TikTok, Banned by U.S. for Allowing Criticism of Israel to Go Viral, Preparing for Shutdown From Sunday

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Jan. 15, 2025

Social media giant TikTok, which was banned by the US government last year for allowing criticism of Israel to go viral, is reportedly planning to shutdown for US users from Sunday.




From Reuters, "TikTok prepares for US shutdown from Sunday, sources say":
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, sources 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 (AAPL.O), opens new tab or Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab app stores, while existing users could continue using 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 sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is not public.
As I reported last year, the main reason TikTok is being banned is because it allowed criticism of Israel to go viral.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken lamented last year that TikTok and social media is allowing the world to see "the inescapable reality of people who have and continue to suffer grievously in Gaza," whereas in the past the "information environment" was controlled by a few newspapers and TV outlets who could shape the narrative.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who was interviewing Blinken, concurred and added that the US banning TikTok is being done to help Israel in their PR war.


As a reminder, Ben Shapiro told his followers that it was an "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory" to claim the ban was being done for Israel even though multiple members of Congress had already gone on record stating the ban was for Israel.



The Wall Street Journal reported explicitly that Congress took up the ban to advance the interests of Israel, not America:
[Rep. Mike Gallagher's (R-WI)] efforts [to ban TikTok] appeared to stall in 2023, but were revived in part by the fallout from the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, according to people close to TikTok and people close to lawmakers. TikTok's users quickly inundated the platform with videos about the attack and Israel's war on Gaza. Some lawmakers said TikTok appeared to favor pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content, and renewed calls to ban the app in the U.S.

TikTok's spokeswoman said that the videos that lawmakers are concerned about were created by its users, and the company argued it has been fair in moderating pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian videos.

"Oct. 7 really opened people's eyes to what's happening on TikTok" and its "differential treatment of different topics," said [Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL)], adding that the coming election also fueled concerns. "People are concerned about interference using TikTok."
The Wall Street Journal said similar in another report, as did the Economist, Glenn Greenwald noted.





Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt -- who Ben Shapiro lionized to his audience as a hero in the wake of October 7th -- was caught on leaked audio freaking out about the "TikTok problem" with "Gen Z" overwhelmingly supporting Palestinians over Israelis.

TikTok started working with the ADL to silence criticism of Israel in the hope their site would not be banned in the US but our AIPAC-owned Congress shoved the bill through anyways and our puppet president Joe Biden signed it into law.

"Many of TikTok's 170 million monthly active U.S. users rely on the app to generate secondary and even primary income streams," CBS News reported in March 2024. "That includes 7 million small businesses that use the platform to drive growth, according to a joint report from Oxford Economics and TikTok released Wednesday."

"Thirty-nine percent of small businesses say that access to TikTok is critical to their businesses' existence, while another 39% say TikTok has allowed them to generate supplemental or principal incomes through their activity on the app, according to the report. Sixty-nine percent of small businesses say TikTok has led to increased sales in the past year," CBS News noted.

Though American small businesses may suffer, the interests of Israel must come first.

When conservatives were complaining about TikTok pushing LGBTQ propaganda on young people, their complaints fell on deaf ears. Yet when Israel complained about pro-Palestine content going viral in the wake of October 7th, a bill without precedent was passed within just a matter of months to ban the site and force it to divest.

Just last week, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt gave a speech to the Israeli Knesset stating how important it is to "capture" TikTok.

"Pushing extremists off Wikipedia might not seem equal to the challenge of pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani River, capturing TikTok might seem less meaningful than holding on to Mount Hermon, libelous tweets certainly might seem less deadly than missiles from Yemen but this is urgent because the next war will be decided based on how Israel and its allies perform online as much as offline," Greenblatt said.

Americans' rights end where Israel's interests begin.

[Header image by Solen Feyissa, CC BY-SA 2.0]

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