Yeah, I mean, I don’t remember ever hearing about challenges like this before tiktok was a thing. There were dumb challenges that could have potentially been dangerous or harmful, but none of them seemed intentionally dangerous or harmful. Tiktok, on the other hand, seems like one challenge after another intended to cause harm and chaos. Combine that with claims that the Chinese version is the polar opposite in terms of trending content and it’s not hard to see why some people believe there’s a CCP conspiracy to make westerners look like degenerate idiots.
That said, while I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, I’m not convinced that it isn’t actually the result of the Chinese credit system. It could easily be explained that way because the system is going to encourage people to only document and share actions and events that align with the system’s ideals. The result is that Chinese tiktok will naturally look a lot less chaotic and troll-y.
However, it’s still pretty suspicious that they have no issues with being able to ban people livestreaming for profanity but have issues with stopping blantant bigotry and challenge trends designed to cause harm, property damage, and general chaos.