President Biden signed a bill that states if TikTok doesn't cut ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance over the next nine months to a year, it will be banned in the U.S.
Its because the company literally paid shills to stump for them in person, call Congress, etc.
The way it was presented was that they paid average users to call Congress which is disingenuous. I’ll admit I was wrong when I came to the influencers being paid for in person events, but that’s only a smaller group of people and events. The vast majority were not paid and did so of their own volition.
Edit: Didn’t realize OP and the replier were different people. That’s also on me.
While some influencers report paying their own airfare to Washington, everyone we talked to took the free hotel. It’s unclear precisely what folks were offered as part of the trip to Washington, but seemingly everyone got one perk or another. Beyond the more than 30 influencers in attendance, along with their travel buddies, WIRED counted 10 other people who were, in one way or another, at the Capitol on behalf of TikTok.
30 influencers and their plus ones and 10 other people are paid. These are only people that wired has talked to, so there might be more people being paid one way or another.
And “everyone we talked to took the free hotel”: everyone wired has talked to has received some benefit from tiktok.
I don’t really know the scale of the rally, but seeing the rally photo from different sources:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dc+tiktok+protest&iax=images&ia=images , it seem like most cameras are pointing towards the same 15 people, all with signs distributed by tiktok.
I don’t think I will be as confident as you about the size of the protest. Even if there were 100 people there, that still means over 50% of the protesters received direct compensation from TikTok specifically for this protest.
let me duckduckgo that for you
Literally the first result on ddg: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-rally-washington-chew-testimony/
Other reports from different sources:
The way it was presented was that they paid average users to call Congress which is disingenuous. I’ll admit I was wrong when I came to the influencers being paid for in person events, but that’s only a smaller group of people and events. The vast majority were not paid and did so of their own volition.
Edit: Didn’t realize OP and the replier were different people. That’s also on me.
What are you downvoting me for? I didn’t write that post lol…
BTW, you might want to update your correction: According to https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-rally-washington-chew-testimony/
30 influencers and their plus ones and 10 other people are paid. These are only people that wired has talked to, so there might be more people being paid one way or another.
And “everyone we talked to took the free hotel”: everyone wired has talked to has received some benefit from tiktok.
I don’t really know the scale of the rally, but seeing the rally photo from different sources: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dc+tiktok+protest&iax=images&ia=images , it seem like most cameras are pointing towards the same 15 people, all with signs distributed by tiktok.
I don’t think I will be as confident as you about the size of the protest. Even if there were 100 people there, that still means over 50% of the protesters received direct compensation from TikTok specifically for this protest.