The Vergecast - Power User: Taylor Lorenz on the TikTok ban

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Today we're sharing an episode of a new podcast called Power User, which explores how technology and the internet are upending our lives and the world around us, hosted by tech journalist Taylor Lorenz. Follow Power User with Taylor Lorenz wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/poweruserpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Everybody's back next week. We will be back to our regularly scheduled programming. But for today, we have something much better than Nilai and Alex. Taylor Lorenz is here. Hi, Taylor. Hi. You're a podcaster now. Last time we did this, you had like ear pods on.

Now you have a light, you have a mic. Like, this is a whole thing. I know. I have the Vox Media setup. Shout out to the producers that sent me all this year. I have the official mic. Is there just like a box that they sent you that's like, welcome to podcast? Yeah, it was a box.

They sent someone over to put up the lights in my kitchen, which is where I am. So you just launched a podcast. It's called Power User. Tell the people about your podcast. It's a weekly tech news show. But it focuses more on the things that I cover, which is the user side of tech. a lot of internet culture, media landscape stuff, you know, some creator industry stuff, Mr. Beast, also touching on things like Netflix, you know, Disney, some entertainment,

media, business. And just wild, weird internet stories and trends. This week we're talking about kindness influencers, which are a plague on TikTok. I don't know if you see those, the guys that exploit unhoused people for content, basically. And there's this feud between two big kindness influencers over who's essentially helping this one family in West Virginia more. We're talking about the Andrew Huberman expose as well. And so, yeah, it's, I think it's a good listen. We just launched it last week. Yeah, you picked an interesting time to do this.

There is like not a shortage of weird stuff happening on the internet at this moment. No. And I want people to better understand it. I think we talk so much about big tech and sort of the traditional Silicon Valley side of tech. And there's not as many, I think, tech podcast focused on the tech world outside Silicon Valley and just more of the cultural side of things. So that's what I'm hoping to get into. Yeah. This is actually one of the things I was thinking about as you were, you know, we talked a little bit as you were getting ready to launch the podcast. And it seems like we're in this weird

space where there are a ton of creators who have podcasts, right? Like it's, I feel like it's the same way in like the sports world, right? Where there used to be lots of people who talked about athletes and now the athletes are just doing the talking. But I feel like they're in this sort of space of like people talking about this business. It's either the people who are in it every day living it or nobody really talks about it. It's very weird. And I feel like this has been like the needle you've been threading for a really long time where you're like, no, this matters, but also if it's just a creator talking about their own life, that's not quite the same thing as like doing journalism about it. Exactly. Yeah. And I think also, I mean, I have a big content

creator on this week. So, you know, I love creators and I want to talk to them. But I, I think it's worth giving a little bit more critical thought. I think a lot of times when you're in an industry, one, you can't speak as freely about it sometimes because you're actually in this industry. You know, a lot of their podcast focus more on sort of like interpersonal drama, like drama sort of stuff or they do culture. I mean, there's a lot of internet culture, YouTuber podcast that I listen to all the time. I think I'm coming at it more from like a business and cultural and journalistic angle. But I love those YouTubers and I hope to have them on and I'm a big commentary channel fan. Oh, yeah. There's lots of good stuff out there. Don't get me wrong.

There's lots of different ways to come at this. So the episode we're going to play here is about the TikTok ban. We picked this one because we talked a bunch about the TikTok ban on the Vergecast two weeks ago. And everyone got very mad at us. We disagreed vehemently about what should happen here. Everybody got very upset. We got a lot of emails. I'm being accused of being a Chinese communist, basically.

And a lot of people think Eli hates free speech and that think Alex is also mad at everybody. It's really good times. I'm just curious how you feel about where we are with a TikTok ban, right? now. We're going to hear a bunch about this in the episode, but where is your head with what you're thinking about the TikTok ban kind of right in this moment? Oh, gosh. I said very earnestly to a friend the other day. I was like, we're living in an era of mass censorship. And she was like, okay, you're starting to sound like Elon Musk. But as a journalist, and I would imagine you guys feel the same way, but it, you know, I care a lot about civil liberties. I've always cared a lot about

civil liberties. I've spent an enormous time reporting on TikTok and not just TikTok, but musically. And I remember when there was this fight when Facebook was driving musically into the ground and they had to sell and Viacom, you know, there was a minute that we thought Viacom my bite dance came in and sort of bought it. And just the last, you know, of course no one cared back then that the fast, one of the, I would have called it one of the most relevant fast growing video social networks on the planet was being bought by Byte Dance. And then now there's this panic five years later. It's a little hard for me to take it quite as seriously. Not that I'm like, where was this energy when you allowed this deal to happen five years ago? But also, I write a lot

about a lot of other up-and-coming apps and there's just Chinese influence in so many things, gaming, particularly. And, you know, so I find a lot of these arguments that these lawmakers are making. It doesn't seem like the ban, as it currently stands the current bill, would address any of these issues, right? Doesn't address any of the problems with data brokers, doesn't address a lot of the civil liberties free speech stuff. And as I've said before, and I was also accused of being a communist, and I understand making this comment, but even if TikTok was a Chinese propaganda app, we're supposed to have a free and open internet.

What if I am a communist and I want to consume Chinese propaganda all day? This is America. I should be allowed to do that. Yeah, we got a lot of emails from people after the episode a couple of weeks ago that were basically like, well, China bans it. Oh, so we should mimic an authoritarian state? Oh, well, this authoritarian state over there. Yeah, what?

No, I actually don't want the government to control our app store. It's so funny the way this is split around political lines. And I think, I mean, I'm planning a future episode about this. So I really hope people tune in. I don't know if anyone's been following the Jonathan hate antiphone press tour recently. But there's just this, you can push a lot of bad legislation and dangerous things through and sell people on things when you tell them it's protecting children. And, you know, here's what your children are up to and they're being brainwashed, you know, by this Chinese communist app or whatever. And it's just not true.

I mean, I'm very skeptical of all of the Save the Children type messaging around phones generally, and especially around TikTok. Because TikTok is quite, you know, liberating for a lot of kids. It's not like Instagram and a lot of other apps, which have actually done the things that they're accusing TikTok of doing, like manipulate, you know, affecting our elections, causing a lot of self-harm, eating disorders, whatever. Not to say, you know, TikTok is a very different. TikTok's much more akin to YouTube. I always say it's a combination of Twitter and YouTube. I think that's right. All right. Well, before we get into the episode, how can people find the show? It's all the places you get podcasts, right? It's called Power User.

You're also on YouTube, right, doing video stuff? Yes, it's on my YouTube channel. So please subscribe, Taylor Lorenz. I'm doing lots more videos, lots more tech videos. It's just Taylor Lorenz on YouTube. And you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Please review it if you like it. And Instagram, I'm going to be sharing your Power User pod on Instagram.

There you go. Awesome. All right. Well, here is the first episode of Power User. Thanks, Taylor. Thanks for having me. This week, we're talking about the TikTok ban, how Shrimp Jesus is taking over Facebook,

and Mr. Beast's record-breaking new reality show. I'm Taylor Lorenz, and that's all coming up right now on Power User. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder, used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated A-B testing,

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slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Power User. I'm Taylor Lorenz, a technology journalist, and I'm so excited to be launching this show today. I've been covering internet culture, online creators, and the tech world for over a decade. Every week, I'm going to be breaking down the biggest stories in tech and online culture, and this week, the big story is definitely TikTok. Recently, the House of Representatives moved a bill forward that would effectively ban the app, and the future of the platform is looking dicey. So I'm bringing in Evan Greer,

the director of Fight for the Future, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that fights for civil liberties online. We're going to break down the concerns around TikTok, what lawmakers are hoping to achieve by banning it, and whether this app is really something we should all be worried about. Hi, Evan.

Thank you so much for joining me on the first episode of Power User. Yeah, for sure, Taylor. Thanks so much for having me on. You've been super critical of this legislation. So I want to talk about some of the concerns with this bill and what you feel like Congress could actually be doing to make our lives better online. First of all, a lot of lawmakers are trying to claim that this is not a real ban. It's a forced sale. And there's some sort of big distinction between the two things.

Is it fair to characterize this legislation as a forced sale or is this an effective ban? This bill is a ban by any other name. I'm not a business lawyer. I've never tried to buy or sell a multi-billion dollar company. But it doesn't take an expert. to understand that like those types of things don't tend to happen overnight. And all of the experts that I've talked to have suggested that the six-month timeline that's laid out in this bill that would attempt to force TikTok to effectively sell itself or get banned is just completely impractical and ridiculous. Well, yeah, it's actually 180 days, right?

Within that six-month timeline, they have to sell within 180 days, which, as my colleague Drew reported, would be one of the thornyest and most complicated transactions in all of corporate history. And it would almost certainly pose insurmountable financial, technical, and geopolitical challenges, making this sale basically untenable. That's exactly right. That's what I've heard from every expert that I've talked to about it as well, which is why the ACLU and many other civil liberties organizations have said clearly that this does amount to a ban. And because of that, it's clearly unconstitutional. United States, we have the First Amendment. It prohibits the government from engaging in acts of

censorship unless they can prove they have no other option, no other way to address the concerns that they're raising. And, you know, we'll get into it a little bit more later, but they have many options, many ways that they could address legitimate concerns with TikTok and other big tech companies short of actually banning them outright. Yeah. And also, I mean, you mentioned these lawmakers themselves have been referring to it as ban. I just want to read. a couple quotes from some of those lawmakers. These are the people that championed the bill and ushered it through. Representative Elise Stefanik says, quote, I'm proud to join Chairman Mike Gallagher to finally ban TikTok in the United States. And then Representative Bob Lata says, I'm proud to help lead the

bipartisan act, which will ban the app from the United States. Representative Chip Roy says, I'm proud to partner with the representatives on this bipartisan bill to ban the distribution of TikTok in the U.S. These lawmakers might try to sort of spin it in the media, like, oh, it's not a real ban, but this is an effective ban, and that is how they themselves are promoting it. That's exactly right. And I think in their minds, you know, I don't know that they've actually like gamed this out until the end, right? They may very much end up as the dogs who caught the car, because I think they perhaps really are hoping to bully TikTok and to selling themselves to a U.S. company or something like that. But the timeline that they've laid out is so

ridiculous that they might end up sort of accidentally banning TikTok and then dealing with the political consequences of that, since we know it is an app that is wildly popular, especially with young people, which both parties are struggling to speak to in terms of what the issues that they care about. So I think, unfortunately, this is a lot of, like, tech policy made for TV, and I think it's bad politics on both sides all around. Not to mention that musically, which is what TikTok was named before they rebranded as TikTok, was sold to bite dance in 2017. None of these lawmakers had any issue with that sale at the time, of course. But the reason that musically sale went through and ByteDance was the one to buy it as well

is because there were no viable U.S. purchasers. Google and Meadow were essentially written out because of antitrust concerns. So I just think it's very telling that, like, who is this app going to sell to? You know, if this alleged forced sale is supposed to happen, any major company that it would sell to, I think there would be serious anti-trust concerns. So it's just totally unfeasible. Yeah, that's exactly right. All right, Evan.

So let's get into some of the civil liberties concerns with the ban. How is this a free speech and First Amendment issue? So what this really comes down to is, do you believe that your government should be able to tell you where you can get news from and where you can express yourself? In the United States, we have the First Amendment. The First Amendment prohibits the government from telling me, I can't give an interview to Al Jazeera,

even though Al Jazeera is not owned by a U.S. company, just like the government can't stop me from writing an op-ed or a letter to the editor to a foreign newspaper. TikTok is a platform that millions of Americans use to express themselves. So banning it would amount to silencing the voices of millions of people. The First Amendment requires that if the U.S. government is going to engage in that type of act of restricting speech, they have to prove that they have no other way to address their concerns. Now, the concerns the U.S. government has stated in this case as they say, TikTok is collecting your data. It could be shared with the Chinese government and or the Chinese government could be manipulating TikTok's algorithm to spread propaganda. Let's take both of those

concerns at face value. Let's say it's true. I mean, my feeling is, even if it was a Chinese propaganda app, say it was, don't we have the right to consume that if we want? Isn't that supposed to be a freedom that we're allowed? Absolutely. You know, there's nothing that says we shouldn't be able to read lies. And, you know, unfortunately, there's more of them floating around on the internet than any of us would perhaps like. But yes, absolutely, even if we take the government's concerns completely at face value, and they believe the Chinese Communist Party has literally has their hand on the lever and is like controlling TikTok's algorithm at a granular level. And let's be clear, there's no actual evidence to suggest that that is happening. But it's a valid concern.

Governments do things. The Chinese government certainly does. engage in authoritarian acts, you know, worth asking. That said, there's absolutely ways to address that. We could pass algorithmic transparency legislation and require that companies like TikTok open up their algorithms to third-party auditors. That would catch a government that was engaging in that kind of manipulation. We could pass privacy legislation to prevent them from collecting so much data about all of us in the first place and using that data to recommend us content. Those are meaningful ways that we could address the types of concerns that the government is raising without banning an app that millions of people use to express themselves. That's why banning TikTok is blatantly

unconstitutional and frankly, a huge distraction from the types of real measures that would actually lead to a better internet with more free expression and more human rights for everyone. Yeah. I mean, I just think it's so telling that while these lawmakers claim, you know, concerns around national security and everything, and we'll definitely get into that. When you listen to what they said at the hearing, you realize that repeatedly, they express issue with the content they believe to be on the app. From the data it collects to the content it controls, TikTok is a grave threat of foreign influence in American life.

It's been said it's like allowing the Soviet Union the power to produce Saturday morning cartoons during the Cold War, but much more powerful and much more dangerous. Banning your platform will address the immediate thing. threats. And that, to me, is really scary and dystopian, because once we have these lawmakers starting to sort of legislate around the content that they think is okay, you know, to expose people to online or the news and information, you know, that young people have access to through apps like TikTok or other social media platforms, it just feels scary. Like that feels very much like an infringement on our ability to freely consume information and express ideas. Yeah. And unfortunately,

that kind of authoritarian impulse of going after online speech and content is not just limited to TikTok, and it's unfortunately very bipartisan in D.C. right now. Both Democrats and Republicans have really leaned into this idea that it's like online content and speech that is driving these harms in our society rather than the underlying business practices of these companies that we can actually regulate. And so what you see is Republicans sort of being like, look at all this content that our kids are consuming and they're talking about like RuPaul's drag race videos or whatever. But then you see Democrats leading into it and saying, look at these Andrew Tate videos and like they're being recommended to kids and like,

that's terrible. And like they're right. That's terrible. The way that we address that is by addressing patriarchy in our society, by attacking the underlying business model that makes it profitable for companies to artificially amplify the most extreme content. We cannot address this issue through government censorship, that just leads to more harm, particularly for young people. And say China did want to interfere with America through, you know, programming, social media. Is there anything that TikTok specifically allows that other American-owned apps like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube don't allow? No. These companies operate in almost the exact same manner. They all employ the same basic surveillance capitalist business model, which is about collecting your data,

monitoring what you do on the app and then using that information to recommend you content in order to keep you clicking and scrolling and generating advertising revenue. They're all basically the same app and they all sort of increasingly become more and more like the same app as they just sort of copy each other. Although one thing I'll say about that is that there has been this refrain from a lot of people of, oh, well, because these are just the same apps, if we delete TikTok, everybody can just go use, you know, Instagram or Twitter or whatever. And I do think that there's something that's different about TikTok, which is that it's not owned by an American company. And also these other platforms have made very aggressive moves to censor speech. I mean, I'm just thinking of meta,

Instagram's recent policies saying that any content that touches on political issues or social issues would be downranked. And that is the type of stuff that they're trying to deprioritize on Instagram, Facebook and threads. So it's really hard to talk about things like revenge porn or the election or just these really critical issues that we should be talking about in society on meta-owned apps. Look at Twitter, right? Elon Musk just spent the past week banning any journalists that reported on this Nazi comic book writer. And YouTube is much more of an entertainment platform in the sense that I don't think a lot of average users post on there. It's also not a great place for politics. So I do think that TikTok allowed a certain group of people,

especially young progressives, a space to really have these urgent political conversations about things like the war on Gaza or climate change and things like that. And it seems, that seems to have really irked these lawmakers. Yeah, I think that's definitely part of the picture here. Although I think in the long run, we just have to recognize that like TikTok may be a friendlier space for some of the politics that we care about right now. But in the end, as long as we're reliant on a very small handful of privately owned companies, whether they're owned by U.S. companies or companies based in other countries to be the kind of digital public square, we're always going to be sort of at the whim of whoever our digital landlord is, whether it's Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or bike

dance. And so I think, again, that's why we need more thoughtful and comprehensive policies that get us past the current era that we're in and toward a future where we have meaningful choices, so that if you are concerned about TikTok or Instagram or any other company and their business practices, you can actually go find somewhere else. And just to your other point, this idea that like, oh, if we ban TikTok, everyone can just immediately switch. Big tech companies have intentionally made it as difficult as possible to switch from one platform to another, to bring your followers with you. And, you know, that really affects marginalized people the most. Maybe if you're a big celebrity and you, you know, the app you're

on gets banned, you can switch to a different app. Everyone's going to follow you there. If you're an LGBTQ content creator or a musician or someone who spent a lot of time building an audience, on one platform and then that platform gets ripped out from underneath you, that can have a profound impact on your ability to make living, your ability to make rent that month, your ability to express yourself and connect with your community and your audience. So I think we shouldn't dismiss or ignore the real human impacts of these types of measures or thinking about banning an entire app or the impact it has on people when an app gets bought or sold. I mean, you know, it personally impacted me when Elon Musk bought Twitter. It was someplace I spent a fair amount of time building an audience

and speaking particularly to other LGBTQ people. And then it became a much less friendly place for my community. That's a reality that, you know, many people have had to deal with and we should take it seriously. And I think a lot of people also misunderstand the ownership structure of TikTok. TikTok is not majority owned by ByteDance. Okay. This is not how TikTok is owned. TikTok was a company that was incorporated in America. And it is based in large, Los Angeles and Singapore. It does not operate in China. It is owned 60% by foreign investors, including many Americans, 20% owned by employees, including over 7,000 American employees, and 20% owned by the company's founders. So does Bite Dance have a stake in TikTok? Yes.

But this is not an app that is solely owned by a Chinese corporation. So back in 2019, the U.S. government forced another Chinese company to give up a 60% stake in, Grindr, a gay dating app. It bothers me a little bit when people try to make these comparisons because Grindr is not a media platform. It is not a social media platform. It is a completely different product. Also, the ownership structure is completely different. In that case, a Chinese company had majority ownership. It's truly apples to oranges, and it is very frustrating to sort of debunk all the different ways. This is different. Grindr had a completely different corporate ownership structure. Well, and even more absurdly, when the U.S.

government forced Grindr to sell itself to U.S. company, which they did. It wasn't that long ago that data brokers were caught collecting and selling information from Grindr to a right-wing religious group that was using it to track down priests that they thought might be gay. So here's an example of where if what we're really concerned about is like bad actors might get this data from TikTok, then we need to regulate the industry of collecting and selling people's data. Because the Chinese government, if you're concerned about them, could just go buy a lot of the same data from data brokers in the U.S. that they could get from TikTok if that's even happening, which again, there's no evidence to suggest that it actually is.

So let's think into some of the national security concerns because I think a lot of people are scared about the data privacy. TikTok has said repeatedly that U.S. user data is stored in Texas on Oracle-controlled servers. So in order for TikTok to make changes or access the data or the Chinese government was going to try to access this data, it would have to go through Oracle, which is a U.S.-based company to access that data, which again is housed in the U.S. There is no evidence that any Chinese entity has even tried to gain access to that data.

Meanwhile, we know that back in 2016 and many other times, foreign governments actually were able to manipulate our social media landscape, not through any sort of secret data obtaining, but through buying things like public Facebook ads or buying data publicly. So tell me a little bit about these concerns about data privacy and TikTok and whether you think that any of this is warranted.

Sure. So people are right to be concerned about TikTok collecting their data. They should just also be as concerned about companies like Instagram and Uber and Postmates and your dog walking app and almost every other free online service that you use collecting your data.

And what we know, is that once a company collects your data, it doesn't necessarily stay with that company. There is a massive, unregulated data broker industry in the U.S., companies collect your data and then sell it to other companies who will then sell it to the highest bidder. It's a national embarrassment that we do not have basic data privacy laws here in the U.S. So it's almost sort of a funny talking point for TikTok, I would say, to be like, our data is housed in Texas, where there's basically no privacy protections or laws. to protect your data. And we have like the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton is like making

lists of trans people. So it doesn't make me feel particularly safer that my data is stored there than if it were stored anywhere else. In the end, what we need is policies that protect everyone's data, which would start with a strong national privacy law here in the U.S. and ideally laws like that all around the world. Why hasn't a law like that been passed? Because it seems like such a no-brainer. This is something that consumers have repeatedly asked for. is. And it's where there's so much consensus between human rights experts and the business community and others. Like, everyone agrees a privacy law would be a good idea. The reason it hasn't moved forward is basically the same reasons that a lot of other legislation doesn't move. It's about corruption,

corporate influence, and congressional dysfunction. So the corporate influence part is probably the biggest factor here. Certainly big tech companies have been very active in lobbying against strong. privacy legislation, but it's not just the like metas and Instagrams and YouTube's of the world that care about this. It's Bank of America and Walmart and Target and effectively every other large U.S. company that at this point has some interest in being able to conduct the type of commercial surveillance that allows them to gain a competitive edge. So unfortunately, because of a lack of regulation, almost every big company in the U.S. has sort of become a surveillance capitalist company in some capacity or other.

And that's a big reason why privacy legislation hasn't moved forward because it's not just opposed by the tech industry. It's sort of posed by Wall Street and the broader behemoths of the American economy. And that's what needs to be overcome to get something done on this, even though it's overwhelmingly supported. People from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly agree we don't want companies to be able to collect so much of our private information and use it. to enrich themselves at the cost of our basic rights and safety.

I'm curious what you think about Biden's reversal and all this. You know, back in 2020, it was Trump pushing this ban. Trump has now recognized correctly that a ban would actually emboldened Facebook, which I guess is his enemy now. And now we have Biden saying that he would sign a bill into law. What do you think led to that flip-flop? I think it just shows that, again, this is really all about politics, right? More than it's about the substance, more than it's about any specific business.

practice and more than it's about any legitimate concerns. TikTok has become a bit of a political football that's being kicked back and forth between two parties that are sort of trying to out-compete each other on who can be the toughest on China. And all of us and our basic rights and free expression are sort of caught in the middle of this political football game. But I think, you know, just to say it, like, look, I'm an advocate. I run a nonpartisan nonprofit. We focus on advocating for people's rights, so I don't get involved in electoral politics, but just it doesn't take an expert to sit back and be like, it would be bad politics for any lawmaker or certainly any sitting president or presidential hopeful to get on board with the idea of banning an app that is disproportionately

used by young people who are the voters that both parties are desperately trying to court. And so it just strikes me as like deeply silly and absurd. And especially now that Trump has come out and said that he's against a ticket. TikTok ban, Biden would just be walking into the most obvious trap ever if he were to sign a bill banning TikTok and hand Trump this talking point to beat him over the head with, especially with the young voters that he is really struggling to keep support from, especially given his ongoing support of the violence in Gaza and a lot of other issues that young people are concerned about and talking about on TikTok primarily.

Yeah. You know, speaking of playing politics, TikTok was also accused. of playing politics by quote unquote forcing users to contact their representatives and express their opinion on the van. Just to be clear, TikTok didn't force users to do anything, despite what Congress people are claiming. How do you think that push alert that they sent helped or hurt them? Yeah, you know, I mean, I think it's hard to say, right? Certainly many members of Congress have leaned into that talking point and said, like, see, look, here's the proof that they have all this power to manipulate people. I mean, I'm old enough to remember the SOPA blackout when Wikipedia and thousands of other websites blacked out their homepage to protest internet censorship legislation

that could have led to widespread harm online. So this is not a brand new thing. That said, you know, I couldn't tell you whether it was, you know, helpful or hurtful to their case in Washington, D.C., because in the end, I think this does come down to politics and sort of what lawmakers think is going to help or hurt them in the election. I should have mentioned this earlier, but just like the timeline that has been laid out in this bill of when a sale would have to be forced, is suspiciously timed to be before the election, right? And so I think, again, that does show us that, like, more than this is about China, more than this is about

data, more than this is about speech, this is about 2024 and politicians sort of jockeying for position with TikTok as a ball that they're kicking back and forth. I'm so glad you brought up SOPA and that blackout, because there's been so many efforts over the years from tech companies and startups to push certain pieces of legislation through Congress and otherwise. I'm also thinking of all of the work that companies did around net neutrality. I mean, for a while, you couldn't log on to Tumblr back in the day without being hit with this big message about this net neutrality legislation that Congress wanted to pass. More recently, other tech companies have pushed messaging to users about legislation they felt would threaten their businesses directly. Instacart, Uber, Lyft, Postmates, DoorDash,

have all engaged in this type of behavior. In 2020, Uber users in California had to confirm that they'd seen a message before calling the ride, which told them that wait times and prices would rise if this legislation called Prop 22 wasn't passed. And Uber actually sent repeated push notifications to users warning them about Prop 22. Instacart workers were also even instructed to insert stickers and flyers endorsing a pretty controversial California ballot measure into customers shopping bags at grocery stores. I really agreed with the Verges Mia Sato, who said, you know, It's really weird to act like this type of behavior isn't standard. And I think that these lawmakers trying to spin it as like China pushing its agenda on the American public are ignoring a long history of tech companies and startups doing exactly this.

Yeah, absolutely. And look, like, this is how companies operate in a capitalist system. We should reckon with that and then decide what we want to do as a society and what sorts of rules should be governing technology and recognize that companies are. going to try to influence that. And it's up to us as a society to push back on that influence and do what actually needs to be done. Yeah. And I certainly would never argue, well, Uber did something. Therefore, it's totally fine that TikTok can do it. I think it's pretty dark that it is so common, but to sort of ignore that history to me is disingenuous. What should average users do who are against this type of bill? You know, I actually think it's still really important that people do

call and email their members of Congress about this. And I would even encourage you to call and say, I am not calling from that TikTok push notification. I really care about this because I care about free speech and human rights. I want you to pass privacy legislation instead of banning TikTok. We have a campaign, my organization, fight for the future at don't ban ticot.com that has that exact messaging. So it's not just saying, hey, Congress, don't do anything. It's saying, pass privacy laws, if you're concerned about this rather than banning TikTok. And I think that that is really important because, again, there's some of this that is just about political posturing and stoking xenophobia and, you know, kind of saying

whatever politicians think is going to sound good on Fox News and MSNBC. But there's some amount of it that is like lawmakers having genuine concerns. And to the extent there are lawmakers with genuine concerns, it's important that we tell them that there are alternatives, that there are things that they can do to address those concerns, but that banning TikTok is not one of them. So I would encourage everyone to write and email their senators, since this is now really a Senate issue, and tell them to pass a privacy law instead of banning TikTok. The more they hear from people, it does matter. I know sometimes it sounds. It feels like they're just ignoring you. They never listen. But I can tell you that

congressional staffers, when their phone starts ringing off the hook, it does make a difference. It does give them pause. It may not always translate into what their boss says. on TV, but it does have an impact on how they end up voting or whether the legislation even goes to the floor. The more that particularly Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader, gets the sense that this is controversial and would be a bad look, the less likely he is to move it forward. I could very much see a scenario where they just to kind of decide, yeah, we'll keep talking about this TikTok thing, but we're just going to kind of hope that people forget about it and never bring it to the floor. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens,

but if people don't speak out, we could end up in a really dangerous situation here. And I could see an environment where they sort of accidentally actually succeed in banning TikTok and the political consequences of that could be really dire. I think a lot of the conversations around this app and the way that people have talked about China. And I'm thinking of when TikTok CEO was hauled in front of Congress and was repeatedly asked if he was an agent of the Chinese Communist Party, despite the fact that he is Singaporean and served in the Singaporean military. Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?

Senator, I'm Singaporean. No. Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party? No, Senator. Again, I'm Singaporean. It just makes it seem like a lot of this stuff is motivated by xenophobia. How much of a role do you think that's playing in the way that these conversations are happening? I think it plays a huge role. And I think it's unsurious to pretend that it doesn't. Right. Like, there are legitimate concerns and they can be separated from this kind of generalized xenophobia and anti-Chinese, anti-Asian sentiment. But it's just foolish and ridiculous to pretend that that's not a huge factor that is animating this attack on TikTok. And let's be real that it's not just Republicans. There are,

unfortunately, many Democrats that are happy to lean into those types of xenophobic and anti-Asian narratives so that they can, again, kind of be one-uping their Republican opponent, on who's tougher on China. And look, you know, I'm an anti-authoritarian. I care a lot about civil liberties and civil rights. I have a lot of concerns about the Chinese government and their policies, just like I have a lot of concerns about most other governments and their policies. So this doesn't mean you can't criticize the Chinese government or that you can't raise concerns about the Chinese government's very small stake in bite dance, which has a stake in TikTok. But there are ways to do that without leaning into these xenophobic and anti-Asian narratives, but unfortunately, that's not what

lawmakers have been doing. They are very much pouring gasoline on those types of flames, and we should be honest about the fact that that has deadly consequences. We know there has been a massive uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes here in the United States over the last number of years as more and more lawmakers have leaned into this type of rhetoric, and we should be honest about the fact that folks that are kind of jumping on this bandwagon of let's ban TikTok because China are either knowingly or unwittingly helping pour gasoline on those flames. And it could really have terrible consequences for some really vulnerable communities here in the U.S. and around the world. We were talking about corporate lobbying. And I just think back to the story my colleague

Drew Harwell and I did a year or two ago about META hiring this Republican political firm to go out and smear TikTok in local news across the country, which they were able to do quite successfully. We know that they are one of the biggest lobbyers in D.C. Political reported that they had outspent many other companies, most other tech companies, in terms of lobbying dollars. What role is meta playing in all of this? Because they love to say, well, we haven't actually asked for an outright ban. But I can't imagine what else this type of lobbying would lead to. Absolutely. I mean, meta has been incredibly aggressive at trying to attain. total monopoly status. Their MO has been they either buy or try to kill off any competitor that

comes along that poses a meaningful challenge to their dominance. And they have absolutely been behind some of this sentiment and attacks on TikTok. I just saw on TV the other day, the head of the Chamber of Progress, which is one of the sort of lobbying front groups that works for meta and other big tech companies coming out in support of this bill that would ban TikTok. even though they push back against basically every other type of regulation that could actually meaningfully address this issue, like antitrust laws, for example. And so again, that really just exposes the fact that this is not really about addressing concerns. It's about entrenching U.S. dominance.

And frankly, it could lead to a world where we have an even more concentrated tech market in the U.S., which would be insane. And again, exposes some of the hypocrisy here. Joe Biden has been very outspoken about how there's too much power in the hands of these big corporations and we should break them up and, you know, pass antitrust reforms and take on big tech. And in the meantime, he's basically saying he's going to sign a bill that would kill off one of Facebook's biggest competitors and lead to even less choice and less options for U.S. consumers who want to find a place online to express themselves. And a huge reason why Musically was forced to sell to Bite Dance in 2017 is because it was having an increasingly difficult time going up against Meta and Instagram. Musically was being run dry by Instagram who was poaching all of Musically's top talent, cloning a lot of their video features. And Musically at that time did not have the resources to compete with Meta.

That is part of the reason it sold to such a big company. And, you know, as the Wall Street Journal reported, TikTok spent a billion dollars in app download marketing. just to sort of get that initial traction and boost after the rebranded 2018. So that is the level of resources that you have to have to go up against these tech giants. And I think it's quite telling that the only app that can even remotely give meta and Google a run for their money has to be backed by another giant, multi-billion dollar tech conglomerate because that's the level of resources that you need to compete with this duopoly. Well, what's even funnier, too, is that, you know, TikTok's format of these short-form videos is not actually brand new. Some of you may be old enough to remember Vine, right, which was basically killed off by meta when they revoked their API access to intentionally crush a competitor, right?

And so we could have had an American-owned version of TikTok, as apparently lawmakers say they want, but because we have no meaningful. anti-monopoly protections here in the U.S., we allowed META to kill off what could have become the U.S. version of TikTok. And so I think, again, that just exposes that, like, these discussions are not very serious right now, that there are real measures we could take to address the concerns we have about the current social media ecosystem. That's not what's being talked about in Washington, D.C. right now, unfortunately. I think that is such a good point about Vine, and I did a lot of reporting on Instagram's aggressive moves to crush Vine, court their talent, steal all of their video features. That was wild.

All right, Evan, well, thank you so much for chatting with us today. I really appreciate you taking your time. Where can people follow the work that you're doing? You can follow me on Twitter, Blue Sky, Mastodon, Instagram. Just by my name, Evan Greer, E-V-A-N-G-R-E-E-R. And then go to Fight for the Future.org, which is the organization I help run. And you can learn about our various campaigns protecting people's basic rights in the digital age. Thanks, Evan.

Thank you. When we come back, we are going to find out why Shrimp Jesus has taken over Facebook and more. Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling. aha moments and quiet meditation. When you're working through one of those problems, you want a partner to bounce ideas off of

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Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning, and we assessed that individual.

They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today Explain drops every weekday afternoon. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to you. night, lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers

that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you're, I don't care if you have. all that, that's like secondary, third. Like, that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America, actually.

Let's begin. Welcome back. I'm here with my showrunner, Zach Mack, and we're going to run through some stories from the week. All right. Hey, let's do it. I put 100 people inside of a giant circle. And whoever leaves the circle last wins $500,000. But if you touch the red line, it's game over.

I've read a story about this this week, but Mr. B struck a deal with Amazon MGM to produce a massive reality TV competition show. This is pretty big news because it's Jimmy Donaldson's first foray into traditional entertainment. The show is going to be called Beast Games and it'll feature a thousand contestants competing for a $5 million cash payout, which is actually the biggest prize offered in TV history. The Hollywood reporter said that Amazon outbid at least one other major streaming service to land this deal.

Mr. Beast has become the most subscribed to individual on YouTube in recent years and he has a massive audience of children. He's really known for these outrageous stunts like burying himself alive or recreating the show's squid game as this reality TV style competition. I think this is a really notable moment for the entertainment industry because it shows how these streaming platforms are willing to pay a lot of money to court these big online content creators in an effort to absorb some of their audience. I think what remains to be seen is whether Jimmy Donaldson's audience will actually hop over and watch this show on Amazon. There's been a lot of other efforts to take internet talent and move them into music. more traditional forms of entertainment, mostly linear TV or traditional movies, and that has always flopped. He said his channel makes between $600 million and $700 million a year, and he reinvests most of that back into his stunts, building his channel and his media empire even more. So who knows,

I doubt that Amazon will give him exactly the same production budget as he usually has, but maybe, you know, they're investing quite a lot in him, and I'm sure they want the show to be successful. Amazon famously spends a lot of money on their shows and really does a poor job of promoting them. I haven't seen them with any like breakout reality or game shows. A lot of their scripted stuff has just not done that well. They spent like a billion dollars on Lord of the Rings and it just didn't really make a, make a splash. So I think a lot of stuff tends to get buried on Amazon. Netflix has had quite a bit of success with reality shows, game shows, stuff like that.

That seems like it probably would have been a better fit for him audience-wise. I'm sure Amazon outbid whoever they were up against. But, you know, the thing that happens over and over again is when your audience is in one place, it's really hard to get them to another place. Well, he's also not stopping production on YouTube. So he's going to continue to post on YouTube throughout this deal. And so, yeah, it just remains to be seen whether the audience will hop over and also watch an Amazon. That said, I mean, other... Other children's shows have had success.

Cocoa Mellon jumped over. It's more of a sort of cartoon children's series. And Mr. Beast's audience is also children. So, you know, if you can plop your child down in front of the TV and turn on the Mr. Beast game show for an hour and distract them, you know, maybe. And I do feel like every parent I know has Amazon. Like, if you have kids, you probably have an Amazon subscription. So it's all right there for you, potentially.

If you've been on Facebook at all recently, you might have noticed that more and more AI-generated images are creeping into your feed. These images can be strange, bizarre, sometimes they're very beautiful, and they're usually posted by anonymously run pages. But since last week, one specific type of image has become pervasive, and that is AI-generated portrayals of Jesus Christ made out of live shrimp. These pictures are really crazy and slightly grotesque, and they've been generating a massive amount of likes and shares every single time they're posted. Shrimp Jesus is actually just the latest engagement hack by these spammy types of pages doing what's called engagement farming. Basically, they're posting something so bad and crazy and absurd that it makes people stop, comment, or share.

This then pushes that pages reach up and allows them to get other content more easily into your feed. After they boost their reach with Shrimp Jesus, they start pushing other low-quality content into your feed, like fake news websites, full of Google ads, or they try to sell you low-quality products. This is how they effectively monetize. So when you see these really weird AI generated images all over, you might just think that they're fun or weird or being shared all in good fun. This is all actually part of a big money-making scheme that's increasingly common on Facebook. Honestly, I get the rubber-necker approach to this.

Like, you're cruising through Facebook and then you just halt and you share or you comment what the fuck is going on. Seeing Jesus as a shrimp is, it is uncomfortable to look at this image. Yeah, it's quite terrifying. I think scammers are always ahead of the game when it comes to what performs online. I've seen a lot of other AI character-driven pages as well on Facebook, which are essentially anonymously run pages that purport to be a specific person. I saw one woman saying, I'm a hundred and twenty-one-year-old baker and I love to bake these peachy confections. And it's just AI-generated images of this old woman and various types of cakes. And this whole Facebook page is ostensibly supposed to be run by this 121-year-old woman, which I think would make her the oldest woman in the world. And it looks so obviously fake. But the comments on the post make it seem like, I don't even think people really care. I'm currently reporting on a similar phenomenon on Instagram. So my story will be out soon. But I really do think that we're just seeing more and more of this AI engagement bait all over the internet. Yeah, boomer bait.

Also happening on Facebook, meta-redesigned aspects of the app to emphasize the poke button again. For people that don't remember, poke was this really popular feature back in the aughts where you could really just send little pokes to people, which you just got a little message saying, I poked you or so-and-so poked you. This redesign apparently works because there's been a 13x jump in use of the feature. I think this is just Facebook trying to bait people into engaging on the app in any way that they can. I think there's tons of nostalgia for the aughts, especially among millennials, nostalgia stuff plays really well. This is a feature that a lot of millennials associate with their youth back when we had Facebook in college and would poke each other in things in our dorm. So I think this is kind of a naked play for engagement. Zuckerberg posted after they announced the uptick in the feature that, quote, nature is healing.

I don't know why we need this. I don't use Facebook anymore, so it's not for me, but I don't. know why we need this and it just feels like an excuse for more notifications and I'm just like pretty anti-notification at this point. Me too. I have all my notifications turned off. Same. LinkedIn, which recently surpassed a billion users and is primarily known as a place to find your next job, is now trying to court gamers in an effort to boost time on the platform. They're rolling out in-app games. The company is testing three puzzle type games so far. And I think this move is really smart because it taps into the puzzle mania that helped other platforms like the New York Times,

boost engagement with things like Wordle and connections. I know people that play every day. Facebook also launched Farmville back in 2009 and time spent on the platform skyrocketed. I think a lot of these social media companies have integrated gaming aspects over the years with quite positive results. It's also worth noting that the company is owned by Microsoft, a gaming giant that made over $7 billion last quarter in gaming alone. So this just seems like smart synergy. And if people can spend a little bit more time on LinkedIn, playing word games or whatever, that's good for the company. Yeah. I totally get why LinkedIn would want to do this and why it makes business sense. But if you're spending a ton of time on LinkedIn playing games,

I don't think you're using LinkedIn correctly. You're probably not finding that new job you're after. But that's not really what LinkedIn is anymore. I mean, LinkedIn is a pretty robust social network. People spend a lot of time on their learning and talking with people and sharing news. Since Twitter declined, LinkedIn has become a huge hub for news and information. People go there in the morning. You check in on your LinkedIn, see what your connections are up to. It's not only looking for work. Obviously, that's sort of what's the initial point of the platform.

But I do think it's sort of just this robust professional networking platform now. Yeah. I've had LinkedIn probably 12 years. I don't think I've ever had a shred of fun on that platform. And I think it's useful. I think it's super useful. And I wouldn't associate it with games. I mean, I think it's smart because it keeps people engaged.

Yeah. You might be on LinkedIn, networking, chatting, sending some messages, waiting for some messages to come through and want to play a crossword or puzzle or something. You know, I think it makes sense. As you mentioned, it's not always the most entertaining platform. Microsoft has a lot of stake in gaming, and this makes sense. Yeah. This reminds me of a tweet I saw that was like, The New York Times, you mean that place where I play my little games?

It's just like maybe that's LinkedIn's future. All right, that's the show. If you like this episode, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Power User is produced by Travis Larchuk and Jolani Carter. We were mixed and mastered by Brendan McFarland. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. you can watch full episodes on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Nashat Kerwa.

Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back next week. See you then.