How TikTok Held 170,000,000 Americans Hostage
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Speaking of viruses spreading from China, TikTok. Oh, nice transition. Thank you. I see what you did there. Thank you. Yeah, apparently TikTok is back. When is this coming out? Yeah. So basically a week ago, it went, it was incredible. After a Supreme Court ruling nine to zero, a Supreme Court ruling nine to zero, the TikTok ban could go ahead and

It was gone for like, what, maybe a couple of hours? Yeah, so they shut it down at like 10 p.m.,

Saturday night like the night before they had to even shut it down like it was supposed to go into effect at midnight I had friends with like teenage daughters who were like actually experiencing withdrawal symptoms From just that brief period of no tik-tok. There was only no tik-tok for like a few hours and they went into withdrawal Okay. Well, this is maybe a sign that we should not be on tik-tok. Um

Uh, yeah, that's one sign, but it's TikTok is not, is still not available in the app store. I'm just looking at it right now. Like you can't actually download it.

Yes, but they did restore services. So I feel like TikTok doing that was kind of like a hostage situation where they were trying to like, it's like the equivalent of the guy like putting a knife up to the person's neck and being like, I'll do it. I'll do it. You know, because no one's like the actual ban, quote unquote, is that if TikTok was not sold to an American company, then TikTok

American companies could not carry TikTok on the app store, whatever. It wouldn't be able to control the TikTok that's already on people's phones until it would essentially die because TikTok couldn't do updates, et cetera, et cetera. But TikTok...

by just cutting the service was trying to be, I think, like, we are serious about this. Like, this is our leverage. We are holding the knife to the throat of the- Is this what you want? Like, you know, hundreds of millions of Americans or whatever, or tens of millions of Americans are using TikTok. Wait, so you're saying TikTok is basically holding 100 million Americans hostage. That is not a good look.

It's working for them. It's not how people see it. No. Yeah. They see it as an example of American government overreach into our free speech. Like TikTok did a masterful job at narrative warfare. And like, I mean, TikTok, it's the only place you can get the truth about Israel. And America. The crazy thing is, like I have seen, like seeing people defend TikTok. Like I saw somebody post, it was either on Facebook or X, where it's like,

Videos like this you can only see on tik-tok because they'll tell the truth about Israel But it was the video if they were on YouTube you wouldn't see that you'd see the videos filmed horizontally Not have you seen shorts man? Yeah, that's a battle. I know you tried to fight that battle you lost that battle I think you definitely lost that battle about vertical video. Yeah, also impactful people will use impactful it had too much of an impactful impact on our

Lexicon. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, the next red line is learnings. I have lots of learnings. But anyway, so I was out to dinner actually Saturday night and I was eavesdropping on the two people next to me who were, I think, on a date. See, more proof of Chinese espionage. Yeah, they were, I think they were on a date, uh,

in their 20s, okay, and the girl was very confidently telling the guy that like she was sure she understood why the US government was banning TikTok. It was because American companies wanted the money

that TikTok was generating from all the people like spying things on TikTok. So the American government was banning TikTok so that the American companies could take TikTok over and then make that money. That is why. And I think that's just a failure of...

communication from the US government on every level. Well, I mean, come on, like TikTok doesn't take anything from you that American social media does. Yeah, that's the thing. Like they shouldn't have gone with the, oh, like it takes all your data because then people are like, China can have my data. I don't care. You know, it's just...

Yeah. Yeah. Like, there was such poor communication from the people in the U.S. government who saw the very serious security risks. I wonder, yeah. Like, they just didn't explain to Americans in any good way why it was such a threat. I can't believe I'm going to do this, but I'm actually going to defend the U.S. government here. This is not something I usually like to do.

But because we put out many good episodes about TikTok, I felt that explained the issue. And even there, after the explanation, people were still repeating the same lies.

about TikTok doubling down and I think this ties into something Yuri Bezmenov, the former KGB agent, explained very clearly in that interview that you can see about political demoralization. So I'm going to read this quote for him. "Like a person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell him nothing. Even if I show him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures, he will refuse to believe it. That's the tragedy of the situation of demoralization."

And I think this really shows in the whole TikTok thing. I mean, as Benoff said, it takes about 10 to 15 years for demoralization to set in because you have to train a generation. Do you think they're demoralized about the U.S.? Or they're demoralized? What are they demoralized about? I don't think it's demoralization as in the sense of like, oh, I don't feel happy anymore. It's just their worldview has been so tainted and

Subverted that they can't even see anything outside of it. That's why if you present people with information about tick-tock, it doesn't matter They've been demoralized They have this other propaganda message in them and I think it's clear with tick-tock because in the 40s and 50s Americans were pretty United they liked their country they banned Soviet propaganda Especially in Hollywood movies and like this was like this uniform Public sentiment and now we can't even get rid of tick-tock There's only one way

which is let Elon Musk buy it. I mean, I don't think he's offered, right? There was some rumor about that, and it seemed like it maybe was just made up. No, I mean, only because that'll get people to turn against TikTok. Oh, I see. I see what you mean. The way that people turned against Twitter slash X. But I don't actually want Elon Musk to buy TikTok because A,

No person should control that much social media. And B, Elon Musk has heavy, heavy investments in China. And I'm not sure he's very clear-eyed about China, given his Tesla investments and the things he said about, you know, Taiwan could be under one country, two systems. I mean, his mom is a, like...

she's a fashion model in china like she is like the brand representative for some chinese you know companies and stuff like that um carry on i remember elon has put out the most critical statement he's ever done with about china and i gotta find it but so so so carry on but yeah so i think the tiktok thing is uh

And it kind of plays into American politics in a weird way and then you know it's a we were talking about We did an episode the week before last about red note like Xiao Hongshu, right? Like the other the app that people are flocking to real quick because I know you have some interesting stuff about red note Yeah, but let me just I found the thing Elon Musk

Tweeted X. I still don't know I've been against a tick-tock ban for a long time because it goes against freedom of speech wrong That said the current situation where tick-tock is allowed to operate in America But X is not allowed to operate in China is unbalanced something needs to change That is the most critical thing he has ever said about China that that is so inaccurate Can we just pick apart for a minute the freedom of speech thing? I?

Because this bugs me so much. The First Amendment is that the government – Congress shall enact no law abridging freedom of speech and four other things, right? So if the government's not abridging free speech, you have free speech. Even things we don't like, even when YouTube does a bunch of stuff we don't like –

It's not necessarily illegal, even if it's morally wrong. Okay, so the freedom of speech on TikTok is basically like this. TikTok does not provide freedom of speech. It is simply one of many platforms on which people can speak. But the reason it's an especially bad argument

to say TikTok is part of America's free speech is that TikTok itself, because of its algorithm, because the way it's programmed, heavily censors information and heavily suppresses information that's negative towards the CCP, heavily promotes information that's positive towards the CCP or positive towards Palestine and against Israel. There's many, many editorial biases

that are manifested in the way that they choose to spoon feed users videos to watch next. And so because they are manipulating artificially what people see,

that like they have no moral grounds on which to defend themselves as a free speech platform. None. I mean, they're shameless about it, but they're doing it and it's working. Right. Because people are demoralized and they just... Right. But Elon Musk is totally wrong about this. And so are a lot of people who've bought

Their their line about free speech. It's just not true. Well as for the part about Elon Musk criticizing about not having X in China who she Jin the former editor-in-chief of my favorite Chinese say from media the Global Times X Mr. Musk you are very wise, but this time you've made a basic cognitive mistake Shelly don't read it. I'm reciting it to you. Don't spoil it. I

If he basically says if if X were to do something like TikTok does in the US and set up a branch in China that complies with Chinese laws, then there'd be no problem. Which I wonder if that's an actual. No, there would still be a problem. Yeah. Right. I mean, yeah, this is this is not tenable. There have been examples of that failing. Yes. Yes. How's the New York Times doing in China?

Is it blocked right now? It's blocked right now. I'm pretty sure. Oh, and before we start to transition to the red note thing, I think another issue with TikTok is, and this is something that reminds me of the initial criticisms of the trade war in Trump's first administration, is

The damage this will do to people's livelihood like so I can definitely appreciate Like you having your livelihood on a social media platform and then that's getting taken away We're really struggling because of YouTube right now. So I get that but the issue is people are Misinterpreting who the enemy here is the tick tock is basically like this Buddhist morality tale where China used tick tock to lure people in with promises of fame and profit and

They would artificially boost people's posts, creating this whole economic system where people depended on it. They put like a billion dollars into like a creator program where they were paying people to post. Yes. And so it's the CCP that has used that to lure people in and weaponized it. And so now that it's being taken away because it has to, and rather than people recognizing that this was a weapon designed to hurt them,

by the chinese communist party they're attacking the us it was the same thing with the trade war where because of uh the tariffs china responded with tariffs and like some farmers were having uh a difficult time and rather than seeing that like this foreign adversary is attacking you they blame trump

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