Hedge-Fund Billionaire's Call for Potential TikTok Ban Over Alleged Pro-Hamas Algorithm Echoes Trump's Early Fears
It’s almost as if former President Donald Trump saw it coming.
Hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman is hardly what one would call a MAGA type. To quote Influence Watch, “Since 1998, with few exceptions to select Republicans, Ackman has mainly donated to Democratic election candidates. Ackman has donated more than $600,000 to Democratic campaigns including those of Barack Obama, Al Gore, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.”
That’s a veritable all-star team of media-hyped Democrat luminaries. So, when Ackman acknowledges that TikTok should be banned because of alleged algorithm manipulation in the Israel/Hamas conflict, maybe it’s time to give The Donald a little credit for foresight.
In a social media post Monday, Ackman — CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management — said the Chinese-owned short-form video platform should “probably be banned” for “massively manipulating public opinion” in favor of the terrorist organization and “amplifying the hate” against Israel.
Ackman was responding to a widely disseminated video of a man in a mask going on an anti-Semitic rant near the campus of Harvard University.
“[Jews] should be all exterminated, every single one of them,” the man said in the video. “And their kids, their mothers, their children, everybody — just like Hitler did.”
Man goes on antisemitic rant at @Harvard University: “I think they’re [Israelis] all dirty, dirty animals…They should be all exterminated, every single one of them—and their kids, their mothers, their children, everybody— just like Hitler did.” pic.twitter.com/XFp7nAjYmi
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 30, 2023
“The world is quickly moving to a very dark place,” Ackman said in a response. “Social media has been amplifying the hate for a decade as algorithms wind us up.
“TikTok is massively manipulating public opinion. Compare the generational differences on support for Hamas. 51% of the TikTok generation say that Hamas’ barbaric acts are justified,” he continued. (According to the New York Post, Ackman was “apparently referring to a Harvard University poll of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 who believed Hamas was justified in carrying out the attacks which left at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead.”)
Ackman went on to say that “TikTok should probably be banned. A foreign government should not be in control of the minds of our next generation of leaders.”
Thinking about it more, identifying this racist anonymous thug and giving the world an economic incentive to find him isn’t the answer.
We need to work toward a world without mindless hate. A world where someone will sit down with this kid, and give him perspective on his hate… https://t.co/MH3T960gav
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) October 30, 2023
It’s almost as if someone saw this coming. Namely, a president.
In an August 2020 executive order issued by then-President Trump, the United States would prohibit “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with ByteDance Ltd.,” according to CNN.
ByteDance is the Chinese-based owner of TikTok.
For the most part, Trump’s order justified the ban based on the fact the app “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information – potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”
However, CNN also noted this: “The order also claims that the platform censors or disseminates content in keeping with the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda, citing ‘when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.’”
Yes, the order “claims” that TikTok controls the narrative. Huh. Fast forward three years and here’s tech industry player Jeff Morris Jr. laying out exactly what’s happening on the platform:
As I looked at the tactics and data, I saw that much of TikTok is being controlled by anti-Israel bot farms, paid commenters/likers/sharers — much of which is paid for by Hamas supporting organizations. pic.twitter.com/NdcDvfiw4U
— Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj) October 26, 2023
Because the TikTok narrative is now so anti-Israel, the engagement flywheel encourages creators to support that narrative because it’s getting the most attention and creating anti-Israel content helps them increase their following.
— Jeff Morris Jr. (@jmj) October 26, 2023
The Post noted that pro-Palestinian videos on TikTok outnumber pro-Israeli videos in a ratio of 15 to 1. And, as The New York Times noted in a Friday piece, China and two of its closest allies — Russia and Iran — have either implicitly or explicitly taken the side of Hamas in the war.
How ’bout that.
Now, of course, this all could have been avoided but for one man — Joseph Robinette Biden, who currently serves as U.S. president.
As the Times noted, he revoked the Trump-era executive order that sought to ban TikTok and another Chinese-controlled social propaganda media service, WeChat, in June 2021. Instead, Biden replaced it with an order the Times said “calls for a broader review of a number of foreign-controlled applications that could pose a security risk to Americans and their data.”
“The Trump order had not been carried out ‘in the soundest fashion,’ Biden administration officials said in a call with reporters, adding that the new directive would establish ‘clear intelligible criteria’ to evaluate national security risks posed by software applications connected to foreign governments, particularly China.”
Does this blatant propaganda, condoning of terrorism and amplification of anti-Semitic rhetoric count as “clear intelligible criteria” to ban TikTok yet, Mr. President? Or did that rabid horse leave the barn long ago, back when you decided to rescind Trump’s executive order that could have done away with this digital cancer in our country once and for all?
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