Today, Explained - TikTok, on the clock, Donald says your time is up

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

President Trump is threatening to ban TikTok, but Microsoft might be able to stop the clock. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. President Trump is making good on his threat to crack down on two popular Chinese-owned social media apps.

He's signed executive orders banning TikTok and WeChat from operating in the U.S. within 45 days unless they're sold. The president is at war with TikTok. He's threatening to ban the social media platform best known for bringing the youngs together to lip sync and dance in harmony. But there might be a way out. A source confirms to NBC News that Microsoft is in talks to purchase it from its Chinese owner. TikTok has 100 million users in the United States, but President Trump is not one of them. TikTok on the clock. I'm Amina Alsadi.

I'm Paul Mounsey. I'm Cecilia Lay. I'm Halima Shah. I'm Udh Sehdi. I'm Afim Shapiro. I'm Bridget McCarthy. I'm Noah Hassenfeld. I'm Jillian Weinberger.

I'm Liz Kelly Nelson. I'm the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. And I'm Sean Ramos-Furham. That story is ahead on Today Explained. Shereen Ghaffari, you've been covering TikTok for Recode and Vox. How far back does the president's beef with this social media platform go? So the beef with TikTok goes, you know, somewhat far back because as early as last year, the U.S. government has been investigating TikTok over national security concerns.

A company compromised by the Chinese Communist Party knows where your children are, knows what they look like, what their voices sound like, what they're watching, and what they share with each other. So, you know, for a while now, there's been this kind of floating concern in national security circles that is something going on with TikTok that the government should be worried about. But Trump has really escalated the attacks on TikTok this summer. We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things.

There are a couple of options. And so did Pompeo. The mission set is to protect American national security and in this case, the information of American citizens. And so whether it's TikTok or any of the other Chinese communications platforms, apps, infrastructure, this administration has taken seriously the requirement to protect. And now, you know, he's said that again with kind of increased urgency. And why exactly does President Trump have like this increasing beef with TikTok? Does it have anything to do with that rally where turnout was kind of low and the TikTok teens claimed responsibility? So it's hard to say exactly what is making Trump escalate the attacks, but it is true that back in June,

the New York Times reported that teenage TikTok users pranked Trump in this epic way and that they said they were going to attend his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma and signed up an online form saying they were going to attend, but then didn't show up on purpose. Guys, Donald Trump is having a rally next week and it's free. All you have to do is give your phone number and you can get two tickets. So I got two tickets, but I totally forgot that I have to pick every individual piece of land off of my room floor and sort them by size so I can't make it for Friday. Oh, well, I already got the tickets. And if you remember, that was a rally that Trump was expecting a really large turnout for.

He didn't sort of get the turnout that his team was expecting. The city's fire marshal estimated attendance at 6,200. The arena holds 19,000. And the campaign had boasted one million had requested tickets. These teens basically took credit for that, at least in part, and said that they helped kind of falsely inflate the attendance numbers that Trump was expecting. You could see how, you know, that may have irked someone. So who knows? Hard to say if that's the thing that really made Trump upset. There are larger and serious national security concerns predating this rally. And it's hard to say if that's the thing that really made Trump upset. There are larger and serious national security concerns predating this rally. And it's hard to say like how much exactly the TikTok

teens were really the ones responsible for that lower than expected turnout. But it's certainly, you know, TikTok has been a place where the kids have been sort of poking fun at Trump and trying to be a thorn in his side. I mean, we laugh about the president's numbers at this Tulsa rally, but is there a chance that there could be some sort of election interference via TikTok? Is there a chance that this might have something to do with the 2020 election? I've definitely heard the worry that because so many young people are engaged on TikTok and they're getting their information there, that if there were to be some kind of misinformation campaign by a foreign government, that TikTok would be a place where they could try to exploit these young people's eyeballs. The most serious proven concern I've seen about TikTok so far

has been that the app was storing people's clipboard data, which means when you go in to copy-paste something on your phone, that TikTok, as part of its like permissions that you give an app as the security permissions it was it was storing that and receiving that data and then you know it wasn't just TikTok a bunch of other apps also have been found to do this and once it was brought to TikTok's attention they said they they stopped doing it so that's that's been kind of the most serious concern that I've seen it's proven so far. And about these bigger like can TikTok, you know, mess with the elections? I think all of that at this point is speculation, but it's certainly there and it's certainly being used by President Trump as a way to show that he is getting tougher on China.

Right. And that this election is definitely one of the themes of it is going to be, you know, U.S. versus China and which potential president is tougher on that in 2020. What about concerns over free speech on TikTok? There's been allegations that they're censoring stuff, right? So there's a lot of concerns, a lot of allegations, but not a whole lot is really proven yet. What has been the cause for some concern is that if you remember the Hong Kong independence protests when they were really heating up about a year ago, you know, a Washington Post report looked into how much content would show up on TikTok when you searched for a hashtag like free Hong Kong. And they found that there was not a whole lot showing up. Now, TikTok has denied that was because of any kind of censorship. You know, it may have been the case that just people on TikTok were not as interested in the Hong Kong protests. But other examples, you know, we did see there was a report in The Guardian that there were some content moderation guidelines that TikTok was using that sort of discouraged content moderators from letting content stay up.

That's about things like Tiananmen Square. And so it seemed like, at least from those guidelines that were leaked, that content moderators were kind of taking down content that may have been anti-China. But again, content moderation guidelines can be really broad, and it's not necessarily true that it was just about the China content. So without having full access to the extent of all the behind-the-scenes content moderation operations of TikTok, we can't really say for sure if they're only, you know, if they're single-handedly doing the Chinese government's work of trying to moderate or take down things that upset the government. So we don't know for sure whether TikTok is harvesting Americans' data. And it sounds like we don't even really know for sure whether TikTok is intentionally and purposefully

censoring anti-Chinese speech on its platform, though there are some hints that it might be. But we do know for certain that the president has signed this executive order to ban this app within 45 days. And something like that has never happened before, right? No, it is, you know, this would represent if TikTok did somehow get banned, that would really be an unprecedented kind of restriction of the free and open internet as we know it in the US. I mean, something like that has just really never happened before. We've seen more business kind of Chinese operations, such as like the Huawei. But that's a lot different than banning a consumer app that 100 million U.S. users use. There might be a way to save TikTok.

More with Shireen after the break. extension of how I communicated with people when I was mayor of Lakeville. My mantra was that I will communicate with you on whatever platform you want to communicate on. So if you sent me a letter to my office, I'd send you a letter back, email to email, call to call, and now TikTok, because younger generations want to talk and interact and do politics on TikTok. What's up, political TikTok? It's Matt Little, your favorite state senator. I always get asked the question, like what is the best way to make change, you know, if I'm in high school? And what I would say is, you know,

don't send a message to your- If TikTok went away, you know, it's just like Vine going away. You know, people adapt, there will always be another social media app that, uh, that hits it big. And so I think if you're in, in politics and you want to talk to the next generation or, uh, different audiences, you gotta be ready. So as soon as we got the threat of the ban, um, a week ago. We signed up for Byte, Dubsmash, Triller. We'll be ready on whatever's next.

Before I take all the credit for this, I want to make sure that I thank my two staff people that helped me a lot with my TikTok account. And their names are Amy and Christian. Please make sure to give them some love too for having to film all these ridiculous videos. Spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.

And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained, cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply. Shireen, President Trump's executive order states that TikTok would be banned in 45 days if it is not sold by their Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance. And there happens to be a U.S. company that wants to buy TikTok. Why does Microsoft want to buy TikTok? So TikTok is a wildly popular app. It has become kind of the crown jewel for social media companies

because it's one of the most quickly growing and most downloaded apps. So of course, Microsoft, a company that doesn't have a popular social media presence, would want to gobble it up. And how popular is it for those who aren't aware? So TikTok says they have about 100 million users in the US and hundreds of millions across the world. Is this like a really easy way for Microsoft to shore up some cool points and be known, you know, by the youths for something other than like Bill Gates supposedly inventing the coronavirus or whatever? You know, it is true that Microsoft doesn't have that shiny, young, hot social media

app in its portfolio the way that Facebook has Instagram and Google has YouTube and, you know, Twitter is Twitter. So Microsoft doesn't have that. And TikTok could be the way to kind of make Microsoft cool again. Could Microsoft make TikTok uncool? No shade to Microsoft, but I mean, I mostly think about like Windows XP Pro or something when I think about Microsoft. What? You don't remember Clippy? Clippy isn't cool? Clippy is actually underrated. Yeah, no, I remember Clippy for sure. I fuck with Clippy. I think that there's definitely that risk, right? We're already seeing a lot of younger users on TikTok worry that Microsoft's going to mess it up,

it won't be the same. And if the kids don't think it's cool, it won't be cool. So definitely Microsoft runs a risk of messing up TikTok's brand. However, Microsoft has bought independent companies and let them continue to run pretty independently and still keep their user base, like the code platform GitHub or the video game Minecraft. Those actually are companies that are now owned by Microsoft, but you probably,

you know, you may not know that if you're not following it closely. I didn't know. Yeah. Okay, and now ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, might be forced to sell TikTok to Microsoft. How might that forced sale work? Right, so it's complicated. Independently of Trump, there's actually this interagency government committee called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. And they've been investigating TikTok for a year now and trying to see if those national security concerns are legitimate.

And they have the power to actually block business deals involving foreign companies like ByteDance in the U.S. So ByteDance acquired another company called Musical.ly back in 2017. Musical.ly is also based in China, but ByteDance bought their U.S.-based operations as well and took in all their U.S. users and kind of rebranded Musical.ly as TikTok, which has become the wildly popular app we know and love today. So this committee that's looking into the national security concerns, they actually have the power to undo that deal. And they have blocked and undone major deals before.

For example, last year, they forced the popular dating app Grindr to not sell to a Chinese-based company. So this government organization, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or maybe just CFIUS, which sounds kind of like an STD, isn't just blocking a deal here. It's sort of creating one out of thin air. Does ByteDance have a choice in whether it sells to TikTok or not? Well, there's a lot going on. So it's not just the CFIUS committee, but it's also President Trump, you know, publicly threatening repeatedly to ban TikTok. It's, you know, bipartisan senators sending letters that they're concerned about this

and they think that Congress should investigate this. So, you know, there's a whole flurry of political drama going on that's essentially forcing the potential deal we're seeing now with Microsoft buying TikTok's U.S. operations from ByteDance. And of course, you know, ByteDance would rather just keep TikTok running the way it is. And ByteDance's CEO has come out and said he thinks that the ultimate goal of the U.S. government here is to ban TikTok in the U.S. in a memo to his Chinese staff that was reported on. So, you know, this is not an ideal situation for TikTok's owners, but this is the political reality that they're dealing with. Which is sell to Microsoft or get banned. Right. And not just sell to Microsoft, but sell to Microsoft under conditions that the U.S. government and Trump agrees to. You know, so Trump has given this deadline of 45 days for them to sort it out.

So it's by September 15th. And if they feel that Microsoft can't do enough to protect U.S. user data and the U.S. national security interests, then, you know, the U.S. government can block that deal and potentially still try to somehow ban or really limit TikTok's U.S. business. So how much do you get to sell your company for when the U.S. government is forcing your hand? So right now, as last reported by CNBC, Microsoft's looking at buying TikTok for $10 to $30 billion. And that might sound like a lot, but remember that TikTok is a hugely valuable company. It has 100 million of the kind of users that advertisers really want, which are largely young, which are engaged and creative.

And that's in the United States alone. And that's in the U.S. alone, right? And so the company was last valued at around $80 billion in the last investor round of TikTok. And now that was for TikTok International, I believe, not just for the U.S. So it may make sense that Microsoft is going to buy only the U.S. part of TikTok's users for a lower number, but it's very much, again, not the kind of deal that ByteDance even wanted to be making at this point in the first place. And the president hinted that like the U.S. government will take a cut of whatever this deal is. Is he aware of how this works? Is that how it works? Yeah. So in kind of an unprecedented statement, President Trump said that if this deal were to happen, the U.S. government needs to get a cut. Because we're

making it possible without us. You know, I use the expression, it's like the landlord and the tenant. And without the lease, the tenant doesn't have the value. Well, we're sort of, in a certain way, the lease. We make it possible to have this great success. And, you know, people were kind of perplexed by what he meant by that, because that's kind of just not standard. That's probably legal, and some say unconstitutional. And, you know, some people have compared it to

kind of borderline extortion. And of course, that's just what Trump said. You know, he hasn't actually done anything. But, you know, some people think that he may have been referring to a kind of sales fee that the U.S. Treasury does make on some of these deals. But that's a standard fee and it's not something that's negotiable or that you would kind of announce as being an amount that the government has to kind of get out of you for the sale to go through. So the president's executive order says that TikTok must be sold in 45 days or the app will be banned. Can he actually ban an entire social media platform? You know, it's complicated. He can't certainly press a button and turn it off overnight. I mean,

even if he wanted to do something like that, the quickest probably way to do it would be to get Apple or Android, which is owned by Google, right? The major kind of mobile phone app platforms to just remove TikTok from their app store. But that's not something that's really ever been done for political reasons in the U.S. like that at the request of a president. And it's not something that Apple or Google, especially Apple, which has been so guarded about the independence of its app store, not something that Apple is just going to say yes to even if Trump wanted. So, you know, there's going to be a flurry of legal and political challenges here if Trump did try to kind of institute this unprecedented presidential ban on a major consumer app.

However, he can make life a lot harder for TikTok and he can do that legally because of these national security concerns. You know, he has the support of not just some Republicans, but also some Democrats in looking into what's going on with TikTok in China. And that committee we talked about, CFIUS, they can basically force TikTok to break off its U.S. operations. And there's other ways. I mean, he can issue an executive order.

He can use emergency economic powers. Trump can do a lot of things to kind of essentially try to sanction or just limit the business power of TikTok. What would it mean for 100 million U.S. users? What would it mean for the country? I mean, I think it would mean that there's going to be a serious change in just the openness of the internet in the U.S. as we know it. And while there may be valid national security concerns, there's also really big concerns about if that's going to give a kind of dangerous precedent for any president of the U.S.

to just ban or turn off an app that they don't like. And so that's why you're seeing the ACLU and other civil liberties organizations come out and say that they're against any kind of unilateral ban by President Trump on TikTok or consumer apps in the manner that he seems to be suggesting. It's kind of amazing how this app that's brought us so many videos of teens dancing to popular songs could end up being this sort of litmus test for our tolerance of free speech in America.

You have to remember that there's been increasing tensions between China and the U.S. And it's not just about TikTok. It's about the entire technology sector and who's really going to be the number one power in the years to come in tech. Is it going to be the U.S.? Is it going to be China? This is about a lot more than TikTok. Shereen Ghaffari writes about technology for Vox. You're listening to Today Explained. my name is jessica fisher i'm a tiktoker my tiktok at is jess fisher five and i make all sorts of tiktoks they often have to do with being queer and or zodiac signs i was at a store today and this girl complimented my blouse and i don't think it's an especially cute blouse but she complimented me and I was like is she hitting on me how does she know that I'm queer if Trump could ban TikTok that would be very upsetting uh just on a personal level I have

90,000 followers I have this fan base that I've that I've created I have made money from my fans from my fan base not literally them giving me money but and a lot of friends of mine and creators that I don't know make their living off of the the creations they make on TikTok and sponsored posts and cosplayers and communities so there would be a lot destroyed if TikTok were to be banned because of the communities that it has built and the spaces that it has created and the careers that it has created. But I do believe just like with Vine, people would find other ways. Probably they would go to YouTube. And I think that a lot of creators would lose their fan base due to that. So I do think that it would be very, very upsetting if he were to ban it. And it would also be

infringing upon freedom of speech.