--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management platform that Adio says is built for the next era of companies.
--:-- Noel King: A powerful data structure adapts to your business model, syncs in all your contacts in minutes, and enriches your business with actionable data. Adio says it also allows you to create those email sequences, those real-time reports, those powerful automations, which they claim can help you build what matters most, your company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Noel King: This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Each Apple product, like the iPhone, is thoughtfully designed by skilled designers. The titanium Apple Card is no different. It's laser etched, has no numbers, and it earns you daily cash on everything you buy, including 3% back on everything at Apple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Trump is making good on his threat to crack down on two popular Chinese-owned social media apps. He's signed executive orders banning TikTok and WeChat from operating in the U.S. within 45 days unless they're sold. The president is at war with TikTok. He's threatening to ban the social media platform, best known for bringing the youngs together to lip sync and dance in harmony.
--:-- Noel King: But there might be a way out. A source confirms to NBC News that Microsoft is in talks to purchase it from its Chinese owner. TikTok has 100 million users in the United States, but President Trump is not one of them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: TikTok on the clock. I'm Amina Alsadi. I'm Paul Mounsey. I'm Cecilia Lay. I'm Halima Shah. I'm Moudzedi. I'm Afim Shapiro. I'm Bridget McCarthy. I'm Noah Hasenfeld. I'm Jillian Weinberger. I'm Luz Kelly Nelson. I'm the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. And I'm Sean Ramos-Furram.
--:-- Noel King: That story is ahead on Today Explained. Shereen Ghaffari, you've been covering TikTok for Recode and Vox. How far back does the president's beef with this social media platform go?
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So the beef with TikTok goes, you know, somewhat far back because as early as last year, the U.S. government has been investigating TikTok over national security concerns. A company compromised by the Chinese Communist Party knows where your children are, knows what they look like, what their voices sound like, what they're watching, and what they share with each other.
--:-- Noel King: So, you know, for a while now, there's been this kind of floating concern in national security circles that there's something going on with TikTok that the government should be worried about. But Trump has really escalated the attacks on TikTok this summer.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things or a couple of options. And so did Pompeo. The mission set is to protect American national security and in this case, the information of American citizens. And so whether it's TikTok or any of the other Chinese communications platforms, apps, infrastructure, this administration taking seriously the requirement to protect.
--:-- Noel King: And now, you know, he's said that again with kind of increased urgency. And why exactly does President Trump have like this increasing beef with TikTok? Does it have anything to do with that rally where turnout was kind of low and the TikTok teens claimed responsibility?
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So it's hard to say exactly what is making Trump escalate the attacks. But it is true that back in June, the New York Times reported that teenage TikTok users pranked Trump in this epic way and that they said they were going to attend his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma and signed up an online form saying they were going to attend, but then didn't show up on purpose.
--:-- Noel King: Guys, Donald Trump is having a rally next week and it's free. All you have to do is give your phone number and you can get two tickets. So I got two tickets, but I totally forgot that I have to pick every individual piece of land off of my room floor and sort them by size so I can't make it for Friday.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Oh, well, I already got the tickets. And if you remember, that was a rally that Trump was expecting a really large turnout for. He didn't sort of get the turnout that his team was expecting. The city's fire marshal estimated attendance at 6,200. The arena holds 19,000. And the campaign had boasted one million had requested tickets.
--:-- Noel King: These teens basically took credit for that, at least in part, and said that they helped kind of falsely inflate the attendance numbers that Trump was expecting. You could see how, you know, that may have irked someone.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So who knows? Hard to say if that's the thing that really made Trump upset. There are larger and serious national security concerns predating this rally. And it's hard to say, like, how much exactly the TikTok teens were really the ones responsible for that lower than expected turnout.
--:-- Noel King: But it's certainly, you know, TikTok has been a place where the kids have been sort of poking fun at Trump and trying to be a thorn in his side. I mean, we laugh about the president's numbers at this Tulsa rally, but is there a chance that there could be some sort of election interference via TikTok?
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Is there a chance that this might have something to do with the 2020 election? I've definitely heard the worry that because so many young people are engaged on TikTok and they're getting their information there, that if there were to be some kind of misinformation campaign by a foreign government, that TikTok would be a place where they could try to exploit these young people's eyeballs.
--:-- Noel King: The most serious proven concern I've seen about TikTok so far has been that the app was storing people's clipboard data, which means when you go in to copy-paste something on your phone, that TikTok, as part of its permissions that you give an app, the security permissions, it was storing that and receiving that data.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: And then it was just TikTok, a bunch of other apps also have been found to do this. And once it was brought to TikTok's attention, they said they stopped doing it. So that's been kind of the most serious concern that I've seen that proven so far.
--:-- Noel King: And about these bigger like can TikTok you know mess with the elections? I think all of that at this point is speculation. But it's certainly there and it's certainly being used by President Trump as a way to show that he is getting tougher on China, right?
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: And that this election is definitely one of the themes of it is going to be, you know, U.S. versus China and which potential president is tougher on that in 2020.
--:-- Noel King: What about concerns over free speech on TikTok? There's been allegations that they're censoring stuff, right? So there's a lot of concerns, a lot of allegations, but not a whole lot is really proven yet.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: What has been the cause for some concern is that if you remember the Hong Kong independence protests when they were really heating up about a year ago. You know, a Washington Post report looked into how much content would show up on TikTok when you searched for a hashtag like Free Hong Kong.
--:-- Noel King: And they found that there was not a whole lot showing up. Now, TikTok has denied that was because of any kind of censorship. You know, it may have been the case that just people on TikTok were not as interested in the Hong Kong protests.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: But other examples, you know, we did see there was a report in The Guardian that there were some content moderation guidelines that TikTok was using that sort of discouraged content moderators from letting content stay up. That's about things like Tiananmen Square.
--:-- Noel King: And so it seemed like at least from those guidelines that were leaked, the content moderators were kind of taking down content that may have been anti-China. But again, you know, content moderation guidelines can be, you know, really broad and it's not necessarily true that it was just about the China content.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So without having full access to like the extent of all the behind the scenes content moderation operations of TikTok, we can't really say for sure if they're only, you know, if they're single-handedly doing the Chinese government's work of trying to moderate or take down things that upset the government.
--:-- Noel King: So we don't know for sure whether TikTok is harvesting Americans data. And it sounds like we don't even really know for sure whether TikTok is intentionally and purposefully censoring anti-Chinese speech on its platform, though there are some hints that it might be.
--:-- Noel King: But we do know for certain that the president has signed his executive order to ban this app within 45 days. And something like that has never happened before, right?
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: No, it is. You know, this would represent if TikTok did somehow get banned, that would really be an unprecedented kind of restriction of the free and open internet as we know it in the U.S. I mean, something like that has just really never happened before.
--:-- Noel King: You know, we've seen more like business kind of Chinese operations such as like the Huawei. But that's a lot different than banning a consumer app that 100 million U.S. users use.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: There might be a way to save TikTok. More with Shereen after the break.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Matt Little: My name is Matt Little. I'm a state senator for District 58 in Minnesota. I use TikTok because it's an extension of how I communicated with people when I was mayor of Lakeville.
--:-- Noel King: So my mantra was that I will communicate with you on whatever platform you want to communicate on. So if you sent me a letter to my office, I'd send you a letter back, email to email, call to call.
--:-- Matt Little: And now TikTok, because younger generations want to talk and interact and do politics on TikTok. What's up, political TikTok? It's Matt Little, your favorite state senator.
--:-- Noel King: I always get asked the question, like, what is the best way to make change, you know, if I'm in high school? And what I would say is, you know, don't send a message. If TikTok went away, you know, it's just like Vine going away. You know, people adapt.
--:-- Matt Little: There will always be another social media app that hits it big and so I think if you're in politics and you want to talk to the next generation or different audiences, you got to be ready.
--:-- Noel King: So as soon as we got the threat of the ban a week ago, We signed up for Byte, Dubsmash, Triller. We'll be ready on whatever's next.
--:-- Matt Little: Before I take all the credit for this, I want to make sure that I thank my two staff people that helped me a lot with my TikTok account. And their names are Amy and Christian. Please make sure to give them some love too for having to film all these ridiculous videos.
--:-- Noel King: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio? Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Matt Little: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model. According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up, and within seconds you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Noel King: You'll see all your relationships in a fully-fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data. And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Matt Little: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and so much more. You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Noel King: We'll see you next time. Read watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Shereen, President Trump's executive order states that TikTok would be banned in 45 days if it is not sold by their Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance. And there happens to be a U.S. company that wants to buy TikTok. Why does Microsoft want to buy TikTok?
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So TikTok is a wildly popular app. It has become kind of the crown jewel for social media companies because it's one of the most quickly growing and most downloaded apps. So of course, Microsoft, a company that doesn't have a popular social media presence, would want to gobble it up.
--:-- Noel King: And how popular is it for those who aren't aware? So TikTok says they have about 100 million users in the U.S. and hundreds of millions across the world.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Is this like a really easy way for Microsoft to shore up some cool points and be known, you know, by the youths for something other than like Bill Gates supposedly inventing the coronavirus or whatever?
--:-- Noel King: You know, it is true that Microsoft doesn't have that shiny, young, hot social media app in its portfolio the way that Facebook has Instagram and Google has YouTube. and, you know, Twitter is Twitter.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So Microsoft doesn't have that. And TikTok could be the way to kind of make Microsoft cool again. Could Microsoft make TikTok uncool? I mean, no shade to Microsoft, but I mean, I mostly think about like Windows XP Pro or something when I think about Microsoft.
--:-- Noel King: What? You don't remember Clippy? Clippy isn't cool. I mean... Clippy is actually underrated. Yeah, no, I remember Clippy for sure. I fuck with Clippy.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: I think that there's definitely that risk, right? We're already seeing like a lot of younger users on TikTok worry that Microsoft's going to mess it up. It won't be the same. And if you get, you know, if the kids don't think it's cool, it won't be cool.
--:-- Noel King: So it definitely, Microsoft runs a risk of like messing up TikTok's brand. However, Microsoft has bought independent companies that, and let them continue to run pretty independently and still keep their user base, like the code platform GitHub or the video game Minecraft.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Those actually are companies that are now owned by Microsoft. But you probably, you know, you may not know that if you're not following it closely. I didn't know. Yeah. Okay.
--:-- Noel King: And now ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, might be forced to sell TikTok to Microsoft. How might that forced sale work? Right. So it's complicated.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Independently of Trump, there's actually this interagency government committee called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. And they've been investigating TikTok for a year now and trying to see if those national security concerns are legitimate.
--:-- Noel King: And they have the power to actually block business deals involving foreign companies like ByteDance in the US. So ByteDance acquired another company called Musical.ly back in 2017.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Musical.ly is also based in China, but ByteDance bought their U.S.-based operations as well and took in all their U.S. users and kind of rebranded Musical.ly as TikTok, which has become the wildly popular app we know and love today.
--:-- Noel King: So this committee that's looking into the national security concerns, they actually have the power to undo that deal. And they have blocked and undone major deals before.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: For example, last year, they forced the popular dating app Grindr to not sell to a Chinese-based company. So this government organization, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or maybe just CFIUS, which sounds kind of like an STD, isn't just blocking a deal here. It's sort of creating one out of thin air.
--:-- Noel King: Does ByteDance have a choice in whether it sells to TikTok or not? Well, there's a lot going on. So it's not just the CFIUS committee, but it's also President Trump, you know, publicly threatening repeatedly to ban TikTok.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: It's, you know, bipartisan senators sending letters that they're concerned about this and they think that Congress should investigate this. So, you know, there's a whole flurry of political drama going on that's essentially forcing the potential deal we're seeing now with Microsoft buying TikTok's U.S. operations from ByteDance.
--:-- Noel King: And of course, you know, ByteDance would rather just keep TikTok running the way it is. And ByteDance's CEO has come out and said he thinks that the ultimate goal of the U.S. government here is to ban TikTok in the U.S. in a memo to his Chinese staff that was reported on.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So, you know, this is not an ideal situation for TikTok's owners, but this is the political reality that they're dealing with. Which is sell to Microsoft or get banned. Right.
--:-- Noel King: And not just sell to Microsoft, but sell to Microsoft under conditions that the U.S. government and Trump agrees to. You know, so Trump has given this deadline of 45 days for them to sort it out.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So it's by September 15th. 15th. And if they feel that Microsoft can't do enough to protect U.S. user data and the U.S. national security interests, then, you know, the U.S. government can block that deal and potentially still try to somehow ban or really limit TikTok's U.S. business.
--:-- Noel King: So how much do you get to sell your company for when, like, the U.S. government is forcing your hand? So right now, as last reported by CNBC, Microsoft's looking at buying TikTok for 10 to $30 billion.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: And that might sound like a lot, but remember that TikTok is a hugely valuable company. It has 100 million, you know, of the kind of users that advertisers really want, which are largely young, which are engaged and creative.
--:-- Noel King: And that's in the United States alone. And that's in the U.S. alone, right? And so the company was last valued at around $80 billion in the last investor round of TikTok.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: And now that was for TikTok International, I believe, not just for the US. So it may make sense that Microsoft is going to buy only the US part of TikTok's users for a lower number, but it's very much, again, not the kind of deal that ByteDance even wanted to be making at this point in the first place.
--:-- Noel King: And the president hinted that like the US government will take a cut of whatever this deal is. Is he aware of how this works? Is that how it works? Yeah.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So in kind of an unprecedented statement President Trump said that if this deal were to happen the U.S. government needs to get a cut. Because we're making it possible without us.
--:-- Noel King: You know, I use the expression, it's like the landlord and the tenant. And without the lease, the tenant doesn't have the value. Well, we're sort of in a certain way, the lease. we make it possible to have this great success.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: And, you know, people were kind of perplexed by what he meant by that, because that's kind of just not standard. That's probably legal and some say unconstitutional. And, you know, some people have compared it to kind of borderline extortion.
--:-- Noel King: And, of course, that's just what Trump said. You know, he hasn't actually done anything. But, you know, some people think that he may have been referring to a kind of sales fee that the U.S. Treasury does make on some of these deals.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: But that's a standard fee and it's not something that's negotiable or that you would kind of announce as being an amount that the government has to kind of get out of you for the sale to go through.
--:-- Noel King: The president's executive order says that TikTok must be sold in 45 days or the app will be banned. Can he actually ban an entire social media platform? You know, it's complicated.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: He can't certainly press a button and turn it off overnight. I mean, even if he wanted to do something like that, the quickest probably way to do it would be to get Apple or Android, which is owned by Google, right? The major kind of mobile phone app platforms to just remove TikTok from their app store.
--:-- Noel King: But that's not something that's really ever been done for political reasons in the U.S. like that at the request of a president. And it's not something that Apple or Google, especially Apple, which has been so guarded about the independence of its app store, Not something that Apple is just going to say yes to, even if Trump wanted.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: So, you know, there's going to be a flurry of legal and political challenges here if Trump did try to kind of institute this unprecedented presidential ban on a major consumer app.
--:-- Noel King: However, he can make life a lot harder for TikTok and he can do that legally because of these national security concerns. You know, he has the support of not just some Republicans, but also some Democrats in looking into what's going on with TikTok in China.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: And that committee we talked about, CFIUS, they can basically force TikTok to break off its U.S. operations. And there's other ways. I mean, he can issue an executive order. He can use emergency economic powers. Trump can do a lot of things to kind of essentially try to sanction or just limit the business power of TikTok.
--:-- Noel King: What would it mean for 100 million U.S. users? What would it mean for the country? I mean, I think it would mean that there's going to be a serious change in just the openness of the Internet in the U.S. as we know it.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: And while there may be valid national security concerns, there's also really big concerns about if that's going to give a kind of dangerous precedent for any president of the U.S. to just ban or turn off an app that they don't like.
--:-- Noel King: And so that's why you're seeing the ACLU and other civil liberties organizations come out and say that they're against any kind of unilateral ban by President Trump on TikTok or consumer apps in the manner that he seems to be suggesting.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: It's kind of amazing how this app that's brought us so many videos of teens dancing to popular songs could end up being this sort of litmus test for our tolerance of free speech in America.
--:-- Noel King: You have to remember that there's been increasing tensions between China and the U.S. And it's not just about TikTok. It's about the entire technology sector and who's really going to be the number one power in the years to come in tech. Is it going to be the U.S.? Is it going to be China? This is about a lot more than TikTok.
--:-- Shereen Ghaffari: Shereen Ghaffari writes about technology for Vox. You're listening to Today Explained.
--:-- [Music transitions to a new segment]
--:-- Jessica Fisher: My name is Jessica Fisher. I'm a TikToker. My TikTok at is JessFisher5. and I make all sorts of TikToks. They often have to do with being queer and or zodiac signs.
--:-- Noel King: I was at a store today and this girl complimented my blouse and I don't think it's an especially cute blouse, but she complimented me and I was like, is she hitting on me? How does she know that I'm queer?
--:-- Jessica Fisher: If Trump could ban TikTok, that would be very upsetting. Just on a personal level, I have 90,000 followers. I have this fan base that I've created. I have made money from my fans, from my fan base, not literally them giving me money.
--:-- Noel King: And a lot of friends of mine and creators that I don't know make their living off of the creations they make on TikTok and sponsored posts and cosplayers and communities. So there would be a lot destroyed if TikTok were to be banned because of the communities that it has built and the spaces that it has created and the careers that it has created.
--:-- Jessica Fisher: But I do believe just like with Vine, people would find other ways. Probably they would go to YouTube. And I think that a lot of creators would lose their fan base due to that. So I do think that it would be very, very upsetting if he were to ban it.
--:-- Noel King: And it would also be infringing upon freedom of speech. Thank you.
--:-- [Music transitions to a closing segment]
--:-- Noel King: Flyers and more meet adobe express the quick and easy app to create on-brand content learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business
