Tag: social media

TikTok Officially Banned in the United States – President Trump Expected to Reinstate App

TikTok has been officially banned following a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to remove the app’s availability in the United States.

This comes after a Friday decision upholding a law forcing China-owned ByteDance to divest from TikTok by Sunday or face a ban from U.S. app stores.

President Trump previously asked the Supreme Court to pause the ban so his administration could be given “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”

Trump also said in an interview with NBC that he will “likely” give Tiktok a 90-day extension when he takes office.

Per NBC:

“I think that would be, certainly, an option that we look at. The 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done, because it’s appropriate. You know, it’s appropriate. We have to look at it carefully. It’s a very big situation,” Trump said in the phone interview.

“If I decide to do that, I’ll probably announce it on Monday,” he said.

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Brussels Ramps up Investigation Into Elon Musk in First Salvo of Upcoming Transatlantic War Between the US and EU Over Free Speech and Online Censorship

The historic inauguration of Donald J. Trump as 47th US President will usher in a new Golden Age in America in many aspects, including free-speech.

But across the pond, a generation of failed Globalist ‘leaders’ is scrambling to counteract that, and keep things as they are in terms of online censorship to carry their political narratives alive.

So, yesterday (17) Brussels showed their intent to fully unleash its infamous Digital Services Act (DSA) against tech billionaire-turned-Trump trusted advisor Elon Musk.

The DSA has been demonstrated to be a new form of censorship in Europe, incompatible with real European values or the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Furthermore, CIA-linked Newsguard is mentioned to have being heavily involved in the implementation of the nefarious act.

Now, with Musk flexing his geopolitical muscles, ‘regulators’ in thew EU refused to scale down an investigation of social media network X.

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Biden Backpedals on TikTok Stance, While CEO Shou Zi Chew to Attend Republican Inauguration Amid Rumors of Elon Musk Acquisition

An unexpected turn of events, the 
Biden administration has reversed its position on TikTok , allowing the popular social media app to remain active in the United States despite growing national security concerns.

Additionally, it has been confirmed that 
TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew, will attend the inauguration of the Republican leader , in what appears to be a symbolic gesture of détente between the government and the powerful Chinese platform.

According to reports from The New York Times and the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, Chew will have a prominent seat at the event, a gesture that underscores the platform’s relevance in today’s political and cultural landscape.

Meanwhile, rumors about a possible sale of TikTok have begun to gain traction in business circles.

Sources close to the company have confirmed that tech mogul Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of X (formerly Twitter), is seriously considering acquiring the video platform.

This move would not only mark a significant shift in the ownership of one of the world’s most popular apps but could also introduce a new power dynamic between the tech giants and the Republican administration.

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United States Activates TikTok Ban Starting Sunday

The US government has confirmed that the TikTok ban will take effect this Sunday as part of a measure to protect national security from alleged espionage risks posed by ByteDance, the app’s Chinese parent company.

App stores will be required to remove the app, preventing new downloads within the country. Existing users may continue using it temporarily, but additional restrictions could be imposed soon. According to the Department of Commerce, the decision is necessary to safeguard the data of US citizens from unauthorized access by the Chinese government.

Social media platforms are buzzing with reactions. Influencers and content creators are lamenting economic losses and the limitation of their reach on a platform that has revolutionized the digital industry. Many are already migrating to alternatives like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to maintain their market presence.

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Celebrities and Tech Leaders Launch Campaign, Asking For Donations To Fund New Social Media Agenda

A coalition of celebrities and tech figures—including actors Mark Ruffalo and Alex Winter, author Cory Doctorow, musician Brian Eno, journalist Carole Cadwalladr, writer and podcaster Akilah Hughes, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales — have launched the Free Our Feeds initiative and are asking for donations to fund their idea. Their mission is to reclaim and expand the AT Protocol, the decentralized framework Bluesky operates on, in an effort to wrestle control from billionaires and corporate interests.

But what do these celebrities have in mind? Free speech? Likely not.

Bluesky, originally conceived within Twitter as a censorship-resistant social media platform, has drifted far from its founding principles. Designed to offer users an open, decentralized space for free expression, Bluesky was intended to prevent centralized control over online discourse. However, it has increasingly been influenced by advocates for stricter content moderation, undermining its foundational goal of safeguarding free speech.

Despite these intentions, the Free Our Feeds campaign might raise some eyebrows. The group is asking for $30 million over three years—starting with $4 million through a GoFundMe campaign—to fund a public-interest foundation. While decentralization is a promising concept, past examples like Mastodon and even Bluesky reveal how these platforms can quickly fall under the sway of those who seek to control speech. Decentralized technologies have been used to censor content and sever connections between platforms that support free speech, raising doubts about how truly independent these systems can remain.

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Despite Sweeping Updates To Facebook Policies In Favor Of ‘Free Expression,’ Restrictions On Marijuana-Related Accounts Remain

Despite new changes to content moderation announced earlier this week, Meta—the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Threads—appears not to be changing its practices around marijuana, continuing to block search results on the social media platform for terms such as “marijuana” and “cannabis” and instead displaying a notice encouraging users to report “the sale of drugs.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of changes to content policies and moderation on Tuesday, such as stepping away from practices like third-party fact checking in favor of a community notes model, in which users are responsible for flagging questionable content. The company said it’s also “getting rid of a number of restrictions on topics like immigration, gender identity and gender that are the subject of frequent political discourse and debate.”

“We will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse,” the company said as part of the announcement, “and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations.”

“Up until now, we have been using automated systems to scan for all policy violations, but this has resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been,” the company added.

To many in the cannabis space—including some medical marijuana patients, cannabis content creators, news outlets and even government agencies—that feels like an apt description of how they’ve have been treated by the company, which has historically removed or limited the visibility of marijuana-related accounts.

But the new changes—touted under the banner of “free expression”—don’t appear to affect the handling of cannabis on Meta’s platforms.

Neither Facebook nor Meta replied to Marijuana Moment’s request for clarifications on the new policies this week, but the only mention of drugs in the new announcement is the company’s stated intent to “continue to focus” its content moderation systems “on tackling illegal and high-severity violations, like terrorism, drugs, fraud and scams.”

“For less severe policy violations, we’re going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we take action,” it says.

It’s unclear exactly when all the changes will be deployed. Facebook said it would implement the use of community notes “over the next couple of months, and will continue to improve it over the course of the year.” It didn’t provide a timeframe for changes to content moderation policies.

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We can’t let Mark Zuckerberg pass the buck on Meta’s censorship

No, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t get to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast and pretend he’s a free speech champion as if there were nothing he could have done to stop the censorship at Facebook that rigged the 2020 election and probably cost lives during the pandemic.

The wanksta-lite makeover can’t hide Zuck’s sins, from throttling The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election to deplatforming a sitting president, Donald Trump, to suppressing COVID-19 dissent.

No matter how many “Iron Neck” workouts he does in an attempt to de-nerd himself, the billionaire tech titan will always be a spineless coward whose monopoly needs to be broken up. No one person should be wielding historically unprecedented power to censor political thought and speech, least of all a socially inept tech bro.

The Facebook founder whose Meta group behemoth owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp whined to Rogan Friday that “these people from the Biden administration would call up our team, and, like, scream at them, and curse,” to force them to take down posts. Now he tells us.

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Biden Slams Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Shameful’ Decision to Roll Back Meta’s Censorship Regime – ‘Contrary to Everything America is About’

Joe Biden is clearly unhappy with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to repair his relationship with Donald Trump.

The outgoing president said at a press conference on Friday that Zuckerberg’s decision to roll back his platforms’ censorship policies was “really shameful” and against American values.

“It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about,” he said.

“We want to tell the truth. We haven’t always done it as a nation. We want to tell the truth.”

“The idea that, you know, a billionaire can buy something and say, ‘By the way, we’re not gonna fact check anything,’ and you know, you have millions of people reading, going online, reading this stuff,” he continued.

“Anyway, I think it’s really shameful.”

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Supreme Court Justices ‘Sound Likely to Uphold TikTok Ban’

According to reports, the Supreme Court justices “sound likely” to uphold the TikTok ban, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 19.

President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to delay the ban, which will begin one day before his inauguration unless it is sold to a new non-Chinese owner.

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has indicated it is not open to a forced sale.

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard over two hours of arguments about whether banning the app would violate Americans’ freedom of speech.

The justices, including conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, seemed skeptical of the claims and said, “The law doesn’t say TikTok has to shut down. It says ByteDance has to (sell TikTok).”

“It doesn’t’ say, ‘TikTok, you can’t speak,’” liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson added, according to a New York Daily News report.

Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to accept that the ban is an effort to prevent Chinese indoctrination of young Americans.

“That seems like a huge concern for the future of the country,” Kavanaugh said.

Trump’s nominee to be solicitor general, John Sauer, filed an amicus brief with the court in December.

The brief argued, “President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history.”

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Mark Zuckerberg Orders Removal of Tampons From Men’s Bathrooms at Meta Offices and Social Media Users Have Humorous Thoughts

Meta and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s red pilling continues unabated, and social media is taking particular note of one significant change he has made.

As TGP readers know, Mark Zuckerberg has done a complete 180 on multiple issues since President Trump destroyed Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. These include getting rid of far-left ‘fact checkers,’ bringing more conservatives into his company, and giving to Trump’s inaugural fund.

But his latest move may be the most decisive of all. The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg made additional changes on Tuesday, including removing the transgender and nonbinary “themes” on its Messenger chat app and getting rid of tampons in the men’s bathrooms at Meta offices.

You read that right. Meta had TAMPONS in the men’s washrooms before Zuckerberg was finally hit by reality.

From the New York Times:

That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said.

Users on X responded to the news with several humorous memes, many targeting Minnesota Governor and failed VP candidate Tim Walz.

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