TikTok On The Brink, ChatGPT Does Your Tasks, Unemployed MBAs

0:00The Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, but is that the end of the story? American users flood to another Chinese social media media, ChatGPT does your tasks, and our MBAs the first victims of AI unemployment. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition right after this.

0:21You're used to hearing my voice on the world bringing you interviews from around the globe. And you hear me reporting environment and climate news. I'm Carolyn Buehler. And I'm Marco Werman. We're now with you hosting The World Together. More global journalism with a fresh new sound. Listen to the world on your local public radio station and wherever you find your podcasts.

0:48Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We're coming to you hot off the presses, just as the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the latest AI news. And we're also going to address this fascinating story in the Wall Street Journal about MBAs not being able to find jobs. And I wonder, is that because of artificial intelligence? We'll cover it all. And joining us as always to do it on Fridays is Ranjan Roy of Marges. Ranjan, welcome back to the show.

1:18To any new listeners we have from Red Note, Huan Ying Ni. That means welcome. Okay, we'll get to that. I mean, we're going to make sure that you pronounce the app's name the right way, because it does have a Chinese name that I won't be able to get right. I've been working on that, so. Okay, so let's talk about the news. The Supreme Court, according to NPR, the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, threatening the app's existence in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the federal government can legally shut down TikTok in the U.S., delivering a stunning blow to the viral video app used by about half of Americans.

1:53That's a stunningly large number. I didn't realize it was half. I knew it was a lot, but half is huge. The high court's decision means that starting on January 19th, tech giants Apple and Google can no longer offer TikTok on their app stores. Web hosting providers must cut ties with the platform or be subject to fines of$5 ,000 for each user that can still access the service, a penalty that can easily add up to billions of dollars. The TikTok ban will start on January 19th. The following day, Trump will be sworn into office. Well, I'll admit this is the closest that I think I've ever been in thinking that this might actually happen.

2:33Here's the question I'm going to start off with. President Biden, it seems like he's not enforcing this. He's telegraphed that he's not going to enforce this. It doesn't seem like Trump is going to either. We'll get into a statement in a minute. But, Rajat, I'm curious if you're Apple or Google. Do you just say it doesn't matter what the executive branch says? I'm going to take this off my app store. I don't want somebody else down the line to see that I'm liable for potentially billions of dollars and have that discretion. I'd much rather be in compliance with the law. So what do you think the big tech companies are going to do despite what the politicians tell them to?

3:08That's a great point because also if you're Apple or Google, having another just large tech company as a competitor is not a great thing. and you'd be happy to remove the app and remove that competition. I think, to me, one of the most fascinating parts about this, last week when we were recording, the Supreme Court hearing was underway and we were tracking it a bit, that this was a unanimous decision. And you could hear it in the questioning of the Supreme Court justices to the TikTok solicitor, but how often do we get anything unanimous in the Supreme Court? And they all said this does not violate the First Amendment rights of ByteDance, the company.

3:51And I think I think we're even closer to this happening. The Trump and Biden angle is very interesting to me because it's odd to me that the Biden administration is essentially leaking that they will not enforce it and leave it up to Trump when it was their legislation. It was their timing that they set to be January 19th to keep it under their administration. so at least come out and just say we're going to stick with it and if trump tries to reverse it that's fine um but yeah i think from the big tech side there's no reason not to go along with the prescribed legislation and just remove it from your store what do you think is behind u.s legislatures or legislators um so emphatically passing this law talking shit on tiktok for years and then at the ninth hour saying actually we don't want it like we don't want the ban there's been movement in the Senate to maybe extend the deadline.

4:45Biden doesn't want to enforce it. Trump doesn't want to enforce it. Why the about face? Is it just the political cost is going to be that large? Yeah, I think this is a perfect example of, and I, long-time listeners know, am a supporter of the ban. I think it's important. I think that both from the national security perspective, the data privacy perspective, the black box algorithm perspective, the relationship between ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party. I think at every level, this is the most logical, sensible thing imaginable, but there's a political cost to it. So, I mean, in this day and age, politicians actually taking something that will cost them short-term gain for the longer-term health of the nation is not exactly the most regular thing you see.

5:35So I think it's a simple political calculation. I'm sure at scale, this is unpopular. This is only popular among people who are following it closely, not the average TikTok user. So yeah, I think that one's a pretty simple explanation. It's almost like this is why it's been so difficult to regulate big tech. It's because even when you have an app where there's all the reason in the world to potentially regulate it or rein it in, you can't do it. And now imagine how hard it is to do something like set back Amazon Prime or spin off Instagram to make it worse. I don't know. It seems like that's tough.

6:12And I think what they're really seeing also is that young people are such a politically independent force. And we saw in the 2024 election, I think for the first time in a very long time, that young people actually swung by something like 30 or 40 points from Democrats to Republicans. And young people use TikTok. So I think everybody's paying attention to the fact that young people's votes are up for grabs for the first time in decades, and they don't want to lose them. Yeah, I think, but I want to make clear for listeners, what exactly is happening right now? TikTok is not being de facto banned.

6:52The legislation stipulated that ByteDance needed to divest TikTok, which the weirdest part of this is, ByteDance has a very heavily inflated valuation, is still one of the most valuable private companies in the world. So they have the opportunity at this moment to potentially actually realize a lot of money. From a financial perspective, it's a no-brainer that why not, at the highs of your property, sell it. So there has to be more. So what the legislation stipulated is that you need to divest. And then ByteDance said, well, the algorithm will never work as well unless you're using the ByteDance algorithm, but we will not be able to divest that because that is considered sensitive property under Chinese law.

7:43So, but we are not connected to China. Like the whole thing just made no sense. And every step along the way, and we'll definitely get into what happened with Red Note. It just makes it so much more clear. This is a very heavily connected app to China. And they didn't really argue against that. They basically admitted to it in the way they've approached this entire process. So ban it. right yeah i i would say that um when tic tac ceo shou chu went before congress and was like answering questions about the app's connection to china it was effectively over then he did such a poor job then and it became clear that he wasn't in charge he could he was answering questions like a mid-level product manager and not like the ceo of a company that has any uh autonomy over what's going to happen and in fact i wrote a story a big technology right after that happened that just like it's clear that he's not the one he's not running the decision the app yeah and it is interesting that you know if you think about it this really did give away the game the fact that they didn't move to sell at all uh the fact that they're trying they're going to shut down it seems like as opposed to trying to find a different option at least that's what they say right and we're going to go through some scenarios where they don't end up uh being shut down uh but no opinion the blogger, talked a little bit about it in a very good post this week on his sub stack.

9:11He said, the refusal to sell the app tells us the Chinese government would rather see TikTok destroyed than fall into American hands. Notably, the same government put up a little fuss back in 2020 when the U.S. forced a Chinese company to sell the gay dating app Grindr to an American company. Why shut down TikTok and leave untold billions of dollars on the table instead of just selling the thing like Grindr was sold. He said the simplest explanation is that Chinese leaders simply think that TikTok, unlike other apps, is so important they would rather destroy it than see it escape their control.

9:43Oh, I mean, okay, completely agree. Because if you have in a way to control the entire American psyche and cultural output, obviously, that's kind of nice. And again, there's been a lot of debate around, you know, how, how heavy is the thumb on the scale. But at a simple level, if you control, you know, what's happening in Xinjiang with Uyghur, the Uyghur population, and just don't allow those messages to kind of proliferate on the algorithm, like really straightforward stories that the government, the Chinese government wants to have some influence over, imagine having that tool in your belt to be able to just control those like really critical narratives around Taiwan, around all these very, around Tiananmen Square, like around these very, very specific things.

10:35Why you wouldn't let that go if that's the key goal of the app. Yes. And Noah actually has some really good data in the story that he writes. he said that content critical of China was made far less available on TikTok than on Instagram and YouTube in a study that was done I think by Rutgers University done in a university study research university study he said the results are revealed a disproportionately high ratio of pro-Chinese communist party to anti-communist Chinese communist party content on TikTok despite users engaging significantly more with the anti-CCP content,

11:23suggesting propagandistic manipulation. Lord Almighty, why do we even have that as a word? But let's talk through the scenario of what could actually happen. So I think you and I are both on the same page, that there's a good chance that no matter what the politicians say, that Google and Apple will just remove TikTok from the App Store on the 19th. But let's talk through what happens if they don't. So the TikTok ban, this is back to the NPR story by Bobby Allen, who was actually going to join us today, but we had the ruling that happened basically as we were recording, but he's doing a great job on the story.

11:59He says the TikTok ban will start on January 19th. The following day, Trump will be sworn into office. Once in the White House, Trump can instruct his Justice Department to not enforce the ban. And again, that would put Apple and Google and other companies that do business with TikTok in an awkward position since they'd be violating federal law. Another scenario he says is that Trump could extend the date of the ban even though it would already have started on January 19th. And we've also talked about the fact that he can just sort of like wink, wink, they've divested and let them continue. And somebody advising Trump must be telling him that these are his options because this is what he said in a statement to CNN immediately following the Supreme Court ruling.

12:40He said, it ultimately goes up to me, so you're going to see what I'm going to do. Congress has given me the decision, so I'll be making the decision. So obviously he sees enough wiggle room in the law. You know, in typical scenarios, that's wrong and ridiculous, but there is wiggle room in the law, and clearly Trump sees enough wiggle room in the law to be able to say they can stay. Yeah, I think the political calculations underlying this are so fascinating. And I think as a political observer, not from the participant side, but purely on the observer side, I'm kind of loving how difficult or how kind of like not incongruous all these kind of ways of thinking are.

13:25think about already you have something where Trump has said, I don't want this ban. And the Supreme Court unanimously comes out in favor of it and saying it does not violate the First Amendment. So already you're having a situation where we were all assuming the court will roll over at every step of the way for Trump. And maybe they won't. The other part of this is at this exact moment and over the last few months, I guess, as well, Trump seems to be pro TikTok. talk. And that could be both the connection to Jeff Yass, the investor, also just gaining more support and trying to have more influence over the younger population and seeing an opportunity.

14:03But on his anti-China messaging, it goes completely counter to it. So if he's going to spend the next four years coming out, I am the anti-China president. And then the first thing he does is a major move to support the Chinese government. That doesn't quite make sense either. So I think even in the next 48 hours or what are we, like 96 hours from inauguration, I feel there's a lot of back and forth that can happen right now. Yeah, I was watching CNBC as the announcement came out and the reporting there was basically that Trump and Xi Jinping have talked about this and she wants TikTok to persist, like has actually stated that to Trump in the United States, which is really interesting.

14:51And, you know, the craziest thing is Trump was Mr. Ban TikTok in the first term. And now guess who's coming to Inauguration Day? Not just the inauguration, but on the dais. Sho Chu, CEO of TikTok. This is according to the Times. TikTok CEO plans to attend Trump inauguration. I mean, the day after the ban goes into effect, the chief executive of TikTok plans to attend President-elect Donald J. Trump's inauguration and has been invited to sit in a position of honor on the dais where former presidents, family members, and other important guests traditionally are seated. Maybe he's sitting in the seat that Michelle Obama gave up.

15:29I don't know. What's going on here? Why is he going? I mean, the next four years are going to be wild, I think. This is just the first reminder of that. But yeah, I agree that of all people, because he's not even a personality. He's not even, I mean, he had his congressional hearing, But it's not like Sho Chu is like dropping tweet bombs at like Bezos and Musk or anything like this. He's not a big personality in tech anyway. So to actually still have him up there, it is quite a signal. I mean, it certainly is. All right. So does Elon Musk end up buying TikTok because that's everybody's favorite rumor?

16:14I like that rumor. I think it's from a purely juicy, salacious standpoint, it's the best outcome and it's the most interesting one. I think the financial slash capital structure side of it, I don't even know how we begin to approach that. Again, this is still a – I think I've seen anywhere between$50 to$80 billion. This is bigger than Twitter, and Twitter really involved a lot of leverage, and that investment from a financial standpoint still has not shown itself, I think, in any marking to be profitable. So how it would work, I have no idea. But, I mean, oh, man, the underlying messaging, if that happens, is just so wild about what's his connection to the CCP, what's Trump's involvement.

17:08I mean, it's too much. It's too much. Yeah, because Musk has business with the Chinese government, with Tesla's manufacturing and sales within China. Well, as Elon Musk said, as his latest rocket imploded over the atmosphere or within the atmosphere earlier today, success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed. Wait, did he say that? Yeah, he did. That's a T-shirt right there. That's a T-shirt. so all right one last thing about this you remember we spoke about polymarket a lot uh in the run-up to the election and it did nail it um so i went to polymarket today before the show and polymarket says the chance of tiktok being banned in the united states is 80 ahead of may 2025 what do you think about those odds i like them i like i mean but i i will humbly recognize ever since August 6th, 2020, when Trump announced his ban, I have been predicting the shutdown of TikTok in the United States.

18:11We're well over four years since that date, and I'm still going to keep predicting it. I would have definitely, my polymarket contract would have expired long ago at zero, but I like the 80 % odds. Okay. Okay. I'll tell you the one thing I do know for certain is that this TikTok ban has sent my TikTok usage through the roof this week. I basically got nothing done because I'm like, oh, yeah, TikTok. Let's see what's going on. I open it up an hour later. I'm like, I should get back to work. Well, one thing I kept thinking about is I'm old enough to have used Napster in my younger days. and Napster was just shut down and it was a very popular app among younger people.

18:57And it's still wild to me because I remember the hearings, Metallica was in them against Napster. Like, you know, they shut down, the government shut down for copyright reasons, a very, very viral popular app. And it's interesting to me that there wasn't this major outcry in the same way, or at least at any kind of like, with any genuine influence. Whereas now, again, you have a very potential national security concern. You have plenty of alternatives and still there's this outcry for this. I guess China is more powerful than Hollywood. Or sorry, Hollywood is more powerful than China, actually, in this case.

19:39I mean, I would say that when those of us who use Napster, I was a Napster user, we all knew what we were doing was wrong. Ah, that's fair. just seems like fun before we close this segment let me just say that i still think heart of hearts that tiktok stays in the united states i i actually don't like the 80 percent odds that you'd get from polymarket and i don't know exactly what's going to be the case but that's my bottom line here is i i think we're talking next week and tiktok is still still operational and the good news is we find out in a week by the other side then 20 20 percent five to one not encouraging any gambling this is polymarket is simply a tool for hedging other financial interests so exactly but yeah five to one i know i think that um you know there was a time where if you made a prediction on twitter people would be like you need skin in the game um i don't maybe i'll do it but if i'm wrong I will come on here next week and admit it and take my shame.

20:48I just don't think I'm going to be wrong. So we'll find out. We'll see. But like, okay, so speaking of popular apps among the youth, as the Supreme Court was thinking what to do with TikTok and as the talk of the ban heated up, Americans decided that they did not want to fully leave Chinese social media no matter what. The Supreme Court, Congress, or the President said. And so they left TikTok, or they hedged TikTok en masse, and they picked up a new Chinese social media app called Little Red Book, and they call it Red Note in the U.S. This app, I got it. It is similar-ish to TikTok. At least that's what it looks like when you use it.

21:35It's got videos and, I don't know, different content. and it's been fascinating seeing what the embrace of Americans has been on the app. A lot of people are calling themselves TikTok refugees. This is from CNN. As of Tuesday, the hashtag TikTok refugee has garnered nearly 60 million views and over 1.7 million comments on the app. Here's somebody who's talking about it. One of the users, our government is out of their minds if they think we're going to stand for a TikTok ban. we're just going to go to a new Chinese app and here we are. Someone said, this is so much better than TikTok. And somebody said, Chinese, give us your American jokes.

22:17Please make fun of us so we can laugh. And someone from China responded, why do you eat like your healthcare is free? I thought that was good. I thought that was good. Ronja, what do you think about the popularity of this app? It's so interesting that so many people, I mean, it's the number one app in the app store. It's interesting that so many people, either they love TikTok so much or I don't know, like they want to send a message to Congress. But to make another Chinese app so popular is fascinating to me. OK, this is where I hope this isn't too controversial, but I have to I have to work through this one.

22:52I have to shout out this one. These things don't just happen organically. the idea that Xiao Hong Shu, or Little Red, which means Little Red Book, which, yes, there is that at least connection to Mao Zedong's original Little Red Book, though we can get more into that. I was corrected a bit on this. But again, it's insane to me. Little Red Book is number one on the App Store. So I went on TikTok when I started seeing this, some reporting around this, and search TikTok alternative. The first things that show up on your feed are people talking about, hey, you should go over to Xiao Hongshu, Little Red Book.

23:35Here's how to do it. Here's how to get uploaded. Here's some instructions. Then my entire TikTok feed started becoming go to this. So the algorithm, very, very heavily favored content around going to Xiao Hongshu. And that's how this works. You can literally influence a mass of people when you have control over the algorithm to take an action, to actually control their behavior, to make an app that has no English content and have American English language speakers go and download this app and make it number one in the app store. That's actually the terrifying part about TikTok to me that they can make this happen with a simple algorithmic tweak.

24:17I do not believe this thing is organic, that this was a very purposeful decision. And I think it's both terrifying and fascinating. And yeah, it's the idea that all of these people, the TikTok refugees are pushing us an app that had no English in its app description and the app title is wild. It's absolutely wild. Did you download the app? I did not. I did not download the app. I don't know. Did you, what kind of content were you getting? I did. It was mostly discussion of TikTok. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But, but think, think about, okay, what does this mean from like right now you're, you're seeing a lot.

25:01And again, I'm seeing this secondhand posted on blue sky and X is, uh, people like realizing China, regular people are kind of normal. And in a normal environment, I would think this is a good thing, because yes, there's a lot about China that's good. There's a lot and like, go see the trains over there, go see just like a lot of the cities. I mean, it's good that Americans in a normal circumstance are coming to this realization. But what does this mean from like a national security perspective? What does this mean? Overall, you're suddenly getting people, the younger population in America, much more excited, interested, connected to China.

25:46Again, that should be good. But what's the underlying purpose of that from the TikTok perspective? Because the app isn't clearly encouraging this. There is an astroturfing element to this. And why is that? That's the question I think we need to be asking. Well, now I'm going to push back on you a little bit, because if this was an intentional move from TikTok or from China, maybe it wasn't thought out so well. Because what you had was a bunch of Americans and Chinese folks interacting on the app, and they're starting to have discussions with each other that the Chinese government doesn't seem to want to have.

26:28This is from Eugene Wei, a former meta employee, a social media strategist. American TikTok refugees fleeing to the Little Red Book en masse and interacting directly with the Chinese user base there is the most significant breach of the Great Firewall in years. Now the Little Red Book is scrambling to hire more English language censors. We'll get into that in a second from Matt Stoller. The Chinese government likes our use of TikTok because that explicitly lets them control Americans, but dislikes our use of Red Note because it lets Chinese people and Americans talk to one another. And that's sort of all built up to maybe a predictable outcome here.

27:08This is from the information. TikTok users move to Chinese app Red Note alarms Beijing's sensors. The pending ban of TikTok in the US is prompting a flood of TikTok users to try out Red Note, and Chinese regulators aren't happy. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet watchdog, is concerned that English language content showing up on Red Note may contain politically sensitive posts that aren't otherwise allowed on Chinese social media. And they raised the issue with Red Note's government relations team earlier this week, warning that the company needs to ensure China-based users can't see the posts from US-based users.

27:49Some users on U.S. social media sites, such as X, have shared screenshots of sensitive content American users uploaded on Red Note. By the way, it's called Red Note or Little Red Book, kind of interchangeably. This week, such as the famous Tank Man photo of the Tiananmen Square, cracked down in 1989, claiming that such posts on Red Note were immediately removed. I think even if the Chinese government wanted this to happen, I mean, this is an app with a lot of Chinese users. And we know that TikTok and the Chinese version are separate apps. And now everybody's combining together on one. And it's like the exposure is concerning the Chinese government.

28:33So I don't know if it was intentional. It wasn't very well thought out if they wanted to maintain their censorship regime, don't you think? I don't. So, again, there's like two bits of reporting. There's Wired had found additional job listings for Chinese language censors for Red Note. Apparently that had spiked. And then there was information reporting from the information around this. But if any government is able to censor that scale of content, I think China's pretty much got it because they're doing it at a billion people. So a couple million going in over there. I think they're going to be able to censor that pretty quickly.