>- Isn’t the point of apps like TikTok that they show you content that is interesting to you? Why can’t they show politics to people who are interested but not to people who aren’t?

How far can we extend this? Assuming AI is good enough to detect shock gore/shock images, why have content guidelines at all? If I want to watch ISIS/cartel beheading videos, why should I have to go to another platform? The standard in the US for clamping down on free speech is "imminent lawless action", so it's unlikely to run afoul of any laws. You can even make the argument that it's bad to ban them, because they're conveying some important information and to do otherwise would be "I want to be kept in the dark and resume my mindless consumption of brainrot". If that's too far fetched for you, replace "beheading videos" with "gaza or ukranian war footage".

>- Does TikTok ban all political content? Or just some? Do they ban all “non-joyful” content? Or just some?

See wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok#Politics

They've also been accused of having a left bias by the right.

>How far can we extend this?

This feels like the slippery slope fallacy.

Most users will have a very different reaction to being served politics they are uninterested in vs being served shocking gore. (Bored or annoyed vs traumatized)

Many users want to see political content. Almost none want to see beheadings.

You can treat this as one long spectrum but if I was in charge of content moderation I’d treat politics and gore as separate categories. (And most sites do!)

> They've also been accused of having a left bias by the right.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have a political bias. It may just not cleanly fall across modern American political party lines. (And it may have changed over time.)

——

But this is all theoretical. My stance is that if you are going to allow some political content then you should allow all political content that doesn’t break other rules.

And I think “non-joyful” is a bullshit rule for a major social media company to have. It can easily be reinterpreted by moderators to selectively silence political speech

>Most users will have a very different reaction to being served politics they are uninterested in vs being served shocking gore. (Bored or annoyed vs traumatized)

That's why I in the second sentence specifically also supposed AI could identify such content.

>That doesn’t mean they don’t have a political bias. It may just not cleanly fall across modern American political party lines. (And it may have changed over time.)

The point is that without actual evidence of political bias going on, actual allegations are a dime a dozen, and shouldn't be taken seriously.

>But this is all theoretical. My stance is that if you are going to allow some political content then you should allow all political content that doesn’t break other rules.

There's no shortage of political content on tiktok, hence why right wingers think there's a left wing bias. There's also no evidence they're trying to cover up ICE raids as a particular topic, only footage of this particular incident that involves violence.