by Keith Woods
When Biden came into office, he revoked an executive order from Trump which had made moves to ban TikTok.
The issue was dropped until last year. What changed?
If you search for news items on the banning of TikTok, they do not surface again until October 2023 All the major politicians calling for the ban justified its urgency by claiming the app was promoting anti-Israel sentiment.
The politician who put forward the legislation to ban TikTok was Mike Gallagher.
Gallagher not only receives huge funding from the Israel lobby through AIPAC, but also Palantir, whose technology is being used by Israel in Gaza. Gallagher since accepted a job with Palantir.
The law to ban TikTok was drafted a cabal of investors and lobbyists led by a Jewish Zionist named Jacob Helberg.
Helberg also works for Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies.
Helberg said he had spoken to over 100 lawmakers about a TikTok ban, and that the proliferation of pro-Palestine content on the app was a “galvanizing force” for politicians to decide to push through with a ban.
Helberg drew on research from activist Jewish-Australian tech entrepreneur Anthony Goldbloom.
Goldbloom is responsible for many of the claims made about the proliferation of antisemitism on TikTok, including Nikki Haleys claim that 30 minutes TikTok = 17% more antisemitism.
The ADL also began a push against TikTok after October 7.
Their report on TikTok expressed concern that they can’t access TikTok analytics the way they can with every other big tech company.
In November, Goldbloom organised a call between TikTok leadership and 40 “mostly Jewish tech leaders” to demand TikTok do more to censor anti-Israel content on the app.
Not satisfied with TikTok’s commitment on this, lawmakers pushed through with the bill.
Jewish Federations of North America, one of the most influential Jewish lobby groups, wrote to lawmakers encouraging the bill due to TikTok allowing antisemitism. No mention of China.
Recently, in a conversation between Mitt Romney and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, they said the ban of TikTok was directly because “the emotion, the impact of images has a very challenging effect on the narrative”, the narrative being “Israel’s PR.
Of course, it’s now an antisemitic conspiracy theory to say the Israel lobby is behind the TikTok ban, even though every lawmaker and activist who pushed for the ban since October did it explicitly as a way to deal with growing anti-Israel sentiment.
You be the judge.
