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TikTok's Plan To Stave Off Government Intervention: Flood DC With influencers (politico.com) 48

The influential social media app TikTok is flooding the nation's capital with influencers next week as part of an 11th hour lobbying blitz to stave off the forced sale of the company. From a report: The efforts come as the Biden administration urges TikTok's Chinese owners to sell the app to a new owner or face a potential ban in the United States. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the interagency board that issued the call, has spent years reviewing the potential national security risks posed by TikTok, and the Chinese company that owns it: ByteDance.

Dozens of TikTok creators will descend on Washington for three days next week, according to a person familiar with the plans, who revealed details on condition of anonymity. The creators will hold a press conference on Wednesday on Capitol Hill, the person added. Another person familiar with the plans noted that TikTok was paying for the cost of sending influencers to D.C. It was not clear which influencers would be making the trip.

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TikTok's Plan To Stave Off Government Intervention: Flood DC With influencers

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  • by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @05:08PM (#63379275)

    If you want to influence things in DC, you better bring a big check and the language you want in the law should already be written for them.

    • If you want to influence things in DC, you better bring a big check and the language you want in the law should already be written for them.

      On the other hand, the political influencers endemic to DC, and the TikTok influencers who are about to descend on DC, are birds of a feather. They may just find some common ground as like-minded parasites, especially since it's possible that many of them are employed by some of the same corporate masters.

  • by VonSkippy ( 892467 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @05:13PM (#63379289) Homepage

    PT Barnum would be oh so proud.

  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @05:15PM (#63379291)

    That would be what, two or three dozen people who serve no useful purpose. Maybe 50 at the top end. Wow, go for broke.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Doesn't matter all that much. These "influencers" only have influence over the non-voting population. Aside from MGT, Gaetz, Boebert or some other nutbag, nobody else is paying attention to them.

    • Useul idiots
  • TF!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by budsetr ( 4952293 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @05:20PM (#63379299)

    They want to demonstrate how they aren't infuential by thowing infuencers at the people afraid of influence by a foreign power???

    • Re:TF!? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Saturday March 18, 2023 @12:09AM (#63379777) Homepage

      They want to demonstrate how they aren't infuential by thowing infuencers at the people afraid of influence by a foreign power???

      "Influencers" in this context means internet celebrities, not necessarily people who wield any actual sort of actual influence.

      It's basically like if Hollywood sent Tom Cruise and friends to DC. Which likely would result in a mob of people who are interested in seeing real celebrities, but probably no change in the minds of politicians.

    • . . . can we spray for this?

  • According to my bing search, most of them won't be wearing very much, so I'm not sure who they're trying to influence.

    • According to my bing search, most of them won't be wearing very much, so I'm not sure who they're trying to influence.

      I don't do TikTok, so I looked up who are the top influencers, too. Most of 'em are people I've never heard of, except for Jason Derulo who is a pop singer. I'm a Xennial and even I can't relate to any of those influences, so best of luck with this plan working on DC's geriatric demographic, ByteDance. Like the earlier poster said, they should've just sent money. That's the universal language of politics.

  • What is it when Weekend at Bernies is in office and doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason?

    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @06:02PM (#63379381) Homepage

      Both parties believe they have something to gain by consolidating the social media playing field. At the very least, it's less places to have to run campaign ads. The right hates TikTok because it's ostensibly being used to make their kids into the next generation of alphabet people, and the left hates it because the left is in bed with so-called big tech (notice the lack of meaningful consumer data protection laws?) and Zuck would be the main benefactor of a TikTok ban.

      • Yes, you've described what I assume is meant to be the proportional response to Chinese protectionism in their domestic market.

        But my question remains: when Trump tried to do it, it was Xenophobia(TM) because it was Trump. What's the excuse for Biden?

        • Biden's policies on China aren't meaningfully distinct from Trump's. Biden kept the tariffs in place, and he's just as likely to bring down the banhammer on TikTok if the courts allow it. What you're asking is about public perception of the issue, and that comes down to the public viewing politics through the lens of sports team fanaticism. There's not really much logic involved in that.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Biden doesn't act the same way he acted two years ago, when he was on the campaign trail, let alone 10,20,30 years. He's obviously aging pretty hard.
        Go look up some videos of him campaigning in 2019. The difference between then and now is surprising. I hadn't realized how apparent it was until I recently saw a shot of him giving a stump speech.
    • Times change. When TFG was in office, TikTok was merely an annoyance, particularly to him. Its true malignancy wasn't revealed until late last year when they were caught spying on US journalists, using their platform to track the locations of those journalists, and providing that data to China. [google.com]

      Teenaged narcissists pretending to be backup dancers for BTS or BlackPink is a triviality unworthy of even taking note. The same teenagers mocking an elected official is protected political speech and any action ta

  • by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @05:26PM (#63379317)

    Remember, it was a bunch of Falun Gong "influiencers" converging on Beijing that got many of the group rounded up and imprisoned (or worse). The irony seems to be lost on them.

    The Chinese government wouldn't think twice about just banning Tiktok entirely with nary a public word if the shoe was on the other foot.

    • by gijoel ( 628142 )
      Hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, in dictatorships.
    • The irony seems to be lost on them.

      It's either a lack of self-awareness, or the realization that America still has a chance to avoid becoming like them. We don't have to go down the path of bans and censorship, it's too late for China.

      Although, desiring to see the USA retain our free speech would require a certain amount of altruism from China, which isn't really on brand for them. So yeah, lack of self-awareness it is.

  • We usually don't like the fact mos tpoliticians are too old and out of touch but here it's an advantage

    • We usually don't like the fact mos tpoliticians are too old and out of touch but here it's an advantage

      This looks like it's going to backfire on ByteDance. I'll never be able to find the damn link to the video, but one of the Florida representatives who was involved with the "Don't Say Gay" bill specifically cited TikTok as where being LGBTQ+ makes you see yourself as a celebrity. It's a common political trope that TikTok is poisoning kids' minds (and before that it was video games, music videos, rock music, comic books, etc.).

      So yeah, this will just come across to the DC grandpa contingent as "Oh look, it

    • Well, if they're sending a bunch of nubile young women... Matt Gaetz will be happy, at least.

  • by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @06:42PM (#63379461)

    Tiktok viewers skew *very* young. 60% are 16-24, and a lot of them aren't even 16. In other words, either they're too young to vote, or they belong to a demographic (18 through 24) that votes less often than any other demographic.

    I don't think the politicians have much to worry about here.

  • Pretty sure 14 year old wanna be dancers cannot vote, and neither can their fans.
  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday March 17, 2023 @07:38PM (#63379521)

    How is this not a violation of the constitution? Specifically Article 1 Section 9.

  • Brilliant! Our lawmakers get to make a lot of money, we all win!
  • The politicians in DC are concerned that TikTok is a Chinese spy app that could allow China to get info it should not have by having affected devices get toted into all sorts of sensitive places...

    and...

    to get them to worry less, a mob of idiots with TikTok on their devices are going to flood Washington DC, getting into government offices and into the presence of all the politicians and bureaucrats where the devices can hoover-up who-knows-what...

    yeahhhhhh, THAT'll really make the point.

    [would sound better

  • Clearly this is a campaign to benefit the Beijing criminal regime (think Uyghurs). So just have them all rounded up and charged with the offence of being unregistered agents of a foreign state.

  • Use a propaganda storm to convince people that your platform is not a propaganda tool.
  • Everytime I hear of TikTokkers, I think of what 747 pilot Kelsey presents on his TikTok roast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • And talking about themselves. All standing in front of famous places blocking the view for everyone else. I don't think this is going to work like tik-tok plans.... They might get banned quicker.
  • Why don't they just go for tried true and tested?, just line the senators pockets with easy money and you can do what ever you want.

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