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      The US attempt to ban TikTok is an attack on ideas and hope | Dominic Andre

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      I’m a TikTok creator. I’ve used TikTok to build a multimillion dollar business, focused on sharing interesting things I’ve learned in life and throughout my years in college. TikTok allowed me to create a community and help further my goal of educating the public. I always feared that one day, it would be threatened. And now, it’s happening.Why does the US government want to ban TikTok? The reasons given include TikTok’s foreign ownership and its “addictive” nature, but I suspect that part of the reason is that the app primarily appeals to younger generations who often hold political and moral views that differ significantly from those of older generations, including many of today’s politicians.The platform has become a powerful tool for grassroots movements challenging established elites and has amplified voices advocating against capitalism and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and women’s rights. Moreover, for the first time in modern history, Americans’ support for Israel has sharply fallen, a shift I would argue can be attributed in part to TikTok’s video-sharing capabilities. In particular, the app’s stitching feature, which allows creators to link videos, correcting inaccuracies and presenting opposing views within a single video, has revolutionized how audiences access information and form more informed opinions.US Congress has cited concerns over Chinese data collection as justification for proposing a ban. This rationale might be appropriate for banning the app on government-issued devices, both for official and personal use. Other Americans, however, have the right to decide which technologies we use and how we share our data. Personally, I am indifferent to China possessing my data. What harm can the Chinese government do to me if I live in the United States? Also, I’d point out that viewpoints critical of Chinese policies have proliferated on TikTok, which would seem to indicate that the platform is not predominantly used for spreading Chinese propaganda.If politicians’ concern were genuinely about foreign influence, we would discuss in greater detail how Russia allegedly used Facebook to bolster Trump’s campaign and disseminate misinformation. Following this logic, we might as well consider banning Facebook.I spent a decade in college studying international affairs and psychology for my masters. So while I’m somewhat prepared for tough times in the event of TikTok ending, many others aren’t. TikTok hosts tens of thousands of small businesses who, thanks to the platform, reach millions worldwide. This platform has truly leveled the playing field, giving everyone from bedroom musicians to aspiring actors a real shot at being heard. A ban on TikTok would threaten those livelihoods.A ban on TikTok would also threaten a diverse community of creators and the global audience connected through it. As a Palestinian, TikTok gave my cause a voice, a loud one. It became a beacon for bringing the stories of Gaza’s suffering to the forefront, mobilizing awareness and action in ways no other platform has.Using TikTok’s live-streaming feature, I’ve been able to talk to hundreds of thousands of people each day about the issues Palestinians face. I personally watched the minds change of hundreds of people who asked me questions out of honest curiosity.TikTok has made a real difference in educating people about what is happening in Palestine. The stitch feature is one of the most powerful tools for debunking propaganda spread against Palestinians. This feature does not exist on other platforms and was first created by TikTok; with it, creators can correct information and respond to the spread of misinformation in real time.Removing TikTok would do more than disrupt entertainment; it would sever a lifeline for marginalized voices across the world – people like Bisan Owda, an influential young journalist in Gaza whose TikToks each reach hundreds of thousands of views – or creators like myself, whose family was driven out of Palestine in 1948, and killed during the Nakba. I’ve used TikTok to show all the paperwork of my great-grandfather’s land ownership in Palestine – and his passport – to show how his existence was taken away from him.On TikTok, you’ll find thousands of creators from different ethnic groups teaching the world about their cultures. You’ll also find disabled creators sharing their journeys and experiences in a world designed for able-bodied people. UncleTics, for example, is a creator who lives with Tourette syndrome and creates content about his life while also bringing joy to his audience.Banning TikTok wouldn’t just mean an enormous financial hit for the creators who use the platform – it would stifle the rich exchange of ideas, culture and awareness that TikTok uniquely fosters. We stand to lose a tool that has brought global issues out of the shadows and into the public eye. A ban on TikTok is a ban on ideas and hope.Almost every creator and consumer of TikTok I have spoken to does not care about potential data collection by China. Creators, in particular, don’t expect privacy when we’re posting about our lives on a public platform. If Congress wants to enact laws that make it harder for social-media companies to potentially harvest our data, Congress should do it across the board for all social media platforms – not just ones which happened to be based in non-Western countries.A TikTok ban threatens to destroy millions of jobs and silence diverse voices. It would change the world for the worse.
      Dominic Andre is a content creator and the CEO of The Lab More

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      in US Politics

      ‘It’s just not hitting like it used to’: TikTok was in its flop era before it got banned in the US

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      TikTok is facing its most credible existential threat yet. Last week, the US Congress passed a bill that bans the short-form video app if it does not sell to an American company by this time next year. But as a former avid user whose time on the app has dropped sharply in recent months, I am left wondering – will I even be using the app a year from now?Like many Americans of my demographic (aging millennial), I first started using TikTok regularly when the Covid-19 pandemic began and lockdowns gave many of us more time than we knew how to fill.As 2020 wore on, the global news climate becoming somehow progressively worse with each passing day, what began as a casual distraction became a kind of mental health lifeline. My average total screen time exploded from four hours a day to upwards of 10 – much of which were spent scrolling my “For You” page, the main feed of algorithmically recommended videos within TikTok.At the time, content was predictable, mostly light and mind-numbing. From “Get Ready With Me” (GRWM) narratives to kitten videos and the classic TikTok viral dances, I could dive into the algorithmic oblivion anytime I wanted. I loved TikTok.The “For You” page taught me actually useful skills like sign language, crocheting and how to cook when you hate cooking (I do). It also filled my days with extremely dumb distractions like the rise (and subsequent criticisms) of a tradwife family and the politicized implosion of several influencers in 2022 over cheating allegations. I enjoy watching urban exploration videos in which people inexplicably hop down into sewers and investigate abandoned houses to see what they can find. Over the course of many months, I watched a man build an underground aquarium and fill it with live eels. I treasured every wet moment. Once I learned a dumb TikTok dance – Doja Cat’s Say So, which went mega-viral during the pandemic. I probably could still do it if pressed, but don’t look for it on my TikTok profile – I came to my senses and deleted it. I don’t post often, but I did genuinely enjoy the trend of “romanticizing your life” – setting mundane video clips to inspirational music. I was inspired to share my own attempts.But now, according to my iPhone’s Screen Time tool, my average time on TikTok ranges from 30 minutes to two hours a day – a far cry from the four-plus hours I was spending at the peak of the pandemic. My withdrawal from TikTok was not a conscious choice – it happened naturally, the same way my addiction began.As my partner put it during a recent nightly scroll before bed: “It’s just not hitting like it used to.” I still find some joy on the app. The delight is just less abundant than it was. Something has changed on TikTok. It’s become less serendipitous than before, though I don’t know when.Others seem to agree, from aggrieved fellow journalists to content creators on the platform and countless social media threads – which raises the question: as TikTok faces a potential ban in the US, was the app already on its way out?Top apps wax and wane, and content creators noticeAs with all trends, the hot social network of the moment tends to wax and wane (remember Clubhouse?). Facebook – the original top dog of social media and still the biggest by user numbers – has seen young users flee in recent years, despite overall growth bringing monthly active users to 3 billion in 2023.But unlike Meta, TikTok is not a public company – which means we may never get granular insight into its user metrics, which have surely evolved over the past few years amid political turmoil and changes to the platform. The company has recently stated that the proposed ban would affect more than 170 million monthly active users in the US.View image in fullscreenCreators – especially those who get most of their income from social media – are hyper-aware of fluctuations in the app of the moment, said Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell University. From the time TikTok was first threatened with a ban by Donald Trump in 2020, major users of the platform raised the example of Vine – the now defunct short-form video platform – as a cautionary tale.“They are aware of the ability of an entire platform to vanish with very little notice,” she said. “[The potential Trump ban] was four years ago, and since then there has been an ebb and flow of panic about the future among creators.”With that in mind, a number of creators who grew a large audience on TikTok have been diversifying, trying to migrate their fanbases to other platforms in case TikTok disappears. Others have grown frustrated with the algorithm, reporting wildly fluctuating TikTok views and impressions for their videos. Gaming influencer DejaTwo said TikTok has been “very frustrating lately” in a recent post explaining why they believe influencers are leaving the platform. “The only reason I still use TikTok is because of brand loyalty,” they said.The unwelcome arrival of the TikTok ShopIn September 2023, TikTok launched its TikTok Shop feature – an algorithm-driven in-app shopping experience in which users can buy products directly hawked by creators.The feature has a number of benefits for TikTok: it boosts monetization of its highly engaged audience, allowing users to make purchases without ever leaving the platform. Integrating shopping will also allow TikTok to compete with platforms like Instagram and Facebook, which have long integrated shopping capabilities, as well as with Chinese e-commerce sites like Temu and Shein, which promise cheap abundance. It is also part of a broader effort from TikTok to move away from politicized videos and other content that may jeopardize its tenuous position with regulators, many of whom believe it has been boosting pro-Palestinian content despite all evidence to the contrary.Some users have pushed back against the shop’s new omnipresence on the app, often characterized as a kind of QVC shopping channel for gen Z users, stating that it takes away from the fun, unique and interesting original content that earned TikTok its popularity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The shopping push has not been very interesting or resonant in general, especially for younger users,” said Damian Rollison, director of market insights for digital marketing firm SOCi. “Shopping is not what appeals to US users on TikTok.”TikTok’s push of the shopping features, in spite of little interest from its audience, underscores the lack of say users and creators have over their favorite platforms and how they work. Creators report feeling pressure to participate in the shopping features lest their content get buried in the algorithm, said Duffy.“There is a tension for creators between gravitating towards what they think TikTok is trying to reward, and their own sense of what the most important and fulfilling kinds of content are,” she said.The magic algorithm – TikTok’s biggest asset (or liability)TikTok’s success has been largely attributed to its uncannily accurate algorithm, which monitors user behavior and serves related content on the “For You” page. According to a recent report, ByteDance would only consider selling the platform to comply with the new bill if it didn’t include the algorithm, which would make it nearly worthless.The algorithm, however, can be too responsive for some users. One friend told me they accidentally watched several videos of a niche Brazilian dance and their feed has been inundated with related content ever since. Conversely, I find if I spend less time on TikTok, when I log back in I find myself besieged with inside jokes that I am not quite in on – creators open monologues with “we’ve all seen that video about [fill in the blank]”. Most recently, my feed was filled with meta-memes commenting on a video about a series of videos about a Chinese factory I’d never heard of.“More so than any other platform. TikTok is very trend-based,” said Nathan Barry, CEO of ConvertKit. “It has its own kind of culture that you have to be tapped into in order to grow in a way you don’t see on platforms like Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.”The mystery of the algorithm is not unique to TikTok. Because social media platforms are not transparent about how they decide which content reaches users, it creates confusion and paranoia among creators about “shadow banning”, when content is demoted in the algorithm and shown less.“Because these algorithms are opaque and kind of concealed behind the screens, creators are left to discuss among themselves what the algorithm rewards or punishes,” said Duffy. “Companies like to act like they are neutral conduits that just reflect the interests and tastes of the audience, but, of course, they have a perverse level of power to shape these systems.”TikTok’s legacyEven if TikTok refuses to sell and shuts down forever, as its parent company seems to want, the app has left an indelible mark on the social media landscape and on the lives of the tens of millions who used it. Many users have stated they quit their traditional jobs to become full-time influencers, and will be financially devastated if TikTok disappears. In Montana, where a ban was passed (and later reversed) many such influencers lobbied aggressively against it.TikTok’s impact on me will continue in the form of countless pointless facts that are now buried deep in my brain: yesterday I spent 10 minutes of my life learning about the history of Bic pens. I watch ASMR – autonomous sensory meridian response – videos there when I am trying to fall asleep. BookTok influencers still give me legitimately enjoyable recommendations. The other day I laughed until I cried at this video. Entertaining drama remains, including one woman who was recently accused of pretending to be Amish to gain followers. I watched a cat give birth to a litter of kittens on TikTok Live just last week.The platform’s biggest legacy moving forward is the solidification of a demand for short-form videos, said Rollison – one that its competitors have yet to meet successfully. While Meta has invested heavily in Instagram Reels and Alphabet in YouTube Shorts, no platforms have found the secret sauce that TikTok has to keep users highly engaged.The Reels venture at Meta had been growing rapidly when the company last released numbers specific to the platform. In recent earnings reports, Meta did not report Reels engagement numbers specifically, but its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said that Reels alone now makes up 50% of user time spent on Instagram. Still, the company said it is focusing on scaling the product, and not yet monetizing it. Alphabet has also declined to share recent numbers on its Shorts, but said in October the videos average 70bn daily views. Executives called the product a “long-term bet for the business” in Alphabet’s most recent earnings call.“TikTok is still the defining standard of success in the realm of short-form video,” Rollison said. “It has defined a need, and if it goes away, that is going to create a vacuum that will be filled by something. The need for short-form video will survive the death of any particular platform.” More

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      in US Politics

      Exclusive: Georgia lawmaker runs secret election-conspiracy Telegram channel

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      A Fulton county commissioner in Georgia has been operating a private Telegram channel for years, propagating debunked claims about the 2020 election, and spreading accusations of crimes by county employees, including Ruby Freeman, an election worker defamed by Rudy Giuliani in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 loss.Bridget Thorne, a Republican representing the relatively conservative cities of Fulton county north of Atlanta, indirectly identifies herself as the creator and administrator of the Fulton County Elections channel on Telegram, a mobile messaging platform, in multiple posts to its page. The channel uses the official logo of the Fulton county board of registration and elections.The channel, created in May 2021, had 133 subscribers as of Tuesday night. The Guardian learned of its existence from Marisa Pyle, an Atlanta-based political organizer.In a post from 14 February, the administrator of the page accused Freeman, a former Fulton county elections worker, of misconduct, despite a Georgia elections board finding that all of the conspiracy theories about her were “false and unsubstantiated”.“We clearly see her double scanning ballots,” the channel administrator wrote about Freeman, a regular target of attention on the Telegram page. “We see her incriminating Facebook posts. Yet, she is made to be a victim and given hero awards.”Rudy Giuliani repeatedly attacked Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, suggesting without evidence that they had committed crimes during the 2020 election. Investigators from the Georgia secretary of state’s office quickly debunked the accusations, but Giuliani continued to make them throughout his campaign to overturn the election, leading to a $148m defamation judgment against him in December. Freeman and Moss were the target of rampant harassment and threats because of the misinformation.View image in fullscreenThorne confirmed in an email to the Guardian that she started the Telegram channel in 2021 “initially for a private archive of events”, but said she is “no longer the primary administrator, nor do I regularly contribute to the conversations found within”. She said the channel was “made private for safety reasons (after receiving online death threats and threatening anonymous mail)”.“I have never stated that Ms Freeman committed any crime or election fraud,” Thorne said. She did not respond directly to a question about whether she posted the lines above. However, Thorne said: “It should be noted that last summer, the state board of elections provided a public reprimand and letter of instruction to Fulton county after the 2020 election specifically noting that ballots were double-scanned. My position has been and will remain that any concerns raised during any election should be thoroughly investigated.”The post about Freeman under the Telegram channel’s administrator account is dated 14 February 2024. A subsequent post in March is self-referential to Thorne: “Oh look! They must have had an earthquake in Union City. My picture along with Hall’s came crashing down in the election warehouse. Somehow in the crash, the actual picture was destroyed.” The March post accompanies an image of a wall of pictures of county commissioners – Thorne’s is the only photo missing in the picture.Thorne is one of two Republicans elected to Fulton county’s seven-member board of commissioners. She has a vote on appointments to the Fulton county board of registration and elections, election office budgeting and some county policies regarding elections administration.Pyle has been pseudonymously subscribed to the channel since its inception and saw Thorne’s posts. “After the 2020 election, I subscribed to as many election-denial channels on Telegram and other platforms as I could, to keep track of things,” she said.Pyle had until recently been the rapid response director for Fair Fight Action, a progressive voting-rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia representative. Fair Fight and rightwing groups claiming election fraud were mutually antagonistic in Georgia even before the 2020 election, a point Thorne herself has regularly noted in posts on the channel.View image in fullscreenThe Fulton County Elections channel went private after Thorne’s election in November 2022, Pyle said. Pyle, now the senior democracy defense manager with the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, exposed posts from the group on X last week after the unexpected resignation of Patrice Perkins-Hooker, the Fulton county elections board chair, who has taken a position as Atlanta’s interim city attorney.“The way in which she is consistently accusing Fulton county and election staff and the state and voters of malfeasance, she has very directly demeaned her own staff, she has accused people within the county of conspiring against her,” Pyle said.Though she can only identify a handful of other people who are following Thorne’s Telegram channel, every time Thorne posts something on the page, other election-conspiracy pages Pyle follows repost it, Pyle said. “She may have the first amendment right to do this, but that is not immunity from it causing repercussions and harm to democracy,” Pyle said. “That delegitimizes the position she holds.”The Guardian initially verified the authenticity of Thorne’s posts by examining Pyle’s device to access the Telegram channel directly.Thorne’s posts on the page level accusations of mismanagement against elections office staff and others. “Fulton Elections Director Nadine Williams and [elections board] Chair Patrice Perkins Hooker creating a hostile environment for anyone observing the polls. … why?” Thorne wrote. “Do they have something to hide? They should be rolling out the red carpet for observers.”Thorne has repeatedly called for the firing of previous and current elections office staff workers, including Williams.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter being made aware of the contents of the Telegram page, Williams said she had never heard Thorne call for her firing directly before, and is concerned about the impact Thorne may have had on recruiting and retaining poll workers. “It does make for an environment that people are uncomfortable in our department, knowing that that person is not working with Fulton but is working against Fulton,” Williams said.Much of Thorne’s ire targets temporary elections workers contracted through Happy Faces, a staffing firm the Fulton county elections board ultimately dropped, and other temporary workers. She pointedly and repeatedly noted the apparent Nigerian citizenship of an IT staffer. The IT staffer Thorne referred to is an American citizen, county officials confirmed Thursday.“Current Georgia law requires poll workers to be United States citizens,” Thorne said in an email Thursday. “I think this is a perfectly reasonable policy and I wish it would have passed last year. To that end, I think I am well within bounds to question whether Fulton county can comply with that law once it takes effect.”Thorne, a Republican, has presented in public statements her concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election in Fulton county as a nonpartisan matter, and avoided describing the election as stolen or fraudulent. “It just seems like every year, Fulton county is a mess,” she said in comments before the Fulton county board of elections in March 2022. “I just want to reiterate that I’m not here as a partisan figure. I’m just listening to anyone who will hear my concerns.”Her comments on the private Telegram channel are not so restrained.Thorne has regularly posted articles during the last three years from fringe and far-right publications like the Epoch Times claiming election fraud in Fulton county and elsewhere around the country. Between the inception of the page in May 2021 and her election in November 2022, Thorne reposted videos and articles by VoterGa, an activist group founded by Garland Favorito, a far-right conspiracy theorist who continues to press debunked claims about the 2020 election in court and the media.Thorne also sought to recruit poll workers through her contacts on the page, using claims of fraud as a rallying cry. “We are in a pivotal time in our country, and we need YOU to stand up NOW,” she wrote. “Voting is not ENOUGH. Freedom is not FREE. YOU can help end the corruption, illegal conduct, and incompetence in Fulton County Elections and restore trust and faith in our system again.”In a 21 March 2022 post, Thorne – as administrator of the channel – wrote a first-person post describing the reasons for her candidacy for the Fulton county commission: “I decided that maybe I could be more effective in fighting for election integrity by running for District 1 Commissioner. Instead of fighting them from the outside, I can fight from the inside. I can ask the tough questions. I can force them to be transparent. I hope that you can help me.” The post is followed by a link to Thorne’s campaign website.Later in May 2022, Thorne posted a recruiting document from Fight Voter Fraud, a Connecticut-based rightwing election advocacy group seeking to raise a “secret army” in Georgia to conduct research on voters the group has “deemed questionable”.Thorne rose to political prominence as an employee of the Fulton county elections office during the 2020 election. A software engineer, she was a Fulton county precinct manager and Dominion-trained poll worker who helped test and set up election equipment in 2020. She claimed that ballots had been mishandled, and before the November 2020 election reported her observations first to elections staff in Fulton county, then to the secretary of state’s office.She then went on social media with rightwing Tea Party organizations and appeared on Fox News to describe a “haphazard” process for handling absentee ballots, and to argue that elections officials were ignoring mistakes. On 3 December 2020, Thorne testified to her observations at a hearing at the Georgia state senate, the same one at which Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani had been pressing a case to overturn the election.Giuliani’s arguments to overturn the 2020 election at this hearing are one element of the racketeering case for election interference brought against him, Trump and 17 others in Fulton county.After the testimony, Richard Barron, the Fulton county elections director, ordered that Thorne and Suzi Voyles, another elections office employee who had been publicly critical of the election, not be rehired for the runoff election in January 2021 – effectively firing them. Barron’s office said the women had committed infractions like taking prohibited cellphone photographs and improperly showing ballots to a poll monitor. But Republican political figures across the state – including Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state – exploded at the firing of two whistleblowers, issuing condemnations of Fulton county and demanding they be rehired.Lawmakers subsequently appointed Carter Jones as an outside observer to review the county’s elections processes. County commissioners eventually fired Barron. Jones declared in June 2021 that Fulton county’s elections operation was rife with sloppiness, mismanagement and disorganization, but wasn’t engaged in malfeasance, dishonesty or fraud. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump Media deal faces calls for inquiry over alleged ‘influence peddling’

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      Democratic groups escalated calls on Thursday for Congress to investigate Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media after a report that it relied partly on emergency loans in 2022 traced back to a Russian-American under federal criminal investigation to make it to its stock market debut.The move increased political scrutiny into the merger between Trump Media Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition – which could net Trump about $4bn – as federal prosecutors secured guilty pleas from two investors who insider-traded on the deal.In a three-page letter on Thursday, the Democratic-aligned group Congressional Integrity Project pressed the Republican House oversight chair, James Comer, to launch a parallel congressional investigation into the Trump Media merger and hold hearings into the nature of the loans.“We are calling on you to investigate possible influence peddling and corruption involving a former president and current presidential candidate,” wrote the Congressional Integrity Project’s executive director, Kyle Herrig.The request came a day after the Guardian reported that Trump Media was kept afloat in 2022 with loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, when a securities investigation delayed the original merger date and imperiled its cash reserves.The delay led Trump Media to seek bridge financing, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which operated through an account at Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.Leaked documents obtained by the Guardian made clear that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and became a subject of the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger.The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not, as it did not offer loans in the US because it lacked a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC.“The American people deserve to know the circumstances around ES Family Trust’s loan to Trump,” Herrig wrote. “It is also imperative to determine whether there was any quid pro quo discussed.”There is no indication that Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond the fact that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of any wrongdoing. A lawyer for Trump Media called the story a “hoax” in a statement after it was published.Still, the Trump Media merger has drawn scrutiny because Trump’s stake in the company amounts to significant increase in his net value.Even if Trump sold only some of his position, he would probably gain a major windfall that could be used to pay about $500m in legal costs stemming from his various civil and criminal cases. That would ease the burden on his political action committees, which are now paying the bills.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn addition, Postolnikov’s connection to the loans raised new questions about the involvement of Michael Shvartsman, who pleaded guilty with his brother to securities fraud weeks before he was due to go to trial on charges of insider trading and money laundering over the Trump Media merger.The Guardian reported that the creation papers for ES Family Trust named Shvartsman as a successor trustee. ES Family Trust stands to gain from the Trump Media merger because the $8m was loaned in the form of convertible notes, meaning it converted to a stake in the post-merger company.While precise figures can only be known by Trump Media, ES Family Trust’s stake in Trump Media is now worth between $20m and $40m, even after the company’s share price plummeted after a poor earnings report.“The full extent of his involvement in the trust is unclear, and getting to the bottom of that fits within your mandate as chairman of the House oversight committee,” Herrig wrote of Shvartsman.Democratic activists have been eager to attack Trump’s business deals as a counterweight to Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, which has unsuccessfully tried to tie the president to business deals done by his son Hunter Biden, in an effort to show corruption or influence peddling.The Biden impeachment inquiry hit a major setback in February after the prosecutors charged an FBI informant with fabricating claims being used by Republicans for their allegations, that Biden and his son each sought $5m in bribes from a Ukrainian company. More

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      in US Politics

      Congress is right to want to curtail TikTok’s power and influence | Nita Farahany

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      Imagine a world where America’s foreign adversaries don’t need spies or hackers to infiltrate our society or meddle with our democracy. Instead, they can deploy a far more insidious tool: a digital platform, addictive by design, that captivates its users and then mobilizes them to influence our democratic institutions.The scenario may sound farfetched, but something like that recently happened. Earlier this month, while the US Congress was considering a bill that would curtail TikTok’s operations in the United States, the popular, Chinese-owned social media platform confronted its users with a kind of digital ransom note calling for political action. As the New York Times reported, TikTok’s campaign sparked a deluge of calls to Capitol Hill, overwhelming some congressional offices and demonstrating the platform’s political influence.TikTok, whose parent company is the Beijing-based ByteDance, is alarmingly addictive and has a young and intensely loyal user base. It’s so addictive, in fact, that the Chinese version of the app, Douyin, limits Chinese users under the age of 14 to 40 minutes of usage a day, and only between the hours of 6am and 10pm. TikTok introduced a similar measure in the US last year, restricting users under 18 to a default limit of 60 minutes a day, though the feature is optional; certain high-usage users are asked to accept a limit, according to ABC News, but are allowed to decide their own maximum.TikTok’s recommender algorithm, which barrages users with an endless feed of viral, short-form video clips, has effectively exploited human psychology to ensnare a generation of users. Research, including studies funded by China’s own National Natural Science Foundation, have shown that the app undermines human self-control and encourages compulsive consumption. Its algorithms. which automatically curate content to users’ tastes and preferences, have perfected what many other companies have tried: fostering addiction through a feedback loop that continually refines content suggestions based on user interactions and profiling.Researchers have suggested that excessive TikTok usage among young people correlates to mental health problems and poor academic performance that further drives depression. With nearly one in five teens reporting that they’re on YouTube or TikTok “almost constantly”, the draw to the platform seems less like a choice and more like a compulsion.The FBI director Christopher Wray’s recent testimony to the Senate intelligence committee also underscored the national security risks posed by the Chinese government’s control of software on millions of American devices. Those risks, as well as TikTok’s generally addictive nature, are part of what led to growing momentum for a US legislative response.On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that would compel ByteDance to either sell TikTok to a US company or face a ban on distribution through major platforms and app stores. President Joe Biden has expressed support for the bill, which enjoys strong bipartisan backing, and indicated he is ready to sign it into law after it is passed by the Senate.By contrast, Donald Trump, whose administration sought to ban TikTok due to the risk of Chinese government surveillance, has reversed his stance in what seems like a strategically motivated pivot to court younger voters and perhaps China. Trump’s opposition to the bill should raise an alarm bell about the risks of TikTok being weaponized in the forthcoming election.Don’t underestimate the platform’s influence: with one-third of American adults under 30 regularly scrolling TikTok for news, and the app serving as the predominant source of information for generation Z, the platform could well influence the presidential election this fall and other US elections to come.While Congress’s bill aims to address immediate security concerns by compelling ByteDance’s divestiture, it falls short of addressing TikTok’s broader risks to US democracy. If the bill takes effect, the app would still probably remain on many of the 170m US devices that have already downloaded it, exposing its users to digital manipulation and foreign data aggregation and influence. The app’s gradual dysfunction when it can no longer be updated might render it slow, glitchy and eventually unusable, but this may not happen before the November elections.Beyond a single app, this saga demands a broader conversation about safeguarding democracy in the digital age. The European Union’s newly enacted AI act provides a blueprint for a more holistic approach, using an evidence- and risk-based system that could be used to classify platforms like TikTok as high-risk AI systems subject to more stringent regulatory oversight, with measures that demand transparency, accountability and defensive measures against misuse.As the bill heads to the Senate, it will almost certainly face an onslaught of legal and lobbying efforts. Critics will also probably argue that the threats TikTok poses are overblown or that the US Congress is merely engaged in anti-China political posturing. That’s untrue. If anything, this is an opportunity for Congress to refine its approach to social media and other powerful technology platforms and adopt a nuanced, risk-based framework that would balance the creative freedoms of content creators with the imperative to shield the public from foreign manipulation.This – the TikTok dilemma – calls for a decisive, comprehensive strategy to fortify the pillars of our democracy and protect Americans’ cognitive liberty – the individual and collective right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. We can and should chart a course toward a future where technology is better aligned with the greater good.
      Nita Farahany is the author of The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology and the Robinson O Everett professor of law and philosophy at Duke University More

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      Is the US really preparing to ban TikTok?

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      The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States.The legislation now moves to the Senate, where its likelihood of passing is uncertain. But with a landslide of support in the House – 352 Congress members voted in favor of the bill and only 65 voted against – it’s clear that TikTok is facing its biggest existential threat yet in the US.Here’s what you need to know about the bill, how likely TikTok is to be banned, and what that means for the platform’s 170 million US users.Is the US really trying to ban TikTok, and why?The bill that passed in the House on Wednesday is the latest salvo in an ongoing political battle over the platform, which exploded in popularity after its emergence in 2017. It quickly surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in downloads in 2018 and reported a 45% increase in monthly active users between July 2020 and July 2022.The platform’s meteoric rise alarmed some lawmakers, who believe that TikTok’s China-based parent company could collect sensitive user data and censor content that goes against the Chinese government.TikTok has repeatedly stated it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government, but lawmakers’ concerns were exacerbated by news investigations that showed China-based employees at ByteDance had accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users.TikTok has argued that US user data is not held in China but in Singapore and in the US, where it is routed through cloud infrastructure operated by Oracle, an American company. In 2023, TikTok opened a data center in Ireland where it handles EU citizen data.These measures have not been sufficient for many US lawmakers, and in March 2023 the TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was called before Congress, where he faced more than five hours of intensive questioning about these and other practices. Lawmakers asked Chew about his own nationality, accusing him of fealty to China. He is, in fact, Singaporean.Various efforts to police TikTok and how it engages with US user data have been floated in Congress in the past year, culminating in the bill passed on Wednesday.Is this bill really a TikTok ban?Under the new bill, ByteDance would have 165 days to divest from TikTok, meaning it would have to sell the social media platform to a company not based in China. If it did not, app stores including the Apple App Store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web-hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.Authors of the bill have argued it does not constitute a ban, as it gives ByteDance the opportunity to sell TikTok and avoid being blocked in the US.“TikTok could live on and people could do whatever they want on it provided there is that separation,” said Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House select China committee. “It is not a ban – think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process.”TikTok has argued otherwise, stating that it is not clear whether China would approve a sale or that it could even complete a sale within six months.“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said after the committee vote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”How did we get here?TikTok has faced a number of bans and attempted bans in recent years, starting with an executive order by Donald Trump in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by courts on first amendment grounds. Trump has since reversed his stance, now opposing a ban on TikTok. Joe Biden, by contrast, has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.Montana attempted to impose a statewide ban on the app in 2023, but the law was struck down by a federal judge over first amendment violations. The app was banned on government-issued phones in the US in 2022, and as of 2023 at least 34 states have also banned TikTok from government devices. At least 50 universities in the US have banned TikTok from on-campus wifi and university-owned computers.The treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in March 2023 demanded ByteDance sell its TikTok shares or face the possibility of the app being banned, Reuters reported, but no action has been taken.TikTok was banned in India in 2020 after a wave of dangerous “challenges” led to the deaths of some users. The ban had a marked effect on competition in India, handing a significant market to YouTube’s Shorts and Instagram Reels, direct competitors of TikTok. The app is not available in China itself, where Douyin, a separate app from parent company ByteDance with firmer moderation, is widely used.How would a ban on TikTok be enforced?Due to the decentralized nature of the internet, enforcing a ban would be complex. The bill passed by the House would penalize app stores daily for making TikTok available for download, but for users who already have the app on their phones, it would be difficult to stop individual use.Internet service providers could also be forced to block IP addresses associated with TikTok, but such practices can be easily evaded on computer browsers by using a VPN, or virtual private network, which re-routes computer connections to other locations.To fully limit access to TikTok, the US government would have to employ methods used by countries like Iran and China, which structure their internet in a way that makes content restrictions more easily enforceable.Who supports the potential TikTok ban?While Trump – who started the war on TikTok in 2020 – has reversed his stance on the potential ban, most Republican lawmakers have expressed support of it. The Biden administration has also backed the bill, with the press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the administration wants “to see this bill get done so it can get to the president’s desk”. Biden’s campaign joined TikTok last month.Despite Trump’s opposition to the bill, many Republicans are pushing forward with the effort to ban TikTok or force its sale to an American company.“Well, he’s wrong. And by the way, he had his own executive orders and his own actions he was doing, and now … he’s suddenly flipped around on that,” said the representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. “I mean, it’s not the first or last time that I’ll disagree with the former president. The TikTok issue is pretty straightforward.”Who opposes the TikTok bill?TikTok has vocally opposed the legislation, urging the Senate not to pass it. “We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7m small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said following Wednesday’s vote.Within the House, 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the bill, including the Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who cited her experiences of being banned from social media. House Democrats including Maxwell Frost of Florida and Delia Ramirez of Illinois joined TikTok creators outside the Capitol following the vote to express opposition to the bill. More

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      ‘Young and handsome’: Biden kicks off $30m ad blitz with spot addressing age

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      Joe Biden’s campaign kicked off a $30m TV and digital ad blitz in key swing states on Saturday with an ad in which the president directly addresses concerns about his age.Set to run for six weeks on stations including Black- and Hispanic-owned outlets, and released shortly after his fiery State of the Union address, the 60-second spot does not shy away from what many voters say is growing concern with the president’s age. The ad, titled For You, opens with Biden in light-hearted form. “Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” the 81-year old president says. “But I understand how to get things done for the American people.”The Biden campaign said the ad will appear on networks including ESPN and TNT throughout March Madness, during which NCAA college basketball tournaments are held across the country. It is also set to appear on Comedy Central and FX, Bloomberg reports.“I led the country through the Covid crisis,” Biden says in the ad. “Today, we have the strongest economy in the world. I passed a law that lowers prescription drug prices, caps insulin at $35 a month for seniors.”Biden then changes tack from the state of the union and addresses who in that speech he only called “my predecessor” by name. “For four years, Donald Trump tried to pass an infrastructure law and he failed. I got it done. Now we’re rebuilding America. I’ve passed the biggest law in history to combat climate change because our future depends on it,” he says.Echoing his pledge from his Thursday State of the Union speech, Biden promises to make Roe v Wade “the law of the land again”, saying Trump “took away the freedom of women to choose.”“Donald Trump believes the job of the president is to take care of Donald Trump,” Biden says. “I believe the job of the president is to fight for you, the American people, and that’s what I’m doing.”The end of the ad features an outtake as a producer off-camera asks Biden for one more take, to which Biden jokes: “Look, I’m very young, energetic and handsome. What the hell am I doing this for?”Since his address to the nation, praised by Democratic observers as a return to form and the occasion for his highest fundraising totals in recent memory, Biden has embarked on a tour of multiple states. He visits Pennsylvania and Georgia this weekend before heading to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan next week.As the country gears up for a Biden-Trump rematch, a poll released last week by the New York Times and Siena College showed that 73% of all registered voters in the US believe Biden is too old to be an effective president.Among those who voted for Biden in 2020, 26% said they strongly agree his age will make him an ineffective president for a second term.At 81, Biden is the oldest president ever to seek re-election, though Trump, at 77, is just four years younger. More

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      Jezebel to shut down after 16 years as parent company lays off staff

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      Jezebel, a feminist US news site, was shut down by its owners on Thursday, with 23 people laid off and no plans for the outlet to resume publication.G/O Media, which owns Jezebel and other sites including Gizmodo and the Onion, announced the closure in a memo to staff, which was obtained by the Guardian.“Unfortunately, our business model and the audiences we serve across our network did not align with Jezebel’s,” Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive of G/O Media, wrote in the memo, which was sent to staff on Thursday morning.“And when that became clear, we undertook an expansive search for a new, perhaps better home that might ensure Jezebel a path forward. It became a personal mission of Lea Goldman, who worked tirelessly on the project, talking with over two dozen potential buyers.“It is a testament to Jezebel’s heritage and bona fides that so many players engaged us. Still, despite every effort, we could not find Jez a new home.”In response to the shuttering, the Writers Guild of America-East, which represents G/O Media staffers, issued a statement condemning Spanfeller.“Jezebel has been a pillar of fearless journalism and important cultural commentary since 2007 and made an indelible mark on the media landscape,” the statement read, before adding: “A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude. Jezebel was a good website.”Susan Rinkunas, a senior reporter at Jezebel, told the Guardian that it was “unconscionable that the company is shutting down its only politics site, which did hard-hitting reporting on abortion, ahead of the 2024 elections.“Readers everywhere will be worse off without Jezebel,” she added.Audra Heinrichs, a staff writer at Jezebel, told the Guardian she was “certainly not surprised” at the site’s closure, but was “heartbroken” that both G/O Media and Spanfeller “unceremoniously gutted Jezebel, a pillar of fearless feminist journalism in digital media and the website I’ve been fortunate to call home for nearly two years”.“Its demise in the wake of Dobbs and in the run-up to the 2024 election in which abortion will no doubt be a significant part of the conversation is not only undue, but despicable,” she said. “As Jim Spanfeller wrote, the Jezebel staff – both past and present – ‘changed the game’. I feel at once honored to be one small part of its singular legacy and devastated for all those who were comforted by its presence.”The closure and layoffs come at a difficult time for US journalism.On Thursday, Vice Media Group said it would lay off a number of employees, six months after more than 100 people were laid off in April. Deadline reported that a number of Vice News shows would not be renewed, meaning some employees would lose their jobs.Vice, once a titan of the media industry, filed for bankruptcy in May, and was acquired by a consortium of organizations following an auction.In October, the Washington Post announced plans to cut 240 jobs through a voluntary redundancy scheme, while earlier this year the Los Angeles Times said it would lay off 10% of its newsroom staff.The Jezebel closure brings an end to 16 years of publishing for the organization. It was launched in 2007 by Anna Holmes and Gawker Media – the online media company and blog whose flagship Gawker.com website shut down in 2016 after being financially crippled by a lawsuit filed by Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the memo to Jezebel staff, the Daily Beast reported, Spanfeller praised journalists’ coverage of reproductive rights in the wake of the supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade.Spanfeller added that he had not “given up” on Jezebel, the Daily Beast said, despite G/O Media’s decision to shut it down.“Media is nothing if not resilient. So are its practitioners,” Spanfeller wrote to staff. “I will keep you apprised if circumstances change.”News of the site’s closure sent shockwaves through social media, with many former staffers and readers offering eulogies and notes about the site’s legacy.“I am not exaggerating when I say [Jezebel] is the reason why I became a journalist. Reading it completely changed my perspective on so many things: on abortion, on sex, on how I navigated the world as a woman in general. I owe it a huge debt. Lots of us do,” wrote the Rolling Stone reporter EJ Dickson on X.Gita Jackson, a former staffer at the G/O Media site Kotaku, wrote: “All my love to the staff laid off today at G/O Media, especially the staff of Jezebel. That site helped me understand how to be not just a feminist, but craft a coherent ideology, and being able to work alongside all the many wonderful people who worked there was a dream.”Laura Bassett, Jezebel’s most recent editor-in-chief, who departed the site earlier this fall, implored people on X to hire the Jezebel staffers who were let go on Thursday: “My heart is with the entire Jez staff who just got laid off, including incredible abortion reporters at a time when the beat couldn’t be more relevant to national politics. Please hire them.”Bassett told the Guardian that it was “ironic that the forces that necessitated the founding of Jezebel in the first place are the same ones that put the nail in its coffin – especially at a time when the site’s urgent coverage of abortion rights is more relevant than ever.“I mourn the loss of the outlet that inspired me to become a journalist in the first place and that I proudly led for two years,” she continued. “The work Jezebel writers have always done and continue to do, and the unflinching voice they bring to feminist media, are vital and irreplaceable.”
      Jenna Amatulli contributed reporting; she is a former deputy editor at Jezebel More