Free Republic

Twenty-three Democrat run states and the District of Columbia, the home of our nation’s capital, filed amicus briefs in support of government censorship and banning of free speech in the United States. These 23 states and the District of Columbia filed amicus briefs in support of the Biden administration in the SCOTUS case is Murthy, et al v. Missouri, et al, 23-411 (Missouri v. Biden) case. The states essentially argue that they have an interest in collaborating with tech companies to “encourage” the public to behave themselves and “discourage” the public from believing alleged “disinformation” or engaging in online predatory...

China has responded to the new U.S. House bill passed against TikTok, and it doesn't look like it's going to make the U.S.-Sino relationship any better. While the measure still has to wind its way through the Senate, it would essentially ban the platform for all Americans unless TikTok's operations were divested from Chinese parent firm ByteDance (BDNCE). The formal name of the bill, titled the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," also likely riled Beijing, which was quick to lay out its position and accuse Washington of "resorting to acts of bullying."Quote: "Though the U.S. has never...

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday raised concerns about efforts to ban Chinese-owned social media app TikTok in the U.S., saying it would only serve to empower Meta ’s Facebook platform. “Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” *** Acknowledging his concerns around national security and data privacy over TikTok, Trump said, “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the platform. “There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who...

TAIPEI—Taiwan will hold a presidential election this weekend that will have global and regional ramifications. The frontrunner, current Vice President Lai Ching-te, has vowed to protect Taiwan’s autonomy from Chinese aggression and strengthen ties with the United States. Beijing has intimidated Taiwan by buzzing its airspace with fighter jets and sending spy balloons and satellites over the island. But there’s another enemy vying to take Lai down, and it’s on TikTok. The popular social platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has been flooded with false or sensationalized videos by accounts exhibiting behavior consistent with organized Chinese disinformation operations, experts say....

Sen. Rand Paul’s heated opposition to a TikTok ban startled Capitol Hill last week, but you could look at it as a straightforward case of following the money, according to insiders – in this case, the money of a major GOP donor who has $33 billion on the line. The gentleman from Kentucky – who has made his career partly as a China hawk – surprised colleagues on the Senate floor last week when he blocked Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley’s hopes for fast-tracked legislation to ban TikTok. “Speech is protected whether you like it or not,” Rand said, jumping...

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) praised former President Donald Trump on Sunday for recognizing the threat posed by TikTok, warning that parents should be "very concerned" about their children using the app. Warner issued the warning during a Fox News Sunday appearance after being asked about the Beijing-owned social media giant, which has become a national security concern over its ties to the Chinese Communist Party . Trump ordered ByteDance, TikTok's China-based parent company, to divest from the platform's U.S. operations or see the app banned nationwide in mid-2020. The Biden administration is trying to reach a security...

ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least two cases, the Internal Audit team also planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a U.S. citizen who had never had an employment relationship with the company...the plan was for a Beijing-based ByteDance team to obtain location data from U.S. users’ devices. TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said that TikTok collects approximate location information based on users’ IP addresses to “among other things...detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior." ByteDance's Internal Audit team was...

The New York Times asked TikTok, a social media app with known connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to censor American users sharing election integrity concerns on its platform. In a recent article titled, “On TikTok, Election Misinformation Thrives Ahead of Midterms,” Times writer Tiffany Hsu details how “TikTok is shaping up to be a primary incubator of baseless and misleading information” ahead of the 2022 midterms, with the issue of voter fraud being a prominent topic shared across the platform. Buried within the article, however, Hsu tacitly reveals that as a result of the Times reaching out to...

The FCC commissioner has called on the CEOs of Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores, citing new reports suggesting the video app popular among American young people is harvesting "swaths of sensitive data" that is being accessed by Beijing on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. In a letter dated June 24, Brendan Carr, the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, warned Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet Inc. and Google LLC CEO Sundar Pichai of "an alarming new report" that shed fresh light on "serious national security threats posed by TikTok." "TikTok is not...

TikTok's parent company is required to share data with the Chinese government The Chinese parent company of TikTok had access to American users' data for months even while U.S. employees did not have access themselves, according to leaked audio. The audio, obtained by BuzzFeed News, covers more than 80 internal meetings at TikTok between the months of September 2021 and January 2022. It showed that U.S. employees were not permitted to access user data and instead relied on Chinese employees to do so, according to BuzzFeed. TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is required under Chinese law to share its data with...

When headlines popped up earlier this month that the Biden regime was using TikTok influencers to spread their propaganda about Ukraine, the vast majority of conservative news outlets used it as a punchline. Even on the left, some took jabs at it. SNL did a skit making fun of the White House move. But as much as the older, politically aware class of Americans might think of it as a desperate ploy or just a comical sign of the times, the Biden regime was actually making a brilliant move. Their actions were lacking; they’re just as oblivious to how TikTok...

In a rare move for a Hollywood star, Ashton Kutcher has issued a warning about China, saying Beijing could use TikTok to influence the minds of Americans when it comes to issues like Taiwan and the South China Sea. Ashton Kutcher made the comments during a recent appearance on “American Optimist,” the YouTube channel run by entrepreneur and investor Joe Lonsdale. “If I’m China and I want to create a problem in that area of the world, specifically a naval problem in that area of the world, in the South China Sea, I would probably want to utilize TikTok in...

The 'independent certifier' who retweeted the claim that all Republican voters are racists approved as Facebook fact-checkers an organization funded by Chinese Communists and U.S. Democrats.A professor Facebook has empowered to decide who can become a fact-checker is an open political leftist who has expressed animus against all Republican U.S. voters, according to recently uncovered documents exposing the official — and the process by which social media censors obtain their powers. According to Jack Houghton of Sky News, the platform’s fact-checking certifier Margot Susca retweeted the claim that racism is “embraced by nearly half of the country’s electorate” in America,...

President Donald Trump on Friday gave the Chinese company ByteDance 90 days to divest itself of any assets used to support the popular TikTok app in the United States. Trump’s executive order said there is “credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance … might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” Trump last week ordered sweeping but vague bans on dealings with the Chinese owners of TikTok and the messaging app WeChat, saying they are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy. …

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China’s ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, after President Donald Trump said on Friday he had decided to ban the popular short-video app, two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday. U.S. officials have said TikTok under its Chinese parent poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles. ByteDance’s concession will test whether Trump’s threat to ban TikTok is a negotiating tactic, or whether he is intent on cracking down on a social media app that...

President Donald Trump plans to ban the popular social media app TikTok from the United States as early as Saturday. He said he plans to use an executive order to make the move. “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Friday night.“I have that authority...It’s going to be signed tomorrow." The move would force ByteDance, the Chinese parent company, to divest and sell its United States operations. As of now, Microsoft has been the leading contender in buying the popular social media platform. The news comes...

Some US investors of Chinese tech behemoth Bytedance are mulling over whether or not to buy control of subsidiary company TikTok, according to a report from The Information.The small group of investors is discussing such a move with ByteDance's top officials, per the report. The US investors involved in the deal could include General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, the latter of which has backed the likes of Apple, Google, and PayPal. Per a previous Information report, Bytedance founder and CEO Zhang Yiming has said he wouldn't be opposed to such a sale.The report comes as TikTok's parent company continues to...

Short-form video sharing app TikTok is planning to add about 10,000 jobs in the United States over the next three years, the company said on Tuesday. The company, owned by China's ByteDance, is also considering London among other locations for setting up its headquarters. TikTok now has about 1,400 employees in the United States, up from less than 500 in January this year, it said. News website Axios reported the news first. TikTok has been seen to distance itself from Beijing after a U.S. national security panel's inquiry into the safety of the personal data it handles, Reuters reported last...

TikTok fans are retaliating for Trump’s threats of banning the app, which is owned by China’s Bytedance Ltd. and is hugely popular in the U.S., especially among teens. The thought of taking away a key social and entertainment hub in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to outrage. “For Gen Z and Millennials, TikTok is our clubhouse and Trump threatened it,” said Yori Blacc, a 19-year-old TikTok user in California who joined in the app protest. “If you’re going to mess with us, we will mess with you.” Blacc said the movement gained steam Wednesday when a popular...