Online life has âbeen taken over by the right wing.â
By Anna Merlan
Senior Reporter
Mother Jones
TikTok very briefly died in the United States before being reborn some 12 hours later, bearing a jaunty new banner.
âAs a result of President Trumpâs efforts,â it read, in part, âTikTok is back in the U.S.â
Trump was not yet president on Sunday, when TikTok began restoring U.S. access despite a Supreme Court ruling Friday upholding a law meant to ban it. But the deeper message was unmistakable: the Chinese-owned company ByteDance and its CEO Shou Zi Chew would do anything to placate Trump and keep its most profitable app online for American users. Trump also said on Sunday that heâd issue an executive order delaying the implementation of TikTokâs ban in the U.S.
As many pointed out, it was a long way from 2020, when Trump vowed to ban the app âimmediatelyâ as a threat to national security. On TruthSocial, Trump even suggested a deal to keep TikTok online that would involve the U.S. gaining âa 50% joint ownershipâ position. TikTok hasnât yet responded to idea, but the Chinese government has signaled it wouldnât object.
A day after the appâs American resurrection, Chew came to Washington for Trumpâs inauguration, along with two other social media giants, Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, and Metaâs Mark Zuckerberg. Also present was Amazonâs Jeff Bezos, OpenAIâs Sam Altman, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Appleâs Tim Cook. Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster in the world and a booster of both Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was also in the room.
All of this, of course, points to one simple fact: the total consolidation of the biggest tech and social media companies behind the new president. âWhat this effectively means is that every social media platform, mass social media platform in the United States, has been taken over by the right wing,â Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said in a Sunday video postedâironically, but unavoidablyâto Meta-owned Instagram.