The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAG): Ameria Estenson, aka “That Midwestern Mom” and Jayeen Krishnamoorthi
The US House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday on a bill requiring TikTok to be sold or face a ban.
Amber Estenson, a 42-year content creator also known as “That Midwestern Mom,” went viral on TikTok two years ago when she uploaded one of her quirky Minnesota “salad” concoctions. The ingredients — Snickers bars, apples, Jell-O and Cool Whip — made her a viral sensation.
Other TikTokers use their platform as a means of giving back. William was a drug dealer and was ex-felon from Baltimore. He said he helps homeless people in his community.
The bipartisan bill, dubbed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” blocks any app store or webhosting services in the U.S. for ByteDance-controlled applications, including TikTok, unless the app severs ties to ByteDance, under a designation that it’s subject to the control of a foreign adversary. ByteDance will not be available in app stores in the U.S. for six months if it doesn’t stop selling things that are not kosher.
But Krishnamoorthi says he and other lawmakers reviewed the efforts and says the company’s claims about their safeguards were false. Tiktok said that American user data wouldn’t be accessible to anyone in China. Again, wrong. That was also proven false. And then they said that American user data is not going to be used to target anybody again. Wrong. That was not true.
Why the House seems ready to ban TikTok and what could come next? Rep. Mike Gallagher argues that the bill is not a ban of the video sharing app
The bill is expected to be passed, but it is not certain what will happen in the Senate, where some lawmakers would like to look at it further.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., who chairs the House Select committee on China and is the lead GOP sponsor of the bipartisan bill, maintains the bill does not amount to a ban of the video sharing app.
The app has been used to target journalists and interfere with elections, according to classified and unclassified national security assessments. The officials from national security agencies briefed all House members on their analysis on Tuesday.
The bill is needed because of the lobbying campaign TikTok launched, which uses location information to connect users by phone to their member of Congress.
“You had member offices being deluged with calls, you know, teenagers crying and one threatening suicide and one impersonating one of my colleague’s sons,” he said. “That, to me demonstrates how the platform could be weaponized in the future.”
The bill also sets up a process for the president to address any future threats from any foreign owned apps if they are deemed a national security risk. It also creates a system for users to download their own data and switch to an alternate platform.
The ranking Democrat on the House Select committee on China is from Illinois and he helped write the bill. He told NPR there was no first amendment right to harm our national security.
The company stresses that it has invested its own money to set up a firewall in an effort dubbed “Project Texas” to address data privacy concerns and keep users’ data in the U.S.
TikTok: A New App to Blame Them for the Wall Street Wall: Former US President Donald Trump and his Twitter Controversy
Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, proposed a ban back in 2020 when he was in the White House. He doesn’t like the House bill.
When he served as president he vowed to ban the social media app. In an interview on CNBC on Monday, Trump said that he had opposition to a ban because he thought users would move to a platform that was more dangerous.
“There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media,” he said.
Despite low unemployment and falling inflation, TikTok is full of viral videos bemoaning the U.S. economy. One popular group of posts uses the term “Silent Depression.” The posts falsely suggest that the country is in worse shape today than it was in 1930. (My colleagues Jeanna Smialek and Jim Tankersley reported on the posts late last year.)
The Wall Street Journal: Consequences for the 2022 Midterm Election Propaganda Against the Communist Party of China from TikTok
The Wall Street Journal analyzed videos on TikTok that expressed extreme positions from both sides of the conflict and found that they were tilted toward the Palestinian side. “Many stoked fear,” The Journal reported. In November, videos praising an old Osama bin Laden letter also went viral.
On Monday, the top U.S. intelligence official released a report saying that the Chinese government had used TikTok to promote its propaganda to Americans and to influence the 2022 midterm elections. The report predicted that the Communist Party of China could attempt to influence the presidential election.