When It Comes to Fentanylware (TikTok), a Digital Weapon of a Hostile Entity, Common Dreams is Jumping the Shark Again (Years After It Ran Out of Steam or Money)
Or maybe it likes the agenda promoted (curated) by Fentanylware (TikTok) and its parent company, Bytedance, along with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Sometimes it's better to say nothing than to utter something foolish or regrettable.
In the past we linked to many thousands of news articles from Common Dreams. Then, a few years ago, output began to rapidly dwindle (decrease) and then it nearly came to a complete halt. Eventually the site would barely produce even one story per week. Funding peaked in 2020 and as the pandemic took its toll it halved within a year.
This was a sad loss because Common Dreams was a very good site for many reasons. It's still missed. Yes, it's still running, but it's mostly reusing junk articles from dubious sites. The "real" site died around 2021.
But Common Dreams isn't totally dead. Sometimes it still burps or coughs out an article, such as this one entitled: "In Deciding TikTok's Fate, the U.S. Supreme Court Must Prioritize Users' First Amendment Rights" (wait, what?)
Allowing Bytedance's Fentanylware (TikTok) to operate in the US basically means importing a censorship regime from China to the United States, where the First Amendment needs to be protected from such "imports". Fentanylware (TikTok) does not exercise free speech, it combats it. But Bytedance's digital weapon (that's an apt description of it) has managed to make a lot of addicts in the US - many of whom are politicians - so they lack an immediate incentive to see the situation from a non-egocentric point of view.
This is a very worrisome situation and it looks like - sometimes sounds like - American public broadcast swallowed the bait (or poison) from Fentanylware (TikTok).
Consider this shallow article from an "examiner". An associate explains that "like many this article parrots the CCP party line, literally, in the false assertions that 1) Bytedance's TikTok has anything to do with communication and 2) that alleged communication is unfettered by the CCP and 3) that corporations have "free speech" as if they were humans."
The associate argues "that last point would allow the owners to double dip, once as individuals and once with the megaphone provided by the corporation and its algorithms".
To use a very simplistic analogy, saying that sanctions against Fentanylware (TikTok) is against free speech is like arguing some person cannot be considered a pacifist for fighting away a home intruder who holds up a knife and who broke down the front door.
Has collective stupidity (or morbid addiction to social control media) blinded enough people to what's truly going on here?
It might be useful to point out that the EFF (and others) once criticised the censorship and manipulation practiced by Bytedance's TikTok, argues the associate. That applies to, e.g. BBC, NY Times, and EFF (it's now lobbying for TikTok).
They and the others have since pivoted to toe the CCP party line and promote the red herring of Freedom of Speech to distract from the main issue of manipulation and influence, says the associate, not that the subset of speech and topics allowed by the CCP is in any way "free". █