It’s definitely not “purely about economical war”. A large part of it was public support for Palestine and the perceived role of TikTok in it, which explains the timing of the ban and why it succeeded this time around. Evidence? Well, many congresscritters were very open about this motive, e.g. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lawmaker... But yes, of course “social media is bad for children” had nothing to do with it at all.
Honestly i think Palestine is very very minor reason. Some super pro israel politians might point to it as reason but its seems more of a cover. Why? Because there is huge support of palestine on facebook and instagram too. Its probably even bigger than on TikTok. These services have all the same content. If content creators arent already posting on all of the networks then there is army of people/bots who will hapily repost for them.
Have you followed the situation at all? Activists have been constantly screaming about censorship and sometimes unjustified bans on Facebook and co. since last year. [1] is just one of the dozens/hundreds of reports/accusations you can read. Sure you can post, doesn’t mean your content will be shown to others, and sometimes you literally can’t post or they ban your account if you’re influential.
Oh and this is BBC saying Facebook censors Palestinian news outlets, from earlier today.[2]
Of course Facebook isn’t as stupid as banning all posts that remotely smells like supporting Palestine, so you can still find a lot of that if you bothered to look. Politicians were saying even that is fanned by people finding unfiltered stuff on TikTok.
I am not saying networks are not doing that. They absolutely do that. But TikTok does it too. Its not like TikTok is some unfiltered bastion of freedom. TikTok is way more aggressive with shadowbans than even Facebook where they stopped caring and its all automated curation.
I simply doubt Palestine alone is someting they worry about as much as $$$ and influence.
“You provided a single link so all the evidence in the world is that single link” is some lame trolling. The topic has been reported many times over since last October/November, with letter to Treasury Secretary [1], op-eds, hearings and addresses on Congress floor which you can look up yourself in a few minutes. [2] is a starting point from early on.
1. There may be users who think I’m going on a flamewar tangent. I may think so myself about similar comments on a variety of topics, but IMO top-down censorship of pro-Palestinian content is something you can’t get around when discussing the TikTok ban.
2. I believe there are a substantial number of users prowling HN flagging anything perceived as anti-Israel. (Same can be said about anything perceived as pro-Israel, btw. Among other things.)
I've definitely come across the second, when posting links to verifiable hasbarah idf social media propaganda training videos and powerpoints the comment got flagged for no reason.
