The New Yorker Radio Hour - Wired’s Katie Drummond: The TikTok Ban Is “Rooted in Hypocrisy”; Plus, Hannah Goldfield on Culinary TikTok

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

David Remnick talks with Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired magazine, about the TikTok ban that just passed with bipartisan support in Washington. The app will be removed from distribution in U.S. app stores unless ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, sells it to an approved buyer. TikTok is suing to block that law. Is this a battle among tech giants for dominance, or a real issue of national security? Drummond sees the ban as a corporate crusade by Silicon Valley to suppress a foreign competitor with a superior product. The claim that TikTok is a national-security threat she finds “a vast overreach that is rooted in hypotheticals and that is rooted in hypocrisy, and in … a fundamental refusal to look across the broad spectrum of social media platforms, and treat all of them from a regulatory point of view with the same level of care and precision.” Plus, the food writer Hannah Goldfield on salmon cooked in the dishwasher, and other highlights of culinary TikTok videos. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I think I first started hearing about a ban on TikTok in the summer of 2020. Donald Trump was flexing his muscles against China, and he signed an executive order that August. And I confess, I imagine some disgruntled teenagers out there, but I didn't give it a great deal of thought. A few months later, a judge appointed. by Trump, no less, block the order as arbitrary and capricious. But now the TikTok ban is back, and this time it may well stick.

Congress just passed it with bipartisan support, and President Biden signed it into law. It stipulates that TikTok will be removed from app stores unless its owner, Bight Dance, sells it, and Bight Dance, in turn, has now filed a lawsuit against the government. Around 170 million Americans are on TikTok. About half the population. Whole economies depend on TikTok. Millions of people get their news from TikTok. So the question is, why ban TikTok?

I'll put that question to two experts. Jacob Helberg, a tech executive and a proponent of the band, will join me in our next episode. But today I'll speak with a skeptic, Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired Man. magazine. You know, you run a magazine that's very sophisticated about tech. We have tech pieces every once in a while, but your relationship to TikTok is something I want to know about first. How much do you use it and what do you think about it as a product?

I did not use TikTok for a very long time, even when it was really rising in prominence and popularity in the United States. I actively avoided it. I didn't see the, I think, the journalistic value. And that all changed actually when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. We had journalists on the ground in Russia. We had journalists on the ground in Ukraine at Vice, where I ran the newsroom at the time. And those journalists started sending us, you know, video dispatches that they had taken with their phones of what life was like on the ground in Moscow and in Kiev as this conflict was unfolding in real time. And we started publishing these video dispatches from our journalists onto. TikTok, and they were viewed by more than 250 million people. And that for me was the moment

when I realized how powerful this app was as a tool for journalists and as a way for news organizations to disseminate, you know, on the ground, real-time information to an audience that frankly might otherwise not, you know, read about this conflict in the newspaper, might not even read about this conflict on a website, right? Which leads me to today where, you know, I would say most evenings I will, you know, get home from work, have dinner, spend some time with my daughter, and then I will spend, you know, maybe an hour, really just scrolling. An hour, an hour.

Where once you were reading Proust. Where once I was, yes, reading, you know, very sophisticated, often, you know, long philosophy books. No, I don't know what I was... What can TikTok accomplish journalistically? What are its virtues and what are its limits, in your view?

It can, I think, provide an audience that might otherwise not engage with conventional news journalism, accurate information from major news providers in a format that feels accessible and sort of comfortable and familiar for them. It can also, I think, bring audiences to places that they otherwise would would never visit and would never experience.

It is the everything app, right? Everything is on there. Where it falls short is in, you know, the depth and the nuance, right? These are often 60 to 90-second videos. Can they capture the nuance of a story written, you know, written to include the points of view of multiple experts, of multiple sources? No. No, it cannot.

But Katie, can't you say that about all the competing apps? Can't you say that about all other social media, Facebook, Instagram, those are everything as well? This is an internet problem. This is not necessarily limited to a TikTok problem. I think one of the reasons that TikTok stands out in that regard is because the algorithm that powers TikTok, and this is obviously a subject of much debate and much consternation, we don't really know anything about it. We don't know how it works. We don't know what information it surfaces when and why.

Whereas with a platform like Facebook, you know, at this point, they have been very clear that they are not surfacing news content. They just aren't doing it. With TikTok, it's very difficult to discern what is being surfaced and why. So what do you think about the U.S. government's effort to force bite dance, which of course owns TikTok, to have to sell it? I think that based on the information that we have available to us now, I think it is a vast overreach that is rooted in hypotheticals and that is rooted in hypocrisy and that is rooted in, you know, I think sort of a fundamental refusal to look across the broad spectrum of social media platforms and treat all of them from a regulatory point of view

with the same level of sort of care and precision. But what you're hearing from various critics is that, TikTok is essentially an instrument used by the Chinese government, by the Chinese Communist Party, to get into the brain matter of particularly Western and American followers of TikTok. It is an extremely powerful propaganda instrument that is exploited by the Chinese. There's a big difference between saying something and actually demonstrating it to be true. And, you know, this ban, I mean, let's call it what it is, you know, the forced divestiture, it was based from everything we know on closed door classified briefings, right, that were provided to lawmakers. That's what catalyzed this very rapid decision to move this bill through the levels of government as quickly as it moved. You know, we don't know anything about what those closed door briefings contained.

Why not? You've got people on both sides of the aisle agreeing with this idea of getting divestment underway. What are they hearing in those briefings? What do we know, journalistically? That's sort of the problem. I mean, my view, and people can disagree with this, but is if you are going to take away an app used by 170 million people that is a livelihood maker, for millions of people, for small businesses, for individuals. I believe that lawmakers and the government, who ostensibly work for us, the American people, owe us more information, more concrete information about why that divestiture is being moved forward. TikTok critics say that they're concerned principally about two things.

China taking user data to spy on us and manipulating the algorithm to influence what people see on the app. Is there no concern about that on your end? Or do you just think it's not been anywhere near proven? There is absolutely fair cause to be concerned, setting the China piece apart for a second. When you think about meta, when you think about X, formerly known as Twitter, when you think about Google, Amazon, and every other U.S. owned tech company and platform, and the fact that they have been collecting vast amounts of personal data from millions of Americans, for years. And that, you know, Facebook, as one example,

essentially has operated as a nation state with, you know, regards to how it treats the free press and the news media, right? With regards to its role in mis and disinformation, in, you know, sewing chaos and dissent around U.S. elections in election interference. It's very hard for me to square how government regulators have treated those companies and the collection of that data and the

behavior of platforms like Facebook, when we then look at TikTok, are they collecting personal data? Of course they are. They're a tech company. That's what they all do. What I would really like to see is a more concerted across-the-board effort from lawmakers to actually regulate how all of that data is collected, how all of that data is used. And again, when we come over to the China point, is it? fair to be concerned in a hypothetical way? Of course it is. You know, we know that bite dance,

which is TikTok's parent company, right, which is based in China, that the Chinese government could compel them at any moment in time to share user data from TikTok with the Chinese government. We know that to be true. And that's actually why TikTok created and launched this, what's called Project Texas, right, which is where they committed to take. taking all American user data and actually housing it in data centers in the United States. So they made that commitment a few years ago after, you know, the Trump administration actually tried to do this. They tried to force a divestiture of TikTok in 2020. On Capitol Hill and the term Project Texas, it was tossed around a ton by both TikTok CEO Show Chu and also lawmakers during the hearing.

Take a listen to what we heard. American data stored on American soil by an American. company overseen by American personnel. We call this initiative Project Texas. I still believe that the Beijing communist government will still control and have the ability to influence what you do. And so this idea, this project Texas is simply not acceptable. So of course it is fair to be concerned about how user data is collected, how it is used. But I would say that that concern exists across the board with any technology platform. It's not limited to TikTok.

So it seems to me you're saying two things at once. Number one, there needs to be much more transparency on the part of the government if it is going to make a concerted effort against bite dance and by extension in their view, the Communist Party of China. And number two, that regulation ought to be deeper and an equal opportunity matter. You know, and I think, too, it's, you know, the Chinese government does stuff like this all the time, right? You can't access American-owned and operated technology platforms in China without a VPN. That is the behavior of an authoritarian regime. And it is troubling to me to see

that same behavior in a country that ostensibly champions, you know, a free and open internet. So those in favor of forcing the sale of TikTok say that this is in the interest of national security. Couldn't this be seen as a rare instance of our government addressing something before it becomes a serious issue and not waiting until it's too late? Is there some sort of dark motivation for both Democrats and Republicans to be supporting a action against TikTok that you're suggesting here? No, I'm not suggesting anything other than, you know, I think a general lack of understanding about how these platforms work and how they operate. a cognitive dissonance between what it means to be American owned and owned by a foreign entity. I think there is sort of this idea of China as, you know, the enemy that needs to be moderated or sort of controlled or tamped down.

You know, I also have to say, I think, that there is a lot of lobbying money at work in D.C. And I think often when people think about lobbying dollars and lobbying, they think about it in sort of a very political and DC context, and they may not realize that companies like Meta and Google and Amazon are spending millions of dollars to lobby lawmakers, right? And who wins if TikTok goes away? Right. Whose interest is that in? That is in the best interests of all of the major U.S. tech platforms, right? Instagram Reels was designed to compete with TikTok. Is all this a bunch of theater, or are there real cybersecurity concerns at the root of this,

Or are you saying that mainstream media really just doesn't know enough to make a determination on it? I think that at this moment in time, as we are having this conversation, media and the American public don't have enough information to tell. We are being told, essentially, we got this information in closed-door briefings, trust us. Does xenophobia play a role in this argument in this debate? It's very difficult to imagine that it doesn't. I think I was really struck by a congressional hearing in January of this year. TikTok CEO, Shu Chu, you know, was questioned along with other technology platform CEOs.

And Senator Tom Cotton actually repeatedly asked him whether he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Of what nation are you a citizen? Singapore. Are you a citizen of any other nation? No, Senator. Have you ever applied for Chinese citizenship? Senator, I served my nation in Singapore. No, I did not.

Do you have a Singaporean passport? Yes, and I served my military for two and a half years in Singapore. Do you have any other passport from any other nations? No, Senator. The CEO of TikTok is Singaporean. He is not Chinese. Yeah, that's different, isn't it? But he, you know, looks Asian.

You have to imagine that I guess that's enough for some politicians to make a connection between, you know, someone's perceived race, the company that they lead and the fact that surely they are, you know, spending time with the Communist Party of China. In 2019, the U.S. government pressured the Chinese company that had owned Grindr, the dating app, to sell the company. They cited at that time national security concerns and talked about the way that the app collects and handles personal data. So there is some precedence for forcing the sale of a company like this. Are they similar, the Grindr cases and the TikTok case? Well, the Grindr case was much more specific to me, right? I mean, that is a LGBTQ dating app. And you are talking about the specific personal information of individuals who identify as,

LGBTQ, and the potential for that identifying information to then be used by foreign entities, you know, with regards to that specific subset of individuals. So that's a very specific case. I'm not saying that that was not precedent setting in some regard, that of course, this can be done. But what I am saying is that with, you know, an app as big and widely used to disseminate information, right, to create livelihoods for American people, that we are existing in, essentially, a vacuum of information with regards to what the actual threat is. If the platform remained intact, TikTok, but was sold to an American company, would that be so terrible? Well, it depends on, you know, what parts of the app come along for the ride. I think it's established at this point that for a tech company like Meta or Google to step in, you know, very, very unlikely, right?

They would be scrutinized with regards to antitrust, left right and center. You know, any sort of deal there is very, very unlikely. You know, and then ByteDance, they, as of now, own TikTok. They also own the algorithm that powers TikTok and that really makes TikTok so effective. Now, it's very unlikely that ByteDance, the parent company, would actually part with that algorithm or would license that algorithm. So I think TikTok has spent many, many years developing that algorithm. So you would be looking at sort of a neutered version of what users today experience. You know, I also think that's sort of hypothetical about who might buy or who might be interested in buying TikTok without the algorithm.

It's hard for me to imagine that being a potentially interesting acquisition for anybody, right? The algorithm is the thing. The algorithm is the thing. knowing that half the country uses it, and a huge proportion of the people who use it and use it a lot, even more than you, Katie, more than an hour or nine, are young and are going to be voting, if not already. What are the political ramifications of this move against TikTok?

Well, the political ramifications of this move against TikTok are certainly not in Joe Biden's favor. I think something like a third of people between the ages of 18 and 35 say they get news on TikTok, right? So it is a very important sort of informational resource for that demographic.

It's also a place where politicians have been increasingly present and prominent. And I think it's, again, interesting to point out that Joe Biden's campaign launched on TikTok

I think the day of the Super Bowl and the evening that he actually signed this bill to force this divestiture, his campaign posted on TikTok again. They have told news outlets, including Wired, that they will continue to use TikTok as a campaign tool right up until the election because it is so effective at reaching young people. You know, the comments under that TikTok post were brutal from users of the app who came across this video and essentially said, hey man, what are you

doing? Why are you banning this? I mean, it is... When you say, isn't it interesting, I think what you're saying is, isn't it hypocritical? It's incredibly hypocritical. I'm being very polite. And disappointing, frankly, if you think that TikTok should not be available to people living in the United States, if you think it is a credible risk to national security, a credible risk to our information ecosystem, don't use it to be elected to office again. Stop using it.

Practice what you preach. Finally, Katie, if TikTok went goodbye to. Tomorrow, what would you miss the most? You know, I can always find a new hobby. I can spend a little more time watching TV. I can maybe pick up a book a little bit more often. I think that TikTok is such an incredible platform for storytelling and for the dissemination of news.

I really genuinely believe that. I have seen it with my own two eyes. I'm sure meta would be very disappointed to hear that I don't think Instagram reels. reaches an audience of that same magnitude and sort of has that same impact. But that is how I feel. Katie Drummond, thanks so much.

Thank you. Katie Drummond. She's the global editorial director of Wired, which is published, like the New Yorker, by Condy Nast. On our next episode, we'll get a very different view of the security threat posed by TikTok. But stick around because

while we're talking about TikTok, we should definitely go on TikTok to learn how to cook salmon in the dishwasher. Back in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. 60% of the world's population uses some kind of social media. That's 5 billion people on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, and the like.

4.9 billion of them, I'm pretty certain, are watching cooking videos. Years ago, I got obsessed with Jacques McPan on YouTube, and some of you may remember when I made it. crepes with him remotely by Zoom right here on the program. Three-quarter a cup of milk, voila, and just put half of it in the flour. About, yes. Mix it with a whisk, right? Well, let's see that whisk. This is a mini-wisk. Wow. Hannah Goldfield writes our column on and off the menu,

and when she's not writing about food, she's watching recipe videos on TikTok. And there are thousands of them, probably millions of them, probably millions of them to choose from. So I wanted to see what she's into. So why are we so fascinated by watching other people prepare food or eat food online? Because I have to tell you, a little confession here. Me too. If I knew that, I think I would be a psychologist of some kind.

But what I do know is that, yeah, I'm the same. I find it soothing. I find it sort of fascinating. It's a little bit of escapism, I think. I mean, I don't, strictly speaking, cook, and I'm watching people cook. Well, I think it's fun to watch someone do something that they're really good at. I think it's a little bit like watching sports or something. You're watching someone at the top of their game.

In some cases, although, as you'll see, some of the videos that I am highlighting today are about people making sort of disgusting-looking food badly. In fact, there's one that I watch, some guy, Southern guy, who just, he goes in front of a grill and he slams down a stick of butter. Y'all already know, baby, he had one stick of butter. And the outcome is bad looking. Like it's a cheese steak from hell. Yep.

And yet it's mesmerizing. And I think there's a lot of ASMR involved in cooking videos. It's the sounds are really satisfying, like the sizzle and the slap. And the drizzle. Just there's a lot of like aesthetic. Yes, the whole thing. Exactly. The whole thing.

Yeah. Hannah, you've got three food-related social media channels to share with us. And I think the first one is Hannah Nealman, who posts as Ballerina Farm. Hello. Okay, so I... What's her thing? The reason that her handle is Ballerina Farm is she's a Juilliard-trained ballerina. She has eight children.

One of them was born very recently. She lives on a dairy and cattle farm in Utah. So that alone is just, I find completely fascinating. She's living a sort of modern-day little house. on the prairie life. You're not going to fall on her footsteps. Eight kids. Probably not.

But then, yes, she's really into food. And part of this kind of homesteader lifestyle, which she gets a lot of flack for making it look like it's easier than it is. And people are always accusing her of like, well, you must have four nannies behind the scenes. And she maintains that she has no child care. At this point, I think the older kids take care of the younger kids. And she's cooking for a million.

And she's cooking for a million. And she's making everything from scratch. and I do mean from scratch. If she makes lasagna, she'll make the mozzarella herself. She'll make the noodles herself. And then it's all these little jump shot videos, so it looks like she's doing it in about three minutes. Well, that's the thing.

Who knows? I mean, I guess. TikTok is a little bit of an illusion or Instagram because it's all boiled down to no time at all. Right. making marshmallows. I used gelatin leaves and put them in cool water so that they could soften. Then we started on a syrup, which was honey, golden syrup, and sugar. We separated some egg whites from the egg yolks.

Started mixing those. And then I added the soften gelatin leaves. Okay, time out. There's like kids crawling all over the counter. There's one strap to her chest. I think she's pulling your leg. I think she's totally pulling. I think she rents these kids. But I just, I like the fantasy. I think it's, I think it's delightful. You know, they are raising cows on their farm, and she's constantly going out to the barn, milking the cows, drinking the milk right from the pale. And it's so good. It doesn't taste like it's not cultured buttermilk I'm used to at the, from the store. Awesome, Mom.

All right. Now, who else do you like? So Ballerina Farm is mostly on Instagram. She has a TikTok account, but she's really big on Instagram. The people I like best on TikTok are a couple. Their names are Haley Catalano and Chuck Cruz. They're both, you know, classically trained chefs. I think they both went to culinary school.

She definitely did, at least. And then they worked in restaurants in Chicago. During the pandemic, they moved back to New Jersey. Their intention was to work in New York City restaurants, but the pandemic foiled that. So they just make cooking videos. Happy Friday. Hope everyone had a good week. Happy Friday.

Today we're going to cook some dinner. We're going to make some Bon Mies. Yummy. Liver for the Pacte. And they have a very small kitchen and they take turns using it I think every other day and they both have their own channels

but then they make dinner together every Friday night. But it is liver. And it is yummy. And it's going to be good. They'll have like hamburger night or hot dog night or they'll have Bon Mee night or they'll do spaghetti and meatballs.

It's all, it's like, it's pretty much like familiar comfort foods but they're making exceptionally delicious-looking versions of these things. And how many kids do they have? They have no kids. They have a dog, which explains how they're able to do this every single day. And they're also just, they just seem like really nice people.

They're almost like, they're almost weirdly nice. They both have kind of soft voices. What is your, what was your favorite after school snack? Like, like right when you gave from school, what did you eat? Oh, just microwave cheese on tortilla chips. and then dipping it in salsa. Pretty good. That's my favorite.

Or just pasta with butter. Nice. And peas, and frozen peas. That's right. That's right. This is riveting. Not since the Godfather, I think.

Have I seen such action? It tends to be slow, and I like that they're really like chefy, but not in a totally pretentious way. Like they keep all their herbs and spices really well organized, but they don't like kind of lord it over you. Like they've totally sold me. on these things called Chef's Presses,

which are, they're little metal devices that you put on top of a piece of meat in a pan to get a really nice sear on it. And he especially uses it all the time. Lots of debate about that. I think you're not supposed to press down. That's a whole thing. I trust him.

Because you saw him on TikTok. Never tasted his food, but I can tell it's delicious. Now, if TikTok is banned, these guys are kind of up a creek, no? Yeah, although they all have, They're all multi-platform creators. So actually, the next person we're going to talk about has spoken about this, and he has a YouTube channel and an Instagram account and post stuff on X.

So I think he's kind of figured it out. So who is this? So this is a person whose name, I do not know, because he is anonymous, because he claims he gets daily death threats. So his handle is called Chef Reactions. He, none of this is verifiable because we don't know his name, but he claims to be a veteran restaurant chef. I think he's Canadian based on his accent, but nobody knows.

He hasn't ever so slightly. I'm like really, I'm trying to find out who he is. He also claims to be the primary caretaker for his 88-year-old grandmother, and this career as a content creator has allowed him to leave restaurants and just do this. Okay, let's do it. Okay. Up and down. Well, there's your first mistake.

It should be up, up, down, left, right, no. It's not. It's not going to be amazing. He's ruined a perfectly good slab of ribs and some beans. Grandma's hangover cure. Grandma's hangover cure. I'm just going to out Grandma for being an alcoholic, just like that. And so what he does is he scours TikTok and Instagram for,

it's mostly like the stuntiest of stunt cooking videos. And he's about to make dishwasher salmon and he's got a baseball hat and big eyeglasses. Well, this is the thing. He's not going to make it. He's going to comment on someone else making it. Make perfect salmon every time in your dishwasher. Or just don't. You know what I mean?

Like is every other cooking apparatus not available to you for some reason? Oh, hold on. Herbs and jarlick, fantastic. He's obsessed with jarlic, which is what he calls garlic that's been pre-chopped and jarred. Fry it, poach it, bake it, steam it, smoke it. Okay, this is pure genius. Let's just for the listeners, we have to, so on the right, a pair of, of hands is seasoning

a side of salmon, putting some garlic on it, lemon slices, whatever, wrapping it in tinfoil and putting it in a dishwasher. On the left, the unnamed gentleman from possibly Canada with the eyeglasses and the baseball

hat is commenting on how possibly nuts this is. Oh man, I love fruity pebbles, and I just know that dump-in-law. There's another video here where he's making a cake, or not actually, I don't know who's making the cake. making a cake with fruity pebbles in a crock pot. When she said, ooh, what are you making?

She said it, like, spelled E.W.W. not O-O-H. $15 worth of eggs. Ha-ha. Eggs are expensive. Okay, hold on one second. Stop the video. So on the right, we're seeing what were those little... Fruity pebbles.

Fruty pebbles. Very familiar with fruity pebbles. I am. I am. And what else is being poured into this crock pot? Cake mix, eggs. It's like a steamed cake being made. But see, I like knowing that someone is developing a recipe for this totally bizarre.

Like, there are thousands, if not millions of people making these weird recipes using... In the Renaissance, people were painting ceilings and making sculptures. Well, now we live in the world that Wally predicted. Hannah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Hannah Goldfield is a staff writer. And her latest piece is called, Are We Living Through a Bagel Renaissance?

You can check it out at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul.

This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Alicia Zuckerman. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.