Fallon, Meyers Purposely Ignore TikTok’s Toxic Side Effects
More gaslighting, more missing facts from the 'truth to power' comics
Jimmy Fallon’s re-education is coming along nicely.
The press initially battered the “Tonight Show” host, the least partisan comic on the late night scene, for daring to humanize then-candidate Donald Trump. More recently, social justice warriors slammed Fallon for a blackface sketch he performed 20 years ago.
In response, the “Saturday Night Live” alum has been hammering President Trump on a nightly basis like his more aggressive peers.
Here, Fallon attacks President Trump for going to war against TikTok, a Chinese social media platform with billions of users worldwide.
What is he doing the president of the United States or the preacher from “Footloose “? This is a real national security threat, the knowing which Americans can and can’t dance. I am sure it has everything to do with national security and nothing to do with the TikTok teens that sabotages his Tulsa rally.
Not to be outdone, the host of “Late Night with Seth Meyers” trotted out random information to suggest a president can’t do more than two things at once, a strawman of the first order.
The death toll is climbing, wait times for tests are rising and tens of millions of Americans struggling to survive the worst economic crash since the Great Depression just lost a $600 unemployment benefit because Republicans couldn’t be bothered to extend it or, God forbid, make it permanent. And Trump couldn’t care less about any of that. Time is running out on his presidency and all he can hear is — TRUMP: “TikTok.”
Why would big, bad Trump want to cancel TikTok? Fallon and Meyers won’t say, of course. They’d rather keep that information from you. So would much of the press.
A few media outlets have shared the shocking details. Here’s a warning from Forbes.com, hardly a right-wing site, on the wildly popular platform.
… the US armed forces have forbidden personnel from using it and describes it as a threat to cybersecurity. Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point has investigated it and concludes it has backdoors and major vulnerabilities, as well as overall security issues. The US government is also investigating it. Meanwhile, Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman describes it as a “fundamentally parasitic app that is always listening” and warns against installing what he calls “spyware”. Several child advocacy groups say it poses a clear risk to children. Apple claims it has caught TikTok using clipboard capture mechanisms to spy on millions of users.
Odd that none of that information made it into the late night monologues, right?
Stephen Miller, a right-leaning journalist, shared more worrisome information recently on the subject.
It’s understood to be hacking and using data collected from its users’ phones. Everyone from the Department of Defense, to the US military to the Joe Biden campaign has banned it. The app is now in talks to sell its US operations to Microsoft in order to abate the controversy, a move backed by Chuck Schumer which Trump says he ‘wouldn’t mind.’
Later, Miller spells out why the platform, which appears both creatively challenging and harmeless, is anything but for parents.
It took a random developer on Reddit to dig into exactly what TikTok does to a user’s phone. He reverse engineered the application and posted what he found saying ‘TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts or your device…well, they’re using it.’
Team Late Night went for the easy yuk, and for some in the audience it worked. Those looking for reality, though, came away hungry for information. Hope their kids choose their social media apps wisely.