tik tok – Hellbound and Down

Federal Jury Finds Florida TikToker Guilty of Interstate Threats for Calling for Trump Supporters to Be Shot

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, announced that a federal jury has found Desiree Doreen Segari (41, Sarasota) guilty of interstate communication of a threat to injure.

Segari, who was indicted on September 18, 2025, faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.

In one of the videos she shared on TikTok, Segari stated, “So if we all get our guns and use our second amendment right … and you see somebody with a MAGA hat, ‘pew pew’ that’s what we do, that’s the way.”

“It’s the only way.”

U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe made the announcement:

According to evidence presented at trial, on August 17, 2025, Segari posted a video on TikTok calling for MAGA supporters to be shot on sight. Segari stated, “so if we all get our guns and use our second amendment right…and you see somebody with a MAGA hat, ‘pew pew’ that’s what we do, that’s the way, it’s the only way.”

While saying “pew pew,” Segari used hand gestures mimicking the firing of a gun.

She further stated, “Put them back in their basements, make them scared again to be racist, homophobic, and terrible just awful [expletive],” and “MAGA people deserve to be terrified and scared to walk in the streets because they should know that real Americans are gonna [mouths expletive] kill them.”

When Segari posted the video, she included a caption: “#seemagapewpewmaga starting a new trend, hope it catches on. Please spread the word. Share this video. Repost it. Use the hashtag all over the internet. Let’s go guys. It’s time to fight back in a potentially effective manner.”

The next day, Segari posted another video on TikTok, in which she stated, “See MAGA pew pew MAGA, see MAGA pew pew MAGA, see MAGA pew pew MAGA so these [expletive] know we ain’t here to play” while again using hand gestures to mimic the firing of a gun.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Michael Sinacore.

The FBI’s Tampa office also shared the verdict.

Keep reading

TikTok Says Privacy Makes Users Less Safe

Over the past five years, the largest social platforms settled on a clear position about private messaging. Lock it down. Facebook turned on end-to-end encryption. Instagram and Messenger did the same. X joined the club. Yes, metadata is still an issue and the protocols used matter; but, generally speaking, the move was toward more privacy of actual messages.

TikTok looked at that trend and made a different choice. Then it scheduled a briefing in London with the BBC to explain the reasoning.

The explanation was safety.

In the UK, TikTok belongs to ByteDance, a Chinese technology company that operates under Beijing’s jurisdiction. China maintains strict limits on end-to-end encryption inside its borders. TikTok, after its own review of the issue, reached the same policy outcome for its messaging system.

Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity professor at Surrey University, raised that point directly. The company’s “Chinese influence might be behind the decision,” he said, adding that end-to-end encryption is “largely banned in China.”

TikTok declined to engage with that suggestion, of course. The remark hung in the air. However, it’s worth adding that the US operation of TikTok has made no indication that it is moving towards private messaging standards either.

End-to-end encryption is simple in theory. Only the people in a conversation can read the messages. The platform running the service cannot access the content. Governments cannot request it. Engineers inside the company cannot view it.

TikTok’s system operates in a different way. Messages on the platform remain readable to the company. Employees can access them under defined circumstances. Law enforcement agencies can request them through legal channels.

TikTok argues that readable messages allow the company to identify harmful activity.

The debate turns on a basic technical fact. “We can read your messages to catch predators,” and “we can read your messages” describe the same system.

Keep reading

Massive TikTok Fine Threat Advances Europe’s Digital ID Agenda

A familiar storyline is hardening into regulatory doctrine across Europe: frame social media use as addiction, then require platforms to reengineer themselves around age segregation and digital ID.

The European Commission’s preliminary case against TikTok, announced today, shows how that narrative is now being operationalized in policy, with consequences that reach well beyond one app.

European regulators have accused TikTok of breaching the Digital Services Act by relying on what they describe as “addictive design” features, including infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and personalized recommendations.

Officials argue these systems drive compulsive behavior among children and vulnerable adults and must be structurally altered.

What sits beneath that argument is a quieter requirement. To deliver different “safe” experiences to minors and adults, platforms must first determine who is a minor and who is not. Any mandate to offer different experiences to minors and adults depends on a reliable method of telling those groups apart.

Platforms cannot apply separate algorithms, screen-time limits, or nighttime restrictions without determining a user’s age with a level of confidence regulators will accept.

Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier described the mechanics bluntly, saying TikTok’s design choices “lead to the compulsive use of the app, especially for our kids, and this poses major risks to their mental health and wellbeing.” He added: “The measures that TikTok has in place are simply not enough.”

The enforcement tool behind those statements is the Digital Services Act, the EU’s platform rulebook that authorizes Brussels to demand redesigns and impose fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue.

Keep reading

TikTok CEO Reveals Coordination With 2 Dozen Jewish Groups to Police Speech

A chilling blueprint for the censorship of pro-Palestine voices on social media has been exposed, directly from the mouth of a top tech executive. Adam Presser, the newly installed CEO of TikTok’s U.S. operations following its forced sale to a consortium led by billionaire Larry Ellison, detailed in a recent resurfaced video how the platform systematically silenced critics by labeling their speech as hateful. This admission confirms the worst fears of free speech advocates and reveals a coordinated effort to shield Israeli government actions from public scrutiny by conflating political criticism with bigotry.

The video, originally presented to the World Jewish Congress, features Presser, who was then TikTok’s Head of Operations and Trust & Safety, outlining specific policy changes. “We made a change to designate the use of the term Zionist as a proxy for a protected attribute as hate speech,” Presser stated. In practice, this means using “Zionist” in a negative context could get a user banned, while phrases like “proud Zionist” remain permitted. This creates a politically motivated double standard where one side of a heated geopolitical debate is granted linguistic immunity.

A tripling of bans and outside influence

Presser boasted of aggressive enforcement, revealing that TikTok “tripled the amount of accounts that we were banning for hateful activity” over the course of 2024. This timeline coincides directly with the global outcry following Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. He further explained that “over two dozen Jewish organizations” are “constantly feeding us intelligence and information when they spot violative trends,” and that these groups help inform TikTok on “what is hate speech.” This outsourcing of content moderation decisions to explicitly partisan advocates strips away any pretense of neutrality, effectively allowing pro-Israel groups to police and silence their critics on a global platform.

The consequences of this policy are not theoretical. Award-winning Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, who had built an audience of 1.4 million followers on TikTok while documenting the war from Gaza, recently found her account permanently banned. In a video, Owda connected her ban directly to Presser’s remarks and to comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last year called the TikTok purchase “consequential” and stated, “We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield in which we engage, and the most important ones are social media.”

Keep reading

Meta, TikTok, YouTube Face Trial Over Youth Addiction Claims

Three of the world’s biggest tech companies face a landmark trial in Los Angeles starting this week over claims that their platforms — Meta’s Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok and Google’s YouTube — deliberately addict and harm children.

Jury selection starts this week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. It’s the first time the companies will argue their case before a jury, and the outcome could have profound effects on their businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms.

The selection process is expected to take at least a few days, with 75 potential jurors questioned each day through at least Thursday. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., settled the case last week for an undisclosed sum.

At the core of the case is a 19-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose case could determine how thousands of other, similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out.

She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury and what damages, if any, may be awarded, said Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow of technology policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

KGM claims that her use of social media from an early age addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Importantly, the lawsuit claims that this was done through deliberate design choices made by companies that sought to make their platforms more addictive to children to boost profits.

This argument, if successful, could sidestep the companies’ First Amendment shield and Section 230, which protects tech companies from liability for material posted on their platforms.

Keep reading

FBI Arrests Active Duty U.S. Marine For Allegedly Kidnapping 12-Year-Old Girl He Met on TikTok

The FBI has reported that an active-duty U.S. Marine has been arrested after allegedly kidnapping a 12-year-old girl from Indiana.

According to the FBI’s press release, William Roy, 24, who was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, flew to Chicago to meet up with a 12-year-old girl at a park.

Later, Roy allegedly took the young girl to a hotel where they stayed overnight.

He faces charges of enticing and transporting a minor to travel for illicit sexual activity and interstate travel with the intent to engage in sexual activity with a minor.

Per FBI Indianapolis:

An active-duty U.S. Marine has been arrested after allegedly traveling from North Carolina to Indiana to meet, kidnap, and sexually assault a 12-year-old Hammond girl. William Richard Roy, 24, of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, was taken into custody by the FBI in Durham, North Carolina, on October 26, 2025.

The investigation began on October 25, 2025, when the FBI Indianapolis Field Office’s Merrillville Resident Agency received information from the Hammond Police Department regarding a missing 12-year-old girl believed to be traveling with Roy. The child’s grandmother had reported her missing earlier that day.

Through the coordinated efforts of the FBI, Hammond Police Department, and U.S. Marshals Service, it was determined Roy allegedly flew to Chicago on October 24, 2025. The following day, he took an Uber to Hammond, where he met the child at a park. The two then traveled by Uber back to Chicago, stayed overnight at a hotel, and later boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Durham, North Carolina.

When the bus arrived in Durham on October 26, agents from the FBI Charlotte Field Office’s Greensboro and Raleigh Resident Agencies took Roy into custody and safely recovered the child.

The arrest of Roy marks the second arrest of a Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune in recent months.

Keep reading

	High Taxes Are Turni… on High Taxes Are Turning Seattle…
	Schumer Admits Illeg… on HERE IT IS: Schumer Slips, Adm…
	AIPAC suffers loss i… on AIPAC suffers loss in congress…
	Homeschooling Famili… on Homeschooling Families Push Ba…
	2,000-year-old artif… on 2,000-year-old artifact may be…