Former left winger Bill Maher just got red-pilled again, this time in regards to the CCP influenced social media platform TikTok.
On his show Maher made the perfectly reasonable point that TikTok is fucking up kids brains and no one in power seems to care or want to do anything about it.
TikTok is fucking up kids brains, and no one seems to care or want to do anything about it. #TikTokBrain pic.twitter.com/UvRxV1lNcr
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) December 1, 2022
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Maher is completely right about the dangers of TikTok but he is wrong that no one cares or wants to do anything about it.
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Former President Donald Trump tried to ban the platform in the United States and the Democrats and media had a hissy fit.
In fact Joe Biden reversed Trump’s efforts to ban TikTok as one of his first acts as President.
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That said, not only is Chinese owned TikTok messing with kids brains the platform is also actively trying to influence the outcomes of our elections.
Via Forbes:
“TikTok accounts run by the propaganda arm of the Chinese government have accumulated millions of followers and tens of millions of views, many of them on videos editorializing about U.S. politics without clear disclosure that they were posted by a foreign government.
The accounts are managed by MediaLinks TV, a registered foreign agent and Washington D.C.-based outpost of the main Chinese Communist Party television news outlet, China Central Television. The largest of them are @Pandaorama, which features cute videos about Chinese culture, @The…Optimist, which posts about sustainability, and @NewsTokss, which features coverage of U.S. national and international news.
In the run-up to the 2022 elections, the @NewsTokss account criticized some candidates (mostly Republicans), and favored others (mostly Democrats). A video from July began with the caption “Cruz, Abbott Don’t Care About Us”; a video from October was captioned “Rubio Has Done Absolutely Nothing.” But @NewsTokss did not target only Republicans; another October video asked viewers whether they thought President Joe Biden’s promise to sign a bill codifying abortion rights was a “political manipulation tactic.” Nothing in these videos disclosed to viewers that they were being pushed by a foreign government.
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The TikTok accounts run by MediaLinks do provide some information about the entity behind them: Profile bios for the accounts say, “Material distributed by MediaLinks TV LLC on behalf of CCTV. More info at DOJ, D.C.” But the vast majority of people viewing MediaLinks videos never see this language. According to data posted on LinkedIn by a MediaLinks employee, NewsToks garnered 8.3 million video views between May 8 and July 6, 2022, but only 57,600 profile views during the same 60-day period.
Moreover, American viewers who did visit the accounts’ bios might not be aware that in this case, CCTV stands for China Central TV, or that this entity is Chinese state media. NewsTokss’s “More info at DOJ, D.C.” disclaimer appears to be an oblique reference to MediaLinks’s foreign agent registration.”
TikTok is the most successful influence operation ever run by a foreign government inside the United States and Democrats and their media allies are complicit.
