Adam and Connor delve into the recent sale of social media app TikTok to a conglomerate of concerning US investors and all the reasons you should probably stop using it. Episode available to subscribers or for purchase only. Check out this clip …
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Source links: https://youdontlike.link/CTS372
Episode Transcript
Adam Tod Brown: [00:00:00] Oh, hey everybody. Welcome to Conspiracy the show. I am your host, Adam Todd Brown, joining me as co-host Connor is back in the trap. How’s it going man?
Connor McSpadden: TikTok.
Adam Tod Brown: last week had a couple CIA officers on the pod That was fun. But now I’m back to talking to the civilians back where I belong back to my roots.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah.
Adam Tod Brown: Not gonna have the intelligence community change me.
Connor McSpadden: Hanging out with a guy with no special information whatsoever.
Adam Tod Brown: I changed the little description under my name when I did that CIA interview to person of no interest, just so they didn’t write my name down, send it on to someone Hey, shout out to John and Jerry. They were great. John Cipher is the name of one of the people I talked to. What a perfect intelligence operative name your name.
Might as well be Jimmy Secrets
Connor McSpadden: that’s worse than the guy that invented a Healy’s being named like Arthur c Healy, which is like really what it is.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, the guy who invented the [00:01:00] Hover Round is the hover round scooter that disabled people use in the grocery store. Tom Cruise. It’s that guy’s name. So fun on several goddamn levels, we’re talking about TikTok this week. Connor, do you ever use TikTok?
Connor McSpadden: people always said TikTok has the best algorithm. I never got my algorithm clued in on TikTok. I would only ever engage with it in the sense that I would follow whatever comedians I know. I would post my standup clips on it, and then it would just show me standup clips of comedians.
I know. if you know comedians, there’s nothing we wanna watch less than standup from comedians we know. so I just never, it was, I was like, Ugh. It was like looking into the sun every time I opened it. I was, fuck, I don’t wanna watch five minutes of that guy Gross.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. I never got into TikTok at all. We set up an UN pops TikTok account a long time ago, and I think we ended up posting like one clip and then I gave up on that shit. [00:02:00] I’ve never really used it. in terms of algorithms, I have my Instagram algorithm pretty well curated to where I only get animal videos, tennis clips, and cute Asian women at batting cages.
And that’s about all my Instagram is.
Connor McSpadden: I was like, where’s the subtly perverted element? There it
Adam Tod Brown: There it is. There it is. Yep. Asian women playing baseball. That’s my shit.
Connor McSpadden: I mean, look if you’re gonna judge the man, there’s a lot worse things to be attracted to than women’s sports
Adam Tod Brown: I would agree.
Connor McSpadden: comradery.
Adam Tod Brown: But yeah I feel like I’ve kind of given up on social media in general. I still use it, but I’m not good at it anymore. I don’t know if I was ever good at it. I just worked for a place. That had a big following, so I got a big following.
Connor McSpadden: it wasn’t through playing [00:03:00] the social media game.
Adam Tod Brown: yeah, it certainly wasn’t through me milking the algorithm or anything back when Digg was a thing.
Remember Digg
Connor McSpadden: Yes, yes. I’m old enough to remember Digg, unfortunately.
Adam Tod Brown: I actually had a Digg I don’t know if they were called influencers or what at the time, but I had a guy who was really good at Digg teach me how to game. Algorithm. So there was a point in history where if I submitted an article to Digg, that shit would hit the front page. But that was my golden age of social media.
I’m over it now. Too old.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, George Takei stole one of my memes one time. That’s about the best I ever did. The Fat Jew, all of those guys were posting
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah.
Connor McSpadden: Fuck Jerry. All that stuff.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. I got some decent follows. In the day, Jim Gaffigan followed me on Twitter. That was cool.
Connor McSpadden: [00:04:00] I have a huge follow that I’ve never been able to discern this guy must have some kind of edge, Lord, social media person, because there’s no earthly reason for Toby Keith to follow me. Like one random Tuesday afternoon nine years ago,
Adam Tod Brown: And I was about to say, didn’t he just die? But no, a friend of his died and he wrote a song about it. Wait, no, Toby. Keith did die, right?
Connor McSpadden: did he. Google ads. I just saw him tweet the other day, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t die.
Adam Tod Brown: did life, put a boot up his ass.
Connor McSpadden: Died February. He died
yesterday. Adam,
Adam Tod Brown: died two years ago. That was 2024.
Connor McSpadden: ago. Yesterday. Sorry. It’s, I just saw February 5th and I was like, wow,
Adam Tod Brown: oh. Rest in piss. Toby Keith. So,
Connor McSpadden: do?
I wanna talk about my boy like that.
Adam Tod Brown: He was all fucking anti-Muslim during the war on terror and shit. He wrote that [00:05:00] fucking courtesy of the red, white, and blue or something like that.
Connor McSpadden: Is that the We’ll put a boot in your ass. It’s the American way. Well, that’s a fucking, that’s a banger, dude. It’s classic. he can’t be mad at Toby for writing the funniest song.
Adam Tod Brown: That’s a good point. So, yeah, TikTok got sold and people are way up in arms about it,
Connor McSpadden: The revolution got sold, man.
Adam Tod Brown: and I think people are right to be up in arms about TikTok being sold. I also think people are kind of crazy to have ever been using TikTok.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, it was like, Hey, it’s just this like super fun, totally innocent Chinese thing that we all like invested a bunch of money in with our government to make for no reason whatsoever. Like it was always kind of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Adam Tod Brown: That algorithm is terrifying. We’re gonna talk about it a little bit more, but the things the TikTok algorithm is capable of [00:06:00] is nuts.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah. Some of the stuff it was showing to yeah. Yeah. You, I guess we’ll get into it. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna bury the lead. Well, TikTok showed what to who find out more at 11.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. So. Let’s talk about why TikTok was sold in the first place. There was a bill signed by Biden in 2024 that demanded tiktoks Chinese parent company Bytedance, sell the app to a US buyer, or be banned
Connor McSpadden: Do you think that Chinese parent companies are really strict,
Adam Tod Brown: strict in terms of
Connor McSpadden: like just like a regular Chinese parent,
Adam Tod Brown: probably. I’m sure they are.
Connor McSpadden: just culturally they’re a very demanding and harsh kind of parent company.
Adam Tod Brown: Micromanaging, fucking demanding of their employees, I’m
Connor McSpadden: It’s like he wants to quarterly reports and he wants to hear me practice the violin.
Adam Tod Brown: So there [00:07:00] was bipartisan support at the time, which is always a red flag
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, that’s, never good when it’s bipartisan.
Adam Tod Brown: People act like bipartisan is good, but it’s not That’s just 10 outta 10 lizard people agree.
Yeah. That just means the whole government agrees and that’s usually bad news ’cause it’s never good. And the concern with Bytedance was that it was tied to the Chinese government in that the app could be used to obtain data about American citizens. Spread propaganda to American citizens. I don’t really believe that excuse. We’ll link to a Rutgers University article about this, and one of the things they point out is China can just buy your data from anywhere if they [00:08:00] want.
They don’t need a social media platform to get our data, everyone. Pretty much has access to our data if you know how to buy it and who to buy it from,
Connor McSpadden: Asian girls in batting cages. Huh?
Adam Tod Brown: Exactly. That’s gonna be the thing that gets me canceled someday in some really dystopian future version of America. It’ll just be the Asian part, not girls in batting cages, Race mixing and our national pastime. Adam, you know better than
Connor McSpadden: that
Adam Tod Brown: What.
Connor McSpadden: 10,000 demerits to your social credit score.
Adam Tod Brown: What would T Cobb say? So, yeah, also, China doesn’t need to own a social network to spread propaganda. any number of countries have been spreading propaganda on social media for years without actually owning those platforms. So I think we were lying about [00:09:00] why we wanted to buy TikTok. I think it’s just that the US government recognized how powerful that algorithm is and wanted to use it for themselves.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, it wasn’t that China could spread Propagandas, that they were jealous that they could do it.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. They want to do the things China was doing for themselves, they want to do it to their own people instead of having China do it It’s especially concerning when you factor in what we just talked about, the algorithm on TikTok. It’s especially bad for children. In late 2022, the Center for Countering Digital Hate produced a report that revealed a whole bunch of alarming shit like how kids are pushed self-harm content within two and a half minutes. Eating disorder content within eight minutes of setting up an account.[00:10:00]
Connor McSpadden: Meanwhile, I’m watching these terrible standup clips can I get some eating disorder content or some self-harm? I want to cut myself. I’ve seen so many fucking vertical standup videos.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, I just got diagnosed as diabetic. Give me some of that weight loss content I need. It
Connor McSpadden: Yeah. Adam wants to be on Bogo v.
Adam Tod Brown: I don’t that shit. I’ve heard that shit can seize up your stomach. Thank you.
Connor McSpadden: I don’t know. well, seems like the kind of thing that there would be some sort of horrible price for you know,
I.
Adam Tod Brown: Another investigation showed that a 14-year-old boy on TikTok was likely to be pushed Andrew Tate type content within three minutes of setting up an account.
Connor McSpadden: Just because this guy took my leadership course does not mean that it’s Andrew Tate type content. Okay.
Adam Tod Brown: This is a quote from Imran Ahmed Center for countering digital Hate. The algorithm [00:11:00] recognizes vulnerability and instead of seeing it as something it should be careful around, it sees it as a potential point of addiction of helping to maximize time on the platform for that child by serving them up content that might trigger some of the preexisting concerns.
End quote. And so now an app that is great at feeding harmful content to children with the goal of getting them addicted to it, is owned by the United States. And Trump has said publicly that it should go full maga. This is how the social media version of the Hitler youth happens, I think.
Connor McSpadden: I’m calling it right now. This is gonna lead this, A lot of tide pot eating type incidents. there’s gonna be a lot of maha shit going around. Or did you know that if you just eat a spoonful of canola oil for dinner every day, I.
Adam Tod Brown: when they talk about harmful content being [00:12:00] fed to children, that’s part of what they’re talking about is crazy ass cures and like the same shit. It’s being pumped to adults.
Connor McSpadden: Colloidal silver and
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. It’s just that children are stupid and. Can’t see through that bullshit. So they’ll fall for it. , so yeah. The algorithm is still gonna be the same. Bytedance is licensing it to this new venture. So the MAGA powers that be are in control of the TikTok algorithm now. That’s great. That’s just great.
Connor McSpadden: Well, and the a algorithm is everybody’s favorite band. You know, like the TikTok algorithm is the Beatles
Adam Tod Brown: Exactly.
Connor McSpadden: right now. my ex-girlfriend, fucking loved the TikTok algorithm would not stop talking about how it shows you the best shit, or whatever. I know there’s people that feel that way about this.
So [00:13:00] this is Donald Trump having full control of everybody’s favorite band. This is called Everyone’s Favorite, Joe.
Adam Tod Brown: And again, we already talked about it. The TikTok algorithm just never reached me. I tell you the algorithm I fuck with is the YouTube algorithm.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, that one has taken quite a large chunk of my life.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. Especially when it comes to music. I remember I saw a thing where Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day posted this thing where he was pissed that people are finding music through the YouTube algorithm. It’s like, why would you be mad at that?
Connor McSpadden: Well, yeah. Where do you think like modern 12 year olds here wanna come around for the first
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, and a lot of the smaller bands that I listen to, I found because of the fucking YouTube algorithm, not all fucking technology is a bad thing. It’s just that music algorithm is the only algorithm that should be on YouTube and not, you know, the white nationalist ones and whatnot. [00:14:00] So we should talk about who bought TikTok. Lots of people bought it, as it turns out. Or a lot of different companies, at least for one thing, the biggest stakeholder is still Bytedance. Who owns a 19.9% stake?
Connor McSpadden: Every time I see the name of that company, I’m like, that’s what you called the company. Really.
Adam Tod Brown: That is a weird name. Yeah. Bytedance.
Connor McSpadden: I guess it’s all about information and dancing to them.
Adam Tod Brown: Apparently US law would only allow for this company to own less than 20%. So 19.9% is the most they can own. As for the new venture in question that will also be owning TikTok, it’s made up of a whole bunch of concerning characters. For one thing, a company called MGX has a 15% [00:15:00] stake. They were founded by which is Abu Dhabi’s Sovereign Wealth Fund.
And if the Feds were to be believed at one point, they have lots of ties to China. CIA and other intelligence agencies have issued warnings about MGX. Working with a bunch of Chinese companies, the US considers security threats. So I guess so much for concerns about China spying on us through TikTok.
Seems like we actually weren’t that worried about it.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, we just wanted to be able to aim the slop trough in the direction we wanted it to.
Adam Tod Brown: MGX has also been involved in at least two big money deals involving Trump. another 35% or so is owned by a whole conglomerate of smaller companies that aren’t really worth listing. There’s an investment company called Silver Lake [00:16:00] that owns 15%, but the most concerning partner is Oracle, who also owns 15%. This is a clip from Larry Ellison, the co-founder and chief technical officer of Oracle. Talking about, you know, surveillance in the future.
Connor McSpadden: The police will be on their best behavior because we record. We we’re constantly recording, watching, and recording everything that’s going on. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on. Uh. And it’s un it’s unimpeachable. The, the cars, the cars have camera, you know, cam cameras on them.
Alright. We, we have, I think we have a squad car here someplace, uh, but those kind of applications using ai, if we can use ai and we’re using AI to monitor the video. And if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate, uh, person, whether it’s the sheriff or the [00:17:00] chief or whom, whomever we need to, um, take control of the situation.
We have, you know, same thing. We have drones. We just, if there’s something going on in a shopping and I’ll stop them. Yeah, a drone goes out there and go there way faster than a police car. There’s no reason for, by the way, high speed chases, you shouldn’t have high speed chases between cars. Uh, you just have a drone, follow the car.
I mean, it’s very, very simple That’s how we get drone striked on the one 10 someday by a fucking police drone. That was Larry Ellison talking about how AI could, you know, just be used to set up a big, massive surveillance state is all which. I feel like stuff like this is already being put in practice a little bit in small ways. I had a weird thing that happened with Spotify a couple months ago where we had maybe [00:18:00] three or four super old episodes where we used music that apparently we weren’t supposed to use and was not a problem for years and years and years.
Adam Tod Brown: Then all of a sudden Spotify pulled down like three episodes and we’re like, you’re using a song you’re not supposed to use. I feel like they ran some sort of AI thing to find shit like that at that point, because otherwise, like how did it go all those years without them calling any of that out and then just all of a sudden they’re super duper on top of it in scanning are massive.
Back catalog.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah. If not, there’s an intern somewhere that deserves a huge raise.
Adam Tod Brown: So that clip you just heard probably goes a long way toward explaining why Ellison has been interested and invested in TikTok [00:19:00] since, well before its acquisition, since 2022. US users. TikTok data has been stored on Oracle servers here in the United States so as to alleviate concerns that China would spy on us, which I love.
in order to prevent China from spying on us, we just gave the data to the guy who says he wants to use it to spy on us, and apparently that was fine. no one cared about that.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, this is like not news to anyone, but we’re in the era where you just say you did something. It doesn’t matter if you did it at all, you just, it’s whoever said they did it the loudest and the most convincingly did it.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, and it doesn’t even matter if it’s just demonstrably false either.
Connor McSpadden: No.
Adam Tod Brown: you just say it. Just get in front of people and say, yeah, that’s, we did that. Don’t worry about it.
Connor McSpadden: Five. That’s good.
Adam Tod Brown: So. [00:20:00] Again, it seems like America just wants to use TikTok to spy on Americans instead of letting China do it. And to that end, Oracle’s side of the TikTok deal is that they will be responsible for the security of American user data, and we’ll also monitor changes and updates to the algorithm.
So the guy who wants to use AI to create a massive surveillance state. Now owns one of the biggest social media platforms in all the world, and a social media platform that is frequently used by people to post political content, anti-ice content, anti-Trump content, so risky business being on TikTok these days
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, if you’re doing anything cool, you might want to have a backup plan.
Adam Tod Brown: [00:21:00] Yeah, and his ideas don’t end with the United States. He’s also proposed a global AI surveillance system, which kind of sounds like a one world government without the government, Yeah, that’s a way to put it.
still just this overarching authority over everyone else, but. They just don’t call themselves a one world government.
I feel like they’d be satisfied with that.
Connor McSpadden: Well, and what is better than a one world government without the government part, because governments sometimes, rarely but sometimes ensure rights to the people that live within them,
you know? So it’s like, oh, it’s one world government without the government. Great. Perfect.
Adam Tod Brown: yeah. There’s no one for the people to ask questions to.
Connor McSpadden: And I think this you know, social critic source score stuff, global service surveillance stuff, I think is all gonna, we’re gonna find out in some dis disgusting, horrible way how it’s all gonna tie into our [00:22:00] blockchain you know, real ID or whatever the fuck.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, that has to be coming at some point. The way they’re harvesting data.
Connor McSpadden: Because once you know, once you have a ledger that’s you can see all of the transactions on it and the history of time, you can have a, well, you can never expunge the demerits from your score. Can you, you know, We always know they’re there. We always know that you lost 500 social points for going to that fucking crash concert in Pomona.
Adam Tod Brown: . Yeah, that’s absolutely feels like what we’re headed for. And there’s also, I think, been kind of a push to get rid of credit scores, regular ass credit scores. And sure, but what are we gonna replace it with?
Connor McSpadden: Of course they do that when my credit score is actually finally good after 10 years.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. Yeah. That sounds about right.
Connor McSpadden: I’ve been fucking nursing this score since 2016, trying to get back on [00:23:00] track and fi, and finally they’re like, oh, we got rid of that. Connor, don’t, don’t worry.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, that’s absolutely how it would work. This is a quote from Larry Ellison about global AI surveillance. I have to tell the AI model as much about my country as I can. We need to unify all the national data, put it into a database where it’s easily consumable by the AI model, and then ask whatever question you like.
That’s the missing link. As long as countries will put their data, all of it in a single place, we can use AI to help manage the care of all the patients and the population at large. End quote. So he is specifically talking about healthcare there, but in the same talk he added that he thought AI could handle other social services and help eliminate fraud and.
I don’t know if there’s anyone out there on the world stage doing nefarious shit in the name of ending fraud, like [00:24:00] sending troops to American cities to attack their own citizens or anything like that, but concerning, very concerning,
Connor McSpadden: Our, fight against fraud.
Adam Tod Brown: yeah, our fight against Somali daycare fraud, the biggest problem plaguing this country right now
Connor McSpadden: So, so this guy’s thing is just that AI doesn’t have all the variables. If it knew what was going on with every person in the country, it could optimize some kind of workflow and we’d live in it in some fictional tech utopia. Yes.
Adam Tod Brown: Yes, and I have jokingly said a lot of times that my preferred version of the apocalypse is that big central computer that just dictates our lives and tells us what to do because then we don’t have to think for ourselves and that. Sounds very relaxing.
Connor McSpadden: Get a bit of order. You know, everyone just sitting around the big computer waiting for it to spit out its
Adam Tod Brown: yeah, yeah. Can I go on vacation this month? No, I can’t. Okay. Thank you. Computer, I [00:25:00] just thought I would ask. But yeah, now I’m not so sure. Now it feels like the big computer apocalypse is coming and it, I think I’m off board.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah. Well, it’s like, I bet if you took everyone’s data in the country and put it into AI and asked a bunch of shit, you might, you probably could come up with a way to lower healthcare costs or get people to school five minutes quicker, but I bet you anything, they’re not gonna use it for that I.
Adam Tod Brown: No.
Connor McSpadden: Someone will be like, I can use this to sell more porn.
Adam Tod Brown: I also would be shocked if there aren’t already several proposals out there for lowering healthcare costs. That we could probably just try out, just put ’em in place without having to ask AI how to game the system
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, I would be in favor of those.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. Let’s just see what the experts say first before we take it to ai. But yeah, he’s just talking about healthcare there, but [00:26:00] obviously what he’s saying could also be extended to spying and like he said in that clip, sending drones after. Cars and things of the like. It’s a scary future. This guy is setting up.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah. You know, well, I mean, once you start thinking about how many cameras are everywhere, and if they all have facial recognition and your face is in the database, then it’s like, oh my God. Then you’re really living in a fucking Logan’s run paranoid schizophrenic future hellscape.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. Not just cameras, but there’s also all those a LPRs everywhere in the country now, which are, I think, automatic license plate readers. I think it
stands for. And those are cameras. There’s thousands in LA that just take an image of every license plate that passes them and they put that in a database The [00:27:00] police can use that to track where you go. Every day. What’s your routine? Where do you work? Where do you go after work? they access that shit so commonly and have been for years. I don’t know. How is anyone committing crimes anymore?
Connor McSpadden: I was just thinking that
Adam Tod Brown: This sucks. I wanna rob a bank and I can’t anymore.
Thanks ai. damn.
Connor McSpadden: too young to explore the world, you know? Too old to rob a bank.
Adam Tod Brown: Exactly, and now the credit scores are gonna go away oh, fun sidebar. Larry Ellison’s son also owns Paramount. So Dad owns one of the biggest social network apps in all the land. His son owns most of the tv, so that’s good times. One thing I will say about Larry Ellison for being 81, that dude looks great. [00:28:00]
Connor McSpadden: Let me see.
Adam Tod Brown: He is
Connor McSpadden: this.
Adam Tod Brown: two years older than Trump.
Connor McSpadden: You know, he does look good for an 81-year-old. Damn.
Adam Tod Brown: He sure does. I thought he was in his sixties or something. That dude is 80 fucking one.
Connor McSpadden: Like out of all the weird guys doing weird health, life longing shit, this is the only one that seems to be working
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, and you can tell he is had a little bit of plastic surgery, but
Connor McSpadden: a tasteful amount.
Adam Tod Brown: yeah, still not enough that I don’t look at him and go, wow, you look great for 81. You fucking monster.
Connor McSpadden: He does, he looks young enough to own TikTok.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, he’s probably dancing on TikTok. So there is one recent change to TikTok that people, admittedly, myself included, have been freaking out about. That isn’t actually as alarming as it seems, or at the very least it’s nothing [00:29:00] new. And that would be the claim that tiktoks new user agreement stipulates that it will collect sensitive information about users including.
Their quote, sexual life or sexual orientation status as transgender or non-binary citizenship or immigration status.
Connor McSpadden: Nothing about being a furry, we’re safe.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, exactly. With this political climate, that’s obviously pretty scary stuff to hear, but in this political climate is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. For one thing, that wording has been in the TikTok user agreement for a long, long time. Similar wording also appears in the user agreements of a bunch of other social media platforms. Case in point, Facebook’s user agreement includes this in the terms of what data they might collect, quote, any information with special protections that you [00:30:00] choose to provide. Such as your religious views, your sexual orientation, political views, health, racial or ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, or as part of surveys you choose to participate in and where you have given your explicit consent and quote.
So Facebook says the same thing basically, and apparently, at least according to TechCrunch, we will link to the article. This wording is there mostly to comply specifically with California law. The non-technical layman’s explanation is that California passed a law that requires businesses to inform consumers when they collect sensitive information, and that law provides a list of things it deems to be sensitive information.
Gavin Newsom updated the list in 2023. To add citizenship and immigration status? Both. [00:31:00] So what the user agreement is saying is that if your video includes sensitive information, like citizenship or whatever, they will receive that data and process it, whatever that means, because of course they will, because it’s in the video you just uploaded to their platform.
But what they’re actually saying here is that. They agree to handle that information within the boundaries of the law. Whether they actually do that is a whole other thing. But either way, the user agreement was not changed to reflect this because it was sold to US company. The agreement already said that you still shouldn’t fuck with TikTok though.
Connor McSpadden: Even though it’s just boilerplate stuff.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, it’s. Pretty standard. I feel like most user agreements when it comes to collecting [00:32:00] data are pretty standard because what do they need to tell you? Just, yeah, we’re collecting everything. That’s really what it is. I haven’t dug into it enough, but there is a phone game out there called Royal Kingdom.
Connor McSpadden: Yes. I see it all over the place.
Adam Tod Brown: Have you seen the commercials?
Connor McSpadden: Like with the celebrities.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, they have some of the biggest fucking celebrities in the world pushing this game.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah. Jimmy Fon will be like, there’s no ads,
Adam Tod Brown: yeah, there’s no ads. It doesn’t cost shit to play. So in that case, you’re the product usually when that’s happening. And I would love to see what kind of crazy shit is in Royal Kingdom’s, user agreements.
I wonder if there’s anything ,
Connor McSpadden: Oh, interesting. Yeah. I’m sure there is
penis size, greatest fear and allergies [00:33:00] all maybe scraped from your biometric data.
Adam Tod Brown: because they clearly got some money behind that shit. They got, I think Rob Lowe was in the last commercial I saw. He can’t be a cheap get, I bet we couldn’t get Rob Lowe on this podcast.
Connor McSpadden: Uh, I, used to work with a guy that had the same agent as him. So maybe I could, he’s more gettable than you think.
Adam Tod Brown: He does seem like a nice guy.
Connor McSpadden: Pretty nice.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah.
Connor McSpadden: All I know about him you only do, only Rob Lowe White Low dirt. I got very into his, the Peloton.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah.
Connor McSpadden: Rob Lowe lights a Peloton.
Adam Tod Brown: big. Atkins diet guy.
Connor McSpadden: Oh. Back in the day, was he?
Adam Tod Brown: He still does Atkins commercials. I think he’s still on the fucking Atkins diet.
Connor McSpadden: Oh, damn. Well he fucking, looks like he’s 12 years
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. Argue with the results. He’s also 81. People
Connor McSpadden: Yeah.
Adam Tod Brown: Pablo’s old as shit. So yeah, I guess don’t worry about the user agreement thing, even though it is pretty [00:34:00] alarming, but at the same time, them saying they will handle that data. Within the boundaries of the law means they do have that data and it is still in the hands of a guy who swears AI is the future of surveillance.
So I don’t know if I would be completely put at ease just because this user agreement is standard technical shit. It’s still bad, still bad that TikTok is owned by who it is.
Connor McSpadden: By all nine of those weird guys.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. And then a whole host of other companies that owned the remaining 35%.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah, miscellaneous enterprises,
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. That said, almost as soon as the ink dried on this deal to sell, TikTok, users [00:35:00] started complaining that content that was anti-Trump or anti-ice. Or related to Jeffrey Epstein was getting censored on TikTok.
Connor McSpadden: the good stuff.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, exactly. The stuff we tune in for
Connor McSpadden: Why do you think we play the game?
Adam Tod Brown: the hashtag TikTok censorship went viral on Twitter, currently known as X over it, but a report in the publication, good authority points to something at least a little less nefarious. A group of eight academics examined how videos were trending during this transition, and found that the drop in views for this content coincided with a data center outage, and that views rebounded almost immediately after that outage was resolved. They said they couldn’t investigate every claim, like the one that says the word [00:36:00] Epstein is being blocked.
In private direct messages, which, what good is that gonna do? If Connor sent me a message and said, have you heard about these files? I would know you were talking about the Epstein files. Like censoring the word Epstein wouldn’t do shit.
Connor McSpadden: I just call him Jeff Ep Jeff e. He’s got a lot of you know, you know
Adam Tod Brown: Jeff.
Connor McSpadden: evil Jeffrey.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah. So they don’t have access to private message data, so they can’t check that. They also conceded that some posts may have indeed been censored, but they just wouldn’t know it because they would’ve fallen into the same pool as all of those posts that got wiped out by the data center crash. All that said, even if the user agreement and censorship concerns aren’t all people are making ’em out to be. Fact remains that a guy who is convinced AI should be [00:37:00] spying on the global population just bought TikTok. And it seems like they’re probably at least gonna try to use it to spy on the population,
Connor McSpadden: didn’t.
Adam Tod Brown: yeah. cause otherwise they just kind of bought it for nothing like.
Connor McSpadden: Well, yeah. Ostensibly to keep China from doing shit with it, which, you know, as evidenced by the board of directors, it seems like they don’t really give a shit.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, I don’t buy the China concerns with this. I also don’t buy it with 5G technology. There was a push a few years ago to stop rural areas from buying 5G technology from China, and I think that is just a continuation of. My favorite pet conspiracy theory, which is that the government intentionally keeps internet access to rural areas shitty,
[00:38:00] because then they’re gonna know too, the man. Keeping somebody down you say.
well, I think it explains why all these right wing websites look like. If they were built on fucking Geo cities or Angel fire, they still got the dancing baby gifts on ’em and shit. Like you go to one of those websites on your shitty rural internet, it’s gonna load lightning quick. Meanwhile, you go to your CNN’s and your New York Times with their fucking HTML five videos and shit.
That site’s never gonna fucking pull up.
Connor McSpadden: Yeah the white nationalist movement in this country has always been known for its lightweight coating methodology. I.
Adam Tod Brown: I mean, they have, like, those websites look like shit. And I think that’s why. So, yeah. The government’s spying on you with TikTok. there are apparently a bunch of TikTok [00:39:00] alternatives out there.
Connor McSpadden: Oh boy. It’s TikTok made with whey protein
and other plant matters.
Adam Tod Brown: Small batch Artisan social media apps. Fucking feed to table two of them, skylight and up scrolled. Both had significant spikes in user numbers After the TikTok sale was announced, we will also link to a CNET article that list seven others along with those two. Also, four of the other seven are just YouTube shorts, Facebook reels, Instagram reels, and Snapchat.
You probably know about all those by now, but there’s a few more options.
Connor McSpadden: you don’t, God bless you and your perfect hearts.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, we wanna meet you and have you on the pod.
Connor McSpadden: Stay pure.
Adam Tod Brown: Yeah, 100%. yeah, go check out one of those alternatives if you need TikTok. In your life. Maybe, we’ll, maybe we’ll get [00:40:00] on upstream or up scrolled, sorry, skylight, something like that. Official conspiracy. The show, skylight account. We’ll see.
Connor McSpadden: I’ve heard stupid things.
Adam Tod Brown: But until then, I do believe that is our episode. Connor, thank you so much. We’re doing the
pod. What do we have to plug before we get outta here? By the time you’re listening to this, there should be new. Subscription levels on Patreon and super cast, including one where if you stay subscribed for the entire year at the end of the year, you will get an exclusive year end wrap up podcast that people is six hours long.
We are going to do a half hour recap of every month of 2026 ’cause it feels like a month worth documenting. And if you subscribe at the right level at the end of the [00:41:00] year, you will get our massive epic Stephen King expanded novel length, six hour year end wrap up episode, and other stuff. So go check that out.
patreon.com/on pops, or actually, no, no, no, no, no. Go to you. Don’t even like.com/subscribe. We have a website now for the network. How about that? Connor, what do you wanna plug?
Connor McSpadden: You don’t even like.com. That’s got a nice ring to it. Check out my special live in Tucson on youtube.com. Connor McSpadden live in Tucson.
Adam Tod Brown: And I think that’s it. Let’s get the fuck outta here, Connor, say goodbye.
Connor McSpadden: Goodbye.
Adam Tod Brown: Goodbye everybody. We love you.