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President Biden signed a bill into law banning TikTok nationwide unless the Chinese company that owns it, ByteDance, sells its stake in the app within a year. What do you think?
“And with that, Chinese influence over our economy comes to an end.”
Rowena Marriott, Topiary Clipper
“But I haven’t finished radicalizing!”
Lochlan Robin, Tanning Bed Technician
“Now the youth will return to the true center of taste and style: Paris, France.”
Asma Harding, Weight Estimator
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The U.S. Senate passed the TikTok bill on Tuesday evening in a vote of 79-18. The bill, which bans TikTok unless Bytedance sells it to a U.S. owner, flew through Congress this week as part of a broader package to provide $90 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. President Joe Biden said in a statement following the Senate vote that he would sign the package as soon as Wednesday, clearing the last hurdle before the TikTok divest-or-ban bill becomes law.
“We’ve learned in recent years that democracy is a fragile and precious thing,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor Tuesday. “It will not survive the threats of this century – the new threats – if we aren’t willing to do what it takes to defend it.”
TikTok is prepared to wage a legal battle against the U.S. government over the so-called ban, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. The social media company claims the so-called TikTok ban is “a clear violation” of the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s 170 million American users. A court case of this kind is unprecedented and could go up to the Supreme Court.
TikTok did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
The “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” also known as the TikTok bill, grants the White House new privileges to crack down on apps it determines to be a national security threat. The bill gives U.S. presidents the power to label apps as “foreign adversary-controlled applications” and force them to be sold to a U.S. owner within 270 days, though Biden can extend this to 360 days (a previous version only provided 180 days). If no sale occurs, the apps will be banned from app stores and blocked by internet service providers in the United States.
TikTok has long denied that it shares any data with the Chinese government. However, Senators received classified briefings on TikTok from national security officials in March, which reportedly revealed the app’s “shocking” spy capabilities. Senators told Axios that TikTok could be used to tap the microphone on users’ devices, and even determine what users are doing on other apps. That said, none of this evidence has been made public
A previous version of this bill swiftly passed through the House in March but stalled in the Senate for more than a month. By tying the TikTok bill to a crucial foreign aid package, lawmakers were able to nearly ensure it would be taken up by the Senate.
One concern tech lawyers have raised about the TikTok bill is that it could ban apps other than TikTok. The bill features vague definitions of what constitutes “foreign adversary-controlled applications,” and gives the president a near unchecked power to make such a categorization.
As President Biden seems poised to sign the TikTok bill into law, former President Donald Trump has flipped his stance on the social media app. Trump now supports TikTok’s existence, posting on Truth Social Monday that “Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok.” Trump was the first to attempt a TikTok ban in 2020 when he signed an executive order that was later rejected by a federal court.
Trump’s reversal, which seems contradictory, is likely to curry favor with younger voters. Despite the overwhelming support in Congress, a U.S. TikTok ban is not popular with voters. Just 38% of U.S. adults say they would support a TikTok ban, according to the Pew Research Center. If Biden signs the TikTok bill, he’ll appear strong against China, but could potentially lose important swing voters.
TikTok says this bill would “trample” free speech in America, an increasingly popular claim among social media apps. Elon Musk’s X and Trump’s Truth Social make similar First Amendment arguments for their app’s controversial content. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is going in the other direction. Facebook, Threads, and Instagram how vowed not to prioritize news on their social media sites, making duller apps in exchange for less controversy.
TikTok has fought tooth and nail to avoid a U.S. ban under Bytedance’s ownership. The app sent push notifications to millions of American users asking them to call their local congress member. Lawmakers’ offices were flooded with phone calls later that day. TikTok and Bytedance also reportedly spent over $7 million lobbying in Congress this year to fight the potential ban. Those attempts were unsuccessful, so now TikTok is poised to take this battle to court.
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Maxwell Zeff
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It’s going to be a little harder to find porn in the Lone Star State. Pornhub is no longer available to Texas residents thanks to a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general.
Horny Texans saw a very unsexy message when visiting the previously mentioned porn sites on Thursday.
“As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the message reads. “Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas.”
Pornhub’s sexy step-sister sites Redtube, Brazzers, and YouPorn are also showing the same message.
Back in February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, for failing to enforce the state’s age verification law. The legislation went into effect last September and requires adult sites like Pornhub to obtain digital identification for users verifying they are of legal age to view porn. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in favor of Texas ruling that the state law doesn’t violate the First Amendment.
Aylo says it’s not finished in its legal battle for the right of every red-blooded adult American to access hardcore porn.
“This is not the end,” said Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community for Aylo, in an emailed statement Thursday. “We are reviewing options and consulting with our legal team. We will continue to fight for our industry and the performers that legally earn a living, and we will continue to appeal through all available judicial recourse to recognize that this law is unconstitutional.”
Texas is part of the growing number of states that are finding the largest porn sites are no longer interested in sticking around. Montana and North Carolina saw their access to Pornhub and its sister sites go away at the beginning of the year. Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, Louisiana, and Virginia have also either lost access or will lose access due to their own age verification laws. The governor of Indiana signed his state’s age verification law on Wednesday.
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Oscar Gonzalez
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Donald Trump appeared to come out in defense of TikTok, the social media platform facing a potential ban by Congress, in a post late Thursday on his social media platform Truth Social—the same platform that experienced a widespread outage as the former president attempted to live-tweet President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech.
“If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!” Trump wrote on Thursday night.
It’s unclear why Trump called Facebook an “enemy of the people,” a phrase that he usually saves for mainstream media outlets not named Fox News. And it doesn’t appear Trump has ever used the nickname “Zuckerschmuck” for Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg before, which, according to a simple Google search, looks like the name of a real online store centered around diabetes.
Trump’s opposition to a TikTok ban would be a reversal of policy for the former president, who signed an executive order in the summer of 2020 that would’ve forced TikTok’s parent company in China, ByteDance, to completely divest of the social media site or face a ban on U.S. soil.
Trump’s executive order, which was held up in federal court before being reversed when Biden took office in 2021, called TikTok’s existence a “national emergency” for the U.S. that could threaten the country’s security and economy.
“This mobile application may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus,” Trump’s executive order read in a line that’s particularly ironic, given Trump’s embrace of many such conspiracy theories.
The executive order also featured claims of censorship on TikTok by the Chinese Communist Party, especially around, “protests in Hong Kong and China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.” Because who doesn’t love “Muslim minorities” more than Trump, right?
Why is Trump reversing course on TikTok? Who knows why Trump does anything? Maybe he’s making the calculation that it helps his own social media platform in some way. Or maybe it’s because Trump reportedly saw at least $5.5 million flowing to his businesses from Chinese sources while he was president. Could it have anything to do with the fact that Republican mega-donor Jeff Yass, a billionaire with a big investment in ByteDance, recently had a friendly phone call with Trump, according to Politico?
Better yet, maybe Trump wants to delay a ban until he hypothetically returns to the White House, a tactic he’s already deployed to sink a bipartisan immigration reform deal because he wants to campaign on the issue of a “broken border.” It really could be anything, as far as we know.
But Congress is moving ahead with a potential ban on TikTok, with a bipartisan bill expected to make its way to the House for a vote very soon. The bill already cleared a House committee in a unanimous vote of 50-0. Much like Trump’s original executive order, the bill would force ByteDance to sell the platform and, if the company refused, would allow Congress to ban the site altogether.
The bill has mobilized some of TikTok’s estimated 150 million American users, with Congressional offices reportedly getting flooded on Thursday by calls imploring members of Congress not to ban the app. TikTok even alerted users in the U.S. about the potential ban on Thursday, a move that made politicians quite angry.
President Biden has come out in support of the effort by Congress to get ByteDance to divest and the White House has claimed the president only killed Trump’s executive order to conduct its own security review while it was tied up in federal court. But it will be interesting to see if the courts agree that Congress has the right to ban TikTok, a move that the company says conflicts with the free speech rights of Americans.
“This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs,” a TikTok spokesperson told Gizmodo on Thursday.
The House vote hasn’t been scheduled yet, but it sure seems like we’re going to find out sooner rather than later if TikTok has a future in the U.S. Incredibly, Trump wants TikTok to be allowed to continue as usual. At least for now.
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Matt Novak
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The Supreme Court of Korea has ruled that a South Korean man must serve one year and six months in prison after he refused the country’s mandatory military service. He had argued he was a conscientious objector, but a lower court dismissed this partially because he loves playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
Released in 2017, PUBG was one of the first and most popular battle royale shooters around. It still holds the record for most concurrent players on Steam at over 3 million. (Not even the recent mega-hit Palworld could top that number.) While other games—like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone—have usurped its status as the top battle royale title, it still regularly appears on Steam’s most-played games list and still has a very large community. That includes one man in South Korea who looking to avoid mandatory military service.
In November 2018, an unnamed South Korean man was charged with violating the nation’s Military Service Act, which compels all able-bodied men in the country to serve in the military for at least 18 months. As reported by The Korea Herald (and spotted by Gamesradar) the man initially told the court he refused to enlist based on his personal beliefs against war.
In the verdict handed down in 2018—and upheld by the Supreme Court on February 4—the court said the defendant had “not put any effort into spreading or realizing what he says is his ideological belief.” The court also pointed to the man’s love of PUBG as further evidence he wasn’t against war and violence.
“The defendant admitted that he frequently enjoyed playing the game ‘Battlegrounds,’ which is about killing characters with guns in a virtual reality,” the court added, as reported by The Korea Herald. “The video game is different from reality. But the fact that the defendant—who says he is rejecting military service based on his beliefs to oppose violence and war—enjoys such games makes the court question whether his conscientious objection is authentic.”
According to investigators, he refused to join the military due to “rampant unfair orders” and because it regularly disregards human rights. The court disagreed and now the Supreme Court of Korea has confirmed the original ruling. The defendant will now be forced to serve 18 months in prison—the same amount of time he would have had to serve in the military.
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Zack Zwiezen
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It shouldn’t be surprising in 2023 that a lot of people watch porn involving video game characters, but exactly who tops the list and why might indeed be unexpected.
It’s the end of the year, which means companies and websites around the internet are releasing tons of data on what people played, read, listened to, and more. These yearly wrap-ups have become one of my favorite parts of December as I love looking through all the data they reveal. And perhaps there’s no data more interesting than what human beings around the world are getting off on. According to at least one popular porn site, a lot of you were into Chun-Li—but not the version from Street Fighter.
Earlier this month, Pornhub released its annual (and very detailed) round-up of what kind of content was the most popular and most sought after on its massively successful site. In all this data, as has been the case for the last few years, is a large section dedicated to video games. Like last year, Fortnite was at the top of the list with Overwatch in second. This time around though, Genshin Impact slipped out of the top three and was replaced by Minecraft.
Further data provided by Pornhub revealed which specific video game characters people were searching for the most in 2023. Chun-Li topped the list, overtaking names like Tifa from Final Fantasy and Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. But weirdly, according to Pornhub’s data, most people were looking for Chun-Li from Fortnite, not Street Fighter, the series she first appeared in. Though Ryu and Chun-Li were added to Epic’s popular battle royale in 2021, it’s still kind of weird.
To get this data, Pornhub says it collected searches that included a character name and a video game title. This was done “to avoid counting searches for pornstars who may have similar names.”
Anyway, here’s the top ten list of most searched characters on Pornhub.
Try not to think too much about Sonic ranking so high or slip into a daydream where you’re in a room of Nintendo execs when they see that Mario cracked the top of the list.
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Zack Zwiezen
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