TikTok ban update 3/28/23

Breathe, before reading this, just breathe.

Either tomorrow or Thursday, Josh Hawley is introducing a unanimous consent vote to ban TikTok. This means that if all 100 senators agree, TikTok will be banned, probably within a month, at a guess. Punchbowl News is the original source, but they are entirely behind a paywall, so unfortunately we have to settle for a Washington Examiner article. You can read the article, or watch it in my recent TikTok.

Unanimous consent agreements happen all the time, but never for something this divisive. Most likely, Hawley is just trying to embarrass Democrats. But it is important not to be complacent, call your senators, both of them, at all their offices, as soon as you see this. This will be a voicemail, so feel free to write a detailed script. I believe voicemails can be a minute or so, some less, some more, so keep that in mind. This isn’t very long.

For Democrats make sure to message that you are confident we will lose in 2024 if TikTok is banned with this agreement. For republicans, mention all the small businesses that will lose their income, also that if we were to ban TikTok it would make us no different than our adversaries.

Secondly, as far as the Restrict Act is concerned, Senators Lindsey Graham(R-SC) and Mark Kelly(D-AZ) both added their names as cosponsors today. That is the only change. Though many creators are starting to read the bill.

Here’s your reminder about how bills work:

Just because a bill is in committee and it has a lot of cosponsors does not mean it will go to Biden’s desk looking like it does. This is where calling our reps comes in. The more we talk to them and the more specific concerns we have, the more likely they will ask for an amendment based on what we say. We don’t want them to pass the bill at all, but we also want several things amended, like how overarching the bill is or how it seems to pretty much give free rein to the government.

Here’s the thing though, reading a bill is an art form. As in, everyone reads it differently. So, don’t take one creator’s word as fact. Everyone is going to read it with their own confirmation bias in mind and you want to be aware of as many of those points of view as possible.

Here’s a very conservative publication called Out Kick that has an article about the bill that I…fully agree with. If you have a conservative member of congress, give some of these talking points.

The final thing I want to mention: Meta hasn’t just been lobbying at federal level. Aurora, CO city council just agreed to ban the app on all city issued devices and city owned wifi. Here is my TikTok on that. And here’s the article announcing that the ban was enacted today.

We have to contact all our representatives. From Biden all the way down to our city council member.

Oh and one more thing, why aren’t we protesting in the streets? We need to be making more noise than we are just being online. We need to start talking seriously about how to organize in person.

We got this, but only if we fight!

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