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Joe Rogan Slams TikTok: ‘It Ends With China Having All of Your Data’

Fox News reported:

Joe Rogan expressed concerns Tuesday that TikTok, one of the most used social media apps in the world, poses a unique threat to Americans’ data privacy and safety.

TikTok is owned by Bytedance, a Chinese company. China’s Civil Military Fusion Policy and 2017 National Intelligence Law requires private businesses in China to share information and data at the request of the Chinese government.

“Listen to this, this is from TikTok’s privacy policy,” Rogan said. “It said, ‘We collect certain information about the device you use to access the platform, such as your IP address, user region.’ This is really crazy.”

“‘User agent, mobile carrier, time zone settings, identifiers for advertising purpose, model of your device, the device system, network type, device IDs, your screen resolution and operating system, app and file names and types,'” he continued. “So all your apps and all your file names, all the things you have filed away on your phone, they have access to that,” he said.

Appeals Court Upholds Texas Block on School Mask Mandates

Associated Press reported:

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order that forbids school districts from imposing mask mandates on schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been upheld by a divided federal appeals court panel.

The ruling from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ended a lower federal court injunction allowing such mandates.

Families of seven children with disabilities — the court record listed Down syndrome, asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity, epilepsy, heart defects and cerebral palsy, among others — had sued, saying the children were vulnerable and that the lack of a masking requirement at their schools endangered their health.

House Republicans Slam Biden Admin for Still Mandating COVID Vaccines in Military: ‘No Scientific Reason’

Fox News reported:

Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., a medical doctor, is joined by Republican Rep. Hudson of North Carolina in leading 19 other Republicans in a formal protest of the Biden administration regarding compulsory vaccination within the military in light of Dr. Fauci’s recent comments on the efficacy of vaccines, saying there is “no scientific reason.”

In response to these comments, the letter reads “With the waning efficacy and durability of vaccine-induced immunity, forcing service members who are by and large a healthy and not an ‘at risk’ population, to be inoculated with no certainty of preventing infection or spread, while concurrently sowing seeds of division and discord, is absolutely wrong.”

“The Biden Administration has willfully and systematically degraded our nation’s readiness with their harmful, politicized, and completely unnecessary federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate,” says Representative Murphy.

“Forcing these patriots to get a vaccine — which even Dr. Fauci has conceded does not protect well against infection and can have potentially serious side effects — is morally wrong and inconsistent with the science and the purpose of vaccination.”

Medical Expert Slams LA County Health Director Over Mask Mandate Push

Fox News reported:

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya called out Los Angeles health officials who are trying to push another mask mandate, saying they have this “illusion of control” on Tuesday’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

“I just can’t fathom that a public health professional looking at the data on mask mandates in the past, completely making no dent on case rates, then concluding that we need another mask mandate.

“I mean, the case rates are coming down in L.A. County without a mask mandate. What does she think causes case rates to go up and down? They have this illusion of control over the spread of the virus that they cannot let go.”

NBA Won’t Have COVID Vaccine Mandate for 2022-23 Season, per Report

CBS Sports reported:

While the NBA still strongly suggests that all players, coaches and staff members receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the league will not introduce a vaccine mandate for next season, according to Yahoo!Sports. Unvaccinated players may be subject to periodic testing, however, pending discussions with the National Basketball Players Association.

This is in line with the NBA‘s health and safety policies from last season when vaccine requirements were left up to local cities and states. Players did not have to get the vaccine, but they did have to follow local guidelines and unvaccinated players were subject to more stringent testing and restrictions.

Philadelphia 76ers wing Matisse Thybulle was unable to play in Games 3, 4 and 6 of the team’s first-round playoff series against the Toronto Raptors because he was unvaccinated and thus unable to enter Canada.

And of course, there was Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving. His refusal to get the vaccine resulted in the Nets sending him home for the first half of the season, and he did not play at all until Jan. 5 when the team changed course. Even then, he was only eligible to play road games and appeared sporadically until March 27 when he finally made his home debut after New York lifted certain local mandates.

China’s Wuhan Shuts Down District of 1 Million People Over 4 Asymptomatic COVID Cases

CNN World reported:

The Chinese metropolis of Wuhan has shut down a district of almost a million people after detecting four asymptomatic COVID cases, as the original epicenter of the pandemic takes no chances in preventing another outbreak under China’s stringent zero-COVID policy.

Authorities in Wuhan’s Jiangxia district, home to more than 970,000 people, announced Wednesday its main urban areas would enforce three days of “temporary control measures.”

All public transport, from buses to subway services, was suspended, and residents were urged not to leave the district unless absolutely necessary.

Authorities also identified four high-risk neighborhoods where residents are banned from leaving their homes. A further four neighborhoods were designated as medium-risk, meaning residents cannot leave their compounds.

Inside TikTok’s Attempts to ‘Downplay the China Association’

Gizmodo reported:

Leaked documents from within TikTok reveal how the company games out responses to tricky questions — and highlight what the company thinks its biggest public perception problems are. Chief among them: China.

The PR documents, which Gizmodo obtained from within the company, are titled “TikTok Master Messaging” and “TikTok Key Messages.” Both are explanations of press talking points in English and include a version translated into a European language. (Gizmodo is not naming the language to protect the sourcing of the document.)

The larger of the two, the 53-page TikTok Master Messaging document, outlines key messages the company wants to present to the public. The dossier’s version history shows it was last updated in August 2021 but had been consistently altered since it was created in March 2020.

Right near the top of the list? “Downplay the parent company ByteDance, downplay the China association, downplay AI.”

Google, Like Amazon, Will Let Police See Your Video Without a Warrant

The Verge reported:

Arlo, Apple, Wyze and Anker, owner of Eufy, all confirmed to CNET that they won’t give authorities access to your smart home camera’s footage unless they’re shown a warrant or court order.

If you’re wondering why they’re specifying that, it’s because we’ve now learned Google and Amazon are doing just the opposite: they allow police to get this data without a warrant if police claim there’s been an emergency.

Earlier this month, Amazon disclosed that it had already fulfilled 11 such requests this year. Google’s transparency report doesn’t seem to include information specifically about emergency requests, and the company didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on how many it’s fulfilled.

Russia Fines Google $34 Million for Breaching Competition Rules

Reuters reported:

Russia’s competition watchdog fined Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) 2 billion roubles ($34.2 million) on Tuesday for abusing its dominant position in the video hosting market, the regulator said in a statement.

The decision is the latest multi-million dollar fine as part of Moscow’s increasingly assertive campaign against foreign tech companies.

“We will study the text of the official decision to define our next steps,” Google said in a statement to Reuters.

Google must pay the fine within two months of it entering into force, The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said.