Raising awareness about a bill in Congress and giving US citizens the tools to speak to their representatives about it isn't "manipulating democracy", it promotes democracy. That is a foundational part of how American democracy is supposed to work, the reps vote on bills but the citizens have the last word - if that's so unacceptable that lawmakers would change sides to ban TikTok in response then Americans should start making funeral preparations for their democracy, because it sounds like these lawmakers want their constituents to be docile, silent and ignorant.

In a strict technical sense, you are correct. Anything that encourages individuals to participate in their government is promoting democracy. However, I think it's heavy whitewashing to look at this whole situation and says it's TikTok promoting democracy.

I find it very hard to believe TikTok is doing this being they genuinely want to promote democracy in the US. This threatens to end TikTok's influence over millions of Americans, they have a business/political stake in this. They're encouraging people to contact their representatives, not because it's in the individual's best interest, but because it's in TikTok's best interest. That's why it's manipulative.

Also, I'm of the opinion the foreign-funded propaganda is generally unhealthy for a democracy.

Edit: Just to be clear, I don't really want to ban TikTok. I don't trust TikTok, but I also don't want to increase the federal government's ability to censor what Americans can view. In the process of battling Chinese influence, I don't want the US to become more like China.

Obviously the issue that they're promoting is in their interests, but its the same for everyone else. Nobody would promote an issue that didn't benefit them! When Google and Facebook blacked out their sites to stop SOPA, that was because it was in their interests too, SOPA would have kneecapped the Web just as it was beginning to take off.

What frustrates me about this discussion is the way that people take anything TikTok does here and assumes that it's out of evil and malicious intent, with very little proof other than its murky links to China, which feels very Cold War 2.0.

TikTok's links to China aren't "murky". ByteDance is literally a Chinese company. Chinese companies are regularly coerced by the state in the PRC, in obvious ways (Jack Ma says Hi) and subtle ones (the coordinated dance to bail out Evergrande).

I'm sensitive to your demand for proof, but how much more "proof" do you want? If the PRC wants to manipulate western democracy by mobilizing a force of Gen-Z nuts via messages in their favorite app, they can do it, just like they do domestically.

I agree w 100% what you said. Unfortunately it’s unwinnable argument in this age.

In attempting to defend themselves (which is fair) they did the exact thing that their opponents have accused them of being able to do.

I don’t know what the right move for them was. Maybe it was just to say this was happening or link to a new story or something.

But saying it’s a “ban”* and helping people find the number to call their representative went over the line and made them look very bad.

*It’s not strictly a ban, only a ban on Chinese ownership. If an American company took total control they could continue to operate. So calling it a “ban” is a little disingenuous in someways although it’s also a lot easier to say

Maybe a bit naive to think that a CCP-backed company is doing something for democracy. Maybe, just maybe... I dunno...

It’s a look thing. Just horrible optics.

I get why they’d want people to contact their representatives.

But they went about it in a very tactless way.

It might not result in maximum ByteDance profits, but TikTok's notification will help a generation of "youths" realize the political process affects them and help them care about technology censorship issues. This is a good thing.

They didn’t try to manipulate democracy, people didn’t vote for their representatives based on their ideas about tiktok, there was no referendum about how to handle tiktok, but of course they actually showed that they could have the influence to affect future democratic process

Contacting your representative to try to influence them is a fundamental part of democracy.

Democracy is not just voting for someone, a democratic government is intended to be directly influenced by the people continually. It's kind of the whole point of a representative democracy.

It is either part of democracy or trying to manipulate democracy, it can't factually be both for obvious reasons, I agree, contacting a representative is part of the democratic process and has been a practice happening forever.

Trying to manipulate democracy would be involving actions that aren't part of an accepted democratic process, like telling your supporters to go to assault Capitol Building and them showing up with assault rifles and pressure elected officials