this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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What I find crazy is the number of "leftists" screaming about this being a bad thing because they "don't want Americans on their app." This is less an issue here but I've seen it on less moderated forums.
I have to feel suspect of a lot of these people because if you are true leftist you would realize how good this can be towards shifting the American views of China to the positive. Like the number of U.S. users moving there is a drop on the bucket to how many Chinese are already there. Are they really so fearful they will be overrun? Or are they bad faith actors trying to make leftist think this is a bad thing and to attack the newcomers to prevent them from learning anything outside the western sphere?
Sure, some people might be genuine and be disgruntled by the influx of US users, but they should understand that this is an amazing opportunity to really start to radicalize these new users and really open their eyes. If after that they are still against them maybe they need to do a self evaluation and decide if they really care about building communism.
So if you see posts saying these migrations of western users to Chinese apps is bad, call that shit out. It may be a mild inconvenience at first, but the potential to grow a real understanding in the west to the truth about China and the rest of the world is massive.
Not sure if the "leftists" you're referring to is Euroamericans or Chinese but, with all due respect, I'd hate if my preferred national social media was suddenly flooded by confused usians. They tend to make everything about themselves and can't comprehend not being the centre of digital spaces.
China may be socialist, but that doesn't mean that every Chinese space needs to be about socialism, specially not about propagandising foreigners about socialism.
I'm happy using the app, but I'm well aware that I'm a visitor somewhere I don't automatically belong and which is not about me. US people are not used to that dynamic in digital spaces and I don't blame longtime users for being against that.
Makes me consider a counter story for what's happening recently, that the US is using the tiktok ban to infiltrate Chinese social media with a shit load of sock puppets. They'll all be hidden amongst the influx of new real accounts.
I find that unlikely, they can already trickle fake accounts slowly and unlike the new influx these sockpuppets will need to speak Chinese in order to influence the intended users.
I think this is just a failed attempt to isolate China and protect their national social media bourgeoisie (consider most tech giants are in the social media market), as well as backlash for the moderation not being in line with the State Dept, letting things like student occupations for divestment go viral. I at least have not seen almost anything about those occupations on US platforms.