Yesterday, Congress approved a bill that could ban TikTok in the United States. 710 WOR host Mark Simone believes he knows why the recent push has gotten so much support.
While discussing the legislation Thursday, the New York-based host argued that the platform’s lack of censorship has made it a prime target from those on the other side of the political aisle.
“I know it’s kind of silly, stupid, but believe it or not, all over TikTok, there’s a lot of political discussion. And unlike Facebook and Instagram, and even Twitter…They don’t censor conservatives on TikTok,” said Simone. “They don’t shadowban them or throttle them down. It’s total free speech, politically. So that’s why Donald Trump and others have now flip-flopped on this and don’t want to shut down TikTok.”
197 Republican representatives voted in favor of the bill, compared to 155 Democrats. Only 15 Republicans opposed the bill, while 50 Democrats voted against it.
Mark Simone continued by noting that forcing ByteDance, the parent company of the social media app, to sell could push it into the hands of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who he believes has a history of strong censorship against conservatives.
“The fear is, if you ban it, you give total control of social media to Zuckerberg, who is just legendary for his censorship of conservatives. Now, the other problem is if you forced the sale of TikTok, the most obvious likely buyer would be Facebook and then once again, Zuckerberg has total control of everything,” Simone stated. “Who would you trust more with your data? Communist China or Mark Zuckerberg? It’s quite a toss-up there. I don’t know.”
