Spotlight — Addressing the TikTok Threat

09/08/22 • 23 min

2 Listeners

Imagine it's the Cold War. Imagine that the Soviet Union puts itself in a position to influence the television programming of the entire Western world — more than a billion viewers.

While this might sound like science fiction, it’s representative of the world we're living in, with TikTok being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.

TikTok, the flagship app of the Chinese company Bytedance, recently surpassed Google and Facebook as the most popular site on the internet in 2021, and is expected to reach more than 1.8 billion users by the end of 2022. The Chinese government doesn't control TikTok, but has influence over it. What are the implications of this influence, given that China is the main geopolitical rival of the United States?

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we bring you a bonus episode about TikTok. Co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the nature of the TikTok threat, and how we might address it.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
Pew Research Center's "Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022"

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/

Pew's recent study on how TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens

Axios' "Washington turns up the heat on TikTok"

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/07/congress-tiktok-china-privacy-data?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Article on recent Congressional responses to the threat of TikTok
Felix Krause on TikTok's keystroke tracking

https://twitter.com/KrauseFx/status/1560372509639311366

A revelation that TikTok has code to observe keypad input and all taps
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

A Fresh Take on Tech in China with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/44-a-fresh-take-on-tech-in-china

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/42-a-conversation-with-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen

From Russia with Likes (Part 1). Guest: Renée DiResta

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/5-from-russia-with-likes-part-1

From Russia with Likes (Part 2). Guest: Renée DiResta

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/6-from-russia-with-likes-part-2

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Imagine it's the Cold War. Imagine that the Soviet Union puts itself in a position to influence the television programming of the entire Western world — more than a billion viewers.

While this might sound like science fiction, it’s representative of the world we're living in, with TikTok being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/

Pew's recent study on how TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens

Axios' "Washington turns up the heat on TikTok"

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/07/congress-tiktok-china-privacy-data?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Article on recent Congressional responses to the threat of TikTok
Felix Krause on TikTok's keystroke tracking

https://twitter.com/KrauseFx/status/1560372509639311366

A revelation that TikTok has code to observe keypad input and all taps
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

A Fresh Take on Tech in China with Rui Ma and Duncan Clark

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/44-a-fresh-take-on-tech-in-china

A Conversation with Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/42-a-conversation-with-facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen

From Russia with Likes (Part 1). Guest: Renée DiResta

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/5-from-russia-with-likes-part-1

From Russia with Likes (Part 2). Guest: Renée DiResta

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/6-from-russia-with-likes-part-2

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Previous Episode

Spotlight — How might a long-term stock market transform tech?

At Center for Humane Technology, we often talk about multipolar traps — which arise when individuals have an incentive to act in ways that are beneficial to them in the short term, but detrimental to the group in the long term. Think of social media companies that compete for our attention, so that when TikTok introduces an even-more addictive feature, Facebook and Twitter have to mimic it in order to keep up, sending us all on a race to the bottom of our brainstems.

Intervening at the level of multipolar traps has extraordinary leverage. One such intervention is the Long Term Stock Exchange — a U.S. national securities exchange serving companies and investors who share a long-term vision. Instead of asking public companies to pollute less or be less addictive while holding them accountable to short-term shareholder value, the Long-Term Stock Exchange creates a new playing field, which incentivizes the creation of long-term stakeholder value.

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we’re airing an episode of a podcast called ZigZag — a fellow member of the TED Audio Collective. In an exploration of how technology companies might transcend multipolar traps, we're sharing with you ZigZag’s conversation with Long Term Stock Exchange founder Eric Ries.

CORRECTION: In the episode, we say that TikTok has outcompeted Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. In fact, TikTok has outcompeted Facebook, but not yet YouTube or Instagram — TikTok has 1 billion monthly users, while YouTube has 2.6 billion and Instagram has 2 billion. However, we can say that TikTok is on a path toward outcompeting YouTube and Instagram.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

An Alternative to Silicon Valley Unicorns with Mara Zepeda & Kate “Sassy” Sassoon: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/54-an-alternative-to-silicon-valley-unicorns

A Problem Well-Stated Is Half-Solved with Daniel Schmachtenberger: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/a-problem-well-stated-is-half-solved

Here’s Our Plan And We Don’t Know with Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, and Stephanie Lepp: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/46-heres-our-plan-and-we-dont-know

Next Episode

Fighting With Mirages of Each Other — with Adam Mastroianni

Have you ever lost a friend to misperception? Have you lost a friend or a family member to the idea that your views got so different, that it was time to end the relationship — perhaps by unfriending each other on Facebook?

As it turns out, we often think our ideological differences are far greater than they actually are. Which means: we’re losing relationships and getting mired in polarization based on warped visions of each other.

This week on Your Undivided Attention, we're talking with Adam Mastroianni, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School who studies how we perceive and misperceive our social worlds. Together with Adam, we're going to explore how accurate — and inaccurate — our views of each other are. As you listen to our conversation, keep in mind that relationship you might have lost to misperception, and that you might be able to revive as a result of what you hear.

CORRECTIONS: In the episode, Adam says in 1978, 85% of people said they'd vote for a Black president, but the actual percentage is 80.4%. Tristan says that Republicans estimate that more than a third of Democrats are LGBTQ, but the actual percentage is 32%. Finally, Tristan refers to Anil Seth's notion of cognitive impenetrability, but that term was actually coined by the Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher Zenon W. Pylyshyn.
RECOMMENDED MEDIA
Widespread Misperceptions of Long-term Attitude Change
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2107260119
Adam Mastroianni's research paper showing how stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and how these misperceptions can lend legitimacy to policies that people may not actually prefer

Experimental History
https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/
Adam's blog, where he shares original data and thinks through ideas

Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y
Academic study showing that Americans are living in what researchers called a “false social reality” with respect to misperceptions about climate views
RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Mind the (Perception) Gap with Dan Vallone

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/33-mind-the-perception-gap

The Courage to Connect. Guests: Ciaran O’Connor and John Wood, Jr.

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/30-the-courage-to-connect

Transcending the Internet Hate Game with Dylan Marron

https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/52-transcending-the-internet-hate-game