The app that’s taken the internet by storm with its viral dance videos has found itself in the middle of a national security debate.
TikTok is banned on U.S. government devices and some college campuses, and efforts for a wider ban have ramped up in recent weeks with some members of Congress recently introducing legislation that would give President Biden the power to ban TikTok.
So how did we get here?
“It became so popular that all of the sudden it was the ‘everything’ app. People were turning to it to search for things the way that some of us would turn to Google to search for things, and a lot of people are now getting their news on TikTok … It now has a really powerful hold over our culture and our discourse,” said Emily Baker-White, a tech reporter at Forbes.
On the show today, Baker-White explains why some members of Congress see TikTok as a national security threat, how real that threat actually is, and what an all-out ban would even look like. Plus, she spills the tea on what it was like to be spied on by TikTok.
In the News Fix: How a viral parody tweet may have helped bring down insulin prices. Also, we’ll explain what the latest round of job cuts at Meta say about the larger tech industry. And, we couldn’t get through an episode with a little Silicon Valley Bank update.
Later, one listener shares their experience with rooftop solar panels. And, this week’s answer to the Make Me Smart question comes from a listener who was wrong about the volatile nature of the tech industry, amid the SVB fiasco.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “TikTok’s master plan to win over Washington” from Vox
- “Senate, White House push new bipartisan bill that could ban TikTok” from Politico
- “EXCLUSIVE: TikTok Spied On Forbes Journalists” from Forbes
- “TikTok tries to sell ‘Project Texas’ as it fights for survival in the U.S.” from NBC News
- “How A TikTok Ban Would Work — And How TikTok Could Fight Back” from Forbes
- “Novo Nordisk to slash US insulin prices, following move by Eli Lilly” from Reuters
- Tweet from @MorePerfectUS about their staff writer’s viral parody Eli Lilly tweet
- “Meta to Lay Off 10,000 Employees, Cut 5,000 More Open Jobs” from Bloomberg
- “George Santos Signals Intention to Seek Re-election in 2024” from The New York Times
What have you been wrong about lately? We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question! Leave us a voice message at 508-U-B-SMART, and your submission may be featured in a future episode.
Make Me Smart March 14, 2023
Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.
Kimberly Adams
Hello, I am Kimberly Adams, welcome to make me smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.
Kai Ryssdal
I’m Kai Ryssdal thanks for joining us on this Tuesday. If it is Tuesday, which it is. One show, one topic today: TikTok and the push to ban the app that has just taken the internet by storm.
Kimberly Adams
I’m sure you thought we were gonna deep dive on Silicon Valley Bank, didn’t you? But no, we decided to take a break from the nonstop coverage of that story, which of course, we’re still covering everywhere else. But to go in a slightly different direction about something that is still a pretty big story, particularly here in Washington because you have a handful of countries including the United States that are banning Tiktok on government devices, we have colleges that are blocking it on their networks and efforts and on a wider ban have ramped up in recent weeks. So we want to know what’s really behind the movement to ban TikTok and how real the threat actually is. So here to make a smart is Forbes tech reporter Emily Baker-White. Welcome to the show.
Emily Baker-White
Thanks so much for having me.
Kimberly Adams
So how did TikTok go from being sort of the cutesy song and dance app to national security threat?
Emily Baker-White
Well, I think TikTok like a lot of the other sort of “smash apps” that we’re familiar with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, began as an app with with a particular focus. For Tik Tok, that was a lot of song and dance. But it became so popular that all of a sudden, it was the everything app. People were turning to it, to search for things that the way that some of us would turn to Google to search for things. And a lot of people are now getting their news on TikTok. And because it sort of reached this point at which it became the everything app, it now has a sort of really powerful hold over our culture, and our discourse, not just about entertainment, but also about civics, about education, about health and other sort of important issues that that touch everyone’s lives every day.
Kai Ryssdal
And why is it a national security threat?
Emily Baker-White
So people who think TikTok poses a national security threat normally think about that threat in sort of two buckets. And the first bucket is the fear that TikTok because it’s owned by a Chinese company, could be used by the Chinese government to gather information about Americans. Some of that information might be the types of videos that we’re interested in watching, but other information like our birthdays, our passwords, and and even our location, could also be sort of gathered through the app and then theoretically turned over to Chinese authorities. That’s bucket one. Bucket two, is the idea that TikTok, which of course is used by 100 million Americans, for I think an average of 90 minutes every day, could suddenly influence the way that we have conversations about politics, about finance, about sort of other important issues, and that through its Chinese parent company Bytedance, the Chinese government could seek to use TikTok to influence our public discourse in some way.
Kimberly Adams
So these are the arguments and the buckets of arguments that people have when they’re saying that Tiktok is a national security threat. How real are these threats that like, how much evidence do we have that any of this is actually happening?
Emily Baker-White
So, there is a lot of evidence that bite dance has pretty has pretty tightly controlled TikTok. And one of the reasons that I know that is I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve worked at TikTok and Bytedance who have talked about the internal distinguishment between those companies being essentially non-existent. So I’ve learned that email addresses that are @ticktock.com are aliases of email addresses that are @bytedance.com. I’ve talked to people who actually like signed a contract with TikTok but received either a W-2 or a paycheck from Bytedance. And so all of tiktoks… all the ways that TikTok employees communicate with one another, their sort of version of Slack, their version of Google Docs, etc, is all proprietary Bytedance software, TikTok employees are using a proprietary Bytedance VPN. So Bytedance pretty thoroughly controls TikTok. It’s not necessarily just like the company that owns this company, it’s also the company that sort of running TikTok. Now there has been moving at TikTok to sort of change that. But the tightness of connection between TikTok and Bytedance does raise the threat that the Chinese government might try to use by dance to sort of get to us through TikTok. But we don’t have evidence that the Chinese government has explicitly sought to use TikTok in this way yet. We have evidence that Bytedance once pushed pro-China messages to Americans through another of its apps. And we have evidence that Chinese state media has used TikTok the same way that they’ve used, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to try to reach Americans through their state media accounts. But as of yet, we don’t know of an instance of Bytedance or TikTok turning over data to the Chinese government.
Kai Ryssdal
So let’s go from there to the idea that the President or the executive branch, as it were right will be given the authority by Congress to ban an entire app from America. First of all, how does that work?
Emily Baker-White
Well, it’s not exactly clear how it will work if the president chooses to do that. There are a couple of different ways that he could choose to go about that. What I think we are unlikely to see is a new law or regulation that says individuals who access TikTok are breaking the law. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think that would cause First Amendment problems. And I don’t think the United States of America wants to do that because that is what authoritarian countries have done when they have cut off access to the internet. And I think we have a really strong legal tradition in this country of not cutting off people’s access to information. And so what I think is more likely to happen is that the government will seek to sanction the company TikTok or the company Bytedance. If the administration does decide they want to go through with a ban, I think they’re going to do it in that way, rather than actually trying to prevent American citizens from accessing information.
Kimberly Adams
I mean, this isn’t the only or the first time that we’ve heard about other countries trying to sway American political beliefs using social media apps, most famously Russia and Facebook and I’m sure an army of Twitter trolls on, you know, Twitter, obviously, from various countries, you know, do their thing as well. You know, is the only difference here, just ownership of the platform?
Emily Baker-White
Sure. So, yes, clearly, other countries have sought and probably are currently seeking to manipulate our civic discourse through social media today. I think the sort of additional fear here is that because Bytedance owns and controls TikTok, the Chinese government might have a better and sort of unique set of tools in order to try to influence discourse in a way that would be even harder to detect than what we saw from the Russian government on Facebook and from some of the other influence operations that we know countries have tried to run. And the reason that is is because when, when the Russian government tried to interfere in our elections in 2016, they were using Facebook, like any other Facebook user, right? If the Chinese government sought to use Bytedance to influence what we saw on TikTok. Theoretically, the fear is that the Chinese government could require TikTok or Bytedance employees in China to make subtle changes to the algorithm that only employees have access to. It would be like giving members of the Russian IRA backend access to Facebook. And I think that’s sort of the the difference in the level of threat. Now, there hasn’t been evidence that the Chinese government has done that at Bytedance. But there’s also the fear that we might not know if they did.
Kai Ryssdal
Alright, so look, let’s get down to brass tacks into a little public service journalism, do I have to take Tik Tok off my 15 year old daughter’s phone?
Emily Baker-White
I took TikTok off of my phone. And I did it after I learned that byte dance had sought to use my IP address base location information to try to figure out which sources were talking to me. I don’t think Bytedance has as as severe an interest in your daughter’s phone as they did in mine. And and it should be noted that if they could access my data in this way, the fear is that they might access other people’s data in this way, including theoretically, people who are hostile to the Chinese government like dissidents or military actors, etc.
Kimberly Adams
What did it feel like when you found out that they were tracking you that way?
Emily Baker-White
Honestly, I was I was sort of disappointed and unimpressed. Because this is a company that was… I felt like a disappointed parent, to be honest, because this is a company that has tried so hard to gain public trust. They’ve put so much effort into saying “you can trust us, we are not misusing your data. Yes, sometimes people in China have access to your data but they’re really tightly controlled by a US team.” Like they’ve been making this argument very passionately and repeatedly to lawmakers across the United States sort of more and more and more over the past year. And, guys! Why on earth? Who on Earth thought it was a good cost-benefit analysis to say “yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s pull the American journalists location data to figure out who’s sourcing her.” Like, it hurt the company so much more than it helped them. They said they didn’t get anything from pulling my data, by the way. But like, it just seems like such a poor decision. And it really sort of shakes my confidence in the company’s broader decision making because either the right people weren’t brought in to tell them that was a bad idea, or there isn’t sufficient oversight, or not enough people realized it was a bad idea. I really just I wanted I wanted better from this company.
Kimberly Adams
Do better TikTok. Do better. Alright, Forbes tech reporter Emily Baker-White. Thank you so much. And enjoy your time, not on TikTok.
Emily Baker-White
Thanks so much for having me.
Kai Ryssdal
Take care. Bye. Oh, man. That’s yeah, well, right I mean, you see your point, right? You guys are trying and you’re making… You’re talking to talk but you’re not walking the walk. Not smart.
Kimberly Adams
I don’t know if it’s the same thing is happening in where you are. But here in the DC market TikTok is like running ads everywhere trying to like… in the metro station there’s TikTok ads about how like you can control how much time your kids spend on TikTok. They’re running like their ads on like the local. I’m sorry, there are… what do we call them?
Kai Ryssdal
Oh, underwriting in public radio
Kimberly Adams
Underwriting! Thank you.
Kai Ryssdal
Funding credits.
Kimberly Adams
Funding credits. I can’t believe I couldn’t say it.
Kai Ryssdal
You’re gonna have your public right card taken awat..
Kimberly Adams
Basically, yeah, there are funding credits on local public radio for TikTok, sometimes running up against stories about TikTok bans. It’s hilarious. So yeah,
Kai Ryssdal
Oh, man. that’s great. I love that. If you’re on TikTok, let us know would you? Why? And why have you not left? Would you take it off your daughter’s, your 15 year old daughter’s phone? I don’t know it’s good question. I think about that from time to time.
Kimberly Adams
Over her cold dead body.
Kai Ryssdal
That’s exactly right. I would have to pry it out of her cold dead hands. That’s exactly right. Anyway, you can get us at 508-827-6278. 508-827-6278. 508-U-B-SMART is another way to do that. Email us and makemesmart@marketplace.org coming right back we are.
-AD Break-
Kai Ryssdal
Alright, news, Kimberly, go. Oh for sure. For sure.
Kimberly Adams
So remember some time ago, when Elon Musk decided he wanted to charge briefly $8 a month for Twitter, like for verified Twitter status. But basically, everybody pranked him and started signing up as various companies and things. And it was funny, but also kind of weird. And so one of the big examples was the person who imitated Eli Lilly and said insulin is free and Eli Lilly stock dropped like crazy. And they had to come out and say “no, just kidding. We’re still charging people too much for insulin.” And then lo and behold, shortly thereafter, they did indeed drop the price of insulin. Well today, Novo Nordisk said it is also going to slash us insulin prices, which is what you know, the Biden administration predicted would happen because basically once one company drops the price, if any of the other companies want to have any kind of market share, they have to drop the price as well. Sometimes markets work, free markets work. And so Novo Nordisk said today that it’s going to cut list prices for several insulin products by up to 75% next year. And it also, it wasn’t just a Twitter thing. Also, in the inflation Reduction Act that passed last year it capped insulin prices for Medicare recipients at $35 a month, but that doesn’t, you know, affect patients without insurance. I feel like we still owe some credit to the Twitter trolls. But yeah, like it’s finally happening. Like this has been something that’s been devastating for families for decades. And now, things change. So as much as we talk trash about Twitter, good things still happen on Twitter.
Kai Ryssdal
That’s right. No that’s a good one. Okay, so here are mine. One’s more of a make me smile for a Tuesday, but we don’t do make me smiles but I couldn’t not say it. But I’ll get to that one. I do want to point out the news from today that Facebook’s parent company, Meta is going to cut another 10,000 jobs. That’s on top of the 11,000 cuts it announced last fall. You know, tech, arguably tech is in a recession already. And I think people just need to keep an eye on that. And especially with SVB, and all that stuff. The days are getting no brighter for technology. So that’s, that’s happening. Here’s my make me smile. George Santos, Congressman from New York, in all kinds of trouble for lying, has filed paperwork to get reelected in 2024. He’s going to run again, folks. It’s all I’m saying.
Kimberly Adams
Lying and fraud and fraud.
Kai Ryssdal
Yes, that’s true. Lying and fraud and who knows what else?
Kimberly Adams
And campaign finance violations and all manner of things. So…
Kai Ryssdal
A morning in America.
Kimberly Adams
Wow. Yeah. You know what it’s like… I want to find out where he gets the audacity so I can go get some too, ’cause like, there has to be a giant repository somewhere. And it’s like share the wealth, man. All right, that is it for the newsfix. Let’s do the mailbag.
Mailbag
Hi Kai and Kimberly. This is Godfrey from San Francisco. Jessie from Charleston, South Carolina. And I have a follow up question. It has me thinking and feeling a lot of things.
Kai Ryssdal
Okay, we talked a couple of episodes ago, I think about solar panels. And we ask all y’all to send us your thoughts and your anecdotes and what have you. And we got this.
Megan
Hi, this is Megan from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I just wanted to say that I have solar panels on my house. We got a loan for them. It’s a 20 year loan. And basically our average bill has has stayed the same, including the loan costs. A little bit higher in the winter because we don’t generate as much fun because it’s Michigan. But once the panels are paid off, then we’ll be in like Flynn because in the summer, this last summer, we ran the AC constantly because it was hotter than usual. Yay, climate change? And my energy bill in August was $95. So I am very much pro solar panels. I think they’re a great investment if you’ve got the cash for the monthly outlay if you’re doing the loan, or if you happen to have $20,000 saved up go nuts! Anyway, thanks for making us smart. Wanted to return the favor.
Kai Ryssdal
That’s super interesting. Super interesting. Really good. $20,000 though, I’m not sure I knew it was that much.
Kimberly Adams
Well, and also a 20 year loan, like what happens if you’re not in the house that long?
Kai Ryssdal
Yeah I imagine that transfers though. Yeah. I imagine that transfers. Right. Yeah.
Kimberly Adams
Interesting. Okay. Before we go, we want to leave you with this week’s answer to the make me smart question, which is: “What is something you thought you knew, but later found out you were wrong about?” This week’s answer comes from listener Rachel in Austin, who sent us this after the SVB fiasco
Rachel
I thought I knew and understood the risk of working in tech and in startups and knowing that, you need to make sure that you have enough money coming in with your paycheck, and not banking on equity, and understanding working out the company books and what their revenue plan is, and how to make a smart bet on a company, even with COVID and everything else that’s happened. But I didn’t see this coming. I don’t think anyone in the industry saw it coming. And it really just goes to show you that even when you think you know all the risks that you’re taking, you always always always have to understand the unknown risk.
Kimberly Adams
For sure, for sure.
Kai Ryssdal
For sure, for sure. Although just for all those people at all those tech companies who spent a weekend literally not knowing if their company was going to be able to make payroll, you’d have to be a really, really, really engaged employee to understand that your company is banking at a bank that has mishandled its interest rate risk. I mean, that that’s, that’s like second order engagement. And if you can be that involved more power to you, but yeah. You know, it’s it’s that is the downside of these really, what can be volatile businesses sometimes absolutely true.
Kimberly Adams
I was on a call earlier today with Eric Gordon, at Michigan, he was, you know, basically going over some of the lessons learned and explaining to people sort of what went down. And, you know, of the lessons learned, he was saying that like, small businesses, and even the startups need to really be thinking about not surpassing the FDIC insurance limits at a single bank, because like banks want small businesses to keep all of their money there. But maybe you need to spread it out so that you don’t, you know, blow past those insurance limit, don’t keep a million dollars of your operating funds in one bank, you know, but then, you know, if you’re a $10 million company, that’s a whole bunch of banks.
Kai Ryssdal
Then it becomes this logistical nightmare, and you know, it’s a business opportunity probably for somebody who can negotiate the software that’s going to handle all that for you. But if you’ve got to coordinate or across, let’s see, to interface across 40 banks, right, if you’ve got $10 million, that’s that’s not doable. But yeah, but look, we’re gonna, here’s my timestamp, my crystal ball on this: we’re gonna, we’re gonna very soon see FDIC and regulator conversations about ensuring all bank accounts in this entire economy.
Kimberly Adams
Do you think it’s gonna be all bank accounts up to anything? Or just higher insurance limits?
Kai Ryssdal
Higher, but a lot higher.
Kimberly Adams
Yeah, like, what, like $2 million?
Kai Ryssdal
Yeah. Two, five?
Kimberly Adams
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.
Kai Ryssdal
I think that’s what’s coming.
Kimberly Adams
But I mean, but with that, though, is going to have to come a much stricter set of oversight rules, right? Because if the federal government is going to be on the hook for bailing out people to the tune of $5 million a pop, then that means they’re going to really want to know what’s going on in these bank’s books.
Kai Ryssdal
Right. But let’s remember where this money comes from, right? This money comes from a tax that’s levied on banks, right? It’s not, it’s not free money, it’s an insurance plan that the banks pay the premium on. So if we’re gonna raise the limit to two, or five, or $10 million, and then the premiums are gonna go up, and you will see, here’s another time stamp, you will see a cataclysmic fight between banks and Congress, when this conversation comes to an actual vote.
Kimberly Adams
Right, because the banks are gonna have to pay it which means effectively consumers are going to have to pay it in the form of higher fees that we pay.
Kai Ryssdal
Right or less interest or what have you.
Kimberly Adams
It’s a mess.
Kai Ryssdal
I’ts a mess. Alright, speaking of messes, we will take yours, whatever you’ve got on your mind. Let us know whatever you want to share with us. Leave us a voice message with your answer to the Make Me Smart question as well. Our number is 508-827-6278. 508-U-B-SMART.
Kimberly Adams
We really couldn’t get through this show without a SVB thing could we? Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Antonio Barreras. Today’s program was engineered by the wonderful Drew Jostad with mixing by the also wonderful Gary O’Keefe.
Kai Ryssdal
Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our acting senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital and On Demand. And Marketplace’s Vice President and General Manager is Neal Scarbrough. We playing the long music today?
Kimberly Adams
Yeah, we all are so much smarter about banking insurance than we were we a week ago. My goodness.
Kai Ryssdal
Yeah, yeah we are.
Kimberly Adams
And I don’t know that I love that.
Kai Ryssdal
Well, better to know than not.
Kimberly Adams
Yeah, I guess. It’s just like yeah here’s your cocktail party conversation: FDIC limits for the win.
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