Android will push notifications for news articles that you may be “interested” in. I think it used to be called Google Now.

Congress is concerned about theoretical propaganda, but it’s a reality in nearly every major news outlet and tech companies, but zero concern when it fits a certain narrative.

I’m Canadian - 2 weeks before the election I started getting about an article per day pushed to my Android phone, for a few days.

This right here - if you ever use TikTok, you really quickly realize why it’s so successful. To deny its success is just plain willful ignorance.

I’m Canadian, but so much of the content I consume is from Americans so I hope it stays.

Which is why you linked so much of this proof, eh?

To date, there is no public evidence that Beijing has actually harvested TikTok’s commercial data for intelligence or other purposes.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/tiktok-ban-national-security-hearing/index.html

And, just so you don’t flail around with misinformation, we’re talking american TikTok data.

The thing with TikTok is almost all americans on it have gravitated away from other platforms because it has more to offer. I don’t think there’s a large demographic on TikTok who don’t precisely understand why they use TikTok over other platforms. (Edit: youth I suppose) I also believe this is why they want to force TikTok to sell, they want to have it exist as a platform but with new management.

If TikTok doesn’t sell and it does get banned, I almost guarantee the demographic will quickly find themselves on another, likely Chinese owned, platform. This will still be a win for Congress as they’ll have fractured TikTok and weakened the demographic as a whole.

Time will tell.

You’re right, Google controls what I see and pushes right wing propaganda to my phone. TikTok’s algorithm actually works to serve me content based on my interests, and I have true political discussion and discourse there.

You make a good point and then draw the wrong conclusion.

You hit the nail on the head with what they should be doing (broad industry regulations), but then you COMPLETELY missed the point you made. Congress is NOT banning TikTok because they collect too much data, they’re banning it because it’s TikTok and the “data” is just an excuse…otherwise they’d pass real data privacy laws.

Another platform will pop up over the next week if TikTok is banned. What they want is to sell TikTok to someone that will change the platform because it’s too powerful. This isn’t to push “government propaganda”, but simply to change the algorithm to not be so good. They don’t want you to gain class consciousness or have political discourse, they want you to be distracted with silly cat videos and memes…and maybe a side of culture war, but nothing else.

How very “land of the free” of you

It wasn’t. There’s zero proof of this currently.

The app is banned because congress can’t control. They want you using the platforms where you can’t become class or politically aware.

Downvoted for the title. Not sure what kind of mouth breather trend that is, but it’s not lasting