More people are using Chinese spyware for news than ever before
Zachary Faria
Video Embed
More and more people are using the Chinese spyware/propaganda app TikTok to get their news, in case the fact that it is spyware isn’t considered a good enough reason to ban the app entirely.
According to Pew Research Center, the share of users on TikTok who use it to get their news has jumped from 22% in 2020 to 43% now. The problem is most dire among younger people, with the number jumping from under 10% of all 18-29-year-olds using the app for news to 32%.
ANOTHER BABY DIES AT THE HANDS OF THE NHS
TikTok is Chinese spyware, with no safeguards in place to prevent employees at its Chinese parent company from accessing private conversations, contacts, and other data from users that go far beyond what other social media companies take. TikTok, in fact, has been caught bypassing safeguards put in place by the Google and Apple app stores, and it has admitted to using the app to spy on U.S. journalists. All of this should be enough to ban the app.
But the idea that an increasing number of people, especially young people, are using the app for news is also alarming. China is known to use bots in social media influence campaigns, as Meta made clear when it announced it found 8,000 fake accounts used by the Chinese government to peddle propaganda. With TikTok, though, China is able to control the algorithm that pushes content to people. As a result, users are flooded with anti-American or pro-Chinese content, including pro-Hamas content during the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza.
When the algorithm isn’t pushing propaganda, it is pushing dangerous “challenges” that go beyond the normal social media challenges you may remember from YouTube and other apps. Some of those challenges include encouraging children to commit criminal acts such as vandalizing school property and stealing cars.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Yet, none of this content exists on TikTok in China because TikTok does not exist in China. The Chinese version is a different app run by the same company, with a different algorithm that promotes educational videos to users while users in the U.S. receive the damaging garbage mixed in with fun dances or random podcast clips.
If you do not think that the “news” that TikTok’s algorithm is pushing to users is colored by the Chinese Communist Party and TikTok’s parent company that works closely with it, you would be naive. It is the best propaganda tool that the CCP has, and it takes excessive amounts of data from people while giving them anti-American propaganda and destructive trends in return.