The fate of TikTok in the U.S. is still uncertain as Congress calls for Chinese-owned ByteDance to divest.
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00:00It looks like the Supreme Court is going to vote to upheld the law that bans TikTok in the U.S.
00:06So what's the likelihood of TikTok surviving this legal battle?
00:11It's not looking great for TikTok right now. The Supreme Court sounded skeptical in those
00:16oral arguments on Friday, and we also know that the decision is very, very near. It's next week,
00:23so there's really not a lot of wiggle room in all of this. The Supreme Court,
00:29it looks like that they're going to just go ahead and uphold that law that was implemented
00:33late last year, and President Trump, incoming President Trump, won't be able to do a whole
00:38lot about it because the ban takes effect on the 19th, and he doesn't actually get inaugurated
00:44until the 20th. So there will be at least an interim blackout period, and it doesn't look
00:50like TikTok's going to be coming back up for air, so it will be banned in the United States starting
00:55on that day. So much focus right now seems to be on the ByteDance part of the equation.
01:01Is separating TikTok and its parent company really, is it really that simple? I don't think
01:07it's that simple. Personally, it would be kind of like asking your grandma to give up her beloved
01:12chocolate chip cookie recipe. The idea of a divestiture of this app seems really unlikely.
01:18That is an option for ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok, to sell off the U.S.
01:23arm of its business. That was a conversation that was also happening several years ago when
01:28Trump was pushing for a ban. There was a conversation between Microsoft or Oracle
01:32potentially buying TikTok, and that ended up not going through. It would be just buying that U.S.
01:38arm of TikTok. But it seems unlikely that TikTok is going to reveal that secret sauce,
01:44that algorithm. It's what makes people love the app so much, is that the algorithm is really
01:50sticky. It's very sensitive. If you want to watch a dog video, you're going to get 10 more dog
01:56videos in just a few minutes. It's a very sensitive algorithm. It's very much TikTok's
02:00secret sauce. And so it doesn't seem likely or smart that this company, this global company,
02:07would give away its recipe to a U.S.-based company, particularly given that the United States has
02:14historically produced a lot of the most successful and most compelling social media apps over the
02:18last couple decades, just seems like giving your playbook to the competition, to be totally honest.
02:24Now, what about one of the solutions we heard suggested by one or two of the justices in their
02:30questioning? Something like a warning label that clearly identifies, quote, the risk, although,
02:37you know, we can debate. I mean, there's some debate about what the risk is, right?
02:41What could that look like and how would it work?
02:45It doesn't really get to the root of what the issue at hand really is, which is the sharing of
02:51data. Most users are probably going to ignore that disclaimer. And the concern is about U.S.
02:57users' data being shared with ByteDance. When the People's Republic of China has said in the past
03:05that they have a right to potentially access that data, there's also been several breaches of
03:11security that have been traced back to China. And so in terms of the entire reason the ban is
03:17going into effect, adding a warning label is very much a band-aid. It doesn't really solve the
03:23problem in any way. I think it's unlikely to influence many users to stop using the app.
03:29Most users are not very concerned about their data being shared. They just want to see that
03:34next piece of content in their feed. So when it comes down to the actual debate, I don't think
03:40we'll actually see that be the reason or the solution because it's not really solving anything.