Is China tailoring the content to politics or are political influencers just better at pandering…
It’s hard to say without proof so I won’t pretend to know the answer. What I do know is that, if the roles were reversed, China would 100% believe that any movement that caused chaos within the country was somehow orchestrated by the United States as that’s what they’ve done in the past. So, until we have a hospitable relationship where the countries see eye to eye on any social issues, it really doesn’t make sense for either control to have the keys to a popular social media network in the other – if you get my drift. I will also say that promotional programs of games and movies from China, like the recent Wukong controversy, highlights that China very much believes in pushing their political narrative to the degree that it would be hard to imagine them not using it with a widely popular social media network like Tik Tok.
This is where federation is smart though – the content is dispersed enough that the idea of removing a server is less daunting and there are fewer entities that are too big to fail.
It’s a fair point. Frankly, considering where I am, I think America’s social media should really be forced to engage with some kind of open federation standard (doesn’t have to be activity pub) as I think it better reflects how the United States itself is designed as a republic. That feels like a long shot, but it’s the dream.
We could force control of Tik Tok’s algorithm to be managed by a United States entity. You know, basically what China does to US businesses who want to sell product in China.
If they don’t want that, they could let Google serve wikipedia articles about Tienanmen Square again lol.
As someone who has been going to 7-11 more now than ever in the past, I actually kind of hope they succeed in this.
The Japanese ownership has made the chain much better than it was prior in the 90s, for instance.
Regarding VPNs, I wish this was an easier way of doing it. Unfortunately it requires all friends to be tech savvy enough to understand why a vpn is necessary.