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Speaker 1: You know, I was sitting on my couch just a

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few weeks ago, doom scrolling as you do, and it

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honestly felt like I had stumbled into a digital wake awake. Yeah,

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it is late January, the big deadline was looming, and

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my entire feed was just well, it was grief. It

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was full of people wearing all black in their videos,

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playing that sad violin music, you know, the one, giving

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these like tearful oscar worthy goodbye speeches to their followers.

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There were literal mock funerals happening in the comment sections.

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It wasn't just a joke. There was this genuine, palpable

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panic that the screen was about to go black for good.

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Speaker 2: It was a huge cultural flashpoint, wasn't it.

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Speaker 3: I Mean, we really saw the intensity of the connection

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people have with this platform. The clock had run out,

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the courts had spoken, and the ultimatum from the government

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was it was binary and it was brutal cool. Separate

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from China or get banned in America.

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Speaker 2: That was it. It really felt like the end of

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an era was upon us.

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Speaker 1: It really really did. It felt like a full blown

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evacuation drill online. I had creators, you know, practically screaming

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at me through the screen. Download your data, save your drafts,

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follow me on Instagram, here's my YouTube, here's my substack.

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It was absolute.

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Speaker 2: Chaos, the Great Migration.

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Speaker 1: The Great Migration exactly, and then the plot twist, the

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funeral gets canceled. The patient makes this miraculous recovery. Right

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there on the operating table. We'll get the headline that

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a deal has been struck, the ink is dry, and

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the app is officially saved. It's staying in the US.

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Speaker 3: A massive corporate and geopolitical victory.

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Speaker 2: Theoretically.

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Speaker 1: Theoretically is the perfect word there, because that is the massive,

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massive irony we are unpacking today. The app was saved,

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it is now legal, safe and quote US owned. And

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yet the moments that news broke, the user started fleeing.

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We were seeing a one hundred and fifty percent spike

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in voluntary deletions of the very app. People were crying

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about losing just what a few weeks ago.

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Speaker 2: It is the TikTok paradox. It's fascinating.

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Speaker 3: We went from please don't take this away from us

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to get this thing off my phone immediately in the

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span of about seventy two hours.

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Speaker 1: So welcome to throwing threads. I'm your host, and today

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we're pulling apart the threads of this incredibly complex story.

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We aren't just talking about as social media app. We're

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talking about a crisis of trust, the intricate scenes of

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data sovereignty, and what happens when the solution to a

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problem scares people more than the problem itself.

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Speaker 3: And I'm here to help guide us through the legal,

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the technical, and maybe even the psychological layers of this,

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because you're absolutely right, this is about so much more

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than dance challenges or viral recipes. It's about who owns

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your digital identity.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so here is our mission for today's thrilling threads.

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We really need to understand why a victory for the

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platform became a total nightmare for the user base. We

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are going to dissect the anatomy of this new US

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ownership deal, like who actually holds the keys to the kingdom. Now,

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we're going to go line by line through those privacy

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policy updates. It sent everyone into a complete spiral, and

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we have to look at the glitch, that mysterious technical

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blackout that happened right as the deal closed. It's just

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too convenient.

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Speaker 3: And we absolutely cannot ignore the political element. There are serious,

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documented accusations of censorship following the sale that we need

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to examine very very closely.

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Speaker 1: Well, it's stop scrolling and start digging.

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Speaker 2: Let's get into it.

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Speaker 1: I think we have to start with the rescue because

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to understand why people are leaving, you first have to

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understand the context of the deal that was supposed to

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make them stay. For years, the narrative around TikTok in

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the US has been a pressure cooker. This didn't just

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pop up out of nowhere, right.

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Speaker 3: This didn't happen overnight. This is the culmination of years

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and years of scrutiny from the Committee on Foreign Investment

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in the United States what's known as CFIUS cfi US.

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Speaker 1: Right, I've heard that acronym.

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Speaker 3: A lot, and the core issue for them was always

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the ownership structure. The parent company Bitedance is Chinese, and

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under Chinese national security laws, specifically the National Intelligence Law

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of twenty seventeen, companies can be compelled. They can be

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forced to assist the state in intelligence.

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Speaker 1: Gathering, which is I mean a terrifying prospect when you

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think about the sheer volume of data involved with an

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app like tiktoks.

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Speaker 3: The scale of it, it's astronomical. So the fear from

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US officials was always twofold. First data security, right, meaning

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can the Chinese government see, for example, the precise location

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data of American troops based on their fitness tracking videos

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or what American teenagers are saying in their private messages.

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Speaker 1: And the second fear was foreign influence right, the idea

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that they could tweak the algorithm exactly.

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Speaker 3: The algorithm is the crown jewel. Could they use it

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to subtly make Americans angrier at each other? Could they

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suppress new stories or narratives that were critical of the

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Chinese government?

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Speaker 1: Information warfare via algorithm precisely.

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Speaker 3: It's a very subtle but an incredibly powerful weapon. And

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that fear, that dual fear, is what drove the US

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government to issue the ultimatum vest or vanish, the breakup

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or get out order.

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Speaker 1: A lot of US I think thought they wouldn't actually

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do it. It just seemed too big to fail, too

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culturally ingrained to just switch off. But they really pushed

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it to the brink. And then this joint venture was announced.

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Speaker 3: And this was pitched as the perfect compromise solution instead

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of a total shutdown, which would have been politically messy.

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The US operations of TikTok were carved out and moved

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under a brand new corporate.

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Speaker 1: Entity, a whole new company.

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Speaker 3: A whole new company. And the critical piece of this puzzle,

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the thing that was supposed to fix everything, is that

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this new entity is majority US owned.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so on paper, problem solved. No more Chinese ownership dominance.

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The threat is neutralized. But we have to talk about

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the specific characters in this play, because the person who

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took the victory lap wasn't a CEO or a tech founder.

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It was President Donald Trump.

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Speaker 3: He was incredibly vocal about brokering this specific deal. He

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made it a centerpiece of his tech policy. Really, he

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framed it as a personal achievement.

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Speaker 1: I have the quote right here in the language is well,

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it's distinct. He said he was so happy to have

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helped in saving TikTok. But then he went on to

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describe the new owners, and this is the part that

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really got people's attention. He said, the app will now

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be owned by a group of great American patriots and investors.

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Speaker 3: That specific phrase, great American patriots. That is where the

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first thread really starts to fray for a lot of

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the users.

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Speaker 1: What do you think that is well.

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Speaker 3: In a standard mergers and acquisitions announcement, you talk about

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shareholder value, you talk about strategic synergy, or maybe market stabilization.

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You don't usually describe a multi billion dollar tech acquisition

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as an act of patriotism.

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Speaker 1: It reframes the whole thing, doesn't it. It stops being a

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neutral tech utility like a telephone line or a server,

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and it starts feeling like a national asset.

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Speaker 2: Or, depending on your politics, a political asset.

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Speaker 1: Exactly.

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Speaker 3: It signals a profound ideological shift. It implies that the

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app now has an allegiance, a loyalty. Remember, the entire

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selling point of this deal to the American public was security.

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The press release promised that US user data would be

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protected by domestic safeguards. They promised the recommendation algorithm, that

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secret sauce that keeps you scrolling for hours and hours

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would be free from any foreign tampering.

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Speaker 1: Tighter oversight, stronger security. We are building a digital wall

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around the data. That was the message.

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Speaker 3: It sounded like the perfect solution. Sovereignty solved, the threat

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of Beijing removed from the equation, So if.

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Speaker 1: Your primary worry was China, this should have been a

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champagne moment. You should be cleeping easy at night knowing

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that patriots are guarding the server room.

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Speaker 3: In theory, yes, absolutely, but the reaction wasn't relief. It

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was immediate, widespread suspicion, because almost instantly, the user base

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shifted their anxiety from who is losing control of this

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app to who is gaining control of it?

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Speaker 1: And that general anxiety needed a trigger. It needed something

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tangible to latch onto, and boy, oh boy, did it

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get one.

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Speaker 2: It got one.

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Speaker 1: The dreaded terms of service update.

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Speaker 2: The click grap moment, the moment of truth.

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Speaker 1: We are all guilty of this. You get the pop up,

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you scroll to the bottom at mock speed, and you

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just like, I agree, yeah, because you just want to

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watch the video of the cat jumping over the cucumber.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: We never ate it, never, We just want the content.

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Speaker 3: But this time the context was completely different. People were

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hyper aware of the ownership change. The news cycle had

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been dominating their feeds for weeks, so for the first time,

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maybe ever, people actually read it, or, to.

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Speaker 1: Be more accurate, screenshots of the scariest parts started circulating

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on x and Instagram and everywhere else.

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Speaker 2: The panic went viral.

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Speaker 1: It really did. So let's break down this list, because

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we have the source material on the new privacy policy

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right here. It lists categories of sensitive data that this

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new patriotic TikTok entity can now collect or process. And

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some of these are well, they're intense. The first one

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that just set the Internet on fire immigration status.

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Speaker 3: That is a radioactive data point in the current political climate.

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There is no other way to describe it.

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Speaker 1: Why, I mean just why, Why on earth does a

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short form video app need to know if I have

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a Green card or a visa. I'm there to learn advance,

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not to file for asylum. What's the justification?

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Speaker 3: Well, before we even get to the why, let's look

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at the full scope, because.

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Speaker 2: It's not just that one thing. The list is long.

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Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, Let's go down the lists. So we

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have immigration status, we have sexual orientation, we have gender identity,

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we have precise location data and we're not talking New York.

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We're talking one twenty three Main Street.

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Speaker 2: Apartment four B down to the meter.

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Speaker 1: Private messages, AI interactions, and maybe most concerning of all

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data link to minors.

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Speaker 3: It is a comprehensive surveillance list. There is no other

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way to put it. It covers nearly every sensitive aspect

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of a person's life.

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Speaker 1: That phrase AI interactions. That one really stuck out to

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me too. We are moving into a world where people

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use chatbots almost like therapists or personal assistance.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: So, if I'm talking to a TikTok ai filter or

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some kind of bot, I'm confessing my anxieties or asking

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for advice on a personal relationship, are they recording that?

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Speaker 3: Are they analyzing it under these new terms, Yes, they

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certainly can. It's feeding the model, it's helping them train

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their AI, and it's potentially feeding a very, very detailed

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profile about you.

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Speaker 1: But let's circle back to immigration status. I want you

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to play the devil's advocate here for a second, or

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maybe the corporate defense attorney. Is there any legitimate, non

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nefarious reason for this or is it just as bad

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as it looks on the surface.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So if we look at this through a purely

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legal lens and we take off our user hat for

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a moment, some legal experts have pointed out that this

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language isn't entirely unique to TikTok It's a trend in

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what lawyers call defensive drafting.

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Speaker 1: Defensive drafting, explain that to me what does that mean?

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Speaker 3: Basically, corporate lawyers are terrified of being sued or fined

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by state regulators. Many US states now have extremely specific

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and very aggressive privacy laws, you know, California, Illinois, Virginia, others.

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And these laws require companies to disclose anything they might

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conceivably collect, even if they don't actively go out and

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hunt for it.

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Speaker 1: So you're saying, if I make a video where I

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say I'm an undocumented immigrant and I'm proud, or I

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share a story about my visa application issues, the app

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has now technically collected that information just because I posted.

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Speaker 3: It exactly, or perhaps more likely, if their algorithm infers

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it based on the content you watch.

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Speaker 2: If you watch fifty videos in a.

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Speaker 3: Row about green card application tips, the algorithm tags you

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with an interest in that topic. So the lawyers, to

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be safe list immigration status in the policy to cover

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their bases. I see they're essentially saying, look, we might

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stumble across this data in the course of operating our platform,

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so we are listing it here so you can't sue

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us later for processing it without your explicit disclosure and consent.

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Speaker 1: So it's a legal shield, is cya.

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Speaker 3: It's a legal shield. But here is the fundamental problem.

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Users don't think like corporate lawyers. Users think like well,

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like human beings. They see a list of demands for

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their most private information.

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Speaker 1: It's perception versus precedent.

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Speaker 3: Correct, That's the perfect way to put it. It doesn't matter

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if Facebook or Instagram has a similar clause buried somewhere

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deep in their fifty pages of fine print, and they

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often do. What matters is the timing.

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Speaker 1: The timing is everything here everything.

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Speaker 3: You have a platform that was just forcibly sold to

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a business group explicitly labeled American Patriots, a deal endorsed

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by a hardline administration known for its very public and

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very aggressive stance on immigration, and then three days later,

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that same platform is knocking on your digital door asking

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for your immigration status and your precise location.

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Speaker 1: It feels targeted. It feels like a trap. It feels

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like someone is coming to your door asking for your papers,

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but they're wearing a mask that says entertainment. It's incredibly chilling.

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Speaker 3: It completely shifts the fear dynamic. For years, the argument

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from Washington was China is watching you now. Well, for

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a significant portion of the user based immigrants, activists, political dissidents,

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minority groups, the fear is my own government, or at

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least people who are ideologically aligned with them, are watching

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me now.

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Speaker 1: And that fear is so much more visceral, so much

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more immediate. If you are a dreamer or you're in

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the LGBTQ plus community, seeing sexual orientation and immigration status

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on a list of data points collected by a Trump

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aligned entity, that isn't just a data privacy issue. That

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feels like an existential threat.

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Speaker 3: It converts the app from an entertainment utility, from a

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fun escape into a potential surveillance tool in the eyes

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of the user. And that's a bell you simply cannot unring.

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Once you feel watched, you can't dance the same way.

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Speaker 1: And let's not just gloss over precise location that combined

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with immigration status, that is technically a deportation targeting tool.

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I mean, if I know who you are, what your

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legal status is, and exactly where you are standing at

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this very moment.

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Speaker 3: Technically, yes, the capability is there now, whether they would

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ever use it that way as a whole other legal

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and ethical question but the capacity is what drives the fear.

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And in the security world we always say judge system

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bit its capabilities, not by its stated intentions.

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Speaker 1: And while everyone was hyperventilating over the privacy policy and

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what it all meant, the app itself decided to have

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a complete and total, nervous breakdown. The glitch, the timing

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was just it was almost cinematic. It's too perfect. Right

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as the hashtag hashtag delete TikTok started to gain serious

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momentum and trend, the app broke. It was like a

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bad movie script.

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Speaker 3: It was the perfect storm for a conspiracy theory. You

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couldn't have planned it better if you had tried to.

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Speaker 1: So tell us what happened technically, because it wasn't just

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a simple case of the app is down. The failures

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were weirdly specific and seemed to affect certain people more

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than others.

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Speaker 3: Right, it wasn't a total outage. Users started reporting that

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load times were slowing to a crawl. Things were buffering endlessly,

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but more alarmingly, uploads were vanishing.

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Speaker 2: Into the ether.

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Speaker 1: What do you mean by vanishing?

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Speaker 3: You post a video, your phone would say upload complete

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and then it would just be gone.

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Speaker 2: It wasn't in your drafts.

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Speaker 3: It wasn't on your profile, no notification, no error message,

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just gone wow. And then a lot of people started

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getting the dreaded zero views bug, which for a creator

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is like shouting into a void. Usually even a bad

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video gets a few hundred views just from the algorithm

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testing it out. Zero implies the distribution mechanism has been

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deliberately turned off for your content.

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Speaker 1: And I saw reports that some high profile creators, specifically

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political ones, people who are very critical of the administration,

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saw their feeds go completely blank, like their entire account

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was wiped clean for a few hours.

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Speaker 3: Yes, that happened to several prominent accounts, so naturally the

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Internet did what the Internet does.

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Speaker 1: It's spiral.

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Speaker 2: It's spiral.

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Speaker 3: They didn't assume, oh, a server rack probably overheated in

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a data center in Virginia.

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Speaker 2: They assumed the.

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Speaker 1: Purge has begun, which given the context, doesn't seem like

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that big of a leap, not at all.

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Speaker 3: And TikTok's official explanation was a incredibly, almost comically mundane.

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They released a short statement blaming a power outage at

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a major US data center. They insisted the issues were

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purely technical and temporary.

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Speaker 1: A power outage.

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Speaker 2: That was the official line.

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Speaker 1: Do you buy that? It's implausible.

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Speaker 3: Look on a technical level, data centers loose power. It

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happens more often than people think. Aws goes down, Azure

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goes down, Cooling systems fail, backup generators don't kick in.

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It is a physical reality of the Internet. It relies

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on copper and electricity and plumbing. But again, we have

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to go back to the issue of trust. When trust

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is high, you accept power outage at face value. When

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trust is at rock bottom and you have just signed

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a deeply controversial ownership deal involving the transfer of control

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over the entire platform, power outage sounds a lot like

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data migration.

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Speaker 1: That was the theory. I saw everywhere people were convinced

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saying they aren't offline. They are actively migrating our data

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to the new servers, or worse, they are scrubbing the content.

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They're deleting videos they don't want the new owners to see,

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or that the new owners don't want on.

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Speaker 3: The platform, a soft reboot to sanitize the platform. It's

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a very common fear during any corporate acquisition that the

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new owners are coming into clean house.

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Speaker 1: And that suspicion wasn't helped at all by the fact

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that when things came back online, the vibe just felt different.

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The algorithm felt.

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Speaker 3: Off, which brings us to the most contentious part of

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this entire fallout, the censorship accusations.

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Speaker 1: This is where the rubber really meets the road. We

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established earlier that the new Owners are a Trump aligned

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business group. That is the description from the source material.

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So the reports start coming in almost immediately after the

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glitch resolves. Creators are claiming that their political content is

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being systematically choked off. It's not being banned outright. You

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don't get a user band notification. It's much much subtler

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than that.

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Speaker 2: It's shadow banning.

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Speaker 1: Right, the classic shadow ban. You post a video that's

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critical of the administration, or maybe it's discussing a protest

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or just presenting a viewpoint that's not aligned with the

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new owner. The video exists, you can see it on

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your own profile, but no one else sees it.

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Speaker 2: It never hits the for you page.

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Speaker 1: Never, it gets zero traction. It's like being put in

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a soundproof room with a glass window. You can scream

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all you want, but nobody can hear you.

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Speaker 3: And our source material for this episode mentions that there

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were independently confirmed reports of instances of suppressed content critical

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of President Trump Specifically, this wasn't just anecdotal user feeling.

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Journalists were able to verify some of these claims.

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Speaker 1: This is the critical juncture in the story. Picktok. The

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00:18:32,279 --> 00:18:37,359
corporation officially denied this. Their PR team went into overdrive.

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They said there are no content bands in place. They

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blame the algorithm trying to recalibrate after the massive outage.

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It's not censorship, is just a broken server.

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Speaker 3: But the pattern was very hard to ignore. If you

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are a creator who critiques the president and suddenly your

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views drop from a million per video to practically zero,

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00:18:55,759 --> 00:18:58,920
the very weak his patriots take over the app. You

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don't need a degree in computer science to feel suspicious, right.

397
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Correlation isn't always causation, but sometimes it is really really

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staring you in the face.

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Speaker 1: It just brings us back to that massive central irony

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of this whole situation. The entire intervention by the US

401
00:19:13,799 --> 00:19:17,039
government was framed as a mission to protect Americans from

402
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foreign influence and potential censorship exactly.

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00:19:19,960 --> 00:19:23,039
Speaker 3: The argument was that ByteDance under pressure from the Chinese

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Communist Party might censor content that Beijing didn't like.

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Speaker 2: That was the threat we had to be saved from.

406
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Speaker 1: And the result of that intervention is that US users

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are now accusing the new US owners of domestic political censorship.

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We traded one fear for another. We traded a hypothetical

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foreign censor for a perceived domestic one.

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Speaker 2: It makes you wonder what the real goal was.

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Speaker 1: It really does. It raises the question is the goal

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of these kinds of government interventions actually free speech or

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is it controlled speech?

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Speaker 3: The users seem to have decided it's the latter. It's

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not we want a free and O and Internet for everyone.

416
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It's we want our guys controlling the narrative, not their guys.

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And if you happen to not be on our guys team,

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well you're out of luck.

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Speaker 1: And that realization, that chilling realization, is what is driving

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the exodus. Let's talk about the refugees.

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Speaker 2: TikTok refugees.

422
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Speaker 3: It's a fascinating term to see popping up in biodeescriptions

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on other apps, like on Instagram or YouTube.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so evocative.

425
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Speaker 3: It implies displacement. It implies you didn't want to leave,

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that this was your home, but you were forced to

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for your own safety or your own principles, and.

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Speaker 1: The stats are undeniable. We set it at the top,

429
00:20:32,319 --> 00:20:35,240
but it's worth repeating. App deletions are up one hundred

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and fifty percent since the deal was announced. Now we

431
00:20:38,119 --> 00:20:40,480
have to be fair here. The app still has two

432
00:20:40,599 --> 00:20:44,000
hundred million users in the US. It isn't MySpace yet.

433
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It's not a ghost town overnight. No.

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Speaker 3: The raw engagement is still very strong.

435
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Speaker 2: But the trend is the story.

436
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Speaker 3: The velocity of the change is what's alarming for the platform.

437
00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:56,480
These trends often start with the early adopters and the

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cultural creators. If they leave, the audience eventually follows them.

439
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Speaker 1: I think that's the most important psychological part of this

440
00:21:02,559 --> 00:21:05,799
whole story. Before the deal, even with all the fears

441
00:21:05,799 --> 00:21:09,000
about China, users felt like the app was theirs. It

442
00:21:09,079 --> 00:21:13,839
was this chaotic, messy, creative community space where weird trends

443
00:21:13,880 --> 00:21:15,839
happened organically from the bottom up.

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Speaker 3: We call that a sense of digital ownership. It's not

445
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legal ownership, of course, but it's a powerful psychological ownership.

446
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The users create the culture, so they feel like they

447
00:21:24,160 --> 00:21:26,599
own the space. It's like a public park the city

448
00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:28,839
owns the land, but the people who use it every

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day feel like it belongs to them.

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Speaker 1: And after the deal, what happened to that feeling?

451
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Speaker 3: That illusion was completely shattered. The updated terms, the glitches,

452
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the censorship claims, it all sent one clear message. This

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app is a tool, and it is a tool owned

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and operated by powerful people with a clear agenda.

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Speaker 1: The park has been fenced off exactly.

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Speaker 3: The park has been fenced off, and now the regards

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at the gate, checking IDs and telling you what you

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can and can't say.

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Speaker 1: There was a line in the research that really hit me.

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Something has broken, not the app, the belief that it

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was theirs.

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Speaker 3: It's a loss of innocence, a fundamental breach of the

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social contract of the platform. You can't just dance anymore.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 3: Every time you open the app, you have these lingering

466
00:22:10,799 --> 00:22:13,440
questions in the back of your mind. Who is watching

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00:22:13,519 --> 00:22:16,279
this video? Who is access to my data? Why is

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00:22:16,319 --> 00:22:19,200
this specific video on my for you page? Is it

469
00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:21,799
because it's genuinely funny or is it because someone wants

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me to see it?

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Speaker 1: That algorithm question is huge. We used to think the

472
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algorithm was this like mystical, almost psychic thing that just

473
00:22:29,559 --> 00:22:32,480
knew we liked cat videos or cooking tutorials. Now it

474
00:22:32,519 --> 00:22:37,119
feels engineered, it feels compromised. How are decisions like algorithm

475
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:40,279
boosts being made? Now? Yeah, that's a question nobody can answer.

476
00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:44,079
Speaker 3: And when the magic box becomes a black box of

477
00:22:44,160 --> 00:22:49,119
potential political influence, the fun just evaporates. If you suspect

478
00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:52,119
the machine is trying to manipulate you, you stop wanting

479
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:53,440
to engage with the machine.

480
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:55,839
Speaker 1: It's the Splinternet in action, isn't it. This is what

481
00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:56,920
people have been warning about.

482
00:22:57,039 --> 00:22:57,680
Speaker 2: It really is.

483
00:22:58,359 --> 00:23:01,079
Speaker 3: We are watching the end of the globe Internet ideal

484
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,599
in real time. We are moving toward a fractured web,

485
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:08,960
a US Internet, a Chinese Internet, a European Internet, and

486
00:23:09,200 --> 00:23:12,160
in each of those zones, the local powers want total

487
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:15,079
control over the data and the narrative, and.

488
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:17,039
Speaker 1: The user is just stuck in the middle, trying to

489
00:23:17,039 --> 00:23:20,839
watch a recipe video without accidentally giving up their civil liberties.

490
00:23:21,039 --> 00:23:24,200
Speaker 3: Essentially, yes, the user has become the product in a

491
00:23:24,319 --> 00:23:27,359
much more dangerous way. It's not just about our data

492
00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:29,119
being sold for ad revenue. I think we all kind

493
00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:31,599
of accepted that faust bargain years ago.

494
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:32,680
Speaker 1: Right, the ship has sailed.

495
00:23:33,200 --> 00:23:36,839
Speaker 3: Now we are the product for political capital, our attention,

496
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:40,519
our eyeballs, our emotions are being weaponized in a domestic

497
00:23:40,559 --> 00:23:41,559
political context.

498
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:44,440
Speaker 1: It's exhausting. I feel exhausted just talking about it.

499
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:46,680
Speaker 2: It is, and that is why people are leaving.

500
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:50,039
Speaker 3: It's not because they suddenly hate the app's features, but

501
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:52,920
because they are exhausted by the baggage that now comes

502
00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:54,920
with it. They just want to have fun, and the

503
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:56,160
fun has become heavy.

504
00:23:56,279 --> 00:23:59,559
Speaker 1: The TikTok paradox, Yeah, saved by the deal, deleted by

505
00:23:59,599 --> 00:24:02,000
the user. It really is the perfect title for this

506
00:24:02,039 --> 00:24:02,559
whole mess.

507
00:24:02,839 --> 00:24:05,440
Speaker 3: It highlights a fundamental truth that I think a lot

508
00:24:05,480 --> 00:24:07,880
of people in Washington and Silicon Valley forget.

509
00:24:08,440 --> 00:24:10,000
Speaker 2: You cannot legislate trust.

510
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:12,759
Speaker 3: You can force a sale, you can change the board

511
00:24:12,759 --> 00:24:15,119
of directors, you can rewrite the code from the ground up.

512
00:24:15,759 --> 00:24:18,400
But if the users don't trust you, you have bought

513
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:20,920
an empty shell. You've bought the building, but all the

514
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:21,960
tenants have moved down.

515
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:24,680
Speaker 1: You've bought a ghost town, or at least a town

516
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:26,119
that is rapidly emptying out.

517
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:28,640
Speaker 3: Two hundred million users is a lot of momentum. But

518
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:32,680
momentum works both ways. Once the cool kids leave, once

519
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:36,519
the creators feel stifled or unsafe. The decline can be

520
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:38,079
much faster than the rise.

521
00:24:38,319 --> 00:24:40,759
Speaker 1: We've seen it before. We saw it with Vine, we

522
00:24:40,799 --> 00:24:44,359
saw it with MySpace. Even platforms that seem invincible like

523
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:47,200
x have seen huge shifts in their user base and

524
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:51,599
culture based on ownership changes. Tech giants seem immortal until

525
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:53,359
the day they aren't exactly.

526
00:24:53,839 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 3: History is littered with essential apps that are now just

527
00:24:57,319 --> 00:24:59,920
forgotten digital artifacts.

528
00:25:00,079 --> 00:25:02,119
Speaker 1: We wrap up this deep dive, this journey through the

529
00:25:02,119 --> 00:25:05,839
threads of the TikTok saga. Let's just quickly recap the

530
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:08,279
journey we've been on, because it's been a wild ride

531
00:25:08,279 --> 00:25:09,559
in a very short period of time.

532
00:25:09,759 --> 00:25:11,519
Speaker 3: We started with a deal that was supposed to be

533
00:25:11,519 --> 00:25:15,480
a patriotic victory, President Trump saving the app from the

534
00:25:15,519 --> 00:25:17,240
clutches of China.

535
00:25:16,759 --> 00:25:19,720
Speaker 1: Which immediately led to a privacy policy update that asked

536
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:24,079
for things like immigration status and sexual orientation, which absolutely

537
00:25:24,160 --> 00:25:25,200
terrified the user base.

538
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:28,680
Speaker 3: Then came the technical glitches, the so called power outage

539
00:25:28,799 --> 00:25:31,839
that looks suspiciously like a data purge or a clumsy

540
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:33,960
migration to the users on the ground.

541
00:25:33,799 --> 00:25:37,759
Speaker 1: And finally the direct accusations of political censorship, the palpable

542
00:25:37,799 --> 00:25:41,960
feeling that the new patriotic owners were systematically silencing critics,

543
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:45,319
leading to a massive, quantifiable exodus of trust.

544
00:25:45,519 --> 00:25:47,759
Speaker 3: It is a perfect cake study and how fragile the

545
00:25:47,799 --> 00:25:51,000
relationship between a platform and its community really is. And

546
00:25:51,039 --> 00:25:53,559
it shows how quickly the concept of safety can feel

547
00:25:53,599 --> 00:25:55,759
like danger when the context changes.

548
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: It leaves us with a lot to think about regarding

549
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:01,640
the future of our digital lives, not just on TikTok,

550
00:26:01,759 --> 00:26:02,519
but everywhere.

551
00:26:02,799 --> 00:26:05,599
Speaker 3: I have one final provocative thought on this, if I may.

552
00:26:05,799 --> 00:26:08,559
We often talk about banning apps. We think the only

553
00:26:08,559 --> 00:26:10,519
way to kill a platform is for the government to

554
00:26:10,519 --> 00:26:10,880
pass a.

555
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:13,079
Speaker 1: Lot and shut it down right the kill switch.

556
00:26:13,599 --> 00:26:17,279
Speaker 3: But this story suggests something different, something maybe more insidious.

557
00:26:17,799 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 2: You don't need to ban an app to destroy it.

558
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,039
Speaker 3: You just need to make the users feel like they

559
00:26:23,039 --> 00:26:26,799
are being watched, not by a distant foreign adversary, but

560
00:26:26,839 --> 00:26:28,319
by their own government.

561
00:26:28,599 --> 00:26:31,440
Speaker 1: That is a chilling thought. The death of fun by

562
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:33,480
a thousand cuts of suspicion.

563
00:26:33,599 --> 00:26:36,160
Speaker 3: It's the death of digital freedom disguised as an act

564
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:37,400
of national security.

565
00:26:37,559 --> 00:26:40,559
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, on that cheerful note. We want to hear

566
00:26:40,599 --> 00:26:43,119
from you. This is thrilling threads, and this conversation isn't over.

567
00:26:43,359 --> 00:26:44,400
We want to know what you think?

568
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:46,559
Speaker 2: What is your stand here? Where do you fall on this?

569
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:51,039
Speaker 1: If a platform changes ownership to quote protect you, but

570
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:55,279
then immediately asks for your immigration status and your precise location,

571
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:59,079
do you feel safer or do you feel targeted?

572
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:00,759
Speaker 2: Are you one of refugees?

573
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:03,759
Speaker 3: Did you delete the app in protest? Or are you

574
00:27:03,839 --> 00:27:06,240
staying put maybe hoping to ride out the storm.

575
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,039
Speaker 1: Leave a comment and let us know. We really want

576
00:27:09,039 --> 00:27:12,119
to understand where the line is for you, because apparently,

577
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:14,279
for one hundred and fifty percent more people this week,

578
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,519
that line was crossed. Indeed, thanks for listening to thrilling threads.

579
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:20,079
We'll see you in the next deep dive.

580
00:27:20,279 --> 00:27:23,960
Speaker 3: Stay curious and always always.

581
00:27:23,759 --> 00:27:24,640
Speaker 2: Read the fine print.

582
00:27:24,759 --> 00:27:26,599
Speaker 1: Always read the fine print. Bye everyone,