Panic World - How bin Laden killed TikTok (with Rachel Gilmore)

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

America is in a “will they or won’t they” situation with TikTok, but it’s not cute. As of last week, the app was finally set to get banned, but over the weekend Trump stayed its execution. Because we don’t really know if/when the app will get deleted, instead, let’s look back at how we got to this dark and dumb moment in the first place. Rachel Gilmore joins us to talk about where it all began: like so many other things, with Gen Z and Osama bin Laden. Our guest Rachel Gilmore is a journalist. You can read/watch her reporting and commentary on her newsletter Bubble Pop (https://rachelgilmore.substack.com), and follow her everywhere else at https://linktr.ee/rachel_gilmore. Catch the extended conversation and plenty of other great bonus content, plus ad-free episodes, by joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before we start today's episode, just a reminder that we're running a super sale on our Patreon right now, 50 cents for the first month. Wow. I think my content is worth 50 cents. And hopefully by the time you hear this, we have enough on our Patreon that you can't listen to all of it before the month is over and you have to keep paying. If you want to check out our Patreon, you can go to patreon.com slash panic world, pay 50 cents and listen to our content. You have to put in panic all caps as the discount code. That's right. That's what gets you. You 50 cents. That's right.

I wasn't going to tell them, but I'm glad you told them. Panic. Like that, all caps. You got to shout it at the screen, yeah. Let's kick things off for the fun question, shall I? Rachel, what's your favorite most ridiculous thing you've heard about TikTok's nefarious influence over the youth of North America? Honestly, any time they talk about it covertly manipulating us, I just think about how the only thing it's made me covertly manipulating us. I just think about how the only thing it's made me covertly manipulated to do is use a lot of slang that isn't necessarily age appropriate for me.

What's your favorite TikTok slang? Oh, maybe like dead ass. Yeah, dead ass is good. Yeah. For real. That's a really good one. Dead ass is no cap for real, for real. Absolutely.

Yeah, you nailed it. Yeah, no. I love the Rizzler. Although Riz isn't TikTok slang. I feel like that came from Twitch, right? but either way. I think so, yeah. It's all a soup these days.

My personal favorite TikTok moral panic is one we've covered on the show before, which is, of course, the fear of Nike Will chicken when TikTok was blamed for people boiling chicken in NyQuil, which I did do a couple weeks ago, actually. Really? Yeah, I don't recommend it. It smelled horrible. I didn't taste it. I didn't eat it.

But it smelled awful. But, you know, I think we can both agree that teenagers have never done anything stupid. on the internet before TikTok, and this is all some sort of conspiracy from the Chinese government, correct? Of course. Of course. It's brand new. It's brand new.

Teenagers were very well behaved until 2018. Yeah. So today's episode of Panic World is all about the impending TikTok ban. I'm Ryan Broderick. Welcome to Panic World, the show about the moral panics and witch hunts bubbling up out of the darkest corners of the internet. No doubt you've been following news stories for the past several weeks, months, almost a year now, about TikTok being banned in America.

And there's a good chance that you don't actually understand why that's happening. And the reason you don't understand why that's happening is because no one can agree on why it's happening. But the very basis of this entire drama is a very stupid and fundamental misunderstanding about what TikTok is and how people use it. Today's story is about how we got here. The moral panic that engulfed America. The video games are turning people into mass shooters sequel that we've been waiting for for a

generation. This is how, for a brief moment, everyone became convinced that TikTok had made Osama bin Laden the icon of Gen Z and how that spun out of control and brought us to this very dark and dumb and confusing moment in American tech history. Joining me is a Canadian. Luckily, we are sick of American guests on here, but I feel like this will be fine, the writer of the wonderful bubble pop newsletter, journalist Rachel Gilmore. Hello, Rachel. Welcome.

Hey, thank you so much for having me. Did you feel like in your heart that we could get to this point where TikTok was going to get banned? Like, did you ever seriously consider this? I was in deep denial for sure. I didn't think that they would do something so stupid and so blatantly just hypocritical when you look at so many other parallels in the world of tech. But apparently this stupidity and willingness to do dumb things of y'all down south, sometimes you guys really impress us. Yeah, we like to go crazy over little tiny things.

That's actually the basis of this entire podcast. It's a very American idea. I also was very skeptical that it would get this far because I just, I don't know, I pride and naturally believe that some adults in the room will eventually step in and stop these things from happening. But that doesn't happen. And now I guess Trump is the adult in the room, which means that, you know, it's never going to get sorted out. Never. And it probably doesn't help that like so many of your lawmakers and stuff are of an age where they would need, they're the kind of people who would accidentally upload a selfie to TikTok and not realize until it's blown up and gotten a million likes, you know? Yes. I also,

found myself, like, feeling like extreme cognitive dissidence over the summer. While I'm, you know, I'm watching the Biden administration be like, we're banning TikTok. It's happening. While Kamala Harris's team is like, we're so brat. This is great. Look at like Tim Walls playing crazy taxi on TikTok. Like it just, to me, it felt so ridiculous that I just couldn't take it seriously. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you're watching lawmakers use it while promising to ban it. And if it's such a serious concern, like security concern, why are they using it and using its trends? And it just really doesn't make sense. I have spoken to people who were inside the White House as of last year who are saying that there were some politicians that were using TikTok on burner phones because you can't have it installed on a government device here.

But then there's a whole bunch of other politicians that have never literally ever used it. and I feel like the environment where you have a bunch of people who can't admit they're using it and a bunch of people who truly don't, who can't admit they've never used it, all trying to argue about whether or not it should exist anymore is a bad starting ground for this. It's very bad. Yeah, especially when a bunch of American citizens are making their living on it. Yes. It's just wild.

Yes. So lucky for us, the Associated Press, has put together a timeline of TikTok's rise, an inevitable fall and how the U.S. government has been sort of dealing with it since it launched. And let's start all the way back in February 2019.

Yeah. February 2019, a little song called Old Town Road blows up. Were you a fan of the little Nas X sort of launch into culture in 2019? Embarrassingly so.

I definitely like sometimes got ready to it at like 8.30 in the morning. It was a weird time to listen to that. song, but I saw him perform it live before he had like put out a real album. Yeah, I was like part of this event where he was a guest and he did like two songs and like it was very good. Like it was a very catchy. I don't ever want to hear it again, but it was very funny catchy song at the time, I think. But the security concerns about TikTok start almost immediately. About two months later, the Pentagon announces that they don't want US military to have TikTok on their phones. Now,

have you ever explored what they used to call boot talk? No. Okay. So my favorite, sort of era of TikTok is this weird moment when, so for people who don't know, bite dance, they buy musically, which was like a lip syncing app. And they combine it with a lot of the tech stack of Dujan, which is the Chinese version of TikTok. And they create TikTok. And so the earliest people on there were musically users, like people who are just like doing fun lip syncs. What many people did not realize at the time is that a majority of those people were bored soldiers on army bases who were just like doing lip sync videos. videos. So like the earliest massive community other than furries on TikTok, well, I shouldn't say

other than furries because there's a lot of furries that serve in the military. But like, it was mainly like board soldiers who were just like recording their like army pieces as they're doing lip sync videos. Perfect. Amazing. And it was like a big enough problem that like the pentagon had to make a statement about it. Why people in the military makes a lot of sense. They're bored. They're sitting around. But why furries, Ryan? I just told you. They're bored at... No, no, I understand, but the non-military furries.

Why? I don't think there's many, but I mean, most of the furries I've interviewed work in emergency services positions such as EMTs, law enforcement, or the military, fun fact. But, okay. And the reason furries were on there is because furries love lip sync videos. Because you, well, I shouldn't say lip sync, because you can't see their lips. But, like, they do... I was going to say.

They do a lot of... It kind of feels like a cheat code for nailing the lip syncs. Yeah, but they do a lot of, like, not lip sync battles, but... like, I guess like dance battles, like furries love dance battles. Awesome. So around this same time, you started to get reports out that the Hong Kong democracy protests are not using TikTok at all. In fact, I was in Hong Kong in December for like the last, what would be the last protest. And no one there had any bite dense apps on their phones at all.

Like they were kind of the earliest political group to be like, we don't trust this stuff. But I wanted your thoughts about sort of like what you remember about the earliest period, this like pre-COVID TikTok period. Like what kind of stands out for you looking back? So I joined TikTok during the pandemic. Like that was when I really got into it. So I didn't have a huge relationship with the app before then. But I would say like in 2020 at least when I joined, which was pandemic. I don't know if I'm jumping too far ahead.

No, no. Go for it. It was just it was still. a lot of lip syncing and dancing and a lot of like teens lip syncing a lot of teens yeah and i felt super old and they were doing these really exaggerated facial expressions with their lipsinging like the bell at porch kind of vibe i was about to say bellop porch right yeah yeah yeah that's definitely like how i categorize that period on ticot and my understanding is that musically was a uh kind of a life raft app for former vine stars so like so basically you know vine gets shut

down on my birthday, um, in like 2017 or whatever, 2016. And then a lot of those users go over to musically and they're just like cute teens doing lip stinks. Yeah. And then they suddenly become like the earliest TikTok users. Yeah. So this is sort of the earliest phase of TikTok culture, which is like teens and furries and soldiers doing like weird dances. And there's like some memes on there, but like not ones that I think have really lasted the test. of time. During the pandemic, when you join, that's also when we start to get things like, you know, the gentlemenians and you get like, do you remember like Adrian's kickback? Do you remember that? No. Okay. So this was like the beginning of like the TikTok riots, which weren't really

riots, but like basically like teenagers would organize like COVID parties on TikTok and it would like get so popular on the app that would like spin out of control. And one of these was like a anti-lockdown hangout session on a beach in California that like, turned into a riot where, like, they shot, like, beanbags at the kids and stuff. And, like, cops had to show up. And it was called, like, Adrian's kickback. Yeah. Okay.

So the idea of a ban wouldn't really start until Trump, you know, starts to notice the app. But in 2020, in August of 2020, there was an executive order that focused on the data and info that China may have been collecting through TikTok. And they were mainly focused on federal employees. That was like, that was like the big concern. And what I wanted to kind of get from you is like, in your own reporting on TikTok, how much data do you think the Chinese government actually has access to through the app? You know, what's your most like skeptical take here?

I do think they probably could theoretically access a decent amount of data. At the same time, they were caught surveilling some U.S. journalists. So that is a point that kind of you have to keep in the front of. of your mind. So I do think that they definitely have access to data, but I don't think it's anything necessarily beyond what other tech platforms collect and disseminate and sell to data brokers and put into the ad tech industry, which then lets it leak out everywhere. So like, to me, it's less that TikTok doesn't have your data, because I think they do, and that they could theoretically, through ByteDance, be compelled to share it with the Chinese government.

but that's already happening through the leaky ad tech system and data brokers that are working with like Facebook and all of those other guys. So it's just kind of, to me, seems like we're not dealing with the actual issue by focusing on a single app, if that makes sense. I think that makes total sense. The only other insight I have here is that I did speak to a bite dance employee in 2019, working in Beijing. Do you remember like those stories about like bite dance pulling down like LGBT content?

or content about Palestine later on. These moments where the moderation seems to glitch out. Yeah. One thing I did here is that Bight Dance employees, like at a certain level, do have, or did have, at least in 2019, moderation access. Like, they could pull up the panel to be like, I'm deleting this. And one of the major problems that Bight Dance had was that the majority of their employees grew up in China.

So in the same way that an American moderator would be moderating content with American values. a Chinese moderator or a Chinese employee might see something on TikTok and be like, oh, we can't have that. That's illegal here. And they would just delete it. And one of the major issues as TikTok spread internationally was trying to find ways to deal with that, which I actually think is like kind of a fascinating glimpse of almost the reverse, I think, of what Washington believes, which is like, TikTok is like, no, no, no, no, wait. We need like less Chinese employees because they're trigger fingers too quick. Yeah.

Well, and it also makes you, again, like everything we talk about with TikTok, I just can't help but think about all the other social platforms. And it's just like, okay, so all of these U.S. owned social media companies, how are they influencing and making ridiculous decisions relative to other cultures? And it's just like, you know, as the Canadian here, it's such like a U.S.-centric way of viewing the world. Yes, yes, it is. We, yeah, we do that. We definitely do that. What I think is, like, really interesting, and you've pointed this out already, is like, The things that are bad about TikTok, and there are things that are bad about it, are not unique to TikTok.

Exactly. What's like so maddening when you dig back through this, this like early moment of the band discourse starting in 2020 is the executive order in August 2020, signed by the Trump administration, singles out TikTok for COVID conspiracies. Oh my God. Like. Yeah, it only happened on TikTok, definitely. I was like covering COVID conspiracies in the beginning of the pandemic. And like TikTok wasn't even on like the like my priority list. Like I didn't even give a shit.

Like it compared to what was happening on Twitter, Twitter was a madhouse. Yes. Literally if you read like the character limit book, you see that Jack was basically kind of a covert antivaxer anyways. You know, I couldn't have told that. I could not have realized that from his gigantic beard. I know, right. I'm like burning man sensibility. So Trump was asked about the executive order in September 2020, and he said, we'll see what happens.

I'm not doing the voice. It'll either be closed up or they'll sell it. So we'll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons or it'll be sold, which is funny because, like, he's doing that right now about the Panama Canal and Canada and green. Like, that's his whole deal. It's like, I'm going to threaten you and you're either going to shut down or you're going to give it to us. which, you know, I don't, I don't support taking over Canada. I want you to know that. I appreciate the solidarity.

Although it would be extremely funny if Trump accidentally bullies Canada and, like, creating, like, the EU of North America. But that's just like a, that's just like a funny idea that I've been kicking around. I mean, do you guys really want to deal with our block Quebecois. Yes, I do. They're actually hilarious, I will say. They rule. They absolutely.

Dude, Quebecua separatists are fucking sick. And, like, a world where, like, Texas separatists and Quebecua separat separatists can, like, fight each other. Like, I mean... I would love to watch that. I would watch that. Okay, let's jump back to our time by here and stop fantasizing. That's the real Alex Garland. Let's stop fantasizing about sectarian violence in the Canadian-American War and jump back to 2021. So in September 2021, TikTok hits a billion monthly active users. So this is the first app sends Facebook to really do so. And I think this is actually the moment where at least

in American Canada, I mean, would you say this is fair? Like in 2021, TikTok kind of overtakes Instagram or Facebook as the most important app. Is that sound right? Yeah. I think so. Which I think we should stop here and talk about how weird that is for a second because like I don't think we've really reflected on how strange it is for a video first app to be that big. Because people weren't really making like video content primarily for Facebook. They were like fighting with each other in Facebook groups.

Exactly. What's your read on like how that has changed internet discourse since? Because I feel like that is a massive change. I think it's the result primarily of TikTok making it super accessible. Like they also have, they make it really easy for individuals to upload and post their thoughts and stuff and like edit and use even green screen effects and everything. But I think that having everything communicated through video definitely shifts conversations in the sense that it changes.

Like I think the news media has taken a huge kind of hits not the right word, but like it's a moment where they could have risen to meet the moment, but instead they're just like, no, you're influencers. But like, you know, we see people's like face talking to us like they're on FaceTime and people started to really enjoy that method of communication and feel like a trust build in a relationship and like to have a relationship with the people communicating to them. So I think that kind of contributed to a lack of trust in media and more of a trust in people getting their news from influencers. And I mean, a lot of it's really short form. A lot of it's more casual.

I think that it probably made our discourse more casual alongside Trump, just constantly changing the norms of what we can say publicly and professionally. We all know way too much about each other now. Yeah, I think that's right. I know so much about people who I should not know exist. And I think the phenomenon you're talking about with like the feeling of trust you get from someone's face or voice telling you something rather than reading it, it's not just conspiratorial thinking. I feel like it's this feeling that you see a video.

on TikTok and you suddenly assume that it's representative of a whole. You're like, oh, this must be a thing that everyone's doing. Everyone's saying riszed up with the guiet. They must. They aren't. I am. I am always saying that. Right after I have my double chunk chocolate cookie, I'm like, give me a risdub. Yeah, I'm going to give three booms to this guillette. I think that's what you pronounce. I've never actually tried to do it. I've never said it out loud and I'm not going to try. It's mortifying. I have to stop saying it. This is also the moment. moment where not only is like TikTok beginning to sort of rot our brains, as we now would say, it is where they're being scrutinized over their impact on teenagers. So like the Wall Street

Journal puts out like a big expose on like how teens are reacting to TikTok, which I mean, for you, like, do you feel like TikTok is doing all that different to a teenager's brain than say like Instagram or Snapchat? Do you feel like it's that different? No. Any visual platform definitely is going to have the impact of, you know, having a whole discourse around body, and the way that we look. And obviously, there's, like, some very powerful filters on TikTok. But there's filters on Snapchat. There's FaceTune.

There's, like, you know, people have been having those issues for forever since we have had visual social media. So I don't really feel like it's a unique problem to TikTok. And I think that, honestly, like, the overarching critique I have of any discourse about TikTok is that all of these issues are more so societal issues and issues with our tech industry than they are TikTok specific. I always like to play this. game where it's like, is this thing new that we're all talking about the internet or like,

did this happen during the MySpace era? For the most part, almost everything that we've ever been mad about on TikTok, like did happen almost 20 years ago. But I do remember like, you know, memetic social diseases like eating disorder content or like self-harm content, you know, happening in the MySpace era. Like there was a whole, what was it, too right love on her arms, like that whole like anti-cutting yourself organization that like had pop-ups at a warp tour and stuff. Like, this is not new. That, like, teenagers get online and they start, like, sharing their fucked up little teen thoughts with each other and make themselves sick.

Like, it just happens. And adults get online and start sharing their fucked up little adult slots. And then January 6 happens, you know? So it's not like it's even just a teen issue. Yeah. No, but we also just did an episode about January 6 that. I was listening to it earlier. Yeah.

Everyone showed up to the Capitol. They had a good time. And as of this week, they all got to go home. Yeah. So, you know, good party, everybody. Great job. So the pressure that the U.S. government and sort of like the U.S. media is putting on TikTok is beginning to actually pressure TikTok to do something.

And so in June 2022, TikTok launches Project Texas, which is crazy that they came up with that name before Project 2025 could use it. Like, I feel like it's a very Trumpian name. So they decide to move all of their U.S. data to Oracle, which is based in Texas and essentially say, okay, Oracle is going to moderate the content, and that way the Chinese government can't access any of our data. Was the Project Texas move just a cosmetic change that wouldn't have actually done anything, or was it actually a substantive offer from TikTok? TikTok has been willing to move as much of their data outside of China as possible.

And my understanding is they're kind of down to do whatever they needed to to stay in business. So it actually could have alleviated the stated fears to a, like, no? That's what I was asking. It's like, was it? I don't think so. Well, and also I think that they did that and then they spied on American journalists. So like, it just, that kind of, they kind of shot themselves in the foot with that move. They were asked by Brett Kavanaugh during the last Supreme Court hearing if the Chinese government could spy on people still.

And TikTok's legal team was like, we can't deny that they can. But also, they can do it through other platforms is the other thing. They can go through the data brokers. They can go through the ad tech industry and siphon away Americans' personal data anywhere. So again, if that's actually what this is about, they should deal with it properly and not just delete tech talk. Yeah. It was cosmetic because that wasn't actually the problem. Right.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But there's obviously like a paranoia about Chinese overreach. and I sort of get it. I sort of am like, okay, like, would we feel comfortable if TikTok was Russian? And I probably wouldn't. Like, it, yeah. I don't know if that makes me like a fuddy-duddy, but part of me is like,

should an adversarial government have all of our data behind their great firewall? And I feel like that's the other part of this, is it like, it does make it slightly different, doesn't it? Yeah, I, I mean, I will say. any nation, I guess, that has traditionally not been besties with the nation that you're from is going to inherently make you a little uncomfy when you think about the fact that they have access to your citizens' data, can figure out weak points and people's vulnerabilities to then try to recruit them for spy activities or whatever, blackmail or, you know, that's a lot of what they do

with this kind of data, right? But again, like, this always brings me back to that argument, which is, yes, that is a concern that I think is legitimate to a degree. But if that is your concern, then do something about Google's monopoly on ad tech that allows so much data to leak through and so much advertiser money to go to really sketchy places and fund sketchy things. Like there's just so many ways in which the tech industry is set up that it's not a TikTok specific issue. It's an industry issue where we don't really care about who is buying and selling our data.

or do anything to actually address the loopholes and many layers of opacity that make this such a big problem. So, like, if you deal with that, you deal with TikTok to a certain degree, right? So I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to target TikTok specifically when you've got meta out here, having scandal after scandal about data leaks. I think in many ways, TikTok right around 2022, 2020, 23 becomes kind of something of like a wicker man that we like all go after and burn because we can't fix everything else. You know, it's like this sacrifice that we've all decided we're going to make. And a sacrifice that just so happens to be, like, I'm sure you saw the research from Pew

that came out. It's the only platform where left-wing news influencers outpace those on the right. So we've got to get rid of it. We got to get rid of it. Well, exactly, right? Like, every single other platform, right-wing news influencers get more traction and, like, blow up on the platform more. It's only TikTok that has that sort of counterbalance.

And it's also the only app where, women news influencers come even close to existing in the same numbers as men. So it's just kind of annoying that the one that they choose to make an example of also happens to be the only one where like the little guy, the people who care about, you know, social programs and like, you know, the world being more fair and closing the wealth gap is the one that they target. I think that is a really important dimension here. And we've addressed this in previous episodes of sort of moral panics always sort of have this like center nucleus of misogyny, around like protecting young women.

You know, this idea that like, it's not just that TikTok is like being used to spy on Americans by the Chinese government. It's that TikTok is being used to spy on young women in America by the Chinese government. Like it's always got that edge to it. Like one of our earliest episodes is about teens and using technology. And it wasn't young boys. It was always like, oh, it's doing bad things to young girls. And I do think.

Because our widowed boys can't handle it. It's right. You're right. need to be protected by strong men. That's right. Donald Trump's going to sign an executive order to protect you guys. But yeah, 20203 is when the wheels fall off the bus here. And any sort of reasonable concession that TikTok's trying to make isn't going to cut it. So that's when lawmakers in the U.S. move to basically start removing the app from federal employees devices.

So this is they ban it there. The Biden campaign. God, what a fucking asshole. This is when he also makes a TikTok account and starts using it to campaign. for 2024. I hate that guy, man. Like, oh my God. Like, just ridiculous. Like, just cutting off your nose to spite your face his entire administration. And this is when in March of 23, uh, shows the issue, the TikTok CEO goes in front of Congress and has to explain that TikTok is not convincing teenagers to cook chicken and Nykwell, um, which we will try to.

Yeah, we're just me. Just me. It smells like fried dough combined with rotting fish. Uh, don't to it. Here, let's listen to Representative Buddy Carter explain the dangers of TikTok. And I don't speak for everyone, but there are those on this committee, including myself, who believe that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in psychological warfare through TikTok to deliberately influence U.S. children. You see some of the challenges that we've seen on TikTok. You know about them. You know about the milk crate. You know about the blackout challenge. You know about the NyQuil Chicken Challenge, the Benadryl Challenge, the Dragon's Breath Liquid Nitrogen Tren.

I want to ask you, as I understand it, there's a sister app in China. Duikin, I'm sorry if I'm butchering the pronunciation. Do they have these kind of challenges in China? Chinese users are as goofy and silly as American users. They troll the way we do. They have their own version of shitposts. Their emoji game is out of control.

they love all that stuff. But they're also not doing nearly as stupid and dangerous things as Americans do on their corner of the internet as far as I can tell. Which to me is evidence that Americans are our own kind of unhinged and we don't really need a foreign government to convince us to, I don't know, boil chicken and NyQuil or dress up in suits to go see the premiere of the new minions movie. That's just not something I think that a foreign government needs to. ask us to do. There's no brainwatching required. And I think that's what really scares people about TikTok is that it's connecting teenagers and increasingly normal people across borders and they don't look or act or sound or dance or vote the way we assumed they always had. And that is a very powerful and frightening idea for people who, you know, have banked their entire careers or political

chances on a assumption about that kind of thing. It's a very destabilizing thing to open up TikTok and discover like people want to fuck venom from the venom movies. It's like endearing, you know? And it makes us not to get too deep about it, but it makes us see each other as human beings when we can otherwise be dehumanized. Totally. So having these moments where you see people being silly and being goofy with their friends

and see them as multidimensional human beings that are just as goofy and weird as we it helps you to remember that people are human beings. I think that's why there was the outpouring of support for Palestinians in Gaza. You're like seeing visually, and I'm sure we're probably going to get to that too. You just people. You just did the thing I love most when a guest does it on this show, which is you took me right to the next point. Oh, amazing. Which I wanted to make right before we go to break, which is my theory about all of this is something

you've already kind of alluded to. So the government has complained about TikTok on and off for at least five years now. And most of the problems that they were complaining about have never really been unique to TikTok. But I do think what you're hitting on is unique about it. TikTok opened the floodgates for young people in America to have not unfiltered conversations, but certainly very different conversations than what they were having before. And this effect is being seen in countries across the world. Young people get online, they download TikTok, and they start communicating without traditional

arbiters of culture. It's not a thing where you're replacing journalists with bloggers like we did in the 2000s. You're replacing almost all media that exists with just other teenagers. And that is a very frightening concept, especially if you work in the government or the news media. And that has sent people into an absolute tailspin. They're freaking out. And they're like, we got to get rid of this thing. And we're going to talk about how they're going to do that and how it's manifesting in the media,

including a little letter written by Osama bin Laden. All of that right after the break. What were you up to on TikTok in November, 2023? I was watching a lot of videos from Gaza. I've always been someone who's had a combo of makeup, fashion, lifestyle, and hard news on world events and atrocities and neo-Nazis and stuff. So it's a good mix. The 20th century media diet is fucking crazy.

It is a trip. But yeah, so I definitely, like, I was horrified watching this happen and, you know, like something somewhat related. But I, like, I lived in Tunisia for two and a half months and worked there with journalists for human rights a couple years ago. And I had the opportunity to meet some Palestinian journalists and, like, speak to them and interview them actually about Shereen Abu Ackla being killed by the IDF and murdered by the IDF in the West Bank. She's about Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist. Right. So it's something that I was aware of the occupation and apartheid like conditions or apartheid conditions. Apartide, yeah. Yeah, apartheid. God, it's that old legacy media like coming from that space. I'm like, oh, am I allowed to say this when it's actually how I feel? Sorry, folks, you're listening to a podcast. We can do whatever we want. We can tell you the truth about Palestine. It was not a bullet-involved murder. It was a cop shot someone. Yeah. Yeah, I'm still. like shaking off because, you know, my newsroom at the time, I wrote a story about Shereen with that

interview I did. And my newsroom at the time killed it. They said I didn't have enough sources when I interviewed four people, including the cameraman who filmed her death, her murder. Classic old media newsroom. Yep. Uh-huh. And so like, got to hold this one up a bit more. Yeah, yeah. It shouldn't take this kind of moment for us to have empathy. But, you know, it was just really incredible to see all these people caring about what was happening to Palestinians and learning about what was happening to Palestinians. So I was just inhaling that on TikTok. Yeah, and there was definitely a brief moment where TikTok was leading the charge on sort of being able to see stuff from Palestine before they put in some of their filters, which we'll get to.

But in November 2023, you have this initial sort of burst of, I'm going to say discourse to kind of cover the whole thing, but it's sort of discourse about the conflict in Israel and Palestine. And amid this discourse, all of a sudden, people start freaking out that, Osama bin Laden's letter is going viral on TikTok. Are you familiar with this? Do you remember this? Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah.

And this very dumb thing will be weaponized in very predictable ways. So we did some digging. We wanted to figure out exactly how this happened. And it's funny you talked about what you're seeing on your feed because patient zero for this entire story comes from a lifestyle influencer named Lynette Adkins. Here, let's take a listen. Let go of your attachment of the. future outcome and start just living in the present. That is literally the best spirit. Like, I know that there is a million and one videos out there about how to improve yourself and how to

level up on how to glow up, whatever. But I'm telling you the only advice that you need to come back to every single day is to be present and to love yourself unconditionally. She's iconic. I mean, her hair is amazing. She's got beautiful, perfect curls, which is that takes skill to be able to style your hair like that. She is like going to the gym, talking about her favorite books, showing off her winter fits. Yeah, she's very, seems like fashion lifestyle kind of vibes to be. From what I understand, this is like her second account. I think she may have kind of lost her first account because of all this stuff. But what I think is like important to point out here is that she is essentially a normal person. Like her videos are doing like a couple thousand views.

which for TikTok is very small. Yeah. She's not a brand. She's just like using TikTok the way you would have used Instagram 10 years ago, the way you would have used Facebook 15 years ago. But in 2023, she moves to L.A. And she starts making content about how she moved to L.A., which, you know, any New Yorker that moves to L.A.

becomes mentally ill. Like, that's just a fact. So, you know, they can be, they go hiking, they become California sober. They are deeply lonely and they post too much. So, you know, that's, that seems to be what happened to you. God. That sounds horrifying.

It's just very normal. Just very normal. And so in November, she stumbles across a letter to America, which is a anti-Semitic, anti-American, misogynistic, homophobic, hateful letter than Osama bin Laden wrote about America. Unfortunately, like, he makes some good points about America, aside from all the other hateful stuff. but like it's not a good, it's not a good document. It's not, he's not like a, he's not serving, you know? Like, it's not great.

Totally fair. Bin Laden was not serving. Are you familiar with the letter? Have you seen it? Have you read it or anything? I remember seeing it at the time and like trying to find, because I kept seeing people saying that it was spreading on TikTok, but I was not seeing any of the video. So I like actively sought it out because I think I saw it in the news first that this letter was

spreading on TikTok. So I was like, is that actually happening? or is this another moral panic in the media? And yeah, but I don't remember exactly what it said. The major reason Lynette was sharing it and why it would eventually kind of go viral at this exact moment is a paragraph towards the end, which I'll read a piece of, I am not promoting Osama bin Laden, I am not promoting Islam bin Laden. I am not promoting terrorism. This is journalism, blah, blah, blah, blah. Dear FBI agent listening to this, I am not supporting Osama Blah, okay.

So he writes, Palestine has been under occupation for decades and none of your president. talked about it until after September 11th, when Bush realized that your oppression and the tyranny against us were part of the reason for the attack. Then he talked about the necessity for two states. Obama is trying to address the issue with the same solutions suggested by his predecessor. They're quilting fruitless solutions not of concern to us. If you want a real settlement that guarantees your security in your country and safeguards your economy from being depleted in a manner similar to our war of attrition against the Soviet Union, oh, I just went through that season of the Americans recently, actually.

Then you have to implement a roadmap that returns the Palestine land to us, all of it, from the sea to the river. It is an Islamic land not subject to being traded or granted to any party. And then he kind of wraps up the letter basically saying, like, there will be more violence and more killing until, you know, Palestine is returned. That is the chunk of why this is happening in 2023 at this exact moment. And I do not blame a normal person. kind of scanning this being like, oh, that's interesting.

Yeah. Because it's not her job to be a journalist. It's like she's just a person on TikTok. They might not know what, I don't know, yeah. They might not listen too closely to every line of that and might just hear the fact that he's acknowledging something that Western media has totally screwed the pooch on. So, you know, and like that's the problem with media

screwing these important stories up. Yes. Like, is that then the people who are talking about it, even if the messenger is literally Osama bin Laden get shared and spread, and they often have poison pills amongst the legitimate points, right? I think that is a fantastic point here, which is that, like, the Palestinian conflict is so tightly wound up in old media bullshit that I think the average person, when getting any kind of glimpse of unfedered discourse about it, they have no context.

It's just like soup, right? So if, you know, if someone says like, hey, Osama bin Laden's like kind of cooking right now, you're like, oh, oh, I don't know anything about this. Let me read. And that is what happens here because from Lynette Atkins, the letter gets picked up by another lifestyle user. Oh, my God. What were the girl he's doing? We have to protect our women from, you know, running into scary letters on.

This is why women can't have TikTok is because they start sharing Osama bin Laden's letter. So I'm going to play this game again. So this is the next user that picks this up. Her username is Canna Blissful, which rules and is great. But yeah, can you describe sort of Canna Blissful's overall aesthetic and vibes here? Yeah, she's also a pretty small creator. She's got like 11, almost 12K followers. Oh, her pinned video is about how vampires are real.

Oh, yes, Gaw Queen. We got a quirky type here. Oh, oh my God. She mentioned Coney 2012 and that just unlocked shameful, embarrassing. We got to get him. We got to get him. I know, right? Coney 2025.

Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like her getting super high, her talking about vampires, her. She's just like a normal person. Yeah. I want to smoke weed and talk about vampires with her. If she tries to bring up a song of Bill Ad, I'll probably be like, hey, let's not talk about that.

But like, let's go back to the vampire stuff. Yeah. And then we have one more user to mention here. Another, I guess you could say lifestyle influencer, more so kind of like, I mean, you'll get this immediately. You can describe this. So this is the user Fairy King B. And yeah, walk us through his general aesthetic and vibes.

Because I do think it's slightly different than the other two, but equally small. Here, let's take a listen. It's apparently the case that Pepsi and Coca-Cola are going to start their prebiotic, probiotic, I don't fucking know, gut-healthy lineup products. And what's interesting to me is that these motherfuckers didn't give about health before. These motherfuckers did not give about health before when they were putting corn syrup in your fucking sodas, bitch. Yeah, he's giving like one of those, you know, holistic health probably thinks they

know more, like doesn't necessarily believe science first. But, and plants, okay. A lot of plants. Also, this is, yeah, yeah, a lot of plants. But still, like, fairly normal, but, you know, and sharing, I'm seeing a lot of posts about helping families in Gaza. So these three accounts were the lead spreaders of this, according to what we could tell. And look, I think Lynette Atkins and Canna Blissful and Fairy King B, fantastic blunt rotation, would love to hang out in a backyard garden with them. But I don't, I don't really want to use them to, like, learn about the world.

But, like, I would love to hang out with the three of them. Yeah. I don't think that they should be sort of deciding what every. one in the world talks about, which is fine. I think they might agree. And I think another important to mention here is that a lot of these people are young. Either they don't remember 9-11 or they weren't alive for 9-11. It's like it is also like, Grant, we got to eventually talk about how often this podcast circles around 9-11 because it might be time to do a 9-11 episode. Yeah, it's coming up a lot. Dude, we talk about it like every time we record now. It's like, I don't know. Anyways.

I thought that was just what Americans did though, right? At least once a week. Oh, yeah. No, Yeah, we all get together once a week and just talk about 9-11 now in America. We just touch each other shoulder and go, do you remember? And then we solemnly nod. Where were you? I say, never forget. To be fair, that's one of those things that we copy from you guys, because I'm definitely in Canada.

You guys talk about 9-11? Oh, we talk about 9-11. Yeah. Wow. Like, I definitely had conversations with people like, where were you? You guys all go to the Tim Hortons and talk about 9-11 together? Yeah, that's actually where we do it. That's where the official meeting is.

That's great. No. So one of the biggest Asama bin Laden letter videos before it gets pulled down has around half a million views. Would you say that's a lot for TikTok? Not for TikTok. No. No, there's videos getting like, I don't know, even hundreds of millions, I want to say? Like, I got to see what the most viewed one is. But definitely at least like tens of millions. Yes. I would say that that is right. Also, a large chunk of the people creating content about Osama bin Laden's letter. And this was something we noticed with Nyquil-Chic and Asana's letter. And this was something we noticed with Nyquil-Chic and Ashton's letter. well, were people duetting the videos being mad about it, which I think is like not something that possibly journalists or politicians kind of understand is that like you can share a video inside of your video and be like, this sucks. Like they don't count, they just count the shares as one thing.

This is my pet peeve. That isn't really a pet peeve. It's like a major source of fury for me is the way in which like legacy media and a lot of journalists and stuff have issued wanting to understand social media for so long. And then they totally, like, absolutely screw up when they actually are supposed to report on something that involves social media because they always had so much disdain for it. They never took the time to understand it. Right. This is exactly how I feel as well. Is it like, they are, they've made themselves useful idiots in a way. Once again, like to gut check with you here, one of the most shared

videos we found about Osama bin Laden's letter had 3,000 shares. Oh my God. Like, I just Google. right, because I wanted to check, there are videos out there that have had billions of views. Yeah, billions. Most of my videos have about a billion. Yeah, all of your videos about Osama bin Laden's letter. All my videos about Osama bin Laden was right. Yeah, have billions of views. You're right.

But just to like really nail home how ridiculous all of this was, on the night of November 14th, 2023, according to Google Trends worldwide, the most popular Osama bin Laden video, was worth about 11% of one video about Travis Kelsey at the time. That was how not popular this was. And those are two equally dangerous, Matt. I would say politically the same. I would say they definitely have the exact same games on their Nintendo DS, which, by the way, if people are listening, do not know about this.

You can download an emulator that is all the games on Osama bin Laden's like DS library, and it is fascinating. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, Grant, we have to do an Osama bin Laden episode. So, and in the U.S., the Osama bin Laden video was even less popular. Like, it was just not very popular. The hashtag letter to America was viewed, duets included, two million times.

The most popular hashtag for seven days at that time was hashtag TikTok shop Black Friday, which had 380 million views. Wow. Yeah. And so sorry, the Osama one had two million views? Views. Not even videos. Wow.

views. Like, that's the combined views of all the videos using that hashtag. And literally, I did a breakdown of Jordan Peterson interviewing the guy who's running, like, against Trudeau or against not against Trudeau anymore, but against this party. And I got 1.2 million views just like on Friday. And you guys aren't writing tons of articles about that. So, you know, we could freak out. I would appreciate it if you did, right, about my video specifically. We could start a moral panic about your TikTok account. I would love that. You are a woman on the internet. It's quite easy to freak out about. So it's true.

I sort of imagine like a journalist sitting down to TikTok possibly for the first time with like a very casual understanding of it and going like, well, a million's big on YouTube and Facebook. So I've had a millions big on TikTok too. And like to me this, this is a story largely about like mainstream media not understanding the scale of a TikTok view. I mean, people will literally comment on videos and be like, congrats. I landed on your video while I was wiping on the toilet. So enjoy the extra views. always I mean and just to be totally clear on YouTube a view is uh one view is someone who makes it 30

seconds into the video on Facebook one view is someone who makes it three seconds into the video and on TikTok it's less than a second and it doesn't even seem to be across the board less than a second it's like a combination of like unique opens and auto plays and also one second retention it's like not a it's not a consistent metric of one thing either to say that two million people opened their app and saw a video with that hashtag on it is like ridiculous. That's a ridiculous thing. And like, watch the whole thing and became indoctrinated. Yeah, they were like, yeah, 9-11 was good. I'm going to do one now because I said, because the Chinese government told me to do it on TikTok. And I did some of the math here to sort of point out how silly this all is. If we were to take one of the

viral videos about Ben Laden's letter in 2023, which had around two million views and we apply it to Facebook's, you know, if we converted those views to Facebook views, we'd have around half a million views on Facebook. And no one in their right mind would ever write a whole article about a video on Facebook that did half a million views. Like, it's just not important. No. No, no, no. Oh, yeah. And on YouTube, it would have 65,000 views. Oh, I'm so glad that, you know, we're doing responsible journalism about things that are actually happening and, you know, that's shaping national decisions about what exists in this country and what doesn't, or your country.

So this is extremely small, but it would be weaponized for political convenience. And here are some of the first consequences. So the Guardian, like the UK newspaper, had been Lodden's letter up on their site as just like a matter of historical record in their archives. And it was getting so much traffic from quote unquote social media that according to 404 media, they had to delete it. Wow. And then things get really insane.

on the evening of November 15th, 2023, when, are you familiar with Yashar? Yes. Yeah. So Yashar Ali, a, let's call him a well-known news influencer, makes a super cut that's five minutes long of TikTok users talking about Ben Laden's letter. And Yashar writes, over the past 24 hours, thousands of TikToks, at least, have been posted where people share how they,

just read bin Laden's infamous letter to America in which he explained why he attacked the United States. And then all hell breaks loose. And that's how we end up with the whole everyone is standing Osama bin Laden on TikTok. I wonder how many of the panics that have happened in the U.S. can be traced back to what your Shahr tweet. Well, I can't say I know for sure about Yashar's involvement, but I do think that there is a massive content economy of people on Twitter telling other adults, isn't it crazy what kids on TikTok are doing? And then everyone freaks out and it goes viral there without ever going viral on TikTok. Oh, yeah.

And that's basically what happened here, too. The trend becomes real because we've made it real. Then obviously, like, it becomes like a political football that can be weaponized. I've messed up this metaphor on this show several times. I don't know how else to say it. But Republicans, they start screaming about how TikTok is woke and how they turn everyone into Ben Laden communist or some crazy thing in this entire fiasco was weaponized by Israel itself. Israel news networks picked it up.

The New York Times starts writing like big pieces about it. Local news picks it up. Everyone realizes that like this is the moment where they can use all the anti-Tick-Tac fervor, all of the anti-Israel discourse that can scoop it all up in a bucket and say like, no, this is my, this is what we're going to do politically about it. Here, Grant created a little highlight reel for us. Here's the greatest hits. Gilly, thanks for being with us.

What is wrong with young people today? The question I find myself as a young person trying to grapple with. Chabna, there was a call, and maybe you can tell everybody about it with Sasha Baron Cohen and a whole number of other people with TikTok. Actually, last week, a pretty big group of creators who are Jewish, including some celebrities, Deborah Messing and Amy Schumer. They all wrote an open letter telling TikTok that the company just wasn't doing enough. The White House denouncing the trend, the trends reigniting criticism of TikTok as well as debate over what Congress should do, if anything, to regulate it.

Going back to the Wicker Man metaphor, it's like everyone has decided that they're all going to actively choose to interpret this wrong for their own political benefit. Democrats go along with it, same as Republicans. This comes up in a vote package for a funding bill for Israel and Ukraine for some reason. And 155 Democrats in the House and 46 in the Senate voted for it. And I think Democrats just view TikTok is a really useful reason for why they were losing the youth vote, and they were happy to blame it on some nefarious Chinese app. Wow. Anything but take personal accountability for your, like, ways that you're not actually reaching Americans. It's definitely not. It's going to be the anti-Israel China propaganda, you know. It's definitely not that an entirely new generation of Americans saw the most horrific violence ever inflicted on essentially normal people and was bombarded by a.

it everywhere on the internet for weeks. And then we're like, I don't think this is good. Yeah. And then kept tuning into the news being like, well, it's complicated. Like, that's just, how do you hear that and not get angry and frustrated and start mistrusting institutions? Right. And to me, that is the story of TikTok over the last, you know, let's say five or six years,

which is a bunch of very powerful people in America purposely misunderstanding it and using it as an excuse for why they suck so bad. Totally. And also by, you know, looking like you're doing something about an issue, whether it be protecting our girls or dealing with data leaks and all of the privacy issues of tech, by dealing with it just by attacking TikTok, you can be seen to be doing something while not actually tackling the real issues at all. That's exactly right. So the conflict in Israel and Palestine, the letter going viral, this quote unquote, this was the event that all these politicians were waiting for, the smoking gun that America's youth had been brainwashed. On November 4th, Representative Mike Gallagher, speaking to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party's Twitter account, says, how are so many young people in America siding with Hamas Terrace?

Where are they getting their news? The real answer increasingly is TikTok, an app under the de facto control of the Chinese party. And then Josh Hawley, who we've talked about many times on this show because he is just a horrible little boy in a man's suit screeching about things he doesn't understand all the time. He says, well, data security issues are paramount less often discussed is TikTok's power to radically distort the world picture that America's young people encounter. Israel's unfolding war with Hamas is a crucial test case. And then you can't have anti-Chinese stuff happening in D.C. without my man, Marka Rubio, who then jumps in and says TikTok had become cesspools of pro-Hamas

misinformation and indoctrination that we're brainwashing American youth. Yeah. Videos posted by Israeli soldiers themselves, definitely Hamas propaganda. To TikTok. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Like, I'm sorry. Like if like the Israeli soldiers posting war crime footage to TikTok were not like winning the PR battle that like conservatives in America wanted.

The videos of normal people and soldiers documenting a genocide are really making people worried about this genocide. Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's such a ridiculous thing to put at the feet of TikTok. Yeah. Is it oversimplifying to think that, if not for Israel's war in Gaza, that this would have just continued to be kicked around as a hypothetical in legislation for forever? Because it was talked to, I mean, like Trump started talking about it, Biden talked about it,

but it was not, lots of things are talked about in U.S. government for years. Do we think that this was the thing that really made it be packaged and pushed through pretty quickly for U.S. government? Rachel, what do you think there? It wouldn't surprise me. But, I mean, I think that there was already a lot of anti-China kind of sentiment that had this. It was just waiting for a spark, I think.

And it could have been anything. And it probably would have eventually gotten us to the same place. But I think that this was a really easy one, too. especially get the Democrats super on side with as well because there's a lot of like pro-Israel sentiment in the Democratic Party. So, you know, that definitely seeing that shift where people are acknowledging the Palestinians or human beings is, you know, a bridge too far. And so that was a clear, easy spark for a lot of, you know, for a bipartisan kind of flame to erupt from. I think, yeah, if it wasn't this, it would have been something else. Like there, there's now

plenty of wedge issues between, like, young leftists and, like, establishment Democrats. And if it wasn't, yeah, if it wasn't, it wasn't, it was. You know, in Israel would have been something else. Yeah. Was there another moment where you thought, oh, I think they're going to use this to Trojan Horse TikTok as a TikTok ban? I mean, there's a lot of little moments that it's like the Flint. You know, there's like a little spark comes off, but it doesn't quite catch.

And it's, I mean, I guess, no, this doesn't really work because it's after the fact. But I was just thinking of that concern about the Romanian election. There's, you know, there's always these little moments where different jurisdictions teeter closer towards banning TikTok. And it's whenever, you know, it's whenever something happens in the news that can be blamed on TikTok. And you see that with these kinds of things happen all the time with other social media platforms, but you don't see the same discussion or outrage or, you know, blow up around it. It takes a lot more. But you have these little bubbling moments all the time with TikTok because they're so primed and ready to act. But I'd have to think about clear examples.

I got one. I got one. You got one? Let's say the conflict of Palestine never happens. And the timeline stays largely the same. I think trans rights would have been the next big internecine Democrat fight to spell out on TikTok. And we have not seen the Democrats be that enthusiastic about protecting the trans community. And so I could easily see a situation where they're like, TikTok, the Chinese government is turning all of our children into having a pronoun.

now, you know, it'll be one of those. So I would say it could be something. Yeah, so it just, it needed to be something that the right already hates and that the establishment Democrats go, this is why we're losing. So whatever falls into that umbrella. I wonder at the Luigi. Luigi could have been another one. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Yeah, there's like, and there's more now, because of TikTok, you know, destroying the Democratic party, obviously. But no, there's just a lot of these wedge issues that. that politicians were just waiting for. Yeah. And that's how we ended up on the brink of a ban. An idea first kicked around by Trump, reconfigured by Biden,

then saved by Trump again, at least for the moment. Because the majority of the establishment do want to shudder this app or they want to control it. Because to them, it represents all of their fever dreams about what's wrong with the world.

And it's a very, very important and politically powerful way to say, could I be wrong? No, it is the youth of America. who are wrong, et cetera. And after the break, we're going to talk about what can be lost if Trump changes his mind again. Tick-Tock ban. What are you going to do? I have been... Well, I should say, wait, it won't affect you, right? No. Well, so here's the thing. It won't affect me immediately. I do, like, I don't know what's going to happen to any American followers I have,

like if a bunch of my engagement and views will tank. But Canada, if the U.S. does something for national security reasons, there's going to be an immediate push in Canada to follow suit. Like we tend to move in lockstep with the states when it comes to a lot of this stuff. I actually interviewed a national security expert, like a Canadian one, about this. And she said that especially with the EU also looking into it after, you know, the freak out with the Romanian election about Russia. maybe artificially boosting a candidate in Romania via TikTok,

as if they don't also do tons of stuff on Twitter and everywhere else. But the EU is also looking into TikTok. So if all of these jurisdictions that we have so many security partnerships with end up banning TikTok, we probably will too. So it's like if it happens to you guys, it's just a matter of time. Yeah, it's, I was asked today actually like, you know, like, well, TikTok just shut down, which I think is like such a funny American, like, like react to this.

Like, yeah, they can't have less, so they got to shut the whole thing down. And just to be clear, as of 2024, there were 150 million TikTok users based in the U.S. There are a billion monthly active users. So, yes, we make up a significant chunk, but it's not the biggest. I've seen estimates that, like, if you remove America from TikTok, it becomes like an overwhelmingly Indonesian app, which is kind of interesting. Oh, interesting. Yeah, there are like TikTok pockets around the world.

And we also have seen examples of what happens when countries get removed from TikTok. So are you familiar with like the Indian TikTok band? Yeah. I'm very still upset about it because it got rid of my favorite TikTok trend, which was Indian boys crying on TikTok. There's a Facebook page you want to check it out where they would record themselves like with like demon eyes and dramatic music. They would also like film themselves going to like their ex-girlfriend's weddings and like doing like dramatic poses and stuff. Indian TikTok was so good. Like, it was so fucking good.

Wow. And then Russian TikTok got banned, although they're still using it. According to, like, research that our researcher Adam and I have done over the last couple years, there's, like, Cyrillic hashtags around, like, Russian soap operas trending on TikTok, like, every month. So they're still on there in some capacity. Well, and I wonder, like, how many people are going to just use VPNs in the States? Like, is that, do you think that's going to be a thing? Half the country now has to use one to go to porn hub.

So, yeah, I mean, that does seem to be happening. What is going on down there? Dude, we're losing it. Like, things are bad here. Yeah, it's a mess. Yeah, I, yeah, there would probably be some VPN usage. But I do think that like the magic of the peak TikTok era was, I mean, it's very much similar to the story of Twitter, which was like, it was this imperfect, fairly ugly and kind of psychotic

public square that we were all on. And then like, we couldn't handle it anymore. Yeah. And we have to, like, go break up. And, like, there'll be, there'll be like a million TikTok competitors, too, I bet. Yeah. But I don't think any of them will get, I feel like they won't have the juice, you know, like, because one thing that TikTok did, I listened to Taylor Lorenz did a podcast episode about this.

And she was speaking with, I think it was either a Vox or a wire journalist. I'd have to look again. But, but either way, they were talking about this. And they were saying that one of the things that's so unique to TikTok is how it didn't necessarily put all its weight behind big creators. It like, anybody could have their day of going viral and anybody could have their life changed overnight. There's people who have paid off medical debt, paid off student loans, like, you know, just

go on there and have one video go viral and it pays their rent or whatever, you know? And it's, I think that that is something that meta products and stuff really don't prioritize. Like, they prioritize brands. Twitter prioritizes psychos. You know, it's, it's, they're. is no platform that is as like little guy focused as TikTok that I've encountered anyways. I mean, blue sky is like the only normal platform that I've encountered recently.

But like, yeah, so to me, that's something really special that I just really, I can't see, you know, people are talking about like, oh, why another competitor will show up. So why does it matter? It matters because the American corporate giants who run meta and all those things, they don't really know the magic of giving a shit about the little guy and letting them be the ones that are driving the platform and going viral and feel like they have a shot of being heard. I think that's exactly right. TikTok is not YouTube. It's not like something you would sit and watch on your television.

And it's not Facebook where it's something where you're, you might see like updates from your neighbors. But like for the most part, you're seeing like magicians eat out of toilets or like a picture of Jesus made of crabs. like stuff that everybody loves. And so like TikTok was like a unique experience where something insane would come out of there once a month. And it was not usually being made by professionals. It was just made by people. Exactly.

One thing that I've sort of come back to is this conversation I had with someone who worked in sort of like Chinese digital media. They worked on like China's version of like mashable or, you know, one of those viral sites or whatever. We were able to have like a fairly open conversation, you know, even though we were in Beijing, about censorship. And they were making jokes about how, like, well, you know, I hope you like your free speech, Trump's president, you know, this was a couple years ago.

And they were like ragging on me for like, that's what happens when you like have free speech. And I was like, look, just like Osama bin Laden, you're making some great points. But the way they sort of described Diyan was, you know, the fear was that if you gave China, a country that, you know, is now still pulling itself out of poverty and is, like, creating a real middle class. But you're dealing with a lot of people who, like, don't have the same kind of literacy rates or media literacy rates or sort of cultural norms. And you're putting them all in line that, like, the way you would silo them algorithmically is exactly what TikTok does to us, where you're seeing your own little bubble. And that's to make sure that, like, being eclipsed by the loudest, dumbest people, you're sort of, you're allowed to have your little bubble. Yeah.

And I think in the West, we talk about filter bubbles as this. bad thing. But like TikTok, it's not that simple. Like a filter bubble can also be very protective. And I think you see this with minorities, with queer people, with with young people, they, they feel like they're in this safe space on TikTok to express themselves. It's a, it's not as simple as I think we've made it out to be over here. No, no, I don't think so. There's like any major social tool, there's going to be pros and cons and there's going to be things that are really about it and things that are a little more toxic about it. And it has the same issues, and in some ways, less relative to other platforms. I mean, like, you go on Twitter and the kinds

of accounts that are prioritized and that you're going to see and that will interact with you the most are not usually the best people. And then you go on TikTok and maybe you're getting a more siloed view, but, you know, I also am not going to be called the C-word. nonstop. And, you know, it's just like each platform has its differences because there are, there's people involved. And the algorithm shapes which people see you and which people you see, but let's not kid ourselves and act like the ones run by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are inherently healthier or more pro-social than the ones run by China. And I mean, for what it's worth, like I can rattle off close to a dozen instances where Facebook has been

proven to have created mob violence. Yeah, 100%. There has just now in the U.S. been like a story about like some TikTok led mob violence, but that was in like a college campus in Boston. And like those kids, yeah, they did a bad. They did like a fake to catch a predator thing. And like it wasn't a predator and then like beat the hell out of this guy. Oh.

But like I don't have a ton of other examples of like TikTok misinformation spinning out of control and like villages being burned down in Bangladesh or something. It's not to me. It has always felt like a more moderated, less insane place than I think it gets a lot of credit for, whereas Facebook is like a mess. Like Instagram is a mess. Twitter is horrifying. None of these things are like TikTok, which feels very anodyne to me. Yeah.

And I don't know. I feel like, you know, there's pros and cons to the heavier moderation that you encounter on TikTok. Sure, of course. But honestly, like, I don't even think humans cause. small violence. And when you give us more abilities to connect with one another, which the internet does, which social media writ large does, the, you know, the village idiot's going to find all the other village idiots and they're going to storm the capital, you know? Like, this is the reality that we live in right now. And again, I feel like I'm such a broken record with it, but it's not a TikTok specific

issue. And, you know, I guess you could even make the argument that maybe it's less of an issue on TikTok. I haven't researched it enough to know for sure whether that's the case. But like, I just think that banning one platform is not the solution, especially when it further consolidates the power of of like a few Trump boot-looking tech bros to control conversations happening in the U.S. Plus, there's no time for mob violence if you have a filter that makes your body look like string cheese. Exactly. Have you seen the people who are sort of coming out of the woodwork now and being like,

yeah, TikTok should be taken away from you people. You're all brain-rodded. It's funny. And I do sort of agree that people are brain-rodded. but I don't think it's TikTok's fault. I think that there's this knee-jerk reaction that a lot of people have to seeing normal average people express their like messy and oftentimes ugly thoughts online.

And like the history of the internet is just people seeing how normal people communicate and going insane. And now that we can hear them talk and see them move, like we're going doubly insane. We're being like, I can't believe that this random woman from New York would share a letter from Osama bin Laden. And it's like, I can. She's a normal weird person.

Like, everyone's weird. I don't know. Exactly. It's a bummer because I do feel like we're losing a connection online that is not going to be easy to recreate. No, it's not going to be. It's a huge loss. It's, I think it's really sad. It's going to hurt a lot of people.

There's a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on it and who have quit jobs. Like, you know, I see that one guy who's always like, you know, talking about he's ranking like beans and stuff. Oh, yeah, the bean rinker. Yeah. And he was like, I'm going to have. to go back to working at McDonald's, and I'm like, damn. It's just like, it's such bullshit that that's being lost and that all of these like interesting, creative, you know, just people who have all kinds of things that the world should, or maybe shouldn't listen to, you know,

we're losing conversation and we're losing perspectives that maybe other apps wouldn't necessarily amplify or show us. And I think that that's a really ultimately sad thing to have to say goodbye to. My favorite TikTokers, uh, B. Dillon Thomas. He's the guy who makes like old recipes from like old cookbooks. Oh, I've seen those. Yeah. I love him. He's the best.

There's so much jello. So much jello. Yeah. They love it. I think he made like a ham jello the other day. It was like absolutely disgusting. But I couldn't stop watching. The lady eating the ham jello would have probably also read an Osama bin Laden letter.

You know, just she didn't have the internet. There's nothing, you know, there's nothing wrong with accidentally amplifying a terrorist letter because it has some interesting thoughts. because normal people don't have to be journalists. If they don't want to, they can just be dumb online. And that's okay. And I feel like that's really the point of today's episode is that no matter what happens, no matter what replaces TikTok, people should be equally dumb there and be totally fine with that. Rachel, if people want to follow you online, where can they do that?

Oh, I'm really about at consolidating my stuff. I have a link tree in any bio. So if you find me on one place, you can find me anywhere. I'm on. My name's Rachel Gilmore. I have Bubble Pop with Rachel Gilmore as my substack. that same naming kind of the bubble pop is my brand name, I guess, that I'm working on, but I'm on Patreon, I'm on Twitch, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok.

If you want to follow her on TikTok, you can download ExpressVPN, and then you can set your server to Toronto, Canada, and then you can access her TikTok. And actually, you'll probably see more of my stuff because you'll be in Canada. Like, when I lived in Tunisia, I saw so much Tunisian content. It was so fun. Like, it's so location specific. I used to get Brazilian TikTok when I was living in Brazil, and it was wild. It was great.

A lot of twerking. And like this really good video about a shark, which they call Tuberrao. It's like, da-da-da-tubarang. It was like a great song. And see, this is the beautiful stuff that we're going to lose. You'll lose at least. Yeah, I will lose, yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, thanks for coming on. This is great. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Panic World is a Garbage Day production. It's written and produced by Grubes. Grant Irving, hosted by myself with research from the always fantastic Adam Bumas. A huge thanks to Gabby Cash for designing the incredibly deranged art for this show. And a huge thank you to Kat Rajesk, our lovely video editor.

And if you'd like to sponsor an episode, you can reach out to Multitude, our wonderful partners, multitude. We have a Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com slash panic world. And I'd like to end this episode with an important reminder. Log off and touch grass while you still can.