Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven Am. TikTok
Speaker 1: is the most influential media platform for Australians under the
Speaker 1: age of twenty five. It's where millions now get their news,
Speaker 1: whether they realize it or not. But the app is
Speaker 1: no longer just a cultural force. It's now at the
Speaker 1: center of a global power struggle between China and Trump's
Speaker 1: America over who gets to patrol the algorithm in the US,
Speaker 1: Sir Trump Aline, a group of investors is taking over
Speaker 1: TikTok's American operations, raising questions about how one platform could
Speaker 1: influence the political views of an entire generation.
Speaker 2: TikTok was the essentially only major social media platform that
Speaker 2: wasn't owned by Maga sympathetic doing air from America, and
Speaker 2: now it is for American users today.
Speaker 1: Associate editor at Krackey Cam Wilson on the trapification of
Speaker 1: TikTok It's Friday, October three.
Speaker 2: Cam.
Speaker 1: Is there a particular type of news or topic that
Speaker 1: travels best on TikTok or does that really depend on
Speaker 1: the user's own personal feed?
Speaker 2: Users have very very personalized feeds, and so every person's
Speaker 2: feed is very different. But the stuff that tends to
Speaker 2: break through are those kind of monoculture events, and those
Speaker 2: kinds of events are increasingly rare, but you know, things
Speaker 2: like the Charlie Kirk assassination. But it's also subject to
Speaker 2: the dynamics that affect many other things on social media
Speaker 2: and the Internet, which is, if something is video, it's
Speaker 2: going to go better on TikTok because you need the
Speaker 2: footage actually see something. And also things that encourage reactions,
Speaker 2: people responding conflict. Those are the kinds of things that
Speaker 2: are more likely to bubble through. You know what's about them,
Speaker 2: maybe nitty gritty of policy details and more about the fights,
Speaker 2: the things that is dividing people. That is the stuff
Speaker 2: that naturally bubbles to the top. Pure because of the
Speaker 2: way that these platforms like TikTok.
Speaker 1: Work, And what about the design of TikTok itself, how
Speaker 1: has that influenced and changed the way other social media
Speaker 1: platforms work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean TikTok has all led this trend that's
Speaker 2: taken over a social media I think it's pretty fair
Speaker 2: to say we are in a post social media world.
Speaker 2: The idea of Facebook connecting you to your friends, your family,
Speaker 2: your local community, the people who you know is kind
Speaker 2: of over I think like in fact, so TikTok kind
Speaker 2: of led this new era of what it means to
Speaker 2: have social content, and it said, we don't really care
Speaker 2: that much about who you say you are follow. We're
Speaker 2: going to use these other signals to determine what to
Speaker 2: show you because we actually think it's more engaging. We
Speaker 2: know you say that you want, but when we give
Speaker 2: you the stuff that you really want that we think
Speaker 2: will interest you.
Speaker 1: And so now there's a battle layer of the future
Speaker 1: of TikTok as a company, and it's framed as a
Speaker 1: battle between Washington and China over ticked off being a
Speaker 1: national security threat. So sit this Dan and tells where
Speaker 1: this battle begins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it really throughout its whole history, as
Speaker 2: soon as it became clearly an ascendent major platform, it
Speaker 2: has faced scrutiny and criticism because of its link to
Speaker 2: the Chinese Communist Party, and particularly in the US, with
Speaker 2: I think one hundred and seventy million users now in
Speaker 2: the US, so an astronomical amount. It faced scrutiny on
Speaker 2: two areas. The first one is this idea of data
Speaker 2: that it's collecting from its users, so you know, whenever
Speaker 2: you log on your location other information about your device
Speaker 2: that is going to TikTok, that's going to buy dance,
Speaker 2: and the kind of accusation has always been that it's
Speaker 2: going to the Chinese Communist Party. The second thing is
Speaker 2: this idea of it as a propaganda tal and you
Speaker 2: can consider it like, you know, the eight million Australians
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy million US users, this app has
Speaker 2: a director line into all their lives and it is
Speaker 2: able to show them content that is actually failure paid
Speaker 2: to anyone else. Like all of that feeds instinct to
Speaker 2: be different. It's very hard to know from the outside.
Speaker 2: It's not like television with you to tune in and
Speaker 2: see whatever and else is watching, or check the TV
Speaker 2: guide or whatever. And there's always been this idea that
Speaker 2: the rules of the platform makes could be used full
Speaker 2: of various purposes. And so this idea that it represents
Speaker 2: a threat to national security because there could be people
Speaker 2: leaning on people and buydownce to encourage certain content to
Speaker 2: be shown to users, like, for example, content critical of
Speaker 2: their governments, or that it could be used to censor
Speaker 2: content that was critical of the Chinese government. You know,
Speaker 2: viewing it not just as a kind of data extraction
Speaker 2: operation potentially, but also something that could be used to
Speaker 2: push certain messages with very little scrutiny. Has made all
Speaker 2: of people uneasy about it.
Speaker 1: And so what is the US government done about that.
Speaker 2: Of TikTok? And US Congress goes back to twenty twenty
Speaker 2: when there was a review into TikTok by the American
Speaker 2: government about the idea of it being a potential national
Speaker 2: security threat, saying that either TikTok has to divest and
Speaker 2: pass over its ownership to American owners or will ban it.
Speaker 2: And the result of that was that TikTok signed this
Speaker 2: very bizarre deal with Oracle, which is own and run
Speaker 2: by Larry Ellison A crump BELLI yeah exactly, and Oracle
Speaker 2: would host American TikTok user data in America and also
Speaker 2: have some kind of oversight role into its algorithm, its
Speaker 2: secret source. It didn't really address the underlying concerns. You know,
Speaker 2: data that's physically alb in America can still be accessed
Speaker 2: in China, as it turns out was the case when
Speaker 2: by Dance reportedly access the data of a American.
Speaker 3: Journalist Bite Dance, TikTok's parent has acknowledged four employees inappropriately
Speaker 3: obtained data of some US TikTok users, including two journalists.
Speaker 3: In a statement, the company condemned the actions of those involved,
Speaker 3: and so they're no longer employed. But that's no reassurance
Speaker 3: for the minder.
Speaker 2: And then this ambient concern over TikTok continued through the
Speaker 2: Biden presidency until it was credited that the October seventh
Speaker 2: attack revitalized interest in TikTok. From Congress was the accusation
Speaker 2: that the content that was being shown to TikTok users
Speaker 2: was leading to a rise in pro Palestinian sympathy in
Speaker 2: young Americans.
Speaker 4: Every thirty minutes that someone watches TikTok every day, they
Speaker 4: become seventeen percent more anti Semitic, more pro Hamas. Based
Speaker 4: on doing that, we now know that fifty percent of
Speaker 4: adults eighteen to twenty five think that Hamas was warranted,
Speaker 4: and what they did with Israel, that's a problem.
Speaker 2: Whether that's true, I think is far from proven. I
Speaker 2: don't think that we've ever seen really conclusive evidence that,
Speaker 2: for example, you know that there was a company directive
Speaker 2: to promote certain points of views about the Israel Gaza conflict,
Speaker 2: but regardless, this fervor led to the bipartisan support for
Speaker 2: the bill. The bill passed that TikTok needed to be
Speaker 2: under American ownership or face a ban by January nineteen,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, coincidentally, the day before Donald Trump was
Speaker 2: sworn in, and when Trump came in, he delayed the
Speaker 2: ban a number of times until recently. The final deal
Speaker 2: that was carried out by the Trump.
Speaker 1: Administration after the break Trump talk so came Last year,
Speaker 1: the US Congress passed a law that said foreign adverse
Speaker 1: recontrolled apps like TikTok need to divest or be banned.
Speaker 1: And now Donald Trump assigned an executive order that would
Speaker 1: pave the way for an American run version of TikTok.
Speaker 5: Next, sir, we have an executive order on TikTok. From
Speaker 5: the first days of your administration. You've charged a team
Speaker 5: from your administration, led by Vice President Vance, with ensuring
Speaker 5: that we can preserve TikTok as a platform for the
Speaker 5: one hundred and seventy million Americans who use it, while
Speaker 5: ensuring that their data is properly protected as required by law.
Speaker 2: With this executive or.
Speaker 1: So, can you just explain what this executive order sets out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so we are now close to the year of
Speaker 6: truck talk, where there is an American owned entity that
Speaker 6: will license a version of TikTok's algorithm.
Speaker 7: You know, it's run by American investors and American companies,
Speaker 7: great ones, great investors, the biggest you don't get bigger,
Speaker 7: I don't imagine.
Speaker 2: And maybe there has also been discussions about retraining or
Speaker 2: you know, essentially fiddling around it and having its own
Speaker 2: twist on that algorithm. So that recipe that's deciding what
Speaker 2: to show uses. But from what we know about it,
Speaker 2: by dance, the company that has owned TikTok until recently
Speaker 2: will now be a minor owner in a US entity
Speaker 2: that will control the US operations. The major owners are
Speaker 2: Oracle that I mentioned before, which is run by a
Speaker 2: very close Trump ally who's been involved before, but now
Speaker 2: his role has grown in it.
Speaker 7: You'll see a list have you seen all this yet
Speaker 7: of the people, well you've been reading about that. Yeah,
Speaker 7: it's it's I know, Michael Dell's involved, and Rupert Murdocks involved,
Speaker 7: and a lot of and let's say we have probably
Speaker 7: four or five absolutely worldless investors that love the country
Speaker 7: and they made a lot of money with the country, And.
Speaker 2: So these are a group of all Trump aligned figures
Speaker 2: who are, you know, very rich people who involved in
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of other things, who now have some
Speaker 2: kind of control over TikTok. We just really don't exactly
Speaker 2: understand how it works, but it's it's fair to say
Speaker 2: that they will have some kind of influence over how
Speaker 2: TikTok works in America for American users.
Speaker 1: So we're saying a shift from a Chinese government aligned
Speaker 1: ownership to a Trump aligned ownership. What do you think
Speaker 1: that will mean for the type of news that we
Speaker 1: see on TikTok from now on.
Speaker 2: I think that we should expect it to change in
Speaker 2: some way, and I don't know how. When Trump was
Speaker 2: signing the executive order, he joked about it being one
Speaker 2: mega content, was his line.
Speaker 7: I always liked MAGA related. If I could make it
Speaker 7: one hundred percent Mega related, it's actually a good question,
Speaker 7: but I would. Yeah, if I could make it one
Speaker 7: hundred percent mega, I would. But it's not going to
Speaker 7: work out that way, unfortunately. No, everyone's going to be
Speaker 7: treated fairly every group.
Speaker 2: We have seen that Trump has shepherded various traditional media
Speaker 2: properties to his allies, including Larry Elson's son, who recently
Speaker 2: bought Skydance, which is a big media company that has
Speaker 2: recently merged with Paramount and owns a lot of popular
Speaker 2: American media properties, including NBC News. They're also apparently looking
Speaker 2: to buy Warner Brothers, so there was an enormous amount
Speaker 2: of cultural reach and popular properties that it currently owns
Speaker 2: and potentially could own, And David Elson has expressed that
Speaker 2: he would like to rejig NBC News to represent a
Speaker 2: more conservative point of view. He's a very strong pro
Speaker 2: Israel advocate, and it's believed that he'd like to see
Speaker 2: that opinion reflected in the properties that he owns as well.
Speaker 2: So it wouldn't be crazy to imagine that that same
Speaker 2: thing would happen with TikTok. We're seeing, you know, all
Speaker 2: of these very very powerful companies that have a lot
Speaker 2: of cultural influence being shepherded into their hands of people
Speaker 2: who are closely aligned with Trump. So it is, I think,
Speaker 2: a pretty significant change in an environment that was already
Speaker 2: pretty homogenous in terms of its ownership. The few holdouts,
Speaker 2: it seems like, are now being shepherded away and the
Speaker 2: keys to the kingdom are being handed over to the
Speaker 2: friends of the King.
Speaker 1: And cam it seems like maybe the next generation would
Speaker 1: escape the influence of the Murdock Empire. In the past,
Speaker 1: they've been notoriously bad at speaking to younger audiences, remember
Speaker 1: the MySpace moment. Of course, Yes, But in getting a
Speaker 1: stake in TikTok, is there a sign their influence over
Speaker 1: the next generation will actually increase?
Speaker 2: I don't know, so I think, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the great strengths of News corp In particularly in Australia
Speaker 2: in the US as well is the way that it
Speaker 2: is able to use its influence for its own corporate interests.
Speaker 2: So wouldn't surprise you that if they got their hands
Speaker 2: on some kind of control over a social media platform
Speaker 2: that so far they've not really had any control over,
Speaker 2: that they use it to promote themselves, promote their other properties,
Speaker 2: promote their ideological views. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
Speaker 2: That being said, the reason they'm cautious is that one,
Speaker 2: as far as I know, they're not a major owner.
Speaker 2: The second thing is that there are a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of owners, and I think that you know, while people
Speaker 2: like political influence, they also have brought in because it's
Speaker 2: a money making operation as well. Anything that could threaten
Speaker 2: the popularity of it, would, you know, not just affect
Speaker 2: the Murdocks, but also other people as well. I understand
Speaker 2: why people are alarmed, but I think that there is
Speaker 2: a balance of these owners of this new Trump talk
Speaker 2: what a balance like, of course they want to if
Speaker 2: further there. They're ideological mission. We've seen that, I think
Speaker 2: with many of their owners. But they're also business people
Speaker 2: who've brought into something that could make them a lot
Speaker 2: of money. And like you know, at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, it's sometimes it's hard to with all the
Speaker 2: business leaders who are expressing fuelty to the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: father exactly know whether that is, you know, from from
Speaker 2: or from the bottom line. I think it's worth paying
Speaker 2: attention considering how those goals might influence each other. Follow
Speaker 2: the money, follow the money, follow the feed of the money.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for your time, Cam, need you. Also
Speaker 1: in the news, Aaron Patterson will appeal her triple murder conviction.
Speaker 1: The fifty one year old was found guilty by a
Speaker 1: jury and sentenced to life from prison with a thirty
Speaker 1: three year non parole period for killing her in laws
Speaker 1: Don and Gal Patterson, as well as Heather Wilkinson. Patterson
Speaker 1: has a new barrister, Richard Edney, who made the announcement yesterday.
Speaker 1: He did not outline grounds for appeal and no documents
Speaker 1: have been lodged yet. And Australia and part of New
Speaker 1: Guinea have signed a major defense deal, agreeing to defend
Speaker 1: each other and increase military cooperation. P and G citizens
Speaker 1: will also able to join the Australian Defense Force, and
Speaker 1: Australians will be able to serve alongside P and G troops.
Speaker 1: The deal is designed to stem China's influence in the
Speaker 1: region and comes as the Albanese government moves ahead on
Speaker 1: a number of other similar agreements with Pacific neighbors. Seven
Speaker 1: Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made
Speaker 1: by Atticus Bastow, Chris Dangate, Daniel James, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcveee,
Speaker 1: Travis Evans and Zodnfecho. Our theme music is by Ned
Speaker 1: Beckley and Josh Hogan of En Below Bordeo. We'll be
Speaker 1: back tomorrow with a Saturday episode wrapping up all the
Speaker 1: biggest political moments of the week, with New Daily's contributing
Speaker 1: editor Aman Ramikus.
Speaker 2: See you then,