Tok and Bull Story

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: when they come for us, they’ll be performing short, comedic, lip-synched dance videos. I first wrote that catchy line back in 2020, when the first calls to ban TikTok hit the mainstream. Well, the ban never happened. Ironically, TikTok actually banned Trump before he banned it. But we now know that the Trumpian battles of yore never really ended. Ultimately, there was no ban, just a sale of part of the American version of TikTok to new investors (at a very favorable price). Bloomberg (Gift Article): TikTok Seals Deal to Operate in the US After Years of Drama.

+ I’ve never heard a national security expert argue that there wasn’t a danger in having a massive social networking algorithm and data collection program being run from China. But do we really feel safer with those same tools in the hands of Trump allies? Do we feel safe with X in the hands of Elon or Facebook in the hands of Zuck? “Trump has already said that he’d like to see TikTok go ‘100 percent MAGA,’ and his allies will now be in charge of ‘deciding which posts to leave up and which to take down’ … Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University, told the NYT that the TikTok deal offered Trump and his allies ‘more theoretical room for one side’s views to get a greater airing. ‘My worry all along is that we may have traded fears of foreign propaganda for the reality of domestic propaganda.'” TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks.