My wife and I are split on this, though neither of us are regular TikTok users.

I keep coming across elected officials who are apparently briefed on something about TikTok, and they decide there’s a reasonable threat regarding the CCP or some such. The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.

My wife feels like this is the US Government trying to shut down a communication and news delivery tool.

While I don’t agree with her, I don’t think she’s wrong. It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.

If the President had over Meta and X the sort of control the CCP has over TikTok, Instagram and Twitter would be banned in most countries. The only reason this is debated so much here is we’re (in my opinion correctly) very cautious about free speech.

> The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.

Even if all the CCP can do is modify how often some videos and comments show up to users on tik tok, there's a chance that level of control could have been enough to instigate the whole jump to red note we're seeing. After all, the suggestion originated within tik tok itself as the videos talking about it (and the comments praising it) went viral. Sure everyone was primed to do something with the deadline approaching, but it's entirely possible that the red note trend isn't an organically viral one, but a pre-planned and well executed attempt to throw a wrench in the works.

red note's infrastructure seems to have had no problems absorbing millions of new users at the drop of a hat, cloud scaling is good, but that kind of explosive growth in mere days, when unexpected, often results in some visible hiccups. Maybe the engineers are just that good, or maybe they had a heads up that it'd be happening.

Utter speculation on my part, but I've found it interesting I've not come across anyone else mention the possibility.

> It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.

No need to speculate too hard here, there are plenty of examples of censorship on TikTok: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok

Censorship is a form of propaganda, and even the very obvious/reported examples we've seen reported over the years are pretty bad. And you have to assume that there is more going on than is actually reported/noticed, especially in subtler ways. It's also just obvious it's happening in the sense that the Chinese government has ultimate control over TikTok.

They make up lies that they tell them in the SCIF.

It's just theater.