TikTok is the social media sensation that all of Silicon Valley — and a lot of Washington, DC — has their eyes on. The app, created by ByteDance, became famous for rocketing musicians and dancers to stardom. But as its popularity and influence have grown, so has scrutiny of its privacy policies, security, and influence, with legislators voicing concern about its ownership by a Chinese firm. Meanwhile, social media competitors are doing everything they can to knock off TikTok’s features and usurp its short-form video dominance.
As he has ever since taking office, Donald Trump again ordered the DOJ to ignore enforcing the TikTok ban law, this time until December 16th.
The president claims a deal is close, which the WSJ reports will hand control to a US consortium of investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreesen Horowitz.
[The White House]
Congress seemed to think a scrolling video platform was a national security threat. What changed?
The Wall Street Journal interviewed several “clippers,” or the people who dice up longer videos into short, grabby clips that get posted to accounts across Instagram and TikTok. One person, whose clipping business earns $20,000 to $30,000 per month, told the WSJ that “the only way to be famous in today’s internet world is with clips.”
[The Wall Street Journal]
I love this description of falling into the rabbit hole of TikTok Live streams of farm workers and other manual laborers, calmly and quietly going about their work. It’s competence porn that highlights the divide between those of us making stuff, and those of us watching from our phones.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly ignored the bipartisan law banning TikTok from operating in the US unless it’s separated from Chinese parent company ByteDance. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is calling for a new way to avoid a ban without breaking the law. In a draft bill, Markey proposes letting TikTok operate in the US as long as it provides transparency into its content moderation and keeps US user data out of countries like China.
[markey.senate.gov]
YouTube is a hit on TVs, and Meta and TikTok are looking to get in on that battleground, The Information reports. What will launch first: Instagram for TV or Instagram for iPad?
[theinformation.com]
My Picun F8 Pros are not as good as the AirPods Max. But they’re much cheaper — and constantly on sale.
The incredibly weird saga of the ordered, then reversed, then passed, then upheld, then ignored, then ignored even harder attempt to ban one of America’s most popular social networks continues — as it will continue until US-China tensions cool down, everyone forgets it ever happened, or the heat death of the universe.
The platform is globally releasing a self-service “Pre-Release” feature for Artist accounts that allows musicians to easily promote forthcoming album releases. Fans can automatically save unreleased albums to their Spotify or Apple Music libraries so that they don’t miss the album drop and can listen to them instantly upon release.
The preliminary finding in an investigation opened last year says TikTok breached the Digital Services Act’s requirements to publish information about the content of ads, which users are targeted, and who paid for them. Now it’s TikTok’s turn to respond and try to avoid a potential fine worth up to 6 percent of its annual turnover, just weeks after it was fined $600 million for breaking the bloc’s GDPR regulations.
The government’s case could come down to whether the judge thinks MeWe is a closer competitor to Instagram than TikTok.
During an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, President Donald Trump said he’d “be willing” to extend TikTok’s June 19th deadline if its China-based parent company, ByteDance, doesn’t reach a deal to divest the app’s US business in time. China backed out of a potential deal last month after Trump imposed up to 145 percent tariffs on goods imported from the country.
[bloomberg.com]
That’s according to Semafor’s White House correspondent Shelby Talcott. The TikTok turmoil is just going to go on forever, huh?
Attorney General Pam Bondi sent Apple a letter “telling the company it should follow President Donald Trump’s executive order” extending ByteDance’s deadline to sell TikTok by 75 more days, reports Bloomberg. The outlet had reported a similar letter sent to both Google and Apple prior to their decision to restore the app to their online marketplaces in February, too.
