In March 2024, Congress attempted to ban the Chinese-owned video platform TikTok due to national security concerns; the ban was ultimately unsuccessful but reflected growing hostility toward China and suspicion about the platform’s possible censorship of pro-Palestinian content.
Six months earlier, Israeli guards had killed nearly 1,200 Palestinians in a massacre; afterward, 30,000 Palestinians, including 13,000 children, were killed by Israel during a retaliatory war.
Rather than addressing these humanitarian crises, American politicians began to equate TikTok with a national security threat, apparently because of the platform’s algorithms and Chinese ownership.