yes also ad spamming. Where would you rank it?
In a way yeah sure, but the unconscius doesn't forget 24/7 ads. We can't possibly escape them since they're literally everywhere. Whatever you buy, is done under the influence of at least some kind of advertisement (buy cheap/ fancy/ green/ fuckall)
Oh no, they are polluting our own US and European propaganda.
noooo we have only facts and truth! Only the bad guys lie and do teh ebil propeganda. Oh wait who blew up the Nord Stream? Anyway the us said it was the spoopy russians. Really sorry that german industries got shot in the legs, and don't you look at who stands to gain by that.
who downvoted this ?
Me
Maybe they should try speaking like a normal person? It's fucking annoying.
srry, next time i'll try being more serious then?
with the exodus, too many libs. We've got to break their ideological bubble, of the cult that is liberalism
sadly true.
And American social media does the same for America. Every dog barks for its master.
Moreover, how is anyone sitting in America (or a country with American bases) primarily concerned about the Chinese government? We have endless military and culture war/ propaganda barriers erected against them; we're basically untouchable, unless we plan on physically going to China.
(The answer is related to the propaganda barriers themselves -- it's acceptable / encouraged to criticize China).
Can you describe what "propaganda barriers" means? From my perspective, it's absurdly easy for foreign governments to bot-farm posts in an attempt to sway public opinion in the US.
And of course it's acceptable/encouraged to criticize China. But it's also acceptable/encouraged to criticize Joe Biden, Donald Trump, AOC, DeSantis, Obama, and on and on. There's not really a shortage of hateful and divisive content out there right now. The rage-bait about what The Other Team just did and how America is in terminal decay are the biggest propaganda wins of all time. And news orgs, desperate for revenue in an age of digital media and ad blockers, will chase whatever is stuck in people's heads so they fuel it even more.
Well, even still, the US government and corporations have by far the upper hand. They control or heavily influence the school curriculums, for starters, in addition to most news media. Essentially, the lion’s share of information that reaches most people throughout most of their lives.
Any social media -based sway from a foreign actor will be comparatively marginal, and will be at very best at an even keel with domestic.
That is exactly why these rags have to keep publishing anti china stories nonstop. Western countries need to convince the public that China is a threat despite all you said, so they can eventually justify western aggression and still try to come off as the real victims.
You're not necessarily wrong in all respects, but this comment is peak whataboutism. Western tiktok is targeted mostly at children and young adults who are obviously highly impressionable, so I would argue that regardless of whats happening on any other social media platform, this is unwanted and harmful and therefore shouldn't be accepted.
The difference is there is American federal policy being put in place around TikTok specifically that is not being done against other social media apps.
Yea when people organize an attempted coup on Chinese tiktok,, your point may hold more water. Not saying it's a good thing, but it's clear that Facebook et al's primary motive is not promoting nationalistic goals; domestically or aboard.
The right-wing pipeline is well documented in both Facebook and YouTube.
Bro Youtube is still very often full of grifting, hawkery and other disgusting stuff.
Whataboutism is the correct and logical answer to hypocrites. There is nothing that Tiktok is guilty of that Twitter or Instagram aren't.
For sure. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are all functionally identical and equally concerning as TikTok in every way, and Xitter is trying to jump onto that too.
Are children and young adults really more impressionable than Fox news, and thereby Facebook's, audience?
I also don't know that I agree with "targeted mostly at children and young adults". There are very large parts of TikTok that would be wholly unappealing to your average kid. Not to mention that American social media started out very much targeted at children and young adults. Or have we already forgotten what the main demographics of Facebook and myspace used to be?
The problem with whataboutism here is that these conversations pretty much always involve TikTok and rarely other platforms until it's brought up in comments where it can be dismissed as whataboutism.
Either they're all a problem (it's this one) or none of them are. We need to stop drawing arbitrary lines between offenders. It's just giving a bunch of shit bags freedom to continue being shit bags.
Fox News isn't being paid by the Federal or State Governments to run "Ads" that attempt to put a positive spin on negative events.
Suuuure. Not paid directly by the gov, but unless you've been living under a rock, everyone knows that politicians and big corporations (or in this case: Fox News) work hand in hand to push propaganda... Or like you said "put a positive spin on negative events".
People just like to jump on TikTok and be like CHINA BAD!. As if America was an angel lmao.
WTF is wrong with you? China is running ads trying to convince people that they're not really genociding the Uyghur Muslims they're just detaining them to send them all to school!
I never said it was, again WTF is wrong with you in your head? Criticizing one group doesn't equate to support for an opposing group.
Does it count when a major political party, that does that all the time, uses the money it pilfered from that government, or is that different somehow?
What about that the only reason they're not doing it directly from the government account is because of the safeguards against that kind of thing they haven't pulled down yet
A political party is not the Government nor do their ads attempt to whitewash Government misdeeds.
A political party makes up parts of the government and uses their ads to whitewash their own actions within the government.
This division is not at clean as you're trying to make it
Oftentimes they're connected to party members mate. Trump literally spoke to a bunch of their broadcasters daily.
Was the US Federal Government paying Fox News to run ads talking about how the mass murder of American Indians was a good thing?
No? Then GTFO out of here with this whataboutism. It's fucking gross.
The same people fund both the government (through elections) and the news media. I guarantee you Murdoch is friends with many of his fellow billionaires.
L
Facebook ran ads paid for by Russian propagandists which IMO is far worse than a Chinese company running Chinese ads.
Both are bad, so prosecute and ban them both.
China is markedly worse than the US, though.
China did not invade Iraq or Afganistan
As an American, I can say that my government sucks for invading Iraq and Afghanistan and face no repercussions. I did so before those wars and have done so repeatedly since.
As a Chinese citizen, I can be arrested for singing a song about Hong Kong. Or saying that Tibet isn't China, or that Taiwan should be left alone. God forbid I ask about what's happening in Xinjiang. Or what happened in Beijing in 1989, or why the Great Leap Forward resulted in so many deaths of my countrymen. Or practicing Flaun Dafa, or whatever else.
Nobody is saying the US is perfect: the US has its problems, we can and should be better. But China is never honest about their shit and punishes people who are. China's markedly worse than the US.
They let you complain about Iraq and Afghanistan because your complaints are irrelevant. You have no power to change policy.
I have free speech rights under the constitution. That's not the case in China.
Don't shift the goal posts - there's a huge difference between the countries, and China is strictly worse.
@fist_of_fartitude @ghariksforge if you're an american maybe
this is not 4chan buddy
That and right-wing propaganda. So much propaganda.
Just click on any video from a "liberal media" outlet, (like CNN), and look at the comments. (Or the dislike count if you have Return YouTube Dislike installed.)And then look at a video from Fox News. Nothing but praise for them, while the "liberal" videos are filled with so much hate from right-wing trolls.
If you didn't know any better, you could be lead to believe than 98% of Americans are Republican.
its not just an american problem either, same stuff you will see on similarly leaning news articles and videos here in australia. all rambling about the same inconsequential shit that the cookers and loonies overseas ramble about as well.
Its pretty funny that for the type of people that like to brag about 'do your own research', they sure are a bunch of stupid sheep that believe any idiotic thing they read online
Hmmm wonder what the common thread between media in the US and Australia could be...? 😯
If God is real, I'm about to read an article about the deaths of the entire Murdoch family.
yeah, we kinda wish he wasnt one of ours...
We can pretend. He doesn’t have passport.
Not sure if it's related. I've know a few channels that have non-political, but questionable/debatable content, and they have absolutely nothing but praises in comments. My bet is that they are using mod tools to delete/hide everything else, probably automatically.
Theres one channel I wont name (because i cant remember what it is actually) but its some chick with tourettes who goes into shops and has her boyfriend filming while she just knocks shit over and makes a mess, then carries on when confronted and makes out like the workers there are discriminating against her. I dont doubt she has a problem, but if anyone came into my shop making a mess while someones filming them WTF would anyone do? anyway, the comments were nothing but praise about how 'brave' she is and how hard it must be to live like that. I am absolutely sure any comment that points out how rediculous it is and does nothing to forward her cause are removed quickly
Well I'm only talking about political news videos, here. Sorry for not clarifying.
There is no currently no actual evidence that TikTok is a threat to national security, but consider this:
have you seen what videos are posted there? Fucking social media like this, reddit, twitter, instagram and facebook is a huge issue for everyone 😅
we definitely would be better off without them
Those 3 points sound like a reason to be a threat to national secuirry for any nation that's not golfing buddies with China.
Still not as bad as American social media.
Not saying it's a lie, but sourcing from NYPost is automatically a huge red flag.
I'll put more stock in this when it's reported by reputable outlets.
It's literally linked in the first paragraph.
Are you worried about your rising cost of living, decreasing living standards, wages and the total global catastrophe that is climate change?
Don't worry about that prole, worry about aliens and tiktok!
"I cannot belive it!" - said no one ever
Isn’t that what Hollywood did for America and democratic values?
From the original story in Forbes: „Both Meta and Google label content posted by state media outlets, and in January, TikTok announced that it would join them in doing so. (Twitter formerly labeled posts by state media outlets, but discontinued the labels under Elon Musk.)“
Yeah, yeah, it's Chinese government propaganda, but isn't all advertisement basically propaganda? "Everything is rosy in Xinjiang" is a harmful lie, but so is "if you buy a big-ass truck you'll be a manly man" and frankly I think the latter is causing a lot more damage because it's one that people act on.
We could focus on the problems of our own country, and maybe try and solve them in some capacity. But why do that when we can look far away, at problems that don't affect us in the slightest? Usually it boils down to "I'm not doing good, but they are doing much worse". It's a soothing balm, that takes away the need to go irl and do something.
TLDR: we're lazy.
Which areas?
Yeah sounds about right for the chinese, we should give mongolia nukes to see if china keeps making false claims afterwards.
Mongolia is being used for slave labor to mine dirty coal
Tibet was annexed in the 1950's by China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I3K7fhLmcE&list=LL&index=5&t=523s
(To be fair, the EU and US aren't stopping China and are benefitting from this slave labor also)
China threatens Taiwan every week despite Taiwan not wanting to be a part of China (their democratic choice)
China Tried invading Vietnam after we left and lost in the 1970's
China threatens India's border all the time
The Uyghur Muslims are now officially being exterminated and genocided by the CCP
I mean, would you like me to go on? I can name 4,000,000,000 times they've now been caught doing the shadiest most awful things around the world. The list goes on and on and on
gasp
No big surprise here. It's been their agenda since the start. Only consumers are fucking stupid for taking it in.
And yet, smart geniuses like you take nypost articles in...
Is Forbes good enough for you?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2023/07/26/tiktok-chinese-propaganda-ads-europe/?sh=5175b11f203d
Propaganda is propaganda, no matter how smart you feel reading something you agree with.
You don't like the nypost source but when a better one is linked all of a sudden no source is now good enough.
I mentioned nypost, because OP linked a nypost article. And yes... there are no sources or sides or whatever good enough. The Chinese don't give a fuck about you. So does nypost or whatever source you blindly believe in. It's just that the latter does have something to gain from your belief.
No one is allowed to report this story, got it.
I never said this. You can read whatever confirms your own belief...
Don't need nypost articles. This has been common knowledge for years now, basically since it's been knowledge that it's been Chinese. Just look at the whole huwei incident.
Ribbit
i'm not surprised at all with this.
Guess that explains the existence of tankies
No way...
…why would you read either of them?
Cgtn can be pretty alright to be fair. Especially if you want a more dry approach to science news instead of sensationalised shit. It's much less entertaining though, which I guess is what you should expect from something that isn't running for the sake of clicks/views.
The New York Post isn't committing cultural genocide right now.
You didn't need to add cultural to that sentence.
If I don't then people will say "oh it's not actually genocide because they aren't exterminating anybody".
China literally has concentration camps dedicated to wiping out millions of Uighurs. Go back to China tankie.
Damn, what’s gave that away I wonder !!
ooh It's another american TIktok hitpiece, where Americans blame the Chinese for same exact things that they are guilty of. I still can't believe how butthurt some US elites are about TikTok. The worlds social media monopoly is such precious thing to them.
How to detect if it's propaganda : I push propaganda you will not push propaganda we push propaganda they will not push propaganda.
I = my country
you = other country
We = my friends and me
They = their friends and them.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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".
What TikTok does to a MF.
Funnily enough, am the only one from everyone i know that didn't install that crap. Why not go back to Twitter ?
Good.
If there's to be regulation on this, it has to be universal and has to apply to all states including the US, and all social media platforms equally.
Otherwise leave it to people to decide what they want to watch. Louis Rossman's view on the matter (guy on YT who complains about Apple and other bad behaviour by big companies) changed recently. Video: I was WRONG about banning tiktok - here's why I changed my mind