Oh No

A Loose Change vibe to the TikTok trends.

By , and
72

Osama Bin Laden’s manifesto justifying 9/11 went viral on social media and on today’s Dispod, Sarah, Jonah, and Mike discuss how we got here before turning to:

-Xi Jinping’s trip to San Francisco

-China’s social media pysop

-The pandas on loan

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  1. Pohl

    The so-called State of Palestine is a party to the Conventions and the Rome Statute. And Hamas is not “allowed” to violate the IHL as a non-state actor. I don’t know where Jonah gets his information. And Sarah didn’t correct him because, after years of war, there’s been hardly 30 minutes devoted to the laws of war on the so-called flagship podcast that even has an ex-JAG co-host. And the last pod with a legal professor discussing this practically scoffed at the very concept of IHL, even though the Geneva Conventions are as universally accepted as it gets. But, apparently, since there’s no IHL Police Force, international law itself is just a big farce. This approach doesn’t do anything for the cause of the current world order, which TD supposedly wants to maintain. Well, actually, Jonah hates the UN, so his approach would almost guarantee the unraveling of international norms. Good luck when even lip service to the UN Charter and other fundamental agreements disappears. It doesn’t get better when countries and groups like Hamas can let their freak flags fly. Who wants that?

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    1. MathewA

      The UN isn't the source of international norms. Look at how they excuse authoritarian regimes but then go continue to pile on against Israel

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      1. Pohl

        Yes, the UN does stupid things. It’s arguably done more good than harm, though. It facilitates many popular treaties, for example. It also has a Security Council, which acknowledges the role of great powers, though France should have been replaced decades ago. The point is that its disappearance would not be an improvement but a giant step backwards.

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  2. Randy Cartwright

    First of all, I love and respect what you guys are doing. Kudos to you for this effort. I'm also a usual listener of Jonah's Remnant Podcast and generally enjoy his excursions into the history of philosophical thought. But I must say that I cringe every time I hear him discuss the "realist" school of international relations theory. He'll often describe it inaccurately, then explain how he disagrees with it. He'll usually explain that he disagrees with "realism" because it holds that states are "black boxes" that act like robots pursuing their objective long-term self-interest or something like that. It’s perversion of the concept that unfortunately many people who’ve never bothered to learn exactly what realism is cite as the reason why they disagree with it. Jonah seems to fixate on what's known as "neorealism" or "structural realism" but the older and (to me) the more persuasive school is what's become known as classical or traditional realism which is rooted in Thucydides’ "Peloponnesian War” where he writes that states are principally motivated by “fear, honor, and interest”. (Thucydides would never had said that states act like objective robots.) What's key is that it's not some objective "interest" that states follow but interest as they or their leaders understand it in light of their fears and conceptions of honor. Ok you might say, what's so enlightening about that? Well, really not much, except that it recognizes human nature as the most important factor in international relations. The same concepts apply domestically of course. The Federalist Papers include some of the best examples of applied realism that I've ever read.

    Ok. There's clearly not enough room to go into a discourse on IR theory here. I would just suggest that Jonah read up on it a bit before discarding it. The irony of course is that Jonah often actually sounds like a realist, which is probably why I agree with him most of the time.

    V/R

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    George.Skinner

    The idea of TikTok twisting public opinion among Gen Z is concerning, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of evidence that it’s actually a widespread phenomenon. A thousand posts on social media could be a concerning sample indicative of broader opinion; it could also be a blip if those people aren’t a random, representative sample. A lot of the messages about Bin Laden’s letter are very similar in content, which has got the feel of an organized campaign rather than a grassroots movement.
    Another thing to consider is what kind of news are people consuming when they claim TikTok is their primary source? I have a suspicion that we’re talking about entertainment news, celebrity gossip, and sports more than foreign policy or federal politics. People may pick up a certain slant through osmosis, but what’s the exposure if the algorithm is primarily focusing on feeding them their preferred stream of cat videos and Family Guy clips?
    The risk posed by TikTok’s influence is significant. More work is needed to determine how valid that risk is - just because something *could* happen doesn’t mean it *is happening.* That doesn’t mean ignoring the risk, but we may not need to rush into a panicked response.

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      Aylene Wright

      Also, there's a risk to overly focusing on Tiktok, because it's easy to say "just ban Tiktok", as if that's One Neat Trick that totally solves this problem. Somehow, I doubt it.

      I think young people wearing Che Guevara T shirts are just as misguided as the ones praising Osama bin Laden on TikTok. But Che T shirts have been around for years before TikTok was even invented.

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  4. Russell J

    Don’t get me wrong, I have been a Sarah fan since this podcast started. Every once in a while, there are signs that Kevin Williamson was correct in his belief that she would frighten us as a head of state though.

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    Jonathan

    I really hate the idea of banning Americans from accessing TikTok (with an exception for gov’t employees). I don’t and have never used TikTok for all the reasons Isgur states but we can’t live down to the standards of China (banning American content they don’t like) or attempt to keep Americans from seeing ideas that are bad or wrong. Don’t tell me I can’t use an app because the Chinese gov’t will get info on me or will show me things that are bad.

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    1. Ken Motamed

      What is the justification for banning government employees from accessing TikTok?

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        Jonathan

        The Chinese govt has access to any and all TikTok data.

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          Dougherbert

          Could you please provide the evidence for saying that the Chinese government has access to TikTok data? TikTok says all data is stored in the US and that currently no one in China has access to it.

          There are leaked emails from a few years ago showing Chinese TikTok technicians discussing accessing this data, but TikTok says it is currently not possible. I am also not aware of any evidence that TikTok has shared any data with the Chinese government.

          Of course, TikTok could be lying. But they also could be telling the truth. I'd be interested in knowing whether you have any actual evidence that they are lying.

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            Jonathan

            The way PRC demands access to the businesses located there is fairly well documented and longstanding. I guess you’d have to wonder why TikTok is different. I guess it could be.

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    2. Jasonkenneth

      I agree with you including the exception for government employees.

      I find it funny to hear long diatribes on TikTok when 1, the other socials suffer from most of the same issues, and 2, the extreme concern for the Chinese brainwashing our youth at a time when the brainwashing of a much older generation by other Americans using traditional technologies precipitated the current crises facing the Republican party and our nation.

      Personally, I'd like to see more of a focus on media consumption. I think it should be improved across the board with traditional education, continuing education and by fostering a culture of civil skepticism.

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        Jonathan

        I’m generally skeptical that a foreign government can do much if any damage to our society with TikTok memes. Kids are uneducated idiots. My generation certainly was and I’ll include myself in that. So what, tho? The government can’t shield people from bad ideas and we have to trust that the better ideas will continue to win out in our own society. It’s worked so far. I’m pretty sure Isgur’s point that our open society is undermining liberalism by tolerating bad ideas is the main thesis of Patrick Deneen’s books. I don’t buy it.

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    Dougherbert

    Sarah continues to say things about TikTok that just aren't true. To give just one example, in this podcast she repeated her claim (first made on Advisory Opinions) that TikTok censors any criticism of the Chinese government's treatment of the Uyghurs.

    It's just not true. I just now searched on the terms "Uyghurs" and "communist" on TikTok. This brings up (by my quick count) almost 200 posts. The majority of these are harshly critical of the Chinese government's treatment of the Uyhurs. There are smuggled videos from the concentration camps in Xinjiang and many photographs of Uyghurs who have been unjustly imprisoned. Here are just a few examples of what's on TikTok right now (many of these have been up for months or years):

    "It's most likely the largest ethno-religious incarceration of a minority since the Holocaust" (posted Feb. 2023)

    There is a video interview of the owner of Dolan Restaurant in DC, a Uyghur who talks about his own father's incarceration and death threats that have been made against him (posted Sept. 2021)

    "When females were taken in for incarceration, they faced gang rape by the guards." (posted March 2023)

    A video captioned "China's Re-Education Camp Uyghur Survivor Bravely Calls Out Xi Jinping at His Arrival in San Francisco" - the video shows the survivor repeatedly chanting "Stop the genocide" and "Xi Jinping is a liar" (posted 2 days ago)

    "The items you use should not be made by tears and bloods of Uyghurs" (posted March 2023)

    "The Chinese state is arresting democracy activists, ethnic minorities and workers fighting for their rights" (posted June 2021)

    An interview of a defector who says he was a prison guard in the Uyghur concentration camps (posted Jan. 2023)

    "China's New Anti-Uyghur Campaign: How the World Can Stop Beijing's Brutal Oppression" (posted March 2023)

    "Close Down the SLAVE Labor Camps and FREE the Uyghur People - Stop the GENOCIDE Now!" (posted Oct. 2021)

    I could post many many more similar TikTok posts. Sarah's claims about TikTok's ban of criticism of the Chinese are not factually based.

    It is sad to see someone who is supposedly dedicated to free speech calling for the suppression of one of the media outlets that is most read by Americans. Sarah (and David French) claim this is just fine because the First Amendment does not cover American's right to hear "foreign speech," a proposition that the Supreme Court squarely rejected in 1965.

    It's even sadder to see Jonah -- who I have long viewed as an avatar of maintaining one's principles despite the changing tides of public opinion -- meekly go along with calls to ban TikTok, something I would have thought would have made his blood run cold.

    With the First Amendment under assault from the progressives, the Trumpist right, and now from the anti-Trump right, it's hard not to feel despair.

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      Aylene Wright

      To be fair to Jonah, he's never claimed to be a free speech absolutist. Indeed, he and Sarah spent an entire Remnant podcast episode, debating whether the SCOTUS allowing Nazis to March in Skokie was a good thing. Jonah doesn't think it was.

      As for Sarah, some of what she's said about Tiktok lately, really come across as more of a moral panic, or wild eyed conspiracy mongering, than an actual clear eyed assessment of its possible security risk. Which seems to be more about the data mining and collection of information on its users, than actual direct attempts to brainwash the youth.

      Ironically, it also reminds me of how so many Democrats worked themselves into a similar frenzy over supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election. A phenomenon I know Sarah sees with contempt.

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        Dougherbert

        I am fascinated by the episode in which Sarah and Jonah debate the Skokie case, which I have not heard yet.

        Probably my best single class in law school at the University of Chicago was back in either 1977 or 1978 when my First Amendment class professor (Geoff Stone, a great law professor) brought in the attorney who had represented the Nazis in the Supreme Court to answer some very hostile questions from my classmates for the entire class. It was a formative moment for me politically, at least as important as my reading of Mill's On Liberty as an undergraduate.

        I'll have to track that one down. I'd be very interested in why Jonah, who I greatly respect, thinks that there are times when "bad speech" should be regulated.

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    2. Jasonkenneth

      I find myself recoiling from those strong assertions as well. I'd like to see a more fact-finding style discussion like I heard on the "Offline" podcast: "The Truth about TikTok's spin on Israel-Gaza" (https://crooked.com/podcast/the-truth-about-tiktoks-spin-on-israel-gaza/). Prove your case, please, when making those kinds of assertions.

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        Dougherbert

        Thank you very much for the recommendation of the Offline podcast. Their episode on "The Truth About TikTok's Spin on Israel-Gaza" and their next episode on the bin Laden letter's brief resurgence had the great advantage, as you point out, of being based on actual views of TikTok and on an understanding of how difficult it is to gauge which way public opinion is trending on TikTok (or other social media sites).

        And I certainly agree with their main point, which is many (not all) of the political discussions on TikTok are pure clickbait, outrageously stupid in-your-face posts designed to boost the wanna-be influencer's views (and income). But while TikTok is undoubtedly full of really stupid political stuff, so are Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter/X.

        I should note that I virtually never see this political content on my feed in TikTok since I focus almost exclusively on comedy on TikTok (which it's superb for).

        I can't stand the politics of the hosts of Offline (I had previously tried Pod Save America and given up), but their empirical approach to this issue and their fervently expressed dedication to fact-checking has led me to start following their podcast as a source of rational discussion of internet issues.

        This is quite a contrast to the slapdash approach of Sarah to the TikTok issue. She relied on some very sloppy Twitter/X posts by Jeff Morris Jr., who she inexplicably calls an "actual expert" because he identifies himself as a former VP of Product and Revenue at Tinder, the dating site, and a managing partner at Chapter One, which he identifies itself as an "early stage fund building the internet." Exactly how this qualifies Mr. Morris as an expert is something Sarah never explains, nor does she show any understanding of how shallow Mr. Morris's supposed reverse engineering of the TikTok algorithm is.

        If anyone is curious about Sarah's prior comments on this issue, they are at about 30:00 on the October 31 "Due Processes v. Defamation" episode and at about 57:40 on the November 2 "RIP dog" episode of Advisory Opinions.

        And if anyone is curious about the super-sketchy basis for Sarah's claim that TikTok is using its algorithm to boost anti-Israel "bots," see Jeff Morris's Twitter/X feed here -- https://twitter.com/jmj

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  7. Sunilsaha2

    Edited:

    My first comment was a bit harsh and then I felt bad because I like The Dispatch. So here is a toned down version. I got to minute 28 and I had to stop. As a left of center moderate, I have recently been feeling that The Dispatch finds the latest wacko left trend and proceeds to spend a ton of time on it even though it represents a small minority of the left. Simultaneously, I can feel how hard it is to offer Biden any praise at all. It eeks out a tiny bit every now and then but not for long. I guess this is what I should expect listening to a conservative podcast. Taking my medicine. I force myself to listen to both sides :)

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    1. Ken Motamed

      Only a small minority of the left is wacko? Only if you include in "the left" people in the middle and perhaps even center-right.

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      1. Sunilsaha2

        So you believe a large % of the left believes we should have a more positive view of Osama Bin Laden?

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      Dougherbert

      I completely agree that lately Sarah, David French, and Mike Warren have been shamelessly "wacko spotlighting" the extremes of the left as typical. I have only managed to get to minute 27 because it is so difficult to listen to Sarah and Mike engaging in the kind of rhetorically polarizing technique that The Dispatch was founded to combat.

      Let's take the Osama bin Laden letter issue that Sarah and Mike discuss around minutes 25-27 or so.

      Per Sarah and Mike, "thousands" of Americans said on TikTok that Osama bin Laden's early 2000's "Letter to America" had educated them or opened their eyes to America's sin of supporting Israel.

      Mike said that, although he's not a "conspiracy theorist," it almost seemed to him like these TikTok users were "reading from a script." Sarah chimed in with something like, "I wonder who's behind that? Oh, I have a guess - CHINA!"

      A few things immediately jump out from this conspiracy-theory-minded exchange.

      First, as you note, "thousands" is a drop in the bucket on TikTok or on any of the big social media sites. But Sarah and Mike treat these folks as exemplars of American youth.

      Second, one could well speculate about the reasons why thousands of Americans might express sympathy with Osama bin Laden's claim that he had attacked the US because of America's support for Israel.

      I can think of a couple of reasons that seem plausible. (a) In the past couple of decades, we have had a fairly sizable number of immigrants from Palestine, elsewhere in the Levant, and the Arab world generally. These folks are often inclined, for obvious historical reasons, to be savagely critical of Israel (and sadly all-too-often of Jews more generally). (b) College students have in recent decades been immersed in an anti-colonialist ideology, which leads them to endorse terrorism as a justifiable "resistance" to the western "oppressors," such as the terrorist campaign in Algeria so fervently endorsed by the seminal terrorist apologist Franz Fanon.

      But to Sarah and Mike, the only plausible explanation for sympathy toward anti-Israel terrorism is CHINA! That's a monomania that is hard for me to distinguish from a conspiracy theory.

      Finally, since Mike and Sarah had previously made a point of saying they don't look at TikTok, you have to wonder how they know what these videos look like or how many of them there are.

      It reminded me of a conversation I had with my sister when she insisted she knew better what the New York Times was like than I did, even though she had refused to read it for ten years and I read it every day.

      Let me be clear. In my view, for any number of Americans to express sympathy for Osama bin Laden is troubling; terrorism against Israel (or others) is absolutely evil (and Israel's response to Hamas has been appropriate); China is an authoritarian state that targets ethnic and religious minorities; there have been attempts by foreign governments to manipulate American opinions; and antisemitism and Islamophobia are increasing in the US and Europe at alarming rates.

      But discussions about how to deal with these problems that are based on a fantasy world view of TikTok and on a belief that the solution to these problems is to suppress Americans' access to "bad speech" are deeply misguided (and deeply depressing coming from The Dispatch).

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        Aylene Wright

        I get the impression you think Tiktok doesn't pose any security threat to the US at all, or that it poses no more threat than other social media sites, and if so, I disagree with that. But, I agree with you in finding Sarah's recent comments to be very unDispatchy.

        Indeed, conservatives falling into a moral panic over Chinese influence operations online, strikes me as especially ironic because most of them, including Sarah, were openly mocking a similar moral panic by liberals over Russian influence operations online.

        The widespread assumption that the Hunter Biden laptop story was "Russian disinformation" seems to have capped off that trend on the Left, because it turned out to at least have some validity.

        That doesn't mean that such online disinformation campaigns by foreign agents, don't exist. But I do think too many people are going into moral panics over the idea.

        Also, the assumption that "the only way people could believe something so stupid, is if they were brainwashed into it by some nefarious entity", really comes across as condescending and again, unDispatchy to me.

        It actually makes perfect sense to me, that young people who don't remember 9/11, or who weren't even alive when it happened, and had a vague idea that Osama bin Laden was an evil terrorist who was hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, would be intrigued to read a letter from him that at least on the surface comes across as a thoughtful analysis of world events, that does indicate he was more than just a barbarian.

        That "thousands" of young people got caught up in this, however, really doesn't make me despair over the future of the country, when I consider that GenZ numbers nearly 70 MILLION people!

        I know these Tiktoks did get millions of views, however, that doesn't mean everyone watching them, actually agreed with the content, or were instantly brainwashed into supporting Al Qaeda. There is such a thing as hate watching. The Duggar reality shows also got high ratings for a while. Doesn't mean everyone watching them agreed with their fringe interpretation of Christianity.

        I recall when Dispatchers were mocking conservatives going into moral panics over Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. Although this Osama TikTok episode, is a tad more serious, I am feeling I am taking crazy pills these days, to see Dispatchers caught up in this latest moral panic.

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          Dougherbert

          Aylene - I agree with virtually everything you say here about Dispatch commentators getting caught in a moral panic, but I'm curious to hear more about why you view TikTok as more of a national security threat than other social media sites.

          I certainly don't accept any argument that TikTok is more dangerous to our national security than other social media sites because of its content. Speech, no matter where it comes from, is not a national security threat.

          However, I am still an agnostic about whether TikTok might be a national security threat due to the user information that it gathers. I haven't seen any convincing evidence that it is such a threat, but I haven't done a deep dive into that issue yet so I'd be very interested in your views on this.

          I'd also be interested in your view of TikTok's claims that ByteDance, its parent company, is not a Chinese-owned company, but instead has 60% American ownership.

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      2. Sunilsaha2

        It's frustrating because it's a smart crew. But they need to up their game. The Dispatch was near the top for me many months ago perhaps when David French was on more. Now it's the following because I learn way more on these podcasts:

        1) https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast
        2) https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-daily
        3) https://thebranchmedia.org/show/lost-debate/

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          Dougherbert

          I just listened to my first episode of The Lost Debate and wanted to thank you again. I love their approach of detailed citation of historical sources for their assertions.

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          1. Sunilsaha2

            Fantastic. Yeah his recent history of Israel-Palestine espisodes are really good in that regard.

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          Dougherbert

          Thank you for the suggestions for further listening. The Daily is a regular for me, but Ezra Klein tends to be a little too elliptical in his thinking and speaking for my taste (though I'll listen if he has an interesting guest). The Lost Debate looks very interesting and I'll check that out.

          One of the most thoughtful and far-ranging podcasts is Russ Roberts' Econ Talks, if you're looking for another podcast.

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          1. Sunilsaha2

            I just subscribed thanks for the recommendation.

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          Seth B

          Thank you for the recommendations.

          The Branch is entirely new to me. It looks promising and I will check it out.

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          1. April

            At least in the last two months, Ezra Klein’s podcast has been significantly more informative and even handed than The Dispatch’s dishearteningly one sided viewpoint.

            At the beginning of Nov. Klein did 2 interviews with an Israeli writer and a Palestinian writer.

            Very informative, a lot of history, and their ideas on where to go from here.

            I wish TD would do more of that.

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  8. Chris

    I'm worried this tiktok problem with zoomers is part of a larger issue that we'll have to deal with. Gen Z might be the first truly post-Christian generation we've had in this country. These are people who by and large don't feel constrained by Christian morality or values and are in fact hostile to them. As a result, attitudes and behaviors that were just assumed to be ungodly and therefore unacceptable by most of society for the past millennium are now up for debate again. I'm reminded of John Adam's quote "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." It looks like we're about to find out how our institutions hold up against what appears to be an immoral and irreligious generation.

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    1. Hikingguy

      "Kids! You can talk and talk till your face turns blue/Kids! But they stilled just want they want to do/Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way?/O what's the matter with kids today?" Go watch Bye Bye Birdie and relax. T'was ever thus.

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    Svetlana Bekman

    Wait, Israel had offered incubators and fuel to the Al-Shifa hospital... I wondered about that - whether there's some humanitarian assistance that Israelis could render at the hospital. Goes to the internet and finds the following on NBC website: "As outrage grows over reports of babies dying and a mass grave being dug at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, Israel has publicly indicated a desire to mitigate the crisis there — not by ending the siege but by offering fuel and mobile incubators." Implication: Israel is doing this BECAUSE of the outrage. Argh.

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      Dougherbert

      If you really want to get your back up, you should listen to some of Al Jazeera's English language coverage of the October 7 War.

      They have a podcast that covers media called The Listening Post. Yesterday's episode was devoted to criticism of Western and Israeli media for their acceptance of what Al Jazeera called the IDF's "clumsy" propaganda. One of their criticisms was that the western media were idiots to report the IDF's claim that it had provided incubators in Al-Shifa because there is no fuel in Al-Shifa to run the incubators. They completely ignored the fact that the IDF also provided fuel to run the incubators.

      They also said the IDF had provided no evidence other than a handful of weapons and single piece of body armor that Hamas had a presence at Al-Shifa. I wanted to scream at them, "Other than the Hamas tunnel, you mean?"

      I listen to Al Jazeera, even though it's difficult to tolerate, because I want to get a taste of what people in the Middle East are hearing. I'm sure the Arabic version of Al Jazeera is even more misleading.

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  10. Zack F

    jonah was grumpy pants this episode

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