Tag: TikTok

Judges Rule Against TikTok Citing ‘Grave Threat to National Security’

Daily Caller News Foundation
iPhone with TikTok app logo

A federal appeals court ruled Friday to uphold a law that will force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the platform or have it banned in the U.S.

A panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled unanimously that the law forcing ByteDance, TikTok’s parent firm, to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or face a U.S. ban is legal, clearing the way for the law to take effect on Jan. 19, 2025. In their ruling, the judges characterized TikTok as a national security risk because the Chinese government is able to manipulate the app to its advantage and stated that the April divest-or-ban law does not run afoul of the First Amendment, as some of the law’s critics have contended.

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Democrats Pressure Big Tech to Censor Hurricane ‘Misinformation’ amid Public Scrutiny of Response

Tom Pappert
Hurricane Helene

Four Democrats in the U.S. House sent a letter to Big Tech executives on Friday demanding increased censorship and scrutiny on their platforms after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, arguing they must censor posts to protect users from potential scams and “misinformation” about federal agencies.

Representatives Deborah Ross (D-NC-02), Kathy Castor (D-FL-14), Nikema Williams (D-GA-05), and Wiley Nickel (D-NC-13) urged tech executives to “do substantially more” to combat social media “misinformation” that purportedly began in the wake of Hurricane Helene, in a letter first reported by Axios.

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TikTok Bans Pro-Life Students for Life Same Day It Begged Court to Overturn Its Pending U.S. Ban

Just the News

Students for Life of America said TikTok banned the pro-life group Monday night, hours after the Chinese-owned platform begged a federal appeals court to overturn a law that forces ByteDance to sell the company or face a U.S. ban.

“Couldn’t find this account,” is all SFLA’s TikTok page says as of 10:30 p.m. Monday. The last archive Just the News could find is Aug. 22, which said the page had 94,000 followers.

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TikTok May Be Held Liable for Girl’s Death, Upending Three Decades of Tech Immunity

Just the News
Montana TikTok Ruling

The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet” may not be as powerful as believed by the bipartisan chorus demanding reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

TikTok’s biggest immediate problem now may be its own users, their parents, and state attorneys general, rather than the state and federal lawmakers seeking to ban the Chinese-owned company and force ByteDance to sell it to an American entity, following a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Aug. 27 that denies TikTok legal immunity for an algorithm choice.

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Big Tech Liable for Breaking Promises to Users that Led to Suicide, Death Threats: Appeals Court

Just the News
Smart Phone Filled with Apps

Days before the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent Big Tech lawyers scrambling by upending three decades of judicial precedents on Section 230 immunity from liability, its West Coast counterpart warned platforms their immunity had limits, too.

While far smaller in scope than the 3rd Circuit’s ruling that TikTok could be held liable for a little girl’s death by algorithmically recommending the video she fatally copied, likely to provoke Supreme Court intervention, the 9th Circuit ruling Aug. 22 against third-party Snapchat app developer Yolo also suggests judges are growing skeptical of maximalist views of the 1996 law.

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Study Finds TikTok Manipulates Content to Favorably Promote Chinese Government

Just the News
TikTok

TikTok uses an algorithm to promote content that puts the Chinese government in a favorable light in order to sway users’ views, according to a new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).

The study builds off a previous report from December that found the social media site likely promotes pro-China content, as the app faces bipartisan criticism over national security concerns. The app is already facing a potential ban in the United States if the Chinese parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest its shares of the platform on time.

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Bipartisan Bill Introduced to Better Monitor Terror Threats on Foreign Mobile Apps Like TikTok

Just the News
Rep. August Pfluger and Rep. Jimmy Panetta (composite image)

Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence, and Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., introduced a bill to “conduct annual assessments on terrorism threats to the United States posed by terrorist organizations utilizing foreign cloud-based mobile or desktop messaging applications, and for other purposes.”

Pfluger said that cloud-based technology has given “terrorist groups even more tools to use in their pursuit of deadly chaos” more than 20 years since the 9/11 attacks.

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Miyares Joins 20 Other AGs in Support of Federal TikTok Ban

The Center Square
Jason Miyares

Republican attorneys general from 21 states, led by the attorneys general of Montana and Virginia, submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia defending the federal law banning TikTok in the U.S.

President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law in April due to concerns that through Chinese-owned parent company Bytedance, the Chinese Communist Party might be able to gain access to users’ private data or influence American youth toward communism. The law threatens to prohibit the app in the U.S. if Bytedance does not sell its shares in the social media company by Jan. 19, 2025.

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Commentary: After Years of Big Tech Putting Profit over Children’s Safety, the Senate Just Took a Big Step to Hold Them Accountable

Admin
Little Girl online

Since 1998 — the last year Congress passed a major law to reform the tech industry and protect children in the virtual space — a lot has changed.

In the last 26 years, more than 100 million Americans were born during the internet’s profound transformation from dial-up to near constant connectivity, especially with the emergence of the biggest social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and more.

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Justice Department Says TikTok Has Collected User Data on Issues Such as Gun Control and Abortion

Just the News

The Justice Department on Friday evening accused the social media app TikTok of gathering information on users’ opinions on social issues such as abortion and gun control.

Attorneys for the DOJ said in documents filed at an appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to get TikTok employees to communicate with ByteDance engineers in China.

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Commentary: TikTok and Instagram Turned Me into a Leftist, but X Helped Me Escape

Admin
Black Lives Matter Rally

Social media plays a significant role in shaping the opinions of those 35 and under — it’s the primary news source for most in that age group, one survey found.

Some stats report that daily screen time for 16- to 24-year-olds is nearly eight hours among females and seven hours among males. To put that in perspective — that’s equivalent to the average time in a school day.

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Commentary: Big Tech Wants to Crush Your Entire World and Trap You in Virtual Hell

Admin
Woman wearing Apple Vision Pro goggles

Apple’s recent ad for a new, thinner iPad featured a hydraulic press smashing everything the new gadget could supposedly replace: paints, musical instruments, a clay bust, arcade cabinets, record players, books.

The new iPad promises a future in which humanity has forgotten the whisper of the brush over the canvas, the vibration of a guitar string, the joy of finding a note tucked into an old used book, and the easy camaraderie of children cheering each other on as they take turns at a challenging arcade game. The craftsmanship that went into these objects is now obsolete. You don’t have to go anywhere, touch anything.

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TikTok Sues U.S. Government over New Law Banning App

Admin
TikTok User

On Tuesday, the Chinese social media app TikTok and its parent company filed a lawsuit against the federal government of the United States over a new law threatening to ban the app if it is not sold to another company by next year.

ABC News reports that the lawsuit, filed by TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, claims the new law is a violation of the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s users. The bill was signed into law by Joe Biden last month, with the TikTok ban being one provision of a larger $95 billion foreign aid package. The law requires ByteDance to sell TikTok within 9 months, or else the app will be banned from use in the United States.

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Biden Campaign Says It Will Stay on TikTok Despite Foreign Aid Package That Could Ban It

Just the News
President Biden in front of TikTok logo (composite image)

Supporters of the legislation claim that the app poses a national security risk because it is owned by a Chinese company, and thereby could expose sensitive U.S. data to the Chinese government.

President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign said on Wednesday that it still plans to stay on the controversial app TikTok, despite the president’s signing a foreign aid package that could eventually ban it in the United States.

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Fresh Revelations About TikTok Come as Senate Considers the Divestment Bill

Just the News
TikTok app in front of Chinese flag

Pressure is mounting in Washington to finally pass a bill requiring TikTok’s China-based parent company to divest of the popular social media app amid new revelations that the company is much closer to the Chinese government than it has previously claimed.

Now, the House has passed a comprehensive foreign aid package which included a revised TikTok divestment bill. This makes it more likely to become law sooner rather than later as the Senate is set to consider the legislation.

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China Lobbying Congress amid TikTok Ban Efforts

Admin
iPhone with TikTok app logo

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been secretly attempting to lobby members of Congress over recent proposals to ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok.

As reported by Breitbart, employees of the Chinese Embassy have been meeting with congressional staffers to try to persuade members to vote against the bill that would force the Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok, or else face an indefinite ban on the app’s use in the United States. The bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in March with bipartisan support, and is now being reviewed by the Senate.

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TikTok Launches Ad Campaign in Battleground States in Which Vulnerable Dem Senators Seek Reelection

Just the News
Tiktok

TikTok launched a $2.1 million advertising campaign try to stop Congress from voting on a measure to effectively ban the social media app in the U.S. that will be run in states in which Senate Democrats are in tough reelection bids.

The bill, targeting the app, whose parent company is China based, overwhelmingly passed the GOP-controlled House and now awaits a vote in the Senate.

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States Focus on Squatting as TikToker Encourages Illegal Immigrants to ‘Invade’ Homes

Just the News
Illegal immigrant being arrested

State and local officials are working to prevent property owners from having their residences taken over by squatters as a social media influencer from Venezuela encouraged illegal immigrants to “invade” homes in the U.S.

The issue of squatting has arisen in both Florida and Georgia, states fighting against squatting, while a New York City resident was arrested for trying to prevent a squatter from reentering her home. Squatting has become a concern with the influx of illegal immigrants as a Venezuelan national encouraged others to squat in Americans’ homes.

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East Tennessee Schools Sue Major Social Media Companies

Peter D'Abrosca
Kids on tablets

More than 30 school districts in East Tennessee have joined a lawsuit first filed by Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) against social media companies, claiming that those companies are harming children.

According to WBIR, Knox, Anderson, Blount, Claiborne, Fentress, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Lenoir City, Loudon, Maryville, Oak Ridge, Oneida, and Sevier counties have joined the suit, which names eta, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, YouTube and WhatsApp as defendants.

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Commentary: If H.R. 7521 Was Only About TikTok, the Bill Would Only Apply to TikTok

Admin
TikTok Social Media

“The TikTok bill gives Biden the power to ban websites & apps run by ‘a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity.’ Given that Biden routinely smears political opponents as being under the control of Putin, the danger should be obvious.”

That was entrepreneur David Sacks on X (formerly Twitter) on March 13 noting the fact that H.R. 7521, which has easily passed the House and is now on a fast track in the U.S Senate will give the President, right now it’s Joe Biden but also future presidents, can force divestiture of any website or application or else have it removed from hosting services if the President determines it is run by “a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity” including Russia, China, North Korea or Iran.

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The Pentagon is Paying a Chinese Communist Party-Linked Venture Capital Firm for Tutoring Services

Admin
Chinese Students

The CEO of a Chinese venture capital firm that quietly bought up a U.S. education company holding a Pentagon contract has long-standing connections to multiple Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence units, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Primavera Capital, a Hong Kong-based venture capital firm, was an early investor in TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and owns Princeton Review and Tutor.com. However, a review of the firm’s Chinese-language website found that CEO and founder Fred Hu has extensive ties to the Chinese government and belonged to organizations that the U.S. government has identified as part of the CCP’s “United Front” system.

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Commentary: ADL’s Partisanship Harms the Fight Against Antisemitism

Admin
Jon Greenblatt

For over a century, the Anti-Defamation League has enjoyed a reputation as the preeminent Jewish organization combating antisemitism and all forms of hate. Its acronym, ADL, has “household name” status—and not just in Jewish homes. This makes its current penchant for partisanship extraordinarily dangerous for, and beyond, the Jewish community.

Last December, Senate Republicans learned that a Joe Biden nominee for a lifetime judicial appointment, Adeel Mangi, was previously a board member and generous supporter of the antisemitic Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers University Law School.

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House Panel Unanimously Passes Bill to Ban TikTok in U.S., Final Vote as Early as Next Week

Just the News
TikTok China

A GOP-led House committee has unanimously passed a bill that attempts to ban TikTok nationwide on all electronic devices.

The bill passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday and could get a final vote as early as next week, amid concerns about the China-based owner of the popular, short-form video platform giving user data to the Chinese Communist Party.

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Foreign-Owned Social Media Platforms Could Face New Florida Restrictions

The Center Square
People on Phones

Foreign-owned social media platforms such as TikTok could face a big change in the Sunshine State if a bill currently being advanced by the Florida Senate gets signed into law.

Senate Bill 1448 is sponsored by state Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, and would add transparency for social media platforms operating in Florida that are owned by foreign adversaries.

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Tech Companies Plan to Combat Use of Fake AI in Elections

Admin
Facebook User

As the threat of fake images and videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially play a role in the coming 2024 elections and beyond, several tech companies have pledged to use their resources to combat misinformation as a result of such technology.

According to Politico, multiple companies are planning to cooperate through a so-called “Tech Accord” dictating several key goals and methods that will be used in the fight against false AI. The companies intend to expose and debunk any “deepfake” images or videos produced by AI, through various tactics such as watermarks and automatic detection technology.

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Gov. Youngkin’s Plan to Ban TikTok for Minors Dies Without Vote in House of Delegates

Tom Pappert
Tiktok Phone

Governor Glenn Youngkin’s proposal to ban TikTok from offering its services to minors in Virginia was defeated on Tuesday after Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates opted against scheduling it for a vote.

The bill, HB 1468 by Delegate Jay Leftwich (R-Chesapeake), would have allowed Attorney General Jason Miyares to prohibit TikTok from knowingly allowing minors to use the social media platform in the commonwealth. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, would have been fined $7,500 per violation for every minor found to be using the site due to the company’s negligence.

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Sen. Blackburn Slams Big Tech Companies in Fox Interview

Peter D'Abrosca
Sen. Marsha Blackburn Fox News

A U.S. Senator from Tennessee took to Fox News to slam Big Tech companies over the dangers their platforms pose to America’s youth. 

“You know, I wish that each one of those [tech executives] would have taken their turn at apologizing to those parents,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told Harris Faulkner on “The Faulkner Focus.” “You look at the amount of pornographic material on X, you look at what Snap has done, connecting kids to pedophiles and drug dealers, TikTok, with the kids that have done these TikTok challenges and lost their lives, Discord which is used for chats and gaming, and kids are meeting really bad actors. Every one of them owed those parents that were in that room an apology and those kids – friends of kids – who had lost their lives that showed up wearing those t-shirts. Some were worth more than $230 which is what [Meta CEO Mark] Zuckerberg said a teen was worth to them on social media.” 

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Commentary: Ban TikTok or Let Beijing Control Our Broadcast Networks, Too

RealClearWire
Tiktok User

In the dynamic landscape of global entertainment, the influence of Beijing over Hollywood has long been a topic of heated discussion. While the box office power of the Chinese market has waned, giving a breath of creative freedom back to our filmmakers, there looms a new and more pervasive form of influence on Hollywood and well beyond: TikTok.

Beijing may have lost theatrical market leverage, but it has more than made up for that with an overpowering social media presence that has become an epidemic, not just in Hollywood but throughout the United States. In fact, the Chairman of Congress’s Select Committee on China, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), accurately labels TikTok as “digital fentanyl” and has been aggressively campaigning to ban the social media app.

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Virginia Democrats Shut Down Social Media Regulations After Gov. Youngkin Promised Bills to Protect Commonwealth Kids

Tom Pappert
Kids on a Smartphone

Two bills put forward by Republicans in the Virginia House of Delegates were defeated in the a subcommittee by Democrats on Monday, just months after Governor Glenn Youngkin said promised to file bills targeting social media companies, particularly TikTok, to protect children in the commonwealth.

Defeated by a margin of two votes, HB 1161 would have required social media platforms to obtain a verifiable form of parental consent for minors to use the platform and for parental consent to be obtained a second time before social media companies could collect personal data from minors.

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TikTok is Still Sending American User Data to Chinese Parent Company: Report

Admin

TikTok continues to distribute data to its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance despite its purported efforts to protect American data, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

TikTok attempted to address concerns from lawmakers and public officials over its handling of Americans’ data by spending $1.5 billion on establishing an isolated unit to safeguard American data called Project Texas. However, managers within TikTok are telling employees to share data to ByteDance, bypassing authorized channels, according to current and previous employees as well as company records the WSJ saw.

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Turkish Smugglers Use Social Media to Help ‘Citizens of Every Country’ Reach the U.S. Border

Admin
Illegal Immigrants

Turkish smugglers appear to be using social media platforms to help migrants from across the globe enter the U.S. illegally through the southern border, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of Telegram and TikTok posts.

The advertisements offer arrangements for travel, visas and transportation directly to the U.S.-Mexico border for migrants in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Border Patrol encounters of migrants crossing the southern border illegally have hit numerous records in recent years, with more than 2.2 million encounters in fiscal year 2022 and more than 2 million in fiscal year 2023, according to federal data.

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Americans Turn on TikTok: 54 Percent Support Banning Social Media App

Admin
TikTok User

TikTok might be popular among America’s youth, but a majority of voters view it as a threat to the United States. An even higher percentage favor a federal ban of the social media platform.

RMG Research, a polling firm led by Scott Rasmussen, shared its latest survey data exclusively with The Daily Signal. The poll was conducted Dec. 18-19 among 1,000 registered U.S. voters.

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TikTok Data Reveals Content Favors CCP Goals, According to New Study

Admin
TikTok China

The popular video app TikTok seems to be promoting content to align with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) goals, a Thursday study found.

Hashtag data showed that content sensitive to the CCP is far less popular on TikTok than on its rival, Instagram, accordingto the study by Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University. A comparison between Instagram and TikTok showed that the number of posts about non-sensitive hashtags in the realm of politics and pop-culture was fairly similar based on how many users each platform has, but the number of posts on hashtags for topics sensitive to the CCP was substantially higher on Instagram than on TikTok.

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YoungkinWatch: Governor Promises Bills Banning TikTok for Minors, Restricting Social Media Data Gathering for Kids

Tom Pappert
Gov. Glenn Youngkin

Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) said in a Friday news conference that he will introduce legislation to the Virginia General Assembly to ban TikTok for minors, restrict other social media from gathering data about children, and expand state-funded mental health initiatives in public schools and colleges.

Youngkin revealed four new legislative efforts he intends to champion during the upcoming legislative session, after first calling for an additional $500 million to address youth mental health in a Friday press release.

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Commentary: Flirtation with Evil Will Not End Well for the Progressive Left

Admin

Has the TikTok Left just jumped the shark?

Well, yes. Imagine seizing on Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American People” as a revelation to justify your wounded adolescent narcissism and historical ignorance? This past week, a bunch of videos from the Chinese owned data-hoovering and propaganda-peddling app took the meme-world by storm by showering some love on the defunct Islamic terrorist and kicking America in the process.  Quoth one fragile female as she brushed her teeth: “Trying to go back to life as normal after reading Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.” Another client of this new experiment in juvenile mind control bleated that the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks taught her that America was a “plague on the entire world.”

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Videos of People Sympathizing with Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ Go Viral

Admin

Videos showing people reading Osama bin Laden’s 2002 letter justifying the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon went viral Wednesday evening, prompting a media outlet to delete its translation of the document.

The Guardian deleted the letter Wednesday after it had been active on the site since being published on Nov. 24, 2002, directing readers to an article from that date about the letter. Videos on the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok showed users reading the letter, Rolling Stone reported.

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CCP-Linked TikTok’s Personnel Can Allegedly Access Politicians’ Private Networks: Report

Admin

TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance’s personnel can allegedly view the private connections of a vast array of politicians, Forbes reported on Wednesday.

TikTok has a social graph tool that reveals connections of individuals including members of President Joe Biden’s family, governors, senators and state attorneys general, Forbes reported. Other social media companies have access to similar data but TikTok has fewer barriers for employees to view it and more personal information available for them to draw from, according to individuals who have worked for multiple tech firms who spoke to Forbes.

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