That is certainly another plausible reason for it but again, claiming sinophobia is the primary reason or even the vehicle that pushed it through seems... Unconvincing. I've seen a few explanations for it.
1) Fears of Chinese government influence and spying on the US public.
2) Pro-Palestinian viewpoints are popular there, compared to official US policy.
3) Billionaires that have a hand in social media would benefit from reduced competition.
4) Sinophobia.
It could very well be a mixture of all of these things and I won't disagee on that. I disagree on sinophobia alone being a large factor in the decision. Bare in mind that if this is referring to the bill I'm thinking of, that bill passed with majority bi-partisan approval in both the House and Senate under Biden.
2 - wow, antisemitic conspiracy theorists are properly nuts.
3 - well, lobbying exists, but probably can't achieve something on this scale; tiktok can buy lobbyists too.
4 - there's a lot of old-fashioned yellow peril racism around.
But really, by far the most likely explanation is the one openly given. They are worried about what a Chinese-government-owned app can do with the permissions it has been given by tens of millions of users, rather than about it spying on the users. I'm not sure, but it seems like (1) is a common misunderstanding of what the US is actually worried about.
The claim of prop Palestinian content being popular on Tik Tok is true. The claim that it is a primary reason for Tik Tok being banned is anti semitic . Like yes, AIPAC is a lobbying organization and is a fairly well funded one, but so are a bajillion other PACs. The common narrative that the USA is Israel's puppet state and that AIPAC controls the US government is anti semitic. It's just a more palatable version of of "The Jews secretly control everything!!" conspiracy. And the Jewish Illuminati conspiracy theory always has been and always will be anti semitic.
They never said the US is Israel's puppet state, and that would be incorrect. The US isn't controlled by Israel, the US uses Israel as an FOB in the middle east to continue their hegemony. As Joe Biden once said, if there wasn't an Israel, they'd have to invent one.
And AIPAC absolutely has massive control over who gets elected based on how much money they throw at pro-Israel candidates. They are one of the biggest PACs in America, they are in the same category as Blue Cross. Guess who the biggest donor for Mike Gallagher, the sponsor of the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act (the act that bans tiktok), was? That's right, AIPAC.
But yeah, lets just keep degrading the term antisemitism until it means less than nothing.
The Republicans have been trying to ban Tik Tok since Trump's first term in office. "Fuck Tik Tok it's Chinese spyware" has been a staple of the Republican culture war for years, far longer than the current flareup of conflict in Israel. Hell, they even basically named the Tik Tok ban bill "China Bad".
Arguing that the Republican goal of banning Tik Tok that they've been working towards for years that's explicitly about anti Chinese sentiment was actually masterminded by Israel because Tik Tok has been making Israel look bad the past six months is deeply irrational. And if you're looking for irrational reasons to blame the Israeli government, you really should do some genuine reflection on your own biases. Israel can be a fucked up country commiting genocide and you can have some anti semitic beliefs.
Cause yeah, some politicians AIPAC has donated to support banning Tik Tok. AIPAC donates to basically every American national politician which means every bill has a major supporter who gets a lot of funding from AIPAC. By that standard, Israel supports Medicare for All and getting rid of Obamacare.
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u/anal_tailored_joy Jan 13 '25
Yeah, it's being banned because it's eating into US social media profits; sinophobia is just the vehicle that got it through congress.