Analysis by Brian Stelter, CNN, January 7, 2025

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is making sweeping changes to the social internet, all in line with the desires of President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters.

Out with the fact-checkers that conservatives deride. In with more permissive rules for posting conservative opinions.

The recent elections “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in his announcement, justifying relaxed new content moderation rules on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

“Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more,” Zuckerberg said, repeating a right-wing talking point used to undermine fact checking.

Because Meta is such a dominant force in the industry, with billions of users on its platforms worldwide, the changes will resonate even more widely, reshaping whole swaths of the internet in MAGA-friendly ways.

Related article: Meta is getting rid of fact checkers. Zuckerberg acknowledged more harmful content will appear on the platforms now

Tuesday morning’s announcements seemed like they were addressed directly to Trump, especially since Meta first gave the news exclusively to “Fox & Friends,” one of the president-elect’s favorite TV shows.

The company’s newly promoted policy chief Joel Kaplan, a former senior adviser to George W. Bush, sat with the Fox co-hosts and fully agreed with the show’s “censorship” versus “freedom” framing.

Kaplan’s appearance was the latest sign of Meta recalibrating in advance of Trump’s second term in office.

Trump and some key allies have been harshly critical of Zuckerberg and Facebook in the past. Trump once accused Zuckerberg of election interference and threatened to send him to prison for “the rest of his life.”

Meta also has lots of business before the US government. The Federal Trade Commission has an antitrust case against the company that is supposed to go to trial in April.

On CNBC Tuesday morning, outgoing FTC chair Lina Khan said Meta might “want a sweetheart deal” from the Trump administration, “and I hope future enforcers wouldn’t give them that.”

Meta is clearly trying to appeal to the incoming administration.

Zuckerberg, touching on two popular right-wing themes, said the company will “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”

The company will also scrap its partnerships with third-party fact-checking groups and move toward an X-style “community notes” system instead. Zuckerberg asserted that “fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.”

In general, Meta will be much more laissez-faire about the content on Facebook and other platforms.

Related article: UFC head Dana White joins Meta’s board, Mark Zuckerberg’s second key right-wing appointment in a week

“We want to undo the mission creep that has made our rules too restrictive and too prone to over-enforcement,” Kaplan wrote in a blog post.

Meta will relax the rules and “tune our systems to require a much higher degree of confidence before a piece of content is taken down,” Kaplan added.

Conservatives immediately cheered Meta’s changes while others, including misinformation experts, warned Meta’s platforms would become even more of a cesspool. False and hateful content will likely become even more commonplace on the social networks.

The changes will also likely lead to layoffs at some news outlets. As journalist Jane Lytvynenko noted on Bluesky, Facebook and Google are “chief funders of fact-checking outlets” around the world, and “there are newsrooms around the world for whom that funding means survival.”

“For those using the platforms, it means they are again on their own to discern what’s genuine information and what’s not,” Lytvynenko added.

Some commentators predicted that Zuckerberg’s announcements would hasten the adoption of alternative social networks like Bluesky. Others suggested that the average user might not notice the changes.

Zuckerberg said at the end of his video that Meta is also “bringing back civic content,” meaning the company will tweak its algorithms so that users can see more posts about elections, politics and social issues.

“For a while the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed, so we stopped recommending these posts,” he said. “But it feels like we’re in a new era now, and we’re starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again.” Political posts tend to cause strife, but Meta will work “to keep the communities friendly and positive,” he added.

Kaplan said the company will take a more “personalized approach” so that users who want more political content can see it in their feeds. It’s a change that underscores just how much power Meta has accumulated.

2) TikTok Readies for Shutdown (US):

Courtesy Reuters (and Social Media Examiner)

The platform plans to shut down its app for users in the United States beginning Sunday, coinciding with a potential federal ban, unless the Supreme Court intervenes to block the legislation. While the law would only restrict new downloads of the app from Apple and Google app stores while allowing existing users to continue using the platform temporarily, The planned shutdown would affect all U.S. users immediately.

When users attempt to open the app after the shutdown, they will encounter a pop-up message directing them to a website containing information about the ban. TikTok will allow users to download their personal data and information before the shutdown takes effect.

Source: Reuters

3) Ahead of U.S. TikTok ban, Canadians flock to Chinese ‘RedNote’ app

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Anja Karadeglija, January 17, 2025

The TikTok Inc. logo is seen on their building in Culver City, Calif., Monday, March 11, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Damian Dovarganes

With TikTok facing an imminent ban in the United States, many Canadian users are moving to rival Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu — also known as RedNote — pushing it to the top of download charts in Canada.

The ban is being driven by security concerns about TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. Chinese national security laws compel organizations in the country to assist with government intelligence gathering.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal law that will ban TikTok starting Sunday unless ByteDance sells it. The court said the threat to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China trumps concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the U.S.

The looming ban has many users in both the U.S. and Canada installing the Xiaohongshu app, better known as RedNote, which is based directly in China and designed in Mandarin.

Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said that TikTok at least had some theoretical safeguards, such as assurances that its data would be kept in the United States and not shared with China.

“None of those even rudimentary protections exist with RedNote,” Carvin said.

In 2023, TikTok executives appeared before a Parliamentary committee and told Canadian MPs the app is not controlled by the Chinese government and Canadian data was being stored on servers in the United States, Malaysia and Singapore.

Asked about the increasing use of RedNote by Canadians, Audrey Champoux, a spokesperson for Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, said in a media statement that “Canadians should make informed decisions about their personal data, and consider carefully how it is being used.”

A spokesperson for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service didn’t directly address RedNote but said its “specific concerns with TikTok arise from its links to (China), and because of this there are national security concerns related to the application.”

The CSIS statement noted that in 2023, China “continued to expand the domestic powers and capabilities of its security services.”

In November, Champagne announced the government was ordering the dissolution of TikTok’s Canadian business following a national security review. The app will remain available in Canada and the company is challenging the shutdown order in court.

But security concerns haven’t deterred users who have made RedNote the most downloaded app in Google’s Canadian app store. RedNote was also at the top of the Apple downloads chart on Apple’s Canadian website as of Thursday.

On Thursday, the Chinese embassy in Canada shared an online post from China’s Xinhua News Agency with a video showing U.S. and Chinese users interacting on RedNote — many of them sharing pictures of their cats.

Former TikTok users have been posting messages on both platforms mocking national security concerns about TikTok, such as jokes about having to say goodbye to “my Chinese spy.” But the exodus to RedNote is also being driven by what Carvin said is an understandable lack of trust in the practices and data protections of big Western social media companies.

Carvin said some of those users argue that much of their data has been stolen or exploited already by algorithms they don’t understand, and they don’t trust Chinese companies any less than North American companies.

She said using RedNote is still risky.

CNN reported Thursday that the platform has been hiring English-language content moderators and that the new users are encountering Chinese-style censorship.

Carvin noted Ottawa still hasn’t provided its rationale for ordering TikTok’s Canadian operations to wind down. 

“If these apps are a problem, be open and transparent with Canadians about what those problems are,” she said. 

“Ultimately, the reason we’re in this position is a true failure of government policy from particularly Western states with regards to data privacy, with regards to enforcing data protection, and their own failures with regards to being transparent around some of the security issues about these apps.”

The future of TikTok in the U.S. remains uncertain. U.S. president-elect Donald Trump had called on the court to keep the ban on hold until after he takes office Monday. The Republican has said he’ll “save” TikTok but it’s not clear what he’d do.

— With files from The Associated Press

4) News

Published January 17, 2025

4) U.S. Supreme Court upholds law banning TikTok if it’s not sold by its Chinese parent company

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Mark Sherman, January 17, 2025

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.

A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users’ phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won’t be able to download it and updates won’t be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.

The decision came against the backdrop of unusual political agitation by President-elect Donald Trump, who vowed that he could negotiate a solution and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has signaled it won’t enforce the law beginning Sunday, his final full day in office.

Trump, mindful of TikTok’s popularity, and his own 14.7 million followers on the app, finds himself on the opposite side of the argument from prominent Senate Republicans who fault TikTok’s Chinese owner for not finding a buyer before now. Trump said in a Truth Social post shortly before the decision was issued that TikTok was among the topics in his conversation Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

It’s unclear what options are open to Trump once he is sworn in as president on Monday. The law allowed for a 90-day pause in the restrictions on the app if there had been progress toward a sale before it took effect. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who defended the law at the Supreme Court for the Democratic Biden administration, told the justices last week that it’s uncertain whether the prospect of a sale once the law is in effect could trigger a 90-day respite for TikTok.

“Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary,” the court said in an unsigned opinion, adding that the law “does not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch filed short separate opinions noting some reservations about the court’s decision but going along with the outcome.

“Without doubt, the remedy Congress and the President chose here is dramatic,” Gorsuch wrote. Still, he said he was persuaded by the argument that China could get access to “vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.”

Some digital rights groups slammed the court’s ruling shortly after it was released.

“Today’s unprecedented decision upholding the TikTok ban harms the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in this country and around the world,” said Kate Ruane, a director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which has supported TikTok’s challenge to the federal law.

Content creators who opposed the law also worried about the effect on their business if TikTok shuts down. “I’m very, very concerned about what’s going to happen over the next couple weeks,” said Desiree Hill, owner of Crown’s Corner mechanic shop in Conyers, Georgia. “And very scared about the decrease that I’m going to have in reaching customers and worried I’m going to potentially lose my business in the next six months.”

At arguments, the justices were told by a lawyer for TikTok and ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese technology company that is its parent, how difficult it would be to consummate a deal, especially since Chinese law restricts the sale of the proprietary algorithm that has made the social media platform wildly successful.

The app allows users to watch hundreds of videos in about half an hour because some are only a few seconds long, according to a lawsuit filed last year by Kentucky complaining that TikTok is designed to be addictive and harms kids’ mental health. Similar suits were filed by more than a dozen states. TikTok has called the claims inaccurate.

The dispute over TikTok’s ties to China has come to embody the geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing.

“ByteDance and its Chinese Communist masters had nine months to sell TikTok before the Sunday deadline,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X. “The very fact that Communist China refuses to permit its sale reveals exactly what TikTok is: a communist spy app. The Supreme Court correctly rejected TikTok’s lies and propaganda masquerading as legal arguments.”

The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.

TikTok points out the U.S. has not presented evidence that China has attempted to manipulate content on its U.S. platform or gather American user data through TikTok.

Bipartisan majorities in Congress passed legislation and Biden signed it into law in April. The law was the culmination of a yearslong saga in Washington over TikTok, which the government sees as a national security threat.

TikTok, which sued the government last year over the law, has long denied it could be used as a tool of Beijing. A three-judge panel made up of two Republican appointees and a Democratic appointee unanimously upheld the law in December, prompting TikTok’s quick appeal to the Supreme Court.

Without a sale to an approved buyer, the law bars app stores operated by Apple, Google and others from offering TikTok beginning on Sunday. Internet hosting services also will be prohibited from hosting TikTok.

ByteDance has said it won’t sell. But some investors have been eyeing it, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire businessman Frank McCourt. McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative has said it and its unnamed partners have presented a proposal to ByteDance to acquire TikTok’s U.S. assets. The consortium, which includes “Shark Tank” host Kevin O’Leary, did not disclose the financial terms of the offer.

McCourt, in a statement following the ruling, said his group was “ready to work with the company and President Trump to complete a deal.”

Prelogar told the justices last week that having the law take effect “might be just the jolt” ByteDance needs to reconsider its position.

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Associated Press writers Haleluya Hadero, Mae Anderson and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report. Hadero reported from South Bend, Indiana, and Anderson from New York.