Like all other social media, they harvest an invasive amount of data. Not more than meta apps or anything, but it is part of standard capitalist practice. They exist, like every mainstream social media platform in China or America, to promote economic interests in a corporate system. It deranked BLM videos because deranking popular dissent is part and parcel with selling to advertisers. China doesn’t even need a backdoor, just the basic understanding of how it’s similar to all their own apps.

China is another capitalist empire under a different flag. They’re neoliberal to the bone, only better at exploiting the system than America in certain ways. They don’t want to undermine the global capitalist order, as they’re quite good at winning in it. They’ve become more nationalistic and hawkish militarily, but that’s a direct result of neoliberalism. It quickly becomes unpopular if there aren’t internal and external scapegoats. The degenerate western influences are scapegoated there, while the degenerate commie immigrants are the enemy here.

All of it serves to protect power. Trump will adopt many strategies from them, because that is what their government exists to do.