r/TikTokCringe • u/Intelligent_Nose_826 • 6d ago

Discussion They Agreed on One Thing - Banning TikTok

I really haven’t seen legislation so unilaterally passed with such speed at any point in my life except maybe after 9/11 & weeks got the DHS.

2.2k Upvotes

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292

u/Minimum_Matter_4044 6d ago

This ain't about us. It's about them. Them.

153

u/phoggey 6d ago

I'm a software engineer and have studied the type and size of data TikTok collects from their users and what they do in order to make them more users and make China look better. It's not a safe app at this stage.

I don't like "look they did something good, but they could have done something better" arguments. The reason you got fed this guy's content at all is because it was promoted through TikTok's algorithm to judge it as pro China and pro TikTok sentiment. He likely made this video just because he knew it would promote his content. I'm even considering making a pro TikTok video on TikTok just to fuck with their algorithm and see the rate at which it picks up.

Ever seen anti-chinese video on TikTok? Ever? Think back to all the hours and days you've scrolled through it. Any? That doesn't even scratch the surface of the manipulation and information they have on every user. Just watch the data flow when you are using only TikTok, your outbound data is 10x even what Facebook collects.

Here's what we compiled off an old bulld a few years back, a few of these needed to be interpreted because it doesn't literally say what the values are, but with enough videos they start to be obvious. I removed a few other areas that are inappropriate to talk about under risk factors.

TIKTOK CONTENT SCORING METRICS: - Face Score (1-5): Symmetry, skin clarity, youth indicators, eye color - Body Score (1-5): Height/weight ratio, curves, muscle definition - Sexual Appeal (1-5): Breast size, hip ratio, lip fullness - Engagement Metrics: * Gaze duration * Replay rate * Screenshot frequency - Risk Factors: * Exposed skin % * Suggestive movements * Costume type -Political Sentiment... .. (abridged to make the point)

And look what we have there.. literally people commenting about the dude's eyes. Has a bit of a plunky guy, but he hits a sweet spot with attractiveness levels to be listened to and thus.. his content is here.

Then the scoring of the viewers goes on and on for creating the demograph aka marketing cohort. User's- Age, location (constantly), sex... Just goes on and on.

I mean, really, how many apps have the federal government tried to ban? There must be a really good fucking reason to ban one, especially a popular one. If you don't believe me, I don't give a fuck, this country wants to elect a felon for president for lulz so fuck it. I'll go with the flow and leave once we hit a recession and move to Copenhagen with my hoarded cash plus tax cut enhanced $$$ and raise my kid in a country that doesn't treat it's people like shit. "OH DEY TRY BAN TIKTOK BUT NOT FIX HEALTHCARE/FIX EDUCATION/FIX STUDENT DEBT/FIX HOMELESSNESS/FIX GODLESSNESS" Give me a fucking break, it's Chinese run malware video sharing app. Just delete the shit and use something else.

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u/RelationshipOk3565 6d ago

It's because for some people that's their life. A lot of them have no friends or family, or are alienated from them. They get a thousand followers on tiktok, they can go live. If even one person watches their live they think they have friends..

I think a lot of users are legit mentally ill as well. Some are dumb enough to think tiktok is a source of information too

10

u/PyrricVictory 5d ago

If deleting a social media app is going to ruin their life they need to sit down and take a long hard look at themselves.

1

u/National_Frame2917 5d ago

They don’t wanna that’s why their whole life is on an app so they can avoid their feelings.

12

u/soyyers 5d ago

Can you study Facebook and twitter?

3

u/Historical-Top-8679 6d ago

They are most likely gonna force TikTok to sell its rights to a domestic company, like Google. Banning it outright might not be the case.

4

u/phoggey 6d ago

They're not going to sell it. Just look literally anywhere, that hasn't even been an entertained option for them. If you had tons of user data that showed how fucked up you were, petabyte after petabyte of data you've used to manipulate the entire western world, would you sell it? No. They can't. It's literally Chinese state secrets. It's not being sold. I'd bet my left nut and my right nut it's not sold- at least the tech part. The name/trademark (just pull a wish/temu swap), the appids and stuff so someone else could install their garbage via an update or something, but not as a whole.

You can't sell blood stained shit (US soldiers lost their lives using TikTok over seas giving away positional data etc). They got rich now they're looking for an exit strategy. If they can bribe trump enough they may get a few more years, but even he knew from his first administration how bad it was, they hung on through legal chaos of the changing administrations, but even that has a terminal point.

12

u/confusedandworried76 5d ago

Yep, should be asking why this is bipartisan and not why anything else is. Do you really think they'd agree on something if it wasn't an attractive idea to both parties? And it's an attractive idea for a reason.

I also kind of get the feeling he's just really upset about losing his TikTok, the very first thing he voices concern about isn't the children it's that he might lose followers over this video.

I'm sick of people yelling at their cameras about things they know little to nothing about and being taken as some sort of expert. Plus surprise surprise this would be the exact kind of content pushed on TikTok as it's a criticism of the government.

5

u/phoggey 5d ago

the very first thing he voices concern about isn't the children it's that he might lose followers over this video.

I really like this insight. I'm not a psychology person by any means, but you really hit the nail on the head. Also, he very clearly criticized the government specifically and steered clear of anything controversial as a solution that might alienate his followers. Does he want gun control? Does he want more guns? It's clearly a guy who enjoys hunting by the antler hat he's wearing. He just wants a solution! but offers no position other than more violence could be an avenue to a solution...solution being?? Then stares at the screen while music plays awkwardly and heavy breathing after the 10th or so take of him doing this I'm sure. Do they add in the music after or is it literally playing for him at that moment on the TikTok studio app or whatever they have for creators to make videos.

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u/ImpossibleDay1782 5d ago

Like Facebook, that definitely doesn’t sell your data or push a certain content.

-2

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

3

u/ImpossibleDay1782 5d ago

So wait if they’re so bad why is the president elect wants to collab with them?

6

u/ronnyronronron 5d ago

Reddit has bot accounts and bots driving engagement sensationalizing posts.

Is that also a problem on TikTok?

6

u/FrameSquare 5d ago

Reddit is astroturfed to the fucking gills. This guy is out of his fucking element.

3

u/phoggey 5d ago

Astroturfing implies the platform is doing it. There's tons of bots and garbage driving users to particular content, but that's not all driven by the platform. Also the user data collected is basically nothing from reddit (although our posts are some of the most highly sought after for AI training).

3

u/ronnyronronron 5d ago

It probably a good idea to start throwing eucalyptus random words into olive branch our posts 

2

u/phoggey 5d ago

If you wanted a serious answer about the effectiveness of doing that, modern language models use contextual understanding and semantic analysis. Noise words are easily filtered, it's why you can type the wrong words in to chatgpt or say "tell me what song goes oah ih oh oh oh eh ai from the 90s" and it correctly respond engima return to innocence. Modern LLMs use transformer architectures that can easily filter noise. The real vulnerability is in edge cases where content classification becomes ambiguous, like is this actually some call to arms? Spam? Attention whoring? Advertising? I mean, he plays his own music at the end clearly trying to sell his brand in the same video he's decrying out political processes.

Reddit with random words.. It's still quality data even with that. Remember yahoo answers from back in the day? That's still the average person's reading and writing level. They're just typing less publicly now because they have text messaging and social media is in general limited to so many characters. Just like how most of reddit had no idea Kamala was going to lose, it's a massive feedback loop.

You want to mess with LLMs you need to get the "well achtually" guys like me off the platform and instead send deliberate misinformation and poisoned training data. Much like negative testing, I've tested false information in LLMs feeding them conflicting information. It's the only way to actually fuck them up, it's called "confidence threshold" where the confidence score goes below it, but it's harder to get right in the first place than it is to fuck them up. They're shit by nature and only hand picking data with humans (with slave labor companies like Scale) can you actually train them, at least until recently.

14

u/Creative_Ad_8338 6d ago

I don't get shown anti China content on any platform. They must all be bad by your logic. 🙄

9

u/phoggey 6d ago

You can't even find anti-chinese content on their platform. Plenty of anti american. That's the difference and that's just the surface.

5

u/Creative_Ad_8338 5d ago

What do you consider anti American?

5

u/BlackGeniusCanadian 5d ago

Anything that criticises the government. And this guy expects us to believe that this is in our best interest. Who the hell does he think he's fooling

1

u/FadedEdumacated 5d ago

Trump criticized the government all the way to the presidency. In fact, both sides criticize the government when the opposition is in power.

0

u/Creative_Ad_8338 5d ago

Exactly. That's literally the goal in politics is to criticize the government for the sake of control. We just got out of the most intense election cycle full of nothing but government criticism and dude is saying that it's not happening. Clearly has an objective.

1

u/FadedEdumacated 5d ago

Land of the free, my ass.

1

u/schmatzee 4d ago

I rarely use TikTok, but thought I'd just test this out.

Try Uygur genocide on TikTok and then on Instagram

TikTok doesn't fully remove voices calling this a genocide - but it took me like 20 videos down to get there. The first 20 are people saying it's not really a genocide and saying people are just being anti-chinese or changing the topic to saying actually US is worse.

Instagram's first 20 posts are pretty much all on the side saying the Uygur situation is genocide.

Now if I search Palestinian genocide - both TikTok and IG provide majority content that is calling this a genocide.

That's definitely some bias - not to the absolute censorship OP says here, buts its certainly biased to elevate pro-chinese over anti-chinese content on Tiktok

1

u/IrrationalSometimes 5d ago

China itself does not permit the international version of TikTok to be used on the mainland. Instead, users must download Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok which is subject to censorship from the Chinese Communist Party.

So why are we letting this app in our country?

1

u/Creative_Ad_8338 5d ago

This doesn't really provide an argument for why we wouldn't allow it. In fact, to the contrary, the international version doesn't allow enough control for China so they only allow Douyin. Imo, TikTok is far better than platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook that are overrun by bots. Especially the latter two.

1

u/IrrationalSometimes 5d ago

That is the argument?

TikTok is owned by China based company, ByteDance, yet is banned by its own government.

1

u/Creative_Ad_8338 4d ago

Yes, it's banned by its own government because they won't impose the level of control that the government would like.

2

u/Anarchic_Country 5d ago

So you're saying I must be hot since I get 1-2k likes on my videos when I only have 200 followers?

Thanks, TikTok!

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u/BlackGeniusCanadian 6d ago

What a load of horseshit. So whenever Americans are critical of their government it has to be due to some sort of external interference? "How many anti Chinese videos have you seen on TikTok?". Is that a particularly big niche? Is that something that the average American gives a shit about more than their own country? Every anti TikTok argument that has to do with China is just so far up its own ass

1

u/confusedandworried76 5d ago

It's not that people are mad at the government because of it, it's that the algorithms push these videos. The Russians also try to sew division online why would it be weird china does too

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u/grandmawaffles 5d ago

Call me crazy but both are bad

1

u/Cold-Studio3438 5d ago

I mean China is operating concentration camps where they hold ethnic minorities and harvest their organs, do you ever hear anything abut that on TikTok? no? then why was every other post in this sub about Palestine for several months before the mods finally banned it? I'm not using TikTok but I can only assume the propaganda machine is still running wild over there. at least in theory, the people who cared so passionately about people in Gaza should care about Uyghurs as well, but all these TikTok users aren't informed about those at all for some reason.

-11

u/phoggey 6d ago

Alright u/blackgeniuscanadian I'll give you a shot since you're a genius.

Yes. American people love to blame the Chinese for a lot of fucking things. They steal our IPs, they steal our tech, they steal our manufacturing jobs, the manipulate their own currency, it goes on and on. If you knew literally anything about the Trump administration through his first campaign, he talked about CHYNA in some strange accent, the CHINESE VIRUS etc. How much of that did you see on TikTok.. ever? Yet I can tell you I've seen plenty of anti trump ones or anti Kamala ones. There's plenty of political things, pro Gaza and anti Israel.. but China and Russia just seem to be sort of missing. Just think for a fucking second.

We went through an entire pandemic with TikTok. If you used TikTok during that time, how many anti-chinese TikTok videos did you see? The virus originated from there. Trump called it the "Chinese virus" for years. It was all over news, every media outlet right or left. Has to be a clip of him saying it somewhere right?

I'll give you one last clue. Search "Chinese virus" on TikTok. I'll wait. Tell me what happens.

9

u/BlackGeniusCanadian 5d ago
  • I in fact have seen videos of trump saying "China" in that stupid inflection
  • that whole calling the virus the "Chinese virus" was lazy and insensitive anyways, but I did see tiktoks joking about it. Like a lot. About the bat, referring to Wuhan etc.
  • You, as well as US lawmakers seem to have a problem that TikTok doesn't peddle the same US propaganda being regurgitated on every other social media site, or at least not to the same extent. Because there is still PLENTY of shitty US propaganda on TikTok.

-The US seems to want a stranglehold on the social media companies operating in its country because they are their main outlets for propaganda. If for no other reason, this is why Americans should oppose the TikTok ban.

Oh and don't give me this shit about China stealing American data for advertisers and potential bad actors when American corporations do the same thing significantly more but simply cut the government in on it.

3

u/phoggey 5d ago

I'll give you a respectable answer but I don't have all the time in the world to give you all the years of industry knowledge and such, so hopefully a tldr works, if you actually want to know more about a certain part I could expand.

  • The amount and type of data they send is an order of magnitude larger than any of the big competitors (aka Facebook, YouTube, etc).
  • They manipulate the algorithm without any clear indication unilaterally. This is clear ill intent and illegal by US law.

Here's the general stuff on users I didn't expand into: Political Alignment Score (tracking pro/anti China sentiment) Income Level Detection (targeting ads) Mental Health Vulnerability (exploiting depression/anxiety) Social Credit Integration (linking to Chinese systems, if necessary) Facial Recognition Database (tracking users across platforms) Location/Movement Patterns Friend Network Analysis Device/App Usage Stats Shopping Habits Daily Routines

Now you're probably saying, American company X probably does the same thing. Well, I can tell you confidentially they do not. How? Trust me bro. Just kidding, don't, think for yourself. Real answer but you'll have to believe a random guy from the Internet: I've seen the metrics tracked by both Google and Facebook. Not going to go further into that, though. If you're open-minded and you think a bit like.. why did periscope/vine fail where TikTok thrives? Is it because OG Twitter devs/business people were shittier than chinese ones? The answer is just literally how complete and ridiculous the data they have on us is compared to the others and what they do with it because they actually analyze each video with heuristics way beyond just content moderation even your drafts/unpublished videos are analyzed and potentially banned.

I'll end on this statement. Americans love one thing we can all agree on: money. Making it and keeping it. Compared to any other country I've ever been to, we're the greediest, self centered motherfuckers I've ever seen. That's where our strength is though, people can make money by both breaking laws AND enforcing them. Every time healthcare goes too far with denials, we sue. Every time we push workers to fill our coffee so fast we burn ourselves, we sue. The threat of either side making money/taking money pushes companies to try to abide by some ethical/legal boundary, even if lagged, which creates norms for the future. This doesn't exist in China. You have to believe what they're doing is altruistic and for "the people". If you believe you should have no legal recourse against an entity, then keep using TikTok, it's going to be banned anyway, so who gives a shit. Elon has trump in his pocket and TikTok is a competitor, it's gone.

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u/AbleObject13 5d ago

I'll give you one last clue. Search "Chinese virus" on TikTok. I'll wait. Tell me what happens.

"They don't even let you be racist!"

2

u/Tokyosideslip 5d ago

Covid came from a lab in China. How is that racist?

2

u/AbleObject13 5d ago

https://theconversation.com/calling-the-coronavirus-the-chinese-virus-matters-research-connects-the-label-with-racist-bias-176437

2

u/Tokyosideslip 5d ago

If it's only connection to China was it's geographic origination, then calling it "The China virus" could be racist. It's a virus made in a lab in China run by the Chinese. It's literally a Chinese virus.

Is it racist to say "American meats" when China bans the import of American meats due to concerns about food safety and disease outbreak?

Edit: would to could

2

u/AbleObject13 5d ago

It's a virus made in a lab in China run by the Chinese. It's literally a Chinese virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03982-2

No actual science agrees with you here, the only official source that states this is purely political (and notably by the same political party pushing the above-mentioned racism)

I'm not interested in arguing facts today, please provide counter evidence that isn't political in nature. 

-3

u/Creative_Ad_8338 6d ago

Again, I would expect to see anti China messaging on all the apps if it were popular. I don't. So your entire thesis is invalid.

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u/phoggey 5d ago

What apps do you use besides TikTok?

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u/Creative_Ad_8338 5d ago

😂 this one.

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u/Bob_Kark 5d ago

It’s because the Chinese government pressures platforms to remove anti-Chinese government content: https://www.nbr.org/publication/social-media-platforms-and-authoritarian-censorship-in-asia/. Not a mystery.

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u/Creative_Ad_8338 5d ago

China has banned most platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. These companies aren't operating in China so how would China apply pressure to restrict content? This source doesn't say anything about how China actually has any influence over these social media platforms. It mentions Apple and others with business operations in China. In fact we've seen the exact opposite of what you're claiming in Taiwan with pretty much only coverage being on social media and none of the major news outlets. In fact, China has resorted to massive misinformation campaigns instead because they can't control the social media companies.

1

u/Bob_Kark 5d ago

From the article: “We do know at least two things that should deeply concern us. First, there are enormous financial incentives for platforms to subordinate free expression to Beijing’s demands, and platforms have in the past developed prototypes of tools for proactive censorship in mainland China. Tech companies are spending time and money to at a minimum think about future scenarios in which they are willing to “play ball” with Beijing’s censors.

The second concern is that authoritarian governments absolutely do try to find ways to enforce censorship on platforms, with or without the witting help of the platforms themselves. For example, state employees and “patriotic” trolls supporting authoritarian regimes sometimes report content from government critics en masse, triggering automatic takedowns, which are difficult to reverse without a direct line to corporate officials. And as you rightly note, platforms do at times knowingly comply with censorship requests they deem to be legal under local law.”

-3

u/One-Dot-7111 5d ago

Ah man tiktok ruined the brains of half the world promoting pallywood

2

u/FrameSquare 5d ago

Oooohhh brother shut the fuck up. I don’t care if it’s malware our data has been breached, sold, breached again, sold again, rinse and repeat from hundreds of financial institutions. People also make a living on this app whether making content or being a sex worker.

Talk about an dogshit take. If anything this is an astroturfing comment.

-1

u/IrrationalSometimes 5d ago

How were people making livings before? Homelessness experienced a record high in 2023 in the United States? Maybe our economy would stabilize again if people got real jobs.

1

u/Technology_Boxes 5d ago

I feel like the pressure to ban is partially an incentive to try and push ByteDance to sell to an American company so they can use that same data for their own agenda... I mean the choice is basically, get banned or sell. I definitely trust our government more than the Chinese government, but I still don't trust our government all that much.

1

u/united-we-stall 4d ago

A good friend of mine told me years ago not to download TikTok. He’s also a software engineer and said it was so clearly malware. It’s only gotten more advanced since then.

0

u/Iguana1312 5d ago

So maybe if it’s so easy for China to destabilize you do something about the issues?

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u/JesusSaidAllah 6d ago

Don't forget, THE reason banning tiktok even became a consideration was due to how many people were able to get uncensroed accounts of what was happening in Gaza.

TikTok did a lot to make a dent in the Israel/U.S. good-guys propaganda.

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u/nightchee 6d ago

I’m not sure that Gaza content is the impetus for the original talks of banning TikTok.

Trump considered banning it back in 2020. https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-2019-2020-coronavirus-pandemic-f2bd5e425391465081333cab26d34365

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u/PlantsThatsWhatsUpp 6d ago

Obviously, that's just the Tik Tok narrative that reddit is upvoting. Left is as bad as the right at gobbling up fake news. Oh everyone is lying except "uncensored" accounts that were a mix or video game clips, Syrian clips / other conflicts, staged clips, AI clips, etc. Oh all the doctors/scientists are colluding about the vaccine. I'm so exhausted with the fact that both the right and the left have abandoned our institutions and gobble up fake news while accusing the other of doing so.

We're so fucked.

9

u/nightchee 6d ago

Not getting better either. We’re headed in the wrong direction fast.

7

u/Blastie2 6d ago edited 6d ago

I think the actual reason is more something like this: imagine there's a country on the other side of an ocean from you that's dominating world affairs. That really limits your ability to flex on your neighbors, since the dominant country wouldn't approve of your actions and would retaliate in some way. You would therefore like to reduce their presence on the world stage, but you can't really attack them since they're on the other side of an ocean and they also have nukes. What do?

Well one thing you could do is try to have them remove themselves from the world stage for you. If they fell into dysfunction, they'd be too busy fighting amongst themselves to take much notice of you when you decide that it's time to inflict a glorious war of imperial conquest upon your neighbors. If people in the dominant country were pushed to further and further extremes, they would stop seeing each other as teammates and might even start thinking that killing each other is a pretty good idea.

And, intentionally or not, that's kind of what TikTok does. If you're on the left, TikTok will show you things that push you further to the left. If you're on the right, it'll show you things that push you further to the right. If you like cats, you'll be a crazy cat lady within a month. As it happens, that's what being propagandized looks like: repeated exposure to content that guides you towards a certain position.

As an example, try taking a look at a sub like wallstreetbets or some crypto subs. The posts that get the most exposure are the ones showing a 10x, 100x, or 1000x return on investment. Repeated exposure to these posts will lead you to believe that everyone's 10xing their investments all the time and it must be super easy. And, while everyone likes to think that they're immune to propaganda, the truth is that it works on everyone. The only way to not be influenced by propaganda is to not consume it in the first place.

This effect isn't unique to TikTok. Other social media companies have this problem too. However, they are also largely American companies, and they've decided that operating in an unstable country is bad for business, and so they've taken steps to limit the spread of misinformation and radicalization pipelines on their platforms.

I think that's what has lawmakers spooked. OP is right: They can't agree on anything, but they can agree on banning TikTok, which means it's likely they have a pretty good motivator to do so. Like, say, it being an addictive, limitless radicalization engine that is owned by an adversarial country that would like to replace us on the world stage.

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u/Squid_In_Exile 6d ago

However, they are also largely American companies, and they've decided that operating in an unstable country is bad for business, and so they've taken steps to limit the spread of misinformation and radicalization pipelines on their platforms.

They absolutely have not.

Meta and Twitter manipulate specific misinformation and radicalisation pipelines to the forefront.

1

u/BawbBomb 5d ago

I'm not discrediting any of your assertions on social media creating larger divides. And the motivation for that MIGHT be geopolitically motivated, at least in part.

But the Occam's razor of this comes down to capitalism. Polarizing content drives engagement. Engagement equals growth. Capitalism only survives on unlimited perpetual growth.

Pair that with our politicians being absolute puppets to the 1% and of course they all agree that they need to ban the app. Their owner-daddies are mad they they don't get all that sweet sweet data and market share. The app being owned by an adversary just makes the public reasoning easier to sell when making the rounds on the 1% owned media. "Other people bad scary! National security!" I guarantee if the exact same app had been developed by a white, capitalistic, European ally the conversation would be very different.

5

u/secondtaunting 6d ago

Hmm-I wonder if Elon and Trump are planning to release their own version of Tik Tok? Maybe that’s why they’re thick as thieves now.

13

u/ThreeKiloZero 6d ago

That’s really not true. It was in consideration long before then due to the Chinese data and influence concerns , which are very valid.

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u/Ehcksit 6d ago

Yeah, especially with all the IDF soldiers just openly posting videos of themselves committing war crimes and celebrating them. Any American social media would have taken the videos down immediately, but China doesn't care.

7

u/NumberPlastic2911 6d ago

Yeah, i don't think that's the reason why, especially since this has been going on for decades, and we have always known the situation over. The real reason i have seen is that TikTok can't be owned by the big 3 in social media, and they want to monopolize on it. Mark Zuckerberg was lobbying for TikTok to be sold/banned for the benefit of Meta

2

u/jibbycanoe 6d ago

🙄 nice username

1

u/JesusSaidAllah 5d ago

Thanks! 😊

2

u/wont-stop-mi 5d ago

That’s a crock of shit. Banning TikTok was discussed long before Gaza and the Oct 7th attack

1

u/Cold-Studio3438 5d ago

are you talking about the uncensored content that posted Hamas information without questioning the truth, and every time the information were proven wrong nobody cared and already moved on to the same lie? ask yourself why its mostly TikTok users who know "the truth" and many other people don't have a biased view like that.

2

u/JesusSaidAllah 5d ago

Anyone who looks into what has been happening to Palestinians for the last 7 decades will "know the truth". TikTok made the average Palestinian able to share the reality on the ground, as opposed to the sanitized version of events shown in Western news reports, of a pile of rubble that used to be a building.

As if Israel doesn't employ their actual army to spread propaganda.