On with Kara Swisher - So ... Should We Ban TikTok?

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Kara loves air fryer TikToks. But she only dares to scroll through them on a burner phone, as she tells TikTok’s Chief Operating Officer, Vanessa Pappas.  As the social media platform has gone gangbusters – accumulating over a billion monthly users globally – concerns have emerged about TikTok’s ownership structure and roots in China. The U.S. government has questions about what data the app is amassing, whether that data can be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party and if the platform is a tool for espionage or foreign interference and propaganda. Kara has those questions too. And she asks Pappas all of them. Before the interview, Kara and Nayeema talk about the newsmakers of the day. They scan through the Elon Musk text messages released in the Twitter-Musk proceedings and explore what the texts reveal about Silicon Valley’s powerful elite – including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. They also discuss recent layoffs at Meta – and how Mark Zuckerberg will navigate the company’s recent struggles without his former right-hand exec, Sheryl Sandberg.  You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is the Rachel Maddow Show with her identical twin lesbian, Kara Swisher. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I am Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. How are you, Kara? Good. I'm really good. I'm a little tired.

I was on Charlemagne the God. Oh, Kara, you're the hip-ass, Kara. No, I really wasn't. It underscored to me exactly everyone else was so hip. And I was literally the suburban soccer mom sitting there like, wow, this is cool. I have been up late at night and earliest morning pouring over Elon Musk's text messages, and I am surprised you are not in them, Cara. I know. I was surprised myself because I had texted him, but I actually email him more than anything because he responds quicker.

In any case, they were kind of interesting to read, and it sort of gives you an insight into what was going on. He definitely reaches out to a wide variety of people to get thoughts, and a lot of people reach out to him to be, you know, hey, cool guy, this kind of thing. And so, including Joe Rogan. I was not saying cool guy. Whenever I text him, I ask him for an interview usually or saying, why did you do this or something like that. Elon Musk's texts are coming out to this legal proceeding in Delaware. Elon, Twitter is alleged, has been exclusively conducting business over text, so they say. And as a result of that, these text messages have come out.

And we are getting extreme insight into the kind of rich and powerful of Silicon Valley. And the text messages start getting really interesting around late March when Jack Dorsey texts Elon. And this is weeks before we learn about Elon's 9% stake in Twitter or whatever it was at the time. And Jack says, yes, a new platform is needed. It can't be a company. This is why I left. And Musk is kind of like, okay, like, what does it look like? Let's chat, you know? So they start talking.

And this is before it all went down. At some point, Oracle founder Larry Ellison pops up with a thumbs up sign saying he wants to chat to Elon and they do need another Twitter. Axel Springer, CEO, Matthias Doffner pops in saying, why don't you buy Twitter and we'll run it for you? And then follows up to say, I'm serious. You know, people want in on the deal. Joe Rogan comes in saying, are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob? So while Elon was texting about kind of the need for free speech. But who do you find most

interesting in all these texts that we're seeing Elon exchange with? I think Elon's the most interesting because he's being very controlled. You know, he's kind of a wild man on Twitter, whether he's memeing funny things or being kind of a jerk or attacking people. And in this case, he's like, aha, interesting. And it's actually the Elon I encounter a lot of the time, which is he's very easy, easy to talk to. He's not usually obnoxious. And I think everyone else is sort of falling all over themselves to kiss up to him. There's a lot of sucking up. So I was sort of interested in him. And obviously, there's a couple different figures that I think are important here. And one of them you said to me was Jack Dorsey. Yes. And that's the person

I'm thinking of this week, the Newsmakers of the Week. It sounded very much like Jack Dorsey in real life in terms of being very lofty and talking about sort of unspecific, dreamy kind of stuff. He's got kind of a dreamy personality. I don't mean that in like, you know, like Harry Styles dreamy. The beard is dreamy, Kara?

Yeah, just he talks in very lofty terms and it often seems meaningless when you're listening to him. And so he was saying, you know, this is for the good of humanity or whatever. And whenever I hear that, I run for the hills when an internet person does that. And they do that a lot.

But do you believe it's real with him? Because I mean, I've heard him described as more earnest, more grappling with his power. No, he is. I know him very well. He is. You know, I think the problem I have with Jack Dorsey is that he tries to act like mistakes were made. And he, of course, was the CEO. You know, I can't believe it's gotten like this. He had so much like, this board is terrible, that kind of thing. And he didn't say it that, he said it in sort of that way. And he, of course, was the CEO. You know, I can't believe it's gotten like this. He had so much like, this board is terrible, that kind of thing. And he didn't say it that, he said it in sort of that way. And I think my issue with him is that he's constantly doing that. And I'm like, you're CEO, you have an enormous platform, which you invented. There are powers that you have. And Elon showed it very clearly how much power he had, and he didn't even own it. So I think blame is one

of the things I was sort of surprised by. He only owns a couple or a few percent of the company, has only one board seat, no dual class shares. So it's very different than say Evan Spiegel, who retained, you know, who with his co-founder retained the voting shares of Snapchat. Sure, here's what the problem is. He has huge power.

He has public power. He could put public pressure on this board. Also, he's the founder. He has enormous pressure that way. But he often is in this sort of prone position. This is happening to me. And it's not. He has a lot of power.

And I think he is loathe to think of himself like that. But it may be a bad board. And I would agree. The Twitter board's been sort of bad for many years and for a long time through its history. It's just that him sort of this, come Elon, I need your help, is sort of just, I don't know. He seems very engaged in these text messages with Elon. And in a way, that Zacco, Mudge, in his testimony was saying, it was effectively saying, Dorsey's checked out.

He said he kind of exchanged 50 words with him over months. And that his entire communication with Dorsey was two dozen texts while he was CEO. So this seems like very different. It seems like Jack was activated by the prospect of Elon acquiring Twitter or acquiring a board seat at Twitter at least, you know, a minimum. He says he pushed for that even earlier. He needed an ally on the board is what he was essentially doing,

a very strong ally who could be the strong man for him, I guess. I guess that was it. And also he's close with Elon. When I did an interview with Jack on Twitter once, I said, who's your favorite person? He said, Elon. So, you know, there you go. Well, he called him the singular solution he'd trust. So, my last question to you, he's kind of playing both sides of this. Did he want to burn down the house? Like, does he just hate Twitter and he wants to burn it down? Because it reads a little bit like that. No, I think he just was felt frustrated by the board and acted like he didn't have any other alternatives.

And so, no, no, no. I think he loves Twitter. I think he loves Twitter. He just has this lofty vision of it. You know, our original sin was going public. Okay, well, he benefited by the billions. So it's just, it's very Jack Dorsey, I would say. Okay, our other newsmaker this week,

another person you've known for a long time, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that during a Q&A session with staff, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the company, now called Meta, would be a lot smaller in 2023, and they would be introducing layoffs. And this is the first major budget cut since Mark founded the company in 2004. It's now grown to like an 80,000-person company. How do you think he's feeling with it? I'm curious how you think he deals with, I don't know if it's failure exactly, but it's definitely not success right now.

Well, it's definitely on the downward trend. Facebook is on the downward trend and you can see it by the stock. Yeah, the stock is down 60% on the year, it seems, the time that we're recording this. So how do you think he deals with the downward trend with failure, with loss? Well, there's two ways. Either he says, you know, oh, I'm going to rally. He seems very uninterested in the business that's making the money.

And of course, focused in on, this happened at Google also, by the way, the founders were doing anything but what it made money at, which was search. And, you know, they had all manner of hijinks, even a barge in San Francisco was kind of ridiculous.

Yeah, so he's done a metaverse instead. Yeah, yeah. And it's a lot of money. It's billions and billions and billions of dollars, 10 billion that they're sort of throwing into the investment oven here. And so we'll see if it warms the house or burns it down. I think that his business secularly

is on a downward trend. He's been beat out always by other innovators such as TikTok and many others. And so they've got to figure it out. Now Cheryl's gone, who was his sort of lieutenant in doing that and sort of pushing it forward. And he's facing a lot of headwinds. Advertising is hard.

Yeah, because of Apple especially, right? Apple has a transparency thing where they're letting people opt in and out of what things that Facebook wants and other companies. Yeah, which is putting a lot of pressure on advertisers saying you can't do as much micro-advertising. And though between that and the overall tech slump we've seen since late last year, this is not a fun time to be Facebook.

It's also not a fun time. I mean, it's not unique to Facebook. Everybody else also. Like Google has also slowed down hiring. Evan Spiegel at Snapchat laid off 20% of his employees right before you interviewed him at Code. Yeah. Netflix, Patreon, Twilio, even TikTok, who, you TikTok, who COO we'll be talking to in a little bit, had some restructuring and layoffs, I think, in their ad sales division.

So everybody's under pressure. And all these tech companies had grown out of control during the pandemic. I mean, Facebook had hired 30% more people, I think. Yeah, they overhired. In the last year. And Google was something like 20%. So they overhired. And now they're a little bit screwed.

Well, they always had the luxury of being able to do that and be able to paper it over with enormous profits. This is enormously profitable still, but it's on the downward strings. Kids don't like it. They don't have innovation. Ultimately, it comes down to innovation. It's like Instagram. I guess not as much as TikTok. Well, it's doing okay.

Old kids like me like Instagram. I know, but it's still not on the upward trend. I'll tell you that. You can just feel it. You felt it when AOL happened. And it is unique to Facebook. I understand there's a downward trend for a lot of people, but I don't see any problem with what Google's doing. And they've got a very strong business in a number of things. Amazon's got a number of strong businesses that are just cyclical. This is a secular problem that Facebook has. And so that's why he was

reaching out to do a metaverse. He's hoping that this is his big, you know, it's not a path out. It's just he's bored with what he's doing. He doesn't like the main business. The main business is very thorny. And it's sort of, you know, pick and shovel business now. And then that's a problem for people who live on the excitement of the latest thing. A friend of mine once said to me about economic problems, distress takes time to work its way through the system. And I think we're seeing that right now with everything that's happened in the last year

and how frothy Silicon Valley had gotten to a certain extent, and especially these companies, because advertisers were paying a lot of money, people are consuming a lot. There's going to be, you know, some, at the end of the day, these are people's lives and jobs. The problem with Facebook, it's not a very good product. It's not kept up.

And that's really where it begins and ends, I think. What would Cheryl do differently? I think she would leave. And that's what she did. And you saw those videos of her, everyone cheering as she went up. I think this is a really big problem for this company. And it can, you know, like AOL, it can do very well on the way to the bottom, but they've got to do something significant. Again, it's a very important and big business. And look, Microsoft rethought itself. They've got to really rethink itself in the correct way,

which is correct for them. And he's the only one who can do it since he controls everything. I would love to have him on the show. Say yes, Mark. Why do you suck so much now, Mark? What happened? Obviously, he's not going to come on the show. We'll see.

Oh, he should still come. You know, difficult conversations are good. He's had such a good time with me every time he shows up. Anyway. Anyway, speaking of problems for Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok, we're going to be back with COO Vanessa Papas after this break. Yes, I'm very excited. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle.

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when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Whoa! What is that? Wait, I want to see too, Cara. Air fryer parmesan chicken. Air fryer hack. Yes, I have an air fryer. Do you have an air fryer? Yeah. The air fryer to clean it. Do you know what's on my TikTok? What? The hot girl walk. See, that's the thing. And you know what's on Scott's? What's on Scott's? Like animals being eaten at the watering hole.

He is such a dark horse. I mean, that's what's brilliant about this. Look at this air fryer rice hack. Like, it's so pleasing. It's so fucking pleasing. Is 99% of your TikTok air fryers? Yes. And ASMR.

And ASMR? Yeah. I An ASMR. An ASMR. Yeah. I love ASMR. And also people that play with sand, clay sand. Isn't that fantastic? That's great. It's also visually very, look, and then they're patting it. Patting it?

Look at that. They're just cutting. Stop talking, Kara. It's so calming without you. So you have TikTok only on a burner phone. Yes. Because? Because of the Chinese government.

I've had it for this way for years. I mean, I wrote about it in the New York Times in early 2020. And then I, of course, I covered China for years with Internet companies and their reluctance to allow American Internet companies in there. They're spying their surveillance economy. very worrisome forever. I had Musical.ly on a phone in 2015, and then it got acquired by Dance. I deleted it because I just didn't want it on my phone. I thought it was a bit of a waste of time. And then I redownloaded it in 2020 after reading your article, and I have it on the burner. Yeah. And so similar to you, very concerned about two things, espionage. Yep.

And also having things planted in my mind. Yeah, propaganda. Propaganda. Because in my TikTok, which I didn't see because of all your like cute sand videos and ASMR, mine is a lot of, it's got a lot of, hey, look at this amazing school in China. Look at this great thing. Oh, really? Look at this.

Yeah. They show me a lot of factories and issues you don't know. So why do you want to talk to Vanessa Pappas today? Well, she was supposed to come to my Code conference. I was very excited to have her there. I'd known her. She was a Google executive. And I wanted her there.

And then at Code, which was really interesting, everyone started attacking TikTok. Yeah, I remember. Different people. Scott Galloway, my partner at Pivot, did it. Jennifer Psaki mentioned it. Axel Springer, CEO. Yeah, Amy Klobuchar.

Senator Klobuchar mentioned that there could be national security reviews. Yes, everybody does. Yeah, coming out of Code Conference, there was a lot that was like, everybody in the room wants to ban TikTok, which I don't think— Which Trump wanted to do, and everybody laughed at him at the time. It's one of the better things that Trump tried to do in a very short list. No, but it's not better because he did it badly. That's true. Vanessa Pappas, chief operating officer of TikTok, formerly YouTube executive.

What is the question you want to ask her? What do you want to get answered? Because she answered a lot of questions at a Senate hearing a couple weeks ago. She didn't really answer them. What are you going to ask her? They didn't really ask good questions. They didn't. It was all performative, right?

Yeah. I want to understand what's going to happen to this company. It's a very powerful company. I want to understand how they going to happen to this company. It's a very powerful company. I want to understand how they're going to get out of the bind they're in. They're going to be banned if something doesn't happen. Yeah, because they're in negotiations right now with the Biden administration for what's about to happen. Their servers are already in the U.S. as of earlier this year with Oracle. Yet, yet, yet.

How do you, I mean, Oracle's working on it. Microsoft was wanting to be part of that. And so it mixes national security. It mixes a great product. It mixes innovation. Big companies like Facebook really are trying to keep up, have had their eyes on TikTok. Mark Zuckerberg's been talking about this for a long time because he knows they've bested him. So that's why I'm interested in it. It's just at the nexus of all kinds of interesting topics. For me, I mean, my big question is, what is her relevance? Can she answer the questions? Because does she have actual power? Yeah. Is she actually able to influence a company which, you know, through various ownership structures, actually reports up to ByteDance and presumably has control from Beijing? Yeah.

Does she work for Xi Jinping? Does she work for Xi Jinping? Ultimately, do they all work for Xi Jinping? Yeah. All right. Have fun in the interview, Cara. Thank you. Hello, and welcome, Vanessa Pappas. Hi.

So just to start out, so you bailed on me at my code conference. You're supposed to come. I did. You were sick, correct? Yes, I was sick. You got COVID, is that correct? I had COVID. I was recovering and I wish I could have been there.

I know it was your last code. It was. Which made it that much more painful for me not to be able to attend. Yes, everyone's like, is it just an excuse? She doesn't want to come? I know she's not like that. But let's just tell you, did you hear what happened? I heard that TikTok came up maybe one or two times. One or two times, Vanessa. Let me just, here's a quick taste of what you missed. Well, I think TikTok is an existential threat to America and should be banned or spun. There are concerns within the government

about the national security risks, about the potential for surveillance, given it's Chinese-owned. It is, of course, a tool of espionage, as you have written just a couple of weeks ago. And I think we should just have this kind of self-respect. And that's why I concretely think TikTok should be banned in every democracy.

Okay. That was Scott Galloway, my partner at Pivot, former press secretary Jen Psaki. You've heard of her. And Axel Springer, CEO, Matthias Döpfner, with a very nice German accent. Sort of was like, oh my God, goodness sake. I was surprised. Trends tend to pull out of code, but this was one I was not expecting. Any response? Yeah, definitely. I mean, obviously, I wish we were there because it would have given us an opportunity to dispel some of the misperceptions. But thank you for having me today so I could do that here. I think the first and foremost is, you know, obviously, we disagree wholeheartedly with the perception that TikTok is a threat and that it needs to be banned. And I think when we think about TikTok, it is an entertainment platform first and foremost.

And it's really kind of driven by the community. And we look to really empower that experience. And so when we look and understand the challenges or criticisms that we're facing, I think they typically fall into two buckets. One is around this idea of data access. And so would the Chinese government have access to that data? And then the second is around content influence. And, you know, is there an ability for foreign government to influence the feed? And so if we kind of break those two down and really address

each one, the first is around the data access. And that's why we've been heavily committed and investing around our security. So whether that's storing the data locally in the U.S. and the reason why that's important is obviously it's then subject to U.S. law. We're working with Oracle in terms of further safeguarding our data. And we recently announced that we are storing 100% of our U.S. user data in their cloud infrastructure. And then we have a set of strict access controls around the data as well. And so if there's anyone who needs to access U.S. user data, they do so based on our protocols, which are all overseen by our U.S. security team, et cetera. Anybody that wants to get it. Anybody that wants to look at it, including your owners. Exactly. And so we have all of those systems and protocols in place really to protect U.S.

user data. So that's the first issue that we'd address. The second around content influence, and I think this is one where it's hard to prove a negative, but it really is about how do we build trust? And we do that through wanting to apply and think about our community guidelines and really stay on the kind of forefront of any challenges that any platform of our size and scale would be facing. The second, we recently announced that we would be opening API access to researchers so that they can actually see how our recommendation systems operate. As opposed to Facebook, which hasn't done this, correct? Correct.

Some things get out, some things don't. Correct. And then finally, we recently announced that Oracle would also be vetting and validating both our content moderation systems as well as our recommendation systems. And this is further to everything else that we've been doing around transparency, like our transparency reports, our transparency and accountability center, where we also invite stakeholders in to understand our systems in that way.

So if you take those initiatives that we've been investing in through both the actions and the transparency around those actions, we, in my view, are actually leading the industry in this way. And so I think that really addresses those two critical concerns that folks have. And yet, TikTok is getting an enormous amount of heat lately. I did not expect people to discuss it, and I certainly knew if you were there, they were going to do that.

But why do you think that is? Is it just the huge popularity of it? Is it because it's, you know, China has become an issue, not just for the Trump administration, for the Biden administration? Why do you think that is? I think, you know, it's a whole host of reasons. Obviously, there's geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. And, you know, this had come up in the previous administration. And, you know, this had come up in the previous administration and, you know, we're coming into midterm elections. And so all of these topics are coming back to the forefront. I also, you know, as you mentioned, we are a large platform. We continue to grow. And with

that growth comes more scrutiny and, you know, competition as well. And so certainly I think there's an element of that. I remember when I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg a couple of years ago, he was starting to talk about China and essentially saying, you're either going to have these Chinese-owned companies, which are Xi Jinping running them, or me. So you should pick me. And I remember him saying that at the time, which was really interesting. And I was surprised that that was his focus. And I used to call it the Xi or me argument. And I was like, I don't like either of you, frankly. You were at the Senate hearing last month where the Committee on Homeland Security pushed you on China quite heavily. It was the very first

congressional testimony, as I said. I'm sure there'll be many more for you. How did you do, would you say, A to F? How did you do, would you say, A to F? A to F. Look, I think what we set out to do was to, you know, obviously show up and tell our story. And the interesting thing about this, and, you know, as you mentioned, this is the first time of myself going to a Senate hearing. It's an incredibly unique experience. first time of myself going to a Senate hearing. It's an incredibly unique experience. And I certainly respect the process and welcome the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with regulators. But I think in some areas, the type of questioning in terms of yes, no,

is not conducive to really getting to a substantive conversation. You're kidding. It's performative? I'm shocked. to a substantive conversation. You're kidding. It's performative? I'm shocked. So, you know, that's why I think forums like this one and being able to talk to you is, you know, incredibly valuable because these aren't black and white issues.

These have nuance to them. Yeah, sure, sure. But it's still an important performance. What senator do you think asked you the toughest question? And which one was the smartest? I guess you're not supposed to say which one you think. I'm not going to comment on that. All right.

Obviously, you know, obviously, Senator Hawley was drilling in on the China piece. And again, I think that goes back to just, you know, how can we really have productive dialogues and get into the substance of the issues at hand? Nuances, which you're talking about. He was particularly testy. Let's listen to a clip of it. So I think you're telling me that there are TikTok employees or ByteDance employees who are members of the Chinese Communist Party? Is that what I'm saying?

No, I'm saying I wouldn't be able to verify that. Oh, well, let me just ask you that affirmatively. Are there members of, are there TikTok employees or ByteDance employees who are members of the Chinese Communist Party? Senator, I'm saying nobody that's sitting on this panel could tell you a political affiliation. I'm not interested about anybody's opinion. I'm asking you a factual question. Are there members of the Chinese Communist Party employed by TikTok and ByteDance, yes or no?

I wouldn't be able to tell you the political affiliation of any individual. What I can tell you is how much we're investing in access. No, membership in the Communist Chinese Party is not exactly like membership in the Democrat Party. So I'm looking for an answer. You tell me you don't know. TikTok doesn't know. You know, I was actually surprised to hear Josh Hawley think being a Democrat and a CCP member is not the same thing. But aside from that, would your answer be different now, having listened to the clip? You know, I think what I answered was to the point of nobody can attest to knowing a political affiliation, and it's really about the data access. Could I have said that a little bit more clearly?

You know, I think it's challenging, again, in this kind of yes-no scenario. But I think if I were to do it again, it would probably be a similar outcome. Maybe I would do a little bit better of a job articulating that. Obviously, people have great concerns about Chinese companies and the influence the government has over them there compared to this country. Not to say that our government hasn't done, you know, things also, but it's more significant there. you know, things also, but it's more significant there. But in June 2022, for example, the same time you moved the service to Oracle, BuzzFeed report showed leaked audio from 80 internal meetings, showed that TikTok staff in China had access to U.S. user data. Can you respond to that? Yeah, so we've devastated that employees in China haven't had access to data. And everything that

we're doing is to make sure that we're reducing or minimizing those access points and really having the right protocols around it so that it is on a must-need basis to globally operate the platform. And so everything that we've been doing over the last year or so as it relates to moving the data storage from our U.S. facility into Oracle's to increasing the access controls and having more of that oversight is really to ensure the safety and security of that data and how it's accessed and making sure that it's for reasonable use or reasonable application.

Do you understand that most people do believe that the Chinese government really does want to influence this platform or any platform that it has power over? Yeah, look, we certainly understand the concerns. But, you know, as we, and like every global open platform, we're all facing the same challenges. So whether it's, you know, covert influence from any of the kind of state actors out there, and we're all investing heavily into the security of our platform so that we don't see those breaches

and we provide full transparency around any time that there would be a request from a foreign government and so on. around any time that there would be a request from a foreign government and so on. So, you know, I think a lot of it gets to this perception that, you know, because we were founded in China, or at least the parent company was founded in China, that that makes the company more susceptible. And that's essentially why we're working, you know, heavily to address those concerns and working through the CFIUS process with the United States government. CFIUS is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. It's full of national security people, et cetera, and more, that decides whether companies can operate in the U.S., essentially.

Yes, so we've been involved and engaged through the CFIUS process for a couple of years now and looking at getting to a final approval of the national security agreement. Can you tell us broadly, I know you can't talk specifically, or you can be happy if you talk specifically, what they want? I mean, it gets back to the exact two things that have been the misperceptions or criticisms that we're facing, which is, can the Chinese government access data and or can they influence our systems? And so we're putting protections in place to really address those concerns. Do you also feel that the Chinese government not allowing U.S. companies in there in the same manner is problematic for you? I think every company has to

think about how they're operating around the world and every country has its own expectations of what that looks like and we're actually seeing just like how fragmented the internet is becoming. And, you know, a lot of the rhetoric around, well, you know, TikTok should be banned or there needs to be a divestiture or something, it plays into that of having a more fragmented internet experience, which I don't think is the path that we want to go down. The reporting was that it wasn't going to divest. Is that what you know about that ByteDance will remain the owner of? That's correct. But that's the way it's working right now.

Yes. Speaking of which, I want to talk a little bit about who runs things, actually. Let me walk through what you did. Late 2018, you joined as U.S. general manager. 2019 summer, you were bumped to GM of North America, Australia, and New Zealand. 2020, when Kevin Mayer, the former Disney executive, left his job, I think he thought it was going to go public, you got a job as interim head of TikTok Global. And in May 2021, you're made COO. So who do you report to? Yeah, so in my capacity, I report to the CEO, who's Shou Chu, who's based in Singapore.

And the remit is, you know, I manage all things around the user experience, our content teams, our marketing teams, our user operations, you know, business strategy and a few others. So let me ask, you report to the CEO. He reports to who? Yeah, so we have a number of business units at ByteDance and TikTok being one and obviously the main one for our global market, I would say. This is based in Beijing, ByteDance is. And, you know, for show, he's essentially, you know, running the business. So all decisions run up and through him. So whether that's product decisions or commercialization decisions, et cetera. Sho runs the TikTok division, but you ultimately do report up to the CEO of ByteDance. Do they leave you alone?

What is the relationship? Different companies are different. Instagram ran independently until it didn't, until Mark Zuckerberg decided to get involved. Yeah, so whether that's myself or our general counsel and head of commercialization, all of who live in the U.S. and then our teams based in Singapore, it's a fairly independently run body.

You know, ByteDance is privately held. But even if you look at the ownership and governance of ByteDance, I think there's a couple of things, and this is where it's, you know, getting to this distinction between is it a Chinese company or a global company or how do you position it? Again, certainly founded in China, but in terms of how it was incorporated, it was incorporated outside of China. It's got a global majority board that the CEO reports into. We have global institutional backers, so folks like General Atlantic and BlackRock and KOTU and others.

And if you look at the ownership of that, over 60% of ByteDance is owned by Western investment firms, with most of the rest being owned by founders and employees. That does go to the heart of what I said before. They could do anything at any moment. Xi Jinping's government cracked down on tech companies in China very heavily. Alibaba's Jack Ma, a very vibrant person, has suddenly been rendered silent. They can do it any time. And if they allowed U.S. companies or other global companies into China the same way, perhaps they have less of a hard time about this. But is that a fear? No, because I guess that goes back to TikTok

does not operate in China. And I think that's probably one of the other misperceptions. The question and concern is around TikTok. That's what we can go back to, which is TikTok is actually incorporated in California. It's operated outside of China. We have a leadership team that sits in the U.S. and Singapore. And ultimately, we report up into a global majority, you know, Western set of investments. Which means you're not under the same rules as, say, is it Douyin? Douyin, yeah. Douyin is the TikTok version, essentially TikTok in China. And it certainly has more strictures under it.

And China does own 1% stake and got a seat on the board of ByteDance Tech. And you don't feel influenced from the Chinese government yourself? No. And, you know, if I look, again, this is for us, and it's always hard to prove a negative. So how often do you go there? Yeah, I went once when I first joined the company back in early 2019. And that was it. That was it. And do you go to Singapore or do you, are you? I need to go. You haven't gone. Get to Singapore immediately. Well, there has been a pandemic. There has been a pandemic. So I am starting to travel more now. So one of the things about the proximity to China is the issue that you're facing.

Besides what's going on with CFIUS, is there anything else the U.S. government should do about it? Obviously, Donald Trump citing national security concerns because of China tried to broker this Oracle deal and Walmart and TikTok. He did make the deal and then he didn't like it. Was that an opportunity? And do you imagine that happening again with the Biden administration? An opportunity for, what's that? To do another spinoff and make it a U.S. company. Do you ever foresee that right now? No. I mean, again, like, you know, we're proud of the platform and everything we've been able to accomplish and what we're providing to millions of people

here in the U.S. and around the world. And, you know, it's an entertainment platform. And I think that, you know, when you look at the value and what we're trying to uphold, we're putting the investments in to really safeguard that experience. So whether that's on the data side, privacy side, security side, and certainly on the trust and safety side. Do you think TikTok is a national security risk? No.

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As you know, I wrote that piece saying I love the product. I really don't want China to have access to my phone, although it's built in China, of course. It's kind of complex on an Apple phone. Talk first about why you think it's built in China, of course, it's kind of complex on an Apple phone. Talk first about why you think it's popular. It's sort of caught all the other social media sites, all the other apps. What do you think it is about the product itself from your perspective? You know, I think when you immediately open the app, you recognize the difference. And so if we go back just to when TikTok really started to get more of a foothold or get more mainstream, you know,

2019 into 2020, it was such a different experience to what was the typical kind of, you know, quote unquote, social media experience, which is really curated by your friend group or celebrities and so on. And what TikTok does is provides this really immersive, entertaining experience. And it prioritizes things that are authentic, creative expression that I think fosters a real sense of belonging. So it's far away from kind of presenting yourself in this very curated, performative, you know, self-expression. And I think that was just honestly a breath of fresh air. You know, TikTok's been called the last sunny spot on the internet. And that's certainly something that I think about in terms of how do we uphold that really unique experience? You know, it really does lower the barrier for entry when you think about the

creation experience. So literally, you know, your grandma could come on and, you know, create a video and use an effect and upload it to TikTok fairly seamlessly. That would be a miracle. My grandmother's dead, but go ahead. And then, you know, secondly, the ease of discovery is just unparalleled. And that's because of the format, right? It's short form videos and, you know, you kind of swipe through the experience. And so you're able to see a lot of great content in a short period of time. And that discovery really does engender you finding, you know, probably things that you didn't know that you were interested in, like air fries. In 2021, a former Google engineer who worked on YouTube's algorithms has since become a

transparency advocate, estimated, well, a YouTube program, 70% of the content was found via algorithm. TikTok probably trends you at 90 to 95%. Does that seem accurate? I think it's actually closer to 80%. So not, you know, 70, 80%. 70% YouTube sounds accurate and 80% TikTok sounds more accurate. It works beautifully.

Let me just say, again, it's the same thing. I love it, but I use a burner phone. I love it, but it's addictive. How many hours a day is healthy? Let's just say for teens, because it's unusually addictive, let me just say. It's unusually addictive. I think as a parent, you know, I am a parent. And so I think as a parent, you know, it's up to you to kind of make the decisions around what you feel is right for your kids.

How old are your kids? They're four and six, so they're not on TikTok. You don't got the teens yet, but go ahead. And then we're providing all the tools to ensure that parents can also uphold what they believe is a safe experience for their teens. So things that we've done, for example,

we have family pairing mode, which we launched over two years ago. You can pair your device as a parent to your teen's device and have them set those controls in terms of what they watch. So you want them to decide how many hours is healthy. But it's such a good product, and it's an opportunity to control minds is the fear here. I think whether it's real or not, it's the opportunity. Some people think that the CCP could drop in propaganda and does. Do you understand why people are concerned that any entity, in this case the CCP, might place their thumb on the scale given the amount of power and influence Tic Tac has over Americans?

Yeah, I think I completely understand the concern about, you know, foreign governments wanting to influence global platforms at scale. And we've seen that with peers, right? And we've certainly looked to learn from the mistakes of others and invest heavily in the areas that I've mentioned. And I think if you look at TikTok, we've been investing not only in these areas, but also in the areas of bringing a lot of transparency to this and so I do think this is not unique to TikTok I understand people's concerns um as to why I like that you say peers I think you're talking about Facebook I believe that's who you

you have a hard time saying other people's go look at look oh look at Apple Josh Hawley that's what I would have done why are you why done. Why are you busting my chops over here? Why don't you go bust their chops? But they bust their chops. So in that vein, foreign interference, which is a problem for everything. Facebook just talked about this meta, just published a report of the foreign interference. You know I'm not the company's biggest fan, mostly because I think their product sucks. But I like that we're seeing more transparency.

So what are your plans for monitoring the election interference ahead of the midterms? There's all kinds of players, both domestic and foreign, trying to do this. Yeah, so obviously election integrity is, you know, something that is critical for us. And we've gone through an election cycle and we've, you know, we have a very mature and well-seasoned team who have been working at many other platforms prior to coming to TikTok. And so we take a kind of multi-pronged approach in terms of understanding any kind of challenges that may come or arise from an election cycle. Do you have a special team? Yeah, so we have our trust and safety teams working with our cybersecurity teams, and we set up essentially like mission control rooms. And so that is daily monitoring.

We do regular sweeps of any trends that may be happening or beginning to occur. We have a lot more rigorous kind of processes around fact checking, like with fast turnaround time. So we work with independent fact checkers during this period. And we really just, you know, across the board are heavily invested in ensuring the election's integrity in terms of any type of misinformation that might be identified on the platform or things like incitement to violence or, you know, any of that bad behavior. How many people do you have and is it an increasing number of people?

It's always increasing. You know, I mentioned this at the hearing as well, that our trust and safety is our largest labor force. And it's the most. I don't have the number offhand, but it is a significant and largest labor force that we have at TikTok. And how many people do you have at TikTok right now? We have thousands and thousands of people.

I don't have... Thousands and thousands. Thousands and thousands. I'm not going to give you a number. We're a private company. But look, we invest heavily. Facebook has football fields full. No, no, no.

It doesn't solve the problem, unfortunately. And it's not also just about the people, right? It's like how you're investing in the technology itself to remove this, you know, potentially violative content at scale. And so we do it through a number of ways, but certainly our trust and safety teams are looking at making sure that we have the right policies. And that starts with things like misinformation, disinformation, et cetera. And we work with our outside experts to continue to refine those. But there's no silver bullet here because, I mean, you think.

There's no silver bullet. But, well, you've been more innovative about presenting content. Is there no innovation in misinformation from your perspective? I mean, there's been, you know, certainly developments like, you know, putting labels on content, making sure that there's transparency around that, redirecting people into our community guidelines. We actually, I think, are the most restrictive as it comes to misinformation. And we, you know, we take a lot of pride in all the efforts that our trust and safety teams are doing to really

safeguard what is an amazing and positive community that we're fostering on TikTok. Or trying to. Trying to. And, you know, that's the thing that keeps me up at night is how do I safeguard this community and what's been called the last sunny spot on the internet. And that job is never done. I'll give you the advice I gave Mark Zuckerberg many years ago when he was talking about this. And I said, guess what?

You can't let anything go. Like, you know, anything goes on these things. I want to finish up with competition and then a thing for you. Competitors cast TikTok as a counterargument to the antitrust investigations in the U.S. I've heard it from them endlessly. Their arguments, TikTok's existence proves we're not a monopoly. That's their latest. A couple of years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was the she or me idea.

Do you want TikTok to win or me? We need to compete and TikTok can't be regulated. And we get regulated. What do you think of these arguments? Well, look, I think competition is a good thing. I think we want to see more independent companies succeeding and we want to see more options for people to choose the platforms that they love. And so that's certainly a good thing. I mean, I don't think I want to comment on, you know, how they view the antitrust environment and their competition. I mean,

certainly, you know, TikTok has seen success. So, yeah. I mean, you are a good, and excuse the reference, paper tiger in that regard, right? Wouldn't you be? I guess so. So more specifically, let me ask you, the Met allegedly launched an astroturf fear-mongering campaign, I wasn't surprised, to smear you in local news outlets across the country. Did you find that to be true, and what did you do in response?

Yeah, so just to give context to your listeners, there are a number of dangerous challenges that kept getting reported on. And our trust and safety teams were doing sweeps of our platform and were not finding anything. Spending money, spending investment, working around the clock and coming back and saying, look, it's not on our platforms. It was deeply concerning to then see this report in the Washington Post that said, essentially, we were being maligned by a competitor and this being meta that we're seeding these local stories with trends that were not happening on TikTok. And often if they were being found, they were found off of our platform. And so it's incredibly concerning because it can actually cause real world harm.

And that's where I think we really take issue. it can actually cause real world harm. And that's where I think we really take issue. We worked, you know, hand in hand with FOSI, with the National PTA, getting, you know, safety messages out to communities. And really, like, if you think about just how much valuable time that the teams should have been spending

on enforcing our policies and doing the day-in, day-out work that they're doing to safeguard the platform versus following these red herrings. It was really problematic. Are you surprised? I'm not surprised. They were also saying that TikTok is downplaying its numbers to avoid additional scrutiny.

The numbers for TikTok that are reported, are they accurate? Yeah, I mean, yes. We're a private company, so we haven't released regular numbers. But the last number that we announced was when we passed a significant milestone, which was over a billion users around the world, which was an incredible achievement for us. So when do you plan to IPO? which is an incredible achievement for us. So when do you plan to IPO? No plans right now, no plans.

But you'll be the first one we call, Kara. I'm sure you won't. I'm sure you won't. All right, last question for you. We have this thing of advice. I asked Chris Cuomo this last week. Advice to yourself when you started, or you can choose the other one.

Advice to Susan Wojcicki slash Instagram slash whatever, how to compete with you. You can answer either one of those. I'll take the self-advice. All right. Okay. I'll take self-advice for 200 rather than treat myself for 50. There's been just so many amazing milestones and challenges and things that we've overcome and things that I'm incredibly proud of that our team have, you know, persevered through. And so I think for myself, 2018 could not have predicted that. And so... So your advice? My advice is, you know, take that breath, you know, one step at a time and keep telling people why you do what you do and show up as a leader. And I think that's where I've seen, whether it's with stakeholders externally

or with our own employees, I think that's where people really respond. So do you think you can convince Josh Hawley you're not a Chinese asset? We're going to keep trying. We're going to keep trying, Cara. All right. On that, Vanessa, you've been very game and I We're going to keep trying. We're going to keep trying, Cara. All right. On that, Vanessa, you've been very game and I really appreciate it. Thank you.

She had a very soothing voice. She was very calm. She did. She was very quiet. She was like those ASMR videos we were watching. Yes. Just like that. We like those.

I love them. Okay. But very dangerous topic. I'm so sorry we're surveilling you, but you're enjoying the entire time. Her voice is very calming. But the topic is very scary. I always found it interesting in the States that people are very concerned about government surveillance here, but not as concerned about company surveillance. I would agree.

They're like, stick an Amazon Echo in my home and listen to me all day. But if you put a CCTV camera— Let me just say, the Chinese government has a record of this is the way they control their population. Now, it doesn't mean they're controlling our population. I think the issue is not so much that they're doing it as they could do it. And it's a vulnerability, just the way our grid is a vulnerability to hacking. The future is not about military as much as we're in this Ukraine situation. The thing is, they can flip a switch very quickly. That's the concern. Or maybe it wouldn't continue to be popular. That's the fear, is they can flip the switch very quickly. And so it's good to have those fears. And

though I don't agree with Josh Hawley ever, national security concerns are valid and should be taken care of. If they can do it in such a way, the problem is no matter what they do, no one's going to believe it. I think that they have a perception problem. And by the way, I should clarify, when I was talking about the concern people have over private versus public surveillance, I mean, if the American government, right now in New York, they're up in arms about subway cameras. People are up in arms about it. But it's like, you have Amazon Echoes on. You have your Instagram and Twitter microphone setting probably off. If you're carrying a cell phone, you're being tracked, my friend. And I don't, it's just a question of who turns it on and who

turns it off and what they use it for. And this just, this is writ large, the problem our whole society faces, not to underscore the fact that the Chinese government is very sneaky and we have to be. And very capable. And capable. Not just sneaky, but capable. And around the world, they're doing things not just with cybersecurity, but with minerals, with resources, with everything else. Yeah, they are playing a very long game. The one thing that China has not beat, I think, has not figured out yet is the soft power

aspect of it. They, you know, people want to move to America. People want to watch Hollywood films. Yeah. The biggest takeaway for me is that they're so superior. She said 80% of the algorithm is programmed versus what's been reported 90 to 95% by some experts. But still, as a superior product, they should have a superior approach to content moderation.

Thank you, Cara. Thank you. Oh, and before I forget, I'm not your mama, but I do have some unsolicited advice for all of you. As always, the internet is an indelible ink. And so assume your text messages will be read, especially you, Elon. That said, he was on Signal, which of course destroys.

So if you don't want it to be read, be on Signal. Try not to destroy it. Kara, don't tell people how to create crimes. They're not crimes. I'm just saying. I was texting with someone pretty well-known on Twitter, DMing. And they were like, can you send me this personal information? I said, absolutely not.

Not on DMs on Twitter. Forget it. And so I'm constantly aware of what I'm saying in places. And I'm sure I have some bad text messages. Everybody does. Oh, don't worry. I have the receipts. Oh, do you? So be very careful, everyone. Understand this is not just discovery in lawsuits. And I think that's one of the things that happens. It's also hacking and things like that. It's like, I'm not your mama, as I say, but you really should be careful.

Today's show was produced by Naeem Arraza, Blakeney Schick, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Raffaella Seward. Fernando Arruda engineered this episode. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a gold star. If not, what is wrong with you? Go wherever you get your podcasts. Look for On with Kara Swisher and of course, hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and me. I mean us. Thank you, Kara. No problem. We'll be back on Thursday for more. Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer.

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