Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and get off my lawn.
Speaker 1: You know, as I get older, I have to work
Speaker 1: harder to keep up with trends in tech. I mean,
Speaker 1: I find that the stereotypes about old people getting out
Speaker 1: of touch with new tech are at least for me,
Speaker 1: partly true. I love tech and I do try to
Speaker 1: stay up to date with news, but some trends appear
Speaker 1: and I'm a little slow on the uptake. And I
Speaker 1: would say that holds true with TikTok, the insanely popular
Speaker 1: video app and meme generator extraordinaire. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: funny because I was at least semi aware of it
Speaker 1: on some level before it was even TikTok. So in
Speaker 1: this episode, we're gonna look into the app, the company
Speaker 1: that owns the app, the people who developed it, and
Speaker 1: the controversies surrounding it, as well as the culture that
Speaker 1: has grown up around it. And it's all pretty fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: There's actually a couple of origin stories for TikTok because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, TikTok is the product of some
Speaker 1: acquisitions and mergers of other apps. Let's start by taking
Speaker 1: a look at the company Byte Dance, which as of
Speaker 1: this recording still owns TikTok. More about that later in
Speaker 1: this episode. And that story really begins with its founder,
Speaker 1: a Chinese entrepreneur named Jeong ye Ming. Now I'd say
Speaker 1: that Jong has kept a pretty low profile in the West.
Speaker 1: In fact, to dig up some info on him, I
Speaker 1: really had to pull up some articles that were written
Speaker 1: in Chinese, and then I had to rely heavily on
Speaker 1: Google Translate. So with that in mind, we have to
Speaker 1: take a lot of what I've got to say with
Speaker 1: a few grains of salt for two big reasons. One,
Speaker 1: journalism in China is not exactly objective. The state, that is,
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communist Party, often plays a very big role
Speaker 1: in that, and so the truthiness of a piece can
Speaker 1: come under question. Second, the translation algorithms that we depend
Speaker 1: upon today, they sometimes fail to capture more subtle linguistic
Speaker 1: elements like idiom or you know, metaphor. Similarly, so some
Speaker 1: stuff does get lost in translation. So with that in mind,
Speaker 1: let's see what we can find out now. According to
Speaker 1: the Chinese website so Who, which is part of a
Speaker 1: big internet company that I'll have to cover in a
Speaker 1: future episode. Here's what I was able to discover. Jong
Speaker 1: initially studied microelectronics, but then switched to software engineering in
Speaker 1: college at non Kai University, and so he was there
Speaker 1: from two thousand one to two thousand five. Upon graduate wation,
Speaker 1: he interviewed with a company called cook Soon, and he
Speaker 1: became employee number five over there. Cook Soon got its
Speaker 1: start as a meta search engine designed to pull up
Speaker 1: train ticket options for travelers in China. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like how search services like hotels dot com or booking
Speaker 1: dot com will aggregate deals for various hotels in a
Speaker 1: region so that you can find the one that best
Speaker 1: suits your needs, whether it's for your budget or where
Speaker 1: you plan on being or whatever. Over time, the cook
Speaker 1: Soon site expanded its scope, becoming more of a general
Speaker 1: search engine for everything from shopping to job positions, and
Speaker 1: it would change its focus numerous times, sometimes scaling back
Speaker 1: to focus more on the travel industry and sometimes going
Speaker 1: more broad. In the meantime, Gen rose rapidly from being
Speaker 1: a software engineer to leading teams of engineers who are
Speaker 1: developing the various products that would get rolled out onto
Speaker 1: the site. There's Jong would leave cook soon in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and at that point the site had
Speaker 1: not yet become profitable, possibly due to this wavering focus
Speaker 1: on what the site actually was about. But it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the end of his involvement with Cookson the company, however,
Speaker 1: we'll get back to that. So in the meantime, he
Speaker 1: joined Microsoft, but he found that working for an established
Speaker 1: global company that had a fairly rigid corporate structure was
Speaker 1: a very different experience from working in a startup environment,
Speaker 1: and he didn't stick around with Microsoft for very long.
Speaker 1: He would leave that company to join another Chinese company
Speaker 1: called fan Fou, which was essentially a clone of Twitter.
Speaker 1: It was a short messaging service style social platform device
Speaker 1: that did not necessarily go that smoothly either, though it
Speaker 1: wasn't through any fault of gens necessarily. In the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand nine, a series of riots relating to
Speaker 1: China's treatment of ethnic mon noorities erupted in northwest China.
Speaker 1: In an effort to clamp down on the situation, the
Speaker 1: Chinese government began to restrict communication channels as much as
Speaker 1: they possibly could, and that included the effective shutdown of
Speaker 1: Fanfu and several other Chinese websites, which were to remain
Speaker 1: dark until the spring of Joan. Ye Ming didn't wait
Speaker 1: around for the Chinese government to lift restrictions. Instead, he
Speaker 1: left the company and he pounced on what he saw
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to have his own start up. Expedia,
Speaker 1: the online travel company, was in talks to acquire Cook Soon,
Speaker 1: Jong's old employer, but as I mentioned earlier, Cook Soon
Speaker 1: had sort of wandered all over the place when trying
Speaker 1: to establish what it actually was, and one business it
Speaker 1: had dipped its corporate toe into was in real estate,
Speaker 1: and that's what Jong was interested in. He arranged to
Speaker 1: acquire that part of Cook Soon's business because it wasn't
Speaker 1: really a line end with expedia strategy and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be needed for Expedia's acquisition. It was a part of
Speaker 1: the company that wasn't really that interesting to Expedia, so
Speaker 1: Jeong y Ming was able to swoop in and purchase
Speaker 1: that part of the company, and he founded his first
Speaker 1: independent company, which he called nine Fong dot Com. A
Speaker 1: couple of years later, Jeong saw a new opportunity, this
Speaker 1: time revolving around how people access news. China was lagging
Speaker 1: a little bit behind the rest of the world in
Speaker 1: this endeavor, but even in China, it was clear that
Speaker 1: mobile devices were completely upending the way people get access
Speaker 1: to information. So with that in mind, Jong resigned as
Speaker 1: the CEO of Fong dot com and he founded a
Speaker 1: new company, one that would be known in the West
Speaker 1: as byte Dance b y t e Dance. The original
Speaker 1: product from byte Dance wasn't a short videos service, nor
Speaker 1: did it have anything to do with lip syncing to
Speaker 1: songs or generating me eames or anything like that. It
Speaker 1: was a news aggregator service, one that would pull headlines
Speaker 1: from various Chinese news organizations. The app was called Chao
Speaker 1: Chow and it was a big hit in China, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that Jong initially encountered very little enthusiasm from
Speaker 1: investors for his idea. Bye Dance would launch a video
Speaker 1: sharing app for mobile devices called dough yin in China,
Speaker 1: but it would be known elsewhere as TikTok and the
Speaker 1: app allowed users to create short, like really short video
Speaker 1: clips fifteen seconds long and then share them online. Users
Speaker 1: would create lip sync videos. They had access to a
Speaker 1: large database of sound bites they could use, or they
Speaker 1: might create short comedy videos, or they might show off
Speaker 1: odd or impressive talents. The service launched in China in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. It received a warm reception in China, but
Speaker 1: when they tried to exp and the app outside of
Speaker 1: China in Seen, it did not immediately catch on. That
Speaker 1: would change a bit later in seventeen when byte Dance
Speaker 1: would merge its TikTok app with another app called Musical
Speaker 1: dot Lee or Musically if you prefer, and that's when
Speaker 1: things would really take off. But that means we need
Speaker 1: to chat about musically for a second. And where that
Speaker 1: came from. That started as a different Chinese startup, this
Speaker 1: time co founded by friends Alex Shu and Louis Young.
Speaker 1: The two originally intended to create a short form video
Speaker 1: service meant for educational videos. So these were supposed to
Speaker 1: be things like how to videos or explainer videos, you know,
Speaker 1: like how this thing works, videos I can identify with that.
Speaker 1: They called their app Cicada, and they pitched it to
Speaker 1: venture capitalists back in and investors like the idea, and
Speaker 1: they poured about a quarter of a million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of cash into the There was only one tiny little problem,
Speaker 1: nobody was using it. They were able to develop the tool,
Speaker 1: they launched the tool, they saw very little adoption, and
Speaker 1: as it turned out, they they realized the reason was
Speaker 1: it's actually really difficult to communicate complicated ideas effectively in
Speaker 1: just a few minutes. I mean, I've done that. That's
Speaker 1: been my gig for a while with making short videos.
Speaker 1: I used to do that back with how Stuff works
Speaker 1: all the time. So it's hard to do and that's
Speaker 1: why you noticed that the average running time for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff episode is closer to like forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: It's just it's not easy to boil all that down
Speaker 1: in just a few minutes and make it accurate and interesting.
Speaker 1: So the co founders discovered that people didn't want to
Speaker 1: use the app because it took so long to write, produce,
Speaker 1: and edit videos that the return on investment in terms
Speaker 1: of time and effort just weren't there. It wasn't fun
Speaker 1: to use. Creation really needed to be more effortless and
Speaker 1: have a better payoff, and young folks who were leading
Speaker 1: the way when it came to mobile phone adoption just
Speaker 1: weren't into Cicada, so it was not really succeeding. So
Speaker 1: the co founders were faced with the problem. They had
Speaker 1: built tools that worked, but they weren't really suitable for
Speaker 1: the purposes that they had in mind. People just weren't
Speaker 1: using it. So they were running out of cash, and
Speaker 1: they had a couple of different choices that they could
Speaker 1: really follow. They could go back to their investors and
Speaker 1: return what little money was left with an apology saying
Speaker 1: we built this thing, it works, but nobody's using it.
Speaker 1: Or they could attempt a pivot and see if they
Speaker 1: could leverage the tools they had already built for some
Speaker 1: other purpose. And that's when they decided to give entertainment
Speaker 1: a shot. Now. According to you, he made this decision
Speaker 1: after visiting the United States. He was in Mountain View, California,
Speaker 1: according to his story, and saw a group of teenagers
Speaker 1: on a train that were listening to music. They were
Speaker 1: taking self fees and videos with the music in the background,
Speaker 1: and they were using social media apps to add filters
Speaker 1: and virtual stickers on top of the images in the video.
Speaker 1: And he thought, hey, you know, these kids are sharing
Speaker 1: stuff in a really creative way, and they're cluging it together,
Speaker 1: right there. They're doing this by using different things to
Speaker 1: try and make something new. If I made a tool,
Speaker 1: if I used the stuff we developed for Cicada, and
Speaker 1: I adapted it so that it was all all of
Speaker 1: those elements were together in one app, people would use
Speaker 1: it because they're doing it already, but they're doing it by,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of piecing it together piecemeal. If I
Speaker 1: put it all together, it's gonna be a big hit. Now.
Speaker 1: I find it interesting that, at least according to the
Speaker 1: sources I looked at, SHO wasn't inspired by previous short
Speaker 1: form video services like Vine now. Vine was a short
Speaker 1: form video sharing service that Twitter had acquired shortly after
Speaker 1: Vine had been founded. Users could create six second long
Speaker 1: looping videos. Those videos lived on vines servers, but they
Speaker 1: could easily be shared the platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Inteen.
Speaker 1: When You and Young were working on their tweaked service,
Speaker 1: Vine was still a thing, though Twitter would shut that
Speaker 1: service down in After about a month of making changes
Speaker 1: to their original platform, the Cicada team created a new
Speaker 1: service that they called Musically or musical dot l y.
Speaker 1: Users could create fifteen second long videos with this app.
Speaker 1: They saw some early adoption and user retention, but growth
Speaker 1: was a little slow in the beginning they were running
Speaker 1: low on cash when they made some more adjustments, a
Speaker 1: big one being that they repositioned the logo so that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't get cropped out when the videos would get
Speaker 1: shared on services like Instagram. So that meant that once
Speaker 1: people saw these videos, they could actually see the logo
Speaker 1: for music Lee, and they knew where to go in
Speaker 1: order so that they could get the happen and make
Speaker 1: their own videos. And adoption really took off at that point,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States. It did not receive widespread
Speaker 1: adoption back in China, but the musically app would hit
Speaker 1: number one on the iTunes app Store, which guaranteed that
Speaker 1: the app would have a prominent position that helped drive adoption,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States. The music Lee team created
Speaker 1: some features that really helped it get attention. One was
Speaker 1: creating a type of tier called Best Fans Forever or
Speaker 1: b f F. So if you followed a music Lee creator,
Speaker 1: you could become a BFF of that creator who would
Speaker 1: follow you back. Essentially your BFFs with each other. So
Speaker 1: let's say two users become BFFs. They could then record
Speaker 1: videos of themselves lip sticking to the same song, for example,
Speaker 1: and music Lee would take these two videos and edit
Speaker 1: them together, creating what was called a duet, so it
Speaker 1: would switch back and forth between the two little videos
Speaker 1: to create a single experience as long as the two
Speaker 1: users were BFFs of each other. A related feature allowed
Speaker 1: music Lee users to create a video response to another video,
Speaker 1: building a chain of videos together, so you could do
Speaker 1: a Q and a style format that musically would stitch
Speaker 1: together so then users could see the full thing later.
Speaker 1: They could see the questions and the answers, or they
Speaker 1: could see a video and a response. And these features,
Speaker 1: along with the ability to post videos to other popular
Speaker 1: platforms like Instagram, meant music Lee had an appeal that
Speaker 1: tapped right into the zeitgeist. Before long, it became a
Speaker 1: launching pad for Internet celebrities as well as musicians who
Speaker 1: otherwise we're finding discovery to be an insurmountable challenge. So
Speaker 1: you had music Lee, which was doing well in the
Speaker 1: United States and in Europe as well as several other markets.
Speaker 1: And you had du Yen or to Talk, which was
Speaker 1: doing well in China but hadn't gained much traction anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Jong saw the chance to bring together two similar but
Speaker 1: unrelated services under one company, and so byte Dance would
Speaker 1: make its move. When we come back, I'll talk about
Speaker 1: that acquisition and what came next, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Musically started back in TikTok Or or
Speaker 1: du Yan had launched in two thousand sixteen. Byte Dance
Speaker 1: was doing incredibly well, largely driven by the enormous success
Speaker 1: of the news aggregator service it had built years before.
Speaker 1: Based on funding rounds in China, byte Dance had a
Speaker 1: valuation of nearly twenty billion dollars around this time, which
Speaker 1: is in fact and extremely princely some In November, news
Speaker 1: broke that byte Dance was making a move to acquire
Speaker 1: the music Lee service, which itself had been valued at
Speaker 1: nearly one billion dollars. So while I was watching friends
Speaker 1: do silly lips sinking videos to songs from the musical Hamilton's,
Speaker 1: these companies were skyrocketing in value. In December seen the
Speaker 1: deal was finalized for an undisclosed amount. Analysts estimate it
Speaker 1: was somewhere between eight hundred million dollars and one billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Not a bad take for the developers of music Lee,
Speaker 1: who had started out with a failed effort to create
Speaker 1: an educational video tool. I really wish my failure is
Speaker 1: paid off like that. Now I'm being a bit snarky,
Speaker 1: but I have to point out that the services were
Speaker 1: both doing really, really well both before and after Byte
Speaker 1: Dance acquired musical Lee. By mid teen, musical Lee had
Speaker 1: one hundred million active monthly users. TikTok or du Yan
Speaker 1: had five hundred million users in China, and those users
Speaker 1: were generating tons of data, and they were watching lots
Speaker 1: of ads, and as we all know, this is really
Speaker 1: valuable stuff, particularly when you're looking at it in bulk.
Speaker 1: So Byte Dance was sitting on a treasure trove of
Speaker 1: information as well as getting lots of money through ad deals,
Speaker 1: and it really gave the company an enormous boost in value.
Speaker 1: In August, byte Dance announced it was shuttering musical Lee
Speaker 1: as a brand. It was going to go away as
Speaker 1: its own thing, and it revamped the service into TikTok,
Speaker 1: so it unified the name across its two services. However,
Speaker 1: the company would still continue to operate the du Yan
Speaker 1: version of TikTok separately on Chinese servers. This was so
Speaker 1: the company could adhere to Chinese government requirements. I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that a little later in this episode. So
Speaker 1: even though there was a unified Dame, there are still
Speaker 1: two distinct, separate incarnations of TikTok to this day. One
Speaker 1: month after byte Dance consolidated TikTok, the service reached a
Speaker 1: new milestone. In September, it became the top app in
Speaker 1: monthly installs in Apple's App Store. It surpassed Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and Facebook. It was a social media app on the rise.
Speaker 1: This was a huge deal, and driving this adoption were
Speaker 1: young users who otherwise weren't quite as keen to join
Speaker 1: some of the more established networks out there. Now that
Speaker 1: being said, the user base still wasn't as big as
Speaker 1: something like Facebook, which is a true monolith of a
Speaker 1: social platform. When it comes to total users, Facebook remains king,
Speaker 1: but TikTok was seeing much faster adoption than other platforms
Speaker 1: at this time. While all this was going on from
Speaker 1: an adoption perspective, there's another aspect we need to address,
Speaker 1: and that's the cultural impact of TikTok. The short form
Speaker 1: video restrictions meant people had to come up with creative
Speaker 1: ways to make use of that time and of the platform,
Speaker 1: and they had to do it in order to stand
Speaker 1: out among all the other stuff being uploaded every day.
Speaker 1: TikTok culture began to evolve, and soon there was a
Speaker 1: TikTok optimized form of storytelling and of humor. TikTok emerged
Speaker 1: at the same time as a generation of kids who
Speaker 1: had grown up in the smartphone age, and they were
Speaker 1: all becoming teenagers around this time. So smartphones have immersed
Speaker 1: us in media like nothing before. Now, my generation would
Speaker 1: spend hours in front of a television every week, and
Speaker 1: there were often times that we could easily escape from
Speaker 1: mass media if we wanted to just go outside or whatever,
Speaker 1: because cell phones were barely a thing when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. There was no YouTube or Facebook, there were
Speaker 1: no smartphones. Even digital cameras were in credibly rare and expensive,
Speaker 1: and so my generation developed a very different sensibility and
Speaker 1: relationship with communication and humor. Now, I don't say that
Speaker 1: superior sensibility. I don't think my generation had a better
Speaker 1: version of that than any other generation. I'm just pointing
Speaker 1: out that it's different. So you contrast my generation with
Speaker 1: the teens of the twenty one century. The Internet and
Speaker 1: mobile devices have changed how we experience, consume, and interact
Speaker 1: with media. Everything seems pulled into the media realm. People
Speaker 1: who would otherwise have led fairly average lives were able
Speaker 1: to leverage online tools to become celebrities. They they've been
Speaker 1: able to amass fortunes by vlogging or live streaming games
Speaker 1: or developing themselves into a brand. It's a totally different landscape,
Speaker 1: and as such, it provides a much different launch point
Speaker 1: for humor and communication, and that's what we're seeing on TikTok.
Speaker 1: TikTok Let's users share short videos that often end up
Speaker 1: being a reflection, commentary, or criticism of some form of
Speaker 1: media or cultural idea, and it's easily shared and it's
Speaker 1: easily digested. So in many ways, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: how people tend to encounter the news. The twenty four
Speaker 1: hour news cycle created a demand for news. You had
Speaker 1: to fill up all that time with something if you're
Speaker 1: going to be broadcasting twenty four hours a day. And
Speaker 1: then the Internet comes along and took that news cycle
Speaker 1: and made it a bazillion times worse. One consequence of
Speaker 1: this is that we don't tend to have very long
Speaker 1: memories when it comes to big events because we're flooded
Speaker 1: with notifications whenever the next big event happens, and because
Speaker 1: the Internet is global, there's always a big event happening somewhere,
Speaker 1: so it just becomes this sequence of big events. Well,
Speaker 1: TikTok videos kind of taps into that in a little way.
Speaker 1: Video creators can become famous. Some may only achieve temporary notoriety,
Speaker 1: but other people have launched entire careers from TikTok and
Speaker 1: they can make ironic observations about the world and media
Speaker 1: and memes that are going on at that time. Most
Speaker 1: videos use a soundtrack taken from established media, such as
Speaker 1: a musical artist or a film soundtrack or audio from
Speaker 1: a television show, and so to someone like me, the
Speaker 1: videos might appear silly or unimportant because I'm a grumpy
Speaker 1: old man. But to a different generation, it's an actual response,
Speaker 1: whether conscious or otherwise, to the environment that they're growing
Speaker 1: up in. Also, because these TikTok videos rely so heavily
Speaker 1: on identifiable pop culture media, they tend to transcend barriers
Speaker 1: like language, so they become really accessible. Oh the the
Speaker 1: tone is really interesting too. There's a sort of self
Speaker 1: deprecating humor that runs through a lot of TikTok videos,
Speaker 1: which is a stark contrast to how people try to
Speaker 1: present themselves on other platforms like Instagram. On Instagram, it's
Speaker 1: far more common to see someone present themselves in full
Speaker 1: blown self promotion mode, so kind of like, look how
Speaker 1: awesome I am, Look how awesome my life is. Look
Speaker 1: how awesome these products I enjoy are. Don't you want
Speaker 1: these products too? Like? That's kind of the perception of
Speaker 1: your typical Instagram personality, right, they are a person who
Speaker 1: are They're presenting themselves as a brand that interacts with
Speaker 1: other established brands. Well, a lot of TikTok users seem
Speaker 1: to use TikTok in a totally different way. They're using
Speaker 1: TikTok in a way to kind of voice their own
Speaker 1: insecurities and to deal with that and to to sort
Speaker 1: of poke fun at themselves in a self aware way,
Speaker 1: as opposed to trying to present this kind of idealistic
Speaker 1: vision of themselves and on the app that frequently goes
Speaker 1: fairly well if you're viewing TikTok through the app, that's
Speaker 1: kind of the vibe you get with a lot of
Speaker 1: TikTok videos, not all of them, by the means but
Speaker 1: it's a pretty common thread. But TikTok also has created
Speaker 1: a strange duality. So on the one hand, you had
Speaker 1: the TikTok culture of the app itself, and then on
Speaker 1: the other you have the culture around TikTok that has
Speaker 1: grown out from the way TikTok is presented on other
Speaker 1: platforms platforms like YouTube and Facebook, where people will upload
Speaker 1: collections of TikTok videos, they'll aggregate them much in the
Speaker 1: same way as Byte Dances news aggregator would gather headlines.
Speaker 1: Many of those compilations popping up on other platforms aren't
Speaker 1: like a best of you know, it's not the best
Speaker 1: of TikTok featuring clever users of the app or particularly
Speaker 1: funny jokes. Instead, there are a lot of cringe compilations.
Speaker 1: These are videos where something isn't necessarily going well, or
Speaker 1: maybe they're meant to service material for mockery and derision,
Speaker 1: so you're making someone's making fun of another creator. So
Speaker 1: these are two very different experiences. Right on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you have the app experience, which tends to be a
Speaker 1: bit more lighthearted, and then you have the wider experience
Speaker 1: of videos appearing on other platforms where people are being
Speaker 1: you know, jerks on the internet. As per usual, the
Speaker 1: duet feature on TikTok can be used for mockery in
Speaker 1: this way. So with a duet, a user can respond
Speaker 1: to a previously posted TikTok video, creating a split screen
Speaker 1: in which the original video plays on one side and
Speaker 1: on the other side you have the response video. Now,
Speaker 1: ideally you would use this to add something of value
Speaker 1: to the original video, to create a duet. Maybe someone's
Speaker 1: singing in one video and you harmonize with them in
Speaker 1: the duet video, and then it's presented that way together.
Speaker 1: That's the intent of this feature. However, a lot of
Speaker 1: people use it in order to make fun of the
Speaker 1: original video in some way, either to react to something
Speaker 1: that happens in the video in an over the top way,
Speaker 1: or to just out and out burn the person who
Speaker 1: created the first video. So you might post an earnest
Speaker 1: attempt to sing a song, and then you might see
Speaker 1: that your video shows up on a YouTube list that's
Speaker 1: being held up for mockery by some TikTok troll who
Speaker 1: gets most of their views by tearing down other people.
Speaker 1: In TikTok culture, it's called ironic TikTok. I think it's
Speaker 1: playing pretty fast and loose with the definition of irony,
Speaker 1: because often the word ironic is being used in a
Speaker 1: place for something like means spirited. That being mean is
Speaker 1: not necessarily being ironic. The two are not synonymous. However,
Speaker 1: this isn't exactly new. I'm not pointing out something that
Speaker 1: has just popped up. This is not to say that
Speaker 1: this generation is particularly awful. I don't think that's true
Speaker 1: at all. The Internet has had plenty of forums and
Speaker 1: platforms where this stuff has happened well in the past.
Speaker 1: It's pretty widespread on TikTok, or at least on the
Speaker 1: plot secondary platforms like YouTube and Instagram. But it's not
Speaker 1: like this is a huge surprise, right that the target
Speaker 1: demographic for TikTok tends to be young people, and young
Speaker 1: people throughout most of history have often sought approval by
Speaker 1: making fun of vulnerable targets. I mean that was true
Speaker 1: when I was a kid and the Internet didn't even
Speaker 1: really exist, at least not in the minds of kids
Speaker 1: my age. The Internet was a thing, but none of
Speaker 1: us access to it. The Worldwide Web didn't exist yet
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, but kids were still you know,
Speaker 1: mean and picked on people. So this is definitely something
Speaker 1: that has been a thing for ages and ages and ages.
Speaker 1: It's just that TikTok enables it on a scale that's
Speaker 1: much larger than what you could do back when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, Like I might get fun of in
Speaker 1: front of the whole school, but that was a school people,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the whole Internet. So this creates a pretty
Speaker 1: unusual landscape. Right. The app itself isn't really plagued with trolling. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the secondary platforms like Instagram and YouTube are much more
Speaker 1: likely to feature trollish videos and making it worse, a
Speaker 1: large percentage of TikTok's audience are not watching the videos
Speaker 1: on TikTok. A lot of them have never downloaded TikTok.
Speaker 1: They're watching the videos on these other platforms like Instagram
Speaker 1: and YouTube, so they're seeing more of the cringe compilations
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. So your experiences with TikTok
Speaker 1: really depend heavily on how you actually access the content. Now,
Speaker 1: not all of the ironic TikTok videos are means spirited.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are, but not all of them.
Speaker 1: Some are more absurdist humor that doesn't really seem to
Speaker 1: have any kind of malicious intent. It's more like a
Speaker 1: very goofy reaction to a similarly goofy video and not
Speaker 1: meant to be like it wasn't that first video terrible
Speaker 1: or whatever. But there are a lot of users who
Speaker 1: really do set out to make stuff that was either
Speaker 1: intended to belittle or insult the original creator. Some are
Speaker 1: just making stuff that is an overt attempt to be offensive,
Speaker 1: probably for no other reason than they find it amusing
Speaker 1: to get an emotional reaction out of people. It's a
Speaker 1: classic troll behavior. Others might be using TikTok to express
Speaker 1: some truly terrible beliefs that they hold, like racist beliefs
Speaker 1: or misogynistic beliefs, because they see it as a way
Speaker 1: where they can exp us these things without there being
Speaker 1: any kind of consequence to that. But why are these
Speaker 1: secondary platforms presenting a more toxic version of TikTok in
Speaker 1: the first place? Why is it so popular there? What
Speaker 1: mostly has to do with how algorithms suss out which
Speaker 1: videos they should suggest to users. Videos that get a
Speaker 1: lot of engagement tend to rise to the top because
Speaker 1: engagement translates to spending more time on that platform, and
Speaker 1: spending more time on the platform means spending more time
Speaker 1: around ads. Spending more time around ads means that the
Speaker 1: platform makes more money. So you see how this drives
Speaker 1: decision making From a platform perspective, the platforms like YouTube
Speaker 1: and Instagram our businesses, and a driving motivator for business
Speaker 1: owners is to maximize profits. So to do that, if
Speaker 1: your YouTube or Instagram, you have to find ways to
Speaker 1: keep people on your platform, to keep them engaged, and
Speaker 1: that often means serving up some stuff that's pretty nasty.
Speaker 1: DN means spirited, not because the content is better, but
Speaker 1: because it keeps people glued to the platform, which is
Speaker 1: pretty gross. But we see this all the time, and
Speaker 1: not just with TikTok. I'm not trying to call them
Speaker 1: out here, It's on all these platforms. It's also one
Speaker 1: of the underlying principles that fuels the discussion around fake
Speaker 1: news and the promotion of extremist ideologies on platforms like
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook. Over at the TikTok app, meanwhile, it's
Speaker 1: largely using a different type of curating. A common feature
Speaker 1: on social platforms is the ability to indicate you like
Speaker 1: a post or video or whatever. So you click on
Speaker 1: the little like button or the thumbs up icon or
Speaker 1: a little hard icon or whatever it is, and you
Speaker 1: express your admiration for the content. On the back end,
Speaker 1: the service logs this response then begins to develop a
Speaker 1: profile for you. Are you liking a lot of pictures
Speaker 1: of dogs on Instagram? Well, what do you know when
Speaker 1: you start doing a search on Instagram. A lot of
Speaker 1: the images that are just gonna populate before you even
Speaker 1: type in a search term are going to be dogs
Speaker 1: on TikTok. If you indicate that the lip syncing videos
Speaker 1: that have really clever edits, maybe they have really interesting
Speaker 1: makeup effects or something you're clicking like on a lot
Speaker 1: of those, you're gonna see more of those pop up
Speaker 1: in your feed. If you don't like videos that are
Speaker 1: more mean spirited, like you never hit like on a
Speaker 1: mean spirited video, then over time they're going to show
Speaker 1: up less frequently. Your actions guide TikTok to curating a
Speaker 1: feed that's most likely to keep your attention, because again,
Speaker 1: keeping your attention, keeping you on the platform for as
Speaker 1: long as possible is the goal, because that's what generates
Speaker 1: revenue for TikTok. There's a feedback loop going on here
Speaker 1: in which TikTok gathers information about its users, then it
Speaker 1: makes use of that information to tweak the presentation of
Speaker 1: the platform to those users in an effort to improve
Speaker 1: the experience, and and by improve the experience, I mean
Speaker 1: encourage more engagement, then monitor the results. The cycle repeats
Speaker 1: endlessly with the goal of constantly morphing to suit the
Speaker 1: preferences of the individual user, while also promoting content that
Speaker 1: has near universal acceptance. There's another aspect of TikTok that
Speaker 1: we're going to explore when we come back, and that's
Speaker 1: how it has come under scrutiny from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: national security. I'll explain more in a minute, but first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Before I get to the
Speaker 1: national security stuff with TikTok, It's important to mention that
Speaker 1: the app has been at the object of scrutiny for
Speaker 1: lots of different reasons, not just national security. One of
Speaker 1: those reasons is that the app hasn't been terribly good
Speaker 1: at enforcing any sort of age restrictions, and so there
Speaker 1: have been some awful, high profile cases in which the
Speaker 1: app has played a part in putting kids in danger.
Speaker 1: For example, according to the South China Morning Post. Kids
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong potentially put themselves in danger on TikTok
Speaker 1: by sharing personal information like their full names or their
Speaker 1: phone numbers. So that's not great, and it's not that
Speaker 1: TikTok should prevent them from doing that, but TikTok allowing
Speaker 1: such young people access to the app in the first place,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking like nine or ten year olds, that's
Speaker 1: a problem. TikTok, like pretty much any online space, has
Speaker 1: its share of predators who might try and exploit that
Speaker 1: kind of information, and that alone is truly disturbing and
Speaker 1: needs to be addressed. And because TikTok doesn't have good
Speaker 1: age restrictions in place, it has run a foul of
Speaker 1: the law in some countries. So in the United States,
Speaker 1: the Federal Trade Commission find TikTok in February nineteen for
Speaker 1: collecting data on children under the age of thirteen. That's
Speaker 1: a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in
Speaker 1: the United States, also own as Kappa. Now, incidentally, I'll
Speaker 1: have to do a full episode on Kappa because it's
Speaker 1: a law that's affecting lots of people, including creators on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and it's actually a pretty complicated issue. Anyway, the FTC
Speaker 1: found TikTok guilty of violating Kappa and tracking this data
Speaker 1: of underage users, and so byte Dance was hit with
Speaker 1: a fine of um five point seven million dollars. And sure,
Speaker 1: to folks like me, five point seven million bucks is
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of money. It's truly enough to merit
Speaker 1: the designation of a princely sum. But around that same time,
Speaker 1: byte Dance had a valuation of nearly eighty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Do you know how many times five point seven million
Speaker 1: goes into eighty billion? I do. I did the math.
Speaker 1: It's more than fourteen thousand times. It is point zero
Speaker 1: zero seven vent of the company's value. So the fine
Speaker 1: wasn't even a drop in the bucket for byite Dance.
Speaker 1: The app has also been in the spotlight for how
Speaker 1: it monetizes itself. So there's the advertising that I mentioned.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know you see ads and that generates revenue,
Speaker 1: but that's everywhere. TikTok also allows for sponsored videos, So
Speaker 1: you could have a brand sponsor a content creator, and
Speaker 1: that creator then goes and makes videos featuring that brand's products,
Speaker 1: and then you would have a tab in the app
Speaker 1: that would make it easy for users to purchase those
Speaker 1: products featured in the videos. They click on the little
Speaker 1: tab they can order the stuff and it really facilitates
Speaker 1: that transaction. Then there are the virtual items, which are
Speaker 1: coins and then virtual gifts. This gets a little wishy
Speaker 1: washy complicated, timey whimy wibbly wobbly. So TikTok allows quote
Speaker 1: select users aged sixteen or above end quote too participate
Speaker 1: in the program. In this case, the program is live streaming. Quote.
Speaker 1: Such users shall be selected exclusively at the discretion of
Speaker 1: the platform on the basis of various criteria, including their
Speaker 1: track record and creating quality content, their number of followers, etcetera.
Speaker 1: End quote. So live streaming is now a thing on TikTok,
Speaker 1: and you have to be at least sixteen years old
Speaker 1: in order to be able to do it. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: for those users who are eighteen years or older, there's
Speaker 1: an additional benefit. These users can purchase virtual coins, or
Speaker 1: if they are people in this live stream program, they
Speaker 1: can accept virtual items. So to purchase a virtual item,
Speaker 1: users have to be at least eighteen years or uh.
Speaker 1: They have to be the age of majority for their
Speaker 1: respective country. And they can purchase virtual gifts with virtual coins.
Speaker 1: The gifts are meant to show a pre ciation toward
Speaker 1: content creators, and the creators received the gifts in the
Speaker 1: form of another virtual currency called diamonds, which is getting
Speaker 1: a bit confusing right. Virtual coins are used to purchase
Speaker 1: virtual gifts, which convert into another virtual item called a diamond. Gift.
Speaker 1: Giving is public, by the way, so anyone on TikTok
Speaker 1: will be able to see when one user sends a
Speaker 1: gift to another, including what that gift was diamonds. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: are as TikTok puts it quote a measurement of the
Speaker 1: popularity of the relevant user content end quote, so it's
Speaker 1: essentially saying how good or how popular is this video.
Speaker 1: TikTok reserves the right to determine the rate of conversion
Speaker 1: of diamonds too, you know, actual real world money that
Speaker 1: can be spent on real world stuff. So creators who
Speaker 1: earn diamonds can withdraw diamonds from their account, whereupon TikTok
Speaker 1: will convert the virtual diamonds into real money based in
Speaker 1: US currency using an arbitrary conversion rule that the company dictates.
Speaker 1: So you can make money as a creator on TikTok.
Speaker 1: But the amount you make is purely at the whim
Speaker 1: of Bite Dance. They might say like, oh, a hundred
Speaker 1: diamonds equals one dollar one day, and then the next
Speaker 1: day they might say a thousand diamonds equals one dollar.
Speaker 1: It's completely up to the company and there's no solid
Speaker 1: conversion there. All right, But now about national security, what's
Speaker 1: going on there? Well, part of the issue doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: point back to Bite Dance the company itself, but rather
Speaker 1: how extremists can make use of social media to spread
Speaker 1: their message or to spread misinformation or disinformation. The concern
Speaker 1: is that extremist groups can spread messages promoting their philosophies
Speaker 1: in short, bite sized packages to a wide audience of
Speaker 1: mostly young and by extension, impressionable viewers. Whether it's an
Speaker 1: organization like ISIS or a looser groups such as white supremacists,
Speaker 1: there's a real concern that platforms like TikTok will serve
Speaker 1: as an entry point for more young people to join
Speaker 1: dangerous groups. Then there are fears that the app could
Speaker 1: be used to interfere with major events, such as a
Speaker 1: country's elections. Here in the United States, there's a real
Speaker 1: concern that social media services are being leveraged by all
Speaker 1: sorts of parties, both domestic and foreign, in an effort
Speaker 1: to spread misinformation, to undermine faith in the democratic process,
Speaker 1: or otherwise affect the outcome of the elections process in
Speaker 1: some way. While you could argue convincingly, I might add
Speaker 1: that the way these social media platforms curate information can
Speaker 1: contribute to their misuse. You could also argue that the
Speaker 1: services themselves aren't necessarily engaged in these activities. They're enablers,
Speaker 1: but they're not necessarily instigators. So while there are real
Speaker 1: criticisms about platforms like Facebook promoting harmful misinformation or extremist
Speaker 1: views due to the way the Facebook algorithm works, most
Speaker 1: people would not go so far as to accuse Facebook
Speaker 1: itself of creating that content. But there's a big difference
Speaker 1: between TikTok and Facebook besides the way the two platforms
Speaker 1: present content, and that's the fact that TikTok is owned
Speaker 1: by a Chinese company. Now, I talked a lot about
Speaker 1: tech politics and China in my episodes about Huawei and
Speaker 1: also another one called why is Everything Made in China?
Speaker 1: But here's a quick overview. The government in China is
Speaker 1: ultimately under the governance of the Communist Party of China.
Speaker 1: In China, the government has tight controls on what the
Speaker 1: media is allowed to present to the Chinese public. The
Speaker 1: Chinese government can sense or information, restrict access to information
Speaker 1: from outside China, and even dictate what can actually be
Speaker 1: communicated to citizens. In addition, in twenty seventeen, the government
Speaker 1: passed a law that says, quote any organization and citizen
Speaker 1: uh in China that is should support and cooperate the
Speaker 1: in the national intelligence work end quote. So that is,
Speaker 1: if the company or person originates in China, then that
Speaker 1: person or a company has a duty to support China's
Speaker 1: national intelligence efforts, which includes spying. So you've got this
Speaker 1: incredibly popular app used by hundreds of millions of people
Speaker 1: around the world, and you have a country with a
Speaker 1: government that demands companies and citizens within that country amplify
Speaker 1: the country's own intelligence efforts. It is understandable why leaders
Speaker 1: and other countries would become concerned about the rise of
Speaker 1: popularity of a Chinese based app. If the company we're
Speaker 1: gathering all that data, it might be used in harmful ways.
Speaker 1: If people in the US were to use the app
Speaker 1: in sensitive locations such as on government property or on
Speaker 1: military sites. It could give away information to a not
Speaker 1: quite friendly country. In fact, in the United States, the
Speaker 1: Army and the Navy have banned the use of TikTok.
Speaker 1: You you cannot install it on any government issued phone.
Speaker 1: A country that has been known to employ hackers in
Speaker 1: cyber warfare projects in the past. China is already pretty
Speaker 1: high on that suspect list, so for some the app
Speaker 1: is akin to handing over ammunition to an enemy during wartime.
Speaker 1: In September twenty nineteen, the newspaper The Guardian published an
Speaker 1: article that included excerpts from leaked documents from inside TikTok.
Speaker 1: Those documents showed that the company had been sending directives
Speaker 1: to moderators, whose job it is to look for content
Speaker 1: that violates TikTok's terms of serve. This the directives expanded
Speaker 1: that definition beyond the stuff you would expect, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff that depicts violence or sexual content, and the directives
Speaker 1: included other stuff like if a video were to include
Speaker 1: material that criticized the Chinese government, or one that addressed
Speaker 1: the political situation in Tibet, or one that talked about
Speaker 1: other topics that the Chinese government wanted to restrict those
Speaker 1: were to be removed or shifted over so that nobody
Speaker 1: would ever see them. So technically the videos would be
Speaker 1: on the platform, but they would be in a bucket
Speaker 1: that no one would ever access. When citizens in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong began organizing protests in twenty nineteen against China, their
Speaker 1: stories were shared on numerous social platforms mysteriously, though it
Speaker 1: was really hard to find any examples on TikTok since
Speaker 1: those protests were directed at mainland China, the implication was
Speaker 1: that TikTok might be purpose fully suppressing any videos that
Speaker 1: were coming out of Hong Kong on TikTok that were
Speaker 1: related to the protests. Now in the United States, lawmakers
Speaker 1: called for investigations into TikTok. Bye Dance responded by saying
Speaker 1: that all US user data exists on servers that are
Speaker 1: actually in the United States, with some backups that are
Speaker 1: also in Singapore, but that no US data, no US
Speaker 1: user information lives on any servers in China itself, nor
Speaker 1: are the data on those servers subject to Chinese law,
Speaker 1: so the Chinese government cannot do anything about that, according
Speaker 1: to byte Dance, nor has it asked for any stuff
Speaker 1: to be taken down, according to Byte Dance. Towards the
Speaker 1: end of twenty nineteen, rumors were popping up that Byte
Speaker 1: Dance was actually considering selling off some or all of TikTok.
Speaker 1: Byte Dance executives have denied these rumors. They say that
Speaker 1: the company has no plans to sell any of the
Speaker 1: service off, despite the pressure on the company that it
Speaker 1: is facing on the international stage. At the same time,
Speaker 1: the US Committee on Foreign Investment launched an inquiry into
Speaker 1: whether or not Byte Dance should be forced to spin
Speaker 1: off music Lee. That's the basis of TikTok's presence outside
Speaker 1: of China itself. As of this recording, Byte Dance still
Speaker 1: has control of TikTok, and according to the company, the
Speaker 1: Chinese government has no say in how data outside of
Speaker 1: China can be stored or displayed. There have been a
Speaker 1: few cases in which investigators pointed out examples of apparent censorship,
Speaker 1: where people's videos appeared to have been taken down on purpose,
Speaker 1: but so far the TikTok representatives have explained those away
Speaker 1: as just being examples of human error. You know, they're
Speaker 1: not examples of a conscious effort to suppress information. By
Speaker 1: the time you hear this, things may have changed. We'll
Speaker 1: have to see. There's also an ongoing concern that TikTok
Speaker 1: is going to be the home of deep fakes in
Speaker 1: the near future. There's talk that byte Dance is investing
Speaker 1: heavily in technology that could lead to deep fake videos.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing that people are worried about. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'll have to do an update on this topic
Speaker 1: in the future, but in the meantime, I'm gonna sign
Speaker 1: off and go be old and grouchy for a while.
Speaker 1: If you guys want to reach out to me, please do.
Speaker 1: You can find me on those other old social media platforms,
Speaker 1: you know, the ones where an old guy like me
Speaker 1: can still feel comfortable. I'm talking about Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 1: The handle for both of those is text stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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Speaker 1: Ye