TikTok

Wired writes that Zen Goziker says he has met with Congressional staff members to share concerns about TikTok’s data practices and claims to be the source for multiple articles about the company and “Project Texas” based on his experiences working there for six months.

Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who’s apparently assembling an investor supergroup to buy the beleaguered app, wants to cut a deal to buy it sans algorithm and rebuild it, according to The Washington Post yesterday.

LinkedIn confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s testing a short-form video feed housed within a new “video” tab on the app, which one user shows off here.

It’s not just TikTok — other apps like Shein, Temu, and WeChat are popular in the US, too. The TikTok ban focuses on ByteDance-owned subsidiaries including CapCut and Lemon8, but includes a carve out for popular shopping apps, The Washington Post reports. On the other hand, “everything app” WeChat could be in a gray area.

In an interview with ABC News, the vice president said the goal of the bill recently passed by the House is to force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell:

Set to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” a TikTok user cut together idyllic, quaint clips of their hometown — followed by a bunch of sterile data centers being built.

From now on, anytime anyone wants to understand the chaotic mess that Amazon has become, I’m just going to send them this TikTok.

The FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Justice Department will brief senators Wednesday on national security threats posed by TikTok, Reuters reports. Senate staffers will get a separate briefing Tuesday.

“I did not handle this situation well from top to bottom, and that is why I have been completely roasted on this app,” said Rep. Jeff Jackson, who posted an explanation of his vote to ban TikTok on TikTok.

The NCAA’s March Madness Live app is also getting a new, swipeable vertical video highlights feed.

I’ll be telling my grandchildren this was Napster.

Italian regulators imposed the fine after finding that TikTok “failed to implement appropriate mechanisms” to monitor content on its platform, “particularly those that may threaten the safety of minors.”

The former Treasury Secretary said on CNBC Thursday that he’s “going to put together a group to buy TikTok.” Such a group would need to have massive buying power, since the app boasts 170 million US users, and has an estimated value in the tens of billions of dollars.

Now that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act has passed in the House of Representatives, TikTok CEO Shou Chew made — what else — a short video appealing to the app’s users to speak up against a ban.

We’ve heard so much about the dangers of TikTok from both sides of the aisle, and even had Trump flip-flop his position ostensibly over the political calculations of banning an app 170 million Americans use. But what exactly did the House select committee see in its secure briefing that led them to vote 50-0 in favor of the bill that would ban the app? If this thing is going to move forward in the Senate it seems like we should at least know the basics.

The former House Speaker said passing a new bill that incentivizes China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok “is not an attempt to ban TikTok. It’s an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-tac-toe. A winner.”

“This is not an attempt to ban TikTok. It’s an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-tac-toe. A winner. A winner.”

I can’t get enough of ad agency creative Dustin Ballard’s AI hijinks: he made The Red Hot Chili Peppers sing a grocery list, turned Lil Jon’s “Get Low” into a time-honored Christmas classic, and showed up a congressional hearing on AI. That’s just a taste.

Appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Trump explained, again, why he no longer supports the push to ban TikTok. “...without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media.”

TheSpAndroid found code within the TikTok app that suggests it’s working on a photo-sharing platform called “TikTok Photos.” One line of code says, “TikTok Photos will be launched soon,” while others invite users to share their posts on the platform.

The former executive expressed interest in buying the app to the founder of TikTok’s parent company, according to The Wall Street Journal. China-based ByteDance could be forced to sell TikTok or else lose access to the US market should Congress pass a new bipartisan bill.

The President said so while addressing reporters in this video from The Associated Press.

The Republican-controlled House is planning a speedy vote on a new bill that could ban TikTok unless it separates from its Chinese parent company. House leaders plan to bring the bill to a vote on Wednesday in an accelerated process that requires a two-thirds vote to pass, according to Semafor.

After months of little serious discussion about TikTok on Capitol Hill, the House Energy and Commerce committee just unanimously passed a bill that could effectively ban the app unless it separates from its Chinese parent company ByteDance.

Apparently TikTok’s push notification warning is working, because congressional staffers say they’re flooded with calls protesting a new play to make Chinese owner ByteDance sell the app:

Reels and longer videos will be included in a new AI recommendation model that Facebook plans to build by 2026, Facebook head Tom Alison tells CNBC. Eventually, Facebook’s core feed may be included in the model as well.