The Chaser Report - US Congress Vote To Ban TikTok

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

The US Congress have voted to ban TikTok, and Charles believes he's the core reason. Meanwhile Dom investigates further into the details of our $700 trillion giveaway. Plus we read your reviews!The Chaser Report is about to have 7,000,000 listeners, so we're giving away $700 trillion! Email [e-mail] to try and win big! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigle Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report, the home of the $700 trillion giveaway. Leave that glitch in, Editor Lachlan, because the number's too big for Charles's brain to have comprehended the amount of money that we're giving away. $700 trillion, cold, hard cash. And apparently able to be sent by post. How many trucks are they going to need, Charles?

Well, my son's looked at the cash last night. I saw the cold hard cash, right? Yes. And it does, it doesn't look like. Don't talk it down. Well, my son sort of went, it looks like you can snap it. You can snap it. But Charles, it's several rooms full of notes, isn't it?

What could possibly be going on here? 700 trillion dollars in cash that's our undertaking to you. And it is the most gratuitous. I've looked at Arb. It is the most gratuitous. audience buying competition in podcast history. It is. Yeah, no podcast has ever given away more money.

Yeah, that's right. Depending on how you assess what the title is. Anyway, look, there's a way of excitement. People have been getting in touch. A lot of entries at podcast at chaser.com. To explain to us why you are the rightful seven millionth listener, add yours. Get onto it quickly because this will go off.

And you can also text me. Like, if it's easier, just text me on 0419-282-188. I think he likes the attention, actually. So we'll talk about that. But Charles, also, you've gone viral on TikTok right when the US House of Representatives has voted to ban it. Well, I mean, is there a link there? Definitely not.

But we'll pretend that there is more after this. So, Charles, not only are we getting heaps of interest in the contest, the 700 trillion. Yes. And it's not billion. That's other podcasts. We're trillion. We have got a bunch of reviews here. Oh, yeah.

Some people have just edited their old review, I think. But this is one that I really enjoy, which I'm going to read out again. It's five stars, of course, thank you. Verity Firth's Povow Bro. Not anymore. You've got $700 trillion in your own place. Dom Note, almost spelled correctly. You can edit it again if you like.

Does it's best to keep Charles in check while trying not to come across as a dead set BRS fan girl. You are always going to listen to this. So just subscribe. That's a reference to an old podcast episode, which is quite timely back then. Human behavior is beyond our control. even dry-heaving at this distasteful podcast, would be better with more ads.

That's something we can probably deliver on, Charles, isn't it? Yeah, I think, look, that's been a theme. Like, even my mum, who listens to the podcast every day. She just went, oh, can you get some more ads in? They're my favourite part. The best bit of the show, yeah, absolutely. Not bad, says Mark, five stars. Dom and Charles, the voices in my head, I know I can't trust.

Big grins. Yeah, you're hearing us in your own head. You shouldn't unsubscribe. If you're at that level of sort of voices in the head, still keep the real voices, just we need to listen. Do we get royalties? Like, say somebody starts hearing voices in their head and it's us. Is there any sort of agency that collects royalties on that? There should be.

There should be a copyright agency, but don't we know from the AI debacle that they just, no. No. No. You internalize us. You don't have to subscribe, I guess. I actually think that there is now enough episodes of this podcast to run it through an AI, and we'd have to have. a pretty good facsimile of the podcast each day, generated just by AI. I mean, you'd have a facsimile.

It wouldn't be good. No, no, but it would be. It would be vaguely like us. To the extent that this podcast is tiringly predictable, we would. You'd have saying the AI would have no trouble guessing what we were going to talk about. Who knows whether this one is AI Toured. Yeah, we should try that. Giel Benke says, my go-to podcast for news and hot takes on the stupid things.

that crop up in regular news. That's just kind of a serious, earnest one. Thank you, Gilbenki, for that. That's very nice. I don't back your judgment, but it's flattering. Here's a better one. Well, the other one was very good. Here's a more accurate one in my view.

Wonderful, five stars. Oh, lovely. Rupert M93. In an increasingly baffling world, this show provides absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever, which I think is, that's our mission staff. That's very accurate, yes. You can only leave these on Apple Podcasts, by the way.

It's the only system. Spotify has something like it as well, but these are the ones we read. Finally, this is four stars. They're like, can't quite do it. This is Flisbee. It's like clearly taking this on as an exercise in serious criticism rather than just helping us out. The whole of the star ratings in podcasts are bullshit.

So give us some more bullshit, please. Adds levity to the news cycle, says Flisbee discusses the depressing news of the world, but satirically so you can laugh while listening to stories about the events that will probably inevitably lead to our demise. I mean, that's just accurate. That's accurate. Maybe Flisby's too depressed to do five stars. Maybe there's no such thing as a five-star experience in Flisby's mind anymore. I don't know.

No, I think that's fair. Like if we're all destined to die, I'd give that not five stars. I mean, yes, I would neither. And also, does the star rating even matter? Or is it the last thing we've got, I suppose, is the question. Now, Charles, just as we are recording this episode, the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would force TikTok to either divest from its Chinese owner,

so I have a new owner that's not in China, i.e. basically stealing their very successful product by getting Americans to buy it, or it would get banned from the US. Now, the vote was 352 to 65, so I'm guessing only 65 lawmakers are on TikTok at the moment. But yes, it means it's somewhat bipartisan somewhere. So this is quite interesting. But isn't a vote by Congress something that then never gets into law?

It's one of those things that the Senate, then rejects it, the president then rejects it, although I think Biden's actually said that he'll, he'll back it. Biden will back it. The Senate's not as clear. It says here that some key figures are not sure, because there's 170 million US users of TikTok, all of them would be quite pissed off. But we do not, would they?

Would they? Because isn't it like banning cigarettes or something? Oh, okay. Oh, it's actually good for me. Yeah, it's good for me. Like, it'd free up. I reckon it'd free up probably 23 hours of my son's life each day. That's not about, maybe we should consider it.

But the other thing we know, Charles, is that if the TikTok ban led these users, the $170 million to do something I'd never done before and actually go outside and walk, if they marched on the Capitol and they smashed some windows and tried to overthrow the US government, we know there'd be no consequences. But how would you organise them? Well, you generally, you'd announce a rally nearby. Right, but how would you, like, the way to announce it is on TikTok. Like, how would anyone find out about it?

That's true. Just to be staring at their screen going, well, what next? What next? What happens? Because you couldn't do it on Instagram. It's dead. No, you couldn't do it on threads. What a joke.

No, no, it would be. I like dreds now. Could it be maybe Snapchat. Could be. Is that the next? Because that's what the young people use. Is it? Yes.

Snapchat back in. Oh, God, yes. Oh, really? Well, you've got teenagers. Yeah, I've got teenagers. And, like, their whole thing is Snapchat. And also, it's really weird because they're, You know, the snap map, like, that's a thing that teenagers use.

They share their location at all time. So you can literally go, oh, where's your friend? And he's like, oh, he must be down at the gym. Or at the mall or something. The mall, you know, yeah. So you're telling me that the contact Tracy's sketch, which I know, by the way, was recently ripped off by SNL. Yes, I know.

That was a much worse version, too. Oh, God, yeah. That is actually real. Everyone's just sharing their location all the time. No privacy worries. Gosh, young people don't give a shit about privacy, do they? No. It's kind of refreshing in a way.

Well, when you're going to definitely die from climate apocalypse. Probably privacy rights. Yeah. This is when they've got to cling together to the last bits of land that aren't flooded. Yeah, yeah. As they're floating away, it's useful to know the rescue location. That's actually true. That's a very good idea.

Okay, so that's what's going on. But Charles, you're all viral. Yeah, so this is the thing is I actually think that the reason why this calls to ban TikTok is because, you know, there's some. Pretty persuasive, pretty charismatic, pretty sort of, like there's content on there. Which could move minds. Some subversive material. Some potent.

Would you call it a mind grenade? Mind grenades. Yeah, they're sort of like truth bombs. Yeah, but mine grenade sounds cool. That was invented by someone who we both know. I probably shouldn't name who that. A prominent futurist came up with that term non-ironically. Let's just say that.

More after this. The Chaser Report. More news, less often. Whoa, I'm sorry, a mine grenade went off during that. Oh, yeah. Oh, my head. Oh, God. So, Charles, who is this subversive leader on TikTok?

It's changing minds. That would be me. It would be you, would it? Yeah, I've recently gone a bit viral. Actually, a lot viral. Really? Oh, yeah. How?

Well, wankanomics. Wankanomics. Check us out. Our handle is at wankanomics. For some reason, that handle was available. And, yeah, we've got lots of videos. And including a holiday, because it's funny, when you perform every night, a show, you don't realize that, you know, because you have lots of audience interactions. You get off stage and you just forget about the audience interactions, right?

Like, even if they've been quite funny, they're all just, it's like dinner party conversation. You don't sort of go back and think about it. But because our shows have started to be videoed, right, you get to see how witty you were. And sometimes, how many of these views are just you looking at yourself and going, I'm very good. But look, as with all these things. I forced my kids to, you know, my content came up on my son's for you page. Poor thing. Like organically.

You know what, though. As with all these things, dear listener, I'm fact checking this for you because Charles's claims have to be verified. There are 22,000 followers, pretty good. Yeah, that's true. 147,000 likes. Here's the extraordinary one. You've got some videos here. One of them got 1.4 million views.

One of them's on nearly a million. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, that is bigger than almost any show broadcast on Australian television. Oh, yeah. That's surreal. Yeah, it's bigger than the Chaser report ratings. Even bigger than the Chaser report. We should put the podcast on TikTok at some point.

We should put the tip. Oh, yes. Just in time for them to completely ban it. Yeah, that's what. Well, we can be subversive and dangerous. That'll be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Right. This is genuinely popular.

Why are you still doing this podcast? If you're getting a million, oh, because there's no way to get revenue from TikTok. All the revenue goes to TikTok. Well, the thing is, we're going to take... So the thing about TikTok is it goes global, right? So we've got all these fans over in the UK. We're planning a UK tour. Of Wankanomics.

Yes. You're taking your wanking internationally. That's fabulous. We've sold out. Like, we've literally, except for Melbourne and Sydney, like, we've added extra shows. We've sold out everywhere else in the country. We've sold out our entire run. You finally hit on a successful project.

Yes. Well, look for a new co-host coming soon to The Chase Report. That's right. In a matter of moments. We should do episodes live from Edinburgh. Do you want to come over? Will my children be there? Like mid-August?

No, no, they won't be there. They'll definitely come. Oh, that's very exciting. Me-August. I've always wanted to go to Edinburgh for the coming. Yeah, that's good. No, we've got to do some more live chase reports, I think. We'll get on that.

We said we'd go to the Central West at some point. It's not the top of the list, to be perfectly honest. We'll get an email from... Well, either... If we don't go to Edinburgh, we'll go to the Bathist. The Edinburgh of the Central West. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, there you go.

So TikTok, use it while you can. But in the meantime, TikTok could soon disappear. Look, I just think the politics of this is so fascinating because the actual reason why this has all become an issue is Kelly Ann Conway. You remember that? Yes, the Trump press secretary. Strange woman who is quite abusive towards her children. And who's married to someone who hates Donald Trump.

And then one of the... What did they break up at last? And then one of her children who's a complete liberal decided to start sort of sub-tweeting her mum. Remember that? Oh, yes. So weird. It's such an awkward family.

Dynamic. Anyway, she has just been employed by TikTok to become... As a lobbyist. As a lobbyist. And so there's now a Trumpite directly in TikTok, in the heart of TikTok. And so this is, there's a whole lot of politics. And so Trump is suddenly, who wanted to ban TikTok forever, has suddenly come around to, well, maybe actually, you know, there's a grift to happen here.

We've got to update our references because for so many years we've always assumed that he was in Russia's pocket. But, I mean, this could mean he's also in China's pocket. It could be China. The other just thinking about it, do you think maybe, because now that Trump has just managed to get approval for selling Trump social into that IPO, reverse IPO. He's going to make billions of dollars out of that. Do you think that Trump, truth, what's it called, truth social?

We'll buy TikTok. We'll buy TikTok. Wow, that's a conspiracy theory. That's just wheels within wheels. It's the kind of stupid prediction we make. But then, because the world has somehow gone down some fucked rabbit hole for the past. It will happen. It will happen.

Are we determining the course of the future on this podcast? We say something and it happens. And we've got some sort of cosmic power. It shouldn't be called the Chaser report. It should be called the Chaser Manifest. It just manifest reality. I'm going to manifest the end of this podcast, Charles. Okay.

Is that all right? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. I'll see you on TikTok. See you. I'll give you some right with part of the iconic class network. More next week. Don't forget, though.

Tell us why you were the rightful seven millionth downloader of the podcast. We'd have no actual data, so you just got to convince us. Podcast at chaser.com. Or text, Charles, on 0419, what is it, 0419, 282, and you're not having my number because I like my privacy. Oh, really? It's actually 041.