For the past 5 years Trump has been trying to buy TikTok from China. TikTok, is a content-creating platform that has about 1.8 billion users world-wide.

Previously many rumors about China surveilling the US through TikTok made many officials in the US concerned, leading to it being banned and unbanned over the following years.

We were taught that China was spying on US citizens. That they were trying to map out areas using the backgrounds of TikToks and what not. Or that China was taking photos of users even when they weren't posting.

This led to a lot of paranoia on my end. However, recent deals regarding TikTok may show us the real reason on why the US was so insist on trying to get rights over TikTok.

The battle for TikTok may be finally over as Trump plans on buying TikTok in a 14 billion dollar deal. Meaning most of TikTok’s shares will be with American and other foreign investors. They will own about 65% of the shares and China and the company ByteDance will have about less than 20% of the shares.

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Who Could Run TikTok Now?

Some of these investors are Larry Ellison and Safra Catz. Safra Catz, the former CEO of Oracle, has decided to heavily invest in TikTok because of its Pro-Palestinian content. She said that it horrified her that there was so much BDS content on the plant form.

BDS is a non-violent movement that prompts boycotts, divests, and economic sanctions against Israel. She also claimed that “Americans must learn to love and respect Israel.” JD Vance even said that this purchase, "Ensures... that American investors will actually be able to control the algorithm." Vance claims this is done to protect American businesses ... as they totally care for their customers and not at all see them as just ways to get money.

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Larry Ellison's one of the other major investors of TikTok who is the current CEO of Oracle, a multinational tech company. Ellison had this to say about his predictions on modern surveillance: "Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on..." Sounds familiar.... oh wait, I remember! It's like Big Brother from 1984.

By the way, Ellison is the world's second richest man, right after Elon Musk... Which ties right back to what Vance said earlier of American companies/businesses being able to control the algorithm. We are literally seeing a rise of an oligarchy, or perhaps were seeing the effects of having one for years.

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Censorship

These were just the recent changes, the Guardian released an article back in December of 2023 that talks about how European moderators had a hard time understanding Arabic/Hebrew videos so they had a button they would press which would (assumably) send the videos to another moderator who understood the videos and would deal with it. However that button’s been removed so it's harder, now, for moderators to moderate content. Thus moderators now “have to” use visual cues to discern whether or not the content regarding the Israel-Hamas War violates content or not.

One moderator said that since they can’t understand what’s being said they can’t tell who the good or bad guys are which makes moderating content harder. And this was going on in 2023.

As of recently many videos regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict/Palestinian [censored] are being censored or removed from people’s For You pages. So, the only way you could see Pro-Palestine content is by clicking on a creator’s profile since it won’t hit the algorithm. Other instances, it was shadow banned, which according to Cambridge Dictionary is, "... if a social media company shadow bans someone’s posts, it limits who can see them, usually without the person who has published them knowing." It should be noted that it is also, now, a lot harder to criticize Israel.

Due to these recent changes, many political commentators and even people who generally support Palestine will get demonetized and silenced. Vice versa, people who heavily support the g#n0cide's content will be more prominent on the platform.

So, the classic scenario of good people being silenced by evil has once again happened. It was there when Jewish people were attacked by Nazis, it was there when Natives were exiled from the homeland, and it's here now with the Palestinians. We often look back at history and think how can so many people tolerate this?

Well, we're living in a moment where we have the power, to an extent, to support Palestinians so why don't we? And how can we?

So What Can We Do About It?

This is a clear sign of freedom of speech being attacked and the only way we go against oppression is with justice and peace. As of now, TikTok users hold the most power. They can limit Israel's control over social media and send a message to the world: we're refusing to participate in this g#n0cide. All of this can be demonstrated with a simple click of a button that deletes TikTok.

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