XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, comp.misc   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   In a conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Sen. Mitt   
   Romney (R-UT) acknowledged that banning TikTok has such strong support   
   in Congress because the social media platform has hurt Israel’s public   
   relations battle.   
      
   “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut   
   down, potentially, TikTok or other entities of that nature,” Romney   
   said at the McCain Institute this past Friday. “If you look at the   
   postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative   
   to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok   
   broadcasts.”   
      
   The official justification for targeting TikTok is the unfounded   
   allegation that it’s a Chinese spy tool because its parent company,   
   ByteDance, is based in China. But Romney’s comments suggest the real   
   purpose of the renewed push to ban the app after a similar effort   
   failed years ago was to censor news coming out of Gaza and   
   pro-Palestinian content.   
      
   Blinken blamed social media in general when asked by Romney why Israel   
   was losing the global PR war. Palestinian journalists have been able   
   to broadcast to the whole world the atrocities committed by Israel in   
   Gaza using social media, including graphic videos of dead or wounded   
   children being dug out of rubble following an Israeli airstrike.   
      
   “Now, of course, we’re on an intravenous feed of information with new   
   impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken said. “And, of course,   
   the way this has played out on social media has dominated the   
   narrative. You have a social media ecosystem, environment in which   
   context, history, facts get lost and the emotion, the impact of images   
   dominate. We can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very very   
   challenging effect on the narrative.”   
      
   A bill to ban TikTok was included in the $95 billion foreign military   
   spending package President Biden signed into law last month. The   
   legislation gives ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, or else it   
   will get banned. But ByteDance has vowed to fight the ban in court and   
   said it would rather shutdown TikTok than sell.   
      
   https://news.antiwar.com/2024/05/06/mitt-romney-says-congress-su   
   ports-banning-tiktok-for-israel/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)