Weekend listening: The Interface

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to put all the issues on the table that keep me up at night. The interview brings you conversations with the people shaping our world.

0:44From global leaders. I've much more than fulfilled the promises that I've made. To cultural icons. I'm just interested in how it feels to be playing songs that are 50 odd years old. Songs are like children. They're with you forever. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:08Hello, Good, Bad, Billionaire listeners. It's Simon and Zing here. We're right in the middle of the season, digging into the lives of the world's richest and most powerful people. And we wanted to bring you some extra bonus weekend listening. If you're curious about how today's tech billionaires are shaping the world around us, we think you'll enjoy The Interface, a brand new weekly tech podcast from the BBC. On Good Bad Billionaire, we've covered some of the biggest names in tech, people like Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos. And The Interface dives straight into that world, breaking down how we use tech and how increasingly tech uses us.

1:39Each week, three sharp tech journalists unpack the stories shaping the digital landscape right now, from AI power plays to the platforms quietly steering politics, culture and everyday life. Coming up next is a taste of The Interface. We hope you enjoy it. This literally is the beef of the century because this is the beef that is still fueling so many decisions in the AI race today. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. I'm Thomas Germain, a tech columnist at the BBC who covers how we use technology and how technology uses us.

2:22I'm Karen Howe, investigative reporter covering all things AI. And I'm Nicky Wolfe. I do the weird internet subculture and national security stuff. Today on The Interface, we will be discussing... Is your doorbell spying on you and your neighbors? Why the U.S. TikTok takeover matters even if you don't use the app. And the beef that launched ChatGPT.

2:50so who caught the super bowl on sunday i can't not i the only brit in this recording is the only one who watched the super bowl i guess for the football yeah i uh i had a friend come over for dinner and i was like oh we should watch something like what do you what do you want to put on he's like oh the super bowl is right i'd completely forgotten that which makes me feel like i'm not a real american yeah not a real american are you guys like big fans of the ads i was this time yeah there's one ad in particular that we want to talk about now right yeah and it got people very riled up because of what it uh what it implied and that ad was by ring the doorbell company loads and loads of people i know use it i'm sure that's the same for you guys it's very useful you know someone rings the doorbell you have an app on your phone you can see who stood outside um what they announced during the super bowl ad was a new feature that they've been soft rolling out for a little while called search party they announced it for lost dogs they were like we have already saved 99 missing dogs because someone someone whose dog runs away you can hit the app and it will turn on everyone's ring door cameras and look around for the lost dog i like finding lost dogs.

4:12I mean, that sounds nice. But it also means that your camera is part of this giant surveillance network. A lot of people totally freaked out about this, right? Yeah. And I think fairly rightly so. I mean, we live in an era where surveillance, mass surveillance and law enforcement overreach, if we can very diplomatically put it like that, is top of the use. I saw this ad too. And I feel like the thing that was, there were two things that made this ad, I think really bad for the company. Like the first one is that they talked about how this search party feature has successfully found 99 dogs in 90 days of operation.

4:56There are 10 million lost dogs in the world. So it's like not even a good functioning product. Like people have been talking about that's pretty good that's literally a 0.005 success rate like they have not dogs that's more than no dogs you gotta i like that's true that's true but the problem number two is that i think the visuals of the ad i think that's why it set off alarm bells for everyone because they literally showed all of the homes suddenly lighting up and scanning the streets with blue light to find a dog. And in a moment right now where so much of the U.S. has ICE on the top of their minds and all the things that have been happening with confrontations between ICE and citizens.

5:42Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yeah. This is why the ad has gone instantly viral in the wrong direction for the company. Like so many hundreds of thousands, millions of people now are talking about how they never knew that this was a possibility. They had no idea and they want to immediately opt out of the future or ditch the product. And what a lot of people describe it as was a Trojan horse. Who could object to lost dogs? But the functionality of this, the potential for this to be used for other things, even if we say that the U.S. government will be absolutely above board with this. And we already know that the US government has successfully requested and received ring camera footage.

6:30You know, this can, you're trusting every government and a massive tech company here. And that is a huge leap of faith that I don't think tech companies have really earned. And ring in particular, uh, these aren't like hypothetical concerns, like sharing ring camera footage with law enforcement for a long time, like was the point ring partnered with police departments all over the United States, passed out these cameras, encouraged them to distribute them in neighborhoods specifically as a tool to set up police surveillance. In fact, they had this system set up where police could create ring accounts and they could get access to camera footage from people's houses without a warrant.

7:19They could just request it from the company and they would hand it right over. This caused a big controversy. There were cases where people were like they didn't realize that they were handing over like their home security footage to police departments and they shut that feature off. But there's all kinds of other concerns, right? There was this big Federal Trade Commission. But I think a lot of people who pay really close attention to Ring saw this ad and were like, yeah, duh, what did you think this was? There's this giant tech company that has all of these cameras all over the United States and all over the world.

7:53And yeah, they are in control of that footage. It's stored on their servers. And like you were saying, this search party feature that for now is just about finding lost dogs is on automatically. If you don't want to participate, you have to go. This is a huge point. They've opted you in. It's worth saying as well, like the reason why I think people were so freaked out is because of the ICE stuff that's happening right now. And just as you were saying, Tom, that Ring has a history of giving data to law enforcement. ICE also has a history of trying to use different types of technology platforms like this one to engage in more surveillance.

8:32Like there was this zine that 404 Media published that actually documented a bunch of the different tech apps and tech platforms that ICE has used, including ones that they have partnerships with, like with Palantir, where Palantir is developing this immigration OS platform that's integrating all this data from different government agencies to track immigrants, but also from tech companies that they don't actually have official partnerships with. So the 404 zine talks about Flock, which is this network of cameras that do automated license recognition in the U.S. And what 404 found was that ICE will ask local police departments that have access to Flock to do searches at the behest of ICE.

9:20So think about like Flock is 80 ,000 cameras and it's specifically license plate recognition. Like Ring is millions and millions and millions more cameras like this is the largest private camera network in the world. And that just completely expands to a different scale. The level of visibility that a law enforcement agency like ICE could have if they wanted it. palantir of course is a tech company founded by the billionaire peter thiel that does a lot of data processing for the u.s government and the military and now ice americans and customs enforcement yeah and the uk government just signed a huge um just a few months ago signed a huge uh deal with palantir so they're also working in security here i mean palantir is literally named for the scrying device that sauron uses in the lord of the rings i mean it could not be more These tech companies are not subtle.

10:18But if you name yourself after literally the ultimate evil in one of the largest stories, I mean, help us help you guys, Silicon Valley. Now, Ring, in their defense, says they have really robust security practices. We also aren't here to say, like, Ring is evil, this is bad, no one should use it. It's a personal choice. So we did get in touch with Ring, and they got back to us with a response, which says that right now, this particular feature, Search Party can only recognize dogs. They said they do have an optional feature called Familiar Faces that does use human facial recognition. They said that video sharing is never automatic, and you can, with Search Party, share by choice to share the video with the dog owner.

11:04They also said that Ring has no partnership with ICE, but they did say that they do hand over data to law enforcement, but only when they're legally required to do so. Yeah, I mean, those are pretty robust protections, right? But I think what a lot of critics are concerned about, and also like what a lot of people who saw this ad are worried about, is like it shows you like the potential of this technology and the kinds of things it could be used for if the company, you know, changes its policies or changes its strategies at some point in the future. The in fairness is that these are very useful.

11:38My dad, who's disabled, has a, I don't think it's ring, but another similar camera installed in his flat so that his carer can always check in and make sure that he hasn't had a fall, make sure that he's safe. Loads of people feel like this makes them safer. But, you know, there's a tradeoff that people are making. Like you're saying, Nikki, there's a very real way in which these can help promote the safety of your house and your family. That's that's an absolutely realistic possibility and outcome of using these products. But there is a tradeoff, which is giving up control over, you know, what is happening on your own property, sometimes inside your own house.

12:22And it opens you up to potential consequences in the future. I mean, you could think about people talk about your data. You know, maybe no one's doing anything bad with it right now. But the fact that it exists means that someday in the future it could be used for a purpose that you don't like or you're not comfortable. with. Yeah. And it is possible to say, I can see the argument that this is worth it for the chance at saving a life, even for the chance at finding your dog. Right. But that's the question that we're being asked. And because it's opt out rather than opt in, that's not even a question we're being asked.

12:59And in terms of questions being answered for you, let's say you're not comfortable with having a ring camera. If your neighbor across the street puts one on their door, and it's pointed towards your house and you're filming, there's nothing you can do about that. So it's like other people are deciding. And I think this speaks to one of the key questions that surrounds all of tech, which is how much privacy are you willing to sacrifice for convenience? Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things is like, these companies kind of use the convenience to erode privacy, But they don't actually have to do that, right?

13:38Like they could provide these features without also accessing the footage. So they kind of use the convenience doorway into being able to monetize off of really intimate data and intimate moments in people's lives. If you want to turn this off, it's very easy to do. If you have a Ring camera, you open up the Ring camera app, you go to the homepage. There's like a little menu up at the top that you can click on. And then you go to the control center and there should be a feature there called search party, or it'll say something like opt into or opt out of helping to find lost pets, which I mean, why would you want to do that?

14:17We all we love lost pets. So this is easy to turn off if you're not comfortable with it. There are a whole bunch of other privacy settings that you can go switch off as well, which is something that I really think everyone should go look at. Like even if you're totally comfortable with Ring, if you've got one of these things on the front of your house or inside your house, just go look at what privacy settings they offer you with and make sure you're comfortable with it. A hundred percent. Yeah, we're fixated on Ring here. But just think for a second about all of the products in your house that are connected to the Internet.

14:50All of them are collecting information. I know at Karen's house, it's like you're a Luddite. So it's just like a bunch of rocks and stones, like nothing. I don't even know if you have Wi-Fi. But for the rest of us, I worry about this stuff. And it's worth just putting in any effort that you can. You know, after you're done listening to the show, just check it out. See what's out there. It's worth your time. I love that. I, like, surprisingly do not have a digital hygiene routine. So I feel like after this episode, I'm immediately going to go. I'm going to. Yeah. And look at my two technology objects in my house.

15:27Right. You're like 2005 Nokia brick cell phone. Yeah. And you're abacus, you know. America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. and this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to put all the issues on the table that keep me up at night. The interview brings you conversations with the people shaping our world.

16:17From global leaders... I've much more than fulfilled the promises that I've made. ...to cultural icons. I'm just interested in how it feels to be playing songs that are 50-odd years old. Songs are like children. They're with you forever. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hi, I'm Frances Fry. And I'm Anne Morris. And we are the hosts of a new TED podcast called Fixable. We've helped leaders at some of the world's most competitive companies solve all kinds of problems. On our show, we'll pull back the curtain and give you the type of honest, unfiltered advice we usually reserve for top executives.

16:58Maybe you have a coworker with boundary issues. Or you want to know how to inspire and motivate your team. No problem is too big or too small. Give us a call and we'll help you solve the problems you're stuck on. Find Fixable wherever you listen to podcasts.

17:15Yeah. Yeah. So we've been talking about the power that all these technology companies have over our lives. And I think there's one in particular right now that perhaps like culturally in the conversations we're all having that has more of an influence than any other. And that is TikTok. And it's a good moment to be talking about it because there was this huge transition. There's a TikTok takeover, right, where the company that owns TikTok, a Chinese company called ByteDance, was forced to sell the U.S. operations of the app to a consortium of other companies in order to keep operating in the U.S.

17:55because of a bunch of laws that the government passed over, you know, privacy and security and national security concerns. So now as of January 22nd, TikTok's U.S. version of the app is now owned by three different companies, including Oracle, which is a big data processing company owned by Larry Ellison, who's a major Trump donor and ally, and a company called MGX, which is based in Abu Dhabi, which did a big crypto deal with the Trump family and then like another like investment firm. so what's been happening on the app is absolute chaos over the past couple weeks and i know a lot of people you know hear this and they go oh tiktok like whatever i don't care about that i think we've kind of gotten over some of the gen z like what's right it's like there's there you still hear people go oh that's where the kids are dancing uh this matters to your life whether or not you use tiktok You hate TikTok.

18:53You've never watched a TikTok video in your life. It still has a major influence over your life and your future. TikTok is, I think, without a doubt, it's like the sun at the center of the solar system of the internet, right? It's not the biggest app in the world of social media, not even close, but it has become like the locus of online digital culture. It's the place where conversations start and then branch out into other parts of the internet and then leak into the real world. It's the cultural engine room right now. Exactly. This is the most compelling explanation of TikTok that I've ever heard.

19:29Like I personally don't use TikTok, but now I'm feeling FOMO. Yeah, it is a really, really important ecosystem. And what people are freaking out about now is the app is undergoing some major changes. So part of this deal that was struck among the big concerns is that the Chinese government might have control over the algorithm them and they might like spread propaganda. There was this amazing hearing in the US Senate where the CEO of ByteDance. Oh, well, that was the CEO of TikTok, not the CEO of ByteDance. That was. Oh, right, right. So that's. But yeah, the I think it was Tom Tillis, the senator was like, have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?

20:10And the guy's like, he was like, so I'm, I'm Singaporean. The guy's like, have you ever been a citizen of China? And the guy's like, I'm Singaporean. But there is no reason to think that, I mean, Tom, maybe you can correct me on this, but there's no reason to think that your data is less safe with TikTok than it is with, say, Meta or Elon Musk's Twitter. There was never, we've been talking about TikTok, freaking out about it for years. There has never been a single shred of actual evidence that has been produced that anything untoward happened with the Chinese government and American TikTok data.

20:55Never. There hasn't been one shred of evidence. It's all been speculation about things that could go wrong. So this new set of companies took over. It's called the U.S. Joint Venture is what TikTok is calling it. And part of their plan is that they were going to retrain the algorithm, like take the algorithm and start over from scratch and like build a new one. And in the first few days, like the first week after the app rolled out, things just went nuts. What do you mean by that? Like what what happened? so it seemed to a lot of people like there was censorship so the tiktok account the official account for the democrats in the united states like usually their videos get like millions of views all of a sudden they were posting videos they were getting like zero views or like a couple of thousand there were uh some examples screenshots online where people said like they were trying to send messages that had the word epstein in them and they weren't getting sent and also there was all this weird stuff.

21:58Like if you looked at the search page, it was suggesting all of this like weird, creepy stuff. Like it would suggest that you search, like, don't look at that mirror in your house, like just the weirdest stuff in the world. It turned out that what was happening was that there was this big snowstorm a couple of weeks ago across the United States. And according to TikTok, a data center had a power outage and the app was just going haywire because things weren't working. Then very quickly, everything kind of went back to normal. But what we do know is the app is retraining the algorithm, right? They're going to shift how it recommends videos, what it recommends.

22:41And people are worried that these companies that now have control over this app have these ties to the Trump administration. And perhaps they could use this new power that they have to promote ideas that are beneficial to Trump or the American government or suppress criticism. And it's worth saying there is precedent for this, right? This is people, people are not worried for no reason. This is exactly what did happen after Elon Musk took over Twitter is that the algorithm started favoring things based on differing political. He openly said that Twitter at the time was basically in that same position of being a cultural engine room.

23:21And it really changes conversation off the app in a way that affects people's lives, even if you've never been on Twitter or TikTok. Tom, to take a step back, when you said that they're retraining the algorithm, like, how is it actually working between all of these companies? Like, is Oracle the one that's going to be retraining the algorithm? Is the other company? And have they said anything about why they're retraining the algorithm or what they're going to retrain the algorithm with? That's a really interesting question. So part of the agreement in the sale of the app is that they have to retrain the algorithm because the algorithm is intellectual property and ByteDance, the company that owns most of TikTok, they still have like a 20 % share in this new company, the TikTok joint venture.

24:05So any concerns that you had about China, it's not like those have gone away, right? Like China still has major control over the app. I think it's like there's this new company called the TikTok joint venture and like the company is doing it. So Oracle, the giant tech company that Larry Ellison owns, is certainly involved in that process. But like, you can just kind of feel that things are different on there. The videos that are getting recommended are just different. And like the order of videos. For whatever reason, they just have Larry Ellison's face in every single one. It's so weird. I've never been on TikTok.

24:43I've seen things that are TikToks because they come through Instagram Reels. I think one of the things I want to do is join TikTok and sort of get an idea of how TikTok works and get a sense of it. You've been on TikTok for a while, right, Tom? I've been, I'm a big TikTok user. I actually joined it because like, I felt like, well, I'm writing about it. I have to be using this app in order to understand what's going on there. And I really had to force myself to do it. I was like, this is so uncool. I don't want to be using. And then like, I got completely addicted to it. Like I have to force myself to put it down.

25:14But Yeah, I'm a big TikTok user at this point. Would you be up for teaching me? Would you give me the... I think we have to. Yeah, we got to get you. Because you're like really, you're not participating in the modern era if you're not on there. I mean, Karen, I don't know if we can get you involved, but Nikki for. I feel like this is a situation where, Tom, you're the earthling and Nikki is an alien that's coming to earth. And I am like the relative that's still on the other planet and Nikki's just going to have to call home every once in a while and explain to me what's happening on earth let's talk let's set you up with an account i'll tell you how to make a video like what you can try and do to go viral and get people to pay attention that could be like a nice project we're working on in the background stay stay tuned although hang on in the uk will i be getting the ellison algorithm or the og tiktok algorithm outside of the u.s it's the same tiktok it always was there it's connected to the u.s tiktok app so that the content is flowing back and forth.

26:14But you, Nick, if you set up, you're still getting that like pure original. It's like classic Coke, right? You're getting the original tick tock algorithm. But what I do want to talk about for a second is maybe why you shouldn't be worried. Like there are real concerns. What's going to happen with tick tock now? Who's in control? What's going to happen? The algorithm? What we saw with Twitter now called X, right, is that Elon Musk turned it into an ecosystem to promote his political agenda. Like he openly said that's what he was doing. And this was, it seems catastrophic for the app. They lost a ton of users.

26:52They lost a ton of advertising revenue. It seemed like this wasn't a great business decision. It certainly wasn't handled in a smooth way that didn't upset lots of people and push them off the app. I think with TikTok, there's like three different companies who are investing along with TikTok. I think that these people are more concerned about business and the TikTok app itself making money. And I think they're very worried about upsetting TikTok's users and losing the cultural cachet and the force and the power of this app. We reached out to TikTok to ask them to comment. They declined. But certainly the company's position is that they are as concerned about protecting people's privacy and promoting free speech as they ever have been.

27:42That's the company line. That's what it's always been. But in the time that follows, like the future of this app, people are going to be looking for examples of where things are going wrong, where it seems, oh, they're suppressing this kind of content. They're promoting this and I don't want them to. Is that happening because TikTok and its allies and people from the Trump administration are putting their thumbs on the scale? or is it just that people are making bad videos that no one wants to watch? You'll never know because the algorithm is a total mystery to the people who are using the app.