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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised a question Thursday that goes to the heart of Special Counsel Jack Smith's charges against former President Donald Trump[1].
The high court was considering Trump's argument that he is immune from prosecution for
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that's probably because it has, at least if you're measuring via internet time. What's now in question is whether it will be around much longer and, if so, in what form?
Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche teen app into a global trendsetter. While, of course, also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to U.S. officials.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner[1] within a year or to shut down. It's not clear whether that law will survive an expected legal challenge or that ByteDance would agree to sell.
Here's how TikTok came to this juncture:
March 2012
ByteDance is founded in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao[2], a personalized news aggregator for Chinese users.
July 2014
Startup Musical.ly, later known for an eponymous app used to post short lipsyncing music videos, is founded in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.
July 2015
Musical.ly hits #1 in the Apple App Store, following a design change[3] that made the company's logo visible when users shared their videos.
2016
ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese users. Its popularity inspires the company to spin off a version for foreign audiences called TikTok.
November 2017
ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.
Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, users begin to share a wide variety of video on the app, including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform, record and post acts that range from serious to satirical.
February 2019
Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap song “Old Town Road” on TikTok, where it goes viral and pushes the song to a record 17 weeks in the #1 spot[4] on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok videos from musical artists who suddenly see TikTok as a critical way to reach fans.
TikTok settles federal charges of violating U.S. child-privacy laws[5] and agrees to pay a $5.7 million fine.
September 2019
The Washington Post reports that while images of Hong Kong democracy protests and police crackdowns are common on most social media sites, they are strangely absent on TikTok[6]. The same story notes that TikTok posts with the #trump2020 tag received more than 70 million views.
The company insists that TikTok content moderation, conducted in the U.S., is not responsible and says the app is a place for entertainment, not politics.
The Guardian reports on internal documents that reportedly detail how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or limit the reach of videos touching on topics sensitive to China[7] such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned religious group Falun Gong.
October 2019
U.S. politicians begin to raise alarms about TikTok's influence, calling for a federal investigations of its Musical.ly acquisition[8] and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, according to news reports[9].
December 2019
The Pentagon recommends that all U.S. military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued. Some services ban the app on military owned phones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all military phones.
TikTok becomes the second-most downloaded app in the world, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower[10].
May 2020
Privacy groups file a complaint alleging TikTok is still violating U.S. child-protection laws and flouting a 2019 settlement agreement. The company “takes the issue of safely seriously” and continues to improve safeguards, it says.
TikTok hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer[11] as its chief executive officer in an apparent attempt to improve its U.S. relations. Mayer resigns three months later.
July 2020
India bans TikTok[12] and dozens of other Chinese apps in response to a border clash with China.
President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok[13] as retaliation for China's alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
August 2020
Trump issues a sweeping but vague executive order[14] banning American companies from any “transaction” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok. Several days later, he issues a second order demanding that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok's U.S. operations[15] within 90 days.
Microsoft confirms it is exploring acquisition of TikTok[16]. The deal never materializes; neither does a similar overture from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, meanwhile, sues the Trump administration[17] for alleged violation of due process in its executive orders.
November 2020
Joe Biden is elected president. He doesn't offer new policy on TikTok and won't take office until January, but Trump's plans to force a sale of TikTok start to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it had imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and eventually lets them slide altogether.
February 2021
Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the legal cases involving Trump's plan to ban TikTok, effectively bringing them to a halt.
September 2021
TikTok announces it has more than a billion monthly active users.
December 2021
A Wall Street Journal report[18] finds TikTok algorithms can flood teens with a torrent of harmful material such as videos recommending extreme dieting, a form of eating disorder.
February 2022
TikTok announces new rules[19] to deter the spread of harmful material such as viral hoaxes and promotion of eating disorders.
April 2022
“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a project created by two fans of the Netflix show as a TikTok project, wins the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album[20].
TikTok becomes the most downloaded app in the world, beating out Instagram, according to SensorTower data[21].
June 2022
BuzzFeed reports that China-based ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the nonpublic information of TikTok users[22], based on leaked recordings from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings. TikTok responds with a vague comment touting its commitment to security that doesn't directly address the BuzzFeed report.
TikTok also announces it has migrated its user data to U.S. servers[23] managed by the U.S. tech firm Oracle. But that doesn't prevent fresh alarm among U.S. officials about the risk of Chinese authorities accessing U.S. user data.
December 2022
FBI Director Chris Wrap raises national security concerns about TikTok[24], warning that Chinese officials could manipulate the app's recommendation algorithm for influence operations.
ByteDance also said it fired four employees who accessed data on journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times while attempting to track down leaks of confidential materials about the company.
February 2023
The White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued mobile devices. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.
March 2023
Legislators grill TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a six-hour congressional hearing where Chew, a native of Singapore, attempts to push back on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.
January 2024
TikTok said it was restricting a tool[25] some researchers use to analyze popular videos on the platform.
March 2024
A bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gathers steam in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington[26] to tell lawmakers to back off, while emphasizing changes the company has made to protect user data. TikTok also annoys legislators by sending notifications to users urging them to “speak up now” or risk seeing TikTok banned; users then flood congressional offices with calls.
The House of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell bill.
April 2024
The Senate follows suit, sending the bill to President Biden, who signs it.
© Copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tom Holland[1] took to Instagram on Saturday to shower love on his girlfriend Zendaya[2] as her latest movie, Challengers, hit theaters.
The 27-year-old Spider-Man: No Way Home star shared a snapshot of the Challengers movie poster on his Instagram feed,
...
Tom Holland[1] took to Instagram on Saturday to shower love on his girlfriend Zendaya[2] as her latest movie, Challengers, hit theaters.
The 27-year-old Spider-Man: No Way Home star shared a snapshot of the Challengers movie poster on his Instagram feed,
...
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Nick Viall[1] and fiancée Natalie Joy ushered in their impending nuptials with a spirited country-themed celebration on Friday evening.
...
Viall, 43, and Joy, 25, shared a delightful video on their Instagram accounts Saturday morning that offered a glimpse into
Former President Donald Trump[1] endorsed Trent Staggs, a Republican mayor seeking to replace retiring Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, in Utah's GOP primary race for the Senate.
"Trent Staggs is 100% MAGA, and is running to fill The Mitt Romney, a Total Loser,
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04:19[1]
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00:42[1]
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Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen penned a 5,000-word manifesto[1] in 2023 that gave a full-throated call for unrestricted technological progress to boost markets, broaden energy production, improve education and strengthen liberal democracy.
The
Millions of Americans still don’t have access to high-speed internet[1]. Christopher Ali[2], a professor of telecommunications at Penn State University, discusses who lacks access to broadband and how the federal government – with a US$65 billion commitment
Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people[1]. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues[2]. This led some
Deals
Market Impact
Zuora’s shares jumped more than 19%
Business & Finance
Market Impact
As of the start of April, the
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that's probably because it has, at least if you're measuring via internet time. What's now in question is whether it will be around much longer and, if so, in what form?
Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche teen app into a global trendsetter. While, of course, also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to U.S. officials.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a U.S. owner[1] within a year or to shut down. It's not clear whether that law will survive an expected legal challenge or that ByteDance would agree to sell.
Here's how TikTok came to this juncture:
March 2012
ByteDance is founded in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao[2], a personalized news aggregator for Chinese users.
July 2014
Startup Musical.ly, later known for an eponymous app used to post short lipsyncing music videos, is founded in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.
July 2015
Musical.ly hits #1 in the Apple App Store, following a design change[3] that made the company's logo visible when users shared their videos.
2016
ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese users. Its popularity inspires the company to spin off a version for foreign audiences called TikTok.
November 2017
ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.
Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, users begin to share a wide variety of video on the app, including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform, record and post acts that range from serious to satirical.
February 2019
Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap song “Old Town Road” on TikTok, where it goes viral and pushes the song to a record 17 weeks in the #1 spot[4] on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok videos from musical artists who suddenly see TikTok as a critical way to reach fans.
TikTok settles federal charges of violating U.S. child-privacy laws[5] and agrees to pay a $5.7 million fine.
September 2019
The Washington Post reports that while images of Hong Kong democracy protests and police crackdowns are common on most social media sites, they are strangely absent on TikTok[6]. The same story notes that TikTok posts with the #trump2020 tag received more than 70 million views.
The company insists that TikTok content moderation, conducted in the U.S., is not responsible and says the app is a place for entertainment, not politics.
The Guardian reports on internal documents that reportedly detail how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or limit the reach of videos touching on topics sensitive to China[7] such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned religious group Falun Gong.
October 2019
U.S. politicians begin to raise alarms about TikTok's influence, calling for a federal investigations of its Musical.ly acquisition[8] and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, according to news reports[9].
December 2019
The Pentagon recommends that all U.S. military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued. Some services ban the app on military owned phones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all military phones.
TikTok becomes the second-most downloaded app in the world, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower[10].
May 2020
Privacy groups file a complaint alleging TikTok is still violating U.S. child-protection laws and flouting a 2019 settlement agreement. The company “takes the issue of safely seriously” and continues to improve safeguards, it says.
TikTok hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer[11] as its chief executive officer in an apparent attempt to improve its U.S. relations. Mayer resigns three months later.
July 2020
India bans TikTok[12] and dozens of other Chinese apps in response to a border clash with China.
President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok[13] as retaliation for China's alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
August 2020
Trump issues a sweeping but vague executive order[14] banning American companies from any “transaction” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok. Several days later, he issues a second order demanding that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok's U.S. operations[15] within 90 days.
Microsoft confirms it is exploring acquisition of TikTok[16]. The deal never materializes; neither does a similar overture from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, meanwhile, sues the Trump administration[17] for alleged violation of due process in its executive orders.
November 2020
Joe Biden is elected president. He doesn't offer new policy on TikTok and won't take office until January, but Trump's plans to force a sale of TikTok start to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it had imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and eventually lets them slide altogether.
February 2021
Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the legal cases involving Trump's plan to ban TikTok, effectively bringing them to a halt.
September 2021
TikTok announces it has more than a billion monthly active users.
December 2021
A Wall Street Journal report[18] finds TikTok algorithms can flood teens with a torrent of harmful material such as videos recommending extreme dieting, a form of eating disorder.
February 2022
TikTok announces new rules[19] to deter the spread of harmful material such as viral hoaxes and promotion of eating disorders.
April 2022
“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a project created by two fans of the Netflix show as a TikTok project, wins the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album[20].
TikTok becomes the most downloaded app in the world, beating out Instagram, according to SensorTower data[21].
June 2022
BuzzFeed reports that China-based ByteDance employees have repeatedly accessed the nonpublic information of TikTok users[22], based on leaked recordings from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings. TikTok responds with a vague comment touting its commitment to security that doesn't directly address the BuzzFeed report.
TikTok also announces it has migrated its user data to U.S. servers[23] managed by the U.S. tech firm Oracle. But that doesn't prevent fresh alarm among U.S. officials about the risk of Chinese authorities accessing U.S. user data.
December 2022
FBI Director Chris Wrap raises national security concerns about TikTok[24], warning that Chinese officials could manipulate the app's recommendation algorithm for influence operations.
ByteDance also said it fired four employees who accessed data on journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times while attempting to track down leaks of confidential materials about the company.
February 2023
The White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued mobile devices. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.
March 2023
Legislators grill TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a six-hour congressional hearing where Chew, a native of Singapore, attempts to push back on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.
January 2024
TikTok said it was restricting a tool[25] some researchers use to analyze popular videos on the platform.
March 2024
A bill to ban TikTok or force its sale to a U.S. company gathers steam in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington[26] to tell lawmakers to back off, while emphasizing changes the company has made to protect user data. TikTok also annoys legislators by sending notifications to users urging them to “speak up now” or risk seeing TikTok banned; users then flood congressional offices with calls.
The House of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell bill.
April 2024
The Senate follows suit, sending the bill to President Biden, who signs it.
© Copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Congress requires the independent assessment of the operational effectiveness, suitability, survivability and — where applicable — lethality of Defense Department weapon and business systems by testing production representative systems, used by regular service
Tom Holland[1] took to Instagram on Saturday to shower love on his girlfriend Zendaya[2] as her latest movie, Challengers, hit theaters.
The 27-year-old Spider-Man: No Way Home star shared a snapshot of the Challengers movie poster on his Instagram feed,
...
Tom Holland[1] took to Instagram on Saturday to shower love on his girlfriend Zendaya[2] as her latest movie, Challengers, hit theaters.
The 27-year-old Spider-Man: No Way Home star shared a snapshot of the Challengers movie poster on his Instagram feed,
...
Nick Viall[1] and fiancée Natalie Joy ushered in their impending nuptials with a spirited country-themed celebration on Friday evening.
...
Viall, 43, and Joy, 25, shared a delightful video on their Instagram accounts Saturday morning that offered a glimpse into
...
Read more https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washington-dc-chooses-wars-ukraine-israel-have-made-the-cut
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised a question Thursday that goes to the heart of Special Counsel Jack Smith's charges against former President Donald Trump[1].
The high court was considering Trump's argument that he is immune from prosecution for
...
...
LOS ANGELES -- All series, Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone has been telling his team it needed to get out to better starts. That just because the Nuggets had been able to come back from double-digit deficits in each of the first three games of their...
Read more https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40041921/nuggets-warm-game-4-shoes-mix-up?device=featurephone
LOS ANGELES -- Shiny purple and gold streamers fluttered down from the Crypto.com Arena ceiling on Saturday, not only signifying the Los Angeles Lakers' 119-108 win over the Denver Nuggets to stay alive in their first-round series, but also L.A.'s first win...
TORONTO -- Star center Auston Matthews did not finish Saturday's Game 4 due to an illness, as the Toronto Maple Leafs fell 3-1 to the Boston Bruins.
Toronto now finds itself on the brink of elimination in their first-round playoff series, with a must-win...
Imagine it’s Friday night. You’re enjoying happy hour with friends after a long week. You’re relaxed, having indulged in several of your preferred adult beverages. Now imagine that as you leave the bar, a police officer approaches. You’re under arrest.
Flash forward to the police station. The officer takes you to a cramped room and ...
You probably know better than to click on links that download unknown files onto your computer. It turns out that uploading files can get you into trouble, too.
Today’s web browsers are much more powerful[1] than earlier generations of browsers. They’re able to manipulate data within both the browser and the computer’s local file system....
The discovery of viral fragments of avian flu[1] virus in milk sold in U.S. stores suggests that the H5N1 virus may be more widespread in U.S. dairy cattle than previously realized.
The Food and Drug Administration was quick to stress on April 24, 2024, that it believes the commercial milk supply is safe[2]. However, highly pathogenic avian...
The primitive hate on display in the streets around the globe cries out for a Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.
It is time to end the Jewish Problem once and for all.
Both the problem and solution are simple, and this instruction can be short.
The decision and responsibility for it are yours.
First one bank announced it will only accept digital currency.
Now the Reserve Bank of Australia has announced it is heading into digital currency.
As the moth is to the flame, so are the follies of man.
Artificial intelligence and the next level of quantum computing will render passwords and encryption efforts obsolete.
The point of having a nation of laws is twofold: (a) you know how to prosper, and (b) you know how to stay out of jail.
The persecution of President Trump has revealed a new threat of charlatan prosecutors and agency administrators cobbling together disparate statutes which the media kindly calls “innovative”, “artful” or “novel” interpretations or constructions.
But these recombinations are actually new laws because they are the nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and contexts in criminal statutes, strung together in new combinations to create newly criminalized conduct after a citizen has engaged in some conduct.
01:18[1]
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