S1: Welcome in San Diego. I'm Andrew Bowen , filling in for Jade Hindman on today's show. A new book explores the rise of TikTok , as a group of American investors seeks to take ownership of the app's US operations. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. You're probably no stranger to TikTok today. The short term , short form video sharing app has about 170 million users in the United States. That makes it one of the most ubiquitous social media platforms in the country. The Trump administration says a group of American investors is expected to take over TikTok's U.S. data operations from ByteDance , its Chinese parent company. Well , a new book chronicles the rise of TikTok and its profound impact on our political and social landscape today. The book is called Every Screen on the planet. And joining me now is its author , Emily Baker White. She's also an investigative reporter at Forbes. Emily , welcome to midday.
S2: Thanks so much for having me.
S1: So let's talk about the appeal of TikTok. What makes this app so popular , even addictive , for so many people ? Yeah.
S2: So when you go to YouTube or Facebook , you type in the search bar what you want to see , you friend people you like , things you share things. When you open TikTok , it just goes. TikTok is a thing that happens to you more than a thing that you instruct on what you want to see. And that means that TikTok is relying much more heavily on your revealed preferences than your stated ones. It's just noticing how long your eyes linger before you scroll , and that means that it knows if your eyes linger a little too long on attractive women , or if they linger a little too long on discussions about alcohol or discussions about divorce. People say TikTok knew that I was gay before I knew I was gay , or TikTok knew I was pregnant before I knew I was pregnant. And the way that it can feel so creepy , feel like it knows you so well. Is that all those little signals you don't think you're even sending are creating a profile for the company of who you are and what you want to see more of.
S1: So , you know , you sort of alluded to the algorithm , this mysterious , all knowing , I don't know , math equation. I guess that's behind TikTok and its success.
S2: But I think when people think of the algorithm as being some all knowing , meritocratic , you know , magic that's going to elevate the most deserving content and perfectly serve you. What you want to see next. I'm really skeptical of that. Um , there's actually a tool inside TikTok that some TikTok employees have access to , called the heating button , where they can actually just , uh , say for a certain piece of content that they want to guarantee that that video is going to receive X number of likes or , I'm sorry , X number of views , and they just blast out that video to 5000 or 50,000 or 500,000 TikTok users. Whether or not the algorithm predicts that that's what those people want to see next. And so when you're watching TikTok , you can you can imagine that everything is perfectly tailored to what , you know , some math equation think should come next. But it also might just be that an employee wanted a lot of people to see a certain video for some reason , and they heated it. Right. And so we can think it's magic , but really it's just people making decisions. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Well , you've done a lot of groundbreaking coverage on TikTok over the past several years. What was the turning point that made you decide. There's a book here.
S2: Um , I have a I have a personal story with TikTok. Uh , I started reporting on the company in early 2022 , and I was leaked a cache of audio recordings , uh , about the company's project Texas , the sort of effort to separate TikTok's US operations from its its Chinese parent company. And I reported on that , and that was really interesting. You don't get a cache of audio like that every day as a reporter. Uh , but after that , the company was so freaked out at the fact that a leak this big had happened. And like many companies , uh , TikTok's parent company , ByteDance , had a group of people internally whose job was to try to find and stop leaks. And a number of those people actually took data from my phone , from the TikTok app on my phone and used it to surveil me to watch where I was going. And then they also took data from all of TikTok and ByteDance employees and monitors where they were going to , and they tried to match IP addresses from my phone and employees phones to see if we were in the same coffee shop or library or , you know , public space at the same place at the same time. Because if we were , perhaps that meant that that person was sourcing me. And the fact that TikTok was so desperate to stop the leaks that they went all the way to surveilling a journalist and surveilling all of their employees. Uh , that was sort of the moment I knew that , wow , there is a book here. Because if they could do this to me , um , the Chinese government could have forced ByteDance to surveil other people the same way , like Chinese dissidents or members of the US military.
S1: So this book is really trying to understand how TikTok became so big and so powerful. Take us back to where it started , with the ByteDance , the company that founded TikTok. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. So TikTok sort of presented as a startup in the United States , but it was actually anything but a startup. Um , TikTok was the creation of a Chinese company called ByteDance , which is like the Google of China. It's absolutely enormous. It's known as an app factory. And so TikTok was able to sort of rise with the image and energy of a startup and the backing of one of the largest , most powerful tech giants out there. And that sort of made something that felt organic , um , much more powerful than than your usual sort of startup energy , because ByteDance was able to put a huge amount of money into advertisements and user acquisitions. Right , and sort of catapult this thing to the top of American tech and society before we even knew what happened.
S1: And tell us more about ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming.
S2: He often goes by just Yiming. Um , and he's he's kind of a tech bro. Um , he's a techno optimist. He really believes that technology can make us more sort of efficient , effective versions of ourselves. And from very early on. 2012 2013 2014. He he was sort of obsessed with this idea that instead of people looking for information , instead of you going to a search bar and typing in something that you want to see , information could look for people. And the idea was , if an algorithm has access to all this information , all the breaking news , all of the , you know , books out there , and it also has enough information about people to know what the people want to see. Then you might not know to ask a question that's relevant to your interests , but the all knowing algorithm algorithm could know that and could prompt you with that information , even though you hadn't gone and looked for it. And his belief was that ultimately this could be a more sort of efficient , effective way of distributing distributing information around the world. And on the one hand , that kind of makes sense , right ? You can see it. Um , on the other hand. That means we would be ceding our agency about what we want to learn , what we want to care about to a system of computers and whoever happens to own and control those computers. And that's pretty wild.
S1: I was a TikTok user for a couple of years. I , you know , it was very entertaining. The dances were fun. Sometimes I would find myself just sucked into this doom scroll , and it took a lot of willpower to close the app , set the phone down , and just do something else.
S2: And my advice , my sort of take on that , is not that we all need to throw our phones into the ocean and never speak to them again. Um , but with every tech company , whether it's Google or YouTube or TikTok or whatever. Um , there's a sort of exchange going on , right ? You're using the app to get something you want a video , an answer to a question , something like that. And the app is using you to usually serve you ads , but maybe , you know , find out some more information about you and monetize it in some other way. And there's always going to be that exchange. But at the end of your session in an app , no matter which app it is , I would ask people to ask , did I use the app or did the app use me ? And if you went and googled some stuff , got some information that you needed and went about your day , you used the app. If you signed on to Netflix and watched the show you wanted to watch and then signed off , you use the app. If you just lost three hours and don't know where it went , I think the app's using you and I would just say like try to pull back some of that control. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Well , for the past few years , there have been a lot of efforts on both sides of the political aisle to , uh , you know , exert some more control over TikTok's level of influence and the surveillance that you talked about. Tell us more about that.
S2: And the concern is that because TikTok is and it still is today owned by a Chinese tech giant , ByteDance , that the Chinese government could force ByteDance to use TikTok either to surveil people or to try to propagandize them , to try to subtly influence what information they see. And this is a real concern. Chinese companies can't meaningfully say no to the government. If the government says you have to do this , then they have to do it , and there's no due process , right ? And so the fear was , on behalf of the US government , that it's not even that , you know , they would necessarily use the front door. The Chinese government could send a cop to a random ByteDance engineer's Home , put a gun to their head and say , you're going to have to give me all this data or I'm going to disappear you and your grandma. And like , they don't have a choice. They have to comply. And that put puts ByteDance in a really crappy position here. Because it's not that they want to necessarily be a sort of engine of a surveillance state , but because they couldn't say no. The US government essentially said , well , we can't trust you then , and we can't trust you because we know that you could be used by this foreign , hostile government. And so both both parties started by saying , I'm sure we can work something out here , right ? I'm sure we can try to separate ownership from control here , maybe put the servers in the United States , maybe limit how many ByteDance employees can access US user data. But at the end of the day , first , the Trump administration and then the Biden administration walked away and said , yeah , there's no way to fully separate TikTok from ByteDance without forcing ByteDance to sell off its US. TikTok and Congress passed a law to that effect last year. President Biden signed it , and then President Trump came to office and promptly said he wasn't going to enforce that law. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Well , we've got a few minutes left. As we wrap up , what do you want readers to take away from your book ? Every screen on the planet.
S2: All tech companies are run by people , and those people are making decisions about what to do with your data and what to show you. And often those people also have people who have leverage over them. Governments and governments all around the world are trying to influence what we see and what can be done with our data. And TikTok is not the only company that has this problem , but it is so big and so powerful , and it has been caught in between both the Chinese government and the US government wanting to be able to influence it. And as we go into this sort of new world where maybe part of TikTok is going to get sold to some people under a deal that Trump negotiated. My questions are , well , what power does the Trump administration now have over TikTok ? Are there terms in this deal that Trump is talking about which might fall apart , by the way ? But if it doesn't ? Are there terms in that deal that allow the US government access to user data , or the ability to influence what type of information we see ? And if so , we need to know what those terms are. Because at the end of the day , we should be skeptical of any government trying to influence those two really important factors. And right now we've seen efforts by by both IT and the Chinese government to do that.
S1: I've been speaking with Emily Baker White , author of Every Screen on the planet. She'll be speaking more about her book at the Pacific Highlands Ranch Library tomorrow , October 15th at 7 p.m.. You can find a link to that event at pbs.org. Emily , thank you so much.
S2: Thanks so much.
