“Welcome back! Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
First of all, Donald Trump is not president right now.
He's a private citizen. He does not have access to presidential powers. He does not have the ability to do any of that.
Please understand that TikTok's decision to name Trump in the notification is a choice. They are signaling that they have agreed to privately collaborate with Donald Trump and the Trump administration.
For all of those concerns that people were saying that TikTok is gonna be used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese, understand they're using it as a propaganda tool for the right.
Now, I want you all to put all the pieces together because what this effectively means is that every mass social media platform in the United States has been taken over by the right wing, with the exception of Blue Sky (but Blue Sky is still very small, relatively).
So when I say put the pieces together:
Elon Musk took over Twitter, and there's open reporting that they have artificially manipulated the algorithms to boost right-wing content on X and to amplify harassment.
Then you have Meta. You have Mark Zuckerberg saying that they're basically also bending the knee to Trump with their changes to fact checking, regardless of how effective that was in the first place.
Now TikTok is now saying, “Hey, we are agreeing we will use our push notification system for all 170 million American users to promote Donald Trump.”
Just understand that government announcements like this with companies, they never name politicians — they will usually name law or policy. TikTok is making an explicit agreement to do this.
And if I were a betting person: they probably are making a deal with Donald Trump to not just use these push notifications — they probably would consider algorithmic changes. Which is ironic because at the time when people voted for the TikTok ban, because there was a lot of pro-Palestinian content, that argument was being used as being somehow “anti-American,” which, you know — I guess supporting human rights is somehow bad.
So what does this mean for us?
We are on the eve of an authoritarian administration. This is what 21st century fascism is starting to look like. Republicans model themselves after Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. You can look to Hungary to get a taste of how they will try to control media and companies in the United States. This is a kind of entrée to that.
As far as what we do:
This is a time of experimentation. A lot of people can and will still use platforms, but I also look towards places where you have more ownership and develop your audiences there — like Blue Sky.
More soon,
Alexandria
(bold text as in AOC's original message)
