TikTok Removal bills updates
Your source for all things possible TikTok removal
Today’s newsletter will be discussing
The upcoming house hearing where TikTok CEO will be testifying
Best practices for posting about the possible removal
My concerns about Clapper as an alternative
Let’s get started!
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is testifying in front of the House Energy and Commerce committee. I cannot find the bill that this hearing corresponds to. There are many bills to “ban” the app, but this is the only one that was referred to the House Energy and Commerce committee. There are zero cosponsors, and the bill was introduced on February 2, 2023 which is after the announcement that Chew would testify, which CNN had as early as January 30, 2023.
The hearing is on Thursday March 23 at 10am ET. Here’s the most important part; It is both open to the public and will be streamed online. I am on the west coast so it will be 7am for me and I will not be awake. Hopefully, someone will record it so those of us who are unable to attend can watch it. It’s possible it will be available on YouTube later, but you never know for sure.
If you are in the DC area and can attend in person please consider doing so. If not and you are awake and available, please watch the live stream. Let’s get so many people watching that they have to take notice!
Onto the next order of business, how we discuss this.
To start off with, only one of these bills has the Biden administration and bipartisan support. That is the so-called RESTRICT ACT, s686. All other bills do not have bipartisan support and most don’t have any support at all. Don’t get distracted by these other bills, for the time being. If they ever do become important to be aware of, I will be the first to let you know.
I use “so-called” because that’s not the name of the bill. Now, let’s not jump to conspiracy theories, I know it’s really easy to do, but it’s not helpful. It is possible that Mark Warner, who introduced the bill, had been calling it the RESTRICT ACT before it was written. Just because we have been misled does not mean it was intentional, by him, by the journalists, well, that’s a different story.
As you probably know by now, if you want to find out any information about the actual bill and not just articles written by journalists, you need to look up s686 or “A bill to authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes.” Yes it’s a mouthful, but that is the official bill title. Those are the only two ways you will find accurate information about the bill.
So coming back to how we discuss this, if you do call it the RESTRICT ACT, use “so-called” and make sure to mention s686, or else you and your audience will not be able to find accurate information. This also means that if you see misinformation from another creator, please correct it in the comments. Comment the bill number and that RESTRICT act isn’t the official name of the bill. Also, do the same if you are trying to get a creator to post about this who isn’t already at all.
Comment about the hearing on every single post you see. Let’s get as many eyes on it as possible! And feel free to direct them to my page, and specifically my Substack to get all the info we currently have.
Make sure people know about the petition. As of my writing this, 104 people have signed. I hope by the time you see this, it’s already way more.
Here’s another big piece of misinformation. It’s not a ban. You can’t remove an app from someone’s phone. There are three things the government can do in order of likelihood.
Remove the app from the app and play stores. This means if you have the app already downloaded, it will be a slow death. You won’t be able to update the app so it will get slower and slower and at some point, stop completely.
The US government could do what the Indian government did when they “banned” the app. They forced internet providers to block the app entirely, so it literally just stopped being available to open one day.
This has never been done before for an app with this many users, but the US government could make it a criminal offense to use the app and fine anyone who does so. I know the word criminal is scary, but I can almost guarantee it would just be a fine. And, given the fact that so many people are on TikTok I can’t imagine they would possibly go this route
In all these cases a VPN could potentially get you around these issues, but that would probably end up just being a temporary fix. For more detailed info on these possibilities, check out this NBC article.
So to recap, when commenting or posting about the “ban” make sure to mention:
The hearing and that it’s open to the public,
s686 is the bill number.
That the “RESTRICT ACT” is not the official title
That a “ban” does not mean a physical removal of the app from our phones and likely just means it dies a slow death
The bill is still in committee and has been there since the day it was introduced on March 7, 2023
Finally, Clapper.
I was invited to be a verified creator on Clapper in 2022. I made an account and scrolled for approximately 10 minutes. What I saw was mostly middle-age men sexually harassing women. I deleted the account I had created then and there.
Clapper was created as an alternative to TikTok for Baby Boomers, Gen X and older Millenials by Edison Chen. It’s based out of Texas, which is everyone’s big issue with Oracle buying TikTok.
My biggest issue is that as much as we hate TikTok community guidelines, they are the reason we think the app is safer than alternatives like Twitter.
Chen has specifically said that the goal of Clapper is basically social media without moderation. People that don’t agree with you can very easily use your video to make their point. This Glamour article breaks it down quite nicely, though doesn’t mention it as a negative.
The app encourages users to build up their own following and be an 'opinion leader' and has a 'Clapback' feature, which lets users simply express their opinion and easily view people’s opinion with support or opposition.
YIKES!
While this can be used as a positive we know all the hate-filled bigots who will use it to make the app incredibly unsafe.
Here’s my thoughts. I don’t think we should be looking for a US alternative. Mark Warner specifically mentioned countries like Canada or India, Europe would also be a great option, though their copyright law is a lot stricter than ours, which means it will be harder to show movies, tv, music etc.
If we find an app outside of this country, we don’t have to be worried if it will give more support to the right than the left, most of our allies have left-leaning politics overall, and even the right political parties are further left than US Democrats. For instance, if we found an app based in Germany, nothing positive about Nazis would be allowed on the platform.
I have not done enough research into what alternatives are available, but, based on my own experience Clapper is not safe for most of our content.
So there's the update.
For the previous update you can check out my other newsletters, or just click here.
As I’ve said before, this isn’t a lost cause, we just have to contact our reps, only post accurate information and FIGHT.
We got this!
I refuse to put my content behind a paywall because I know how aggravating it is when important info is inaccessible. Without accessible information, we can’t stay informed. So if you are able, please donate so I can keep making this content.
One final thing, I’m part of this Patreon-like start-up for organizations. It’s a great way to start your activist journey. You donate any amount, I do mean any, to the causes that are important to me, from Ukraine to queer rights to disabled rights, you know my issues. I’ve found the organizations so you don’t have to.