from Hacker News

TikTok's seizure is a lesson in modern capitalism

by JMiao on 3/18/24, 8:25 PM with 1 comments

• by wahnfrieden on 3/18/24, 8:31 PM

  > Another narrative advanced by imperialist media is that TikTok and its algorithm are responsible for the rise of support for the Palestinian cause against the US-Israeli occupation. TikTok has indeed enabled westerners to see videos of IDF soldiers committing atrocities. A viral meme the IDF brass seems unable to shut down involves IDF soldiers wearing the lingerie of Palestinian women whose homes they have destroyed. Western critics blame the TikTok algorithm for guiding youth towards content critical of the imperial project, but if TikTok has had any effect on western impressions of the empire it is merely through accurately depicting the reality on the ground in an ongoing genocide.

  > The Israeli colonial administration’s call for seizing TikTok serves multiple ends. Even conservative westerners have come to admit that Netanyahu is campaigning for Trump’s reelection, as the prevailing sentiment in Israel is that the US is preventing the IDF from winning the war on Gaza due to wokeness. Blaming TikTok for western youth’s growing criticism of the occupation distracts from the horrid reality of the genocide while pushing the flailing Biden administration to adopt a policy that will be incredibly unpopular among American youth: banning their favorite app. Biden must lose for Netanyahu to win, and the feckless Democrats are playing right into this strategy.