TikTok Takedown

Watch the episode here:

• Gain expert insights into the TikTok bill and what it really means for the platform and its users.
• Understand the historical context behind the legislative efforts to regulate TikTok.
• Hear a cybersecurity expert break down the implications of new policies on digital freedoms.
• Get a clear explanation of the complexities of international laws affecting tech companies.
• Equip yourself with knowledge to discuss and navigate the changing landscape of social media legislation.

Hey, what’s shakin, hey, I’m Rick Jordan today, we’re going all in. Today we’re talking about Tiktok and the bill that has already passed the House. And maybe by the time this airs, because this isn’t live right now, this is just recorded a couple of days prior, the House and the Senate have maybe passed the bill themselves or have come up with their own version, but I’m going to talk about what it’s going to do, at least what I see it doing okay, and also clear some air on this whole thing, because everyone’s thinking that this was like a TikTok ban, Bill. And it kind of is kind of isn’t or that it’s gonna force the sale. Now, historically speaking. In the former Trump administration, they were talking about forcing the sale of TikTok. And I’ll tell you why. You know, obviously, I have a cybersecurity company. I’ve been all over the news media about this over the last couple of years, especially when this came up with the previous administration. I’ve talked about it a lot. Now, let’s back up there again, and I’m gonna break this down for you real quick today. Okay, TikTok is incredibly popular, you know, and I even stayed off of it for a while because I own a company, majority shareholder, actually, in a public company, a public cybersecurity company, we just went public, it’s called ReachOut technology. And I always was thinking, it’s like, maybe it’s a little bit of a conflict of interest because of all the stigma and paranoia around TikTok, because the parent company of TikTok, is called byte dance. 

Byte Dance is a Chinese company, meaning it is it’s in the country of China, just like my company would be a US-based company, so this isn’t a company that is owned by China, by the country, or by the government, it is a company byte-dance is a company within China. Now the problem, and this is where intelligence has come out over the last couple of years, is there were even hearings within Congress, by our government towards the CEO of byte dance, and TikTok. And the reason is because of the supposed influence of the Chinese government, now, if you don’t follow foreign relations, I hope that you do you know, this one is going to be good, I’m gonna break it down, it’s gonna be really simple. So just follow me stick with me on this whole episode that I Okay, I’m gonna break this down. There’s the Chinese government, the People’s Republic of China, the PRC, that’s what it’s called, right? But then there’s also the controlling party, you know how in America, we’ve got Republicans and Democrats as the two prevailing parties. And then there’s some other ones that exist, like the Green Party and all that you don’t hear too much about them because it was really kind of a two-party system. The controlling party in China is the CCP, which is a Communist Party. Okay. And if you look back to the history of everything, all the way back to pre-Russia to the Soviet Union, when that existed, you know, that was all communism that generated the Cold War, the nuclear arms, race, all of that stuff. 

Now, whenever typically speaking, America is always very, very, very much against communism. And there are a lot of good reasons for that because communism is horrendous, it’s absolutely horrendous what it does to the people, it’s oppressive. Now, at the same time, I talked about this in a movie I made a few years ago, China is a huge country, huge, like over a billion people, you know, out of the seven or 8 billion people in the world, China has a huge portion of that huge population in there. Now, the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, makes up about 70 million people. Now, obviously, that’s still a lot of people. That’s a lot of people. However, compared to the entire population of the country, you’re really talking about, like 7% of the country is actually communist. But still, that’s the controlling party of the country. So the government’s the entire country is under the control of the CCP. All right. And the biggest thing, and this is one of the reasons why I stayed off this for a while, you know, thinking it might be a conflict of interest being the CEO of a cybersecurity company, is there’s a Chinese law. Okay. And Chinese law pretty much says that FBI director Christopher Ray has pointed to this a number of times, it’s says that pretty much the Chinese law requires companies to do whatever the government wants them to, in terms of sharing information, or serving as a tool of the Chinese government. 

So in essence, the government can just come in and say, give me all the data that you have. Give me everything that you have right now. And also, this could be not just on Chinese people, because there are millions of Americans, right, millions of Americans, like over 100 million from what I read, that are actually on TikTok right now, I might have that number wrong, but I know it’s at least in double digits, but there’s millions and millions and millions of Americans that use TikTok. And the issue is that that means that there’s American data on TikTok servers. So I’m sure you’re connecting the dots with me right now that the Chinese government because of this law, can go into byte-dance, the parent company of Tiktok, and say, give me all the American data that you have. Now, there’s a movie you need, there’s a movie that you need to watch called The Great Hack, okay, you have to go back and watch this thing, because it talks about social media persuasion and running ads, it was actually during the Trump campaign. And you know, the whole Cambridge Analytical scandal, all of that stuff. And that’s one way to actually sway an election. And this is an election year, this is a presidential election year, you know, so at that point in time, there were different bodies that could actually like you, Russia, or China, or any other country could actually be an adversary of ours could actually go and purchase ads on social media, using specific targeting data that you could obtain from platforms like Tiktok. 

And then the more people see things, I mean, think about it, let me think like Coke and Pepsi, there’s this thing in marketing called awareness campaigns, right? And all it does is it keeps putting the same thing in front of your face in front of your face in front of your face and start to program your brain to see this stuff. So when you see something when you walk into a grocery store, or something like that, and you see 100 ads for Coke on social media, for Coca-Cola, you are more likely to buy this is psychologically proven, you’re more likely to buy something from Coke, rather than something from Pepsi. You know, you might end up with Coke Zero rather than a Diet Pepsi, because you saw more ads for Coca-Cola. Now, this can work in politics, too, because you see more ads. And that’s why I’m saying you might want to go back and watch this movie. It’s intriguing how this worked, you know because it can even be used to strengthen somebody’s position that they’ve already had. And I remember reviewing it was President Trump would put out ads, it was Michigan, it was a big battleground state, right? It would put out ads in Michigan, to the Trump supporters already and those ads would be like triumphant ads, like he was winning, he was the best choice, and everything like that. And then they didn’t really bother with the Democrats at all. The ones that were registered Democrats had already said, You know what, I’m gonna vote for Joe Biden. 

They didn’t touch them. What they touched were these persuadable URLs that were undecided. They call them the persuadable us. And then they would start to hammer that with negative ads, negative ads of Joe Biden. And that’s what got those persuadable over into the Trump camp. So they use triumphant ads to keep the Trump supporters in the Trump camp and just further entrench their position. This is all psychology, everybody, and then the persuadable as they would hit them with negative ads on Joe Biden to get them to move over to Trump because negativity is a positive, it’s a positive emotion. Isn’t that an oxymoron right there? Negativity is a positive emotion, meaning it creates movement in a certain direction, you know, it doesn’t cause you to retract, it actually causes you to go out some direction that people want you to go in the opposite direction. It’s very intriguing if the Chinese government can get this data, I’ve drawn the map for you here that they can actually do some things with marketing and get people to think a certain way. It’s the same way why Russia invaded Ukraine, why they hit the banking system. And actually, on all the ATMs, when people would go to see what’s in their account. That was your big, fat zeros, the citizens of Ukraine. 

And that was psychological warfare. That’s all that it was right before they invaded. They caused panic, using cyber warfare. That’s another way that the data is like this because it can be used to target specific people and cause mental which then would cause social unrest amongst a certain group of people. And that’s how China could win this stuff, which by the way, from a staff perspective and cybersecurity, they’ve got us like 50, to one Chinese has 50 human beings in the cybersecurity cyber warfare division of the government to our one within our cyber warfare division. It’s horribly outnumbered we are horribly outmatched from a manpower perspective. Now, we’re smart. We’re Americans, of course, I always believe that we’re just going to kick ass and we’re going to win anyways. But from a staffing perspective, we have a lot of catch-up to do. We do. So that’s the resources that they’re devoted to this, but of course, it freaks out people like the director of the FBI, saying Oh, my God, this is a national security crisis. Absolutely. And I’m with him on that. I am completely with him on that. So this bill that’s in Congress right now. It’s called it’s hr 7521. It’s already passed the House and as at this point, it’s sitting in the Senate. And it’s it’s protecting Americans from foreign adversary-controlled applications acts. 

In other words, if an enemy of ours has control of an app that Americans are using, we don’t want to allow that. You know, because it’s a national security issue. So what it does is it prohibits the distribution, the maintenance, or the updating of any app. Now, we’ve seen stuff like this get pulled from app stores before, right? If it’s on your phone already, it actually can stay on your phone, and you can probably still access it, right? But the distribution, that’s the app stores, that’s the Google app store, or the Google Play Store, or the Apple App Store, where it would cease to exist, it would be pulled from that immediately if this bill were to be passed. The second thing is the maintenance, which means that there, there are no updated versions that can go on to those app stores, and then the updates, which means that those updates cannot be pushed out, you know, so it kind of covers all bases, in order to prevent Americans from getting to that, right, which means that if you have the app, no longer can it be updated, you might still be able to access TikTok for the time being. But as they update their servers and everything, it’ll end up breaking that connection. So it’s a little bit of a delayed response. But the big thing is nobody new, can get access to this app. 

We’ve seen that with other apps before, I don’t have a specific example for you right now, I know, this is a lot of information I’m giving you, but you’re awesome for staying with me. And I’m giving my opinion here on you know, for a lot of these things, right? And this is within 180 days of the bill’s enactment. You know, unless a qualified divestiture means a sale of the company. So you have to hear me on this, this bill does not force a sale, it does not force a sale of Tiktok. What it does is prevent the distribution of the app and the updating of the app forever, unless there is a sale to an American-controlled company, which of course, then regulators would have to scrutinize and do their diligence and make sure that that company is okay within the US to and outside of the hands of any control of any foreign adversary, you know, everybody’s talking about this is you know, it’s forcing a sale, this bill is not forcing a sale. It’s not at all, you know, and that’s probably one of the ways why this might potentially and likely would stand up to constitutional review, because sometimes Congress can pass things and then the Supreme Court says no, it’s unconstitutional, then it gets, you know, it just gets voided. For this, I think this was a safe measure by Congress because they’re saying we’re not forcing the sale. But we’re forcing or preventing the distribution of this app, so nobody else can use it unless it is sold. And I think our government realizes, I hope so anyway, that there are so many millions of users on this. And that’s actually the reason why I ended up jumping on it’s like, you know, what? The data that I have on there, that’s fine. 

You know, if the CCP can see me, they know, they know who I am obviously, right? Because just like every other American, they know who you are, because they have access to your data. They absolutely do. And the most ridiculous thing is, is that one time, they tried to save face, right? And they moved all their servers for Tiktok over to the US all American data from China over to Chinese servers over to US-based servers. But it didn’t matter. And we still had proof of that. And we verified this before the Senate hearings because they didn’t say, Oh, look, guess what, the data is not in China anymore. It’s not in China anymore. But it’s over in the United States, right where you’re at. But then still, we prove that the government was still accessing that frickin data in the servers in the US, like connecting to them remotely, right, just like many of us do. Similar concept. Like if we work from home, if it’s remote work, you’re connecting back to the servers or to the cloud or wherever, but you can do it from your home. Same thing. Chinese hackers are like, Hey, what’s up, it doesn’t matter. I can still access all the data that I need to it doesn’t matter where the servers are located. So it was kind of a ruse. Yeah, that’s why this thing came to pass to where it’s like, we need to do something about this. All right. Now, here’s something that I’m gonna throw out there. TikTok is a big ass company. Lots of users on it. Lots of users, and there’s this thing in our country in the United States, that’s like anti-monopoly.

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at that. It means capitalism, which is the business principles that our country is built on. Yay, capitalism smashing. I don’t know if you’ve seen Austin Powers. I sure haven’t. I love it. It’s the it’s the foundation of which business is built in the United States, meaning anybody has the right to make as much money as they want to. Yeah. So you can get into business for yourself, which is what I did. And you know, now I have a public company, and you can do anything you want to do in business. You have the right to make a living in this company in this country anyway you want to. That’s capitalism, right? Any legal way you want to, and the issue here Is if Tiktok gets sold. It limits competition, the Spirit of Capitalism, and in this country is to raise the amount of competent competition. Right? This is why you see a Home Depot. And then right across the street is Menards. And a Lowe’s, like there’s three of them right there, the big boys, right? This is why you see so many different restaurants in any community in the whole frickin United States because it’s competition. That’s the freedom that we have when it comes to business and capitalism in this country. And it’s encouraged by our government because the competition does a number of things, two very specific things that are very big one, it can keep prices controlled, so that they don’t go sky high, because in countries that just have like a monopoly of one company. Like if there’s one cellphone provider, here, we have three big ones. 

And we have a lot of regional ones like we’ve got, you know, Verizon AT and T and T Mobile as the three big ones. But then we’ve gotten mint, we’ve got Google phi, we’ve got virgin, we’ve got red or something, there’s a whole bunch of them, I can’t even name them all. There’s a whole bunch, and it generates good competition to help keep prices in check. Because if it’s just one, they can do anything they want, because they know that you’re their only choice, or they’re your only choice. That’s the crazy thing, right? And that’s why competition keeps prices in check. The second thing it does, and it’s been proven, is that it drives innovation. Because these companies compete, it’s not just about price. So like you don’t, we can be better than that. We can have better features, we can make the quality better, we can make it faster, we can make it  4k, instead of HD, we can do all these things. And that’s why competition is encouraged because it drives innovation. And it continuously pushes us, whatever industry that competition is in forward in a positive way, in a good way. So that new things are done, new things can be come up with, right? Because if you look at Apple, Apple obviously drives a lot of competition versus Samsung right now, I realize they’re not to US companies, but it’s big examples, right? If you look at McDonald’s, Burger, King, Arby’s, all these things, I mean, they’re always coming out with new sets of new types of sandwiches, because it’s like competition. You know, somebody’s like, Hey, we got a new special sauce. 

People like, Oh, my God, that’s great. Burger King doesn’t have that sauce. But then all of a sudden, Burger King has got the sauce. You know, for real. It’s it’s what happens. And it’s good. Because it drives good things in whatever industry, especially in the tech industry, which is where this is from, you know, it’s it’s a good thing, the issue that I see. And actually, ironically, this is what President Trump former President Trump has talked about, too, is if you eliminate Tiktok, right, if you completely eliminate it, that actually reduces the amount of competition because now you really just have Facebook, which you didn’t like, what about Instagram? Well, they’re the same freaking company. By the way, I run ads on those. And it’s the same platform, you run an ad, and it hits both Facebook and Instagram. It’s called Meta now, right? But Zuckerberg big a brilliant thing to change the company name from Facebook to Meta, a Meta has both Facebook and Instagram. It’s the same thing, same thing. So it’s really just meta, and then x. Those are really the only two big ones that exist. You’ve got Trump’s truth social, which is not doing so hot financially. You know, I don’t know if it’ll stick around, who knows? But those are really the only choices that you have. TikTok has actually driven a lot of innovation. Look at reels on Instagram. 

Okay, remember, when reels came out, the reason why reels happen on Instagram is because of TikTok. That’s why they took place. They used to just be video posts and other reels, and it matches the functionality. And you see these guys like feeding off of each other to continue to grow, the quality and the features and the offerings of all these platforms. I wish there were four more of them. I do because then we’d see some really cool stuff happening. We would see some really cool stuff happening, though. There are a lot of what-ifs when it comes to this. And I’ll end this last bit with a bit of a story here. Okay, because with the rise of influencers, there are a lot of people who are making good money on these platforms. Now they’re using these platforms to get the word out, you know, it’s like my cousin’s have a hot sauce company that’s doing amazing. They were just at the governor’s mansion in Illinois, you know, with an award they want SBA awards are doing amazing stuff with this hot sauce and it’s taking off they keep growing the company, and a big reason for the success and their growth has been social media. Getting the word out there about it. So imagine if TikTok went away. I have another friend you can go follow she’s awesome Emily Ford you know on Instagram it’s Emily. It is Emily something happened some kind of technical glitch in her profile was gone for like the last two weeks okay, just came back yesterday, and I

think you know, and I saw I’m like yeah, you go girl. You gotta back it who knows why there wasn’t any reason to disclose why it just disappeared as if it never existed, and this was right in the middle of a book launch for her and a challenge launch, I think it was a book launch. But it was a couple of different launches. And she had to resort to other means, like an email list, right? But going back to the 90s, right, she’s still got it done successfully, but probably not as successful as it would have been if she had the power of her social media account on Instagram. This is a big deal. This is a big deal. If something like TikTok goes away completely, which is why if it does, I hope there’s some kind of sale to an American-based company, and it can stick around specifically for the cap for the capitalist purpose of competition to continue innovation. That’s what I hope, okay, and at the same time, I also want the frickin Chinese government’s hands removed out of it. And you’re probably going to watch a clip of this show on TikTok, too. And that’s, that’s awesome. You know, it’s ironic, right? Because I’m there now, it’s very cool. 

There are purposes for these platforms. And I’d hate to see people like my cousin, have something bad happen to their business and hit their business income, because TikTok just goes away, like overnight, and doesn’t have any, any possibility of coming back or like what happened to my friend Emily, to where this took place. And it probably hindered the sales of her of her challenge in this new launch that she was doing. You know, it’s it’s horrible that way. There’s power in social media, they’re great platforms to be able to use a lot of negativity with people staying in there for hours and hours, and endless scrolling and scrolling and all that. But there’s a good reason for it as well. I mean, I can’t imagine a world before Facebook and before Instagram and all that, and I see value in it. Same with Twitter, same with X, I’ll call it x, you know, everybody still calls it, Twitter, whatever. But whatever happens with this bill, I hope it supports the principles that this country was founded on, which is continuing to develop competition amongst everybody. So I hope they can figure that part out and at the same time, protect the security of our country, because to me, that is absolutely the most important Overall if something like Tiktok would allow some kind of literal warfare from China, whether it’s ground warfare, artillery, nuclear, whatever, by all means, I would choose for this just to go away for Tiktok to go away, that would be my first priority. But if we can have the security in place, get the Chinese government’s hands out of it completely to where that’s not that threat, and also promote competition in good old fashioned American capitalism with it. Let’s do it.