As the debate over banning TikTok continues to rage, Florida has quietly passed its own bill that might solve the problem, a ban on children using social media at all. It s a law that should be in place in every state, we ll talk about it. Also, a major disaster in Maryland has a cargo ship crashes into a bridge, sending dozens of cars careening into the river. What happened and, more importantly, why? Also a horrifying story shows in disturbing detail why surrogacy should be banned. Plus, the Attorney General of Minnesota says that car manufacturers are to blame for tempting young people with cars that are easy to steal. We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
00:00:00.000Today on the Matt Walsh Show, as the debate over banning TikTok continues to rage,
00:00:03.940Florida has quietly passed its own bill that might solve the problem, a ban on children using social media at all.
00:00:09.500It's a law that should be in place in every state. We'll talk about it.
00:00:11.600Also, a major disaster in Maryland has a cargo ship crashes into a bridge, sending dozens of cars careening into the river.
00:00:18.280What happened and, more importantly, why?
00:00:20.520Also, a horrifying story shows in disturbing detail why surrogacy should be banned.
00:00:24.580Plus, the Attorney General of Minnesota says that car manufacturers are to blame for tempting young people with cars that are easy to steal.
00:00:32.100We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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00:01:57.560Legislation that would ban TikTok in the United States, unless its Chinese owner divests from the company,
00:02:02.000is currently making its way through the Senate.
00:02:03.860It's still not clear what's going to happen to that bill exactly.
00:02:07.080It overwhelmingly passed in the House by hundreds of votes,
00:02:09.800but it appears to be significantly less popular in the upper chamber.
00:02:12.460And that's true in no small part because of the most intense lobbying campaign in recent memory is underway to kill the legislation.
00:02:20.200A lot of very powerful and very wealthy interests don't want to see this ban pass.
00:02:24.780And that's not to say that there aren't reasonable arguments on both sides of the issue.
00:02:28.400On one hand, TikTok is unquestionably toxic for both kids and adults.
00:02:33.900Pretty much, you know, everyone who uses TikTok very quickly drops several IQ points and learns how to twerk,
00:02:40.000at least in the U.S., where the algorithm is fine-tuned for that express purpose.
00:02:44.840It's also a spy app under the control of a hostile foreign power that's transmitting all sorts of data we don't know about.
00:02:50.800And these are, to say the least, serious problems.
00:02:54.820On the other hand, there are obviously legitimate concerns about empowering the U.S. government to remove entire platforms from the Internet,
00:03:00.820even though the bill, as it's written, only applies to platforms that are controlled by foreign entities.
00:03:05.900You do have to wonder how far that limitation can be stretched.
00:03:08.860We all just lived through, you know, several years of hysteria about Russian control of the White House.
00:03:14.300And every other significant new power that the government has been given to combat foreign enemies has eventually been used against the government's domestic political opponents.
00:03:23.580So it's hard to be reassured that, given this vast new authority to ban the most popular social media app on the planet,
00:03:30.320that the government wouldn't at least try to ban, say, Twitter, which is far more inconvenient for them,
00:03:37.700even though the language of the legislation would not seem to allow that.
00:03:41.960So that's why legislation that was just signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is so significant.
00:03:48.760It hasn't gotten much attention, but it should, because it addresses the legitimate concerns about apps like TikTok
00:03:53.760without granting the government any kind of sweeping new, unprecedented powers to regulate the lives of American citizens.
00:04:00.260Instead, it regulates the behavior of children in a manner that's consistent with all sorts of other regulations that already apply to minors.