Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Is TikTok really dead?

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Last week, TikTok lost its challenge to stop a ban or forced sale in the United States. WIRED senior business editor Louise Matsakis joins Taylor to discuss what happens next and if this is really the end of the road for TikTok. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Taylor Lorenz. Welcome to Power User. Last week, TikTok lost its challenge to stop a ban of the app in the United States. I've been in deep denial about this and a lot of creators have been too, but the ban is looking more and more likely. My guest today is honestly the best person to talk about this. Louise Mitzikas reports on China and Tech for Wired. Hi, Louise, welcome to Power User. Hey, it's so great to be here, Taylor. Okay, so I wanted to talk to you because I feel like you are the expert of all things about sort of China and tech. And I think you just got back from Taiwan learning Chinese. Is that correct? Yeah, that's very nice of you to say. Yes, I was just in Taiwan for about 10 weeks doing an intensive Chinese course. Well, I feel like we can't talk about China and tech without talking about TikTok. So what is going on with TikTok? Catch us up to speed because obviously we see news that the ban is back on. what is the latest? I know they lost the court case. Can you give us a kind of like 101 on where things stand right now? Yeah. First of all, I just want to acknowledge that if you find this difficult

to follow, you're not alone. I think it's been about four and a half years now since we first started talking about TikTok being banned. It was about like the middle of 2020. Okay, so maybe four years since we started talking about this. And I kind of feel like the girl who cried wolf, like I've talked so many times about TikTok maybe, you know, not being available in the U.S. or the app getting banned here or what have you. But maybe not all listeners will believe it this time, but it's for real, guys. Like, this is actually the time that it's like looking truly, truly bad. This is not just like something that Trump is tweeting or whatever. Like, this is really like the courts have made a really important decision. So the specifics are that last week, there was a decision in this case

where TikTok sued the U.S. government for passing a law that would basically force either TikTok's parent company BightDance to sell its U.S. operations to an American company by January 19th, or the app would be banned. So people describe the law as like a ban or sell law, basically. So TikTok sued saying that the law was unconstitutional because banning this platform that 170 million Americans use, they argued constituted a violation of the First Amendment, aka it violated people's right to free speech. However, TikTok lost that case and the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. cited with the U.S. government. Basically, the court said that there are legitimate national security issues here. So what happens next is that the case could go to the

Supreme Court. And how likely do you think that the Supreme Court would take this up? I think they are likely to take this case, but it's hard to predict which way they would rule. The justices seem like they are interested in protecting free speech. But historically, courts have given a lot of leeway to national security issues and have given a lot of sort of deference to the executive branch and the president to make judgments about national security. So speaking of the national security stuff, I feel like one thing that's really concerning to me is that there doesn't seem to be any proof. we still don't have this like smoking gun of all the allegations, I guess, that are made against TikTok. And of course, American companies also have been involved like Facebook in foreign interference and elections or schemes and stuff. So has the U.S. government come with anything new? Is there a smoking gun at this point?

No. And actually, if you read the court's opinion, it's really interesting because they acknowledge that a lot of the concerns about TikTok being owned by a Chinese company were actually. hypothetical. But they said that those hypothetical national security issues were enough to determine that the law was in fact constitutional. So yeah, we don't have a smoking gun. We don't have any evidence that the Chinese government is spying on Americans through TikTok or that they're trying to manipulate people's For You page to promote certain ideas. We really don't have that kind of evidence. But that's not because the Chinese government is benevolent. What we've seen time and time again is that they're able to get information that they want from Americans, their personal data, their social security numbers, you know, where they come and go through other means, right?

Right now. Like third party Facebook vendors. Yeah, exactly. It's not that I'm trying to say, oh, the Chinese government doesn't have an interest in sort of espionage and hacking. It's that I don't think they need to do it through TikTok. No, they can do it through any other data brokers and all of the data that's being harvested on every American social app.

Along with this sort of law then, I mean, does that take in tiny account? Is there any sort of comprehensive data privacy reform that's going to be passed along with this ban to ensure that Americans are kept safe from China? That's a very nice thought, Taylor, but the reality is no. So there is nothing stopping another app from coming along and basically doing the same thing and it being owned potentially by another foreign adversary or a different country or collecting your data and selling it to the Chinese government through maybe some complicated supply chain. There is nothing here that really applies in a broader context that is designed to protect

your privacy in a general sense. This is really a law that was specifically designed in order to target TikTok and to target its subsidiaries. And that was part of what TikTok tried to argue to the court, right, that this is not actually about national security in China. It's about cracking down on one platform, but the court did not agree. Even though it is kind of cracking down on one platform, right? I personally think so. Yeah, it's kind of been really frustrating over the last four years to watch as people in D.C., in particular, lawmakers on both sides of the spectrum, we should say.

Like, this was originally sort of something that came from Republicans, but then really became a bipartisan issue that all of the focus was on this single app. and what this app could and couldn't do, what kind of data it was collecting. And I think, honestly, a lot of that has to do with the fact that increasingly less so, but generally TikTok is known for having a pretty young user base. And a progressive user base. Yeah, and a very progressive user base. And I think it was really telling that you saw time and time again that politicians who are really worried about this

would readily admit in interviews that they haven't actually used the app themselves. And I think TikTok is really the type of thing where if you haven't spent a good amount of time using it yourself, you don't really know what it's about. And you can't really get the vibe from like reading a think tank report or something like that. Well, it's also, I mean, I feel like I've reported on this a bit too, but meta and Google have aggressively campaigned against TikTok and led smear campaigns that I think the media has fed into. I mean, there's been a lot of reports of these fake TikTok challenges that then end up in Senate. hearings and other things brought up. What role do you think those sorts of campaigns, those lobbying campaigns, those PR campaigns in the media played in this decision? I think there's no doubt that if TikTok went away, it would be incredibly beneficial for Facebook and their Instagram Reels product. Certainly a lot of people would try and find the same content on YouTube, which also now has a vertical short form video platform as well. But I think that really TikTok,

became a symbol of rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China and that Google and Facebook didn't really need to do anything. It just became sort of a household name. It became this incredible, I don't know how to put it, like almost, I guess I think a symbol is sort of the right word. I think it's a boogeyman. It's used to push a moral panic. And it's like, I mean, so much of the conversation around this is moral panic and sort of like you said, these hypothetical fears. But of course, if those hypothetical fears were actual legitimate concerns, we would be doing things to address them. And it seems like they're not interested in that. And I know the New York Times and Wall Street Journal both reported, and I had known this too

for my own reporting, that the impetus for bringing back this ban last year from Rep Gallagher, who really spearheaded this effort, was around speech on the app. And young people, especially espousing progressive values and pro-Palestinian sentiment. And that was sort of what put it back on his radar. And that seems really concerning that so much of the, even the hearings about TikTok were, it wasn't really about China. It was about the speech happening on the app and the desire to censor speech. I totally agree. I think one of the really interesting things about reporting on U.S.-China relations is that a lot of the time, particularly with older conservative of lawmakers, but across the spectrum, this issue with China or this thing we're afraid of

really has very little basis in China or is not really relevant to China, but it becomes this boogeyman or this thing that we can talk about that is actually a vessel for our own anxieties. So I think towards the end of the TikTok saga, you know, as the bill was passing, I saw a lot of lawmakers. And I think you probably saw this to Taylor when the CEO of Taylor. when the CEO of TikTok testified before Congress, a lot of those questions weren't about China. They were about kids and social media, right? They were about, you know, like fears about like what kids are learning online.

Yes, it all feeds into. I mean, we've been covering a lot on this show, this broad moral panic about kids and technology use. And yeah, it was like kids are boiling NyQuil chicken and other conspiracies. And it's terrifying, I think, because of course this law has pretty. significant ramifications, right? I'm curious, will it only affect TikTok or will it also affect other bite dance apps like Lemonate and Capcut? Lemonate being their sort of Pinterest competitor and Capcut being, I think, like the main mobile video editor for the entire content creator industry. So what is the fate of some of those other bite dance apps? Is this like a bite dance ban or will it be more limited? This is a bite dance ban. So it will definitely apply to the other by dance subsidiaries because

they are, you know, share the same. No, not Capcut. Don't make you learn Premiere again. I know. I know. Capcut is so much better than Premiere. I really think it's understated the role that it's played in allowing so many more people to become creators because it was so, it just got so much easier to, like, edit a video right on your phone and then upload it right away and to have it look at least like somewhat professional or like have some cuts or some different views. There's nothing like it. There is nothing like it. And it's actually interesting, like I'm curious our thoughts too, how quickly TikTok pushed these other companies. Like we basically have a duopoly outside of TikTok between meta and Google. And neither meta or Google has ever invested in creator tools, never really

prioritized creator. Well, YouTube, of course, prioritized creators, but not like they don't have a editing suite like Capcut that's available to them. And it seems like TikTok was able to really challenge them and force them to innovate and force them to actually better serve users. And now that they're eliminating that competition, it seems like users are the ones that are going to lose out. I think that's right. And I think the reason that TikTok was able to do that and ByDance was able to do that is that they're really the only major social media company. I would venture to say in the last 10 years that has been able to take lessons it learned in the biggest and most online market in the world, which is China. And then take.

take those lessons and use them to succeed and to compete in the U.S. market. And I think that's part of what makes TikTok's competitors afraid because they've been shut out of the Chinese market, right? Like there is an argument that I think you can make that's, okay, why is BightDance able to dominate both the U.S. market and the Chinese market when meta, Google, a ton of other American companies were shut out of that market, right? That's what makes BightDance so interesting. And I think one of the things they learned was, hey,

if you want people to upload good content, you have to give them the tools in order to do that. Well, of course, the irony is that it was all built out of Musically, which was right here and which could have sold to Viacom or in another American company, and which it couldn't. And it, I mean, Musically was forced to sell in large part, as I reported in my book, because Meadow was driving them out of business. And it does seem sort of anti-competitive to hand this win to Meta and Google. a way. It's going to obviously also have huge economic impacts. This seems like it's, I mean, it's going to devastate millions of Americans that rely on the app for income, millions of small businesses. What is the fallout going to be from this ban? I think it's going to be catastrophic in a lot of ways. And it's going to be particularly loud because these are small businesses, small

creators that have built an audience on this platform that they cannot build elsewhere. Right. Like I I think in the environment of like five to ten years ago, there were a lot of small businesses were like, you know, they were great, they were beloved, and they sort of had like a kind of popular Instagram page, maybe like a few thousand likes on their Facebook page. And that was it, right? Maybe a few hundred on their YouTube if they were lucky. And that was like the extent of their digital presence. That is not how TikTok works. If you do well as a small business on TikTok, that can transform your entire company overnight. You know, we're talking like one really passionate baker who bakes in her home kitchen. And in a few months, she can, like, have two

storefronts and a staff of a dozen employees and, like, credit almost all of that success to the audience that she was able to find rapidly on TikTok. And that's not to say that TikTok is some kind company that wants to make these small businesses do well. What it is is that their strategy is always to diffuse, diffuse, diffuse. They would rather have, you know, 10,000 stay-at-home moms who each sell like three sweaters through the TikTok shop, then try and lure one big celebrity that sells 30,000 in a night or whatever it is. They think that the way to build a sustainable platform is to hedge your bets by turning as many people as possible into sort of like micro-influencers or trying to lure these small businesses.

And I think that one consequence of that strategy, which has been very successful, is now you have really a lot of people all over the country who probably are not making a million dollars a year, although there are some here in Los Angeles for sure, but they're making five, $10,000 from the platform. And that's really meaningful for their life. Yeah. I mean, I did a story months ago where I was interviewing small business owners about this. And I mean, these are like mom and pop businesses across the country. These are people where they, this is how they're feeding their family. This is how they're paying for health care. Like it just seems so wild that these lawmakers truly don't give a shit about any of them. I mean, there is no alternative. There simply is no US

alternative. There's no other platform that has that level of e-commerce integration and discovery. Like TikTok, as you mentioned, there's something very democratic about it because it is so built around discovery that small creators can thrive there in different ways and be discovered. And YouTube and meta are just so incredibly saturated. It makes me nervous. I really, I really do wonder sort of what that follow is going to be. And also like, who people are going to blame for it. Totally. I think one possible scenario here, and I don't know how legally viable it is, is that actually what happens is that Trump does make good on his promise to quote unquote save the platform. And one way he could do that is even if the Supreme Court decides,

to let the law stay, to uphold the law. Trump could basically just not really enforce it. It's not clear how long he would necessarily get away with that. I feel like the platforms are just going to abide by the law, though. Even if he's like, I'm not going to enforce it. No one's going to believe him. He changes his mind all the time. And that shifts the burden.

Like the risk is then solely on Apple and Google. Do you know what I mean? So I feel like... Yeah, but we could end up in sort of a weird, space, I think. Again, like, it's so hard to know where, like, you can't download it from the app store, but it still works on your phone. Until it doesn't. Yeah, until it doesn't, for sure. But I just, maybe I'm just in denial, but I can't believe just that, like, on January 19th, you'll open the app and it won't work anymore. One of the reasons that I remain somewhat

optimistic that Trump will want to intervene is that it was interesting to see how as this law got closer and closer to passing and as more and more lawmakers became convinced that banning TikTok was the right move, you saw the public go in the complete opposite direction. There was a really great poll from the Pew Research Center, which showed that as the TikTok saga unfolded, a lot more people became unsure about whether they wanted to see TikTok get banned. And a number of people also said, no, I actually don't think this is a good idea. Now that I've watched the news for the last 18 months or whatever and seeing how this is gone, I don't actually think this is a good idea. So I wonder if the risk to voters, the risk to losing public sentiment, losing public trust.

And also, you know, the big elephant in the room is that these politicians, particularly Trump, rely on TikTok to reach voters, right? Like, this has become a really important platform for politics. That was the irony of Biden doing all of this, which is like at the same time that Biden is spewing misinformation about TikTok and pushing this moral panic about the app and his whole administration is pushing really dangerous censorship. They're leveraging it. They're like celebrating and then Kamala HQ account. It's like they're using TikTok. So it just, it seems like this mind fuck, you know, or it's like it seems so incongruous. These politicians just seem willing to talk out

of both sides of their mouth. Yeah, you know, I used to think like, hey, I'm going to, you know, give the lawmakers, the suits in D.C. a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. Like, I don't have a security clearance. Like, maybe they've seen some sort of classified information that's really, really troubling, right? And I've seen plenty of really wild sort of Chinese hacking incidents, you know, in the news this week is that China was able to get a lot of information from U.S. telecoms, right? Phone numbers, all sorts of personal information from people. And that they were really sophisticated sort of espionage operation. And they're very interested in getting data from Americans. But if that was surely the case, then why is the Kamala Harris campaign

posting on TikTok every day and like, why is she risking her staffers, you know, logging in and out of the app, right? Like, it doesn't actually make sense. We'll be back after the break to talk more about kids and technology and China's role in everything with Louise. So regardless of whether it ends and it seems like it will be banned, this threat of China doesn't seem to be going to away. And it seems like China is playing a bigger and bigger role in the U.S. tech ecosystem. Is that accurate to say? And what do you think is their sort of long-term goal in Silicon Valley? So I think there are two broad things happening. One is that the new Cold War, geopolitical competition, the threat of China getting to a superintelligence first has become this enormous sort of narrative that is being used by

Facebook, by OpenAI, by a bunch of defense companies in Silicon Valley that are now trying to be the new defense contractors. And I think that that narrative is sort of like permeating everywhere in tech and is something that is very popular and that is bipartisan. And I don't think that that's going anywhere and that's going to continue to be a huge source of rhetoric from these companies. And I think it's worth pushing back. Like what are you actually afraid of? What is the real concern here. Like, why this app? Why are we worried about this specific thing? What is the consequence of this? What are the tradeoffs of making everything about national security? The second thing, which is really the amazing irony, is that while TikTok has been under all the scrutiny over the last

few years, two companies in particular that are also Chinese have become a huge part of the everyday lives of literally tens of millions of Americans. And those are Timu and Sheehan, which are both fast fashion sort of Amazon competitors. My mother-in-law the other day texted me and said, do you shop on Timu? And I think it just showed that like these shopping platforms, which also collect a lot of data about you and are also owned by two really big Chinese companies, were allowed to thrive and grow as all the focus was on TikTok. Yeah, Timu had a like a Super Bowl commercial last year. Yeah, I think the last time I checked, Timu has been downloaded 100 million times.

in the U.S. And no moral panic about that, of course. Like, you don't see. There's been a little bit, but like literally I think that like Congress sort of lost interest because I think that I think that there's also this understanding that one thing that keeps Americans placated is their ability to buy cheap stuff. And I think that lawmakers are less interested in getting in the way of that than they are in like, oh, this dancing app that's poisoning the youth and making them like more leftist, right? Like, that is a more compelling narrative than the stuff is too cheap on this app, right? Well, I guess it goes back to like the data privacy concerns. I mean, if you were, again, so concerned about China getting access to our highly sensitive data, we would have more protections.

And I think, as you mentioned, companies like that, also gaming companies, right? There's a ton of Chinese investment in gaming companies. These are also, I would argue, de facto social platforms that are harvesting data and connecting people. And the focus is obviously very singular sort of on TikTok in that way. But I guess what do you see in the future in the next five years, as you mentioned, this sort of Cold War happening? How do you think that will play out? I definitely think you're going to see more of this. And I think what you are going to notice when maybe you travel to other parts of the world is that we're going to see this split between Chinese platforms and products, right, such as electric cars and American. ones. And I think that you're going to maybe have this weird experience of like, you go to Mexico and you're like, oh, there's all these electric cars here. And like, I've never seen any of these in the U.S. Oh, that's because they're all Chinese. And maybe you go and call an Uber and it's like, oh, actually everyone uses Didi here, which we can't use in the U.S. because we've cracked down on Chinese apps. And like maybe, let's say, like, there is a crackdown on Timo and Shian. Well, then, you know, when you're on vacation in Thailand and you need something that's for sale on Timo, that's what you'll use there. instead of Amazon. And so I think you're going to see this splintering move to other parts of the world. And I think that Chinese companies have, in a lot of cases, exhausted the domestic market.

So if they want to keep growing, they need to go somewhere. And I think that they're going to continue to try and compete in places where maybe Facebook and Google's hold on the market is not as tight as it is here. We're not going to stop using these American platforms that are headquartered here. But I don't necessarily think that Vietnam is going to want to keep using Facebook over TikTok necessarily. No, I feel like that's what the threat is and also why they want to ban it so bad or why Meadow is pushing it so hard is this is their first real competitor. And it's a much better product and it's more appealing. And it is just undeniably more engaging. I think it's also kind of weird and I'm curious your thoughts of this of like, you know, we've always criticized China

as a country for being so closed off. And like you said, like they don't allow our apps. So why should we allow their apps, whatever? But it does seem like this focus on China is ironically making us more kind of China like where it seems like we're cracking down. We're developing our own tech ecosystem where we're further cut off from the world. I mean, I think of just TikTok in terms of how much we learn and engage with the world and international discussions and knowledge sharing that happens on there. And it seems very bizarre that we're sort of receding back into the boundaries of our own country and being cut off from all of those discussions and connections and the global market.

Totally. Isn't it really depressing? I think that that's bad. And I think one of the most frustrating things about the China obsession, I think it's fair to call it an obsession. Like, it really is. The imaginary China that looms large in the heads of some of these lawmakers is really wild and has little basis in reality a lot of the time. But what really makes me that about it is, yeah, like a more closed off world, a more closed off country. But also, like, I want us to do things because we want to do them and because we believe in America, not out of fear or competition with this other place, right? Often when I look at, like, Chinese legislation, it's coming from like, oh, we've identified this domestic issue, right? Or like, we've identified

this problem that people are concerned about or that, you know, whatever, the authoritarian government is concerned about, to be completely honest. But at least it's coming from. from a place of like we're focused on us and like doing our thing and trying to make it better for what we want. I hate that like so much of these policies come out of this idea of, oh no, there's this app from somewhere else. Like we need to do something about that app rather than like privacy is a fundamental right that we believe is part of our American values and something that we want to protect for our own reasons and our own morals. And that's the worst part about it. When you're so worried and anxious about that guy over there, it's really hard to, you're

just think about what you need and what your country needs and what is best for your own people. Yeah. And I feel like we're losing relevance, right? Like America is already losing global relevance and this, I think, will just escalate it in the sense that we're not part of those international conversations or that global ecosystem. What are some things that you're seeing in terms of tech trends and just interesting product developments? When you say that five years ago, you were sort of thinking, oh, there might be a lot of this stuff in China coming to the U.S. What are you seeing today that might sort of give us a peek into the tech landscape of the future in America and elsewhere?

That's a great question. I'm going to give you just like one fun example and that I could talk a little bit more broadly. So it was in China recently and their version of Uber, which is called D.D. has this amazing service where you literally can call a D.D. like as in like a designated driver. And so a man or a woman, but it's usually a man, will literally roll up. on a tiny electric scooter, fold up the electric scooter, put it in your trunk, and then drive you home. Oh, my gosh.

We need this in Los Angeles, like, immediately. Truly, the amount of times I've seen, like, obviously drunk drivers on the road in L.A. is so concerning. So sometimes it's things like that where I feel like it's such a big market and there's so much competition that that pressure creates a lot of innovation. And I think that there's a lot of interest in sort of like iteration. So, like, I think in the U.S., we say to ourselves, oh, like, that genius male founder, came up with that idea and like that thing already exists. And so like the myth of that is already

there and I can't do that. I have to like sit by myself in my room and close my eyes and come up with an original idea. Whereas in China it's like, oh, well, like I can see a tiny hole in that guy's app and I'm just going to exploit it and like basically copy his app and make it slightly better. And then the next guy is going to do the same thing and the next guy is going to do the same thing. And so I think that that kind of iterative environment creates a lot of things like the D-D driver service or like these little conveniences that I think, yeah, are just really indicative. Also, like, it's just a place where people spend so much of their time online, even more than

in the U.S., if you can believe it. And what I think that results in is a lot of like, sort of like the Chinese app aesthetic where there's so many things coming at you. There's all these discounts that could be ever spent time on Timo. But if you look at it for a little bit longer, you can like really see. the genius in a lot of it. Like the other day, I was on trip.com, which is like the Chinese Expedia. And I like looked at a hotel that I was almost sure I was going to book. And then I, whatever, went and did something else. And then I went back to the hotel. And it was like,

$3 cheaper than the last time you looked at it. And it's like, that is so genius. And I like booked the hotel right away. And that was enough to like push me over the edge. And there's a lot of things like that where I'm like, this is kind of invasive and icky, but also brilliant sort of. And you start to see over time when you pay enough attention, those little tricks make their way into the U.S. market often. But they're never credited, right? Like, no one's ever like, oh, I took this from Didi or I took this from Doyne, which is the Chinese version of TikTok or whatever it is. But why don't we have that spirit of iteration? Is it just that it's so tough to compete with these duopoly, basically?

I think it comes back to like that founder mentality, right? I need to have this original idea rather than I'm just going to iterate on the thing that somebody else. else is doing. I think that's part of it. I think also there's a lot of focus on being in an environment where like this is the city literally where we make this type of car part. Right. And if you live in that city, it's like you need to figure out a way to like have a job there. So maybe it's that you make the car part for slightly cheaper. Whereas I think in the U.S., we have such a service economy where it's more about being in a group of founders. We're all going to talk about our next idea rather than sort of like I think, I think it's a cultural thing to some extent.

it's also like, I already feel like the U.S. was so cutthroat and competitive. It's like, just add like four times the amount of people, right? And like, imagine what would happen. It's like, of course it would probably get more competitive. Yeah, I think, but also with four times as many people, you can support small niches and things that you can't support in a market that doesn't have that scale. Yeah. I also think part of it too, and like this is a big thing that I think about a lot that scares me, is no one is going to China anymore. And so what I worry about like these sorts of pretty basic observations that I'm sharing with you now sound more insightful than they should, I think, because it's so hard to go there. Like there are so few students now

who are studying there, like, you know, the Peace Corps program, the Fulbright scholarship, both of those were ended during the Trump administration. And so it's a lot easier to be afraid of this place if you've never been or you don't know anyone who lives there. And I think that that makes all of the things we've been discussing a lot worse and harder to combat. Because it used to be like, I don't know if you've had this experience, but I feel like in the last five years, like, when I first started reporting on China, people would be like, oh, yeah. I went on like a great wall tourist trip or whatever with my family or something. Or like, oh, yeah, I studied abroad there, you know, for a semester when I was in college or I went on a high school exchange program. Yeah, it feels very like

Cold War energy. Yeah. But the reverse is not true, right? Like all these people from China are coming here and learning from us. And so that's what I worry about is that it's not happening in the reverse. Well, I don't think Americans are also that fundamentally curious about other countries generally compared to other nations. It's true. One thing that you wrote about a while ago, too, that I wanted to touch back on is just because we were talking about sort of like the moral panic around kids in tech and how so many fears about China end up just basically like sort of, it's really just like sort of domestic fears of like our children. And I think you wrote this piece for the Atlantic last year, but it was about China's sort of like safety things. And we're seeing the resurgence of COSA. It won't die.

The Kids Online Safety Act, this horrible, horrible, horrible, dangerous piece of censorship legislation. And so much of the conversation is, you know, well, China protects their children. How true is that? So that is and isn't true, which is sort of what I went to in the piece. So I think that the first thing that was interesting and why I wanted to pursue that story is that it was fascinating to me that these two countries that, claim to be so different and have complete different political systems were home to parents who had the same concerns, right, about like, rising social media use, about bullying, about their kids talking to people who were predators online, seeing inappropriate content online, or too much screen time for like really little kids. But the difference between these two places is that China already has the most sophisticated surveillance regime in the world and they track the activity of

everyone on the internet. And so they were able to sort of wield that system in order to try and crack down specifically on minors. And so there are these rules now that I think it's about an hour a week now during the school week that kids are allowed, quote unquote, allowed to play video games, right? But the reality, and this is exactly what would happen here if we pass the same kind of laws, is that when the toddler is crying, like, their mom just hands them their phone, that they're using their national ID to log into, right? Or like, if your kid is begging you to play video games, or maybe you like playing video games and you want to play video games with your kid, right?

Like, you're just going to log in under your name. It always ends up being a parental issue. And it is about the decisions that parents make privately within their own families. And that's still the case, even in this elaborate surveillance regime that we don't have here. We don't have the ability to... We don't have it. Yeah, but I think that's... the whole issue, right, is that there is this desire to create and replicate that surveillance

machine through bills like COSA that require age verification, right? Or like facial scans or just all of these efforts to tie your offline identity to your online. I actually think this was like one of the most terrifying moments of my career was at the White House Content Creators Day or whatever back in August that they had with Biden. Yeah, I remember this. Nira Tandins of Biden admin official. And she was asking this crowd of hundreds of content creators, who wants to remove anonymity from the internet? Raise your hand if you wish that basically all your trolls could be en masse and we could eliminate anonymity from the internet. And everyone pretty much raised their hand and cheered and was rooting for this. And then she proceeded to give this whole Q&A, basically the

entire day was about removing anonymity from the internet and tying your offline identity to your online behavior. And I think the fact that they're trying to get these content creators on board with it who don't know any better is really terrifying. Removing anonymity from the internet is very bad. Like, we know that it doesn't actually lead to less harassment. We know that. We've seen studies on that. But also, it is exactly what we criticize China for is this deep surveillance state. So it seems kind of disingenuous. I completely agree. And it's troubling to think that U.S. lawmakers want to build the system or I think that there's a need for a system that is similar to China. You know, like one of the most heartbreaking, repeated things that I go through in my reporting

is seeing people trying to express themselves, whether online or offline in China, and seeing that brutally crushed and seeing their families get harassed. And often the reason that they're able to find them is because now in China, you have to basically tie your national ID to everything you do, every app you log into, everywhere you go. And that's very similar. like you said, to like, these types of laws where, like, in order to, like, get on Facebook after 10 p.m. or whatever, you would need to, like, scan your driver's license, right? Like, that's very frightening. And I think what's been sort of, I guess, clarifying for me is actually

I'm reading about the USSR right now. I'm reading Moshegesen's book, which is called The Future's history. It's so good. And it was really striking to me how as Russia became more authoritarian, there was this enormous focus on we have to protect the children. We have to protect the children from LGBT people. We have to protect children from like this type of content and like how that snowballs into like these more authoritarian concerns. Like while I do sympathize with parents who are trying to navigate a really different world than like the one that they probably grew up in, right? Like it is scary. For all generations by the way. Every jet. Yeah. Of course it's always the grew up in a different generation than their children. Exactly. I totally get it. Like I understand that

maybe that is bewildering. And since maybe the industrial evolution is something that every parent has to go through. And I have a lot of sympathy for that. And I think, like, there are, like, discussions to be had that are reasonable. But I really think it's worrisome when that then gets weaponized by the government, right? Like, it's so anti-American, this idea of, like, begging the government to restrict how you can interact with your own children and what you should be allowed to show them and when and how much time they should spend using different types of media, right? Like, I think if we just look at this for what it is, it's a very troubling idea. And it's a very troubling idea. And it's not good that I'm like, oh, I'm reading this book about the rise of Putin and I see

similarities and what's happening in the U.S. Right. Like that's, that should set off alarm bells. And I think that using China or using some sort of like scary other place that like you can't really imagine and that you have to listen to like our description of is a really great way to sort of mask what's going on here, right, which is more government control of speech, more government control of what kinds of content, what kinds of apps are available. And it's in this context of, well, we need to protect you from China. We have to protect the children just sort of like, you know, overall, right? Like, those are really nice justifications for something that I think fundamentally is really questionable. Yeah. And of course, they don't want to protect the vulnerable children who would suffer under these types of laws,

the LGBTQ kids that rely on the internet, you know, for community. And it's a life line. But I think it's, as you mentioned, it's just really important to point out the authoritarian kind of tendencies beneath that. And I think Jonathan Hyatt, all of these other kind of prominent media figures have really fomented this moral panic. And they're pushing really authoritarian things. I think it's important to call that out. Because I think they've gotten a lot of liberals on board, right? Like, you mentioned these parents that care about these things are authoritarian or necessarily want to feed authoritarianism, but they end up doing it. And parents, like you mentioned, so much of the, like, moral panics of the past are all about like save the children and even just like the comic book

ban in the 1950s was very much under the sort of premise of the Cold War and a lot of that sort of political climate. So it does seem like we're entering into kind of scary times. Yeah, I think it's just like to step back and acknowledge that all of this and like why it's so interesting and why it's so triggering for a lot of people is that it's two really primal fears. the fear of protecting your children and like the fear of a scary, mysterious other, right, which in like this case is China. And TikTok sort of got caught between those two forces. And I think that that's why the app has sort of ended up in this really unfortunate legal position that it has. It's not really anything having to do with the app itself.

It's the lawmakers, the politicians capitalizing on two, you know, tried and true trusted ways to pass legislation. that is troubling or to further a moral panic. Well, Louise, thank you so much for chatting with me today. Thanks for having me, Taylor. That's all for the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larcich and Jelani Carter. Our executive producer is Zach Mack.

Our video editor is Sam Essex. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like this show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And in the meantime, subscribe to my substack newsletter, UserMag.com. for weekly online culture updates. Thanks, and we'll see you next week.