#chew shou zi

[matriokshya]

The way everyone else on tiktok during the very short “tiktok ban” were talking about how peaceful and non toxic everything is and how all the bots and weird Jesus comments suddenly disappeared when the Americans were gone. And now they’re back and people are going “oh… uh welcome back” “they’re back ffs” is kinda funny. Gonna delete tiktok though cause we know they’re in trump’s pockets now with all the ass kissing announcements they’re putting out. He now has a convenient propaganda machine to be used on the addicted gen z and gen alpha.

[lucasamandi]

TikTok-Toe... Trump?

Destino avverso per 12 ore, caro #TikTok… questo è quanto. Poi la bella figura del neo-presidente rieletto degli USA. Perché, dite? Perché Donald Trump – o come piace chiamarlo agli estimatori hispanohablantes: Don Trampa – ha decretato dall’alto del proprio trono che l’annosa questione sarà rimandata di… qualche settimana. L’ultimo favore fatto da Joe Biden al nuovo presidente è stato quello di…

[isabela-merceds]

not a singaporean ceo with his tongue up trumps asshole. i mean cmon.

[justasingaporegirl]

𝒮𝑒𝓃𝒶𝓉𝑜𝓇 👏 𝐼'𝓂 👏 𝒮𝒾𝓃𝑔𝒶𝓅𝑜𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓃👏

[timothy-kang]

News/Chew Shou Zi—1 Feb. 2024

On January 31, Chew Shou Zi, the Singaporean CEO of TikTok, attended a hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington. The hearing was centered around two main issues. The first issue was related to the adequacy of child protection measures in th

On January 31, Chew Shou Zi, the Singaporean CEO of TikTok, attended a hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington. The hearing was centered around two main issues. The first issue was related to the adequacy of child protection measures in the platform due to the presence of child sexual abuse material. Additionally, it was noted that Hong Kong and Tibet were less mentioned on TikTok…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lisa Needham at Public Notice:

You’re forgiven for forgetting about TikTok for the last couple of days, what with the horrorshow avalanche of executive orders and gleeful deployment of Nazi salutes (plural!) from the world’s richest man. Nonetheless, TikTok is ostensibly banned in the United States as Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly voted only nine months ago to outlaw the app unless its parent company, ByteDance, agreed to sell it. The US Supreme Court even upheld the law just last week. However, TikTok lives, thanks to the whims of Donald Trump, the same person who, in August 2020, issued an executive order giving ByteDance 45 days to sell the app or see it banned. Trump has been extremely transparent that he flip-flopped on TikTok because the app helped him win the election last year, in part because it became a hotbed for criticism of Biden’s support for Israel. “We won young people and I think that's a big credit to TikTok,” Trump told Newsmax earlier this month (even though he in fact lost the youth vote). “So I'm not opposed to TikTok ... I had a very good experience with TikTok." Lost in the current discourse about TikTok is an important conversation about whether it violates the First Amendment to ban a social media app based on national security concerns about its Chinese-owned parent company. Also lost is a debate about whether it’s fair to single out TikTok over worries about user privacy, data harvesting, and manipulative algorithms when such issues are common to all social media platforms. There’s also a discussion to be had about whether singling out TikTok is racist — though there’s a good argument it is. Instead, what’s happening here is the creeping oligarchy of companies and capital aligning around an authoritarian president, with everyone fully aware that sucking up to Trump personally, ideally along with staggering sums of cash, is the only way to evade scrutiny.

[...]

The art of the deal

To be scrupulously fair to Trump, he isn’t the only person who reversed course on TikTok. Once it was clear that the public opposed the ban and that the Supreme Court might not step in to save legislators from themselves, the Biden administration spent last week trying to figure out how to keep TikTok alive. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Markey introduced legislation to delay by 270 days the initial January 19 deadline for TikTok to be sold, despite having voted for the ban in the first place. The problem these efforts faced, however, is that TikTok wasn’t interested in working with the Biden administration or Senate Democrats to fix the problem. And why would they be, when Democrats are hobbled by a persistent inclination to actually follow laws rather than treat everything as an episode of The Apprentice, where flattering Trump as a master dealmaker is all that matters?

It’s exactly the latter approach that TikTok took. The ban required Google and Apple to remove it from their app stores or face steep fines for each user who downloaded the app. What it did not do, however, was penalize anyone who already had the app on their phone or accessed TikTok on the web. So the real financial peril would initially fall on Google and Apple if they kept the app available. After the Supreme Court decision last week, the Biden administration suggested it would not penalize those companies for continuing to host the app, a move TikTok said didn’t provide them enough “necessary clarity and assurance,” and they would therefore shut down in the United States on January 19. Thus began the public kayfabe of TikTok pretending that only Trump could fix it, knowing full well that he would happily go along. So the app went abruptly, ostentatiously dark on the evening of the January 18, only to pop back up some 12 hours later on January 19 with a gushing message to Trump: “We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.”

One might note, of course, that Trump was not president on January 19. One might also note that what Trump did promise — basically, that he would not enforce a law passed by Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court — is not functionally any different than what Biden or Markey were trying to offer, albeit without a demand the company show them personal fealty. But if TikTok had simply left the lights on for those 12 hours and waited for the incoming administration to decide how to enforce the ban, it would have missed the opportunity to let Trump be the savior who brought the app back from the dead. And the one thing social media companies have learned about Trump is that their success will rise and fall with his impulses.

When social media platforms let Trump and his hangers-on say and do whatever they like, he loves them. Once X was purchased by president-unelect Elon Musk, it became transformed into a MAGA megaphone and no longer faces scrutiny from Trump. That’s a change from January 2021, when Trump complained that then-Twitter was “not about FREE SPEECH” after it banned his account following the insurrection. Though Meta didn’t change hands, it still transformed — or more accurately, perhaps, deformed — to meet the new Trump era. CEO Mark Zuckerberg got rid of third-party fact-checking on Facebook, calling it “politically biased,” and revised its hateful speech policy to explicitly allow for attacks on trans people. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to the inauguration, went to church with Trump Monday morning, and hosted a reception Monday night. For the inauguration itself, Zuckerberg, along with Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Google head Sundar Pichai, was basically in the front row. Nothing says “incipient oligarchy” like an inauguration dominated by the richest men in the world, private citizens all.

TikTok’s cozying up to Donald Trump is a bad thing.

[fleabagspurplewife]

please do not fall for this tiktok propaganda.

Shou Zi Chew is a sellout and is furthering trumps campaign. do u think it’s a coincidence that it was restored less than 24 hours after it was taken down? he is trying to get the support of gen z. do not give in.

trump does not give a shit about you or tiktok. the only thing he cares about is getting as many people behind him as possible and he will do anything to get it. he is trying to distract you from all of the horrible things he will do. trump has said he will start ice raids on DAY ONE.

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS

[pythoness-at-delphi]

I need to say this.

feeling so physically and mentally sick about the Tiktok ban and what it really means for the political state of the usa. it doesn’t matter if you never used it for whatever reason but it needs to be known that tiktok wasn’t “just an app” it was a world community, a place where people’s lives could be changed for the better, a way to earn a living for marginalized people outside of the corporate capitalist hellscape. a place you could go to communicate now that third-places have all but been eradicated.

and they took it from us. they took it from us to remove the ability for us to speak and reveal news before the media could twist and distort it to serve their agendas. they took our voice.

they took it from us so they could clear the playing field of competition for meta.

FACT: every politician that voted to ban the clock app had bought stock in meta. look it up in public stock trading rosters. i would even venture to call this insider trading in the most perverse regard. Martha Stewart went to prison for less.

it’s all about MONEY. it’s all about CONTROL. they are afraid of us.

they counted on every US citizen to come crawling back to Zuckerberg’s apps. his restrictive american-made apps that disabled and done away with fact checking entirely. on purpose.

but it backfired. big time. they didn’t count on us waking up. class consciousness has erupted across all sides of the political spectrum. and instead of going back to where the expected a fuck-ton of us fled deliberately to a chinese-made app: Xiaohongshu / 小红书 / REDnote.

this is our boston tea party.

the government told us they banned Tiktok because it was stealing our data maliciously when every other american app has been stealing and peddling our data for years without consequence.

and now the app itself led by Shou Zi Chew is claiming that Trump and his oligarchy of billionaires will save it. this is not fealty but rather a savvy move imho to play on the orange disaster’s pride. they know they can get trump to save it so he can look like the hero to the younger constituents. it’s all a game of political chess and WE are the pieces.

but it’s too late. we woke up. ideas are like fires — once they spark they spread into a fires.

when trump resurrects the app i need you to remember that this was all a long game. this was all their plan.

do. not. forget.

FASCIT COUNTRIES BAN APPS.

CAPITALISM KEEPS US WEAK AND TIRED SO THEY CAN MANIPULATE US.

do.

not.

forget.

[tamtihae-horatio]

You either die a hero

Or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

[crosseyedcricketart]

MET Gala 2024, "The Garden of Time".

[fersauce47]

About the TikTok situation... no way.

So I haven’t posted that much in the past few days, I kind of took a break after the Bo Burnham situation went down. I made the Bo Burnham situation my thing for a few days, and now that’s fallen from its grace and has become old news. If the two masterminds do anything with the channel, (because that’s what they said they’d do) I’ll revisit it. 

On January 10th I said “So I downloaded TikTok the other day. I wanted to check out the hype before it got banned. It’s a fine app, I don’t think it deserves its hate. If it gets banned I’ll probably just go back to YouTube shorts or migrate to Instagram reels. I heard about this “Lemon8” thing as well, which is an option. I'll have more to say about this topic at a later date, that date being January 19th. Since I just joined TikTok, I don't have much knowledge about it. From what I've seen, it's a fine place. I like it. On January 19th I'll talk more about it, but Idk what I'd post.”

Here we are, 10 days later, it’s finally time to address the situation. IT’S BULLSHIT! I may be naïve, I thought the Bo Burnham situation was real, I thought that Tally Hall was gonna return, I thought that the ceiling really did say “gullible” but even I saw this one coming! People are really dumb enough to praise Trump for bringing it back? What the fuck is wrong with them?

Listen, the whole thing was a rug pull. A publicity stunt, if you will. FunkyFrogBait, who I love, was back on my feed this morning talking about “Hi, this is awkward… I guess we’re just back now? This is one of the most obvious publicity stunts I’ve ever seen.” and yeah, no shit! It’s not HARD to believe that there’s a lot of people who didn’t see this coming and thought that trump actually saved that shit, it’s just sad. Mfs are really out here praising Trump for taking Shou up on a win-win situation! He didn’t do shit! That’s like getting robbed, the robber giving your things back, and then expecting you to get on your knees and thank them oh so graciously for being so kind. No! Absolutely not! Bullshit!

12 hours? Are you kidding me? That’s all it lasted? I saw the notice late Saturday night and I said “Damn, I have a lot of things to say on Tumblr later.” and then I went to sleep, and the next day I was playing Pokemon Brilliant Diamond when I got the notification like “Heyyyyy, we’re back” and then I said “DAMN, now I REALLY have a lot to say on Tumblr.” wth? Like damn, at least let the mfs finish their job applications first, why so hasty?

Don’t get me started on all the TikTokers losing their shit. I saw an AngryAsian video about it, and I realized that, yeah, there were probably a lot of people who wanted to go out with a bang. Sucks to be them, when I left YouTube I just yapped for 20 minutes. It must be hard for all the people who confessed their deepest darkest secrets to the rest of the sailors aboard the sinking ship, but they deserved it. 

Everyone has been saying that they have a bad feeling about this, and I wholeheartedly agree. As Bo Burnham puts it, “There it is, again, That Funny Feeling.” I feel that the situation isn’t over, because that couldn’t have been all of it. It just couldn’t. 

No way it’s over and this won’t happen again. No way. The only way I can see this ending is if Shou sold TikTok to Trump or Elon, which I think is very likely. Even then, I’m sure that mfs will find another reason to ban it. I can’t say for sure that Trump won’t come out in a couple days and say “Actually, nvm, fuck your TikTok” and take it away again. 

Thanks to CerosTV for keeping me updated. He’s very helpful, check out his channel on YouTube and his TikTok. I think he has reels as well. 

But TikTok has grown on me. If it isn’t gone by February I’ll start posting. I’ll just be using my Tumblr rants as scripts though, so you wouldn’t be getting anything special at the moment. 

Let’s all hope and pray that this shit doesn’t go south very soon. I have a strong feeling that it will. Let’s just say, a funny feeling. 

[justasingaporegirl]

He has the patience of a saint.

[rizzanon]

HELP im sorry the only thing i thought of was "senator im Singaporean" 😭

- 👻 anon

HAHAH PLSS i don’t blame you tho 😭

[xeyesofstardust]

I feel like this is confirming what I already think is actually happening.

TikTok isn’t actually back, it’s just for right now because we all know Trump isn’t going to honor that promise he allegedly made. He spent 4 years trying to get rid of TikTok.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Bryan Tyler Cohen (01.19.2025):

If you use TikTok, you’ll know that the app shut down last night. By this afternoon, if curiosity, rage, or nostalgia compelled you to re-open the app, you would have received a pop-up notification that read:

How miraculous. Trump swooped in as the white knight to save TikTok. Of course, this would carry a bit more significance if the whole debacle surrounding whether or not to ban TikTok hadn’t been started by…Donald Trump. Yes, the very same white knight. Seems unlikely? I encourage you to marvel at this montage of Trump repeatedly bragging about banning TikTok. In 2020, Trump signed an executive order effectively banning the app in the US. Any transactions between TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, and U.S. citizens were outlawed for national security reasons. In other words, we’ve landed here because Trump was the pilot. When TikTok posts issuing groveling praise for Trump’s leadership or presenting him as some savior, what’s conspicuously absent is a large disclaimer at the bottom, informing consumers that Trump was indeed the source behind the ban. Of course, no one in the media or at TikTok wants to acknowledge that reality, because part of the whole deal with bending the knee is agreeing to abandon, or at least ignore, your own principles in order to adopt whatever fabricated reality the Godking wants you to endorse. Just as Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Elon did, Shou Zi Chew (TikTok’s CEO) is offering Trump the effusive praise he expects. Make no mistake, he is fully on board the circus train. In fact, Shou will attend tonight’s Make America Great Again Victory Rally. Which is a solid reminder that we need to prepare ourselves for the following transaction, on repeat: Do Trump’s bidding; collect special treatment (until, of course, you become dispensable to him, at which point he won’t care if you go to jail, are sent to the gallows, etc. The entire big tech oligarchy got the memo; Shou and TikTok are just following suit. If you want to play in Trump’s America, you have to make a big show of your fealty, then sign on to perpetuate the gaslighting. That’s what happened today, and it’s what will continue happening, unchecked.

[...] What makes this whole sham sabotage even worse is that President Biden actually came out and said that he wouldn’t enforce the TikTok ban. And yet still, TikTok executed its whole big performative shutdown and went dark, only to bring the app back within 24 hours, branded with some effusive pro-Trump praise. Just another public spectacle of bending the knee. This whole thing—the disruption to service, the notices, the drama—was all just a calculated move executed for an audience of one: Donald Trump. That doesn’t mean that Democrats are off the hook here. Being so oblivious to the consequences of this very predictable play is not necessarily tantamount to being complicit, but we’re not going to get through the next four years without being a bit more savvy and prepared to call out these scams. 170 million Americans are on TikTok. It is monumentally popular, with many relying on it for their livelihoods and their source for news. Dems should have foreseen that voting to ban TikTok would be met with fierce resistance. And yes, they did it with the help of Republicans, and the vote was 50-0, but Biden signed the bill into law. Which meant that they handed Trump a perfect opportunity to swoop in and reverse the damage that HE had caused because as we all should know very well at this point, Trump is only in it for Trump and for receiving credit. How could anybody be surprised that that is precisely what happened here? Democrats need to understand the media environment and understand that it’s not enough to say “trust us,” because frankly, very few people trust the government. If you’re not going to factor this reality into account, then you can’t be surprised when you’re forced to contend with the consequences of it.

Serial arsonist Trump puts out the fire he helped set with his initial support of banning TikTok, only to reverse course.

[ratciicle]

Chat I think Shou Zi Chew payed a little visit to Niklaus Hendrix…