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Their content moderation team in the U.S. market is based in California and will promote and censor things in accordance with Californian values. I've followed conservative accounts on there that kept getting banned whenever they hit a certain follower threshold. On the other hand, their site recently highlighted several trans creators to celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility.
From the second link:
In its domestic market China has a much tighter leash on what TikTok can show its users, of course, but in America TikTok's social positions are the standard progressivism you will see promoted by any other major American company. If China is putting its thumb on the scale for the U.S. moderation team to engineer American social discord, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the chaos created by Musk simply halting most censorship on Twitter.
The old Chinese joke about 'Cultural Revolution now being in America' comes to mind.
They probably think they can't make it any worse, is my guess.
The kind of 'chaos' created by Twitter is no longer more censorious against people who aren't seriously left-wing is the desirable kind of chaos. You want that.
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Perhaps the Chinese learned from the French, "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
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