Do users have to worry about TikTok’s censorship of private information? An analysis by Amber Estenson, William McCoy, and Krishnamoorthi
If a law is enacted the fight might not end there: TikTok has mounted legal challenges against other efforts to ban the app, and courts have sided with their argument that blocking TikTok violates users’ First Amendment rights.
Amber Estenson, a 42-year content creator also known as “That Midwestern Mom,” went viral on TikTok two years ago when she uploaded one of her quirky Minnesota “salad” concoctions. She made a sensation of herself by using ingredients like Snickers bars and apples.
TikTokers use their platform to give back. William McCoy is a former drug dealer and ex-felon from Baltimore. He said he uses his platform to help homeless people in his community.
A bill that would require TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to quit the app within six months of the law’s enactment has the backing of both sides of the aisle.
But Krishnamoorthi says he and other lawmakers reviewed the efforts and says the company’s claims about their safeguards were false. It was Tiktok that said that American user data would not be accessible to anyone in China. Again, wrong. That was proven false as well. And then they said that American user data is not going to be used to target anybody again. Wrong. It was not true.
Why the House seems ready to ban TikTok and what could come next? Comment on the bipartisan bill that would ban the video sharing app “Project Texas”
The bipartisan measure was unanimously approved last week by the House Energy and Commerce committee. The process that will allow it to come to the floor on Wednesday requires at least two-thirds of the House to pass.
The bipartisan bill that was the subject of debate in the US congress does not amount to a ban of the video sharing app according to the man who is the lead GOP sponsor.
The app has been used to target journalists and interfere in elections according to classified and unclassified national security assessments. Top officials from intelligence and national security agencies conducted a classified briefing on their analysis for all House members on Tuesday.
The bill is needed because TikTok’s lobbying campaign, which used location information to connect users by phone to their congressman, proves how important it is.
Teenagers cry, one threatens suicide, and one impersonates one of my colleague’s sons, as the member offices were deluged with calls. That shows how the platform can be weaponized in the future.
The bill also sets up a process for the president to address any future threats from any foreign owned apps if they are deemed a national security risk. Users can download their data and switch to another platform.
The ranking Democrat on the House Select committee on China is from Illinois and he helped write the bill. He pushed back on the company’s argument, telling NPR, “There’s no first amendment right to espionage, there’s no first amendment right to harm our national security.”
The company insists it invested its own money in an effort dubbed “Project Texas” to address data privacy concerns and keep users’ data in the U.S.
Social Media: Trump’s Opposition to a Social Media Ban and Why He voted to Neither Congress nor the House Bill (and Neither did he)
Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, proposed a ban back in 2020 when he was in the White House. But he does not support the House bill.
When he served as president he vowed to ban the social media app. Trump explained his new opposition in an interview with CNBC on Monday, saying that despite his the possible security risk, he opposed a ban because it meant users would move to another platform that he considered more dangerous.
“There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media,” he said.
Despite low unemployment and falling inflation, TikTok is full of viral videos bemoaning the U.S. economy. One popular group of posts uses the term “Silent Depression.” The country is in worse shape than in 1930, according to the posts. Jim and Jeanna reported the posts late last year.
Wall Street Journal: TikTok blew up the U.S. during Hamas’s attack and warned China against the 2022 midterm elections
After Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, TikTok flooded users with videos expressing extreme positions from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tilted toward the Palestinian side, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. “Many stoked fear,” The Journal reported. In November, videos praising an old Osama bin Laden letter also went viral.
On Monday, the top U.S. intelligence official released a report saying that the Chinese government had used TikTok to promote its propaganda to Americans and to influence the 2022 midterm elections. This year, the report warned, China’s ruling Communist Party may try to influence the presidential election and “magnify U.S. societal divisions.”
