The US government is not able to control speech on TikTok the way it can on US-based social media companies. So it makes sense it would need to go. Aside from all the inane video content on there, there is a lot of content that gets censored on US-based social media apps that does not get censored on TikTok, which is a big problem for the US leadership.
The more meta question though is how this affects both Americans’ perception of their own country domestically and others’ of it abroad. Younger Americans feel very clearly that they are having their speech curtailed by their government. Older ones can buy the party line about “foreign government data harvesting” of people’s dance videos and rizz videos and whatnot. But younger ones don’t.
“Free speech” has long been one of the bludgeons the US uses internationally to push other governments to open themselves up to reforms favorable to US interests. This move looks like it partially dismantles one of the US’s favorite tools for foreign influence… which is very odd. And does not seem to be planned. It just looks sloppy, like much of what the US does these days.
WRT the American influx of RedNote, I can’t imagine the Chinese government will let that stand as it is now for long. The US and China have two COMPLETELY different worldviews, philosophies, sets of values/morals, even very different interpretations of historical events, facts, etc. Chinese have been actively working to move their society in a more traditional direction for a decade now. A lot of Americans are very pushy about their views and tend to serve as de facto activists and proselytizers for Western progressivism, which the Chinese view as a corrupting influence. I’m honestly surprised there were mainland Chinese apps in the American app store. Seems like an oversight. I think it caught everyone everywhere by surprise.
My guess is the Chinese government is figuring out how to deal with that situation right now. You’d expect them to maybe split the app into two apps, like what they did with TikTok/Douyin: one version for Westerners (inaccessible to mainland Chinese), and another for mainland Chinese (inaccessible to Westerners) — just to keep these two groups apart.
OTOH… might be interesting to see if the Chinese government lets Americans stay on there, but simply pushes them into following Chinese standards of behavior, non-proselytizing of sensitive topics, and actually start winning Americans over to a more Chinese POV.
Of course, if that happened, the American government would just ban RedNote, then probably all Chinese apps, at lightning speed
Either way, I would expect these two governments allowing the unwashed masses of their citizens to hang out together
en masse online and shoot the breeze is probably not a situation that is going to last for very long..
Chase
