Factually! with Adam Conover - The Truth about TikTok and China with Abbie Richards

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

What is the truth about the relationship between TikTok and the Chinese government, and would banning it help or hurt Americans? This week, TikTok misinformation researcher Abbie Richards joins Adam to bust myths and explain what the real problem with TikTok actually is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an amazing expert about all the amazing stuff that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together. We're going to have a fantastic time doing it. Now, you might have heard that TikTok may be getting banned in the United States. If you were alive and on the internet over the past month, you've probably seen the footage of U.S. Congress people grilling the CEO of TikTok, asking questions like, does the Chinese government have access to user data? Can TikTok connect to

my Wi-Fi and steal my identity? And who the hell is this Hank Green guy and why won't he stop teaching me science facts? Okay, that last one was a joke, but the debate over TikTok is very real. The central concern is that TikTok may be at the whims of China's authoritarian government. TikTok has 150 million American users and it is collecting the same locational and browsing data all social media companies do. And some are concerned that the Chinese government,

which is the supreme institution in China, can leverage this huge window into Americans' lives to, say, spread propaganda and misinformation or otherwise promote a Chinese agenda. For that reason, TikTok has been banned on government devices in America, Canada and across Europe. And in D.C., legislators are pushing the Restrict Act, a bipartisan bill which would, quote, give the Commerce Department and White House sweeping new powers to ban or restrict a wide range of communications and technology products coming from China. warns that the bill would do little to protect Americans' privacy, while criminalizing common practices like using a VPN or sideloading apps onto a device you own, while giving our government the enhanced power to censor the internet. And many are wondering why there is so much focus on TikTok when our homegrown social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have already been used to steal user data and

undermine elections by foreign governments. So is the focus on TikTok nothing but anti-Chinese xenophobia, or is there some truth to the idea that we should be wary of it? How bad is the misinformation problem on TikTok really, and should we be concerned about how Americans who currently use the tool would be harmed if it was suddenly banned? Well, to answer those questions, we have an incredible guest on the show this week. Her name is Abby Richards, and she's not only a professional researcher who studies TikTok and misinformation, she is also a TikTok content creator herself, and she knows more about the platform than anyone I have ever met. You are going to love this interview. But before we get to it, I have to remind you that I am going on tour this year.

If you live in San Francisco, San Antonio, Tempe, Arizona, Batavia, Illinois, just outside Chicago, St. Louis, Missouri, or Baltimore, Maryland, please head to adamconover.net to get tickets to see me do a live hour of stand-up. And if you want to support this show, please head to patreon.com slash adamconover. We are newly an independent podcast. We are no longer associated with the podcast network, and your donations help keep this podcast free to everyone and up and live every single week. So please head to patreon.com slash adamconover. Just five bucks a month gets you every episode of the podcast ad-free and a bunch of other goodies. Now, without further ado, let's get to my interview with Abby Richards.

Abby, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for having me. So before we jump into it, just tell us a little bit about your history with TikTok, your research into it and how you use the platform yourself. with TikTok, your research into it, and how you use the platform yourself? Yeah. So I am a TikToker and a TikTok misinformation researcher. So I look at how misinformation and extremism spread on the platform. And then I also make content about it. I got into this very accidentally. It was never my intention, but I think I was like many people at the start of lockdown trapped, nothing to do, made a Tik TOK. I went viral for kicking a water bottle, uh, and was like, this platform is wild. I must understand it. That's a lot of people's first experience with Tik TOK is I remember

logging on and I saw a video of a girl who was just doing a before and after of her haircut. She was just like, I'm going in to get a haircut. And here it is. And the video had like 2 million views. And then I tapped on her profile and it was the only video she had ever posted had 2 million views. And I was like, hold on a second. How, wait, what, how is that possible? And that was when I knew I had to figure out what the fuck was up with this platform. And then I posted stuff that I went viral without realizing it. And it had this bizarre sort of new way of working that no other social media site had before. You had the same experience.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I was kind of just messing around, posting whatever video I wanted and just killing time in lockdown, making wet coffee and whatnot. And then it was right when the song was viral, before Jason Derulo stole it. And I kicked a water bottle and it was right on beat and 1.5 million views. And I was like, what is this app? Whoa. I think it went viral in Germany. Cause I got like all these German children following me.

They famously like weird stuff in Germany. You don't want to know why they like it. But I first saw your material on TikTok because you were doing material about misinformation spreading on the platform and you were doing material about misinformation spreading on the platform and you were breaking down how the platform worked and why we should be worried about it, which was, you know, one of the things I like about the platform. It brought me, I never would have, you know, heard your voice if I hadn't, I hadn't first seen you on TikTok. So before all of this stuff with banning TikTok happened, what, what were your concerns and what was your research finding about TikTok? So my concerns have always been rooted in the misinformation that spreads on

the platform. And this gets into like how TikTok is structured and what we were just describing where like anyone can go viral. It's completely just driven by this algorithm that looks at like how much people are engaging with a certain piece of content and then determines from that who they will show it to and how many people they will show it to. That's a very good system to create and have misinformation thrive in because it's not this like top down, think like New York times information ecosystem where these editors decide what is newsworthy and what they're going to print, and then people fact-check

it and reporters go do their investigation based on what they've been assigned. Instead, we have this bottom-up information ecosystem, which has its advantages, it has its disadvantages. But one of those disadvantages is that misinformation misinformation that appeals to emotions that offers a very simple answer for complex problems that makes people feel afraid, makes people feel angry like that, just because it can go viral so fast. Yeah. And, you know, I've taken advantage of that ability to go viral myself during lockdown. I started making TikTok videos about the kind of stuff I normally do, the hidden truth behind something in your life,

or haven't you ever wondered why, you know, here's the problem with the American school system, stuff like that. And I'm like, oh, if I can make people a little bit angry, if I can give them that feeling of discovery that they've learned a hidden truth in under a minute, then it'll, it's like a formula for going viral. Right now I do that pretty responsibly because I would do screenshots of the articles that I was sourcing and et cetera, and I know the difference between a good source and a bad source, but I've also seen plenty of people do that in a way that is not that responsible or that is basically just sort of repeating urban legends. And it's not always harmful, but I do watch stuff where

I'm like, this is, ooh, wait, this is using some of the same tools as what I would make, but it has less truth value to it. How big of a problem is that? Because, you know, it's easy to overblow how big of a problem misinformation is, because misinformation has always been a problem, you know? It's a problem in traditional media as well. So how big of a problem is it on TikTok in your view? It's hard to quantify. And I mean, misinformation is a fundamentally like human phenomenon. It's been around as long as society has, as long as we've had language, we've had lies, as long as we've lived in communities. Like we've really probably had conspiracy theories about outsiders.

Like these are these are things that go deep, deep into our history and our psychology. The problem is then when like you're inundated with it and when your information like the information that we consume is what constructs our perception of reality. So if we are overwhelmingly consuming misinformation, that really has potential to warp our understanding of reality. And that's where I'm concerned. much worse is this information than it was on Facebook versus than it was in 1920s radio or in ancient Rome. It's really hard to quantify that and compare them, but it is very easy to look at, or much easier, I'd say, to look at a specific phenomenon of misinformation and the harm that it's causing. So like a good example, right now on TikTok, we're seeing like a resurgence of the National Rape Day panic, which is a hoax.

Okay. I don't know if you encountered this in 2021. I did not. This did not show up on my algorithm. I mostly get videos of video game speed runners and uh you know and like happy queer content we get different feeds well i get the happy queer content too but yeah uh national rape day is a hoax that kind of originated it is more of like an urban legend like you were saying, that was floating around the collective consciousness for a while. And then in April of 2021, it popped off on TikTok. The earliest I could identify it

showing up on all social media was actually on Twitter, but it really quickly spread to TikTok, which is where it found that virality because of how TikTok is designed. of how TikTok is designed. And suddenly we had millions of people who thought that on April 24th, there were some different versions of this, but on April 24th, hordes of men were going to take to the streets and just like rape, or that rape was going to be legal, like purge style. And that these like imaginary men were organizing online to go commit rape en masse on this one particular day. That's not how sexual violence works. It's deeply, deeply harmful on many levels. So you have like, first of all, just the trauma of it for a lot of people who are now like terrified to leave their house that day. Yeah.

And then there was also this. A traumatizing idea just to hear about. Yeah. And then there's also like this genre of response, particularly from men of like performing violence as a means of protection, which is definitely not helping the problem. But that content performs really, really well. So you have like men like swinging around a baseball bat talking about how they are going to hunt down rapists on the 24th.

And then, because like every other day in this country, there are rapes, it becomes this like self-fulfilling belief system because one or two people can post a video about how they were in fact sexually assaulted on April 24th. Or there was like a murder of one girl who was like looped into the whole belief system. And it justified this like piece of misinformation and it skipped last year we didn't see a big resurgence of it but then this year in february uh people started warning about it was going like viral again yeah and this is i can see how this comes from real fears like people are justifiably worried about organized groups of

men plotting together to do bad things in america that's a real thing that happened on january 6th right it happens uh you know the proud boys do in fact organize to go do horrible things and be violent right um i can see how it sort of connected to. But it's also takes on a life of its own in a way that's really harmful. It also reminds me a little bit of a knockout game. If you remember that from almost like it was years ago, that was like spreading in traditional media on Fox News and stuff like that, that like there was a there was a game that, you know, youths, I think generally youths of color were playing where they were like, you know, receiving points to assault old ladies in the street and like, you know, sucker punch people. And it like took on a life of its own as this thing that was like happening around the country when there's no evidence for it. So that's a that's a real problem. That's very bad that that's happening on TikTok.

And I think you have a lot of really justifiable concerns about TikTok. I'm curious, though. I assume you watch some of these congressional hearings about TikTok. And I think you have a lot of really justifiable concerns about TikTok. I'm curious, though, I assume you watch some of these congressional hearings about TikTok. Did you see any of your concerns mirrored in those congressional hearings? And do you share any of the concerns that the Congress people have? What was your reaction to that political event? reaction to that political event? Oh, man. I mean, a lot of stress. I made it through about three hours before I could feel myself losing brain cells. And I was like, I'm calling it. There were some points that were great. There were a handful, like a very sparing handful of points made by Congresswomen mostly, but also I think some congressmen pointing to like algorithmic bias and like racism within TikTok's algorithm

and censorship. And then overwhelmingly, like, yes, I am concerned about data privacy much more broadly. I just think that specifically looking at TikTok when it was really doing everything else that all the other big players in the industry are doing, it's not helpful. And I'm worried that it's a big distraction from a much bigger need for data privacy in this country. Yeah, I mean, it seemed to be, you know, I'm very familiar, having been on the internet for decades now. There's a recurring thing that happens once every couple of years where, you know, a bunch of politicians get very upset about the internet in a way that people who use the internet a lot feel very, you know, have a lot of fun making fun of right so these people are really out of touch the the uh the source of the quote uh the internet is a series of tubes you remember that

that was like that's like over 10 years ago now maybe 12 years even maybe even longer i don't know how old i am um but you know uh there's you know recurrent protests over sopa and pipa these like bad bills that are uh being promoted and you know, net neutrality and things like that, where you've got folks on the internet saying, wow, the, we're watching the footage of the people we elected talking about the place where we spent a lot of our time and they don't know the first thing about it. be a big, big part of the response that I saw on TikTok and on Twitter and on the rest of social media that, oh, these folks are going to ban TikTok without understanding the first thing about it. At the same time, there's a lot of real concerns about TikTok. So let me ask you this. There's a the the the big headline from those congressional hearings is over the the national security implications of TikTok, TikTok's relationship with the Chinese government. Where do you fall on those concerns? And what of them do you think are credible? And what is the

relationship, if you can outline it for us a little bit? Yeah, I'll do my best. And this is a huge question. So we're going to have to break it down into a couple of shots. We're just going to get into it. Yes. Because when we're talking about national security, I think that we should separate this into two big questions. The first is cybersecurity. And then the second is potential for some sort of TikTok as a propaganda machine. TikTok as a form of information warfare. And these are entirely different speculations.

And so first we'll start with TikTok structure. So TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is this Chinese company that was actually incorporated in the Cayman Islands. It's not incorporated in China. And they have multiple different products, including TikTok, including Douyin, which is like the China like within the borders of China equivalent

of TikTok. The user interface is the same. It's a different app with a different name that is sort of similar to TikTok. It's like... It's exactly the same. It's just like the user interface looks virtually the same. Um, the experience of scrolling it is very, is very similar. Um, the difference is that it falls under like the regulations of the CCP. Ah, okay. Got it. And then they also have other products. Notably is one that translates to

like today's headlines, which is interesting. It's a news product. It feeds you information and news using an AI recommendation algorithm. So imagine TikTok, but just like the algorithm is feeding you just news it thinks you'll like. And then they also have a video platform built into that. So fundamentally, ByteDance, you can think of as exporting tech, but in particular, exporting AI. That's what they're really good at, is building this AI that creates something like this recommendation algorithm that makes TikTok so powerful. ByteDance owns, like underneath ByteDance is another ByteDance and they own the Chinese-based companies that are like regulated within China and have to follow the rules of the CCB. TikTok is owned by ByteDance. They are the parent company. But they are like operate outside of

China and are not subject to laws within within the borders of China. Does this make sense? It does. It sounds like the opposite of what I've heard in the news, like what the news is telling me, what the Congress people seem to think is that ByteDance is like run by the Chinese government or has such a close relationship with the Chinese government that all of the data that TikTok has on me is accessible at any time to the Chinese government. What you're saying, though, is that ByteDance is incorporated outside of China and only its Chinese local subsidiaries, which do not operate U.S. TikTok. They only operate Chinese TikTok, Douyin, only those are subject to the CCP. Am I understanding what you said correctly? Yes, that is the best that I can articulate that. So it is not the case, in fact, that the company that owns TikTok is, like, directly under the thumb of the CCP, in your view?

So one wing of it is. Yeah. Like ByteDance as like the head head, like slightly less so. And then ByteDance is the ByteDance that is underneath the daddy ByteDance. They have, you know, CCP has a lot more control over their products.

Yeah. Whether or not CCP has control over like the Western exports is a lot more control over their products. Yeah. Whether or not CCP has control over like the Western exports is a lot more dubious. And when you say CCP, we mean the Chinese Communist Party, right? Yes. Just to define that. Yes. So it's just, it's much more complicated than the narrative that we've been fed. And like, there's a lot of a lot of complicated business formation details here.

So the fact that it is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and it was started by a Chinese tech entrepreneur, but then incorporated in the Cayman Islands. The board, I believe, three out of the five members are Westerners. A lot of the funding for ByteDance is coming from Western capital. So it's just not nearly as simple as it's been being portrayed. And that complexity, I think, creates a lot of room for fear-mongering. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff in the congressional testimony where they're grilling the CEO of TikTok and they're talking to him as though he's Chinese. And I believe he's Singaporean, right? He's not even Chinese at all.

So, look, it seems as though it's a little bit difficult to tell because this is the nature of shell companies. It's hard for us to figure out the power structure and how much control the Chinese government actually does have over ByteDance. But if I'm going to be a skeptic, I'm going to say, well, the Chinese investment has a lot of roles in a lot of companies that touch Americans. Look at, you know, Apple and iPhones and all of these other, you know, there's so like we're,

we're in an interconnected world here. And so what you're describing, like you're describing a multinational corporation that does a lot of business in China and therefore has relationships with the Chinese government, which is also true of like Google. It's like like a lot of a lot of these a lot of companies we think of as American are incorporated in Ireland and have, you know, Chinese subsidiaries that directly work with the Chinese Communist Party to filter out stuff that the Chinese government doesn't want seen. And so I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out where what's the difference between TikTok and, you know,

some of these other companies. And it is, do you feel that there is one? And do you personally have a concern about the Chinese government vis-a-vis TikTok? Well, okay. I, this is, well, we'll get to that bigger question as we work through cybersecurity. I'm sorry, I packed in five questions into that. You've got to slow down. We've got to go piecemeal here. Because you're right. I think 155 of Apple's top suppliers are based in China, right?

Apple rolled out a software update in China, in Hong Kong, particularly to stop the airdrop feature that was being used by protesters to communicate and organize. Apple has provided customer data 96% of the time when asked by the Chinese government. Apple has removed the Taiwan flag emoji from keyboards for users in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests. boards for users in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests. Amazon has partnered with the Chinese state propaganda agency to launch China Books, like a China Books portal. Amazon and Microsoft have both provided web services to a blacklisted Chinese surveillance

firm. Facebook developed a censorship tool in an attempt to court Chinese engagement. Google also developed a censored version of its product for use in China, but then was then forced to backtrack after it got pressure from human rights groups. And then Chinese state media exists on other platforms too. If you ban TikTok, the Chinese state media will still exist on Facebook and Twitter and Google. Um, and like, you know, they've paid YouTube influencers to, to make pro pro CCP content. So really when you start to think about this, it's like, it's not just TikTok and we're getting into like a much bigger problem here about what our relationship is with China when it comes to creating a technological world.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the things you listed are the exact things that people are concerned that TikTok would do. Turning over user data to the Chinese government is exactly what people are concerned about TikTok doing. And these are, quote unquote, American companies doing exactly that. But you said you want to talk about cybersecurity. Let's go to the cybersecurity concerns. Adam, can you define cybersecurity for me? Oh, God. I guess. Okay. So on a personal or business level, that would be making sure that any private information or certain sensitive information uh about your business that you don't want getting out there on a national level uh it's a little bit less clear to me uh what it means i guess like there's the idea of cyber warfare that you know a another nation could if they wanted to, you know. Oh, here's a good example. Like the U.S. to disrupt Iran's nuclear program, like engineered a virus that like snuck its way into their like where they were doing their their nuclear testing and like fucked with their equipment, I believe, with their centrifuges to like destroy their ability to create a nuclear weapon. And so that was like clear cyber warfare.

It was like, we, it was like some fucking hacker shit. We, we snuck in, literally snuck in a virus that destroyed a bunch of sensitive equipment. And I would say cybersecurity on a national level would be making sure stuff like that can't happen to you.

That's, that's, I would say that that's. That's pretty comprehensive. A good example of a cybersecurity threat that did relate to China is, do you remember the 2014 Marriott data breach? Marriott data breach? No. Okay. So in 2014, well, technically this came out in 2018, but in 2014, some hackers put some malware in a reservation software used by the Marriott. And in 2018, the Marriott reported that they had been trying to, and potentially and probably successfully extracted data of 500 million people who booked hotels through the Marriott and all of its companies. And so that included really personal information that included things like passport

numbers and credit cards, as well as gender, names, address, phone number, that sort of stuff, but also super personal information. And so then this was later attributed to Chinese state connected hackers, which China denies, but like, I'm not getting into that right now. And that's a good example of like, there's an instance where like that personal data of a lot of people is actually valuable to an adversarial state because they could be looking at that and seeing like when diplomats are traveling, when are spies traveling, who's going where and meeting who at what points and like using their passport numbers to track that. So that's an instance where like,

So that's an instance where like that does present a national security threat. And and that puts it into a nice bit of context to me where I am forgetting that China and the U.S. are definitely spying on each other all the time. Like we've got we've got so many spies. They have so many spies here. Spying is just a thing that's always happening. And so if you're, if you work for the CIA, I see why this would be shit that you would be concerned about. I'm not granting that the CIA has a valid concern or should even exist. I'm just saying, I understand why if you're a CIA guy or gal, you'd be like, okay, I'm a little concerned about this because

our spies cover could be blown stuff like that. Yeah. Because that information is a value. So this takes us to like three big questions when we're looking at TikTok threat to cybersecurity. The first would be like, what data is TikTok collecting? The second is like, is that data of value to the Chinese state? And then the third is if that is a value is, you know, having some sort of political authority over TikTok via ByteDance, um, the only way or the best way that they could access that data. And to put it simply, no, it would be like pretty ineffective. So the data that TikTok is collecting is too much data, but it's also the same as other platforms. The things to know are that like they're using first party and third party trackers, basically like cookies, those like annoying pop ups that you get on all sorts of websites asking for permission to track you and sell you things. So like that couch that you looked at once can follow you around the entire internet. So TikTok is using both of those. The first party cookies, first party trackers will

be sent to like their app developers. That's how they, they track bugs or they, they look at how users use the app. Um, and then the third party trackers, that's how like they might sell to other companies. Um, And I'm definitely concerned particularly about that because I'm not a fan of surveillance capitalism. Yeah, that's a problem in TikTok. It's also a problem across the entire internet. It's why I've ad blockers up everywhere. It's why I don't use Google. There's a lot of reasons to be concerned about that kind of technology. I know TikTok also tracks my location because when I went to France last year, I started seeing French TikToks. So it's definitely keeping track of your location.

There's a difference between your regional location and your GPS coordinates. They are certainly tracking your regional location. There's no evidence that they're tracking your GPS exact location without permission or any sort of thing like that. A report from Citizen Lab looked at like the source code of TikTok and Duyen and found that there was no evidence that they were doing any sort of like data collection beyond, again, I'm using air quotes, but industry norms. Um, and then the question that follows from there is like, is that data valuable? And like this aggregate data, is that valuable to a foreign adversarial government. It's hard to imagine how. It can tell you likes and interests.

Really, what seems more likely is that the aggregate data of how the entire US population is using the app is much less valuable than like specific people of interest so if you are a secret super spy and you get on tiktok and do a little dancey dance in front of like a prototype of new defense uh missiles like that is you know that's that's a national security threat but it would be a national security threat if you posted it on YouTube, too. Yeah. If you're under deep cover, you probably shouldn't be, like, getting your scroll on. Or maybe you should get your scroll on because then you'll look totally normal because that's what a normal person would do. But I get that.

Like, if you think you might be targeted by Chinese surveillance, or if you're worried about those people, that's something to be concerned about. And that's why the U S government has banned Tik TOK on U S government devices. Like, you know, if you're working for the department of defense, you can't install Tik TOK on your work,

Blackberry. Well, Blackberry doesn't exist, but you know what I mean? But that, that equally applies for any other social media platform. That's not unique to TikTok in any way, shape, or form. If you are revealing state secrets online, it doesn't matter which platform you're using.

People can find it. This is called open source intelligence. It's called OSINT if you want to sound really cool about it. If you want to sound like a badass, you call it OSINT. And that is essentially gathering any sort of intelligence information from publicly available open documents. So that could include newspapers. It could include public government records, but it also increasingly is including social media. And so if you want to track down a person of interest, it's very easy to do it. I mean, anyone who has looked at their ex's sister's Instagram to see if their ex is dating someone new has essentially done OSINT. But the governments just have much stronger and more powerful tools to do it than you do like stalking your ex.

Yeah. So if so, the point is, if in talking about the government targeting a particular American or Chinese government targeting a particular American, TikTok could help them do that. But so would every other piece of social media that they would use. In terms of the aggregate data, like all of our, you know, I'm using TikTok, you're using TikTok, or, you know, everyone we know is using TikTok. The Chinese government is going to somehow use that data to track us. You're saying it's not clear what advantage they would get from it, apart from like very broad demographics. And I have to say, I agree with that. Like, I'm not I'm really not sure what the Chinese government is going to do with my data that I'm concerned about. That's worse than what, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is doing with my data. Or, you know, currently, American capitalism is using that aggregate data to feed me lies, to sell me shit I don't need, to follow me around,

to sell my data to each other, to try to sell me more things. And that has negative effects on my life currently, such as when 14 year olds use public information databases to look me up and call me online at 1am, call me on the phone at.m., which has happened. And I've had to use like data scrubbing tools to like get my phone number off the internet because 14-year-olds won't stop doing it. This was a couple of years ago. You're on Delete Me, right? Like you're using Delete Me.

I'm on Delete Me, correct. Okay, good. Delete Me. Oh, let's just do a non- Free promo. A quick free promo for Delete Me, which is a service that, so there's all these public information, not public information, their data, data miners, data scrapers, right, that that collects basically your phone number, your address, your employer, all these sorts of things.

And people can for 15 bucks a month or whatever, just like get this data on other people, kind of like a really evil version of the white pages that your parents used to get when you were a kid. And there's like hundreds of these services. And if your data is on them, and if someone wants to find you, they can. And so I had a problem where literally 14 year olds were paying $15 a month to get my phone number and just go, are you Adam Conover? And it was annoying. And so Delete Me is a service that one by one, you give them all your information. And one by one, they go to every single one of those repositories and they file a request. Please remove Adam Conover's information from this database, which each of those sites is required to have. And they do a good job. They just automatically for you remove your information from all these sites.

And so I've signed up for it. I've sent my whole family up for it. If you're at all concerned about people looking up your data, you know, maybe you're not, but if you are, it's a, it's a, it's a tool that works. I should frankly call them and see if they want to sponsor this podcast. See if you can pull a sponsorship deal. Looking for new sponsors. So, so that's a, so those are actual. That's an actual bad thing that has happened to me because of surveillance capitalism. I'm unclear what the risks to me of the Chinese government doing that are because the Chinese government isn't isn't trying to sell me shit. But actually, wait, hold on. Maybe that connects to the other point that you said we should talk about that people are concerned about, which is propaganda.

point that you said we should talk about that people are concerned about, which is propaganda, right? That is what the Chinese government might want to sell me is ideology or, you know, that sort of concern. So let's get into that. But before we do, let's take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Abby Richards. How was that for a segue? Hey, everybody. So, you know, you should be backing up your data, right? You know that you are just one laptop in a puddle away from losing all those files that are so important to you, but you don't know how to do it. Oh, my God. All these cloud services, they're always bothering you. Which is the best one? Let me recommend one to you. Why don't you check out Backblaze?

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surveillance and how, you know, the concerns are maybe a little bit overblown or about how we shouldn't necessarily be more concerned about TikTok than other social media sites. But what about propaganda? This is a concern you hear constantly with TikTok that TikTok could slightly adjust the algorithm to feed our kids garbage and make them love Mao

and they're all gonna turn into little communists. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but is this a real concern or not? And why, in your view? You are not exaggerating. I have spent the last like week and a half digging through like the anti-China hawk, anti-TikTok reports that have been written. Weirdly, a lot of them are coming out of Australia. And like, that's not an exaggeration. Like that is the fear. You've nailed it. Okay. Well, is it a real fear in your, is this something we should be afraid of? Well, so, you know, in, to answer the question of is, is TikTok a threat to national security? We have to kind of also unpack this propaganda claim. And I think that, again, we're going to have to break this down piecemeal because this is like

such a huge question. And so the first thing we want to look at is like, is TikTok exporting some sort of censorship and censoring like anti-China content? And then we also want to ask if TikTok's recommendation algorithm is manipulated by the CCP. And we want to look at if it could be manipulated by the CCP. Could this become some sort of propaganda organ for China? Yeah. So let's start with censorship and work our way bigger. Sounds good. Okay. Okay.

What's your experience of censorship on TikTok? Do you think that, have you experienced it? Yes, but only of the type where, okay, so I made a video on marijuana laws across America. And it was like, you know, I had like a map of like, here's where marijuana is legal and here's where it isn't. And I forget exactly what it was about. It was like, um, I think it was about places where like marijuana couldn't even be tested by scientists because of weird federal laws around it. Um, and that video was immediately like restricted. It got to like 5,000 views and then they shut it off. And I had spent like a couple hours making it. And I was like, oh, that this sucks. You know, I prepared this whole TikTok video and like a shut it off. And I had spent like a couple hours making it. And I was like, oh, this sucks.

You know, I prepared this whole TikTok video and like a whole monologue. And I guess because it's about marijuana at all, a drug which is legal in the state where I live, I can walk down the block and buy an eighth for, you know, 40 bucks. That to me was clear censorship. That was my own experience. Yeah, and I've had, I lost an entire account

to being shadow banned after posting protest footage. There's a dead account out there of me where I went viral for kicking a water bottle. Um, and that is, is it was denied any access to the for you page ever again. So like there is certainly censorship, but we also have to kind of put it in context. So there's been censorship and there's also been propaganda about the prosecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. There was censorship about the persecution of Uyghurs on American TikTok? There was an account who certainly went viral for talking about it and then was removed and then TikTok apologized and put it back up. viral for talking about it and then was removed and then TikTok apologized and put it back up. And also if you looked in 2020, you would have seen a lot more content that looked like Chinese state propaganda about the region than you would have seen content about concentration camps and re-education camps. And if you look now, though, you will see all that content. You can go see footage of these camps. You can go see very intense footage of Tiananmen Square.

So what we're seeing is actually more of this evolution of a company that was stepping away from Chinese regulations as it like faced pressure from the Western market. And if, if we actually put that censorship in context, right, where like, uh, mentions of Uyghur genocide were, were censored. Um, a lot of LGBTQ terms were censored. were censored. A lot of LGBTQ terms were censored. But also there was leaked documents from moderation guidelines for TikTok moderators that they weren't supposed to give any exposure to fat people, to people who were disabled, people who were just like, quote, ugly people who looked poor or their environment was poor. And they were quite explicit in this, these, these guidelines that this was because

that would push people, push new users away. Um, what they wanted was to portray this app that was like shiny and happy and full of Charlie D'Amelio types doing dances. Right. Like that was always their goal. And like, it's quite clear if you look at the big picture of their moderation, including the fact that they banned like protest footage in the U S um, and suppressed, uh, content relating to black Lives Matter originally, and then they backtracked on that,

they were doing it for profit motives. They wanted to keep people on their shiny new dancey platform that was full of fun memes. And you can find these cherry-picked examples that are specific to China, but you can also have a much much more accurate bird's eye view where you're looking at a company that wanted to portray themselves as like super positive and apolitical.

So it's less of a, the censorship that has existed on Tik TOK has been more frankly, capitalist censorship, that it's censorship of things that are going to make people want to use the app less. And then but they've also been responsive to political pressure when they've like, oh, our business is at threat because we're being seen as censoring things that are critical of the Chinese government. We have to change that. And these are like bad practices that we should be critical of, but they're not necessarily related to the Chinese Communist Party is what you're saying.

Yes. We have an app that is clearly doing everything in its power to just keep people on the platform as long as possible so that they can consume as many ads as possible. And in their mind, like in those, especially in their earlier days, you know, somebody filming in a poor environment might turn, like make somebody turn the app off. So they didn't, they, they encourage moderators to like slow down that content. There are also times though, that I feel like TikTok emphasizes conflict and things that are, you know, like a kind of TikTok I see distressingly often is a black person who's filming being harassed by police

or having a white person filming them, you know, the sort of like Black Lives Matter adjacent content of like, look how this person is harassing me. I see that stuff quite often because it seems to really glue people to the app when you're, when you're suddenly thrust into a sort of heated real life situation like that, you know, um, and you're watching somebody being, uh, you know, uh, you

know, dealing with a Karen to, to use the, the, the recent term. Um, I do see that sort of thing quite often. Did you see it in 2019? I wasn't using TikTok in 2019. I started using it in probably late 2020. Okay. So these are policies that haven't been in place for the last couple of years. TikTok has become a very political space. Whether they like it or not, as long as there are people using your platform who care about politics, you're going to have a political platform. And that took them far too long to realize because I was yelling at them for ages that they needed to get somebody on board who was an expert in violent extremism. And it took way too long for them to bring on an expert in violent extremism because they were like, we don't have Nazis on our platform. We're just a dance app. So this kind of censorship is, again, it's capitalist censorship of the kind that we

deal with all the time from American companies as well. Like if, just to take an example here, Uh, like if, um, just to, just to take an example here, I work in Hollywood. If I wanted to write a movie, uh, if I want to write a big budget superhero movie about how, you know, the evil Chinese government is oppressing Uyghurs. If I wanted to have a scene where the Avengers go to China, right. And they take on the Uyghur concentration camp, Disney would say that scene can't be in the movie because this movie needs to sell in China. Right. That's like something that is very, very common in Hollywood or they'll have a you know, they'll have a Hong Kong cinema star, et cetera, in an American movie or they'll portray, you know, this is this is extremely common. Or there have been instances where scenes have been cut from American movies because they performed poorly in, you know, there was a Chinese right-wing backlash against them. This has happened, you know, something that was perceived to be as insulting to the Chinese

Communist Party. This is, like, American companies do this. And we criticize them sometimes to a certain degree. I think maybe not as often as we should. It does come up a little bit. There's a thing where John Cena was promoting a city, sorry, promoting a movie. And he had to like, he issued an apology because he called Taiwan a country. And that was like, that's like a thing that you cannot say on the mainland because they don't consider Taiwan to be a country because of the complicated geopolitical relationship between those two places. And so he issued an apology, like in Mandarin, I believe, for for briefly saying this because it caused a firestorm. And I and, you know, I looked at that going like, that's weird.

That's very weird for that to happen. I understand why it's happened. I'm not critical of John Cena particularly. He had you, you know, he's, he's in the position in capitalism he's in. He has to sort of like bend to the pressures that are put upon him. I mean, whatever, I don't really give a shit about John Cena, but like, this is a strange relationship, right? That we have now created between the American entertainment industry and the Chinese entertainment industry and the Chinese government. And it's one that like most American companies are now subject to, to some degree or another, you were talking about, you know, Google censoring search results, Apple turning over,

you know, customer information to the Chinese government, et cetera. What you're talking about, again, sounds similar between TikTok and all of these American companies. What you're talking about, again, sounds similar between TikTok and all of these American companies. But but what about the what about the idea of the Chinese government affecting the algorithm, those other things you're talking about in order to feed propaganda to Americans, et cetera? Is what they do we think we have? They have any ability to do that um and is that a concern so this whole like tweak the algorithm thing is is interesting because nobody can explain what that would look like and what it would mean and like there isn't that much evidence that like an algorithm could just like be slightly tweaked to provide people with like state propaganda. The algorithm on TikTok is very good at like recognizing what

you like and guessing based on your previous usage what you will like next. That doesn't mean it would therefore be good at like a slight change and like now it's just like feeding you Chinese nationalist military content. Like these are, these are, it's, it's entirely hypothetical. And it's also like non-falsifiable. It's also non-falsifiable. I can't say it's impossible. But at the same time, nobody who's making these accusations can provide a single instance where it has happened. And no TikTok users are really reporting that experience. So it's hard to make that claim.

And I think that it's actually kind of a red herring. I think a lot of this national security talk is honestly quite a red herring. because what we're dealing with here is, as you were just saying, this much more complex geopolitical realm of navigating a Western market versus a Chinese market and these poles of power that we're seeing unfold. um so to give you some context like yes the chinese state has power to some degree over other bike dance products like do you like today's headlines um and that has like to some extent it's actually been more turbulent than it is being portrayed where like i think it was do you and was fined for not being uh pro ccp enough or for having like anti-ccp content on it's like they they aren't in like a super buddy buddy relationship that they're being portrayed like they're still trying to make profit uh and then being constrained to some degree uh by the ccp That's definitely happening. And like today's headlines has like started pushing out, you know, more pro-China, pro-CCP content. So that relationship

absolutely exists with the tech that ByteDance puts out in mainland China. The bigger question is like, do they want to use TikTok as some sort of like propaganda arm? Is that the point? Are we looking at this, you know, Trojan horse of this mega corporation that has raked in billions of dollars, but secretly is actually about promoting propaganda or should we look at TikTok and its history and all of its previous choices that have seemingly been made in the interest of like always securing just maximum profit and judge it in that way. And I would very much argue for that approach. If we want to understand whether or not they're going to push propaganda, I think the first question would be, is it profitable? Which

probably not. Yeah. So in that lens, again, it makes TikTok, there are many, many valid concerns about TikTok. And some of those concerns relate to the Chinese government, genuinely. But we also have those same concerns about every social media platform, also vis-a-vis the Chinese government. Right. Like, I'm just as concerned with Mark Zuckerberg's relationship with the Chinese government. And the dude is learning Mandarin for a reason, you know, like he he has a big business there and he wants to continue to have a big business there. And so it, it, it brings me back to this idea that the concerns that we have about TikTok are really concerns that we should have about every social media site and that the focus on TikTok specifically by lawmakers is fundamentally a little weird. Like we do want

to constrain these companies and be concerned about them and like put regulations in place that will protect Americans, but not just with TikTok, with all of the companies simultaneously. Is that, does that sound fair to you? It sounds super fair. That sounds like not even fair.

That sounds like, you know, the bare minimum, like the bars on the ground to be like, excuse me, can you not sell my data to other governments? Actually, on a follow-up, can you not sell my data to my government either? Because there's instances where it was Amazon's camera outside your door. It'll just give your information to the police. They don't even need a warrant. So like these companies, they're not just working with the Chinese government. Like they're also working with your own government in ways that will make you uncomfortable. And like

your data is from everything from like your, your Comcast to the DMV has sold your data. Like people are constantly profiting off of your, your mere existence and you just want to get by in the world and like not be wound into that system. And they're selling your data to people who are trying to hurt you at times, to debt collectors, to data brokers, to people who are trying to target you with ads for things that will hurt you. The data can be used by scammers who want to call your grandmother and pretend to be you,

except you're in a car accident. So they need you. They need her to wire you five hundred dollars immediately, which is something that happened to my grandmother before she passed away. Oh, my God. That is a very common scam that that, you know, and they had all this information about me. They knew where I lived, et cetera. They got that from data that, and they had all this information about me, they knew where I lived, etc. They got that from data that they bought from somebody, data that was collected and then sold to them. So these are, yeah, these are real concerns. And I mean, there's also very real concerns about state media and propaganda. There are definitely, like like states do influence operations. The U S is certainly not excluded from that.

Uh, I have researched like, uh, what seemed to be state run, um, operations, like information operations on TikTok. Um, but I've, I've seen, like, I, I researched a Russian one, which was really interesting at the start of the invasion of Ukraine. They started the hashtag RLM for Russian Lives Matter. It was quite cringe. But so, yeah, foreign governments, friendly and adversarial, will use all social media platforms for propaganda. will use all social media platforms for propaganda. And the Chinese government, a lot of what these supposedly super damning reports say is that the Chinese government has said that they would like to promote pro-China socialist

messaging. It's kind of unclear whether they're talking about promoting it specifically just within the borders or if they're talking about like this expansive messaging system that they'd like to create. All evidence at the moment seems like they're much more interested in controlling within their borders primarily than like trying to influence billions of people outside it that they have a lot less control over. influence billions of people outside it that they have a lot less control over and then on top of that like if you're going to be mad about the states any state chinese state working to push propaganda that uh promotes their their particular ideology then like you also should be really mad about the DOD co-writing Avengers scripts. Like, you don't get to pick and choose. Well, the people at the DOD get to pick and choose.

When we do it, it's fine. We don't like it when other people do it. Like, I understand if someone wants to be that self-serving, but let's be honest about it, you know? I mean, we don't need to play, you know, an equivalence between the United States government and the Chinese government, but we can acknowledge that the Chinese, that the United States government also engages in, in propaganda. But even if we're only talking about foreign governments, like, you know, we know the Russian government engaged in a disinformation campaign in multiple United States elections through Twitter and Facebook.

And Mark Zuckerberg, you know, was brought to the Capitol and and was called on the carpet and yelled at. And, you know, there are all those funny photos of him looking all pale and stricken, you know, while they're yelling at him, which is great. Except that except that no one talked about banning Facebook. That was never part of the conversation. Should we ban Facebook? It's only for some reason, we only talk about banning TikTok, which is a very strange difference when, you know, Facebook is at least, if not more damaging to Americans than TikTok is. So let me ask you this. I'm very wary of both companies, of all of these companies. I'm very concerned about all of them.

I want all of them to be regulated. But I do have a concern about, and so some people take the position, hey, well, why not just ban TikTok? It's a start because that's one of these fuckers and we'll just knock out one of them and we'll get to the rest later. But you wrote an op-ed for Time, I believe, a little while ago about why you didn't.

Newsweek, excuse me. Well, can you blame me for confusing Time and Newsweek? They're the same magazine. They're both old-fashioned magazines that barely exist on the internet anymore. So you came out against, you said we shouldn't ban TikTok unilaterally. What would be the harms that would be caused if we were to just say, hey, let's ban it tomorrow, rather than taking a more all-inclusive approach across all social media platforms? Yeah, so there are a lot of harms, potentially. First of all, is that, like, there's this distraction element where we would be pretending that we've solved something that, like, we have not begun to solve.

Nobody is... Cybersecurity theater. Yeah. we would be pretending that we've solved something that like we have not begun to solve uh nobody cyber security theater yeah nobody is safer because even if we did ban tiktok like as we were talking about we're talking about cyber security that data even if it were valuable which it's it's hard to imagine that it it is um it's it's not exclusively accessible on TikTok. It's available everywhere. So like you're really not doing much to protect Americans in that sense. And then there's like, you know, the geopolitical, like entering a Cold War issue of, you know, there's possible repercussions politically of banning TikTok. I am biased in this case because, like, I will come out as being anti-entering another Cold War personally. Hot take.

Not into it. I think we might already be in one, as can be seen by these. I mean, when we're, when we're talking about why is TikTok being treated differently than these other companies, it's because it's seen as being controlled or, or connected to a country that we are in an active conflict with. Yeah. So maybe it's escalating the cold war that I don't want. Um, but the op-ed piece that I wrote, um, because I felt like this was just being excluded from a lot of mainstream media's discussion of banning the app, is that this would be like essentially deconstructing these information systems that have been created by marginalized communities on TikTok. And that like TikTok is a means for connecting people who are otherwise ignored by mainstream media and by like institutional news organizations and has, you know, allowed for them to have a voice, have communities, have like some amount of discursive

power that they didn't have before and reach outside of just like their own vicinity. and reach outside of just like their own vicinity. And that's quite new. And if we were to just like take that away, like that could have really devastating effects for those communities. And if we are, if you have your legacy media, right, that is allowed to just exist forever, they've,

this like, and this is what I was talking about at the start of the episode, right? This like top-down information ecosystem where people in power who serve to benefit from certain stories, like being newsworthy and maintaining certain narratives, like they are the ones who decide what the headlines are. They decide what's newsworthy and they publish it to their readers. And then on TikTok, you have this bottom-up infrastructure where this algorithm and how it's responding to the people, that's what's determining what is worthy of viewership on the app. And that has allowed for people who have like otherwise been excluded to actually have power.

And if you, you wipe that, you'd just be taking away these voices that we've suddenly empowered. Yeah. And that would be a bummer. And people would say, well, why don't they just go to Instagram reels?

Oh my God. Okay. I'd have to say Instagram reels. The algorithm sucks. There's nothing good on there. TikTok shows me weird, serendipitous people. I've never, it shows, for some reason it shows me, it helps me encounter people from other walks of life who I would not have seen otherwise.

There's this kid I'm obsessed with on TikTok. All right. His name is, his name is Big Fat I'm obsessed with on TikTok. All right. His name is Big Fat David. That's his username. All right. He's a kid who lives in Fresno. Do you know Big Fat David? Do you follow him?

I do not. He calls himself the Sopita King. He makes Sopita. He lives in Fresno. He appears to live like on an orchard of some kind. And he's like a high school kid in Fresno, California. Right. And I saw one of his

first TikToks. He's funny and charming. And I don't really understand his, you know, I'm like trying to figure out what, what the hell is he doing in this video? And by following him, I've just like gotten a little insight into life in Fresno, California, you know, which is a different, a different walk of life than mine. I don't think I would have encountered him on Instagram reels or on YouTube shorts. There's something weird about the way the TikTok algorithm works that surfaces people and surfaces ideas that we do not normally encounter. And that is what I enjoy about it. Just selfishly, I like that experience.

But I think it also contributes to what you're talking about, about elevating the voices that would not otherwise be elevated, which is not to sing TikTok's praises. It's just saying this is one of the effects of it. So please say what you were about to say before I rambled about TikTok. No, that discoverability feature is so strong and it's part of what makes TikTok so fun. I mean, I say this as like a TikTok creator. makes TikTok so fun. I mean, I say this as like a TikTok creator. I say this as somebody who criticizes TikTok constantly and has built my entire career criticizing. And like, I like to think bullying TikTok. But yeah, the discoverability that TikTok allows is what has created all of these communities and empowered a lot of people. That's not to say that like they don't fail when it comes to moderation.

That's not to say that like there is an algorithmic bias and like racism built into TikTok. There is. But at the same time, like we do have a generation of like these creator types, these new voices that are suddenly empowered who probably wouldn't have found that tremendous amount of discursive power without TikTok. And to get into like, you were just like, oh, why don't you go to Instagram Reels? First of all, Instagram Reels, quite boring, quite dull, not fun. Two out of 10. But more broadly, I think that speaks to a lack of care about these communities and the fact that a lot of people have spent several years building these communities where they are trusted messengers.

And we're often talking about when we talk about a disenfranchised community, they have very real reasons to not trust institutional media and institutional information sources. They've often been excluded. They've been overlooked. They've been explicitly, you know, discriminated by them. They've not been, like, represented there at all. They don't trust them. So they rely much more on these trusted messengers within their community that they can turn to. Now, if you completely access trusted messengers, that's where we like seriously could

run into mobilization and communication problems, um, within those communities and saying, well, why don't you just go build somewhere else? Like, why don't you'll be fine. Just go to another platform. I kicked down your sandcastle. Why don't you build another sandcastle? Yeah. I mean, it's like, if you take two families, right. And they both build houses and one family, you let them like keep that house for a hundred years and they get to keep renovating it and they keep to get expanding it and they build a mansion. And now you have this giant, like New York time style, like legacy family mansion mansion and then you have their other family you burn it down every five years and the other family you run a freeway through

yeah yeah like of course they cannot continue to like develop and organize and mobilize because they're constantly in rebuilding phase and that's a way of keeping them down. Wow. You put that very vividly. That's a perfect connection to, I mean, honestly, what happened in American, in the suburbs, in American real estate, in American cities, that the homes of marginalized people were constantly being destroyed, constantly being forced to move, live under precarity while white Americans were allowed to build. And I think that's absolutely comparable to the media landscape that if you look at the history of American media, that's super vivid. So to wrap us up here, let me ask then, if you were able to speak before Congress and

say, you know, say to them convincingly, don't do what you're doing. Do something else. Here's how we should actually address the concerns that we all have about TikTok, the real harms, without displacing all those people who are currently using the app, an app that we're critical of, right? But we don't want to cause harm to the users, right? We don't want the app to be able to harm Americans, and we don't want to cause harm to Americans with our remedy.

So what would you propose? How would you like to see us tackle this problem? I would say three major things. Two are very concrete. So the first would be like a comprehensive data privacy protection law, something that secures the data and right to privacy of all Americans who use technology. That's bare minimum. I would also like to see a change to Section 230, which right now allows for platforms to host whatever information they host and not face repercussions. They are not viewed as the publishers of this content and therefore they're not liable in the way that the Washington Post could be sued for whatever it posts that's false. So I would like to see a change to Section

230 and a reevaluation of what it means to be responsible as a platform in the internet age. And then the third would be, and this is like, you know, me being a utopian socialist, like, how do we imagine our dream internet? And like, I want to start having conversations about what a healthier internet would look like in the first place, because I don't think people are even thinking about it. I certainly don't think that our representatives are of like, okay, like if we could build a online digital space or spaces that are not about raking in the maximum amount of profit possible and are instead about like improving our wellbeing. They are about like healthy information ecosystems. They are about forming communities and

bonds and, uh, empowering people rather than, you know, keeping them just like hooked on a short form video content binge. Like I want to have that conversation much more broadly. That would be nice. Wouldn't it? If we could have that conversation, if folks in DC were capable of having a productive conversation rather than latching onto the thing that inflames them the most and wins them the headlines and the talking points on cable, that would be great. I know. I said I was being utopianist. It was dumb. I take it back. There's some reasonable folks there. There's some reasonable folks who hopefully will listen to this interview and maybe we can start to take the temperature down a little bit about it a little bit.

And hopefully we've gotten some of the word out about how distorted this conversation is and the public will start responding as well. I can't thank you enough for coming here to talk to me about it, Abby. Where can people find you online, particularly on TikTok, as long as it is still accessible in the United States, which hopefully it will be by the time this episode comes out. On TikTok, I'm at Tofology. And on Instagram, I'm at Abby SR. On Twitter, I'm Abby ASR. If you want to see all my published works, that's on my, like everything I've written is on my website, which is just abbsr.com. I also really wanted to cite a report that, and this is where a lot of my information came from.

So I think that it's good to cite it. Um, it's called TikTok and U S national security. It was published by the Georgia Institute of technologies, internet governance project. Um, it's quite recent, recent, and it breaks down all of these national security questions. Um, and I think it does a really good job of it. So if you want to learn more, it's a recent, and it breaks down all of these national security questions. And I think it does a really good job of it. So if you want to learn more, it's a good report. Awesome. Abby, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you once again to Abby Richards for coming on the show. And thank you to everybody who

supports this show at the $15 a month level on Patreon. I'm going to read some recent names. Thank you to Robin Dunlop, Jeffrey McConnell, Nisi Pods, Brian Tabone, Leslie Coach, Sean Garrison, Raghav Kaushik,

Always Sunny, McPwoninator, Ashley Molina Diaz, Ask, Ghost, and Francisco Ojeda. If you want to join them, head to patreon.com slash adamconover.

I would love your support if you find this show valuable. Thank you to our producer, Sam Roudman, our engineer, Kyle McGraw, and to the fine folks at Falcon Northwest who built me the incredible custom gaming PC that I record every episode of this podcast on. You can find me online at Adam Conover or adamconover.net. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next week on Factually. That was a HateGum podcast.