• @Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Archived version of the actual WSJ report. Still cuts off part of the article unfortunately.

    After Trump’s ban attempt, TikTok set to work walling off its U.S. data, in an attempt to reassure a government panel that TikTok has been negotiating with and let it remain in the U.S. TikTok ran television ads featuring all-American themes, including veterans and American flags. When Montana tried to ban TikTok, the company won an injunction temporarily blocking the state law, with a federal judge saying it likely violated the First Amendment.

    Anthony Goldbloom, a San Francisco-based data scientist and tech executive, started analyzing data TikTok published in its dashboard for ad buyers showing the number of times users watched videos with certain hashtags. He found far more views for videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags than those with pro-Israel hashtags. While the ratio fluctuated, he found that at times it ran 69 to 1 in favor of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags.

    Monaco and other Biden administration officials helped with another problem. The House China committee expected that even if the legislation passed Congress and the president signed it, TikTok would sue, arguing that it violated the First Amendment. So the committee teamed up with the Biden administration on how it could be written to best survive a legal challenge.