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Jan. 15, 2025 - The Culture War - Tim Pool

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Tiktok To SHUT DOWN On Sunday As SCOTUS Fails To Issue Decision On Ban, Trump Says HOLD UP

Tiktok To SHUT DOWN On Sunday As SCOTUS Fails To Issue Decision On Ban, Trump Says HOLD UP BUY CAST BREW COFFEE TO SUPPORT THE SHOW - https://castbrew.com/ Become A Member And Protect Our Work at http://www.timcast.com Host: Tim Pool @Timcast (everywhere) My Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnews Podcast Channel - https://www.youtube.com/TimcastIRL

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tim pool ▲ ● ▼		TikTok is preparing to shut down this Sunday after a ban was signed last year.
		And as of today, the Supreme Court has issued no decision.
		Now, they may still issue an injunction.
		We don't know exactly what's going to happen.
		But if there is no intervention...
		This is it.
		Now some have questioned why TikTok would make this move.
		There's ways to mitigate the damage.
		They could just divest from ByteDance, which is the Chinese-owned component of TikTok, but they're not.
		They're saying, no, we will shut down.
		And there's a big argument about whether or not TikTok can even be banned.
		Do they have First Amendment constitutional rights in these United States?
		Well, my friends, this could impact 112 million estimated users of TikTok in the United States.
		It can cause a decent amount of economic damage as there's a lot of young entrepreneurs who use the platform to make a living.
		But the question is still challenging.
		Should we, as the United States, allow China, an adversary of this country, to operate what is mass media in the United States?
		See, the argument is their algorithm controls what young people in this country think.
		Why would we let China control such a large portion of our economy?
		Not the biggest, but still a portion, especially one that could influence politics.
		The public is divided, my friends.
		But the issue here isn't so simple.
		Conservatives were first to want to ban TikTok.
		Then all of a sudden, liberals jumped on board saying they wanted to ban TikTok.
		You got a bipartisan effort.
		And the question is, how did this happen?
		Why now is Donald Trump saying, actually, hold on?
		Let's keep TikTok around.
		We're going to deep dive into this issue.
		I'm going to break down the whole story for you.
		Why TikTok is being banned.
		Why Trump says don't do it.
		And why some Democrats are saying let's hold off as well.
		How did the narrative flip so quickly?
		And how are we barreling towards the permanent ban of a massive social media platform?
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		The first story that we have, breaking down where we're at.
		TikTok prepares for U.S. shutdown from Sunday, sources say.
		Reuters reports, TikTok plans to shut its app for U.S. users from Sunday when a federal ban on the social media app could come into effect unless the Supreme Court moves to block it, people familiar with the matter said.
		The outcome of the shutdown would be different from that mandated by the law.
		The law would mandate a ban only on new TikTok downloads on Apple or Google app stores, while existing users could continue to use it for some time.
		Under TikTok's plan, people attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban, the people said, requesting anonymity as the matter is not public.
		The company also plans to give users an option to download all their data so they can take a record of their personal information.
		Shutting down such a service does not require longer planning, one of the sources said, noting that most operations have been continuing as usual as of this week.
		If the ban gets reversed later, TikTok would be able to restore service for U.S. users in a relatively short time, the source said.
		So why shut down if they can keep operating?
		Well, according to the rumor, TikTok wants to shock you.
		Seriously.
		They know that if they say, we're going to pull from the App Store, And still allow those with the app to keep using it.
		Well, most people are just going to keep on keeping on.
		There's not a ruffling of feathers, as it were.
		But if they take away the platform from you, sort of in protest, they force many prominent, influential young people to speak up in outrage and go after members of Congress, lead protests and demand the restoration of their platform.
		Reuters goes on to say, privately held ByteDance is about 60% owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock and General Atlantic, while its founders and employees own 20% each.
		It has more than 7,000 employees in the U.S. Joe Biden signed last year a law requiring ByteDance to sell its U.S. assets by January 19, 2025, or face a nationwide ban.
	So let's work backward real quick so I can give you the gist of what this law says and talk about how it came to be and why we are even discussing banning TikTok in the first place.
	The AP reported this.
	Senate passes bill forcing TikTok's parent company to sell or face ban and sends the bill to Biden for signature.
	Shortly after, President Biden signed the new law to ban TikTok nationwide unless it is sold.
	On April 24th of last year, NPR reported President Biden on Wednesday signed a law that would ban Chinese-owned TikTok unless it is sold within a year.
	It is the most serious threat yet to the video streaming app's future in the U.S., intensifying America's tech war with China.
	Still, the law is not expected to cause any immediate disruption to TikTok, as a forthcoming legal challenge and various hurdles to selling the app will most likely cause months of delay.
	The issue at play is that TikTok, according to Wikipedia, and, well, the news, is...
unidentified		Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here.
		It's a new year, and you know what that means.
		No, not the diet.
		Resolutions.
		A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year.
		And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging a** and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get.
		Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.
		$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month.
		New customers on first three-month plan only.
		Taxes and fees extra.
		Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on Unlimited.
		See mintmobile.com for details.
tim pool ▲ ● ▼		Owned by China, effectively.
		Wikipedia says TikTok is a Chinese short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance.
		It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration from 3 seconds to 60 minutes.
		It can be accessed with a smartphone app or on the web.
		According to Statista, they've got around 113.2 million users, meaning this could deeply impact a ton of people.
		The bill that was created last year and passed and then signed was not a direct ban on TikTok.
		And everybody was coming out saying they're going to ban TikTok.
		That violates free speech.
		It's going to take away my platform.
		But this was never a ban.
		They're simply saying, hey.
		We don't believe a foreign adversary like China, Iran, Russia should be able to operate in the United States.
		So TikTok, just sell off your Chinese component And you can keep operating.
		It's not a ban.
		But if China is going to have access to manipulating an algorithm by which young people get their news and collect and store private data of Americans, that is a threat to our national security.
		That is a threat to our economy.
		And thus, many people on both sides said, yeah, actually, this makes a lot of sense.
		Here we have the bill, H.R. 7521 in the Senate of the United States.
		An act.
		To protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary-controlled applications, such as TikTok and any successor application or service and any other application or service developed or provided by ByteDance LTD or an entity under the control of ByteDance LTD. It reads, in general, prohibition of foreign adversary-controlled applications.
		It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain or update or enable the distribution, maintenance or updating of a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out within the land or maritime borders of the United States any of the following.
		A. Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary-controlled application through which users within the land or maritime borders, blah, blah.
		But you get the point.
		I'm not going to read all the intense legalese.
		The point is, if a foreign adversary is operating a platform in such a way, they must divest or be removed from U.S. servers.
		In the definition section, it says controlled by a foreign adversary means with respect to a covered company or other entity that such company or other entity is a foreign person that is domiciled in, headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country, an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph A directly or indirectly own at least 20% stake.
		Or a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph A or B. Now they go on to define foreign adversary controlled applications specifically as any of ByteDance, TikTok, their subsidiaries or successors, entities controlled by them, or a covered company that is controlled by a foreign adversary and that is determined by the president to present a significant threat to national security of the U.S. following the issuance of...
		And then they go on to add a bit more a public notice, a public report.
		There is an opportunity to challenge this that is in this.
		And they say foreign adversary country means a country specified in section 4872D2 of Title 10 U.S. Code.
		This law is about acquisition of materials from non-allied foreign nations.
		And in this, they say covered nation means the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, the People's Republic of China.
		So basically, if there's any app that has ownership or funding or is connected in some way to one of those four countries, the president could issue a report saying our national security is threatened, deliver the report to Congress, and then there would be a judicial review period.
		The bill states...
		In the case of a challenge, it can happen not later than 165 days after the date of the enactment of this act.
		And in the case of a challenge to any action or determination, not later than 90 days.
		So that means for TikTok and Bytedance, they had 165 days to challenge this bill specifically.
		And if Trump or whoever tries to go after any other company, they'll have only 90 days to file a challenge.
		Now, of course, TikTok said they won't shut down.
		If the Supreme Court intervenes, well, obviously, if the Supreme Court cuts them some slack, they won't need to.
		And it's looking like the Supreme Court may be skeptical, but we will see.
		As of today, the Supreme Court has not issued a decision, and today's supposed to be a decision day.
		They may still issue an injunction, but it's not looking good for TikTok in the short term or its users.
		SCOTUSblog broke it down.
		Supreme Court skeptical of ban on TikTok.
		The Supreme Court on Friday was divided over the constitutionality of a federal law that would require social media giant TikTok to shut down in the U.S. unless its Chinese parent company can sell it by January 19th.
		During two hours of oral arguments, the justices raised questions about whether the law at the center of the case actually restricts TikTok's freedom of speech, as well as about what will happen if there is no sale by the deadline.
		The article wraps by saying, with the law's January 19th effective date looming, the justices pressed lawyers about what will happen if ByteDance does not sell TikTok.
		Francisco told the justices that TikTok would go dark in the U.S., echoing Trump's brief in the case.
		He argued that it would make perfect sense to issue a preliminary injunction and buy everyone a little breathing space.
		Prolagar countered that ByteDance was playing a game of chicken, hoping that it could stave off the effective date of the law.
		Either in the courts or in the executive branch.
		But she emphasized that the restrictions on TikTok could be lifted as soon as ByteDance sells it, which might be just the jolt that ByteDance needs to move forward.
		TikTok and ByteDance have been on notice since 2020 that the parent company might need to sell TikTok, she stressed.
		Preligar added that there was no basis for the Supreme Court to enter a preliminary injunction blocking the law unless it believes TikTok is ultimately likely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the law.
		And today, SCOTUS blog reported there is no decision on TikTok, which means injunction or nothing.
		So, my friends, it looks like TikTok will be shut down.
		But I got to tell you my thoughts right now.
		I mean, I want to deep dive more into where this ban comes from because it goes left and right, up and down.
		But let me just say, China doesn't get free speech in the United States.
		Imagine going to the founding fathers with an originalist view of the Constitution, right, in mind.
		Go to the founding fathers and say, good sirs, when you presented the idea of free speech under the Constitution, did you mean that a foreign adversary of the United States could leaflet in our country?
		They'd say, what?
		No, of course not.
	I mean, it's kind of absurd, right?
	In trying to understand what free speech does protect, I think you'd be hard-pressed to believe that a foreign country operating That doesn't seem to make any sense at all.
	And so, if Congress or the president and these laws are passed, if they also choose that foreign adversaries should not be operating algorithmic media control to 112 million U.S. users, then, well, it seems to make sense.
	Why then would the Supreme Court get involved anyway?
	Seems like the Supreme Court we have right now might just say, guys, this is not a question for us.
	A bill was passed.
	This is a foreign adversarial nation as defined by other laws.
	If we were to unrestrict us, it could open up a can of worms.
	Congress has spoken.
	The president signed it.
	Thank you and have a nice day.
	Now, Senator Markey, Wyden and Booker.
	And Rep Khanna have announced legislation to extend the TikTok ban deadline.
	And this might actually go through.
	Donald Trump wants to push back the ban.
	He wants to negotiate something else.
	Why?
	It's actually kind of funny.
	Donald Trump and conservatives were upset that TikTok was banning conservative content.
	And there was no way to counter that.
	As with Twitter and Facebook, there at least was some legal remedy.
	Well, TikTok was China, so conservatives were like, nuke them.
	Then all of a sudden, the algorithm changed, and Donald Trump started doing really well.
	Conservative memes started going viral, and Trump says, whoa, whoa, whoa, we like what we see.
	That does seem like a bad strategy, though, because if ByteDance is going to play a game like that, if that's true, why wouldn't they just turn around like they did, just do it again, and then wield that power against you?
	The question at play is, should they have the power to do that?
	At first, Democrats liked TikTok.
	Now they don't.
	At first, conservatives didn't like it, now they do.
	I don't know that anyone's gonna buy it.
	It's all about who gets the power, right?
	Now, there are a lot of people arguing that TikTok should be allowed to operate in the United States.
	And the reason for it is that, well, American social media was effectively working in collusion with the U.S. government to censor Americans.
	I personally don't agree with this argument, but I do understand it.
	The argument is...
	Facebook bans certain ideas.
	They're effectively propaganda for the FBI, the NSA, the CIA. And so is Twitter.
	Well, Elon Musk bought Twitter, turned it into X, and it's greatly improved.
	Still, people are arguing that there are nefarious forces that are going to force the algorithms to only support certain opinions.
	In this story from ABC 15, leaked documents show Facebook made a portal for feds to report misinformation.
	Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a lawsuit earlier this year seeking to uncover collusion between major social media companies and the federal government to censor free speech around topics such as COVID-19.
	In the most recent example is Mark Zuckerberg appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast.
	The Daily Beast says Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan Biden aides cursed and screamed.
	Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that Facebook has faced massive institutional pressure to start censoring content on ideological grounds.
	I love it.
	It's funny because it's vindication.
	Remember when we were all saying that conservatives are being targeted and the media lied and said it wasn't true?
	Yeah, it's because the government was telling them to do it.
	Now I'm of two minds on this.
	Part of me is terrified at the idea that Biden's administration Was using the power of the federal government to force Facebook to censor Americans.
	And the other part of me is happy that Mark Zuckerberg was getting yelled at.
	But in all seriousness, yeah, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the censorship is real.
	So for a lot of people, TikTok represents separate interests.
	Not that we trust China, but at the very least, their censorship will be different.
	So if you go on the Chinese controlled app, You can say X, Y, and Z, but you can't say A, B, and C. And if you go on the American-controlled app, it's inverted.
	X, Y, and Z is banned, but A, B, C is okay.
	Maybe then you'll get a mix because both governments are competing with each other.
	I gotta be honest, I still much prefer American interests over Chinese interests.
	At the very least, we learned about what the federal government was doing.
	We were able to sue them, and we put a stop to it.
	Largely, not entirely.
	That'd be naive.
	But I think we can still counter it when it's in America.
	We can't if it's China.
	In this report from the House Oversight Committee in February of 2023, we saw the cover-up.
	Big tech, the swamp, and mainstream media coordinated to censor Americans' free speech.
	It's incredible.
	They basically go on to talk about how Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms were outright censoring Americans and affecting the outcomes of elections.
	In this story from Legal Dive, they say Twitter legal chief Vijaya Gade at center of storm is fired as Musk completes purchase of social media site.
	Gade shouldered the brunt of Musk's criticism of the platform's approach to content moderation.
	In fact, some had accused her of actually having meetings with feds on a regular basis to, let's just say, figure out what to censor.
	And although I will say things have improved greatly, there are still many people criticizing Twitter's new iteration X for censoring people.
	Axios reports, MAGA vs.
	Musk, right-wing critics allege censorship loss of X badges.
	The simple argument...
	There were many prominent voices on X that lost their premium badges, their verified badges.
	And this meant they lost access to subscriptions.
	And they said Elon Musk was censoring them, particularly over immigration issues.
	Now, Elon Musk's response was, some people think that freedom of speech means I have to pay them to do it.
	No, you're allowed to insult me, but I don't have to keep you in our premium partner program and allow you to make money based on the things you say.
	You can still say it.
	But we're not paying you for it.
	So all in all, here's the timeline that Axios has put forward.
	In August of 2020, Trump tried to force the sale of TikTok.
	In April, Biden signed the bill.
	On May 7th, 2024, TikTok and ByteDance sued the US. On August 2nd, 2024, the FTC, the DOJ sued TikTok and ByteDance.
	In December, a federal appeals court upheld the ban.
	On December 27th, 2024, Trump asked SCOTUS to pause the ban.
	January 10th, the Supreme Court held a hearing and now, as of Sunday, the deadline to either ban it or sell it.
	One major issue at play for a lot of people is Israel-Palestine.
	There are a lot of people who feel, on the left and on the right, that criticism of Israel is likely to get banned on mainstream social media platforms, but less so on TikTok.
	The Intercept reported, the TikTok ban is also about hiding pro-Palestinian content.
	Republicans said so themselves.
	And they ain't wrong.
	On TikTok, criticism of Israel skyrocketed.
	And it seemed to be deliberate.
	There was a week where pro-Israel content following October 7th was massive on TikTok.
	And pro-Hamas, pro-Palestine, their separate things I know, were low.
	Seemingly, over the weekend, it inverted.
	And all of a sudden, pro-Palestine content skyrocketed.
	The implication was it was a deliberate algorithmic change.
	Many Republicans said TikTok was trying to undermine U.S. security interests.
	Now, of course, for a lot of people in the United States who are anti-war and critical of Israel, they were like, so what?
	We're allowed to criticize it.
	But there is an argument to be made of.
	Yeah, but if you're being propped up by an enemy of the United States, your criticisms may be apt, but you are being used.
	Still, that doesn't mean you should take away someone's right to speak.
	It does, however, mean that U.S. national security interests are being hindered by China.
	Certainly, there are activists in the United States that don't agree with how the U.S. handles their national security interests, but the U.S. government as an entity unto itself, I know it shouldn't be, is going to say no to TikTok.
	Surprise, surprise.
	The moment that happens, Democrats and Republicans find bipartisanship.
	Ain't that something?
	When you look at this post from YAF, it is kind of funny to see where we are right now.
	TikTok targets conservatives, no transparency, vague guidelines.
	With a bunch of criticism over hate speech and other issues, it's not surprising that conservatives were opposed to it.
	But here we are today, my friends.
	With only a few more days, TikTok may be banned forever.
	No, maybe not.
	I mean, any reasonable business might just sell off the stake to keep the business going.
	There is an interesting argument here.
	TikTok says they'd rather shut down than divest.
	That kind of says to a lot of people, it ain't about the money.
	And if it's not about the money, what's it really about?
	Perhaps it's about collecting data on the American people.
	And pushing weird ideologies to harm young people in this country.
	Many people criticize the platform, saying, oh, you go to TikTok and you get weird woke stuff.
	You get Dylan Mulvaney.
	But in China, Douyin, their counterpart, it's science, math, astronomy.
	Because these ideas of wokeness are harmful to young people, there is a real risk China is trying to hurt our younger generation.
	But hey, there are still questions around free speech, whether or not China should operate or get free speech, and we'll leave those up to the Supreme Court.
	But there you have it, my friend.
	The deadline is looming, and we shall see how it plays out.
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