New Report Exposes How Many Minutes It Takes to Get Addicted to TikTok

TikTok is well aware of just how harmful it is to young users, according to internal documents included in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Thirteen states are separately suing TikTok for misleading the public about the app’s potential harmful effects. One of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky attorney general’s office, contained faulty redactions, revealing the confidential internal documents uncovered in the two-year investigation into TikTok, according to NPR. The information contained in the redactions was first reported by Louisville Public Media, before a judge resealed the suit.

State investigators found that it was possible to form a habit around using the app after watching 260 videos, which on a fast-paced app such as TikTok can take fewer than 35 minutes.

Internal research at TikTok found that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety,” according to the suit.

This was not only the case with how teens were using the app but also with what they were being shown on it. TikTok actively demoted videos featuring people deemed unattractive, and boosted videos of those using beauty filters. It’s not difficult to imagine how imposing and rewarding unattainable beauty standards could be harmful to young users.

Internal documents in the suit also showed that TikTok would sort users into “filter bubbles” of content, where a user “encounters only information and opinions that conform to and reinforce their own beliefs, caused by algorithms that personalize an individual’s online experience.”

An internal document showed that users were “placed into ‘filter bubbles’ after 30 minutes of use in one sitting.”

This can be particularly harmful should a user end up in a bubble that is pushing negative content, such as pro-anorexia content disguised as “thinspiration,” which has recently had a major resurgence on the app. Videos featuring self-harm also made it past TikTok moderators.

Internal documents also showed just how easy it is for young users to be led down a depressing rabbit hole, after engaging with content in the filter bubbles “painhub” or “sadnotes.”

“After following several ‘painhub’ and ‘sadnotes’ accounts, it took me 20 mins to drop into ‘negative’ filter bubble,” one employee wrote. “The intensive density of negative content makes me lower down mood and increase my sadness feelings though I am in a high spirit in my recent life.”

When TikTok did tout new time-management tools to reduce kids’ usage, internal documents revealed that TikTok cared more about how the tools were perceived than how well they actually worked. The documents showed that executives rated the success of these tools by how they were “improving public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage,” rather than how they were actually reducing usage. The tools themselves were found to have a negligible impact on usage.

One executive said that the app’s “break” videos, which encourage users to consider leaving the app after long periods of activity, were “useful in a good talking point” but “not altogether effective.” TikTok still decided to launch the features.

One executive gave a chilling description of what TikTok’s addicting algorithm could do to young users. “We need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities,” the unnamed executive said, according to court documents. “And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at someone in the eyes.”

TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek criticized NPR for publishing the now-redacted information.

“It is highly irresponsible of NPR to publish information that is under a court seal,” said Haurek. “Unfortunately, this complaint cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.

“We have robust safeguards, which include proactively removing suspected underage users, and we have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16,” Haurek said.

The fake electors that tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election are back in position to help in next month’s election.

NOTUS reports that out of 82 slated electors in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, and Nevada in this coming election, 14 took part in Trump’s fake elector scheme in 2020.

Of Nevada’s six fake electors in 2020, two are back for 2024, including Michael McDonald, the state’s Republican Party chair who is now also a Trump campaign senior adviser. Michigan has six fake electors who are returning for next month’s election.

New Mexico has one fake elector from 2020 returning for this election, while Pennsylvania is bringing back five of its fake electors, out of a total of 19, for the 2024 contest. But Arizona and Wisconsin are taking precautions to ensure that fake electors can’t come back.

In the Grand Canyon State, Arizona’s attorney general indicted 18 individuals who took part in the state’s fake elector scheme in 2020, and the 11 fake electors from back then, who include a Turning Point USA executive, two state representatives, and the executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, are not on the list of Arizona electors for 2024.

Wisconsin’s 10 fake electors were sued by a progressive law firm working with the Georgetown University Law Center, with the case reaching a settlement where they all agreed to publicly state that President Biden won the 2020 election and to never again serve as electors for Trump.

But even as many of the 2020 fake electors won’t be attempting to repeat their efforts in this election, some will be in more powerful positions in states including Wisconsin. One fake elector, Robert F. Spindell Jr., is on the Wisconsin Elections Commission until 2026 and says he’ll be “insuring that voters have confidence in the outcome of our elections.”

One fake elector in Michigan, Stanley T. Grot, refuses to resign as the clerk of Shelby Township, a Detroit suburb, even though he was indicted last year along with the state’s other fake electors. Worryingly, his job entails maintaining local voter registration files and administering November’s elections in the township.

In Georgia, one fake elector, Burt Jones, even became the state’s lieutenant governor, receiving support from Trump, who said Jones was a “conservative warrior” who would “get to the bottom of the Nov. 3 presidential election scam.”

President Biden signed Electoral College reform into law in 2022 to ensure that the chaos caused by Trump in 2020 couldn’t happen again. But as NOTUS’s report shows, the same pro-Trump conservatives are still in positions of power to cause chaos again in multiple scenarios.

Amid his already staggering legal tab and the financial strain of running a campaign in a competitive election, Donald Trump has yet more bills to worry about.

According to NBC News, several cities are seeking more than $750,000 in unpaid fees from the Trump campaign for rallies held over the past several years. Four cities and a county say the former president owes them reimbursements for the costs of local law enforcement and first responder support at his campaign events.

The city of El Paso, Texas, makes up the bulk of that amount. The city is billing Trump for $569,200 in expenses from a 2019 event, according to an invoice provided to NBC News. The amount owed is so egregious that its City Council lawyered up to “advocate in the City’s interest in the collection of the outstanding invoices.” Yet the Trump campaign still hasn’t paid.

In classic MAGA fashion, Trump’s team has decided to blame someone else for the bill.

When NBC News reached out, a Trump campaign official said via text message that “questions related to local law enforcement and first responder costs should be directed to secret service.”

Though the Secret Service said through a spokesperson that it is true that the agency is typically the one that requests local safety reinforcements for campaigns, the agency “lacks a mechanism to reimburse local governments for their support during protective events.”

While some officials have acknowledged that Trump may not be legally responsible for the costs, they still believe that the Republican candidate should pay up due to the burden his rallies place. “We believe the Trump 2020 campaign should reimburse our City for those taxpayer dollars, and we have invoiced the campaign accordingly,” said a spokesperson for the city of Mesa, Arizona, which has billed the Trump campaign around $65,000 to cover additional law enforcement costs.

Trump could easily do the right thing and pay back these cities, even with the money he has earned from selling NFT trading cards—but with outstanding legal fees in the hundreds of millions, perhaps he isn’t looking to be charitable anytime soon.

Donald Trump appears convinced that his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris is so impressive, even his old archnemesis will vote for him.

In a Truth Social post Friday, the Republican presidential nominee suggested that former President Barack Obama was in his camp.

“Obama admits a total lack of enthusiasm for Kamala, especially with Black Men,” Trump wrote. “I think Obama will be voting for me because he doesn’t like the fact that Kamala is an extremely Low IQ Person!”

That is despite the fact that Trump has attacked Obama for the better part of the last two decades, spending his time launching personal barbs at the former president and dogging the legitimacy of Obamacare.

In 2010, Trump stoked the flames of a right-wing rumor that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, participating in calls for the former president to publish his birth certificate (which, once distributed by the White House, revealed that Obama was born in Hawaii). Obama did not respond to Trump by name in the document’s announcement but alluded to the real estate developer’s request as one of “sideshows and carnival barkers.”

Days after unveiling his birth certificate, Obama addressed Trump directly at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner over the political stunt, mocking him for supercharging the conspiracy while the former reality TV star sat unamused in the crowd.

“I know that he’s taken some flak lately,” Obama said at the time. “But no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate issue to rest, and that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

During his first bid for the Oval Office, Trump repeatedly derided his predecessor, decrying Obama as “the worst president maybe in the history of our country.” At a campaign rally during that election season, Trump flagrantly described the former president as a “founder of ISIS.”

Obama has since consistently endorsed Trump’s opponents. In 2016, Obama endorsed and campaigned for Hillary Clinton in her race for president. In 2020, he heralded Joe Biden, and this year, he has made several appearances since the Democratic National Convention in campaign ads and interviews rooting for Harris.

Right-wing figures are latching on to an outlandish claim that Kamala Harris used a teleprompter to answer audience questions during a Univision town hall Thursday.

Fox News’s Sean Hannity, pro-Israel violence-funding billionaire Bill Ackman, and allegedly unwitting Russian propagandist Benny Johnson are among several MAGA pundits and influencers who have begun to claim that Harris must have been using a teleprompter to respond to audience questions, because one was visible on the set of her town hall.

Both Hannity and Ackman have since deleted their posts criticizing Harris—probably because a little digging quickly revealed the claim to be an obvious lie.

Enrique Acevedo, the town hall’s moderator, offered a helpful fact-check of the right-wing claims, given that he was the one actually using the teleprompter.

“The prompter displayed my introduction (in Spanish) and then it switched to a timer,” Acevedo wrote late Thursday on X. “Any claim to the contrary is simply untrue.”

Daniel Coronell, the president of Univision News, was also quick to shut down the right-wing chatter Thursday evening, resharing one of the conspiratorial posts on X with some crucial context.

“That’s not true. The teleprompter that displays a text written in Spanish was a support element for the town hall moderator. I can tell you this with first-hand knowledge because I was in charge of the television program,” Coronell wrote.

It makes sense that MAGAites are a little touchy about the whole teleprompter situation. Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he doesn’t use one—even when one is sitting right in front of him. In reality, Trump regularly uses a teleprompter, before veering wildly off-script into incoherent rambling he calls “the weave.”