TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, NBC News has confirmed. The news comes as the app’s executives are desperately trying to halt a law that would ban TikTok in the United States unless it’s sold by its Chinese owners.
The ban of the controversial app — which has become rife with right-wing misinformation and pro-Trump propaganda in recent years — is set to go into effect Sunday. Trump says he should have a chance to weigh in as president. And Chew met with the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago last month.
The man seems mighty desperate.
As my colleague Steve Benen noted Wednesday, Chew isn’t the only titan of the tech world planning to attend Trump’s inauguration. Other Big Tech executives — such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, X owner Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, as well as Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook — reportedly will have prominent seats at Monday’s ceremony, near Trump’s Cabinet picks and elected officials. The tech execs and their companies have been showering Trump with $1 million donations.
The scene at the Capitol is shaping up to be a gross epitome of the Big Tech oligarchy I warned about after the election.
The scene at the Capitol is shaping up to be a gross epitome of the Big Tech oligarchy I warned about after the election — and which President Joe Biden warned about Wednesday in his farewell address from the Oval Office.
The Big Brother(s) of many Americans’ nightmares have arrived, in the form of these tech elites who have chosen to prostrate themselves to the incoming administration. Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos, Chew, Pichai and Cook all run companies that feed on Americans’ digital appetites and feast on our data — and have played large roles in our nation’s misinformation crisis.
And on Monday, they all plan to be in attendance to kiss Trump’s ring and celebrate his reascension to power.
In many ways, the imagery ought to be clarifying for Americans. It’s past time for all of us to dispense with the idea that social media and Big Tech platforms like these are designed to help keep us informed. Their leaders’ deference to Trump and his MAGA movement should be ominous for us all.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.