On Saturday, the United States House of Representatives passed a comprehensive legislative package worth $95 billion, which includes a bill to either separate or ban TikTok. Surprisingly, American internet celebrity Zach Sage Fox, who earns money through TikTok, strongly supports the move by Congress. He believes that the platform has become a cesspool of spreading hate and false information.
According to the New York Post, comedian Fox earns part of his income by sharing solo performance clips with his over 1.1 million followers on TikTok.
After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year, TikTok was accused of being anti-Israel, promoting Hamas, and leading American youth towards Islamic extremism. This made Fox realize the dangers of the TikTok platform.
“I feel terrified by the content I see on TikTok,” he told the New York Post.
The internet celebrity emphasized that in recent months, TikTok has been a “treasury” of the biggest sources of false information regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“In its algorithm, it seems like something is happening, (TikTok’s content) has been trying to smear the West,” he said.
Fox believes that the bill passed by the House of Representatives can prevent tens of millions of American youth from receiving information indoctrinated by the Chinese Communist Party, and instead, redirect them to sources that, while not perfect, at least have some supervision in fact-checking.
The House of Representatives passed the bill related to TikTok on Saturday with a vote of 360-58. The bill gives TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, nine months to sell TikTok. If progress in the sale is confirmed by the U.S. President, the deadline can be extended by another 90 days, giving ByteDance a total of one year to complete the separation. If ByteDance fails to separate TikTok within the deadline, the application will be banned from being available on U.S. app stores.
TikTok has 170 million users in the United States and is particularly popular among teenagers and Generation Z.
On January 13, Republican Senator Ted Cruz questioned TikTok’s CEO, Shou zi Chew, during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking why in China, TikTok (Douyin) promotes science and math videos, educational videos, and limits children’s time on the platform, while in the U.S., the platform promotes self-harm and anti-Israel videos to children, leading to a stark difference.
“Why is it that on Instagram, the number of posts with hashtags related to the Hong Kong protests is 174 times higher than on TikTok? What kind of censorship does TikTok carry out at the request of the Chinese (Communist) government?” he questioned.
After the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out, TikTok briefly featured a letter supposedly written by Osama bin Laden to America after the 9/11 attacks. The letter criticized U.S. support for Israel, leading some young people to mimic the likes. However, this also strengthened the determination of some lawmakers to ban TikTok.