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You may only know TikTok as the massively popular social video app for phone-obsessed teens, but lately the app has been caught in the political fray. On March 13, the US House of Representatives approved a bipartisan bill that, should it become law, would require TikTok’s parent company, the Chinese firm ByteDance, to sell the app or else see it banned on devices in the US. Lawmakers in the US have expressed concerns that data from American TikTok users is being shared with a Chinese company and that, therefore, TikTok poses a threat to national security.
This week on Gadget Lab, we’re joined by WIRED senior politics writer Makena Kelly to talk about those security concerns, what this bill means for the rest of the tech industry, and what could happen if TikTok is actually banned.
Show Notes
Read Makena on the bill that would ban TikTok, and read Vittoria Elliott’s update on Wednesday’s vote. We also have instructions to get your videos off TikTok. Read all of WIRED’s TikTok coverage.
Recommendations
Makena recommends going to the office. (Really.) Mike recommends Ener-C powdered vitamin drink mix. Lauren reiterates Kate Knibbs’ earlier recommendation of American Fiction, the film that just won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay.
Makena Kelly can be found on social media @kellymakena. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
How to Listen
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Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Lauren Goode: Mike?
Michael Calore: Lauren?
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Lauren Goode: How much time are you spending on TikTok these days?
Michael Calore: Oh, at least three or four minutes a day.
Lauren Goode: That's it.
Michael Calore: I'm not a big TikTok user, I'm more of an Insta girly.
Lauren Goode: Oh my God. I am also not a big TikTok user.
Michael Calore: But I am on there occasionally.
Lauren Goode: Same. Do you see any political content on there?
Michael Calore: No. I mostly see pranks and shenanigans, things like cat videos or fights that people have recorded at concerts and clubs and stuff.
Lauren Goode: Really?
Michael Calore: Yeah. It's—
Lauren Goode: Why has the algorithm targeted you with that?
Michael Calore: I don't know, but it's disturbing.
Lauren Goode: It must know you from your mosh pit days.
Michael Calore: Maybe.
Lauren Goode: Well, pretty soon you might not be able to see any of that—cat videos or dance mashups or mosh pits or parodies of people carrying around giant Stanley cups, which happens to be my current favorite.
Michael Calore: Oh boy. Well, if that stuff went away, then I would miss some of it.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Well, we're making a lot of jokes, but the truth is, TikTok is not exactly a joke right now; it's on its way to very possibly being banned in the United States.
Michael Calore: I would love to hear more about this.
Lauren Goode: We should talk about it.
Michael Calore: OK, let's do it.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]
Lauren Goode: Hi everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.
Michael Calore: And I'm Michael Calore. I'm WIRED’s director of consumer tech and culture.
Lauren Goode: And we're joined this week by WIRED politics writer Makena Kelly, who is Zooming from our office in New York. Hey, Makena.
Makena Kelly: Hey, it's good to be here.
Lauren Goode: It's great to have you on. So today, we're talking about TikTok. Big news this week. At the time that we are taping this Wednesday, March 13, the US House of Representatives approved a bill that would require TikTok's parent company, China-based ByteDance, to either sell TikTok or have the app banned on devices in the US. It was a huge, huge landslide of a vote, 352 to 65.
So TikTok may seem like just another social video app for phone-obsessed teenagers, but over the past few years it's been totally caught up in this political fray. First of all, TikTok is massively popular. And because it's owned by a Chinese tech company, US politicians have expressed concerns that data from US users is being shared with the Chinese company, and they say that TikTok poses a threat to national security, and we're wondering if this is the case.
So Makena, in the first half of this podcast, we want to talk about exactly how TikTok works, basically, on the data-sharing side of things, and why the House voted so overwhelmingly against its usage. And then, later on in the show, we're going to talk about the trickle-down effects on other apps. Tell us what happened with the vote.
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Makena Kelly: Sure. So like you said, it was an overwhelming vote to, essentially, ban TikTok. This was championed by a lot of House Republicans who have been pushing this for years, which is funny because it seemed like we had gotten to a point where the lines on banning TikTok were very clear, the political lines, and now, they're really kind of confusing and a bit dizzying because we've seen Joe Biden join the app and then of course, Trump who's now backtracking on wanting to ban it. It's just a very confusing time, which is making deciding whether if this would get approved in the Senate even more complicated.
Michael Calore: Right. So this bill in the House had bipartisan support, obviously, with the voting numbers being what they were. Was that surprising?
Makena Kelly: Yeah, no, I mean, this has been, overwhelmingly, bipartisan in some ways. It's bringing together a lot of the similar China Hawks folks, so like Senator Mark Warner, who's a Democrat in Virginia, he had a bill last year called the Restrict Act that kind of does some similar things to this bill that kind of stalled out and didn't really go anywhere. So it's been bipartisan in a lot of the circles of intelligence and foreign relations focused senators, but more progressive Democrats like Representative Jamaal Bowman, Representative Maxwell Frost, and AOC, of course, they're on the side of not wanting to ban it, they all voted no today, but House Republicans, of course, are really excited about it.
Lauren Goode: And does TikTok have a good First Amendment argument here?
Makena Kelly: Yeah, I mean, that's been the argument that they've been making for several years now. I think the one case where it's really proven to work somewhat so far was, I am sure everyone remembers, when Montana was the first state to ban TikTok in the entire state. And immediately TikTok sued the state. Now the case hasn't been entirely resolved yet, but in the latter half of last year, a federal judge heard TikTok's case and decided not to let this bill go into effect at the first of this year. Tiktok's entire case, like talking to that judge, was First Amendment and free speech suppression.
Michael Calore: You mentioned that President Joe Biden just got onto the platform. His campaign posted a Biden campaign video in January, is that right? February? It was during the Super Bowl, wasn't it?
Makena Kelly: Yeah, it was during the Super Bowl. It was a strange, I'll just call it strange, it was weird, but it was Biden in what looked like his living room, looking at the camera answering these yes or no questions, like Chiefs or whoever. And then, at the end, it's like rigging the Super Bowl to get an endorsement from Taylor Swift, and he's like, "I can't tell you that." And then, it's like a picture of dark brand and laser eyes. That one was very silly and strange, but they've been doing a lot of other videos as well. It seems like they're posting multiple times a day at this point doing very similar stuff. It's mostly taking TV clips that look bad for Trump and good for Biden, and then posting those on TikTok.
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Michael Calore: And meanwhile, he has said, the president has said that if this bill gets through the Senate and it lands on his desk, he will sign it.
Makena Kelly: He has. He was asked by reporters as soon as this bill, I think passed through committee last week, if he would sign it, and he said he would, which is very funny when you look at Trump, who now doesn't want to be on the app.
Lauren Goode: And this is interesting because back in 2020, Larry Ellison, the chairman of Oracle, made a bid to buy TikTok. He kind of outmaneuvered Microsoft for this bid, and then that fell through because Biden was elected president and effectively quieted some of the alarm bells about TikTok. So am I understanding this correctly, Makena, this is a bit of a flip-flop on the part of the Biden administration.
Makena Kelly: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of seeming that way. There's been this whole process with a Syphius review and all of this conversations about selling off TikTok, and those conversations have completely stalled. So I don't know if this bill, it's really hard to know why Republicans brought up this bill now, other than maybe elections and saying something positive that they've done, I guess. But yeah, no, there's still a lot of questions on that even if a sale is possible or if ByteDance would even be willing to sell it in the first place.
Michael Calore: I think the point you make about Republicans bringing this up now is interesting because there has been a lot of interest among politicians and the electorate about regulating the tech industry. And while this bill is not explicitly regulating the tech industry, it certainly smells a lot like government regulation of the tech industry, right?
Makena Kelly: Yeah. I mean, the biggest problem with TikTok that all these lawmakers are pointing out is a privacy concern. It's about our data going over into the Chinese government then being used for surveillance purposes. Well, a lot of US-based tech companies collect a lot of data, and even when we got in this big privacy fight in 2018 when Facebook was embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that was really, really hot and nothing really came from that either, which is strange now we're seeing how fast and just how quickly this TikTok bill is moving. And I don't even want to… I have to say that this is moving incredibly fast. This bill was introduced on Tuesday, and then the next day it was approved out of committee. First of all, that is completely unheard of. That does not happen in the US Congress right now. And this is-
Michael Calore: Yeah, it's kind of like as quickly as they pass healthcare bills, right?
Makena Kelly: Right. It was incredibly slow. And the fact that we have a floor vote today, Wednesday, is crazy, it's absolutely crazy. But we have no idea if Chuck Schumer is going to bring this up to the floor anytime soon, he hasn't really had any indication, so it could just be really, really fast and die off.
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Lauren Goode: All right, let's take a quick break there and we'll be back with more TikTok.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: OK. So it's safe to say, at this point, that TikTok has become a total political pawn. There are concerns about personal data sharing and nefarious uses of that data, which may be valid, but those concerns are not just around TikTok, this happens on other social media apps too, including those that have originated in the United States, but the fact that the US House actually moved on a vote around TikTok signals that politicians are determined to make their stamp on it this year. So we're wondering what might be the trickle-down effects of this on other apps? Makena, before we get to that, what do we think is actually going to happen in the Senate vote?
Makena Kelly: Yeah. So it's kind of complicated right now. Like I said, the politics are incredibly hazy. The former president and the current president have their hands in it in a very strange way. And then, of course, lines are being blurred, like I said. But we're looking at the Senate, no one's really indicated yet what they would do. People are looking at it. Strangely, Lindsey Graham, on the Sunday shows this weekend said that he didn't want TikTok to be banned. This man is a China Hawk and has been for a very long time, and it's strange to see him say that after Trump made these Truth Social posts. So-
Lauren Goode: Maybe Lindsey really likes TikTok.
Makena Kelly: Maybe he just got into it. Maybe he just made an account.
Lauren Goode: Oh, dear.
Makena Kelly: He's like, "Actually, this is really nice." I'm curious what he would be watching or maybe not. But yeah, no, it seems like if this were to go into the Senate, I think the bill would change in some ways. I'm not entirely sure, but this is definitely like, it's moved really fast, I think they're going to want to take a deeper look at it. And it could be a couple of weeks or months. But like I said, Congress moves so slow and the Senate moves even slower. It is fewer people and it still moves even slower. So there's a lot still up in the air.
Michael Calore: And we should also note that even if it continues to move very quickly, it's still going to be a while before TikTok ever actually gets banned, because correct me if I'm wrong, Makena, but the way that the bill is written now, companies who are based in countries that have an adversarial relationship with the United States will have 165 days to sell their app or sell their interest in the company that runs the app to either United States Company or an ally of the United States. Is that right?
Makena Kelly: Yeah, that's correct. 165 days. And the thing with ByteDance specifically is that they've said time and time again that they would rather be banned than sell.
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Michael Calore: So ByteDance is a Chinese company, but this bill would affect apps from all over China and from other countries that we don't do business with, like Russia and Iran.
Makena Kelly: Yeah, I am imagining WeChat being a very important one where a lot of Chinese Americans use that to talk to people, their family in China. That app is very similar, where that could get a lot of attention and be asked for some kind of divestment. There are a ton of apps that people use every day that I think are very integral to their lives that could be affected.
Lauren Goode: Do we have a sense of how this might affect a company like Meta, which is based in the US but has a family of apps that operate all around the world?
Makena Kelly: Sure. That's not entirely clear. I really doubt that this bill will do too much to hurt Meta. Meta has been reportedly lobbying in favor of this ban on TikTok for obvious reasons. But there is definitely a lot of energy right now going towards regulating tech in many, many ways. This is, of course, an election year, so I don't want to get anyone's hopes up too much. These lawmakers are doing a lot of other things right now, but they're also pursuing child safety legislation, KOSA, the protecting Kids Online Act are all being debated right now. And TikTok was hauled in before Congress just a few weeks ago with Mark Zuckerberg and Linda Yaccarino at X to talk about how they're protecting kids online in face of this threat of this bill.
Michael Calore: OK, so for the sake of argument, let's just say that I'm a TikTok creator and that I have 250,000 followers on TikTok. Right?
Lauren Goode: What is it that you're influencing on? What's your shtick?
Michael Calore: I'm telling people how they can achieve their greatest creative potential.
Lauren Goode: Posting your morning routines.
Michael Calore: Exactly.
Makena Kelly: You're like Gary Vee.
Lauren Goode: Cold plunges.
Michael Calore: I am.
Lauren Goode: Yeah.
Michael Calore: Yes. It's squash it, squash it, that's my catchphrase, not crush it. So the app is banned, and now I have this giant platform that I've spent years building that within a number of days is going to go away. What is a creator to do? Solve my problem for me.
Makena Kelly: Diversify revenue streams.
Lauren Goode: That's what Gary Vee would say.
Makena Kelly: That's what Gary Vee would say. But yeah, no, I think that's really what a lot of people are looking at. I don't think it's lost on creators that platforms come and go and things change on platforms all the time, and you need to shift. Being a creator in many ways is just adapting to all kinds of changes. I mean, everyone speaks in algo speak. There is this online, right? People have this understanding of the algorithm and this need to adapt, and so, they're already joining, being more focused on Instagram or whatever, Threads. I've seen some Threads influencers, which are very silly, lately. But yeah, it's just putting yourself everywhere. And I think this is something creators are used to doing.
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Lauren Goode: Makena, if you had to rate the silliness of either the Biden TikTok ad or people trying to be influencers on Threads, which is the silliest?
Makena Kelly: No, probably the Threads influencers, because it's a weird mix of people who posted on Twitter when it was Twitter and then LinkedIn with the weird spacing of every line. And everything is so self-important and self-serious. At least Biden is kind of making fun of himself a little bit on TikTok .
Lauren Goode: Fair. Totally fair. Are there any groups of creators who are lobbying for this not to be banned for that reason?
Makena Kelly: Yeah, I mean, last year, I went to the hearings with the TikTok CEO for the first time, and they had a lot of creators show up to this press conference when the Restrict Act was happening, when we hit our first big peak on TikTok ban stuff. There's definitely a lot of people talking about it. I know Under the Desk News has been really big on explaining this every day, and a bunch of other creators have been really, really on it explaining it to their audiences.
Lauren Goode: Right. Because as much as there's potential for any social app to be leaking personal data in a way that can be used against users, this also seems like it has the potential to cut off an important stream of information during an election year in the US. And a lot of people would probably argue that this isn't necessarily high quality information, but there have been Talk the Vote campaigns on TikTok in the past. It is where younger people are increasingly getting their news. It seems like there could be consequences around just information flow too.
Makena Kelly: Yeah, I mean, our habits have changed a lot really quickly on how we consume news. And the thing too is I think Facebook is still the biggest social media distributor of news or whatever when it comes to election stuff. TikTok is getting bigger though because I think you remember just a couple of weeks ago, Meta announced that it wasn't going to be amplifying politics and news stuff in people's news feeds, so I think that's part of the reason why people were moving to TikTok because they don't have those kinds of rules where it's being very clear about what's amplified and suppressed and all of that. And so, at this point, if TikTok disappears, a lot of other social platforms that politicians, campaigns, journalists use are very hostile to the content that they're producing.
Lauren Goode: Well, this has been a really great explainer of what's been going on with TikTok. We're likely going to have more news on this soon, so be sure to read Makena's story and then check WIRED.com for updates. Let's take another quick break, and we're going to come back with our non-algo recommendations.
[Break]
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Lauren Goode: Makena, as our guest of honor and in-house TikTok expert, what's your recommendation?
Makena Kelly: Oh, man. I am back in the office for the first time in a while, and I think my recommendation, ooh, this sucks, I feel bad saying this, is going into the office a little bit, mostly because I feel very good about my choice to come in today. I had to, A, but also, B—
Lauren Goode: Makena, blink twice if management is in the room with you.
Makena Kelly: It's the security guard from earlier. But no, right now, a lot of our other Condé magazines are trying out new products and stuff, and they're putting it on the kitchen table. And I think I snagged a hundred dollars worth of skincare today, and it's in my bag ready to take home. So there are some perks to going into the office, that's my recommendation.
Lauren Goode: That is definitely the perk of working next to other brands such as Vogue and Allure. At WIRED, we're like, "Here's a battery pack that someone didn't need." And you go to the New York office and there's all kinds of fancy stuff.
Michael Calore: Yeah. It's also, you're telling people to go back to the office so they can get all the goodies from the other Condé Nast brands.
Makena Kelly: Yeah. This is purely Condé certified.
Lauren Goode: Makena's not like, “Wow, my collaboration just went”—you're not saying, "Oh, my productivity or collaboration just went through the roof”" It's, “Come get this swag."
Makena Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Lauren Goode: All right.
Makena Kelly: My productivity has not been the best today.
Lauren Goode: Well, you've got a lot going on. You were also on TV earlier today, right?
Makena Kelly: Yeah. Yep. That was at two, and then, I was on radio just before I came here.
Lauren Goode: Well, it sounds like a pretty good day at the office.
Makena Kelly: Yeah, it's fun.
Lauren Goode: Thanks for that recommendation.
Makena Kelly: Yes.
Lauren Goode: So Makena, do you think you're going to make this a regular thing?
Makena Kelly: I think I have to because we're working on some stuff here in the office that I do need to be here for that I cannot talk about yet.
Lauren Goode: I like this tease.
Michael Calore: Yeah. Solid.
Lauren Goode: You're going to have to come back on the show when you're ready to talk about it.
Makena Kelly: Yes.
Lauren Goode: Mike, what's your recommendation?
Michael Calore: My recommendation is, now bear with me here, it is multivitamin drink mix.
Lauren Goode: OK. You guys are all on the wellness train today. Tell me more.
Michael Calore: This is important because right now is the time when we're just through … the winter months are ending, we're just through that period where everybody that we know is sick, so we're letting our guard down. It's very important to not let your guard down. In fact, you should keep your defenses up, and a great way to do that is to add some multivitamin drink mix to your water that you drink.
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So we're all drinking tons of water, we all have our giant Stanley tumblers and our big sippy cups that we walk around with. So when you fill that thing three or four times a day, one of those times you should add multivitamin drink mix. There are a lot to choose from. There's a very popular brand called Emergen-C, with a big capital C at the end to signal that it's stuffed with vitamin C.
I would like to recommend an ersatz competitor to Emergen-C. I shouldn't call them that. It's a very good company. The company's called Ener-Life, and they make something called Ener-C, which I really like because it has a lot of natural ingredients, and it's sugar-free, and you just dump it into your water. And it tastes better than the other multivitamin mix powders that I've used. So this is how I get my multivitamins. This is how I make sure that I stay a healthy, growing young boy, is I drink one of these a day in one of my big things of water, my big liter jug of water that I drink every day at the office.
Lauren Goode: Now, doesn't the FTC require you to now disclose this as an ad?
Michael Calore: No, it's not an ad. This is not SponCon, this is me saying, "Look, you've tasted these things and most of them are nasty. I have found the one that is the least nasty of all of them, and specifically it's the tangerine and grapefruit flavor that they make in Ener-C, which I can recommend because I bought the variety pack, I tried them all, and this is the only one that I finished." So—
Lauren Goode: This is great, this whole career for you as a hustler, influencer on TikTok.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: I like this, Mike.
Michael Calore: Yep. Like and subscribe.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, that's right. Smash that subscribe button.
Michael Calore: Duet with me.
Lauren Goode: May I ask you a gross question?
Michael Calore: Sure.
Lauren Goode: Is it true that if you just consume a lot of these little packets, which I have, I usually bring an entire baggie of them to CES and other conferences, running around.
Michael Calore: Yeah. Oh, they're great for traveling. Great for traveling.
Lauren Goode: Basically, yeah, for travel. Is there a point at which you take too much and you are just peeing it out?
Michael Calore: Well, you should take one a day. I feel like one a day is plenty because these things, you get like 400 percent of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin B12 or whatever, and like all the vitamins are just off the charts. So one a day is probably fine.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Michael Calore: I'm sure if you had two or three, your pee would probably smell really funny and turn bright green.
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Lauren Goode: Green?
Michael Calore: Which we've all experienced—
Lauren Goode: Not orange?
Michael Calore: Those of us who've experimented with multivitamins.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Michael Calore: Yes. Producer Boone is nodding his head vigorously right now. I don't know, Lauren, ask me another question.
Lauren Goode: Well, I am just going to put the disclaimer out there that Mike is not a doctor.
Michael Calore: That's right.
Lauren Goode: Thank you for that recommendation.
Michael Calore: What's yours?
Lauren Goode: My recommendation is a repeat from an earlier episode because Kate Knibbs joined the show a few weeks back, and she recommended this. The movie American Fiction just won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, written by Cord Jefferson. Blogger done good, by the way. Cord Jefferson has written for a number of outlets but used to write for Gizmodo and then got into TV writing. And then adapted this book. The book is called Erasure by Percival Everett, and Cord adapted it into the screenplay for American Fiction. It's a very good film; I highly recommend everyone check it out. Kate did a great job of describing it. And she also knows Cord Jefferson, so she talked a little bit about that in an earlier episode. But yeah, Kate did forget to mention one key detail in that episode.
Michael Calore: Which is?
Lauren Goode: Cord Jefferson is a stud. Look, I don't make the rules.
Michael Calore: Is he a zaddy? Is he—
Lauren Goode: I don't know. I think a zaddy suggests a certain age, right? And I think he's youngish.
Michael Calore: I don't know.
Lauren Goode: I don't know. Anyway, maybe Boone will cut that out. Listen, the most important thing, very talented writer. OK?
Michael Calore: OK.
Lauren Goode: All right. That's my recommendation if you haven't seen the movie yet.
Michael Calore: He looks good in a tux.
Lauren Goode: Sure. You said it, not me. All right, that's our show. Makena, thank you for joining us. It's been great having you on.
Makena Kelly: Yeah, and thanks for having me.
Lauren Goode: And thank you all for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter. Gosh, we're still saying that, huh?
Michael Calore: I'm on TikTok, I don't know what you're talking about.
Lauren Goode: If you have feedback, you can find Mike on TikTok, Mikey Vee is his name.
Michael Calore: And my handle is @WIRED.
Lauren Goode: We're also on Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, we're LinkedIn influencers. Find us all there. Just check the show notes, we'll link to some stuff. Our producer is the excellent Boone Ashworth, who takes his multivitamins every day. Goodbye for now. We'll be back next week.
[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]
