Ahead of Supreme Court arguments over the future of TikTok, critics have warned that banning the popular social media app in the United States would be an assault on free speech. For some Republican lawmakers, that’s at least part of the point — and there’s a very specific type of speech they want to squash: pro-Palestinian sentiments.
Republicans have been discussing banning TikTok since Donald Trump’s first term, with a plethora of justifications centered around Chinese interference. But in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, conservatives have become hyper fixated on policing pro-Palestinian messages on the app, accusing TikTok of influencing young Americans to “support Hamas” and favoring pro-Palestinian content. TikTok, for its part, has vigorously defended itself against the perception that it favors Palestinian perspectives and asserted that its algorithm does not “take sides.”….more
