DOJ Turns To Chinese Scare Tactics In TikTok Lawsuit

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging that the social media app is illegally collecting children’s data. If they were actually concerned about data theft, they’d be suing EVERY social media website. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against TikTok alleging that social media app is illegally collecting children's data. If they were actually concerned about the data theft, they'd be suing every social media website, ties into the last story we just did. This is the mean Chinese, we gotta do something. It's all been going on for so long, Meta, everybody's been doing exact same things, but it's easier to do when it's the Chinese, right?
Yeah. Because there you have the bad guys, and the bad guys are not some guy in a corner office down in Silicon Valley. The bad guys are over there in red China. They want to get you, they want to take your data. They want to turn us all into communists. These are all talking points, by the way, we have heard over the last few years about China.
You think there might, I mean, the Department of Justice is all over this.
Right.
They've come alive, right?
They really have. This will be one where they don't try to settle it. They want to get these SOBs. But the point is, did TikTok violate the agreement to not steal data?
Yes.
Seems pretty obvious.
They did.
Yes, they did. But you cannot, this is a selective prosecution. That is what this is.
There is no question.
The political persecution that everybody talks about. This is it because you could go after Google, you could go after Meta and Facebook. You could go after Instagram, even before Facebook bought 'em, all of these other sites, all of these apps. Amazon, of course, with the data theft, you could go on and on with pretty much any website anybody's ever visited, collecting and selling your data. And they only pick TikTok. That is it. We gotta go after them because they're an easy enemy, like you said, because we connect 'em to China. Everybody's afraid of China right now. We got this in the bag, the DOJ says.
Yeah. There's another point to this though and it's kind of real nuance. The DOJ, I'm assuming they're thinking this. Hell, I don't know what they think half the time. But if the DOJ looked at this in kind of a macro way, the discovery that takes place in this case, you understand, this discovery could go on for a long time. They could find documents, they could take depositions, they could find things that lead to far more than this. It could mean corporate espionage. It could mean international espionage. My guess, if somebody with a brain is driving this, they're using that as the vehicle. We do it all the time. We'll bring in a company and we'll say, okay, with this company, we're able to find out the bigger picture of what your industry is all about, you see. That's what we do on, think about, it's what we did on opioids. We did it on PFAS. We do it, it's a very common approach. And so the Department of Justice has an opportunity here. They want to talk about, well, there's all of this espionage going on. They should be able to find out. I mean, there's stuff that they can find out that ordinarily they would not be able to know. Now, the question is, will they do that? Ah, probably not. They'll settle. They'll settle for a little, some little bit of money. At the same time, these folks aren't killing people like Boeing did. Right? How much did they settle for Boeing?
Oh God. I forget the number off the top of my head. But it was pathetic.
It was chump change. Right. These are people who killed hundreds and hundreds of people and they took the money here. I'd be interested to know what they think the value of this is when they settle because probably they will settle it, you know.
Well, and another thing it does too, is it encourages TikTok, okay, well, with this and the legislation that they passed this year, now we've gotta sell. And that's of course, I think what the federal government wants to do. And then their wealthy Silicon Valley backers.

[KristiWilson-nc]

I really hope when we win, Kamala gets rid of Garland, he needs to go

[vic]

Like other social media companies *don't* do this. *Actual* selective, political prosecution.

[monsterglo]

Old Don tried banning Tik Tok in July, 2020, I remember it so well because I was recovering from 3 months of hospitalization due to his mishandling of COVID! 💙

[TheOfficialZombieWhisperer]

I have a child in Shanghai China and OMG the Chinese and Russian propaganda 🥺

[Missunderstood]

Tiktoks quality competition that is doing a lot better than certain other sites. So instead of those other established sites here improving and offering quality social media, (you know, competing)and opening the field a tiny bit for competition- free enterprise, they are "lobbying" the government to take it over, take it out, or shut it down. We don't have a free enterprise system. We have a 1% controlled market of monopolies.

[halfdeadedlifereturningwit]

Some rich Republican will end up buying it.

[zeusathena]

Other countries have laws that prevent companies from doing this, & they can be held accountable. Yet Congress, & the President doesn't want to deal with the real issue. No company should be able to do this.

[GravesRWFiA]

the fact china won't allow tik-tok in their own country but DEMANDS it be allowed elsewhere is the point of hypocrisy

[johnnyfreedom]

This could very well be the test case guys, just to see if we can be successful! Corporate Republicans are so terrified because Kamala will be going after monopolies like this! Let's let this one play out guys! I am now have faith in the Democrats again!

[davidlosse]

The real issue is young people get their news from Tik Tok and they can't control what narrative is spoken about on Tik Tok.

[khon]

china has one of the strictest regulation in there country, it's banned in india

[johnhodgson]

TikTok copies and collect Biometric Data of all users. This is used as security pass codes for banking and other online activities "Speech, for instance, is automatically transcribed to generate automatic captions for video. But TikTok's recently updated privacy policy needs our attention. It now enables TikTok to collect biometric data in the form of “faceprints and voiceprints” from its users in the US." This is sent to China, you gonna argue that 'hey tiktok doesn't do that anymore' In My Opinion, TikTok is still shipping this data to China.

[lilithleon]

I’m shocked Boeing (idk how it’s spelled) isn’t being charge for the astronauts stuck in space due to faulty piece

[mannys]

saying that meta does it as well doesn't really make it okay... nor does it make me feel any better that even if we did get decent data protection laws, it wont mean squat to a foreign company... I could care less if it was tiktok or facebook... saving a consumers sensitive information is never okay.. also from my understanding tik tok new terms allow them to keep a user's biometric data... scary thought with how easy it is to use an ai trained software to mimic voices, faces, prints, etc.