The elephant in the room of all of this is that TikTok was the social media platform that allowed for the genocide taking place in Palestine by Israel to reach audiences directly. All other major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) heavily censored this information or outright deplatformed and canceled accounts of prominent dissemination of information about the war crimes being committed by Israelis.

TikTok, outside of the US and Zionist-controlled sphere of influence, remained the one place for this information to be available widely far beyond what was possible on other platforms.

All the other platforms have the same concepts of algorithms and targeting and bubbles. TikTok was uniquely not under Western control, and thus, needed to be pressured to conform.

The significant shift in young people's opinions about Israel in recent years is heavily attributed to the unfiltered information about their ongoing genocide against the Palestinians that they could uniquely see on TikTok and must not be understated, especially in light of all the major shifts in news, media, and social media over the past few years as they grapple with the fallout of losing the narrative.

I don't deny that social media as a whole has many harms and negatives, but there's no action like this being taken against Meta, Google, or Twitter despite the exact same harms present, sometimes even more so, on their platforms. They're already in the same overall group that supports the narrative and have done so by self-censoring their platforms accordingly. TikTok didn't play ball and got trampled.

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kurthr 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm fully against censorship, and I don't want it covered up, but at some point profiting off of the suffering of others and distracting people with holocaust porn or influencer virtue signaling is self defeating. What did all of that social audience gain? Clicks, entertainment, dollars, while children died? That's disgusting.

And in the end is there anything of value left, any documentation of what happened, or how to prevent it from happening again? Nope. That thankless unprofitable work is done by others and ignored by the same consumers.

	▲	deaux 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It gained a massive shift in thinking that would not have been possible without it. Tens of millions people now have very different opinions about the events and parties than they would've without it. In the long run, that matters. If you think this is meaningless, take a look at countries like Saudi Arabia pouring tens of billions of dollars in trying to achieve the exact opposite - cultivating a positive opinion/view of the country among those in the West. They wouldn't be doing this if it didn't matter. The US hegemony has thrived largely on this kind of soft power. If the whole world (instead of just half the world) had already hated the US decades ago, it would've become nowhere near as powerful.
	▲	basilgohar 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		All media, newspapers, and social media networks do this. I'm not sure why you're raising this specifically in response to the fact I was stating TikTok was uniquely able to bring awareness to the issue of the genocide in Palestine. Many people were completely unfamiliar with the plight of the Palestinians over the past 100 years and TikTok (and, to a much less degree, other platforms) brought the issue to their attention. Israel is no longer untouchable and many have recognized them for what they are now - the last remaining Western imperialist settler colony. This was not the case merely 4 years ago. The transformation is stark and real. What can people do with that knowledge? That's up to them. I don't really get the rest of your comment, unfortunately.

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midlander 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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