BS Summary: This video contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including False Dilemma, Availability Heuristic, and Appeal to Authority, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 25.4% saturation with 124 hits. Analysis detected 1,159 faulty-reasoning hits from 488 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 87.8% and a BS Rank of 92% (1,368 of 16,813 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 91.90% of the video peer group.
Social media giant TikTok today seeking a dismissal of a New York case that accuses the company of harming users mental health.
NTD's Arleen Richards has more on the proceedings.
But isn't it a product?
A New York appellate panel of judges on Wednesday hearing arguments over whether the state of New York can sue TikTok on behalf of the platform's users.
TikTok argues that only people who are harmed can bring claims.
To answer the question of whether a state can sue TikTok, the courts have to grapple over whether the state's case is about the content posted on TikTok, in which case the company would be immune from liability under the First Amendment, or the design of the platform and its algorithms, which may arguably be called a product.
>> The TikTok itself, is that not a product?
product? No, TikTok is a uh The algorithm.
>> Platform, the algorithm, that's all a publication mechanism, a service under New York law, compared to a product.
Does the First Amendment protect human beings or artificial intelligence?
As you're gathering together things based upon the user and what the user um has exhibited some interest in, and then feeding that directly to the user.
New York is one of a coalition of 14 state attorneys general who filed lawsuits in 2024 against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance.
They are accusing the social media platform of harming young users' mental health while deceiving the public about its dangers.
New York State Supreme Court ruled last May that Attorney General Letitia James could sue the platform and rejected TikTok's request for a dismissal of the case.
In Wednesday's proceeding, the New York attorney explained why the algorithm is a product and not related to free speech.
But how do we get past that being um like speech from different people just pulled together in a way that they say is interesting versus it being an actual product?
So I think that this is a product in the same way like a child's toy would be.
A child's entertainment or a child's toy would be a product.
Since the platform's US operations were sold to a group of American investors in January, concerns have remained over whether its algorithm could still manipulate content on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, Congressman John Moolenaar, recently told Cliff May on the Foreign Policy podcast that he wasn't satisfied that TikTok's parent company ByteDance still owns a minority stake in the US operations.
There's a lot of unanswered operations.
questions.
To your point about the algorithm, um to what degree does ByteDance still have control of that algorithm?
And uh and how secure is the data when it comes to Americans' data?
In the New York case, the panel didn't rule on Wednesday.
Arleen Richards, NTD News.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.