Joe Rogan and Adam Curry discuss the potential TikTok ban in the US
Joe Rogan and Adam Curry recently broke down a potential TikTok ban in the United States of America. A podcasting pioneer, Curry is the nephew of former CIA official Donald Gregg and is revered for his geopolitical knowledge.
In his latest appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Adam Curry told host Joe Rogan that the US government might soon impose a nationwide ban on the Chinese social media app TikTok.
UFC commentator and podcast mogul Joe Rogan referenced TikTok's privacy policy and labeled TikTok "an extraordinarily invasive software." TikTok routinely faces allegations of being a propaganda and data-mining tool used by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), the ruling party of the People's Republic of China. Alluding to this, Rogan stated:
"At least it says in TikTok's terms like what -- It's outrageous, but some of it is like, monitoring your keystrokes, and having access to your microphones, and stuff like that." Rogan and Curry concurred that all apps usually demand such access. Rogan added, "One of the points of concern for some people was that it was linked to computers that aren't even loaded up with TikTok, like they're not even connected."
Watch the podcast episode below:
Meanwhile, Adam Curry clarified that he doesn't condone the Chinese government's data mining via TikTok. Regardless, he noted that US-based social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter do the same for the US government.
He suggested that to stop TikTok from garnering greater ad revenue than themselves, US-based companies are getting US politicians to lobby for a TikTok ban. Curry said:
"Everything is tracked. There's only one telephone company. It's the US government. They have everything. Everything is recorded. Everything that you put on a network... In Utah, they've got the big data centers. They're all cooled under waters; all kinds of high-tech sh**."
Watch Rogan and Curry's assessment in the video below:
When Joe Rogan expressed his disbelief after reading TikTok's terms of service
TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which is purportedly affiliated with the CCP, the Chinese military, and China's intelligence agencies. Major military powers such as the US and India have consistently accused TikTok of being a national security threat and an information-mining arm of the CCP.
While India banned TikTok amid its border standoff with China in 2020, the US is currently mulling over imposing a similar TikTok ban. On the JRE podcast in July 2022, Rogan spoke to fellow American comedian Theo Von about TikTok.
Rogan notably insinuated that he was shocked after reading TikTok's terms of service.
Watch the podcast episode below:
The MMA personality told Theo Von that he went down a TikTok rabbit hole. Joe Rogan's investigation seemingly led him to conclude that TikTok was created by the Chinese government primarily to mine TikTok users' information. When asked what happens after TikTok collects the information, Rogan simply said:
"It ends with China having all your data."
Watch Rogan and Von's discussion below: