Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular social media apps in the world, with more than 150 million users in the United States alone. But its Chinese ownership has raised significant privacy and national security concerns. Earlier this month, the House passed a bill that would ban TikTok in the US unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells its ownership stake. The bill, which passed with broad bipartisan support, now heads to the Senate for approval. Joining me to discuss the bill and its implications is Lauren Feiner, Senior Policy Reporter at The Verge. Lauren, welcome to the show.

Lauren Feiner:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s start from way back at the beginning. For any listeners who have been under a rock, and don’t have apps on their phone, could you explain what TikTok is, what its reach is, what the scope of its popularity is?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, sure. So TikTok is a social media app that basically you open the app and you immediately are watching a video. It’s a vertical video on your phone. It’s a very short video. And you often see creators just getting right into it. And then you could scroll vertically to get to the next video. And what people find really enticing about TikTok is that the algorithm just seems really good at knowing what you like. So people end up spending a lot of hours on this app and it has huge reach in the US, about 170 million US users. So it’s hugely popular.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So what you’ve described, Lauren, sounds pretty innocent. Why are there concerns about this app and its reach?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, so the issue here is that TikTok is owned by a Chinese parent company called ByteDance. And what lawmakers are concerned about is that China has a national security law that lets the government ask companies to hand over information that they think might be relevant to national security if those companies are based in China. TikTok says that they don’t keep any US user information in China, so they say that the Chinese government shouldn’t be able to access that information, but nevertheless, lawmakers, the intelligence community, still seem to be concerned about this. And then on top of that, I think there’s an additional concern that, at least in theory, if China really does have control over this app, then maybe it could tweak its algorithms to push certain messages in a way to either spread propaganda in the US or just kind of sow some level of chaos.

Preet Bharara:

And is there evidence of the second thing actually happening in practice?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, so I think it’s something that would be really hard to prove unless you have access to TikTok’s data and how it’s algorithm works. But I think something that lawmakers were taking away last week from the efforts to stop their vote for this divestment bill was that they were getting a lot of teens, people who sounded like teens and younger kids calling into their offices, really asking, demanding, that they not pass this bill that would seek to force TikTok to spin out from its parent company. And a lot of lawmakers took that as kind of a sign that TikTok might be able to push users in a direction on certain messages with a lot of force because TikTok had sent this kind of full screen notification to users saying, “Please call your representative. They want to ban TikTok. Tell them not to do this.” So that got lawmakers thinking, “What if they did this on something else? What if it was about China and Taiwan?” So I think we haven’t seen a lot of hard evidence around this, but I think a lot of lawmakers are thinking about the what ifs.

Preet Bharara:

So speaking of lawmakers, there was an effort to take some action against TikTok previously that kind of faded into oblivion a bit, and then as you point out a second ago, it got new life when TikTok took the step of putting up that screen and urging people, many of whom were young, to call their members of Congress. What does the bill actually require and do and is it constitutional?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, so this bill, it does name TikTok and ByteDance and what it’s really seeking to do is have ByteDance sell TikTok so that it’s no longer connected to this Chinese company and a lot of the core national security concerns that are there would theoretically no longer exist. So it would give TikTok six months to separate from ByteDance. The problem with that is that TikTok is a huge company. There’s only so many companies that might be able to buy it and especially companies that might be able to buy it that wouldn’t have the kinds of competitive issues that might arise from another social media company owning it.

And then to the point of whether it’s constitutional, I think the authors of this bill really worked hard to write a bill that they felt would stand up to legal pressure. And they did that in response to challenges that the Trump administration saw in their efforts to ban TikTok. And they tried to take a different route and they worked with the White House and the Department of Justice to try to find a path that they felt would not pose constitutional barriers. But at the same time, I think it remains to be seen. I think certainly if this bill were to pass, we would almost certainly see a challenge.

Preet Bharara:

So the particular constitutional concern, as I understand it. Arises under the First Amendment, and so you have civil liberties organizations like the ACLU are opposed to it, but at the same time you have former President Donald Trump also opposed. And to coin a phrase, aren’t the ACLU and Donald Trump strange bedfellows?

Lauren Feiner:

Absolutely, and I think you end up seeing a lot of strange bedfellows in a lot of these tech policy issues because they really don’t fall along straight partisan lines. There’s a lot of different incentives around this. So with the First Amendment concerns, yeah, civil liberties groups are saying basically this could cut off a huge platform for expression and communication in the US. Now on the other hand, the government will obviously say, “Well, there’s plenty of other places where people can communicate with each other.” So I think that’s something that we’ll need to see how that progresses through the court if it gets there. Donald Trump, his argument has been a little bit different and been more about the idea that if TikTok goes away, then all of that money, all of those users, will go over to Meta, which he thinks is the enemy of the people.

Preet Bharara:

So it passed fairly overwhelmingly in the House, this bill. What do we think will happen in the Senate?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, so this bill really sailed through the House. It was about a week between when it was introduced and voted on in committee and then passed out of the House. And that’s really unusual, especially in this day and age. So it’s pretty likely that things are going to slow down significantly in the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not said firmly that he’ll bring it to the floor definitely. He’s kind of bringing it through the committee process, which is a slower, more deliberative process. The head of the Senate Commerce Committee didn’t necessarily commit to this specific bill, although she seems supportive of the overall aims. So I think we might see some changes here. I think in the Senate things are a little bit harder to get through because you need 60 senators to get on board, and I think everyone wants to have their voices heard on this.

Preet Bharara:

But what would be the reason why the Senate would not also have a lopsided vote in favor given the popularity of this bill on both the Democratic side and the Republican side in the House?

Lauren Feiner:

One thing I would consider is that I think the speed that this bill got through the House, part of that might be that there wasn’t enough time for TikTok to really launch a well-considered lobbying campaign against it. It seemed to have taken-

Preet Bharara:

Well, but they did, I guess, well, considered is doing a lot of work in that sense.

Lauren Feiner:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

As you just point out. I mean, look, intuitively, you might’ve thought that asking all your loyal customers and users to call their congressmen, that’s a tried and true free speech, right to petition your government practice, that has worked over time. I worked in the Senate for four and a half years and we took into account whether constituents were calling on one side or the other side of the bill. So it usually worked. Did it backfire here because all these children were calling?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, I think it backfired for a few reasons. I think part of it was these children were calling. I think part of it was that just the very notion that TikTok could mobilize so many people to call in, to the point where offices were having to cut off their phone lines because they just couldn’t handle the influx, kind of showed them something that I don’t think TikTok was intending, which was what would happen if this was about a different issue? What if this was about China and Taiwan and TikTok was able to mobilize all of its users to call in about some policy that would benefit China.

Obviously those are very different issues and it’s not clear that they would actually be able to mobilize as many users to call in about something like that. But I think that was part of the thinking here. And then I think I also talked to Congresswoman Anna Eshoo who said basically, “I care what my constituents think, but they’re not thinking about the national security of the US when they’re using this app, and as a US lawmaker, that’s my job.” So I think to some extent the issues that at this point, a lot of them have been communicated to lawmakers in classified settings, are things that maybe day-to-day TikTok users are not really considering.

Preet Bharara:

What do we think a forced sale by Congress on a deadline does to the price of the company?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, I mean, I think the first question is whether ByteDance would even sell TikTok, which seems unlikely. This is like a prize jewel of the China tech ecosystem. This is a hugely successful company by any measure. But, yeah, I mean I think to find a buyer, it’s going to be in the billions of dollars. There’s only so many companies that are going to be able to buy this company. It’s not clear if the company, if TikTok would really be what we think of as TikTok right now once it gets into the hands of another company, and ByteDance figures how to separate it. So even if a sale happens, I think it’s really unclear what that will look like and who would really be able to own it.

Preet Bharara:

By the way, taking action against TikTok in a large country with a large population is not unprecedented. India has banned TikTok. Do you have any reaction to that?

Lauren Feiner:

That’s definitely true, but I think that in the US it’s so out of the ordinary to see a large speech platform being ousted. Not something that Americans are used to, not something that Americans really want to see a lot of the time. So I think it’s just a very unusual position for the US to be in.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have any thoughts about what people are saying with respect to the effect that this action if taken ultimately would have on US-China relations?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, I think ultimately would definitely be a strain. I think part of the fear that people have is about retaliation, but that maybe doesn’t come into play as much here because a lot of US platforms don’t operate in China because they can’t show everything that they want to over there because of censorship laws. So retaliation, it’s unclear, but we do have companies like Apple and Tesla that rely on China for manufacturing and other things. So I think there’s a lot of interconnectedness that would be in question if US really takes aggressive action that China really doesn’t like.

Preet Bharara:

So we mentioned the Biden administration and their approach to all this. I think it was Representative Mike Gallagher who said, and others, that the White House provided technical thoughts and reactions to the bill and improved the bill. The President has said he will sign it, right?

Lauren Feiner:

The President said that if it passes both chambers, he will sign it. Now that is a big if in the Senate. To pass through the Senate is still a big question. So yeah, if it passes, he will sign it, but that could be a long way away and it could be never.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think this becomes an election issue in any sense?

Lauren Feiner:

I think the election here is a big kind of elephant in the room, partially because Biden’s campaign is even on TikTok, and it’s a huge platform where especially Democrats can reach young voters. So I think that’s going to be a really tricky dynamic to navigate because on the policy side, you have this fear of national security issues on TikTok, but on the campaign side, it’s a really valuable campaign tool.

Preet Bharara:

Have parents weighed in on this, parents of young people who have a strong affinity for TikTok, among them the people who have been calling into members of Congress? Or is there not a consensus among the parents?

Lauren Feiner:

Yeah, I’m not sure what parents in particular are thinking about this, but I know that more generally there’s been a big push from parents to see more kids online safety legislation in the US. I think parents feel really overwhelmed with how to deal with the constant access to social media and all of the content that’s coming at their kids, the recommendations they’re getting from different social media algorithms. And that’s not something that’s specific to TikTok, but I think it’s part of the conversation, which is a little bit different from what’s being talked about here. But I think there is a lot of anxiety around how kids are using social media.

Preet Bharara:

All right, so you haven’t done this yet. You talked about how it will wind its way through the Senate. Will you make a prediction? Will this pass in the Senate or not?

Lauren Feiner:

I think, from what I’ve been hearing, if it’s going to pass in the Senate, it’s probably going to be sometime soon. We’re probably talking in the next few weeks or month, couple months. If it drags on for longer, I think the chances just get lower and lower. And especially once we reach the summer, it’s really hard to pass anything in an election year after that.

Preet Bharara:

Are you yourself a user of TikTok?

Lauren Feiner:

I do use TikTok and it’s addictive. It’s hard to get off the app once you’re using it because you’re constantly being fed videos that really tailor to what you like and it’s really easy to just keep scrolling on it.

Preet Bharara:

So does your affinity for TikTok and using TikTok render you biased on this reporting, Lauren Feiner?

Lauren Feiner:

That is a great question. Though I use TikTok, I also do sometimes worry about what is this app collecting on me? But I think that’s something I worry about with all social media apps that I use in this day and age. So many companies are collecting information on you. Some people who oppose a ban or forced divestment will say it’s like data brokers already have your information, sell your information, possibly even to China. And there was actually just a separate bill in the House that passed that would try to keep data brokers from selling your information to foreign adversaries.

But I think the truth of the matter is our data is out there and I think we don’t really know enough at this point about what is the risk to individuals? We haven’t seen a lot that’s been declassified about how the individual risk works. I think the case has been more about at the national security level. Although some people will argue that there could be a dossier on what you like and what sort of things you’re interacting with, and maybe at some point that’s useful if you rise to a position of power somewhere. So it’s hard to say. I think as a tech reporter, I try to understand the technology that I cover, but I also try to stay skeptical about what’s out there and what might be collected on me.

Preet Bharara:

Well, we will be following this with great interest, see what happens in the Senate, see what happens at the White House level. Lauren Feiner, thanks for being on the show.

Lauren Feiner:

Thanks so much for having me.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content including the weekly podcast I host with former US attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at (669) 247-7338. That’s (669) 24-Preet. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producer is Noa Azulai. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.