The Palestinian journalist has spent years documenting life in Gaza under Israeli occupation and, recently, amid Israel’s genocide. Her series with Al Jazeera’s AJ+ has won numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and even an Emmy. At the same time, pro-Israel voices have sought to silence Owda, including in a campaign in 2024 to pressure her Emmy nomination to be withdrawn.
In her Instagram video, Owda said that the ban was “expected” due to pressure from high-powered figures to censor Palestinian voices from TikTok.
She overlaid a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he named TikTok as a “number one” priority of Israel.
She also shared a video with the company’s U.S. CEO, Adam Presser, saying that the company made a change to designate critically labelling someone as a “Zionist” as hate speech. “Over the course of 2024, we tripled the amount of accounts that we were banning for hateful activity,” Presser bragged at a conference last year.
Everyone on tiktok deserves that’s coming to them.
They should be smarter and use Mastodon!
Isn’t mastodon the better Twitter? And loops thee tik tok equivalent?
…including a firm headed by the notoriously pro-Israel Larry Ellison.
Finally. Someone finally calls out Larry Ellison by name.
FYI: He also owns Oracle and Paramount/Skydance (CBS). His reach into our data and the information we consume runs very deep.
Was reminded of this article if you’ve got some time to read
Tiktok went from Chinese propaganda to Maga propaganda, from bad to worse.
TikTok was never “Chinese Propaganda”. It had roughly as many American investors as Chinese investors, with management centered in Singapore.
But the Singapore owners didn’t bend over backwards to purge any Palestinian Rights power users. So it got slandered as “China Social Media” as an excuse to force the sale of the US operations.
Tiktok is not a Chinese propaganda like fb, twitter, and reddit “aren’t” US propaganda.
A mega addictive social media platform with a world wide audience would not be able to operate independently without its state wanting to exploit that reach.
Tiktok is not a Chinese propaganda
The line from the Biden Administration was that TikTok propagated anti-Zionist mass media. It was “Hamas Propaganda” according to the prior regime’s leadership.
Exactly, this isn’t complicated. As you say, reddit facebook and Twitter are absolutely undeniably American propaganda and anyone disagreeing doesn’t understand what the word means. In the same vein, tiktok was Chinese propaganda.
It was absolutely Chinese propaganda, it’s absurd anyone would say that it wasn’t. Literally you thinking it isn’t Chinese propaganda is a result of the Chinese propaganda on it.
How was it chinese propaganda? Did they ban people for saying tiannamen square or something?
I’ve only heard FUD surrounding tiktok, like the CCP having access to all of its data. That’s not the same as propaganda. I’ve also never seen proof of them use that access maliciously and the US government now has access to all of the data a la PRISM.
We’re moving from reality to orthodoxy. You’re making an unfalsifiable claim.
Do you think there’s any social media platform isn’t being used as a propaganda machine at this point? If not, why wouldn’t the Chinese government use it for this purpose? If so, what makes TikTok different than anyone else?
Do you think there’s any social media platform isn’t being used as a propaganda machine at this point?
TikTok was replete with all sorts of advertisements, marketing campaigns, and influencer content. Nobody is claiming it lacked a surplus of propaganda.
The claim Biden’s administration made was that Beijing bureaucrats were dictating the social media feed of American TikTok users based on Palestine-friendly media content served up during the 2024 primaries. This is a fully unsubstantiated allegation. Nevertheless, it was used to justify the forced sale of the US branch of the application to Trump-aligned business interests.
Well we can’t do more than speculate since we don’t have inside information, but this push started during Trump’s last term before Biden was elected so it seems both of them are aligned on this point. Considering everyone is using social media to push their own nationalist propaganda, I don’t see how one could argue China wasn’t doing it too especially considering they’re also a global superpower just like the US. Why wouldn’t they use it for this purpose?
Well we can’t do more than speculate
We have individuals in the government on record for their reasoning.
In a recent open letter, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said that the influx of content critical of Israel could “propagandize Americans.”
…
Hawley’s letter cites an October 25 X (formerly Twitter) thread by former Tinder executive Jeff Morris Jr., who said he tried to “reverse engineer the TikTok algorithm” and found that “Israel is losing the TikTok war.” He compared the total views for pro-Palestinian hashtags on TikTok to those of pro-Israel hashtags, and claimed that TikTok users are incentivized to post “anti-Israel content” in order to game engagement and increase their following. Morris also posted a screenshot of what he called “anti-Israel bot farms” from the messaging app Telegram, which is not affiliated with TikTok, where users encouraged each other to “ratio” the state of Israel’s account on X, which is also not affiliated with TikTok.
this claim is totally different from “TikTok is Chinese propaganda”.
“Could/Would” is not the same as “is”
It’s not a totally different claim. “Could/would” is what we use when we’re forced to speculate due to a lack of insider knowledge. Claiming that it “isn’t” is no more valid than claiming that it “is” in this situation, but we can use context clues like the fact that other nations are using social media for the same purpose and it originating in China, a fellow world superpower, to reason that they would be using it for similar purposes. Why wouldn’t they be using an effective tool like this? This stuff isn’t being created for altruistic reasons.
We’re forced to speculate due to a lack of insider knowledge
You mean you want people to believe unsubstantiated claims that lack evidence?
but we can use context clues like the fact that other nations are using social media for the same purpose and it originating in China, a fellow world superpower, to reason that they would be using it for similar purposes. Why wouldn’t they be using an effective tool like this? This stuff isn’t being created for altruistic reasons.
Still don’t see any argument that justifies substituting “could/would” with “is” except vague notion of “we do it, so they’re definitely doing it”
It censored Tiananmen Square and fostered a positive impression of China politically, economically, and socially. It openly promoted propaganda. Hell, all those “traditional Chinese manufacturing” videos were literally state sponsored. Are you operating on some extremely narrow definition of propaganda?
Looks like you’re wrong. Hopefully you can learn from this so you can prevent it from happening in the future.
Unfortunately, nobody expects you to own up to it because that’s just how your kind operates.
People on lemmy can’t read any better than people on reddit. Censored. Past tense. This was all in the news a few years ago for those of us that haven’t had their attention spans ruined by tiktok and can remember longer than a week or two at a time. Pro-China content is literally propaganda on a state sponsored app. Positive PR for a country is called propaganda. Hope this helps with your ability to understand relatively basic concepts in the future.
It censored Tiananmen Square
fostered a positive impression of China
The crime TikTok users committed was fostering a positive impression of Gaza.
If you searched for Tiananmen Square, it would censor/remove anything about the massacre, and promote anything about tourism.
Looks like you’re wrong. Hopefully you can learn from this so you can prevent it from happening in the future.
Unfortunately, nobody expects you to own up to it because that’s just how your kind operates.
Lol, you know nothing of “my kind”
A modern search does not equate to a search from a year ago.
If you searched for Tiananmen Square
It is reasons like this we are being distracted by a moral panic about social media being bad for our health.
We need to forbid American social media at national or EU level
The account did appear to be banned on Wednesday and Thursday. However, late Thursday afternoon Eastern Time, Owda’s account appeared to be restored, but restricted. Some content seemed to not be available, and a banner appeared at the top of her feed that read: “Posts that some may find uncomfortable are unavailable.”
The account is back evidently.
