Big Technology Podcast - Gary Vaynerchuk and TikTok’s Blake Chandlee on the ‘Ban’ and TikTok’s Future

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

TikTok is in a state of limbo as the U.S. government decides whether to ban it. In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the app from operating in its current form in the U.S. The order gave TikTok a 45-day deadline, but after a few extensions, we’re now in December, and TikTok is still running. As TikTok twists in the wind, Gary Vaynerchuk, owner of digital ad agency VaynerMedia, and Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s head of global business solutions, join the Big Technology Podcast in a recording at Web Summit to discuss the app’s present and future. 

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. TikTok is in a state of limbo as the U.S. government decides whether to ban it. In August, President Trump signed an executive order demanding that the app either sell its U.S. operations or shut down in the country due to security concerns. The order gave TikTok a 45-day deadline, but after a few extensions were now in December, and TikTok is still operating. The app's future is murky, and it's fair to wonder whether it actually knows what the government wants from it. And as we wait, the business and its users twist in the wind. Joining us today in a live podcast taped at Web Summit are Gary Vaynerchuk, owner of Digital Ad Agency VaynerMedia,

and Blake Chanley, TikTok's head of global business solutions. And away we go. Hello everyone out there at Web Summit and to those listening on the Big Technology Podcast. I'm thrilled to be here with Gary and Blake for a fascinating discussion of TikTok and where it's going. So let's start with the question that's on everyone's mind and I'll toss it to Blake first. What's going on with TikTok right now? Is it going to be sold or banned in the United States? Do you have any idea where this is heading?

Yeah, Alex, well, one, it's good to see again. There's a lot of media hype, and it's tough to break through it all. We've been pretty clear that we disagree with some of the things have been claimed against us, and we've been pretty public about that. We're obviously going to work with the administration closely to find resolution, which we're really committed to. But the end of the day, this is really about us fighting for our community and for self-expression and creativity and community.

And so that's what we continue to do day and day out. I can speak to a whole lot more than that, of course. Well, Blake, let me ask you this. Do you know what the United States government wants from TikTok? Because I've been following this pretty closely, and it seems to change every few days. So do you at least have a clear understanding of what they want for you, or are you just kind of rolling with it at this point? Yeah, we have open dialogue with the government every dash. And so we've got pretty clear guidelines, and we're working towards resolution.

Okay. So it sounds like you have a good idea. Gary, where do you think this is going? that's so uncomfortably above my pay grade, you know, people that spend 12. But you're a great prognosticator. I am, but I think people, you know, I'm a great procast. I'm a great predictor of human behavior in the macro, making a judgment call on the current administration, the outgoing administration, the new administration, it's just so difficult

and politics in general tends to not go through a logical concern. center, which makes it hard for me because it's inside baseball, it's politics. And where I make my judgments or the things I like to talk about is when I see the will of humans gathering around something that brings them value or eliminates friction. And so I keep my world pretty narrow. You know, I'll speak about those kind of dynamics. Guessing where the TikTok government thing works out is over to top guessing from my standpoint, the end. Okay, I think we're all pretty much. Well, we'll see where it goes. It's going to, it's anyone's guess at this point. The underlying, I mean, there's a lot of things that might underlie what was going on with the Trump administration's

action, you know, on the app. But one of the main questions was, you know, can United people in the U.S.? Are people in the globe really trust a company that has links to China? to make sure that that algorithm isn't sort of manipulating the culture. That's what people had concerns about. So Blake, what do you think about that? Do you feel like this is something that's not going to be an issue? Listen, if we go back to you, if we kind of go a little bit to Saddam Hussein, and kind of go back to the mission to company, which is to inspire creativity and bring joy,

like that is why people come to the app every single day. They want to be entertained. They want to create something amazing. They want to be authentic. They want to be themselves, right? we have an obligation of duty to our users around the world to protect them and protect our community. And that goes everything from their data and security of that data all the way through to how we protect them from various, you know, with guidelines that protect me as to various behavior and so on and so forth. And I think we're doing a really good job.

Like, you know, spent a long time at a different player in the space. We're doing a good job. And we've really cleared the data for U.S. users, which has been the focus of the government's, their concerns. sits in the U.S. and Singapore, it does not have access from China. There's lots of debate on that subject from some folks, but we're working through that and getting full transparency. I mean, the one thing you're going to hear from us over and over again is we want to be the most transparent and accountable company in the space. And I think we're going to huge, huge means to do that. And so, again, we're having daily conversations with the administration around the security of that

data and make sure people feel comfortable with it. So we'll continue to do that. Right. And that previous company that you referenced was Facebook. So I'm sure we'll have a lot to say about that towards the end of this discussion because Facebook notoriously tries to kill its competitors. But sticking with the TikTok-centric stuff to begin with, what does the uncertainty of something like this do from a standpoint of, you know, whether influencers are going to continue to invest in the app? I've had people who've asked me, you know, should I keep using it or marketers that have you. use me, should I keep using it? I feel like Gary would be the perfect person to answer this one.

How does the uncertainty change the way that you approach the platform? I'm in the business of running commercials on MASH when MASH is the number one show on TV. I'm in the business of running commercials on Seinfeld when Seinfeld is the number one TV show. This notion of investing time as if it goes away like Frenzor and MySpace has been the greatest misstrategic move of most people's and companies' behaviors of this. emotional need to misunderstand what social networks are, which is they are places where human beings' attentions are for a period of time. When you build a significantly great company like Facebook Inc. has for all of the opinions on it, you get to stay a big show for a long time,

no different than SNL. When you are not building an unbelievable company, like a daily booth or a social cam or a vine or things that nature, you may have one season of that. So for me, I'm obsessed with communicating on TikTok because of the amount of attention, amount of organic reach, how underpriced the ad platform is, how well the creator and influencer ecosystem works there. And, you know, this is just a truth. Like, I don't know how to be emotional about something being here forever or going away. I just know that I want to be focused on where the attention is today.

I can't predict April. I can't predict June. I may get hit by a tree and not care. You know, and so from my standpoint, it hasn't affected it at all. and if anything, it's, I've been weirdly, sorry, Blake, I've been weirdly happy about it because it's slowed down other people's, the ones that really have this misunderstood have been slow, have not put out as much, fear, fear, fear, and that's given me more time to extract the opportunities out of the platforms for myself and for my clients.

Blake, how do you respond to that? Has most of your time been spent, or most of the company's time been spent with people who are making, you know, the best content? for the platform trying to convince them to stick around? I mean, Gary seems like he knows where he wants to be, but what about everybody else that he referenced? We're effectively a two-year-old company, and we're competing in a space with companies that have been doing this for a long, long time, right?

And Gary's exactly right. In the early stages, those that jump in early get to extract value because the demand on consumers' attention, time, and thus the CPMs are lower than what they get as the platform matures and there's more demand, right? where we spend most of our time is not talking about some of the regulatory of the government stuff where we spend most of our time with our brands at least right and I'm sure we can have discussion on our traders as well is around ensuring your brand safety and community safety

that is the number one conversation we have and it's something that we're you know we're putting an enormous amount of energy into and there's a big body of work around now and that's where we spend our time and that's where we should spend our time like that's where the industry needs spend the time. So the brands are coming on and the vast majority of the top 100, Fortune 100 brands on the platform at this point in some stage, some are testing, some are all in, and we'll continue to get more and more come on every single day. So we're optimistic on where things are going. On the trader's side, we love our creators. It is the heart and soul of our business. That probably makes a little bit different than some of the platforms you reference. Traders are the lifeblood of the company.

And so their experience on the TikTok platform is different than on YouTube or Instagram or SnapNow or others. And we're really grateful with all the work that creators are doing, the energy they bring and the creativity of the time. Yeah, and Gary, you know, he's talked to the bit about at the beginning about prediction. We decide not to make predictions about the government. But speaking about where the social media world was going, you were right on this. If I recall you were an early investor in Vine or at least, you know, we're working with. great story, I believe, which was an agency. I mean, both.

The agency that... I wasn't an investor in Vine, but to your point, once I understood its magnitude, I started an agency that represented a lot of the early influencers because I really understood that the YouTube thing I learned in 2006 was about to happen there. And that became the precursor, probably to the newer version of me as a marketer, which is why I stayed so on top of Snap musically.

TikTok, because that was a tipping point moment for me on Vine that kind of made me understand that the scale and the long tail of influencer seemed more viable, and I think that's what we've seen play out. How did you feel when, I mean, Vine obviously was shut down by Twitter? You had invested a lot into it, and I know we talked a little bit about how thinking about investing into the long term in this world might be a little ridiculous. Yeah. But yeah, tell us about your personal journey. about it. I personally wish every social media app disappear tomorrow because that would mean

all that attention would go somewhere and people would struggle to figure out where and I'm very good at figuring it out. Right. And so for me, when things change, I'm at my best. I don't want. Listen, I've extracted uncomfortable amounts of value at a Facebook and Instagram, but I never want it and never want that to be the only places. I'm blown away and excited about TikTok but can't already wait for either the new feature that TikTok puts out that makes it a competitor to something or waiting for the next two incredible young women from Kansas City or Kenya to start something that wins that I can then extract. This is real estate for me, right? I'm a real estate developer. I find new places that I think are undervalued, misunderstood,

and I start building buildings and then it gets populated. So for me, refining my skill set on Facebook, focusing more in groups, 90-year-olds, refining, I mean, the amount of times I refined my skills on TikTok already before people have even jumped onto it, you know, this, I day trade culture and attention. So I had a non-emotional thought on Vine whatsoever because what I thought would happen, happened, which was those individuals segued pretty aggressively to YouTube, Instagram, and at the time, Snapchat. And so, you know, watching people move their behavior more to TikTok, you know, micro influencers than Instagram because the organic reach and the community explosion made it better for them. That didn't upset me even though I was

winning on Instagram when this all went down over the last two years. That excited me because now I'm in pattern recognition. I'm in refined skill set and I went and built a massive audience on TikTok for myself. You know, that's just life. That's business. That's the game. Like if you want to freeze time, you're a losing player. And so for me, I have zero emotion. to things disappearing or growing in importance, I think accountability is something that no one's talking about these days. Everyone's scared the algorithm is tricking them, delete the app. Like, you know, like, it's like alcohol. Like, don't drink it all. You know, like accountability. And I take on accountability for being great at what I do.

Gary, what do you think it is about the social media world where people seem to get bored of apps so quickly? I mean, we talked a lot at the beginning of this era, about network effects and how once you started, you know, something in motion, stays in motion. Now it seems like people abandon a platform every other day. So why do you think that is? You know, Alex, I disagree with that, actually. I don't think people.

Oh, you were just saying that you like it, though, when that happens. For me, I don't think it happens often. I mean, Facebook's, you know, now Facebook is a different product today than when Blake first started working, or when I played on it, it was much younger. Now it's older, but it's here for quite a long time. Twitter is here now for quite a long time. we're getting into, you know, decade plus, right? Instagram is old.

You know, you know, TikTok, I can't, when Blake said two years, I'm like, oh, getting old. You know, like, I think these things have been sticking, I think, a little bit longer than people realize, Snap has not disappeared. Snap it does its nice thing and what it does. LinkedIn went a decade as a utility and then converted into a content social network-like environment and is having its run. So I would actually argue that there hasn't been movement. I think now, to your point,

there's been, during all this time, the peaches of the world, right? The social cams, like I mentioned, the Bites, which was the Vine Founders. There's been, you know, Plurk, if you're old school like me, back in 2007-08. There's been, Vidler, the great mistake of my entire social media career

was being one of the first people to pop on YouTube and then move over to Bidler exclusively because they gave me 7% of the company and I just didn't even know how to calibrate that. Like that was so remarkable. It was so early. I had dreams. But honestly, that was a mistake

because I gave up the attention that I would have been able to get on YouTube. So, you know, there's been a ton of things that were the next type thing. There was that Vero, I think, right? Like all these things have popped up that are going to be the next big thing. The reason I don't tend to talk about a lot of things

until six months or a year after they've been grounded is there's always going to be the next thing. But I think people haven't changed. You know, if you look at, if I'm going to throw content like YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, you know, now TikTok. I think they get nice five, seven, ten, fifteen plus year out of them. I do think what is interesting and what TikTok triple reaffirmed for me is if you build a tremendous product, There's always room for somebody to come along, and that's interesting. Yeah, and some of these social platforms with staying power that you mentioned are ones that have reinvented themselves over and over again. That's such a tremendous point by you.

I would argue that Twitter could be much bigger today if it reinvented more often during that half decade that I think about very little innovation. I would argue YouTube has given up more opportunity than anybody else. There's so much permission they had to innovate more mobile-centric, some of the dynamics. So that's such a tremendous point. So, Blake, how do you respond to this? First of all, what do you think about the fact that Gary seems to want you guys to go away quickly, even though he likes you? And then how is TikTok going to reinvent itself over and over again in order to stay relevant?

Is that even on the roadmap? This is actually one of my favorite conversations. And Gary's got right. now because you brought it. It's not like reinvented, it. You have to disrupt, right? Because at the end of the day, you will get disrupted if you don't disrupt. And I think, I do think that some of the leaders of the other companies have been in the reference all realize that. And they try to. They've gotten very, very big. And it's harder and harder. The more scale you have to disrupt yourself. Because you're accountable to shareholders. You're accountable to investors. You're accountable to employees. And it becomes just more difficult to capture that moment and to capture that fire in the belly again. And you wrote a book, you know, Alex. actually always day one. And that's what made those companies so successful. And it's actually one of our bite styles at a TikTok, which is it's always day one. And so we're constantly trying to figure out how to disrupt ourselves.

And we're young enough that that's just part of the DNA. It's the reason we've all joined the company. It's the, you know, we're here. It's like Facebook 2007, 2008. That's how the energy is, the culture is, the speed, the pace that we're operating at which the products were launching on both the user side as well as the, you know, the commercial side of the business. And so we're disrupting ourselves every single day. And yeah, I think that if we look at Instagram, it did a great job with stories when Snap was disrupting it with an audience.

You know, Reels is certainly something that, you know, they put out there as a, as kind of a potential, you know, TikTok competitor. And we'll see how that works out. You know, Google Plus did the same thing to Facebook back in the day and didn't quite capture the same magic because they didn't quite understand social. We're not a social platform. We're not, we're not reliant on people's social graph, which is where Facebook is just very, very good. There's nobody better in the world at doing that. And building products that emanate from that is kind of their core competency. We're a content graph, right? We're an interest graph, which is different. The nuances are different, but how people create and discover content is a little different. It happens faster. It's not

reliant on these kind of circles to grow. So we're very aware. We're a very innovative company and I love the pace of it's operating. And Blake, you've been at Facebook. You were there even during the Google Plus battle. You've seen the company go into destroy mode and though it didn't necessarily destroy Snapchat, definitely built a big product or helped accelerate its product based off of copying stories into Instagram. Now you're on the other side. You're in a company where Facebook has trained it's destroy laser on and has released reels. How worried are you knowing the company's capability to do stuff like this? I don't think we don't look that much externally. We see what's going on, whether it's Facebook or any of the other startups that are coming. I think to Gary's point,

we worry more about the startup that hasn't gotten there yet. You know, two people in a garage, wherever they might be, whoever they might be. And that becomes the next big thing. We're watching whatever he's doing in the space, of course. Like, you're not worried at all about Facebook. I mean, I imagine you've seen the capabilities, so. Yeah, I have enormous respect for Mark and the team there. Like, I've spent a decade there and, you know, I've seen how well they can operate.

So I wouldn't say we're not worried, but like we, we're in our job and focus on our capabilities, our relationships with our influencers, how we're building commercial products that introduce brands into that environment in a really natural, authentic way. and that's really yeah yeah i will say uh ticot seems to be giving facebook it's toughest challenge to date all right gary we have 45 seconds left so who wins facebook reels or tictock and why ticot because

it's their actual thing and reels is a feature within a thing i think it's a good i think both get value out of it in different ways but if you're asking it the way i think you're asking it do i think Reels puts, you know, TikTok out of business or makes it disappear? No. I mean, they did an incredible execution on Instagram stories to Blake's point earlier and that didn't put Snapchat out of business. Do I believe that massively slowed down the growth of Snapchat at that point going into that 35 to 55 year demo? Yes, I do. But back to Blake's point, every minute you're spending scared about somebody house is a moment you're not spending innovating your own. And I think that let's also let's not be naive. I don't know how educated, but I assume wildly the audience that's watching this.

TikTok is already at such significant scale. It would almost be scary to me if they had any level of true fear about it because they've got the history of the last 20 years of this educating us that they're at enough scale that as long as they worry about innovating. And I'll be honest with you. The observation I have is I think the Chinese DNA for TikTok is very, very powerful. And what I mean by that is let there be no confusion. The nuances of a communist infrastructure, a full stack for the Wii chats and the wave was and all that in China lends itself to understanding the full stack of retail, live selling. And I see a lot. I think TikTok's innovating a ton. But to Blake's point, I mean, I respect Facebook Inc. at the highest of highest levels.

think if Facebook tomorrow launches a standalone app that is a monster competitor to TikTok, I don't think either company actually gets affected. I don't think people understand the abundance of time consumption, you know, that is actually out there. They're not competing with each other. The competing against Xbox, PS5, Netflix, The New York Times, this video right now. There's a lot more real estate to be in up by the five to ten winners of this game. So I think We enjoy the battle of like the game, but if you take a step back and are actually thoughtful of full-time consumption of stuff, I would say both Facebook, Inc, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter and Snap still have more land grab to go around other platforms.

Yeah, and it's going to be a heck of a battle to watch play out, especially now we see the FTC might be bringing some action against Facebook, so it's going to have an extra stumbling block to try to get over. Okay, well, Gary, thank you so much. Blake, thank you so much. Great to see you both, as always. Thanks, everybody out there watching. And now I'm going to toss it back to Web Summit in Lisbon.

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headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So search for the Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app like the one you're using right now. And we are back here on the second half of the big technology podcast. We just recorded the first half at Web Summit and now Blake Chan Lee from TikTok has graciously decided to stick around and spend another 15 minutes talking about the business and his career. Time at Facebook, time at TikTok, Blake. It's good to have you back for the second half. Alex, I appreciate it, man. So I wrote the book, Always Day 1 about tech giant culture. I learned a lot about Facebook,

Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. I didn't hear anything about TikTok. Can you tell us a little bit about what TikTok culture is like and how it either differs or compares to bite dance, which is the parent company based in China? Yeah, I think that, you know, TikTok is a reflection of its overall mission, right, which we talked about earlier, you know, to inspire creativity and bring joy. And that just brings a certain energy level, you know, within the employee base especially. You know, people join it because, one, they see this as a new opportunity to kind of, one, be a little bit disruptive. Like, we're definitely trying to be disruptive. Yeah, we see this content graph is really important. Yeah, the four you feed is a really powerful

component of that. But the ability to give really strong and tangible creative tools to people and to really democratize creativity is an important part of what we're trying to do here. And, you know, we use the word, you know, influencers, we call them creators versus influencers. If anybody can be a creator, you know, it could be me, it could be you, it could be you know, it could be Charlie. It could be, you know, it could be anybody. You know, they're a huge influencers. We still call them creators. Or there could be someone who's got, you know, 3,000 people following them, but they're, you know, talking about some kind of science capabilities that are, it's really relevant

to their audience. And so we just think this open, this open exchange of creativity is really powerful. And that just oozes its way through the business and through the culture. Yeah. And also like what I'm getting at is like in Facebook, obviously there's a Zuck ideas bubble up to him. He makes product decisions.

Is that how it works in TikTok? Like obviously there's been some leadership changes with the U.S. business, but how do, how do products skip? I mean, I guess TikTok doesn't have the bloat that Facebook has. So, but how do decisions, I guess? made inside the company. So there's a lot of collaboration. I mean, Vanessa's, you know, Vanessa basically has effectively replaced Kevin. Right. And let's, let's give their full name so it's Vanessa Poppers, right? Who's the acting head of TikTok in the U.S.? Exactly. Exactly. And she's got more of a global

remit than just a U.S. remit at this point. And there are there are these GMs all over the world on the user side of the business center, you know, working closely with the engineering teams and the product teams, which are distributed, you know, across the world. And, and, you know, And trying to find out what's the best user experience. And is there a different user experience in parts of Meenot, with the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, versus Southeast Asia, versus the U.S. And for the most part, you know, behaviors are very, very similar around our content. And so those teams work closely with the different engineering groups.

And there's lots and lots of testing. There's lots of lots of iteration that's taking place. You know, there's a lot of work going on around live stream right now, which is not just within us, but across the industry in general. You know, certainly exploring different areas around commerce and shopping and Facebook and others have made a big bet there around what that looks like and the role of that in the future of those companies. And certainly we're, you know, early stages of exploring some of those ideas. And on the commercial side, you know, it's very similar. You know, what's working, what's not.

The world's changing pretty dramatically out there in terms of, you know, used to be collect as much data as you possibly could. And that's how these businesses were built. you know, the terabytes and terabytes of data. Yeah, you know that well from your time on Facebook. You know, very well, right? And, but that's not, I don't think that's the currency going forward. Like, I think that, you know, the shifts in IDFA going in the early next year, I think there's been some fundamental changes.

And so the guidance that I'm trying to take the company and on the commercial side is, let's not look in the rearview mirror and built everything that, build everything that Facebook or Google and everybody else built, but let's build for the future where we think there's much more control from a consumer perspective. So all those conversations are taking place 24-7. Yeah. All right. Let me ask you this. So one of the funny things that I hear from Facebook employees from time to time is when they've, I mean, maybe this happened in the earlier days, but they went out in the wild, you know, quote-unquote, people who met them were like,

wait, people work at Facebook. Like, what do you do? You know, sort of, you know, believing that the product is static, whereas, of course, inside Facebook, you're kind of. constantly testing and building new features and products, which you know well. But like I kind of ask to myself the same question about TikTok. Like TikTok obviously is not, and we've sort of touched on this, but it's not filled with feature bloat. It's a pretty straightforward experience. The algorithm seems to do much of the work. So what are people inside the company actually building?

There's a lot of work going into different future functionality and feature sets. And so, yeah, the algorithm and the feed, the same thing, Facebook. like the feed did most of the work in the early days and it was connecting friends and family and then that social graph was the the driving it was our version of our four-you feed right and you're right people would come up to us in the early days ago whoa you work at facebook like what do you do and uh and the same thing happens to ticot like i was traveling recently and someone saw my ticot you know logo on on my phone or my computer something like whoa you work at ticot like what do you do um but just like any company. There's all sorts of different businesses that we're thinking about in terms of features

and functionality. And there are different groups that are working on those for products and engineering perspective. And there's certainly policy and commercial. And it takes a lot to run a big company like this. Yeah, we have a few minutes left. I just want to kind of end with your personal journey. So you spent 10 years at Facebook just about. What makes you decide to pick up and go to a TikTok? Yeah, I don't know. I'm one of these guys that. that I like kind of that path less traveled. And so, you know, joining Facebook was a big deal back in 2007. And I was, you know, running a big part of Yahoo in the UK.

And people said, you're going to go join Facebook. Like, why in the world would you do that? Like, Yahoo's a really big job. And I just kind of saw where concerned behavior is going. And so, you know, jumped on that opportunity. And the same thing's happening now. Like, there's just a shift. And the next generation is spending less time on, you know,

suddenly, you know, the, you know, the big blue badge on Facebook and Instagram even, and even Snap. And so, you know, TikTok has kind of taken this. And I believe there's a fundamental shift taking place. I don't think those, to Gary's point, I don't think these companies go away. I think there's way too much, you know, people find too much value in the different platforms. I do think that in terms of entertainment and where people spend time and where they just want to have a moment of joy and people just say that, you know, TikTok's the last sunny spot on

the internet, right? You go there and you're not worried about politics. You're not worried about things like that. You just go there for a laugh. I used to say that about Instagram too. And, you know, TikTok has not been immune to political and conspiracy theories. There's no doubt about that. No, I think there's, we saw some of that neat, you know, with Black Lives Matter and we saw some of the early political stuff. Hong Kong protests. And we've been really, we've been really diligent about, you know, watching. But I don't think people go there with the expectation, right? I think people are much more there for this sense of community and the sense of joy, right? And that's important with why people are using a platform.

Yeah, I remember when Mark Zuckerberg, we talked about this in the previous podcast, Mark Zuckerberg wanted to acquire Instagram, Kevin's sister, and was talking with investors about like, should we go to Facebook or is he going to go into destroy mode? I mean, it's sort of like the, you know, Gary talked about how there's room for so many competitors but it also seems like it is zero sum because you are competing for time so maybe you're both in destroy mode for each other no i don't think so i do think that there's what we are going to compete everybody's competing and competing for time i do think that the that there are other places where people are going to spend less time um and i think there's a lot

of opportunity and space there for everybody yeah um okay finally uh the way that you're talking it seems like you think that TikTok's going to be around for a while in the U.S.? Is that a fair assumption? I said earlier, I mean, we're working closely to find a resolution with the administration. That's our, that's our end goal. Yeah. What TikTok to exist for our 100 million plus U.S. users, and, you know, we're committed to, you know, to that. Do you think you're going to have to go through a similar process with the Biden administration,

or do you think that this will sort of do it, and then you'll be able to move on and live your lives? I'm going to take Gary's quote on this one, say that's way above my pay grade. Yeah. Well, look, I think that it's an interesting app. I'm a user. I like using it. And I also think that we're going to be seeing questions about it because it is an interesting corporate structure with unique liabilities in the United States. But number one thing I think is it's important to have a dialogue between folks inside TikTok and the public.

and we spoke before this and I was mentioning that like I don't think we hear enough from TikTok so I appreciate you sitting down taking the time being gracious to spend a couple extra minutes on the podcast and wishing you luck yeah no I appreciate it and you'll continue here from us Alex like we want to be as simple we want to be as transparent as we can and we've opened these transparency centers and we published our first few transparency reports and so we're being you're trying of these transparent as we can with both just the public and the administration, everybody else, and we'll continue to that on that. So you'll hear more from us in the future, of course. Okay, sounds great. Well, that will do it for us here on the big technology podcast,

broadcasting, of course, from Web Summit. So I want to thank the Web Summit folks for allowing me to record this session and turn it into a show. Thanks also to Red Circle for hosting selling ads on the podcast, and Nate Gwattney, who's our audio editor, does a great job of it. We do these shows every Wednesday if you're a first-time listener and want to hit subscribe. I would appreciate that. And if you're a long-time listener, a rating goes a long way. Thanks, everybody, and we will see you next Wednesday.