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Democrats Set Up Trump to 'Save' TikTok After His Effort to Ban It
"The Democratic Party setting up Trump to play the part of the zoomer savior after Trump got this all rolling in the first place is... the sort of self-inflicted wound that only the Democratic Party could accomplish."
Jan 19, 2025
After starting Sunday with a Truth Social post declaring "SAVE TIKTOK!" U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced plans for an executive order delaying a nationwide ban on the global video-sharing platform—which some political observers framed as a "win" for the Republican that was made possible by Democrats in Washington, D.C.
Trump actually kicked off efforts to force TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest with an August 2020 executive order, citing national security concerns. Three months later, he lost an election to Democratic President Joe Biden, who ultimately reversed the order. However, Biden then signed the legislation currently impeding the platform's availability in the United States.
"Congratulations, Democrats," said Nina Turner, a former Democratic congressional candidate from Ohio, as the platform began informing U.S. users that it was no longer available late Saturday. "This could've been avoided had you listened to progressives last year when this bill was being forced through Congress."
U.S. Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last March
led a bipartisan coalition that introduced a bill targeting TikTok's parent company—the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act—in the House of Representatives, where it swiftly approved in a 352-65 vote.
A version of the bill—which forces ByteDance to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or face a U.S. ban—ultimately passed both chambers with bipartisan support as a rider to a $95 billion military assistance package for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel, as it waged a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza. Biden signed it in April.
The resulting legal battle reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Friday unanimously upheld the law, "giving the executive branch unprecedented power to silence speech it doesn't like, increasing the danger that sweeping invocations of 'national security' will trump our constitutional rights," in the words of ACLU National Security Project deputy director Patrick Toomey.
The court's decision meant TikTok would "go dark" on Sunday without action from Biden, who declined to give ByteDance a 90-day extension to sell or accept the ban, despite pressure from First Amendment advocates like the ACLU, the platform's 170 million American users—including content creators and small businesses facing financial impacts—and some lawmakers.
In a Friday statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
pointed to Trump's Monday inauguration, saying that "given the sheer fact of timing, this administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next administration."
Late Saturday, TikTok users in the United States began seeing a pop-up message that the platform was unavailable, stating: "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!"
In response to former Obama administration staffer and podcaster Tommy Vietor calling TikTok's message an advertisement from the Chinese Communist Party, leftist political commentator Hasan Piker highlighted Trump's opportunity to restore access to the platform, saying that "the Democrats handed him the easiest w of all time if he's smart enough to seize it."
Others were also critical of the Democratic Party—which is wrapped up in debates over how to move forward from devastating electoral losses in November—with independent journalist Ken Klippenstein saying that "this reminds me of when Trump put his name on the stimulus checks but Biden didn't. Historic own goal by the Democrats here."
Jacobin podcast host Daniel Denvir similarly said on X—the platform owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, the world's richest person—that "the Democratic Party setting up Trump to play the part of the zoomer savior after Trump got this all rolling in the first place is... the sort of self-inflicted wound that only the Democratic Party could accomplish."
Lynese Wallace—who was the chief of staff for former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), a progressive who opposed the law—said that "the TikTok ban was always bad policy and bad politics. Let's not forget it was folded into a $95 billion foreign aid package passed in the last Congress—and has since paved way for Trump to now 'save' it, despite his own support for a ban during his first term. So dumb."
Seizing the opportunity, Trump said Sunday on his Truth social media platform that "I'm asking companies not to let TikTok stay dark! I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law's prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security. The order will also confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order."
Although Trump can't take action before he is sworn in, he continued:
Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations.
I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture.
By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to [stay] up. Without U.S. approval, there is no TikTok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars—maybe trillions.
Therefore, my initial thought is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners whereby the U.S. gets a 50% ownership in a joint venture set up between the U.S. and whichever purchase we so choose.
Responding with a statement on X, TikTok said that "in agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties [for] providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive. It's a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States."
Even before Trump's post, Musk—who is expected to co-lead a presidential advisory commission—said on X that "I have been against a TikTok ban for a long time, because it goes against freedom of speech. That said, the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced. Something needs to change."
ByteDance's Chinese version of TikTok, called Douyin, was introduced in China in September 2016. The New York Timesreported last April that "TikTok has more users on its platform, but Douyin is ByteDance's cash cow. Roughly 80% of ByteDance's $54 billion revenue in the first half of [2023] came from China."
Critics of bipartisan efforts to ban TikTok in the United States have blasted lawmakers for their priorities throughout the process.
"America: Where it's OK to ban TikTok, books, and abortions, but not OK to ban assault weapons, bombs for genocides, or student debt," said Warren Gunnels, Democratic staff director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee under the chairmanship of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who voted against the TikTok legislation.
Just hours ahead of a cease-fire taking effect in Gaza, Turner, who co-chaired Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, also emphasized that "they really banned TikTok before they banned sending weapons to Israel during a genocide."
"If Congress actually gave a damn about our data privacy," she added, "they would've passed a sweeping data privacy bill, not a bill targeting TikTok."
In a Sunday email to supporters, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—who also voted against the law—agreed, stressing that "the answer is not just playing endless whack-a-mole with apps."
"We should have real privacy legislation in the United States," she said. "We should help people have greater agency over their personal information so that they're not being spied on all the time, whether it's a domestic company or a foreign company."
"To which, of course, Big Tech and their lobbies are going to fight against," she warned. "So they just target an
app instead of targeting the problem."
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'Completely Out of Touch... Both Parties': Supreme Court Looks Ready to OK TikTok Ban
"Banning TikTok in this way sets a dangerous precedent that could pave the way to future government interventions against online speech," said one advocate.
Jan 10, 2025
To the chagrin of First Amendment defenders and content creators, the Supreme Court on Friday appeared poised to uphold a law passed by Congress last year that would shut down the widely popular social media app TikTok in the U.S. unless its owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, sells it.
The de facto ban on TikTok was tucked into a $95 billion legislative package for aid to Ukraine and Israel that was passed by the Senate in April 2024. A standalone version of the legislation cleared the House with bipartisan support a month earlier. It is set to go into effect on January 19, barring a sale by ByteDance or intervention by the Supreme Court.
The law was justified on national security grounds, which were fueled by fears that national security laws in China could compel ByteDance to give the Chinese government access to data on TikTok users.
Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, wrote Thursday: "The U.S. government stood up to TikTok before they stood up to[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, or the health insurance lobby, or Big Pharma, or Big Oil—no. TikTok. Completely out of touch with the American people. Both parties."
During oral arguments, "justices across the ideological spectrum asked tough questions of both sides, [but] the overall tone and thrust appeared to suggest greater skepticism toward the arguments by lawyers for TikTok and its users that the First Amendment barred Congress from enacting the law," according to Friday reporting from The New York Times.
However, the Times also noted that "several justices were skeptical about a major part of the government's justification for the law: the risk that China might 'covertly' make TikTok manipulate the content shown to Americans or collect user data to achieve its geopolitical aims."
Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court's hearing on TikTok's appeal of the ban, three bipartisan lawmakers were among the First Amendment advocates who filed amicus briefs in support of the app in late December. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked the court to grant TikTok an emergency injunction to block the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
The ACLU, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and the Freedom of the Press Foundation were among several civil liberties groups that also filed an amicus brief in late December, arguing that the government has not presented sufficient evidence that the app, which is used by 170 million Americans, causes "ongoing or imminent harm."
In a statement released Friday, the Free Press policy counsel Yanni Chen said that "as with repressive laws from oppressive regimes around the world, the real toll of the ban will be on everyday people... TikTok users, many of whom use the platform to organize communities and express views that legacy media often ignore."
"Banning TikTok in this way sets a dangerous precedent that could pave the way to future government interventions against online speech," she added.
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'Genuinely Weird' and 'WTF': Critics Denounce Meta's AI-Generated Profiles
"What is obvious from scrolling through these dead profiles," wrote 404 Media's Jason Koebler, "is that Meta's AI characters are not popular, people do not like them, and that they did not post anything interesting."
Jan 03, 2025
On the heels of Meta’s short-lived foray into celebrity lookalike AI chatbots, users around the internet have been unearthing AI-generated profiles created by Meta that are non-celebrity bots—and the reaction to them, to put it mildly, has been negative.
The Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah engaged in a back and forth with "Liv" an AI-generated Black "queer momma" who told the writer that her "creators admitted they lacked diverse references" when creating her personality. The bot, in reference to her programming, also said that the team that created her implied that white is the "default" or "natural identity."
"Not sure if Liv has media training, but here we are," said Attiah in a thread on Bluesky, where she attached screenshots of her conversation with the bot.
"This is genuinely weird and concerning," said Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, of Liv.
According to The Verge, "Carter" an "AI-managed by Meta" profile that promises to give users dating advice, also elicited negative reactions. "Wtf is the point of this," wrote one commenter. "What the fuck does an AI know about dating?????" read another comment. Instagram pages for both Liv and Carter are no longer live.
While these AI-generated profiles only recently attracted a lot of attention, they've been around for awhile. A late December Financial Times piece about Meta's push into a range of AI-generated products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook in order to retain young users, created some confusion.
Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta, was quoted by the FT saying "we expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way accounts do... They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform."
According to 404 Media's Jason Koebler, "in the immediate aftermath of the Financial Times story, people began to notice the exact types of profiles that Hayes was talking about, and assumed that Meta had begun enacting its plan." In fact, these profiles have been around for over a year.
"There is confusion," Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney told CNN. "The recent Financial Times article was about our vision for AI characters existing on our platforms over time, not announcing any new product."
"What is obvious from scrolling through these dead profiles," wrote Koebler, "is that Meta's AI characters are not popular, people do not like them, and that they did not post anything interesting."
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