The Vergecast - The TikTok ban and the iPhone monopoly

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

The Verge’s David Pierce, Nilay Patel, and Alex Cranz answer questions from The Vergecast Hotline all about the TikTok ban debate and the US v Apple case.  Further reading:  TikTok ban: all the news on attempts to ban the video platform US v. Apple: everything you need to know The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age Vote for The Vergecast in the Webbys! Join The Verge at the 2024 Chicago Humanities Spring Festival Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Super App Regulation. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am what I would call desperately on a hunt for solar eclipse classes. It's Monday morning. It's like three and a half, four hours until the eclipse, and like a super genius planner that I am just didn't go get eclipse classes. I think I sort of thought that sunglasses would work. Turns out that is not correct and terrible science, and you should not listen to me

about anything to do with the eclipse. So now I'm running around trying desperately to get glasses, and so far it's not happening. Target was out. Staples had a sign on the door that clearly somebody had just like hastily printed, basically saying, like, leave us alone. We don't have any eclipse glasses. I'm now going to every sort I can think of, including some that just obviously won't have eclipse glasses, trying to convince someone to sell me these classes.

I have realized I will pay what amounts to an alarming amount of money for these glasses, but I don't think it's going to happen. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today. I was in New York last week and took the opportunity of all being in the same city to drag Neli into the studio and grab Alex and just talk about TikTok and Apple and all of the stuff that's been happening over the last couple of weeks. We've talked a lot about the TikTok ban and Apple antitrust and we've heard a ton from you, questions you have for us, thoughts you have about the things that we think, feelings you have about all of what's going on. And we figured we just spent an hour talking about it. We got a bunch of really great emails and a bunch of really great hotline questions. And so that's what this whole show is.

It was really fun. I really enjoyed it. It got deep and kind of emotional at times in a really interesting way, as all of this Apple antitrust and TikTok band specifically stuff tends to do. Super fun, really awesome show. All of that is coming up in just a second. But like I said, I have three and a half hours to get some eclipse glasses. It's probably not going to happen, but wish me luck anyway.

This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations. on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools

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Go to Retool.com. slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports. And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. All right. So we've gotten a lot of feedback. We have asked for and received a lot of feedback on two things that we've talked about on the show the last couple of weeks.

So we're just going to dive into a bunch of it. Nelai Patel is here. Hi, Neal. Alex Kranz, also here. Hey, what's up? Neil and I are in this small studio that I've never been in before. It's very exciting. There's a frame TV in here.

I want to point out. I'm not going to. We have a lot of questions. We have a lot together. I'm just letting you know. So the two things we're going to talk mostly about here are the Apple antitrust stuff, which we talked a lot about. And the TikTok, we're going to do Apple first, then we're going to take a break. Then we're going to talk TikTok.

And we got a ton of feedback. So what I tried to do was find hotline voicemails from people that were like roughly representative of the feedback. So some of them have questions that we should ask. Specifically, some of them are just kind of points a lot of people made that we should talk about. We have three for Apple and four for TikTok. This is going to take us four hours ago. Let's go. All right.

The first voice mail we got is from Harrison. Hi, David. And Birge crew. My name is Harrison. I have a question about the Apple DOJ case. What I'm trying to understand is why people are going after Apple specifically. Apple has 60% market share in the United States, and people like you say that like, I messages are locked in or that green bubble envy and thing, which it totally is.

But I feel like people are getting upset that Apple, like won capitalism. It feels like they made a product that won based off of popularity and not necessity, because we all use SMS and then I messages built on top of that. it kind of feels like trying to force Apple to be to open that up or to open other parts of the iOS experience up. It would be kind of like making it so Sony has to put God of War on the Xbox or that like I have to be able to put the brake pads from a Honda cord onto a Hyundai Tucson or something. It feels like we're just trying to like create an argument for the sake of an argument. I would just genuinely like to know what is it about this case with Apple that makes it, a bigger deal in antitrust than something like Amazon Web Services and Amazon storefronts

or Google with Gmail or search, I guess. Thank you. Have your rest of your day. Bye. Okay, so I want to reframe this question very slightly before we get into it because there is a part of this premise that I disagree with, which is that we're only going after Apple because there is antitrust action against all of these companies. But the reason I pick this one is because I would say the most consistent piece of feedback

we got was that this is just the DOJ picking on Apple. for being too successful. And that what is this fight if not just trying to turn Apple into Android or make it worse? And why are we mad at Apple for being so successful? So I figure that is a thing we should address here that this question is also very much about. So, Nilai, you were nodding through this whole question. What do you think? Yeah, I think those are good points.

I agree with you, David. If you look at the landscape of antitrust actions, the governments around the world are going out for all these companies, just all over the place. So there's that. Just set that aside. Including explicitly Amazon storefront and Google search. All that stuff is in this in a very real way. Yeah. And then I want to just focus on two words, winning capitalism.

I'm a capitalist, pretty unrepentantly so. I think you should win capitalism. I think you should try really hard. I think that's a good, I think that works. The problem is you have to have a functional market for other people to try to win. And so these cases are all premised on once you've won and once you've won and place, you shouldn't be able to take that power and prevent anyone from winning in another place. And I think in particular with the iPhone, Apple's desire for control or desire for quality

or desire for fees, you pick and choose in what order they're in the equation and how they're weighted, desire for services revenue has precluded a bunch of other kinds of businesses from existing and competing with Apple. And that's actually the problem, right? It's that you get these companies that have a monopoly in one area, and maybe they've earned it. I think iPhones are really good phones. I think their cameras are really good. Like all the stuff, I think they've earned that stuff. And then you take that and you say, and now we will make sure that no one else can compete in another area, or we will make sure that we have an advantage in some other area that is unrelated to where we won. And I think that's the part where if you want a functional,

capitalistic market, you have to have markets. People have to be able to pick and choose freely and vote with their dollars, which I believe is more efficient in like voting for politicians in centralized control structures. Like, I would rather vote with my dollars than vote for politicians. Like, that's just a thing that I believe. And so you just look at the iPhone and you're like, oh, it's actually pretty hard to vote with your dollars here. It's a pretty hard to vote with your time.

And if Apple doesn't want that to exist, it just doesn't. And I think that's the heart of these cases, and I think it gets lost. When I interviewed Jonathan Cantor on Decoder, he made a point of saying there is more interest in antitrust by young people than there ever has been before because people can feel that their options are being limited by a handful of big companies across the entire economy. And that's the heart of it. Yeah, it seems to me that thinking about this one compared to Amazon and Google, I actually feel like I can explain that tension very easily with Amazon and Google because there is

sort of one specific thing. With Google, it's we built a very successful search engine. It is not illegal to win. But then what Google did is use all the money that it made from said successful search engine to basically buy all the real estate on the internet so that no one else could have a successful search engine. At least that is the allegation, right? Whether that will win or not, I don't know.

But that is at least sort of a straightforward version of the thing you're talking about. The thing that Amazon allegedly did where it would crawl the. web to find sellers who are selling stuff cheaper off of Amazon and then ruthlessly penalized those people on Amazon, same thing, right? That is you created a big market and then you used it to punish everybody who played elsewhere. I don't know that there is one thing that feels as obvious to me in the Apple suit that we've seen so far. Is there one that you can point to that feels kind of, because I think this is part of what

people are responding to. And Alex, I'm curious how you feel about this too, because it seems like the Apple thing is about sort of so many things. And I think to some extent, and Alex, we talked about this in a luncheon, and on the show, the wallet one feels to me like maybe the most straightforward version of this where, like, Apple built a thing and then didn't allow anybody else to build said thing. That is a version of the thing. I think it's both about protecting markets and allowing markets to exist, right?

Like part of this case is saying Apple has said these markets cannot exist. And the other part of it is that Apple has made the experience for consumers fundamentally worse, and it has such a large market share, that that worse is now impacting people in a really real and measurable way. And that's the part I think about the most. Because I think, I think Neely is right, right? Like, they went in and they said, okay, you can't have these markets. Like, if you want to have cloud gaming, it cannot exist on this, which means 60% of Americans cannot have this unless they choose to vote with their dollars elsewhere. But all this lock in is keeping them from doing that. And then the other part of that is if you want to send a message to your mom with a photo in it,

that photo is now degraded because Apple has willingly chosen to degrade its services to keep people walked in. And those two things are like both existing at once. So it's like Apple won at capitalism and then made everything worse as like a victory lap is kind of part of this case. And that part, I'm like, yeah, maybe that should be illegal. Maybe that shouldn't be a thing that's happening. And that's the tension of the case, right? The tension of the case is like, is that allowed? And I think that's where it becomes almost like a philosophical argument of like should that be allowed. And I'm on the case, like I love consumers. I want to help consumers. That's my job is. a consumer technology reporter, I want to make sure that they're protected.

And so I'm like, yeah, we shouldn't make things measurably worse just because we went at capitalism. And a lot of people are like, yeah, but you win at capitalism, you get to do what you want. Yeah. By the way, this is like a tension of the American economy dating back 100 years or more. Right. Right. Like the reason it's called antitrust is because there was a form of business that called

trusts. And we like knocked them all down and built antitrust law. I highly recommend reading The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu, which is a lot. a little, it's like a booklet. It's not even long. It's just like a fun, readable history of antitrust. But this is the idea is that you should have competition in our market. And if you don't protect the competition in our market, then you're going to end up with a handful of big companies around everything and they will not be as good for you. And by the way, I think a bunch of big companies in our markets right now would love to be regulated monopolies. Like just up

and down. They would love it. Facebook would love to be a regulated monopoly and be in charge of everything and make all the money and not have to compete. That's just, I don't know, it feels a key to me. I think with the iPhone in particular, you're right. It's like hard to point in one thing, but I'll give you one example. There are ads in the setting screen. That's brutal. That's brutal, right?

And it's like, that's just the clearest self-preferencing that anyone can do. And it's like, this sucks. Like, fine. Okay, put ads in the setting screen, but at least let other competitor apps have as much access to the phone. It should not be that because I picked an operating system one time. or I prefer one camera that all of these other choices down the line get made for me by some corporation that wants to extract 30%. I just don't. That feels icky. Like, that's my money. Stay,

stay away from it. Okay, what a truly perfect segue that just was into question number two, because there's more ways to talk about on that point. But this next question basically asks it directly. It's from Josiah. Hi, David. My name is Josiah. And I, of course, have a question about the DOJ versus Apple situation. A lot of the stuff in that complaint is, about like Apple forcing companies to do things either the Apple way or just not at all. And I feel like that is an area where Apple being the bully to these other companies does result in a lot of benefits for me as a user. The nightmare scenario is like thinking about the wallet and NFC access. And obviously opening that up has the intent of creating a bunch of different competitors that

have better features and then that requires Apple to make their thing better. And I would love to live in that world, but far more realistically, I feel like the world we live in, is one where the second, the court says, Apple exclusively can't lock users in. Then every other company is just going to say, oh, cool, and they're going to remove their card from the Apple, like wallet, and they're going to make their own wallet, and then they're going to make me use exclusively their wallet to use their thing. And that's hell, because then all a sudden I have my Amazon card is in my Apple wallet, and then my Delta tickets and my Skymiles card or in my Delta exclusive wallet.

And how does that not just, like, result in a worse experience for everybody on the back end? Like, how can we force Apple to open up? Is there a way to force Apple to open up that doesn't just allow all these other companies to be like, ooh, Apple can't be the monopoly, so I would like to, and then lock everybody else out of their new thing? Is that possible or is by forcing people to open up, we're going to inevitably struggle with interoperability? Thanks. Hopefully it'll be too long.

I got an answer for this one. So I think it is down to the idea of capitalism is that competition would happen. The idea of capitalism is that Apple would say, okay, other people can make their wallets, and they can now do this as well. And then Apple has to make sure their wallet is the best wallet and force people to get. Like Netflix was an example of this, right? Hulu were an example of this. They were early movers in these fields, and they said, okay, we're going to be the best.

And everybody else is going to come work with us. And if they don't work with us, then their product is going to be measurably shittier, i.e. Paramount Plus. And that's what's going to happen. And that theoretically is what would happen in this case, too, right? Chase may say, okay, we're going to go and make our wallet app and not use apples anymore. And if their wallet app is worse, then people might be like, well, it's not that hard for me to move over to Bank of America or Wells Fargo or whatever. I'm just going to move my business over there because I need the convenience of this other product that's much better. So having just switched banks, I take unbelievable offense to that premise that switching banks. So easy.

This is one of the things this question made me think about is like maybe where we're headed is we're about to realize lock in is more real, more places than anybody has reckoned with. And actually what we're doing is we're starting down this like incredible hill of trying to get out of the holes that we've dug ourselves into over the years. But I don't know, Neelai, what do you make of this question? So specifically with wallets, I have an answer. And then we can abstract it. With wallets, everybody wants your credit card to be everywhere. There's no incentive for anyone to make you use a different wallet app.

The incentive is for your credit card to be everywhere. Right, because they want you to use your credit card. And you can see this play out on the web already where every storefront has like 15 payment service buttons. Like, do you want to use shop pay? Do you want to use Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Apple, like, whatever. Just pay us the money. You get PayPal and Venmo, which are the same company. They're like, we don't care.

Just do something. Any way to get your money. They'll do it. So the incentive, at least for that one, is for payment services to make it easy for you to spend money. So I think that one will be fine. I think there are other ones where the incentives will be get over here and we'll lock you in in other ways. What I'm hopeful for is that, yep, we'll all perceive that and that'll be annoying in some ways. But then over time, that annoyance will actually reduce how much people use some of these services or the switching costs will be obvious.

Alex brought up Netflix. I think we've all gone through this now in the streaming example where every streamer was like, we have these exclusives. Music services are like, we have these exclusives. And then people are like, but I don't care. Like whatever. And then like most of the streaming companies have gotten 90 and put their stuff on Netflix. Like I think the economy should wax and wane in these ways.

And I think right now it can't. It can't because you picked an operating system, which is weird. Like that's too many decisions to give away. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I buy the premise to some extent that if you give everybody access to everything, you suddenly will get a thousand ads on your setting screen and that actually that's a worse outcome than only Apple being allowed to show me ads on the setting screen. Just from a pure like user experience perspective.

And I think then you have to believe that, oh, okay, people will ditch their iPhones because there are too many ads on the setting screen. You know, there's a counter example. It's just like sitting in front of all of us all the time, which is we use the web on our computers every day. the model for computing is not only on phones. Yeah. There's a whole other one. Like you buy any desktop computer and then you put another application environment on it in terms of a web browser. And then you have multiple competing application layers and multiple, like all this stuff.

It's just like pure chaos. And that market seems to be fine. Like from what I get. Like all to seem to enjoy it. It's like people make things. The browser companies seem to be doing fine. Like there's new innovative browser companies all of a sudden. Like the market.

changes. People are selling laptops from what I understand, Alex. They keep making them. Yeah, they do that. Every day. You look at this other thing and you're like, well, that works fine. Until Google comes along and ruins it for everybody. But then we get another other stuff that shows up and starts to work. I think that's largely right. I think what I wonder is how many things we're about to discover don't have the incentive structure of things like credit cards. Yeah. And actually, as you're talking about the Netflix stuff, Alex, I was thinking about all of the, these companies that have shown up trying to be like the search service for streaming. And Netflix sometimes works with them and is usually part of the search stuff.

And there was a really funny thing recently where a bunch of people discovered you can search on the Apple TV app and get Netflix stuff. And everybody got really excited. And it's like, no, that's been there for a while. But what it won't do is show up in the continue watching stuff and it won't show up in the recommendations. And it's like Netflix wants to own that experience. They'll take search because you've got to be there.

but Netflix still wants to own that experience and is powerful enough that it can get away with not being part of that. And it just makes me wonder there are more things like that that are going to be out there, I think. The foundational premise of this question is also really interesting,

which is Apple makes people do things the right way, which is Apple's rep. Right. They're like, we have a user experience and if you want to be a part of it, you got to do it our way. Right, but this is the correct answer in some sort of way.

But there's a correct answer. And like part of that's true. Like that's Apple's history. Like they're like, there is a correct design answer. I think that's being corrupted by Apple's financial interests. And then I think, like, actually you look around, you're like, we made a bunch of weird decisions. Like, we all have to deal with HGICs.

Yeah, right. Right? Like, that's weird. Like, did that, was not the right answer? Like, I don't know. TikTok started supporting H.T.R. videos. And it's just a mess.

Like, it is just a mess. It looks like shit. And, like, everything is too bright and then also kind of grainy. Instagram has the same problem with H. And it's like, this is just because Apple is like now the videos are HDR. and it forced everyone to, like, deal with it. And it's like, this isn't great. And it's like, these are just choices that Apple is sort of like making down the line.

I think one piece of evidence that, you know, it's kind of the lumbering monopoly, is it the polish on some of that stuff isn't there the way it used to be. Yeah. Yeah. And it's still coasting. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They get away with it.

Yeah. I think that's fair. We have one more question from Peter. Hey, this is Peter and Brooklyn. Just heard the episode about the Apple lawsuit with the U.S. government. And want to say one thing people never point out about super apps is that China has one because the Chinese government has banned everything else. And they want everyone to be in one app because it's easier to collect all the data and mess with all the information in one place.

So maybe that's why China and India have one and no one else wants it. Yeah, just something to think about. Thanks. Bye. So I just, I want to add one thing to this before we talk about it, which is, I think another consistent piece of feedback we got when we talked about the antitrust stuff was people saying, why would you want super apps? Those are just monopolies of their own. And they have just as much, if not more, lock in than many of these other systems. Why are we the three Vergecast co-hosts standing so hard for super apps? All right. So maybe I didn't say this as clearly as I could have because I was on a beach, literally drinking a be Nicolada and my audio is coming through AirPods. I think the DOJ is talking about super apps because that's a sexier idea than web apps. That is my fundamental belief. That's what I think, too. I think they can point to be like, we could turn Facebook into a super app and then you would just like leave your iPhone and buy a cheap Android phone and Facebook would take you there. And that would bring down prices of phones in the market.

And that's one way. Fine. But it's actually web apps could do the same thing. Right. I think of my phone in many ways as a vessel for Google services, which are all. so slowly degrading over time. But that was a real problem for Apple about five years ago, when people would buy iPhones and then load them up with Google apps,

and Apple realized, oh, we need services that can compete with this across the board. And those services have to be everywhere. That's why Apple Music is on Android. Like, they know that some of these services have to be everywhere. So I don't know. I don't know that I want super apps either. I just, my belief is that they couldn't pick web app. Like, you can't be like Apple start killing the web.

Like, that is somewhat famously the argument they made about Microsoft in the 90s. Right. So I think they had to pick something new and shiny. And honestly, I think because Elon keeps talking about turning X into a super app, I think they wanted to court that particular political base. You think it also might just be in the lexicon in a way that like if you say progressive web apps, everybody's eyes kind of start to glaze over, except for Vergecast listeners,

which is why we love to. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, there's an element of politics here. Like the United States government is like doing a thing. I think they are communicating as political actors. You know, this is law, like, the DOJ is law enforcement. The cops are, like, doing stuff, and they need people to believe in their power as cops.

Okay. Like, I just, I'm not out here saying we need a Chinese-style super app. Like, the point is, if you had one and in markets where there are one, you see the switching costs between iPhones to other phones are very low, and people switch between them all the time. And that is true. In Europe, that is true in China. That is true in India. There are other ways to make those switching costs low.

They just happen to be the web. And it's only us here in our little Vergecast Club that know that and care about that as much as we do. Alex, what do you think? I mean, ditto. I totally agree with Neely on that. I don't think anybody necessarily wants a super app, but it's a really good example to use in this thing. And it's a really good example to show, like, we could have cheaper phones. This could be a lot cheaper.

And we don't necessarily need super apps for that. It could be the Google suite. It could be the Amazon suite. It could be another monopoly, like tech company suite. Who can say? But we should have choices and just choices at all. And to have just a whole style of app forbidden from 60% of phones in the United States because Apple doesn't feel like it and is threatened by it is like bad, even if those apps themselves maybe aren't great. And I once again point to desktop computers where you can just the entire application model is the web in the.

And that's fine, right? And like, do people switch between Windows and Mac all the time because you can just use Google search and YouTube? No, they don't. They still have preferences. And the computers are still expensive. But a lot of them have gotten way cheaper in a way that, you know, phones have not. And we have evidence of this, right? Like Apple talks about not wanting parents to buy their kids cheap Android phones because that worries them that if they people can just access the service on a good enough phone, they won't buy expensive iPhones.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. Alex, we're about to get to the portion of our show where you and I get repeatedly accused of being China-loving communists. Would you like to briefly explain why you'd like WeChat to come to America and it'll make everything better and solve all of our problems? No. Okay, good. Yeah, I don't think it will. I don't think we need it in this country. And I don't think, I think super apps are probably, I think, to Peter's point, monopolies themselves.

We probably don't need them in this country. But we also should probably be able to have them if we really want them like the choice should be there The whole idea of capitalism is we have choices and it's like okay I would like that choice Yeah also millions of Americans routinely choose to use meta products Like all the time All the time like all the time like we are just like a little bit away from that thing actually being real Yeah and it's not like John Gruber keeps pointing this out when you give people the choice of do you want a service with personalized advertising.

They're like, yes. And they're like, what if you didn't have that and you could pay for it? And they're like, no. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's right. All right. Well, we should get to TikTok stuff, but first, we've got to take a brief break. We'll be right there.

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uh but is also occasionally sometimes a monster who believes in the opposite of capitalism and hates everything. It's really been fun times listening to the feedback to the TikTok band stuff. We got so much feedback about the TikTok band, including somebody who called us, I think, three times to yell at me specifically in increasingly well-spoken ways. It's like they called. They weren't happy with how they did. So they called a kid.

And then they did it. It was unbelievable. Thank you to that person. More people should call and yell at David in an increasingly polite ways. No, no. They were not increasingly polite, increasingly well-argued ways. I see. Okay.

I'll take that too. Do that again. Yeah. All right, but let's get to a few of them starting with the question we got from Brandon. Hello, my name is Brandon. I'm complete for getting rid of TikTok funded in part sort of the source of like information. I think that there's just sort of a best interest to kind of eliminate the wild current events news from the landscape on an election year. But the national security and sort of like China angle of it is sort of like a convenient sort of top level.

reason to use to get rid of the app. But I feel like it just sort of is, you know, one hand that's washing the other. And the other hand is really the true reason why both sides of the aisle want to get rid of the app. But that's just my thoughts. Thanks. Okay. Two things going on here. One, we got a surprising number of voicemails that start with not to be a conspiracy

theorist and then dive deep down into it, which is just delightful and is perfectly in line with this entire conversation. But I do think this question of the Israel Hamas war being sort of the catalyzing event for a lot of this came up a lot. And we talked about it a smidge in the episode that we did on it. But it's been reported on a lot. And there's been this question still ongoing of like, what does the government know and why haven't they told us? Yes, without question. They have not been clear.

Now a couple of weeks later, I just want to come back to this thing about like, okay, what do we know about what this is actually about and what's going on? and what the U.S. government believes it is actually doing here. Okay. I don't want to talk about APEC too much. Like, you really can fall down a wild ride of conspiracy theories there. But I will point out that yesterday, as we're talking probably last week as people hear this, Joe Biden told Netanyahu on the phone, the situation of Gaza is unacceptable and conditioned further aid for Israel on some lasting solution to that situation. So the pressure has worked. Fair enough. I think embedded in this question and much of the feedback that we got is an assumption that the TikTok algorithm is neutral. And then what's happening on TikTok is a neutral representation of how everyone in America feels. And people are like, the kids are speaking and TikTok is like fighting back. And it's like maybe, maybe that's true. I also believe the situation in Gaza is untenable. And there should be a ceasefire. But I don't believe that the TikTok algorithm is neutral.

There's no evidence that it is. But there's no evidence that bite dance or the Chinese government is not like, you know what? The fastest way to break lasting Western peace would be would be to break the United States support of Israel. Like, that is a true thing. That's a thing that you could do. And putting pressure on that alliance in particular, like resets the world order. Can you do that through the mechanism of fucking tick? I don't know.

Right. But I think, like, to accept that premise that it's because of what happened in Gaza and the, you young people arguing against a war is what is causing the United States government to say TikTok has a problem. You have to accept somewhere in there that the algorithm is neutral, that it is a neutral representation. And I think that's a huge assumption that you should not just make lightly. I also think my formative experience as a young person was the war in Iraq. And I, no one listened to me either.

My friends got arrested marching down Lake Shore Drive protesting that war. And that straight up, like, no one, like, we were loud. I wish I'd had a TikTok then. I would have made a lot of videos. And so I hear that frustration. I feel it very keenly. I feel the same way about this war in all wars. But I think the presumption that the algorithm is neutral is one that if you want to make

that claim, I would just encourage you to challenge that presumption and think about how much you're relying on it. But like at least yesterday, at least, you know, the pressure has worked in some minor way. Well, and this is also a trend we see with social media. every time. A social media that is used by younger people tends to have this moment where everybody's like, why is nobody else talking about this? And it's like, well, because you're just on this particular, you're just on Tumblr in 2016. That's why nobody else is talking about it because you haven't left Tumblr. You're just on TikTok in 2024. That's why nobody else is talking about it because you haven't left this app.

And if you go and you look elsewhere, if you look at other media, you will see that this stuff is being covered. And I think that's a trend we see a lot. And on TikTok in particular, because you have. because of the algorithm, because of the way it is really, really good at disseminating information really, really quickly. We've seen that accelerate. We've seen that be a lot louder and a lot faster than it was in those other cases, which we have seen, like, to be clear, we've seen it. We saw it with Live Journal back in 2004 with the war in Iraq, 2003, 2004. You see it again and again and again. And it's a behavior where younger people who are starting to really get into media literacy and starting to really think about these things. They go, they get on an app. They find other people just like them. And they're like, Why is nobody else talking about this? Why is this being held for me in these other areas? And the truth is it's not.

It's just being discussed in a different way. It's being discussed maybe with a little less heated rhetoric or whatever. But also, I do kind of agree with him. Not about that part, but I agree with him certainly about, like, there are other reasons why the TikTok ban is being pushed. And it is, I would certainly agree it is not just national security reasons. I think there's an massive financial incentive for both the United States and for the many, many companies based. in the United States that are direct competitors to TikTok. And those are the people that, like, they do, they met a Mark Zuckerberg, we'd be delighted if TikTok got shut down tomorrow,

you know? Like, Elon Musk would be delighted if it got shut down tomorrow because that means more users back on their platforms. So I think, like, we can't ignore the fact that there are certainly other incentives here that are encouraging this, but we also have to like deal with the facts as we are given them. And like, when we start to think about, what is it, you know, why is nobody reporting on this stuff? People are reporting on it. People are looking into this stuff. People are examining it. But if we don't have proof, if we don't have like real quantifiable facts, we are just like piss it in the wind being like maybe something's happened over there. Yeah. Also, you know, most of Congress believes what they're going to accomplishes

a sale of TikTok in that I don't like, if you believe they're going to sell it, like, then you also have to believe that someone's going to find the big algorithm dial and turn it like towards Israel. and that implies that that dial exists and it is currently pointing towards gossip. It can be turned. And then now you're right back at the problem of who controls that dial. And so I was just like,

to that assumption that is like, do you believe that the Instagram Reels algorithm is neutral? I do not. It mostly shows me babes. Like it just fully believes that that is what I want from that place. And like, I can't type trucks exploding into Instagram like more loudly.

Like that's the thing I actually want. And the TikTok algorithm is like, you definitely want trucks exploding. And then here is some of the weirdest gadgets ever made. You should buy them. So TikTok gets you. TikTok is like, you're going to buy so many vacuum cleaners. Here's some cut rate anchor batteries.

We're doing it this week. That's what's happening. And it's like these algorithms. We all know that the algorithms have preferences and biases and can be shaped by the people who control them. The question for this is who should do that? Should it exist in our country? Should it exist? If Rupert and Murdoch bought TikTok, would you be pleased about that?

Why or why not? Right. And then the question is, would you be pleased that the Chinese government has the same power? Yeah, I think that's fair. And then the, you know, tangential to the question of is the algorithm neutral is like on what vectors can you move the knobs, right? And it's like, that comes back to what do these companies want and who is really in charge? And it's like, that's where all of this gets so messy for me, right? Because it's like, I doubt sincerely that it would be good for TikTok's business to move the Gaza knob one way or another. I do think it. moves the shop knob to move the business. That's just obviously true. Like, it feels true being on TikTok. But then there's all of those questions next to the fact, like you're talking about, Alex, that the three of us sitting in this room have completely different experiences of TikTok.

So to sit here and talk about TikTok as a single thing is essentially impossible. And this is where, like, I just start running in circles on all of this, right? Like, we're essentially using different apps. I would bet 95% of what the three of us see on TikTok does not overlap. Yeah. And what do you do with that? Yeah. It's so weird.

Well, you explain Jojo Siwa to Nelai right before the show starts. No, I refuse to know any of this information. Yeah, Nilai got to. I know there is an entity called Jojo Zewa, and that's all the information you guys. I refuse to even acknowledge that it is an entity. I know that there are words that people say that sound like that. I see. Okay.

Yeah. By the way, my belief is that the Instagram algorithm only shows me babes because I refuse to engage with it. And its default is like, huh? Will this work today? Nicky, I know you want this. It's like, we don't know anything about you. Fair enough. All right, let's get to the next one, which in the name of fairness is very mad at me specifically,

but we got a lot of these that are very mad at me specifically. And as a good journalist, I feel obligated to air one. This person, they said their name in a way that I couldn't identify, so we're just going to call them St. Louis. So this is from St. Louis. It starts from St. Louis and listening to the latest episode of the Birchcast and taking my fist at the clouds and yelling into the... the ether because David and Alex are just, I don't know, I guess they've been brainwashed by TikTok

or something. To start from first principles, right? The most compelling reasons for banning TikTok and then just work your way down to the least compelling. First and foremost, what Neil I mentioned in the 1932, it was Communications Act, known for ownership of media. Boom, right there. You don't need to go any further that right there is justification for banning TikTok.

It should have been done one time ago. We don't need to have any debate. done period next China fans of US social media why would that be why would they think they should do that maybe because if they think just being done to them it's because they're doing it to you right I mean

it's kind of a tit for sat thing but again you combine that with the other one and again I don't think we need to debate it any further second you guys are talking about well what are they doing this is all hearsay blah blah blah I don't know you guys have a you know a whole website and you seem to like to investigate you know shit related to technology and whatever, how about looking into the differences in content between,

you know, the different platforms? I would hazard a guess, and I'd take a big bet, that the types of content on TikTok versus Reels versus YouTube shorts is quite different, meaning pick a controversial subject, you know, Israel, Hamas, or Taiwan, et cetera, that there's a dramatic difference in the number of pros and cons posts that are presented on these different platforms. Hi. So the two things in here. One, he brings up a bunch of stuff we've been talking about.

And I think the question of content differences is very interesting. But I specifically want to talk about this one because a lot of people responded to our talk about the TikTok ban by saying, well, China does it to us, the end, problem solved. We can do it back. And I don't find that argument credible at all. But I am open to discussion on that. And Neli, in particular, I want to know what you think because you are the most pro-ban of us, I would say.

Yeah, I don't, I've heard that argument a lot. It makes sense in like its way, like straight tit for tat. Like, but China also directly controls its information economy and it is an authoritarian government. And I don't think we should do that. Well, so this is kind of where I ladder up to you. I just want to be clear. Like, I believe in the First Amendment in a very. real and meaningful way. What I'm saying is there's a reason in the United States we don't allow a ton of foreign ownership of media.

There's a reason that historically we have not allowed concentration of media ownership because we know that's dangerous to like the plurality that makes a democracy strong and all the stuff. And so like that that's its own argument. That is not they do it so we can do it too. Right. Yeah. I think to me there are sort of two inclusive questions inside of that. One is like, is. Is China does something we can do it back a good argument? And I think no for the reasons you just said, I don't want to be like that. I think that argument feels good. I want to be clear.

I think that argument feels good. Sure. But I also think when you run around being like what we want to preserve as a plurality of media, like no one gives a shit. When you're like, they do it to us. Like everyone's like, yeah. That feels good. I understand why the argument is made and I understand why it feels good.

Right. And I think it latters up to an argument that I think a lot of the antitrust conversation also ladders up to, which is what do we think our argument is what do we think our government's job is to do here. And I think in a lot of ways, there is this belief in America that the market regulates itself. And this is how we talk about this stuff and capitalism and all this stuff. But then the question of what is the government's role in that is like it has occurred to me a number of times that this is a thing we should spend a lot of this year talking about is what the government's job is and should be and what that actually looks like in practice.

Because I think a lot of people in America feel like what the EU is doing to tech companies is like way overreaching and heavy-handed and ridiculous. But it's like culturally, I think, in a lot of places in Europe, it is less out of bounds with how things normally work. But to me, all of this stuff sort of circles around this question of like, is the government's job to govern what I look at on my phone? I don't know. No, I just will be very clear about that. No. Like, I really don't believe. But you want them to ban TikTok.

Yeah. Again, I think your question about like, what can the government do and can the market regulate itself? The pendulum has swung pretty wildly over the last 40 years towards no regulation. Right. And now it might just slowly be swinging back. Right? Like there's 1980 Ronald Reagan, Robert Bork. We've done that decoder episode.

There's like a total deregulation in the market. You can see it. Jonathan Cantor mentioned it to me. Same thing. He's like 1980 this happened. And now the pendulum might just be swinging back, like just a little bit. And people are like, ooh, that's weird. And that's fine.

Like, that is inside of our market. The thing that I'm saying about TikTok in particular is if you find out they're doing the bad thing, we can't go arrest the Chinese government. Right. You can't do it. You cannot hold them accountable in specific ways. I mentioned this on the last show, and I'll say it again. Their kids aren't here. The people who run bite dance, you know, their kids are there.

They're in China. They're in Singapore. So there's just a thing that's different. Like, our experiences here in this country are valuable to us. And our media ownership is just a part of that. Like, it really is a big part of that. Like, I said this is a joke at the end of the last episode. I think we should also break up Sinclair Broadcasting and Clear Channel.

Sure. Like, massive concentration of media ownership across the country is not good. It only gives you, like, a singular point of view and puts too many people in charge of what too many people see and feel. There's that really famous video that I think Deadspin made ages ago that was just single. Claire news anchors all saying all reading the same speech about the fake news. Yeah. And that is horrifying, right? That's horrifying.

And the reason you have media ownership rules is to make sure that doesn't happen. And so like I landing all of my like we should ban TikTok criticism in that idea, right, which is the people who make the media in the United States, who shape opinion in the United States who have control of what people see and experience this has skin in the game here. Fair enough. And there should be more competition in that. Any thoughts? Yeah. To Neil's earlier point, I think he's right that like we took our eye off the ball for a very long time in this country.

We stopped paying contention and we stopped caring to regulate companies. And historically, we did that a lot. And some of our biggest and most like vibrant economic moments in this country were when we were heavily regulating companies. And so a lot of this is just like culture shock. If you haven't done something for 40 years and you start doing it even a little bit, everybody's going to be like, the hell are you doing over there? But at the same time, like, I see the TikTok stuff. And I'm like, well, that feels kind of hypocritical of us to be like, well, we have to shut down TikTok because it has this really large control over our media. And it has this really important impact on our media. When Disney has what, like 80% of American box office and has this enormous control. And so the only difference between those two is one is in China and one is Bob Iger. That's a huge difference.

Like Disney's here and Ron DeSantis is like, here's a weird law about not saying anyone can ever be gay. Which is going super well for Ron DeSantis. Right? And then Disney got into a political fight and they lost a tax district and they got to get it back. There was an investor fight that Disney just had to win. Like the consequences of Disney's speech in America are real. Right. And yes, it is true.

They have mostly succeeded in all of their fights. but they had to fight. Yeah. Right. There were actual, they were held accountable for their positions. And I agree with most of their position. Not all of Disney's positions. I would hasten to say.

But some of their positions here about being inclusive, like all that stuff, like a meaningful political element in United States tried to punish Disney for that stuff. And Disney fought back. And largely has won or not one or come to some set of accommodations with the Florida government. Like, whatever happened there is different than whatever if we find out TikTok is doing the bad thing. Yeah. Right?

And that's, I think that is just a massively important, like, I don't know, like Disney has employees in the United States. Like if Disney has 80% of the box office. I'm sorry. I was reading my, I was reading my little red book that I received. I didn't hear anything. I was just saying like. Yeah, no, I think there is a, there's a fundamental difference, right? Like, the argument here, the core argument of this TikTok thing is who is allowed.

to dominate conversations in America. And I think that argument shouldn't happen at all. Who should be allowed to dominate conversations in America? No one. We shouldn't have that. Like, Disney shouldn't be as it is. TikTok certainly shouldn't be able to just have everybody believe a conspiracy theory or know who the what's up brother guy is with just like a little twist of the algorithm.

That's bananas. No one should have that kind of monopoly on our culture and on our media. But at the same time, I kind of agree with the fact that, like, we probably don't want foreign actors in the United States controlling stuff, right? Like, we don't necessarily want that because we've seen time and time again. But banning TikTok doesn't solve that. Russia has found many ways to get into our country and influence us at a mass scale using American tools. Like, the tools themselves are the problem. It's not who owns them because the tools are the thing that is disseminating the information.

We saw that in 2016 with how Russia manipulated Facebook and other social media platforms. And that's just proof. Like that happened. There was a bunch reporting about how there was a Russian disinformation campaign around Kate Middleton. Yeah. And it's like, oh, they just keep doing it. They're still at it. They're still doing it.

I'm realizing as we talk that I think I would be more compelled by your argument, Nelai, if I felt like the U.S. was regulating anything. That we have like a functional government. If we were preventing the American-owned services from doing the things we're accusing TikTok of, I would be more compelled by the argument that since we can't prevent TikTok from doing it, the responsible thing to do is kick them out. I think if you draw that line, that sort of makes sense to me. But that assumes that we are capable of doing it to anybody. And there's really no evidence that we're capable of doing that to anyone. Well, there's one huge prohibition, which is the First Amendment.

It really gets in your way. Mm-hmm. Right? It's like a real problem. It's good problem, a problem that I think we should continue to have. I swear, there will come a time on this show where I make you earnestly argue against the first time. I'm so excited about it. It's very challenging. You have to believe, and I think this is why a lot of the people who don't think TikTok should be banned or sold, who think this is all crazy. You have to believe that American companies have in some way the best interests of Americans at heart or America at heart, and I don't think that's easy to believe. I think if I walked up to most people and I'm not. I was like, Disney is a champion of American values. They pick, what are you talking about? If I said that about Facebook or Apple or Google or Pfizer or whatever, like, most people do not believe that that is the case.

Right. I don't know that I believe that that is the case. But it is what I talk about challenging assumptions. That is one assumption at the heart of the idea that big companies in America should have all kinds of freedoms in big companies from outside of America shouldn't. That is my assumption is the working assumption of lots and lots of policy. Yeah. you are free to disagree with that assumption.

Like, I understand the reasons why you might, but that is the heart of it. Yeah. All right. We got one more, and then we're going to get out of here. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns.

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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 unite 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 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. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas. 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. All right, we're back. One more question about the TikTok ban.

This one comes from Lucas. Hi, Virchcast. This is Lucas from Virginia about the TikTok ban. I'm pretty much in the same boat as Nilai. Just, you know, I think of TikTok as digital crack. But at the same time, I think that most prohibition laws fail. So this will probably go that way. Love the pod.

Have a good one. Ditto. Nilai Patel. TikTok is digital crack. That's the headline here. I want to pose this as a question because I think this is kind of where we ended the last time we talked about this. And I want to end here too. Is there a version of this that accomplishes anything?

A, TikTok ban. A, can you ban TikTok? A, can you ban TikTok in an actually practically enforceable way? And B, would it do anything? Because I think there's a real nihilism setting in a lot of this. conversation that's like whatever it's it's for yeah first of all just to be I think as of today uh TikTok is not banned correct there is no movement on a bill in the Senate Alex and I are winning that bet so far yeah yeah there's no movement on a bill in the Senate to actually ban TikTok so

whatever right right then there's the other reality which is the bill would potentially force a sale and there's a lot of people who might want to buy it and you might just end up in situation. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that have to happen first and many of them don't end up in the thing as banned. But I think if you do ban it, like I don't think people are just going to be staring at like a blank screen on their phone. Just like wistfully thinking about when Charlie DeMilio started dancing again, you know, like, I think they're going to just like move on. Okay, but let me posit this. So the, what this does is prevent app stores from carrying it, right? That is essentially what this band looks like? There are what a couple hundred million

people in the United States who already have TikTok on their phones. I don't think there's any real precedent for Apple and Google reaching out and proactively deleting apps from your phone. Yeah. So that's just a lot of people who have TikTok still already. It also VPNs exist. People have done a lot of work to go out. I do love the idea of like some small country, like becoming a honeypot VPN destination for

like Monaco, you know? It's like everyone is just like VPNing through Monaco and Monaco's TikTok becomes U.S. TikTok. It's like the, I forget which country it is, but the country that owns the dot-AI domain is suddenly that's like a meaningful part of the GDP as all these companies. It's great. Yeah, great. All these things could happen. And I agree many. Look, the Chinese great firewall works, but it's not perfect. Right. And the idea that we would put one up and it would work perfectly is like nonsensical. Like, yes, some people are still going to use TikTok. But the app won't be able to get updated. And people won't be uploading content to a thing that looks like it's not. Like, it will result in some kind of weird decline over time. and fine. But there's just so many steps from here to there. Like, so, so many steps from here to there.

Yeah, Alex, you and I have been on the same page about this, and I'm curious. Where I've landed after, you know, two more weeks of this is I think most likely outcome by a pretty wide margin, nothing happens. Yeah. Second most likely outcome, it gets sold in some way, shape, or form, not to Stephen Mnuchin, but to somebody else. Big, giant, planet-sized gap down to option number three, which is that TikTok. actually gets banned in a meaningful way. Do you disagree or disagree? It's not going to get banned. It won't get banned. And I think even a sale is going to be super unlikely because who's going to buy it? Who's going to have the money and not have a monopoly as soon as they own it, right? And also then I think we just come back to that conversation of wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's not okay for the Chinese government to manipulate us through TikTok, but it is totally okay for Disney or Larry Ellison or whoever to manipulate us.

through TikTok. Well, that's not good. Like, I think it's just such a stupid, stupid ban and for, for those reasons. I understand, like, the rationale behind it and the legal theory behind it and all of that. I get that. But at the same time, I'm like, the hypocrisy of it is so outrageous. And I'm like, don't be so dumb. I've decided that the funniest possible outcome is that one branch of the government forces it to be sold to YouTube. And then four minutes later, Lena Con files a lawsuit against you to for antitrust. That'd be good. You got to keep the government wheels turning.

Yeah. We're just going to keep a lot of lawyers employed. Well, when I think of what the founding fathers really wanted, it was a self-perpetuating cycle of government actions. It's beautiful. All right, we got one more, and then I'm going to let you guys get out of here. This has nothing to do with TikTok or Apple, but it is a perfectly verged-casty question, and so I am obligated to play it.

This is from Michael. Hello, this is Michael from San Francisco. So I've been loving you guys' coverage on the future of the web, and I love how it's with the web you are. And I, too, I'm obsessed with it. And I'm trying to find more and more web apps to replace the apps on my phone. So I'm wondering what web apps, not native apps, but like, whether they be PWAs and just web pages, like, what are the web apps do you guys use day to day?

What are some of your favorite web apps? Thanks. Goodbye. Okay. I just, I want to just, we're going to do two each. These are the rules. And neither, none of us can say the verge because the verge is the best web app. that exists. You should download it to your home screen. It's actually very good on your home screen.

Highly recommend. Everybody is furiously scrolling through their phones right now. So I'll go first. The two web apps that I use the most, I would say at this moment are I use an app called FeedBin as an RSS reader that is fantastic on the web. It's super late and super fast. It's where all of my stuff comes into. I started piping my YouTube subscriptions into there so that I get new things from the channels I subscribe to without the rest of the YouTube interface. Love it. FeedBin.com. It's amazing. I think it's like five bucks a month. Cannot recommend it highly enough. And the other one, there's two I could choose from here,

but the other one I'll pick is a to-do list app that I have started using and stopped using and come back to because this is the sickness with which I live my life. It's called T-W-O-S. And it is like just a perfectly made, very simple list-making app with reminders and integrates with your calendar. And it is just fast as hell. And a lot of the app works offline, even in your browser.

It rules. enough. I love a good, simple, fast. Choose.com. I think it's twosapp.com. That explains a lot of a thing. It's very cool. Yeah. So those are my two. Alex, what do you got? Storygraph is probably my big one. It's a good read for placement.

And it is, it just slaps. It is fantastic. I don't use any of the social parts of it. I just use it to track what I'm reading. And anytime somebody says, which book should I read? I immediately open that and start flipping through it because I just adore it. And then my other one is probably like a console I use

to interact with my Raspberry Pi. It's just like... Amazing. It's the Piehole console. And you can just like, there's like a web app version of it. And I adore that. Like a lot of smart home stuff has web apps. And I'm just like, yeah, this is great.

And so I was looking through it. I was like, oh, I guess most of my web apps are like smart home quick access. It's perfect. I love it. And that's like it connects to all your stuff. It does all the stuff. And it just does it. And they work.

Yeah. And it's great. That's good. Yeah. Piehole is a good app. All right. Nealai, what's yours? Well, I wish I'd gotten this question knowing that I wasn't on to say the verge.com.

Yeah, it's just cheating. It's like, it's a website. It is very good on the thing. I want to issue one correction. Last week or two weeks ago, I said Notion Calendar on the Mac was native. That's an electron app. It just happens to be very good. And the person who wrote it was tweeting how happy he was.

He was very proud. Yeah, that you confuse it for being a native app. That's good. Which means all the people who build bad electron apps, shame on you. Yeah. Do better. You got nowhere to hide. Yeah.

So yeah, I have a Homebridge, and I use the Homebridge web app on my phone all the time, mostly to update the plugins. But that's like a thing that I use all the time. I go to that web, and then it's actually interesting that I don't think of these as web apps. They're just little web servers in my house. So Humbridge just runs in my house. That counts, yeah. And then my Sony receiver has a little web server in it to change all the settings. Of course it does.

And I spend so much time just like monkeying with the little settings on the Sony receiver. That's amazing. You know, this question, like, it gets the heart of something. I was looking at twos app.com and you open it, and the banner is like download our app. Yep. At the top of the screen. Yep. It's actually better on the web than any other platform and it still wants you to download an app,

which I think is fascinating. A lot of this question is just like Apple does not want that thing to happen that happened to its laptops. Right. Yeah. And, yeah, there's going to come a time when I'm going to write 40,000 words about how annoying it is when you open up, like, Reddit or any other site. And it's like, isn't this better in the app? And I'm like, no, I'm under website.

Have a good website. If it's better in the app, it's your fault. Yeah. But yeah, anyway, the web is great. We love the web. Please ask us questions about the web. All right, we got to get out of here. Nealai, Alex, thank you as always for doing this.

And I suspect we will have more of this to do in the very near future. Peace. That's it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to Neelai and Alex for doing this with me. And thank you, as always, for listening and for sending in all of those hotline questions and emails. We love getting all of your feedback. There's lots more on everything we talked about, by the way. at theverge.com. I'll put some links in the show notes, but also the TikTok ban and the Apple

stuff is all happening sort of constantly all the time. Even just recently, there's a huge lawsuit about the Apple Watch that is very much a regulatory question about Apple, even separately from the antitrust stuff. There's just a lot going on. Before we go, two quick housekeeping things. One, this coming weekend, April 13th on Saturday, I'm going to be in Chicago at the Chicago Humanities Festival, along with a couple of my colleagues doing a series of of panels all about AI and creativity. Trying to figure out what does AI mean for people who want to make things? And what does it give them in terms of tools?

What does it take away? How do we as consumers understand what this stuff is when some of it is made by humans and some of it's made by AI and that line starts to get really blurry? We're going to spend a whole Saturday afternoon sorting through all of that with some really interesting people. I'm going to put the link in the show notes. We'll put it in the description. If you want to get tickets, if you're in Chicago, you want to come hang out and talk

that AI, please do. We would love to have you. It's going to be incredibly fun. Thing number two, we have been nominated for a Webby Award for Best Technology Podcast. It's very important, A, that you vote for us because we want to win this award very badly, and B, that we beat Neely and Decoder. It's so, so important. Neely is nominated for Decoder as Best Business Podcast, and he can totally win that. Sounds great. Love that for Nealai. Enjoy that. I want to beat him for Best Technology Podcasts so bad. Plus, he wins anyway. Great news all around. Go to the Webby's. We'll put the link in the show notes. Put the link in the description. Please vote for the Vergecast. We love particularly when we win the People's Choice Award because it comes from you all. The listeners who say you like this show. We want

all your feedback. We want all your thoughts. But the Webby Award is really cool looking and I want one really bad. That's enough for now. Please go vote for us. Come see us in Chicago. Can't wait to hang out. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or more you want to say about TikTok in China, You can always email us at Vergecast at the verge.com. Or call the hotline. 866 Verge11. Truly, the hotline is my favorite thing about the Vergecast. It's so fun hearing all of the things you have to say,

some of which is super mean and doesn't make it on the show, some of which is really nice and doesn't make it on the show, some of which is somewhere in between. It's great. We do a hotline question on the show at least once a week, so please keep them all coming. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will For. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Nilai, Alex, now will be back on Friday to talk about some fun gadget reviews we got coming this week and everything else happening in tech. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.