The news that broke over the weekend about TikTok being tweaked to become “100% MAGA” has been rattling around in my head like a loose screw in an old MacBook. It’s one of those stories that makes you pause mid-sip of your morning latte and wonder if we’ve finally crossed some invisible line into full dystopian territory.

What strikes me most about this whole situation isn’t just the brazen nature of it – though that’s certainly something. It’s how perfectly it illustrates a pattern we’ve been watching unfold across the digital landscape for years now. The systematic capture of information infrastructure by those who understand that controlling the narrative is far more effective than winning hearts and minds through actual policy.

There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a multinational corporation fold like a cheap suit the moment a government official so much as raises an eyebrow. This whole Jimmy Kimmel situation has me absolutely steaming, and judging by the response online, I’m clearly not alone.

The facts are pretty straightforward. Kimmel made what amounts to a fairly mild observation about the MAGA crowd’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death, followed by a joke about Trump’s response to his “friend’s” murder. Nothing groundbreaking, certainly nothing that would have raised eyebrows a decade ago. But apparently, in 2025 America, that’s enough to get you cancelled by government pressure.