cassandra-neo

In the summer of 2023, after several years of swearing up and down that I would never download or use TikTok, I finally relented. I had stubbornly resisted because my government had told me, by way of the media, that it was a Chinese owned app, and this meant that it was dangerous. Like the rest of the country stuck on Facebook, I was also under the impression that TikTok was an app for stupid Gen Z'ers to do stupid little dances. This, of course, ended up being another false narrative.

I eventually gave in because over the years, and especially during the pandemic, my mistrust for the US government had continued to grow. I no longer believed a word they said.

All I knew is that TikToks were showing up in my Facebook and Instagram stories, and they were WAY funnier and much higher quality than the stories created by Meta influencers.

And so, I hopped on over to TikTok. Within minutes of scrolling, my FYP was giving me video after video of hilarious skits, or it was feeding me my most well-loved topics. Content that fascinated me.

Every night before bed, I would scroll TikTok and laugh uproariously loud. I called it “my nightly funnies”, and it became a routine. What danger could there be in comedy? I had already learned long before that laughter is God's medicine. This routine felt good for my mental health. On my most difficult days, this dopamine-fueled laughter was my saving grace. It got me through. Bread and circuses.

Pretty quickly, my feed began to teach me things, on every topic under the sun. I had never used a social media app that was productive in this way. We weren't “doomscrolling”, we were learning how to grow our own food, how to be more self sustainable, how to educate ourselves, how to build communities, how to advocate, and how to mobilize. We discussed controversial topics that would have resulted in immediate hostility on Facebook and other platforms. We were being cast as Gen Z “libtards” in the media, but in reality, we were intellectual, bipartisan adults who were tied by a common belief – that we had handed all control over to the US government and none of us were happy about it. This caused our unification. We began to trust each other, despite our differing political beliefs. Campaigns to donate to those in need or to create change on a national level were hugely successful. We began to finally understand the concept of “strength in numbers.” Everyone’s voice mattered. We had destroyed the “us vs. them” mentality in terms of our fellow Americans. We had turned that concept on its head, and directed it towards the actual guilty parties. It was “TikTok vs. the corruption of the United States government.”

After years of creating meaningful and positive change through bipartisan unification, and without the infighting that occurs everywhere else, it seemed very clear that the only reason the US government had labeled TikTok as dangerous was because they couldn't control it like they've been able to control Meta. We stopped believing a single thing we saw or heard on mainstream news and other social media networks.

Over the years, we were consistently belittled for “getting our news from Tiktok.” And yet, it was strange... We actually got the news first. Before the rest of the country watched it on Fox News or CNN. This occurred frequently and repetitiously, and only deepened our suspicions that “our” news was reaching us uncensored, before the information was watered down and twisted up in a cocktail of deception for the masses to consume.

In mid-November of 2024, we began seeing videos of enormous, SUV-sized drones in the skies over New Jersey. TikTokers in Jersey were capturing video of these drones, and there were so many different users and so many different videos that surely, just like all the other times that we had caught word of something first, this was a true and factual phenomenon. And yet, mainstream news remained silent. We checked every day for the story to break. It took nearly a month. By that time, we were seeing videos from all over the country, and now there were orbs in the sky as well, and not just drones. When the story finally hit the headlines, it was shot down within a day or two by the federal government and its owned and controlled news outlets, and from President Biden, who assured us that these were no more than typical hobbyist drones, and that we were spreading fake news for the purpose of sowing further mistrust in our leaders. The mayor in New Jersey and other local politicians became outraged at this – the sheer amount of gaslighting around something that even they reported to have witnessed with their own eyes.

We figured that the drones were owned by the Department of Defense, and that perhaps they were studying the “orbs” (or “plasmoids”), which they didn’t actually know much about. We figured that they wouldn't have given us the true explanation regardless – especially if it was a matter of national security. Perhaps they were staying quiet to protect us. Or perhaps they were suppressing the truth and gaslighting us to death. Just stupid kids on TikTok spreading fake news. In a hilarious twist of fate, Bethany Frankel from The Real Housewives became our official source of news on “all things drone.” At one point, she explained to us that she had been ordered to stop talking about this topic online. She had been silenced.

And so, as we had grown used to doing, we developed code words in order to maneuver around the algorithm that now seemed to be suppressing anything related to the drones. Bethany coined the term “Dior bags” to replace the word that was now being actively censored – “drones.” For the next several weeks, TikTok (or at least my corner of TikTok) was exploding with news of “Dior bags” that “The Management” did not want the American people to know about. A grassroots effort was made to keep this content in our feeds. We fought the algorithm for weeks, which was near impossible due to a flurry of events happening all at once. Luigi Mangione's dramatized “perp walk” and being charged as a terrorist... The New Years Eve attack in New Orleans... Severe weather across the country, including a pervasive fog in areas where fog does not typically occur in winter...The fires in California...And of course, the insanity of an upcoming inauguration. All of these events spiraled around each other, and the distraction of them caused disorientation. Meanwhile, the TikTok ban that had been threatened for five years was looming. For years, we had been told that the reason for this ban was to protect us from the Chinese stealing our data.

This made no sense. Almost everything we own is made in China. We shop on Temu and Shein – Chinese apps that gather data, just like every US-made app. Why would TikTok be the only avenue for malicious data collection?

I'm not sure anymore if the reason we were given for the ban (“data collection”) was a result of being in an echo chamber and not receiving the important pieces of information, if we were intentionally manipulated by a foreign adversary by being given a half-truth, or if our leaders were choosing to not properly explain the actual danger.

Regardless of what was going on behind on the scenes, and who was pulling the strings, this culminated into a situation where millions of Americans believed that their government was actively suppressing information and manipulating citizens for their own gain. This was the spark that led us to migrate to a FULLY owned Chinese app, where I had an experience that scared the living daylights out of me. One in which I will never, ever forget.

But that's for next time. For now, I have to go escape my digital prison for a bit.

#TikTokBan #AlgorithmicWarfare #DisinformationCampaigns #CCP