this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
844 points (86.0% liked)
Memes
45550 readers
1564 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Who are they worried China is going to influence? Children, right? If it's adults, that's almost more insulting, they think we don't deserve to be able to see all sides of an argument and are too stupid to discern fact from fiction. We may as well dispense with free expression entirely at that point because the government can just say "you're too stupid to read this and we're worried you'll be influenced, so you can only read the books we've pre-approved for you"
It is every American's right to think freely, to speak those thoughts to others, and to have others have the opportunity to hear those thoughts whether or not they are "good influences" according to govt. It is wild how easily people are willing to throw that right away for fears of "foreign influence". What's next, banning TV shows from foreign countries because they might "corrupt our culture"? Banning books with subversive topics because they will "give people bad ideas"?. This is how the road to fascism begins.
Yeah fam, you and me are definitely way too smart to ever be manipulated by military units whose sole job is to effectively manipulate large swaths of the population.
The answer is everyone. They’re worried about anyone and everyone, because they do it also.
https://youtu.be/VA4e0NqyYMw?si=u_d-eDOMYA-FetVn
The problem that many people have with this argument that "China is going to influence us" isn't that we are immune to influence, its that the argument sounds extremely hallow when our own native social media manipulates the absolute shit out of us already... like what is China going to do that our own country isn't already doing.
This is the argument you hear from people on tiktok about why they don't care about the governments concern.
Well that and how its kind of disgusting how completely unified the house is in this bill, but couldn't give a shit about wealth inequality, corporate ownership of residential housing, rampant inflation, rising homelessness, school shootings.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/VA4e0NqyYMw?si=u_d-eDOMYA-FetVn
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Good point. We are all vulnerable to manipulation and should only read content that is approved by the US Govt. Anybody who breaks this rule should go to jail. That is for our safety ✅
Except that’s not my point, but you already knew that didn’t you? It’s pretty obvious you’re not actually here for a conversation.
Yeah they’re clearly here because they think they have no chance of getting manipulated, that they’re better than others, or even that they think this is some sort of free speech thing. Sorry bud, that’s not how it works. The government routinely bans things that cause foreign influence, it’s just usually not at this scale and not something people are addicted to and use as their news.
Literally Huawei and ZTE are banned from imports and sale in America for the exact same reasons. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-bans-equipment-sales-imports-zte-huawei-over-national-security-risk-2022-11-25/
They're here because they're one of the ones doing the manipulating.
Lemmy.ml is a tankie instance.
Is there any chance that the fact you're lemmy.ml user might be an indication that you're not looking at this completely objectionally? I'm not for the ban either but that doesn't mean I can't be honest about the reasons for it.
I joined this instance at random, look at my history if you think I'm a tankie.
You shouldn’t have to personally defend yourself or this post. They want to censor your speech the same way the government wants to censor Tik Tok. So much for liberal personal freedoms.
Blocking another country's possible influence is not the same as ONLY being fed whatever the Government approves.
TIktok, due to the nature of the company's ownership and board directors WILL have Chinese Government influence. And they've already proven that they're willing to influence the internet to the point of controlling it 99% for their own citizens. China is the latter of the above statement. The USA and most other countries are barely even doing the former.
You are asking if banning books is the next thing. Isnt it already happening in the schools in some parts of USA?
Yep. Unfortunately both the left and right in the US seem to have free speech in their crosshairs one way or another. The right with "don't say gay", their book bans, and war on drag, the left with the TikTok ban, wanting the government to be able to define and regulate "misinformation" on social media, etc. The long-term protectors of free speech like the ACLU have even done a pivot away from free speech cases because they perceive them as unpopular.
Maybe what you think is the left, isn’t really all that left.