4 ms·

Important to note the pretext for the TikTok ban: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lawmakers-tiktok-ban-pro-palestinian-content-1235016101/ h

• tiahura 2y ago
  As Israel-captured as the US government may be, Israel-Palestine is way way way down the rationale list.
  • logicchains 2y ago
    Then why did the recent move to ban it come just weeks after AIPAC publicly complained that footage of the Gaza genocide broadcast there was turning young people against Israel?
  • saturn8601 2y ago
    What evidence are you basing this on?
  • jmyeet 2y ago
    In my estimation, Israel-Palestine (and, in particular, the college protests) was the straw that broke the camel's back. Remember the bill to ban Tiktok was introduced 5-6 months after October 7 at the height of college protests. The real problem with Tiktok, from the perspective of the US establishment and government, is that it doesn't move in lockstep the US State Department, as opposed to Meta [1], for example. An earlier prominent example was the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment [2] that was all over Tiktok for over a week before it got any mainstream media coverage. Mainstream media has to straddle a line between paroting the State Department and maintaining the veneer of legitimacy. Just compare the reaction to Brad Spafford, caught with the largest explosives cache ever seized, out on $25k bond [3] to a woman having set a $100k bail for saying "deny, defend, depose" over the phone to a health insurance company and, should she make that bond, she'll be kept on home confinement [4]. Or the resources dedicated to arresting Luigi Mangioni. Or even a man just recently killed by the police in under a minute in a raid for... a judge-exeuctive's weed eater in Kentucky [5]. Police in fact killed over 3 people a day in 2024 [6], including many egregious examples such as Sonya Massey [7]. My point here is that I agree this isn't solely a Israel-Palestine issue with Tiktok. But the media are complicit in not holding those in power accountable when they are quite clearly acting as thugs at the behest of the wealthy and powerful. Tiktok doesn't seem to play along with that narrative and that's why it got a ban. If we really cared about user privacy, we would've passed an expansive data protection bill. If we cared about foreign influence, why do we single out China and not, say, Israel? [1]: https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/... [2]: https://www.wired.com/story/east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment-tiktok/ https://www.wired.com/story/east-palestine-ohio-train-derail... [3]: https://www.vpm.org/news/2024-12-31/norfolk-homemade-explosives-brad-kenneth-spafford-bond https://www.vpm.org/news/2024-12-31/norfolk-homemade-explosi... [4]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czenlg5d5rjo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czenlg5d5rjo [5]: https://www.lex18.com/news/covering-kentucky/stolen-weed-eater-investigation-tied-to-officer-involved-deadly-shooting-in-laurel-county-warrant-reveals https://www.lex18.com/news/covering-kentucky/stolen-weed-eat... [6]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/01/03/xymt-j03.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/01/03/xymt-j03.html [7]: https://apnews.com/article/illinois-sonya-massey-deputy-shooting-grayson-01b91fa1731da8007cff693206cad2bc https://apnews.com/article/illinois-sonya-massey-deputy-shoo...