They usually always paint Russia as the innocent victim when they are not, and even blame the US for wars that doesn’t involve them

41 comments

  5. As others have said, TikTok (like most social media) is a focal point for Chinese and Russian propaganda. That, and it’s (American) userbase skews younger – a demographic who isn’t necessarily wrong on social justice/equity issues… But who are, taken as a whole, about as educated on national security/foriegn policy/geopolitical issues as my wife’s Guinea pigs.

  7. It’s really easy to blame the USA for stuff. Their involvement all over the word has led to wars long after they left those areas. During the cold way they installed numerous dictators and overthrown governments which destabilized many areas for decades. Places that have limited freedom of the press use this to their advantage blaming their own failures and poor behavior on others and the USA is an easy target.

    Additionally TikToc is a Chinese app and the USA is often at odds with both China and Russia. Also both have similar government styles in that they are single party governments, there’s limited freedom of the press, high rates of corruption and poor human rights record so both back each other up.

    The USA has far less government regulation of the media, so it’s easy for people who want to sow discord and destabilize the country. Funding wars isn’t popular with many Americans so painting the USA’s aid to Ukraine as bullying poor innocent Russia helps foster divisions in the country and feeds into Russians’ belief of what the Kremlin has told them.

  10. TikTok is owned and controlled by the People’s Republic of China. You see on there what the Chinese Communist Party wants you to see.

    It’s in China’s interest that the world sees Russia as the “innocent victim” of the war they started, and that always makes America look bad, so that app pushes videos that promote their propaganda.

    Remember, China is our adversary, not our ally. TikTok is a propaganda platform for a hostile foreign government, not some harmless social media site.

  11. Why is a Chinese-owned company with assumed ties to communist governments and an unknown number of users from anti-American agencies so anti-American? Hmmmm….

  14. From 2016 to this year, there was a Russian outfit called the Internet Research Agency that was responsible for spreading and encouraging that sort of thing, destabilizing governments and whatnot.

    What we tend to forget is that there’s (sort of) a precedent for this. Not just the Russian (and before that, Soviet) propaganda factory in general, but specifically how electronic media can weaken a state.

    Once there was such a thing as a fax machine, the state had a harder time suppressing things (a fax being much harder to jam or tap than a phone, because by the time you had the whole message to censor it already went through).

    And one of the first things people did was unofficially share how much they hated their leadership- *samizdat*, distributed much further. Eventually, an independent Russian agency called Interfax used this network to avoid government interference and criticize the regime.

    Pretty soon, dissatisfied people organized and… there we go.

    The Chinese government (no slouch at propaganda either) obviously saw this.

    So, with that precedent, the idea of Russian troll-farms, the Chinese 50-cent party, etc isn’t that outlandish. Or just encouraging anti-American content and promoting it.

    Tik-tok (from China) is pretty widely known to have that as a purpose- people wouldn’t listen to a straight up propaganda broadcast like a news channel, but a bit at a time, with the little endorphin rush of social media *would* make it through.

  18. Edgy kids who see the world from a skewed perspective. Also it’s a Chinese app that was likely designed to spread such comments to help China.

  20. Russia throws a lot of their “military” budget towards misinformation/disinformation campaigns.

    Their kids are required to have a 2nd language, this is the fruition of that program.

    They pay minimum wage to college age kids now to either fight through the internet with anti-vaccine memes or they get to go fight Ukraine on the front lines.

  21. Because Tiktok is a Chinese company regulated by the CCP, and the algorithms are designed to display anti-American material or material designed to “erode” our society. Basically, it’s a complex form of Chinese propaganda.

  28. I’ve never seen anyone paint Russia as a victim unless they were also pro America. Your algorithm is weird.

  31. Social media—TikTok especially—makes use of algorithms to match your attention up against content that’s likely to keep your attention. They then flash ads in front of you every once in a while to monetize that attention.

    The algorithm has, for whatever reason, found that you spend more time/engagement on TikTok when they show you content sympathetic to Russia, and so it’s giving you more if it.

    We live in an age of disinformation, curating alternate realities by the algorithms we feed by staring at screens all day. If this is how you want to spend your time, it’s incredibly important for you to pay attention to how this works and curate your feed by making use of the “show me less like this” and “don’t show me content from this source” options in every app that has a feed. Reddit included, but *especially* TikTok.

  32. I think a part of it is that people from other countries are not informed about regular Americans. No matter which social media platform I go on if a video about an American food pops up there are always those Europeans that are quick with the American food is trash, we don’t know what fresh vegetables are etc.

  34. TikTok is a Chinese propaganda machine and spyware. Both Apple and Google should do the intelligent thing and ban it from their stores.

  36. It’s controlled by a Chinese company so they can pick what’s trending. It’s kids who generally think they understand more than they know and like to rebel against the status quo. Take your pick.

    Bin Ladens manifesto was literally trending on there recently, for example.

  40. Depends on what side of TikTok you’re on. I’ve actually seen a lot of videos on TikTok calling out inflammatory “America bad!” content. It doesn’t stop people from making those videos but I see more pushback against than I do on Reddit.

  41. 1. Because tik-tok is primarily filled by young people, who are mostly stupid and just spout off anti-establishment lines.
    2. tiktok is owned by the ccp, and is basically an app to spy on while while making videos.
    3. There’s a shit ton of bots that spout anti-us bullshit on all the social media platforms.

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