The social media platform TikTok fought in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, against a federal ban that is set to take place on Jan. 19. The ban would prohibit app stores across the U.S. from carrying or advertising the app.
The only way TikTok can counter the ban is if the company can convince the federal court to reverse the bill. The court date took place Sep. 16, but Dec. 6 marks when the court will have to release their ruling.
“There’s a lot of innocent youth using it, and people are super prone to being influenced,” junior communications student John Love said. “It is dangerous. There’s so many, like, all the videos and so many different things being thrown at you. So many different ideas being thrown at you at the same time. ”
TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance and has been accused by several political figures throughout the last few years of having too much power over Americans using the app. One of the biggest concerns raised was about political sway and Chinese government control over what is being shown.
Ava Martucci, a senior criminology student with a minor in psychology, believes the ban isn’t going to happen.
“They’ve been saying they’re gonna ban it for like four years and they’ve never been able to ban it. We’ve all thought it was gonna be banned,” she said. “I get like, their reasoning behind it, but I just dont think it’s fair. It’s obviously, like, a form of speech.”
Another student, Alyssa Hardy, a sophomore psychology major, said she thinks the court will backpedal the ban.
“I feel like the chances might be kind of low, since they have been talking about it for so long now. But also, anything’s a possibility,” she said.
Different from Martucci’s and Hardy’s beliefs, Love feels the court won’t block the bill.
“If it’s political, then yeah, it’ll probably be banned,” he said.
There is still hope for TikTok users. The House of Representatives said they would not ban the site, if ByteDance sold the app to a U.S. company. ByteDance seems sure of their refusal to sell, but only time will tell as the decision date looms closer.
Monday marked the last court date set to hear out the app’s prosecution and defense.
Three judges listened to each side and will be the deciding factor for the Dec. 6 ruling.
Aryn Kauble is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].
Chibby • Oct 2, 2024 at 6:26 pm
TikTok is grooming Chinese loyalist influencers by rescuing compulsive shoppers who are drowning in debt.
Look at the top TikTok stars and you’ll notice two things: they live in hovels and their videos are mediocre. The best creators aren’t the top performers.
TikTok superstars make mediocre videos, sharing their opinion about some inane topic. Even the editing is remarkably poor, where sentences no longer make sense because the creator was too lazy to do another take and get it right. They just chop out the gaffes and create a cheap word salad video.
“Demure and mindful” goes ultra-mega-viral? Really? TikTok makes these posts go viral by shoving them in every FYP, multiple times. TikTok can make anyone a star, but they’re looking for desperate people who are in debt.
Look at the environments where these top TikTok stars produce their content. It’s like they all live in trailer parks and shacks, with few exceptions.
Also, most top TikTok creators are only successful on TikTok. Again, this is because their creations are inadequate to rank organically on any other social media platform.
These people are making up to $500,000 per post, yet they still live in a shack. Why? They’re broke compulsive shoppers. They have poor credit. They need time to save up money for a new home, which can only be purchased with cash.
Their credit is so bad, they can’t get a loan. They’re bad at saving, and you can see the pile of crap stacked up in their trailer, purchased with their influencer money. They can make millions a year and they still live in a shack. That’s a perfect tool for a foreign government.
Those who have extreme debt aren’t granted security clearances in our government, because they can be manipulated by foreign interests. This is the strategy TikTok employs to manipulate Americans.
Why would a company “partially” owned by the Chinese communist party convert mediocre creators who are in debt into TikTok mega stars? They’re throwing out a lifeline to people who are sinking in the quicksand of debt.
If a company takes you from poverty to riches and you only work a few hours per week, would you be loyal or disloyal to this entity? You’d be very loyal to them. You would do anything for them.
TikTok is grooming influencers who are loyal to the company and China. They look for financially struggling creators who make average videos. TikTok pushes these crappy videos relentlessly on FYPs.
These newly-minted superstars are now influential and loyal to TikTok. Their content typically can’t succeed on any other platform, which is by design. They don’t want their human tools used by other platforms.
At this point, TikTok can manipulate the influencer who, in turn, manipulates the masses.
You even see top influencers involved in lawsuits to save TikTok. Now that’s loyalty! They’re more loyal to China than the US, because China took them from extreme poverty to wealth. They don’t care if ByteDance is a threat to national security. They just want lots of Chinese money. Perhaps they should repatriate to China after TikTok is shut down.
Since their content cannot succeed organically on any other platform, TikTok is their sole savior. The only reason they thrive on TikTok is because they’re a tool of the Chinese communist party.
ByteDance can sell TikTok, but they say they won’t. Either they control TikTok or shut it down in the US. (India has already banned TikTok. It can be accomplished in a properly functioning democracy.)
If Twitter sold for $44 billion, TikTok could probably be sold for more. What corporation doesn’t want tens of billions of dollars? Isn’t that odd? Corporations are EXCLUSIVELY profit-seeking entities, but not TikTok. Weird!
A profit-driven corporation would be looking for a buyer! TikTok isn’t about profit. It’s about grooming Chinese-friendly influencers.
Addressing profit, TikTok still hasn’t shown one. Although many tech companies run in the red for years, TikTok doesn’t bear the costs of their competitors who had to invest in original product development. TikTok is a copycat app. That’s a massive savings, yet the company hasn’t materialized any profit!
These are the same people who flew a “weather balloon” over the US! It had so much surveillance technology that the payload was the size of a bus!
The Chinese think we’re all idiots. I’m not. I see through it. I lived in Hong Kong for a year and in a part of SF that’s 75% Chinese for two decades. (I literally live across the hallway from a Chinese brothel run out of a three bedroom condo.) I know all the tricks.
They should ban TikTok immediately. It should have been shut down months ago, because we have a massively important election to decide if we’ll remain a republic or revert to feudalism. You can’t have Chinese (or any foreign actors) meddling at any moment, but definitely not now.
Biden should pass an executive order and immediately shut the company down. They have no interest in selling, which is an option presented to them. That tells you, TikTok isn’t a corporation. It’s an extension of the Chinese communist party.
To be fair, all of the foreign interference we experience is a karmic retribution. The US pretty much invented tactics like this. Now the chicken has come home to roost.
I predict it will be like whack-a-mole. You ban TikTok, and they’ll create another social media app. Maybe the next one will be done by proxy — the company will be based outside of China, but will still be controlled by ByteDance and the communist party. They can make it go viral the same way — by minting a few mediocre stars, so millions of other users participate, hoping for the same result.