Tick Tock For TikTok's Sale

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It's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Miles Parks.

I cover voting.

I'm Elena Moore.

I cover politics.

And NPR tech correspondent John Rewich is here.

Hi, John.

Hey, guys.

Thanks for being here.

And we are hoping you can explain what is next for TikTok.

The popular social media app has a set of buyers to move it from Chinese to American control.

And John, let's just start there.

Who is in line to take over TikTok?

Yeah, well, Miles, this deal is not finalized yet, right?

We really don't know the final structure.

It hasn't been made public.

But there are a few players that we know about from statements by President Trump and the White House.

A big one is Oracle, the software and cloud computing company.

They're going to be the security provider.

Basically, it sounds like they're going to be running TikTok.

Americans' data that's fed into TikTok is going to be stored and monitored by Oracle.

The all-important algorithm, which picks the videos that pop up on your feed, is going to be inspected and monitored by Oracle.

Like which cats are singing at you, like in what order the cats are singing at you and all that good stuff.

And more, yes.

The fate of the algorithm is actually a key part of the deal.

And we can talk more about that later because it's complicated.

But Oracle is a big part of it.

There are other investors, too.

President Trump is named Rupert Murdoch.

He's also named Michael Dell is being involved.

Michael Dell founded Dell Computers, right?

The computer company.

And then there's a tech-focused private equity firm out here in Silicon Valley called Silver Lake that has also been named.

I kind of want to walk through the history of this deal also.

Not that it's done yet, but I do think that the saga is pretty interesting because, you know, a year ago, weren't we talking about TikTok being banned and potentially like millions of people not being able to access this on their phone.

This seems like an extraordinary turnaround.

Yeah, it almost goes back to when TikTok was founded back in 2017.

China passed a couple of laws, one on intelligence, one on cybersecurity, that codified the government's ability to kind of lean on Chinese companies and get them to hand over data and help the government with tech issues.

In the subsequent years, TikTok's popularity in the U.S.

skyrocketed.

It's continued to this day.

I mean, about half of the population of the U.S.

is on it, according to TikTok.

By late 2019, it really started to become a bipartisan sort of issue of concern on the on sort of on national security front.

And in August 2020, during Trump's first term, he issued an executive order that declared Chinese apps to be a threat.

And it named ByteDance.

Fast forward to the end of the Biden administration, and Congress passed a law, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which is a mouthful, but it basically said, TikTok needs to be sold to American entities or it needs to shut down in the U.S.

TikTok fought it all the way up to the Supreme Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds, but right at the beginning of this year, the court decided that this law could stand.

So the clock was ticking on TikTok.

That's a bad pun, but the clock was ticking.

It's so tempting.

Yeah, they used this.

I'm really sorry about that.

It was supposed to go dark the day before Trump took office in January.

In fact, it did go dark for a few hours there.

But on day one, he issued the first of several executive orders, which some experts see as legally questionable.

But he issued this executive order suspending enforcement of this law.

Well, Elena, I'm hoping you can drill into something that John alluded to, which is the ubiquitous nature of TikTok.

I have to admit, I do not have an account.

My brain is completely clear of the algorithm.

You're so brave.

But I do feel like the minority at this point, right?

Yeah, you are definitely a weirdo.

No, I mean, look, we've talked a lot for the last few years about politicians trying to navigate like what would be called non-traditional media platforms that, you know, podcasts, maybe,

you know, YouTube, social media more broadly, TikTok, I would argue, like, is a cog in that larger machine that all major politicians are trying to break into and be successful at.

And because it is a place where increasingly so people are getting information there and they're turning to TikTok for their news.

You know, there's a few research center data from the summer that found that there's been an increase across all ages, especially among young people, in turning to TikTok to get their news.

You know, if you're between the ages of 18 and 29, 43% say that they regularly get their news on TikTok.

And that's up from 9% in 2020.

So the jump is really so stark, and it's the fastest jump of any of these major social media apps.

So to say it's kind of like this shiny object that, of course, you want to be effective there, I think is probably an understatement.

Yeah, and I feel like it's not just politicians, right, who are figuring out how to harness TikTok's massive reach.

I mean, media companies companies are still trying to figure out basically how they can use it to get their information out there.

And I do wonder about the growth, how much, John, do you think that played into President Trump's turnaround on it?

Because in his first term, as you mentioned, he led the push to ban it.

And I guess I just wonder how much the app's popularity has led him to kind of change his tune on it.

Yeah, that's a tough question because during his first term, he was sort of leading the charge eventually or at the end of his term to get it banned.

But he was open to the idea of it being sold to an American company.

But post-2024 election, I mean, he has said on many occasions, I like this app.

He said he was biased towards this app the other day.

When he talks about TikTok, and Elena can elaborate on this, when he talks about TikTok, he often says, it helped me get elected, frankly.

I did great with the youth and they were all on TikTok.

Yeah, and I mean, we can't know for certain how important TikTok was to President Trump's re-election, but we know that he was able to make an impact there.

He was really the most prominent Republican politician on the app in the 2024 election.

I did this analysis in the summer of 2024.

I looked up every single member of Congress and there wasn't a single Republican senator or member of the House that had an account.

I haven't updated that, but I've done a quick search of big names and still really haven't found anybody.

But yeah, Trump was kind of in his own boat there and he developed this huge following.

He had over 15 million followers on his account, which hasn't been used since he won.

But now the White House has an account and it has, I believe, over a million followers, 1.6 million followers.

So I think it's something that Trump sees as really a direct correlation, even if we can't really.

quantify that.

I also just think we've seen other prominent Republican voices, not in politics, but just be very successful there.

I think about, you know, Charlie Kirk, the activist who was assassinated last month.

He had a huge following on TikTok.

It's obvious that this is a space where some of these ideas can really thrive.

And so I think that the Trump orbit very much has seen that.

And so they want to keep a hold of that.

Yeah, it's so interesting because I feel like over the last 10 years, there have been so many accusations from conservatives about social media companies being biased against them.

And yet I think when you actually look at how well a lot of these ideas do on the platforms, that is just not the case.

Let's take a quick break and more on this in just a moment.

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And we're back.

So, John, I want to dig into the view from China on this.

TikTok is obviously a big technological asset for China and also a show of soft power and influence.

How does this play into broader United States-China relations?

Yeah, China's view on this has been interesting.

I mean, when the talk of banning TikTok began five years ago, they were really tough on it.

You know, after the 2020 executive order, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman basically said this amounted to economic bullying, and he said coerced transactions, like if it was forced to be sold to an American company, were tantamount to robbery.

In the subsequent years,

Chinese officials voiced strong opposition to this forced sale of TikTok, but the position really softened earlier this year when the Commerce Ministry sort of hinted at it.

They said a deal for TikTok must comply with Chinese law, kind of opened the door to it, signaling that TikTok was in play.

And China really seems to see it as part of this broader relationship, as you point out.

Like it's a piece on the chessboard, frankly, that they could trade for something else.

And this deal coalesced around the time of a phone call between President Trump and Xi Jinping, the leader of China.

And in its wake, you know, we've seen them announce plans for these two leaders to meet in a few weeks in South Korea.

And then Trump is going to travel to China early next year.

And they've said Xi Jinping is going to come to the U.S.

at an appropriate time.

I think Beijing sees opportunity.

They want a more stable, less combative relationship with the U.S.

They want more trade.

They want tech restrictions lifted.

And ultimately, the big prize at the heart of China-U.S.

relations is Taiwan.

Well, John, let me drill down a little bit more on how the app could actually change as part of this.

Is there any sense on if this deal goes through and China gives up control over the algorithm, will that change users' experience with it?

The White House says there's not going to be any change.

Clearly, we don't have all the details of what this deal is going to look like, who's going to be in charge of what.

We know, though, that the algorithm is going to be trained on U.S.

data and exclusively U.S.

data going forward.

You know, it seems like American users of TikTok are going to have access to international content still.

You can watch Australian cat videos if you want.

What I think it means is that going forward, the...

videos that pop up when you score are going to be based on American preferences rather than global preferences.

Does that make sense?

I guess guess so.

I feel like now I'm just fixated on whether the cats are going to have Australian accents in these videos or American accents, but I guess I think I'm following you.

And I want to turn to Elena and kind of look ahead politically at this.

This is a pretty big deal in terms of when I think about to the midterms.

If you're telling me that basically, you know, half of young people are getting news from this platform at this point, I guess, how much do you think the midterms are going to play out on TikTok?

I feel like it depends.

Cause I remember thinking the same question after 2020 when that was the first time TikTok was really a player in the presidential race.

And in some ways, we are still seeing a hesitancy.

You know, like I said earlier on Capitol Hill, there are more Democrats that are on the platform, but it's not everybody.

It's not like having an X account or having an Instagram account, which is way more common, or Facebook, of course.

So I think it's still, you know, people kind of tiptoeing in.

But I think where you really see it is candidates who are not in office.

I think about on the Democratic side, especially, you have someone like James Tallarico.

He's a Texas state lawmaker.

He's running for U.S.

Senate next year, and he has almost 1.5 million followers on TikTok.

You know, when he made his announcement video, it was a vertical video, which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris also did moves like that.

And Kamala Harris, former vice president, is also an interesting person to watch.

She's still using her campaign TikTok account.

So I think it's going to be really interesting to see who really leans in there.

We've seen also like some Republican 2028 potential contenders on the app.

So TBD, I would just caution to say that just because this app is moving really fast, it's very popular, it doesn't mean it's necessarily the only place where.

politicians could reach people like this.

I mean, I think about how much we've talked about young men, you know, politicians wanting to win over young men.

You know, there was a report published by a Democratic leaning group that really dove into how young men in America were feeling today, and it found that most young men, 95% use YouTube, six in 10 use Reddit, and more than 50% use Discord.

And Miles is nodding his head like, uh-huh.

Like, I'm like, I do, I do have YouTube.

Yeah, I'm like, I do have a lot of people.

But like, I say that just because it's like, I remember when it was almost going to be banned.

Like, people are like, okay, we'll go somewhere else.

And like, I think that is a thing that's very likely, and there's always going to be platforms.

But this one is definitely the hot ticket right now.

So yeah.

John, what else are you watching as this continues to develop over the coming days?

Big question mark for me is specifically what's going to happen with the algorithm because China's law doesn't explicitly ban the sale of the TikTok algorithm, but algorithms, things like it, are banned from sale outside of China, if that makes sense.

They can't sell the algorithm.

So the algorithm is being leased to this U.S.

entity.

And this algorithm on TikTok and in all social media is, and this has been said many, many times, it's the secret sauce.

It's a complex system of computer code that decides how to rank videos and how to figure out what videos you might like and to stick them in front of your face and for you to stay on that platform.

And these things are updated on social media daily.

There are updates and patches that go out to the apps on your phone all the time and you don't know about it.

And from the technical sort of computer science folks that I've talked to about this, they think that ByteDance, the Chinese company, is going to be the one updating the TikTok algorithm.

That may raise some security concerns with folks who are worried about what kind of code might be in there to tweak the algorithm.

Because the point of this exercise of forcing TikTok to be sold was to secure U.S.

users' data and to try to minimize the chances for China or entities in China to influence Americans through TikTok feeds.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much for going through this, John.

I feel like we have an, you know, former China correspondent covering tech now is like the perfect person to explain this.

So I can't wait to have you on again.

Thanks, John.

See you on the interwebs.

Yep, see you there.

All right, NPR tech correspondent John Rewich.

I'm Miles Parks.

I cover voting.

I'm Elena Moore.

I cover politics.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

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