The entrepreneur says he’ll need President-elect Donald Trump’s help to close a deal for the social media platform’s U.S. operation

Earlier in the day, O’Leary posted on X that he was partnering with former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt on his bid for TikTok.

The TikTok ban was initially floated during Trump’s first administration, before ultimately being passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden last April. The chief concern U.S. lawmakers have with TikTok is that it doubles as a spyware app for the Chinese government; TikTok, according to Chinese law, is required to share user data with China’s communist government, if it is asked to do so.

The Supreme Court case asking if the government can ban TikTok is easier than it looks

As it turns out, the First Amendment arguments for allowing the government to ban foreign adversaries from owning TikTok are stronger than they may initially seem. As Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, one of three appeals court judges who upheld the federal law, explained in a concurring opinion, the federal government has a long history of trying to lock foreign nations out of US communications.

Indeed, current US law prohibits “any foreign government or the representative thereof” from receiving a radio station license, and it broadly bars noncitizens and companies with significant foreign ownership from controlling radio broadcasts.

China’s ‘indoctrination isn’t hypothetical. It’s real.’

Now, an updated study conducted by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI)—provided exclusively to The Free Press—finds that those fears may be justified.

The new research is being released as the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments this week about whether the U.S. site must be sold or shut down. TikTok, owned by the Chinese media giant ByteDance, is arguing that federal legislation forcing a sale by January 19 is an unconstitutional limit on free speech. (A lawyer for Donald Trump has asked the Court to delay the sale date so the president-elect can pursue “a political resolution.”)

The experiences and views of each site’s users – from how much political content they see to the platforms’ impact on democracy

X stands out as a place people turn to for politics. A majority of X users (59%) say keeping up with politics or political issues is a reason they use it, compared with 36% of TikTok users and even smaller shares of Facebook or Instagram users (26% each).

Partisans hold opposing views of X. Republican X users are far more likely than Democratic users to see it as mostly good for democracy (53% vs. 26%). In contrast, Democratic users are three times as likely as their GOP counterparts to see it as mostly bad (39% vs. 13%).

There’s a range of reasons people are drawn to social media platforms – even on X, where using it to keep up with politics is relatively common. On TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, politics takes a backseat to other reasons we explored.

The entrepreneur says he’ll need President-elect Donald Trump’s help to close a deal for the social media platform’s U.S. operation

Earlier in the day, O’Leary posted on X that he was partnering with former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt on his bid for TikTok.

The TikTok ban was initially floated during Trump’s first administration, before ultimately being passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden last April. The chief concern U.S. lawmakers have with TikTok is that it doubles as a spyware app for the Chinese government; TikTok, according to Chinese law, is required to share user data with China’s communist government, if it is asked to do so.

The Supreme Court case asking if the government can ban TikTok is easier than it looks

As it turns out, the First Amendment arguments for allowing the government to ban foreign adversaries from owning TikTok are stronger than they may initially seem. As Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, one of three appeals court judges who upheld the federal law, explained in a concurring opinion, the federal government has a long history of trying to lock foreign nations out of US communications.

Indeed, current US law prohibits “any foreign government or the representative thereof” from receiving a radio station license, and it broadly bars noncitizens and companies with significant foreign ownership from controlling radio broadcasts.

China’s ‘indoctrination isn’t hypothetical. It’s real.’

Now, an updated study conducted by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI)—provided exclusively to The Free Press—finds that those fears may be justified.

The new research is being released as the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments this week about whether the U.S. site must be sold or shut down. TikTok, owned by the Chinese media giant ByteDance, is arguing that federal legislation forcing a sale by January 19 is an unconstitutional limit on free speech. (A lawyer for Donald Trump has asked the Court to delay the sale date so the president-elect can pursue “a political resolution.”)

The experiences and views of each site’s users – from how much political content they see to the platforms’ impact on democracy

X stands out as a place people turn to for politics. A majority of X users (59%) say keeping up with politics or political issues is a reason they use it, compared with 36% of TikTok users and even smaller shares of Facebook or Instagram users (26% each).

Partisans hold opposing views of X. Republican X users are far more likely than Democratic users to see it as mostly good for democracy (53% vs. 26%). In contrast, Democratic users are three times as likely as their GOP counterparts to see it as mostly bad (39% vs. 13%).

There’s a range of reasons people are drawn to social media platforms – even on X, where using it to keep up with politics is relatively common. On TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, politics takes a backseat to other reasons we explored.