Mr.Beast isn’t buying TikTok.

On January 18th, 2025, TikTok servers in the United States went dark for roughly 16 hours. Users were greeted with three messages during this time. The first was before the servers went dark, warning us that a law would make servers temporarily unavailable. A few hours later, this message would change. Now, users in the US were greeted with a “Sorry, Tiktok isn’t available right now.” Then, the next day, a nice “Welcome back!” Tiktok was saved so fast, how great!

But then everyone started theorizing what had happened. How was it suddenly just back? The message thanked President Trump, but he technically wasn’t president yet. How could he have saved it already? The only explanation is that they obviously sold out. So who bought TikTok? Trump himself? Meta? Mr.Beast? Everyone needed to get to the bottom of it.

So videos started popping up everywhere with user’s conspiracies on the truth. Mr.Beast had put something a little funny in his bio during this time. “New CEO of Tiktok?” People started making posts immediately with lines such as “POV: me after seeing Mr.Beast’s bio on Tiktok” and “Thinking Tiktok is back to normal after the whole ban thing. seeing Mr.Beast’s bio.” There were also videos suspicious of Meta. Pop-ups telling you to link your account to Facebook, new verified accounts, a surplus of Meta ads? Obviously, Mark Zuckerburg bought TikTok and we need to boycott everything Meta now.

I am here to tell you why all of this is harmful.

A conspiracy theory can be defined as an attempt to explain the real causes of major events, whether social, political, or whatever else, and usually claims that there is some secret power at work behind this (Jolley, Marques, & Cookson, 2022). Surely, we all have been in a situation we don’t fully understand, and your brain tries to put together the pieces based on the information we do know to make sense of something that just doesn’t. A lack of knowing can cause so much anxiety for many. I can attest to that. It is a psychological need to rid yourself of this anxiety. But how do conspiracies come into play in situations like these? Well, they allow you to ‘figure it all out’ on your own and you no longer have to worry about the answer to the question. G. Scheider called this a “two-for-one special: an ego boost and a ready explanation for distressing events.”

Politics, Society, and Safety.

It can be scary when that confusing situation affects your whole country. That is why we see so many political conspiracies. If a conspiracy theory helps make sense of a confusing situation, then it is logical to believe that it would have a positive effect on those who believe in them. You can pin all the bad things in your country on whichever political party you don’t like and move on with your day if you have to. But this is such a dangerous thing to do, and even more dangerous to spread. Studies have shown that these theories did not reduce any fear or anxiety, and there is evidence pointing to the idea they do the exact opposite instead (Jolley, Marques, & Cookson, 2022).

Political conspiracies cause tensions. Almost everyone can see that. But they do more than that. Conspiracies directed towards a specific group of any kind can actually do a lot of emotional harm to those in the group, making it harder to feel safe outside of their community. This leads to a lot more harm in our society than people realize. We are becoming separated from one another more than ever, despite having so many ways to be connected. Hatred is spreading faster than ever now. And people being targeted by that hatred no longer want to interact with those who are any different from them. (Jolley, McNeill, & Patterson, 2023) Democrats and Republicans no longer want to be friends with one another. Members of the LGBTQ+ don’t want to even think about stepping foot into a church. Minorities don’t know who they can trust. This is not a world we should want to live in. Yet, every day we continue to spread misinformation that causes these issues to grow worse.

Social Media and Influencers

Conspiracy theories are based on what people think they know. With the growth of the internet and social media, there is so much information and so many conversations you can access at any moment, and you are carrying it with you in your pocket everywhere you go. It can be very easy to fall down a rabbit hole on some niche topic and have your ‘eyes opened’ to all these new perspectives. Many of us laugh at flat-earthers and those who believe the moon landing is faked. But to these people, they have information to back these things up. They combat your laughter with a long list of sources from Facebook and TikTok explaining to you the details you missed out on because ‘the media’ didn’t want you to know.

Researchers in the Netherlands looked into why conspiracy theories have become the way they are. Psychologists know people are all different, some of us like things that get our adrenaline pumping, and some of us like to solve mysteries for fun, whatever it may be, there is a bit of a game behind conspiracy theories that brings people excitement. With that being said, it makes sense that conspiratorial explanations for the things happening around us are more exciting than regular, logical explanations (Scheider, 2023).

Let’s go back to the discussion of ‘putting the pieces together.’ You may think you came to a big resolution on your own after gathering all kinds of information from people online, but you are being manipulated. Hank Green came onto TikTok to discuss this right after the ban. “This is how conspiracy influencers work. They present you with a bunch of puzzle pieces and then have you put them together and you feel like you’ve done the work. But the puzzle pieces were the ones they selected for you, and may have been entirely made up.” If you are a conspiracy theorist, you may want to deny this. I can hear the “Nu-uh!” already. But stay with me for a moment. Most, if not all, the information these theories are based off of the things that were ‘hidden’ from us. The information isn’t presented as fact from any reliable source. People share all the small things they have noticed, telling you something you didn’t know was happening until they pointed it out. And you take what they say at face value because we are all gullible to an extent.

Now let’s go back to the Tiktok ban. Hank Green shared some wonderful examples of the ‘facts’ theorists were sharing about why they thought Meta bought TikTok. Many people were sharing that Tiktok CEO, Shou Chew, had taken the “CEO” part out of his bio, leaving it to now just say “Tiktok.” Even now, I am sure if you go to look at his profile, it still only says “Tiktok.” This must mean he is no longer the CEO of TikTok now, right?

No. CEO was never in his bio. This was presented to you in a way to trick you. When you hear this, you think you can go look at the proof yourself, so you go to Shou Chew’s profile. You can see for yourself, with your own eyes, that his bio only says “Tiktok.” You believe what you were just told because you ‘saw the proof yourself’, but you weren’t given the full story. You were directly lied to, so you would believe something that wasn’t true. But, what about the new Facebook pop-up that allows you to link your TikTok to your Facebook now? You can now add all your friends between the two platforms, and we didn’t have that option before. This is obvious proof, being put right in front of our faces, that Tiktok is now owned by Meta, right?

Again, no. This pop-up has always been here. We as people have developed a habit of ignoring pop-ups like these so we can get to our brain-rot scrolling as quickly as possible. But, with all the pop-ups about the TikTok ban, people were paying more attention, so those of you who always clicked ‘No’ to link your Facebook and TikTok before now took the time to read it. But it has always been an option on the app. I could on further with ‘proof’ given that is easily disproven, but I assume we all get my point. You are being presented with the ‘puzzle pieces’ to solve the mystery and are left believing false information unless you take the time to pay attention to what is happening around you and fact-check things that you haven’t seen any real proof for.

It can be hard to avoid falling victim to things like this, especially when the manipulative skills to spread these harmless theories were developed forever ago, and we are just now noticing the signs. But if you learn how to tell the difference between a fact and sliced-up bits of information it can make a difference. Try to fact-check your favorite influencers, or even your friends and family. Show them information they may not have been aware of, and help stop the spread of misinformation and toxic conspiracies. I strongly suggest you take the time to watch Hank Green’s Tiktok yourself, and sit and read Scheider’s article on conspiracy theories. It can be easy to get wrapped up in all the chaos of these theories, especially when they feel fun to solve, but educating yourself on the dangers of conspiracies is so important, now more than ever.

Sources:

D. Jolley, A. McNeill, & J. Patterson “How conspiracy theories can affect the communities they attack – new research” The Conversation, 12/23, https://theconversation.com/how-conspiracy-theories-can-affect-the-communities-they-attack-new-research-218768#:~:text=Not%20only%20do%20conspiracy%20theories,safe%20outside%20of%20their%20community.

D. Jolley, M. Marques, & D. Cookson, “Shining a spotlight on the dangerous consequences of conspiracy theories” ScienceDirect, 10/22, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22000823

Hank Green Untitled, Tiktok, uploaded by @hankgreen1, 1/25, https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8F7bEeL/

G. Scheider, “Why Conspiracy Theories Are Fun but Dangerous” Psychology Today, 9/23, https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/frazzlebrain/202309/why-conspiracy-theories-are-fun-but-dangerous-0?amp