Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s11e30 Episode Script
TikTok Ban
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight".
I'm John Oliver, thank you
so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week full
of horrendous headlines,
from "Millions of Bees
Killed in Wildfires",
to "Armie Hammer Reveals"
"His Mom Gifted Him
a Vasectomy for His 38th Birthday",
to "Mark Zuckerberg Just
Dropped a Single with T-Pain".
That is real, by the way.
It is a cover of "Get Low",
a song T-Pain
did not originally sing,
and you are not ready
for how bad it is.
From the windows to the walls,
'til sweat drops down
my balls,
'til all these bitches crawl,
skeet-skeet, motherfucker,
skeet-skeet, god damn.
That honestly might be
the worst thing I've ever heard.
Sounds like Kidz Bop for adults,
where all the swears are intact,
but there's still a deep lingering
sense that music was a mistake.
I didn't even need
to play you all of that.
I could've just played the way
he sang "motherfucker".
No! Not like that!
Don't enunciate that cleanly,
Mark!
It's like listening to a rap
by the Google Translate voice.
A week of intense headlines regarding
Trump's new cabinet appointees,
which were, even by his low
standards, awful.
For his ambassador to Israel,
he picked a guy who's said
there's
"no such thing as a Palestinian".
For director of national intelligence,
a woman who's repeatedly
promoted Russian propaganda.
For secretary of defense,
a Fox News host,
who, among many other things,
has defended service members
accused of war crimes and said
women don't belong in combat.
For HHS, a conspiracy theorist and
anti-vaxxer with a worm in his brain.
And to top it all off, for AG,
Matt Gaetz,
a man who, in high school,
was voted
"most likely to not be allowed
within 500 feet of here."
That pick was so extreme,
even conservatives
found themselves at a loss.
When I heard that Matt Gaetz was
picked to be attorney general,
I threw up in my mouth.
I'm pretty sure I called him
a clown and a charlatan.
- And you stand by that.
- Yeah.
It must be the worst nomination for
a cabinet position in American history.
I mean, it might,
but get used to it,
because
"the worst blank in American history"
is going to be this administration's
MO going forward.
Get ready for the worst Easter Egg
Roll in American history.
The Easter Bunny will be on fire,
every egg will be filled
with expired mayonnaise
and the kids who don't win will be
immediately put into foster care.
Apparently, when Gaetz
was announced,
there were audible gasps
by House Republicans.
When a reporter asked
congressman Mike Simpson
if Gaetz had the experience
and character to be AG,
he responded: "Are you shittin' me,
that you just asked that question?"
"No!" Which is objectively
the correct response to the idea
that this guy could be
attorney general,
a man who my lawyers
insist I cannot call
"Jeffrey Epstein if he went
to shittier beaches."
So I am not going to do that.
But it didn't stop there.
The head of government affairs
for one environmental advocacy group
told: "Luckily, our environmental
laws are older than 18 years,"
"so Representative Gaetz shouldn't
have much interest in them."
Which is a solid hit, and also,
incredibly grim.
Because as you probably know,
Gaetz was the subject
of both a federal investigation
into sex trafficking,
which concluded last year
without charges,
and "a House investigation
into allegations he engaged"
"in sexual misconduct
and illicit drug use."
That report was due
to be released this week,
but was effectively ended
when he suddenly resigned
to become the country's top
law enforcement officer.
Many are calling for it to be
released anyway, though,
and while Gaetz has denied
any allegations,
damning parts
are already leaking out,
including that one witness
testified to the committee
that Gaetz had sex with her
when she was 17
and another testified
that she witnessed it.
And yet, there is still a question
of whether Republican senators
will reject Gaetz's nomination.
Some have expressed reservations.
Lisa Murkowski has said:
"I don't think it's a serious
nomination for attorney general",
and Susan Collins said:
"I was shocked by the announcement."
"I'm sure there will be a lot
of questions raised at his hearing."
Although don't read
too much into that.
As we all know, the Susan Collins
scale of government ethics goes:
"concerned, but gonna vote him",
"shocked, but gonna vote for him",
"questions raised,
but gonna vote for him",
and "outraged, but fuck it,
still gonna vote for him."
And other Republican senators
have been even more noncommittal.
Do you think
Matt Gaetz is confirmable?
We'll find out, won't we?
- Any concerns about it?
- We'll see.
Senator Kennedy, what do you think
of Matt Gaetz as attorney general?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Yeah. "Happy Thanksgiving."
I'd say that's the most jarring thing
that Kennedy could've said,
but I will remind you,
he could have gone with this.
I can't wait to have
your cock in my mouth.
Yeah.
That's the clip that keeps on giving
and that you never, ever want.
A lot can happen with these nominations
between now and Inauguration Day.
So, for now, let's move on
to our main story tonight,
which concerns TikTok, the social
media app many are addicted to,
thanks to its cooking tutorials,
dances that are impossible for anyone
born before 1985 to look cool doing
and masterpieces like this.
There is truly nothing I love more
than watching this man's videos
and guessing what he's making.
Totally, a snake. Got it.
What a journey!
And honestly, I don't know how TV
is supposed to compete with that.
I'd absolutely watch that guy
host a game show titled
"Dick or Snake?"
It's basically "Is It Cake?"
only with significantly
higher snake-on-dick injuries.
TikTok is massively popular. It has
more than a billion users worldwide
and "170 million monthly
active users in the U.S.",
with fully a third of U.S. adults and
a majority of those under 30 using it.
All of which makes it
pretty remarkable
that it may be on the brink
of going away.
You might have forgotten with
everything else going on this year,
but in April, this happened.
This morning, the clock begins
ticking down for TikTok
after the Senate
last night passed a bill
giving the social media platform's
Chinese parent company an ultimatum:
sell the app or be banned in the U.S.
Lawmakers in both parties say TikTok
poses a serious national security risk.
It's true. TikTok could be
banned by January 19th,
because it's a security threat.
Which sounds frightening,
even if those claims were made
under footage of this orange furball
going to town on its own feet.
"We cannot let the Chinese get
their hands on our private data,"
"like how often Dr. Tuna Fish here
gives himself the full Tarantino."
The point is, Congress came
down on TikTok hard.
When that law passed, with broad
bipartisan support, by the way,
TikTok's users were not thrilled.
An army of young TikTok rebels
are taking a break
from viral dance crazes and
challenges and coming together
to stop government from taking away
their favorite social media platform.
They're using their phones
to actually make phone calls
to members of Congress.
Do not ban TikTok.
That's not acceptable.
That's not acceptable.
I'm an 18-year-old in Michigan.
What am I gonna do for China?
Take my information.
I don't care.
That is an amazing reaction.
"Take my information. I don't care."
"My address is 2443 Emerson Place,
my blood type is A positive,"
"and I think my dad
did tax fraud. Now what, China?"
"I don't give a shit."
Congress made teenagers so mad,
they made actual phone calls.
That is dedication.
Teens hate doing that.
If you ever need to scare one, hand
them a ringing phone and say:
"It's for you."
But that reaction
shouldn't be surprising.
People love TikTok and not just
as a place to watch a guy
watching a guy make
a giant chocolate dick snake.
Nearly 40% of adults under 30
say they regularly get their news
from TikTok,
and it's a significant
driver of business,
given that more than seven
million small businesses use it.
And yet, some lawmakers insist
it's also among the biggest
threats facing our nation.
TikTok is a grave national security
threat to Americans.
TikTok is just Chinese malware.
It's just junk food for our brains.
It is spyware,
it is being weaponized.
TikTok is a gun aimed
at Americans' heads.
Yeah, those are some strong words.
Because we all know Congress
will not stand by and watch
someone pointing a metaphorical gun
at Americans' heads.
Actual guns?
That's a complicated issue
for some reason.
But metaphorical gun violence
will not stand!
So, if an app this popular
is supposedly such a dire threat,
tonight, let's look at TikTok.
Who's behind it,
what the concerns are
and what this might
really be all about.
This story's actually a lot more
nuanced than you might think.
And let's start with the fact that
TikTok's had a meteoric rise.
It's owned by ByteDance,
a Chinese company
who first made a similar app
for the Chinese market
called Douyin back in 2016.
The next year, they launched TikTok
as the international version,
then purchased an app
called Musical.ly
with a pre-existing user base
in the U.S.,
merging the two in 2018 to create
the app we know today.
But TikTok's breakout moment
was the pandemic,
when all of a sudden,
many of us were stuck at home
with nothing to do but learn
how to make cloud bread,
whip up coffee, and try to master
the savage dance.
It is genuinely hard
to imagine a better scenario
for TikTok to thrive in
than a pandemic.
Suddenly,
they had a captive audience
whose only other entertainment
options were getting into sourdough,
Windexing groceries a third
time, or, of course,
retreating into a blank void
where they slowly went insane.
I'm fine now. Don't worry.
I'm fine now.
Lawmakers were already raising alarms
about TikTok being Chinese-owned.
And by mid-2020, Trump signed
an executive order banning it,
saying TikTok would be shut down
unless Microsoft or another company
purchased it from ByteDance.
That never wound up happening,
as a court found
that Trump had overstepped in trying
to ban it by executive order.
And in the years since,
TikTok's been at pains
to publicly distance itself
from China.
It launched something
called Project Texas,
where they promised to store
U.S. users' data on U.S. servers,
maintained
by a third-party U.S. company.
Which might sound good,
but there are real questions
about how effective
that has been,
with one worker saying the data
protections amount to basically
"a wink and a nod."
Meanwhile,
they've launched a PR push,
with ads leaning hard
into Americana, like in this one,
featuring a veteran
named Patriotic Kenny.
My scooter broke down.
I went into a depression.
- How do you feel about that?
- Pretty sad.
And I posted it to show that
Kenny's not always happy.
Within 24 hours, people
had donated over 5.000 dollars.
And within a week,
people had donated 110.000 dollars.
And Kenny hit
a million followers.
It has changed
my life tremendously.
None of this would have
happened without TikTok.
I don't know
what's more American there,
Kenny's taste in home decor,
or the fact he had to go viral
on social media to get access
to basic medical equipment.
Although, to be clear,
TikTok didn't buy Kenny a scooter,
other people did.
It's a bit like having people
put money in a jar for charity
and then thanking the jar.
None of this could have
happened without you, jar!
Truly, you are the best of us!
But despite those efforts,
concern about China's influence
over TikTok continued to grow,
culminating in the law
passed earlier this year
demanding it be sold or banned
from app stores in the U.S.
a law, by the way, that passed
the House 352 to 65.
Worth talking about the government's
two main concerns here:
the data TikTok is collecting
from its users
and the power it has
to push content to them.
And let's start with the data.
TikTok is powered by an algorithm
that tracks things like
what videos you skip past
and which you linger on.
That way, it can quickly figure out
exactly what you like,
and feed you more of the same
thing, over and over again,
not unlike a doting grandmother
or Marvel Studios.
Sometimes people are genuinely
weirded out
by how perceptive TikTok's
algorithm can be,
because it can seem to know you
better than you might know yourself.
I downloaded this app a year ago.
I thought I was straight.
After being on TikTok, I quickly
realized I was not straight
and that I was bisexual.
I always say that the algorithm
knew that I was gay before I did
and I stand by that.
It absolutely knew.
Are any other girls, like,
kind of aggravated
that it took more than 20 years
to figure out we were bisexual,
but it took my TikTok algorithm
like 37 seconds?
Would've saved me
so much fucking time!
Yeah, TikTok is speedrunning
people's sexual awakenings.
Before, a revelation like that
might've taken years of therapy
or an entire episode
of "Xena: Warrior Princess."
I don't think a machine has
been responsible
for more sexual awakenings
since "The Iron Giant."
I'm not explaining myself
to you about that. I'm not doing it.
He's an objectively hot robot.
He's tall, has kind eyes,
he's great with kids, and I'm sure
has a vibrate setting.
Don't be weird about this!
You're being weird.
The algorithm is powerful because
you're constantly feeding it new data,
every interaction
you have with a video
trains it more
on your preferences.
Because those videos are so short,
it can gather a lot of data about you
very quickly.
But that is not all
the information it gathers.
It knows the device that you're
using, your location, IP address,
search history, the content
of your messages,
what you're viewing
and for how long.
It also infers factors such as your age
range, gender, and interests,
and in the U.S., its own privacy
policy says it may collect
biometric information including
face and voiceprints,
from any content you post.
That is a lot of personal information
and some of TikTok's critics
paint an alarming picture
of what that means.
Imagine you woke up tomorrow
morning and you saw a news report
that China had distributed
100 million sensors around the US,
and that any time an American
walked past one of these sensors,
this sensor automatically collected
off of your phone your name,
your home address,
your personal network,
who you're friends with,
your online viewing habits
and a whole host
of other pieces of information.
Well, that's precisely
what TikTok is.
Yeah, that's a scary-sounding
Only slightly undercut by the fact
that guy's name is, and this is true,
Klon Kitchen.
Which sounds less like a name
to trust and more like a start-up
trying to disrupt
the spatula space.
Basically, the concern is that
all this data could one day be used
by the Chinese government to
identify intelligence opportunities.
For example, "by helping China
uncover the vices, predilections"
"or pressure points of a potential
spy recruit or blackmail target."
I guess there's a nonzero chance
a future U.S. president
is currently running a fan account
devoted to Sonic the Hedgehog's feet,
which could be weaponized
against them in the future.
Though it is worth noting, a huge
component of blackmail requires shame.
And if you're not on TikTok,
you're missing out on just
how little shame its users have.
There's an entire challenge
that just consists
of naming your biggest traumas
for all the world to hear
while dumping candy into a bowl
and it is riveting.
I'm not saying ByteDance
hasn't been guilty
of alarming privacy violations.
It has!
A few years back, this reporter was
investigating TikTok and ByteDance,
only to learn that she
was being investigated herself.
After I wrote my first few stories,
I got a big leak
from inside the company.
Someone inside the company gave me
a bunch of audio recordings.
In an effort to discover the leak,
a team of ByteDance employees
launched a surveillance project
called Project Raven,
pulling information from Emily's
personal TikTok account
to monitor her IP address.
And the theory was
that if they could match
my IP address to the IP address
of one of their employees,
they could maybe place me
and an employee at a Starbucks
or at a library at the same time,
and then maybe figure out
who was talking to me.
Yeah, if they knew
one of their employees
had been in the same location
as that journalist,
it'd be a pretty big clue.
And it was much easier
to pull IP addresses
than go through every Starbucks
dumpster to try and find the cup
that said "Secret Whistleblower."
I have to tell you,
the company says
the employees involved in that
surveillance scheme were fired
and it's restructured the team
in charge of internal audits
and removed access to U.S. data.
But critics point out:
it doesn't matter how good
ByteDance's public intentions are,
because fundamentally,
they're vulnerable to the whims
of the Chinese government,
which has shown a clear willingness
to go after American data.
Officials have blamed Chinese hackers
for breaches
of the Office of Personnel Management,
Anthem Health and Equifax.
And if China wanted to pressure
ByteDance to do something for it,
the company wouldn't be
able to put up much of a fight.
Chinese law says
that if the Chinese government asks
a company to cooperate,
it has no choice.
No appeal, no going to court,
no laying across the railroad tracks.
ByteDance, they could be perfectly
innocent today.
And if Xi Jinping
wakes up in a bad mood tomorrow,
they could be doing
something bad.
Yeah, again, that sounds bad!
Major decisions that affect millions
of people could hinge
on whether or not the leader of
a country wakes up in a bad mood.
It's the kind of unpredictable,
emotionally volatile leadership
you get in China and luckily,
nowhere else.
While that does sound frightening,
it's important to note
that there's also a lot of "if" in
how this tends to get discussed.
TikTok insists it hasn't,
and wouldn't, give data to China.
But whether or not
you believe them,
"there is still no public evidence
the Chinese government"
"has actually spied on people
through TikTok."
What's more, while it does
collect a lot of data on its users,
as we discussed
in our data brokers story,
lots of other apps do
the exact same thing.
When "The Washington Post
worked with a privacy researcher"
"to look under the hood
at TikTok",
they concluded that it doesn't appear
to collect any more data
than your typical mainstream
social network.
For instance, while TikTok
is tracking users around the internet
even when
they aren't using the app,
the same tracking tool is used by
Meta and Google on a far larger scale.
Even when it comes to tracking
reporters, TikTok is not an outlier,
given an Uber executive once used
an internal tool named "God View"
to track the location
of a BuzzFeed news reporter
who was covering the company.
And again, I am not giving
TikTok a pass here.
I'm just pointing out
that its behavior is pretty consistent
with Silicon Valley's own
very shitty standards.
Think of TikTok as a soft drink
company in the 1800s.
Sure, its product
is mostly cocaine,
but hey, show me a child's
beverage that isn't.
That is the case as it relates
to TikTok's usage of data.
But what about the claim
that it can push propaganda
or bury content that makes China
look bad?
ByteDance
does do that within China.
Douyin, the version of TikTok
for the Chinese market,
has to play by China's rules
when it comes to censorship
and "has banned a broad range
of supposedly subversive topics,"
"including any content
that causes 'discomfort'".
When TikTok first
started growing internationally,
it did seem to bring
some of that ethos with it.
In 2019, leaked documents showed
TikTok had instructed moderators
to ban content
on "highly controversial topics",
citing mentions of "Tiananmen
Square, Tibetan independence,"
"or the banned religious group
Falun Gong", as examples.
And in 2020, The Intercept
reported its moderators
were also told to censor
political speech in livestreams,
as well as, fun fact,
"users deemed too ugly, poor
or disabled for the platform."
TikTok insists those were old
guidelines no longer in use
and that their moderation practices
are now more transparent.
But some researchers believe
there is still reason to worry here.
One team studying TikTok
created fake accounts,
representing American teenagers
and they were alarmed
at what they found.
When I go to YouTube,
you put in "Tiananmen"
and the first thing you have are
mainstream news documentaries.
But researchers say
most of the content
regarding Tiananmen
that showed up on TikTok was,
in their judgment, not relevant
or pro-China
compared to what showed up
on Instagram and YouTube.
When we looked at material sensitive
to the Chinese Communist Party,
these materials were significantly,
inexplicably underrepresented
on the platform.
They concluded that videos
undesirable to the CCP
were underrepresented, though,
interestingly, not unrepresented.
TikTok says that study is flawed
and while I hate to agree with them,
the methodology is a bit weird.
Because the researchers
searched words like "Xinjiang",
"Tibet" and "Tiananmen,"
clicked on the first result
and let the algorithm
take it from there.
Which doesn't seem like how people
tend to search for information.
If you just type in "America"
and search,
it is gonna leave out a lot.
And honestly, given how
spookily good TikTok's algorithm is
at knowing exactly what you want,
it might even have concluded:
"Got it, you're a bearded researcher
pretending to be a 16-year-old"
"looking for evidence to support
your censorship hypothesis."
"Here are the results that,
deep down, you want."
"Also, fun fact, you're bi!"
Ultimately, it is hard
to know for sure though,
because the algorithm is proprietary
and the decisions it makes
about content
are largely opaque.
And banning TikTok out of fear it may
be a vessel for foreign influence
is a little weird,
for a few reasons.
First, China, like many countries,
including the U.S.,
has covert influence operations,
like accounts pushing propaganda,
running on all sorts of platforms.
And researchers say they haven't
seen a particular focus on TikTok
that goes beyond the ones
it also runs on Facebook,
Instagram and YouTube.
When it comes to China directly
influencing TikTok behind the scenes,
even the government's own filings
say point-blank
that "they have no direct evidence"
"China has used TikTok for
propaganda purposes in the U.S."
but there is significant risk
that it could happen.
But as long as this argument
is about what could be the case,
we should probably ask:
could there be any ulterior motives
behind the U.S. government's
approach here?
Alongside the concern
about national security,
it does feel like there can be
an undercurrent of xenophobia.
Here is Tom Cotton
interrogating TikTok's CEO.
You said today, as you often say,
that you live in Singapore.
Of what nation
are you a citizen?
Singapore.
Are you a citizen
of any other nation?
No, Senator.
Have you ever applied for
Chinese citizenship?
Senator, I served my nation
in Singapore. No, I did not.
Do you have
a Singaporean passport?
Yes, and I served my military for
two and a half years in Singapore.
- Do you have any other passports?
- No, Senator.
Your wife is an American citizen.
Your children are American citizens.
Have you ever applied
for American citizenship?
No, not yet.
Have you ever been a member
of the Chinese Communist Party?
Senator, I'm Singaporean, no.
Ever been associated or affiliated
with the Chinese Communist Party?
No. Senator, again,
I'm Singaporean.
That is so bad, I almost wish that
line of questioning had kept going.
Okay, but do you know
where China is on a map?
Yes. Yes, Senator, I do.
How do you know where China is?
What do you mean?
I'll say it again, how do you
know where China is?
Because I can read a map?
And how can you read a map?
Because I learned to in school.
And what kind of school would teach
a child to read a map of China?
Any school.
Not any of ours.
Well, that's not great, is it?
So, you're insulting the USA
'cause you're a secret Chinese
citizen? I rest my case.
And look, obviously, Tom Cotton
is a persistent piece of shit.
But it is hard to shake the feeling
that at least part of the panic here
stems from an ugly place.
And that's not
the only possible motivator.
There's also the fact there are plenty
of big U.S. tech companies
that would very much like their
market share back from TikTok.
Meta and YouTube now each
have their own TikTok knockoffs
in the forms of Reels
and YouTube Shorts,
and Meta's been caught openly
seeding negative stories about TikTok,
even hiring a marketing firm,
with one campaign director
saying in an email,
the "dream would be"
"to get stories with headlines
like 'From Dances to Danger.'"
Which sounds like a Netflix
true crime documentary
about a ballet studio that turned
out to be a sex cult.
And Mark Zuckerberg,
seen here looking
like the chef from "Ratatouille"
trying to pivot to Bitcoin,
personally lobbied Trump
on the risk posed by his competition.
In 2019, in a private dinner
at the White House
he made the case that the rise
of Chinese internet companies
threatens American business,
and should be a bigger concern
than reining in Facebook.
Which seems
a little suspect to me.
If you get caught shoplifting,
the best defense isn't usually:
"That guy did it too
and he's Chinese!"
Banning TikTok might be the only
thing that helps Meta here.
Because as some TikTok
creators will tell you,
they much prefer the platform
to its U.S. competitors.
100% of my customer base were
derived directly from TikTok.
For instance, there was a gentleman
that saw one of my TikTok videos
and he saw a couple of cows in
the background that he liked.
He reached out to me and he said:
"Are those cows for sale by chance?"
He did not see those cattle
on Facebook or Instagram.
Let's face it,
Facebook is archaic, it's dead.
Instagram's prime was more
than seven years ago.
This is the number one
platform in the world right now
and this is where a number
of our customers are coming from.
There is no way to undersell how
cooked you are as a tech company
when that guy is telling you
you're behind the times.
He looks like his number one
concern is rustlers
and concerns two through
seven are all stampede-related,
so if he is explaining why your social
media platform is substandard,
you are done. Goodbye.
So, very basically,
that is the case, pro and con,
for this potential TikTok ban.
Or, at least, the public case.
Because there is one more element
to the government's argument
I haven't talked about yet,
but only because
it's basically impossible to do that,
as they won't tell us what it is.
There is a line that keeps coming up
with lawmakers
whenever they are
advocating for this ban.
Is there concrete evidence
that we can point to
that says that nefarious
activity is going on?
Yes. A lot of it is classified.
TikTok is certainly a national
security threat.
We've seen evidence
in a classified setting.
Many Americans, particularly young
Americans, are rightfully skeptical.
At the end of the day, they've not
seen what Congress has seen.
They've not been in the classified
briefings that Congress has held.
And here's the thing
about that: right!
We haven't seen it! So maybe
you need to show it to us!
Saying "trust us, it's super scary"
only really works
when the person saying it is someone
you trust in the first place.
TikTok is suing the government
over the impending ban
and in its filings, the government's
redacted significant portions
of the evidence it says it has,
with some parts of its affidavits
looking like this.
And incredibly, even
ByteDance and TikTok
don't know
what's behind those black bars,
because the government's not
revealing its evidence to them, either.
Which feels wrong.
Because usually,
showing your evidence
is a fundamental tenet
of American justice.
It's right up there
with a right to plead your case
and to be tried by 12 half-asleep
strangers who'd rather be
anywhere else
in the world right now.
And the condescension
of "just trust us"
can get really frustrating, especially
when it's expressed like this.
I think it's important to recognize
we're actually doing this
to protect the privacy of Americans.
People feel like they're taking
their rights away,
but it's actually
protecting their privacy.
But is it, though?
Because in a world where
Instagram knows your location,
Uber knows
your childhood fears,
and DoorDash has a detailed 3D
rendering of your small intestine
its executives use as a screensaver,
claiming you're protecting Americans'
privacy by banning TikTok
feels like claiming you're fighting
climate change
by banning the Kia Sorento.
Sure, I mean,
it's technically not nothing,
but it is, in a larger sense,
basically nothing.
One of the reasons this story
is difficult to navigate
is there's so much we don't know
and coming
from two sides I don't remotely trust.
Because you're either taking the word
of a multinational tech company
that profits off your data,
or the U.S. government,
which seems more than happy
to turn a blind eye
whenever American companies
do the exact same thing.
Who knows where things
could go from here?
TikTok's lawsuit may end up
before the Supreme Court,
meaning that January 19th deadline
will likely get extended
into the Trump presidency.
And remember!
He's the one who tried
banning TikTok in the first place,
though he's now
done a complete 180 on that,
releasing this video
during the campaign.
For all of those that want to save
TikTok in America, vote for Trump.
The other side's closing it up.
But I'm now a big star on TikTok.
So, if you like TikTok,
go out and vote for Trump.
I mean, it's perfect. As always,
it is genuinely hard
to focus on the message there,
because of the weird energy
that he's projecting.
His delivery is giving:
"Okay, now how about a silly one"
mixed with the spontaneous delayed
release of 60 years of diet pills.
So, apparently Trump
wants to "save TikTok" now,
by getting Congress to repeal the ban
or undermining it some other way.
Although he could very well
just change his mind again,
he has been known to do that.
So where does that leave the rest
of us? Well, I don't know.
We talked to a lot of experts
on both sides of this ban.
National security types tend to be
in the "why risk it, just ban it" camp.
While those in the tech policy space
are more concerned
about whether the benefits of that
would outweigh the free-speech impacts
of banning a massive platform.
And I'm slightly torn.
This show
has an account on TikTok.
I personally do not have it
on my phone,
partly because I don't trust it,
mostly because I am very old.
But if there is one thing
many experts do agree on,
it's that the risks
to Americans' data online
in no way end
with China or TikTok.
As one puts it: "TikTok represents
maybe 2% of the problem"
"when it comes
to Americans' privacy",
adding that without
adequate privacy law,
"there are millions of apps collecting
and abusing Americans' data."
There is just no good reason why
we don't have better protections.
The U.S. is the only country
in the G20 that doesn't have
some kind of comprehensive privacy
law protecting consumer data.
We've been behind the rest
of the world on this issue
for an embarrassingly long time.
There was actually an effort to shore
things up earlier this year,
called
The American Privacy Rights Act,
which contained
robust data protections,
like the requirement that companies
minimize the data they collect,
so the onus
is on them to collect less
and not on us having to play constant
defense with different opt-outs.
Unfortunately, it was stripped
of some of its most crucial parts
and support for it
eventually evaporated.
But we badly
need something like it,
just for a baseline level
of protection here.
I guess what I'm saying is,
this TikTok ban ultimately
may not even be necessary,
but it definitely isn't sufficient.
Or, to summarize all of this
the only way anyone on TikTok
can seem to internalize, that is,
while watching someone make fancy
chocolates or dancing,
if we really want to better
protect Americans and their data,
that's great,
that's a penis by the way,
but you don't just do that
by just addressing one company.
That's a chocolate penis
with ridges around it.
You do that by addressing by
Yeah, it's totally a screw.
Or, you know what?
It's a robot penis.
It's a chocolate robot penis.
You know what? Hit it!
And now, this.
And Now: Jesse Watters
Is Not Invited To Thanksgiving.
Deb from Minneapolis,
"Maybe Tulsi should have
Thanksgiving with your family."
I'm actually not having dinner
with my mom and my dad
this Thanksgiving.
I've not been invited.
People are taking some space
in the Watters household.
I'll have you know
that I was not invited
to my mother's house
for Thanksgiving.
Apparently,
there wasn't enough room.
She said it was
a scheduling situation.
Last Thanksgiving, I cleared
the whole table out.
I don't know if everybody knows,
my family's all Democrats.
I just sat at the end of the table
by the end of the night.
I had my wine. No one wanted
to have anything to do with me.
I find it irritating on Thanksgiving
when my mother starts
yelling at me about politics.
My mother's
a crazy radical liberal.
Trust me,
Thanksgiving's a nightmare.
Jesse, you love to spend
time with family.
Yeah, but they don't like
spending time with me.
I drove my parents crazy.
Literally drove my mom crazy.
I would make her listen
to Limbaugh on car rides
and she'd have fits of road rage
and almost drive into shrubbery.
But I survived.
Some of the Thanksgivings were
awkward but here I am now
on "TheFive" and "Jesse Watters
Primetime." I think I turned out okay.
No, you didn't. Moving on.
This is our last show of the season.
And honestly? It has been a weird one.
We started by offering Clarence
Thomas a million dollars a year
and an RV in exchange
for his resignation,
which he very rudely
did not take.
And since then, things got pretty
weird here in the studio.
I got lost in some corn,
we had an indoor rainstorm,
I got swarmed by these
furry freaks from "Cats"
and shuttled offstage by what
appeared to be a flock of big,
spooky raviolis, which I'm sure
made sense in context.
We also tracked down a prolific stock
photo model from Azerbaijan
and flew him here
to take some more.
We got Will Ferrell to sing
a new patriotic song
to replace "God Bless the USA"
at citizenship ceremonies.
We bought the contents
of a shuttered Red Lobster,
and then, for reasons
I don't have time to get into,
sent some kitchen equipment
to a New York bakery
after bullying them into making
John Oliver cake bears
with a sumptuous donk,
which they very much did,
as well as making us this
spectacular bear likeness of me,
which I then ate ass-first,
proving that I'm not new to this.
I'm true to this.
Ya boy's an eater for real.
And much of that helped distract
from the genuinely bad year
that was 2024.
So bad, in fact, we were forced
to spend eight different main stories
covering issues
surrounding the election,
forgoing much more interesting ones
that we wanted to tackle like:
"Liev Schreiber just dropped
an enormous jar of vodka sauce"
"in the Whole Foods self-checkout.
Sauce everywhere."
We had 23 minutes on that planned,
but had to scrap it for an episode
on all the ways Trump would fight
the election results if he lost,
which, of course, he did not.
So tonight, before we leave,
I'd like to try and look forward.
The end of the year always has me
thinking about the next one
and what I hope 2025 will look like.
In 2025, I'd like Elon Musk
to jump so high,
he never comes back down.
I'd like to go just one day without
hearing about the "Wicked" movie.
And in 2025, I'd like the final
"Mission Impossible" film
to end with Tom Cruise taking
off his face mask
to reveal Shelly Miscavige.
That would be an amazing twist!
I know none of that is likely
to happen.
And that we're gonna have to cover
a lot of terrible shit next year.
But if there's one thing
I really do hope for,
it's that we still get to talk
about some ridiculous stuff, too.
So my plea to the rest of world
is to please keep being weird
in fun ways.
Keep making terrible statues,
holding weird contests
and auctioning off bizarre items.
And if I can talk
to New Zealand specifically,
please keep doing
exactly what you are doing.
I don't have to tell you to be
weird. Just be yourselves
and we'll find something
we can work with.
Look, the next four years
are going to be exhausting.
All we can really hope for
are little pockets of time
between new horrors
and calamities.
Maybe the goal should be to savor
those minutes of calm as best we can.
Basically,
I guess what I'm saying is,
when chaos becomes the norm,
we need to appreciate every second
we've managed to go without
a fresh affront to humanity.
Every day without an incident
going forward should be cherished.
I know,
we're gonna be hitting reset a lot.
Maybe the clock's been
ticking up for a while
and suddenly
you get a news alert:
"Rudy Giuliani Appointed
to the Supreme Court."
And then boom, you find
yourself back at zero again.
Maybe you're lucky enough
to get a second to catch your breath
and the clock climbs up for a bit,
only for suddenly
"Secretary of State Turns Out
to Be Putin in a Fake Mustache."
And boom,
you got to reset again.
And this is the time that
you really should treasure,
because deep down you probably
know it's just a matter of seconds
Hold on, we're out of helium now?
Like, it's all gone?
And maybe you're not sure what
to make of that story,
so you kind of barrel on,
only to get an alert that says
all aquariums are indefinitely
closed to the public,
which is so confusing it feels okay
to kind of just ignore
until you get the alert: "Please Stay
Inside; The Sky Is Full of Sharks Now."
I get it, the helium, from before.
I'm not sure what the exact
chain of events was,
but the sky's full of sharks,
and that's very bad. It makes sense.
And boom, we've got
ourselves a big old reset.
Again, the point here is,
we will be here for you next year
to talk about the bad moments
and hopefully
the moments of joy in between.
So, that is our show, thank you
so much for watching us all this year.
We'll see you in February.
Good night!
No, come on!
Fucking shit.
Motherfucker.
I'm John Oliver, thank you
so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week full
of horrendous headlines,
from "Millions of Bees
Killed in Wildfires",
to "Armie Hammer Reveals"
"His Mom Gifted Him
a Vasectomy for His 38th Birthday",
to "Mark Zuckerberg Just
Dropped a Single with T-Pain".
That is real, by the way.
It is a cover of "Get Low",
a song T-Pain
did not originally sing,
and you are not ready
for how bad it is.
From the windows to the walls,
'til sweat drops down
my balls,
'til all these bitches crawl,
skeet-skeet, motherfucker,
skeet-skeet, god damn.
That honestly might be
the worst thing I've ever heard.
Sounds like Kidz Bop for adults,
where all the swears are intact,
but there's still a deep lingering
sense that music was a mistake.
I didn't even need
to play you all of that.
I could've just played the way
he sang "motherfucker".
No! Not like that!
Don't enunciate that cleanly,
Mark!
It's like listening to a rap
by the Google Translate voice.
A week of intense headlines regarding
Trump's new cabinet appointees,
which were, even by his low
standards, awful.
For his ambassador to Israel,
he picked a guy who's said
there's
"no such thing as a Palestinian".
For director of national intelligence,
a woman who's repeatedly
promoted Russian propaganda.
For secretary of defense,
a Fox News host,
who, among many other things,
has defended service members
accused of war crimes and said
women don't belong in combat.
For HHS, a conspiracy theorist and
anti-vaxxer with a worm in his brain.
And to top it all off, for AG,
Matt Gaetz,
a man who, in high school,
was voted
"most likely to not be allowed
within 500 feet of here."
That pick was so extreme,
even conservatives
found themselves at a loss.
When I heard that Matt Gaetz was
picked to be attorney general,
I threw up in my mouth.
I'm pretty sure I called him
a clown and a charlatan.
- And you stand by that.
- Yeah.
It must be the worst nomination for
a cabinet position in American history.
I mean, it might,
but get used to it,
because
"the worst blank in American history"
is going to be this administration's
MO going forward.
Get ready for the worst Easter Egg
Roll in American history.
The Easter Bunny will be on fire,
every egg will be filled
with expired mayonnaise
and the kids who don't win will be
immediately put into foster care.
Apparently, when Gaetz
was announced,
there were audible gasps
by House Republicans.
When a reporter asked
congressman Mike Simpson
if Gaetz had the experience
and character to be AG,
he responded: "Are you shittin' me,
that you just asked that question?"
"No!" Which is objectively
the correct response to the idea
that this guy could be
attorney general,
a man who my lawyers
insist I cannot call
"Jeffrey Epstein if he went
to shittier beaches."
So I am not going to do that.
But it didn't stop there.
The head of government affairs
for one environmental advocacy group
told: "Luckily, our environmental
laws are older than 18 years,"
"so Representative Gaetz shouldn't
have much interest in them."
Which is a solid hit, and also,
incredibly grim.
Because as you probably know,
Gaetz was the subject
of both a federal investigation
into sex trafficking,
which concluded last year
without charges,
and "a House investigation
into allegations he engaged"
"in sexual misconduct
and illicit drug use."
That report was due
to be released this week,
but was effectively ended
when he suddenly resigned
to become the country's top
law enforcement officer.
Many are calling for it to be
released anyway, though,
and while Gaetz has denied
any allegations,
damning parts
are already leaking out,
including that one witness
testified to the committee
that Gaetz had sex with her
when she was 17
and another testified
that she witnessed it.
And yet, there is still a question
of whether Republican senators
will reject Gaetz's nomination.
Some have expressed reservations.
Lisa Murkowski has said:
"I don't think it's a serious
nomination for attorney general",
and Susan Collins said:
"I was shocked by the announcement."
"I'm sure there will be a lot
of questions raised at his hearing."
Although don't read
too much into that.
As we all know, the Susan Collins
scale of government ethics goes:
"concerned, but gonna vote him",
"shocked, but gonna vote for him",
"questions raised,
but gonna vote for him",
and "outraged, but fuck it,
still gonna vote for him."
And other Republican senators
have been even more noncommittal.
Do you think
Matt Gaetz is confirmable?
We'll find out, won't we?
- Any concerns about it?
- We'll see.
Senator Kennedy, what do you think
of Matt Gaetz as attorney general?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Yeah. "Happy Thanksgiving."
I'd say that's the most jarring thing
that Kennedy could've said,
but I will remind you,
he could have gone with this.
I can't wait to have
your cock in my mouth.
Yeah.
That's the clip that keeps on giving
and that you never, ever want.
A lot can happen with these nominations
between now and Inauguration Day.
So, for now, let's move on
to our main story tonight,
which concerns TikTok, the social
media app many are addicted to,
thanks to its cooking tutorials,
dances that are impossible for anyone
born before 1985 to look cool doing
and masterpieces like this.
There is truly nothing I love more
than watching this man's videos
and guessing what he's making.
Totally, a snake. Got it.
What a journey!
And honestly, I don't know how TV
is supposed to compete with that.
I'd absolutely watch that guy
host a game show titled
"Dick or Snake?"
It's basically "Is It Cake?"
only with significantly
higher snake-on-dick injuries.
TikTok is massively popular. It has
more than a billion users worldwide
and "170 million monthly
active users in the U.S.",
with fully a third of U.S. adults and
a majority of those under 30 using it.
All of which makes it
pretty remarkable
that it may be on the brink
of going away.
You might have forgotten with
everything else going on this year,
but in April, this happened.
This morning, the clock begins
ticking down for TikTok
after the Senate
last night passed a bill
giving the social media platform's
Chinese parent company an ultimatum:
sell the app or be banned in the U.S.
Lawmakers in both parties say TikTok
poses a serious national security risk.
It's true. TikTok could be
banned by January 19th,
because it's a security threat.
Which sounds frightening,
even if those claims were made
under footage of this orange furball
going to town on its own feet.
"We cannot let the Chinese get
their hands on our private data,"
"like how often Dr. Tuna Fish here
gives himself the full Tarantino."
The point is, Congress came
down on TikTok hard.
When that law passed, with broad
bipartisan support, by the way,
TikTok's users were not thrilled.
An army of young TikTok rebels
are taking a break
from viral dance crazes and
challenges and coming together
to stop government from taking away
their favorite social media platform.
They're using their phones
to actually make phone calls
to members of Congress.
Do not ban TikTok.
That's not acceptable.
That's not acceptable.
I'm an 18-year-old in Michigan.
What am I gonna do for China?
Take my information.
I don't care.
That is an amazing reaction.
"Take my information. I don't care."
"My address is 2443 Emerson Place,
my blood type is A positive,"
"and I think my dad
did tax fraud. Now what, China?"
"I don't give a shit."
Congress made teenagers so mad,
they made actual phone calls.
That is dedication.
Teens hate doing that.
If you ever need to scare one, hand
them a ringing phone and say:
"It's for you."
But that reaction
shouldn't be surprising.
People love TikTok and not just
as a place to watch a guy
watching a guy make
a giant chocolate dick snake.
Nearly 40% of adults under 30
say they regularly get their news
from TikTok,
and it's a significant
driver of business,
given that more than seven
million small businesses use it.
And yet, some lawmakers insist
it's also among the biggest
threats facing our nation.
TikTok is a grave national security
threat to Americans.
TikTok is just Chinese malware.
It's just junk food for our brains.
It is spyware,
it is being weaponized.
TikTok is a gun aimed
at Americans' heads.
Yeah, those are some strong words.
Because we all know Congress
will not stand by and watch
someone pointing a metaphorical gun
at Americans' heads.
Actual guns?
That's a complicated issue
for some reason.
But metaphorical gun violence
will not stand!
So, if an app this popular
is supposedly such a dire threat,
tonight, let's look at TikTok.
Who's behind it,
what the concerns are
and what this might
really be all about.
This story's actually a lot more
nuanced than you might think.
And let's start with the fact that
TikTok's had a meteoric rise.
It's owned by ByteDance,
a Chinese company
who first made a similar app
for the Chinese market
called Douyin back in 2016.
The next year, they launched TikTok
as the international version,
then purchased an app
called Musical.ly
with a pre-existing user base
in the U.S.,
merging the two in 2018 to create
the app we know today.
But TikTok's breakout moment
was the pandemic,
when all of a sudden,
many of us were stuck at home
with nothing to do but learn
how to make cloud bread,
whip up coffee, and try to master
the savage dance.
It is genuinely hard
to imagine a better scenario
for TikTok to thrive in
than a pandemic.
Suddenly,
they had a captive audience
whose only other entertainment
options were getting into sourdough,
Windexing groceries a third
time, or, of course,
retreating into a blank void
where they slowly went insane.
I'm fine now. Don't worry.
I'm fine now.
Lawmakers were already raising alarms
about TikTok being Chinese-owned.
And by mid-2020, Trump signed
an executive order banning it,
saying TikTok would be shut down
unless Microsoft or another company
purchased it from ByteDance.
That never wound up happening,
as a court found
that Trump had overstepped in trying
to ban it by executive order.
And in the years since,
TikTok's been at pains
to publicly distance itself
from China.
It launched something
called Project Texas,
where they promised to store
U.S. users' data on U.S. servers,
maintained
by a third-party U.S. company.
Which might sound good,
but there are real questions
about how effective
that has been,
with one worker saying the data
protections amount to basically
"a wink and a nod."
Meanwhile,
they've launched a PR push,
with ads leaning hard
into Americana, like in this one,
featuring a veteran
named Patriotic Kenny.
My scooter broke down.
I went into a depression.
- How do you feel about that?
- Pretty sad.
And I posted it to show that
Kenny's not always happy.
Within 24 hours, people
had donated over 5.000 dollars.
And within a week,
people had donated 110.000 dollars.
And Kenny hit
a million followers.
It has changed
my life tremendously.
None of this would have
happened without TikTok.
I don't know
what's more American there,
Kenny's taste in home decor,
or the fact he had to go viral
on social media to get access
to basic medical equipment.
Although, to be clear,
TikTok didn't buy Kenny a scooter,
other people did.
It's a bit like having people
put money in a jar for charity
and then thanking the jar.
None of this could have
happened without you, jar!
Truly, you are the best of us!
But despite those efforts,
concern about China's influence
over TikTok continued to grow,
culminating in the law
passed earlier this year
demanding it be sold or banned
from app stores in the U.S.
a law, by the way, that passed
the House 352 to 65.
Worth talking about the government's
two main concerns here:
the data TikTok is collecting
from its users
and the power it has
to push content to them.
And let's start with the data.
TikTok is powered by an algorithm
that tracks things like
what videos you skip past
and which you linger on.
That way, it can quickly figure out
exactly what you like,
and feed you more of the same
thing, over and over again,
not unlike a doting grandmother
or Marvel Studios.
Sometimes people are genuinely
weirded out
by how perceptive TikTok's
algorithm can be,
because it can seem to know you
better than you might know yourself.
I downloaded this app a year ago.
I thought I was straight.
After being on TikTok, I quickly
realized I was not straight
and that I was bisexual.
I always say that the algorithm
knew that I was gay before I did
and I stand by that.
It absolutely knew.
Are any other girls, like,
kind of aggravated
that it took more than 20 years
to figure out we were bisexual,
but it took my TikTok algorithm
like 37 seconds?
Would've saved me
so much fucking time!
Yeah, TikTok is speedrunning
people's sexual awakenings.
Before, a revelation like that
might've taken years of therapy
or an entire episode
of "Xena: Warrior Princess."
I don't think a machine has
been responsible
for more sexual awakenings
since "The Iron Giant."
I'm not explaining myself
to you about that. I'm not doing it.
He's an objectively hot robot.
He's tall, has kind eyes,
he's great with kids, and I'm sure
has a vibrate setting.
Don't be weird about this!
You're being weird.
The algorithm is powerful because
you're constantly feeding it new data,
every interaction
you have with a video
trains it more
on your preferences.
Because those videos are so short,
it can gather a lot of data about you
very quickly.
But that is not all
the information it gathers.
It knows the device that you're
using, your location, IP address,
search history, the content
of your messages,
what you're viewing
and for how long.
It also infers factors such as your age
range, gender, and interests,
and in the U.S., its own privacy
policy says it may collect
biometric information including
face and voiceprints,
from any content you post.
That is a lot of personal information
and some of TikTok's critics
paint an alarming picture
of what that means.
Imagine you woke up tomorrow
morning and you saw a news report
that China had distributed
100 million sensors around the US,
and that any time an American
walked past one of these sensors,
this sensor automatically collected
off of your phone your name,
your home address,
your personal network,
who you're friends with,
your online viewing habits
and a whole host
of other pieces of information.
Well, that's precisely
what TikTok is.
Yeah, that's a scary-sounding
Only slightly undercut by the fact
that guy's name is, and this is true,
Klon Kitchen.
Which sounds less like a name
to trust and more like a start-up
trying to disrupt
the spatula space.
Basically, the concern is that
all this data could one day be used
by the Chinese government to
identify intelligence opportunities.
For example, "by helping China
uncover the vices, predilections"
"or pressure points of a potential
spy recruit or blackmail target."
I guess there's a nonzero chance
a future U.S. president
is currently running a fan account
devoted to Sonic the Hedgehog's feet,
which could be weaponized
against them in the future.
Though it is worth noting, a huge
component of blackmail requires shame.
And if you're not on TikTok,
you're missing out on just
how little shame its users have.
There's an entire challenge
that just consists
of naming your biggest traumas
for all the world to hear
while dumping candy into a bowl
and it is riveting.
I'm not saying ByteDance
hasn't been guilty
of alarming privacy violations.
It has!
A few years back, this reporter was
investigating TikTok and ByteDance,
only to learn that she
was being investigated herself.
After I wrote my first few stories,
I got a big leak
from inside the company.
Someone inside the company gave me
a bunch of audio recordings.
In an effort to discover the leak,
a team of ByteDance employees
launched a surveillance project
called Project Raven,
pulling information from Emily's
personal TikTok account
to monitor her IP address.
And the theory was
that if they could match
my IP address to the IP address
of one of their employees,
they could maybe place me
and an employee at a Starbucks
or at a library at the same time,
and then maybe figure out
who was talking to me.
Yeah, if they knew
one of their employees
had been in the same location
as that journalist,
it'd be a pretty big clue.
And it was much easier
to pull IP addresses
than go through every Starbucks
dumpster to try and find the cup
that said "Secret Whistleblower."
I have to tell you,
the company says
the employees involved in that
surveillance scheme were fired
and it's restructured the team
in charge of internal audits
and removed access to U.S. data.
But critics point out:
it doesn't matter how good
ByteDance's public intentions are,
because fundamentally,
they're vulnerable to the whims
of the Chinese government,
which has shown a clear willingness
to go after American data.
Officials have blamed Chinese hackers
for breaches
of the Office of Personnel Management,
Anthem Health and Equifax.
And if China wanted to pressure
ByteDance to do something for it,
the company wouldn't be
able to put up much of a fight.
Chinese law says
that if the Chinese government asks
a company to cooperate,
it has no choice.
No appeal, no going to court,
no laying across the railroad tracks.
ByteDance, they could be perfectly
innocent today.
And if Xi Jinping
wakes up in a bad mood tomorrow,
they could be doing
something bad.
Yeah, again, that sounds bad!
Major decisions that affect millions
of people could hinge
on whether or not the leader of
a country wakes up in a bad mood.
It's the kind of unpredictable,
emotionally volatile leadership
you get in China and luckily,
nowhere else.
While that does sound frightening,
it's important to note
that there's also a lot of "if" in
how this tends to get discussed.
TikTok insists it hasn't,
and wouldn't, give data to China.
But whether or not
you believe them,
"there is still no public evidence
the Chinese government"
"has actually spied on people
through TikTok."
What's more, while it does
collect a lot of data on its users,
as we discussed
in our data brokers story,
lots of other apps do
the exact same thing.
When "The Washington Post
worked with a privacy researcher"
"to look under the hood
at TikTok",
they concluded that it doesn't appear
to collect any more data
than your typical mainstream
social network.
For instance, while TikTok
is tracking users around the internet
even when
they aren't using the app,
the same tracking tool is used by
Meta and Google on a far larger scale.
Even when it comes to tracking
reporters, TikTok is not an outlier,
given an Uber executive once used
an internal tool named "God View"
to track the location
of a BuzzFeed news reporter
who was covering the company.
And again, I am not giving
TikTok a pass here.
I'm just pointing out
that its behavior is pretty consistent
with Silicon Valley's own
very shitty standards.
Think of TikTok as a soft drink
company in the 1800s.
Sure, its product
is mostly cocaine,
but hey, show me a child's
beverage that isn't.
That is the case as it relates
to TikTok's usage of data.
But what about the claim
that it can push propaganda
or bury content that makes China
look bad?
ByteDance
does do that within China.
Douyin, the version of TikTok
for the Chinese market,
has to play by China's rules
when it comes to censorship
and "has banned a broad range
of supposedly subversive topics,"
"including any content
that causes 'discomfort'".
When TikTok first
started growing internationally,
it did seem to bring
some of that ethos with it.
In 2019, leaked documents showed
TikTok had instructed moderators
to ban content
on "highly controversial topics",
citing mentions of "Tiananmen
Square, Tibetan independence,"
"or the banned religious group
Falun Gong", as examples.
And in 2020, The Intercept
reported its moderators
were also told to censor
political speech in livestreams,
as well as, fun fact,
"users deemed too ugly, poor
or disabled for the platform."
TikTok insists those were old
guidelines no longer in use
and that their moderation practices
are now more transparent.
But some researchers believe
there is still reason to worry here.
One team studying TikTok
created fake accounts,
representing American teenagers
and they were alarmed
at what they found.
When I go to YouTube,
you put in "Tiananmen"
and the first thing you have are
mainstream news documentaries.
But researchers say
most of the content
regarding Tiananmen
that showed up on TikTok was,
in their judgment, not relevant
or pro-China
compared to what showed up
on Instagram and YouTube.
When we looked at material sensitive
to the Chinese Communist Party,
these materials were significantly,
inexplicably underrepresented
on the platform.
They concluded that videos
undesirable to the CCP
were underrepresented, though,
interestingly, not unrepresented.
TikTok says that study is flawed
and while I hate to agree with them,
the methodology is a bit weird.
Because the researchers
searched words like "Xinjiang",
"Tibet" and "Tiananmen,"
clicked on the first result
and let the algorithm
take it from there.
Which doesn't seem like how people
tend to search for information.
If you just type in "America"
and search,
it is gonna leave out a lot.
And honestly, given how
spookily good TikTok's algorithm is
at knowing exactly what you want,
it might even have concluded:
"Got it, you're a bearded researcher
pretending to be a 16-year-old"
"looking for evidence to support
your censorship hypothesis."
"Here are the results that,
deep down, you want."
"Also, fun fact, you're bi!"
Ultimately, it is hard
to know for sure though,
because the algorithm is proprietary
and the decisions it makes
about content
are largely opaque.
And banning TikTok out of fear it may
be a vessel for foreign influence
is a little weird,
for a few reasons.
First, China, like many countries,
including the U.S.,
has covert influence operations,
like accounts pushing propaganda,
running on all sorts of platforms.
And researchers say they haven't
seen a particular focus on TikTok
that goes beyond the ones
it also runs on Facebook,
Instagram and YouTube.
When it comes to China directly
influencing TikTok behind the scenes,
even the government's own filings
say point-blank
that "they have no direct evidence"
"China has used TikTok for
propaganda purposes in the U.S."
but there is significant risk
that it could happen.
But as long as this argument
is about what could be the case,
we should probably ask:
could there be any ulterior motives
behind the U.S. government's
approach here?
Alongside the concern
about national security,
it does feel like there can be
an undercurrent of xenophobia.
Here is Tom Cotton
interrogating TikTok's CEO.
You said today, as you often say,
that you live in Singapore.
Of what nation
are you a citizen?
Singapore.
Are you a citizen
of any other nation?
No, Senator.
Have you ever applied for
Chinese citizenship?
Senator, I served my nation
in Singapore. No, I did not.
Do you have
a Singaporean passport?
Yes, and I served my military for
two and a half years in Singapore.
- Do you have any other passports?
- No, Senator.
Your wife is an American citizen.
Your children are American citizens.
Have you ever applied
for American citizenship?
No, not yet.
Have you ever been a member
of the Chinese Communist Party?
Senator, I'm Singaporean, no.
Ever been associated or affiliated
with the Chinese Communist Party?
No. Senator, again,
I'm Singaporean.
That is so bad, I almost wish that
line of questioning had kept going.
Okay, but do you know
where China is on a map?
Yes. Yes, Senator, I do.
How do you know where China is?
What do you mean?
I'll say it again, how do you
know where China is?
Because I can read a map?
And how can you read a map?
Because I learned to in school.
And what kind of school would teach
a child to read a map of China?
Any school.
Not any of ours.
Well, that's not great, is it?
So, you're insulting the USA
'cause you're a secret Chinese
citizen? I rest my case.
And look, obviously, Tom Cotton
is a persistent piece of shit.
But it is hard to shake the feeling
that at least part of the panic here
stems from an ugly place.
And that's not
the only possible motivator.
There's also the fact there are plenty
of big U.S. tech companies
that would very much like their
market share back from TikTok.
Meta and YouTube now each
have their own TikTok knockoffs
in the forms of Reels
and YouTube Shorts,
and Meta's been caught openly
seeding negative stories about TikTok,
even hiring a marketing firm,
with one campaign director
saying in an email,
the "dream would be"
"to get stories with headlines
like 'From Dances to Danger.'"
Which sounds like a Netflix
true crime documentary
about a ballet studio that turned
out to be a sex cult.
And Mark Zuckerberg,
seen here looking
like the chef from "Ratatouille"
trying to pivot to Bitcoin,
personally lobbied Trump
on the risk posed by his competition.
In 2019, in a private dinner
at the White House
he made the case that the rise
of Chinese internet companies
threatens American business,
and should be a bigger concern
than reining in Facebook.
Which seems
a little suspect to me.
If you get caught shoplifting,
the best defense isn't usually:
"That guy did it too
and he's Chinese!"
Banning TikTok might be the only
thing that helps Meta here.
Because as some TikTok
creators will tell you,
they much prefer the platform
to its U.S. competitors.
100% of my customer base were
derived directly from TikTok.
For instance, there was a gentleman
that saw one of my TikTok videos
and he saw a couple of cows in
the background that he liked.
He reached out to me and he said:
"Are those cows for sale by chance?"
He did not see those cattle
on Facebook or Instagram.
Let's face it,
Facebook is archaic, it's dead.
Instagram's prime was more
than seven years ago.
This is the number one
platform in the world right now
and this is where a number
of our customers are coming from.
There is no way to undersell how
cooked you are as a tech company
when that guy is telling you
you're behind the times.
He looks like his number one
concern is rustlers
and concerns two through
seven are all stampede-related,
so if he is explaining why your social
media platform is substandard,
you are done. Goodbye.
So, very basically,
that is the case, pro and con,
for this potential TikTok ban.
Or, at least, the public case.
Because there is one more element
to the government's argument
I haven't talked about yet,
but only because
it's basically impossible to do that,
as they won't tell us what it is.
There is a line that keeps coming up
with lawmakers
whenever they are
advocating for this ban.
Is there concrete evidence
that we can point to
that says that nefarious
activity is going on?
Yes. A lot of it is classified.
TikTok is certainly a national
security threat.
We've seen evidence
in a classified setting.
Many Americans, particularly young
Americans, are rightfully skeptical.
At the end of the day, they've not
seen what Congress has seen.
They've not been in the classified
briefings that Congress has held.
And here's the thing
about that: right!
We haven't seen it! So maybe
you need to show it to us!
Saying "trust us, it's super scary"
only really works
when the person saying it is someone
you trust in the first place.
TikTok is suing the government
over the impending ban
and in its filings, the government's
redacted significant portions
of the evidence it says it has,
with some parts of its affidavits
looking like this.
And incredibly, even
ByteDance and TikTok
don't know
what's behind those black bars,
because the government's not
revealing its evidence to them, either.
Which feels wrong.
Because usually,
showing your evidence
is a fundamental tenet
of American justice.
It's right up there
with a right to plead your case
and to be tried by 12 half-asleep
strangers who'd rather be
anywhere else
in the world right now.
And the condescension
of "just trust us"
can get really frustrating, especially
when it's expressed like this.
I think it's important to recognize
we're actually doing this
to protect the privacy of Americans.
People feel like they're taking
their rights away,
but it's actually
protecting their privacy.
But is it, though?
Because in a world where
Instagram knows your location,
Uber knows
your childhood fears,
and DoorDash has a detailed 3D
rendering of your small intestine
its executives use as a screensaver,
claiming you're protecting Americans'
privacy by banning TikTok
feels like claiming you're fighting
climate change
by banning the Kia Sorento.
Sure, I mean,
it's technically not nothing,
but it is, in a larger sense,
basically nothing.
One of the reasons this story
is difficult to navigate
is there's so much we don't know
and coming
from two sides I don't remotely trust.
Because you're either taking the word
of a multinational tech company
that profits off your data,
or the U.S. government,
which seems more than happy
to turn a blind eye
whenever American companies
do the exact same thing.
Who knows where things
could go from here?
TikTok's lawsuit may end up
before the Supreme Court,
meaning that January 19th deadline
will likely get extended
into the Trump presidency.
And remember!
He's the one who tried
banning TikTok in the first place,
though he's now
done a complete 180 on that,
releasing this video
during the campaign.
For all of those that want to save
TikTok in America, vote for Trump.
The other side's closing it up.
But I'm now a big star on TikTok.
So, if you like TikTok,
go out and vote for Trump.
I mean, it's perfect. As always,
it is genuinely hard
to focus on the message there,
because of the weird energy
that he's projecting.
His delivery is giving:
"Okay, now how about a silly one"
mixed with the spontaneous delayed
release of 60 years of diet pills.
So, apparently Trump
wants to "save TikTok" now,
by getting Congress to repeal the ban
or undermining it some other way.
Although he could very well
just change his mind again,
he has been known to do that.
So where does that leave the rest
of us? Well, I don't know.
We talked to a lot of experts
on both sides of this ban.
National security types tend to be
in the "why risk it, just ban it" camp.
While those in the tech policy space
are more concerned
about whether the benefits of that
would outweigh the free-speech impacts
of banning a massive platform.
And I'm slightly torn.
This show
has an account on TikTok.
I personally do not have it
on my phone,
partly because I don't trust it,
mostly because I am very old.
But if there is one thing
many experts do agree on,
it's that the risks
to Americans' data online
in no way end
with China or TikTok.
As one puts it: "TikTok represents
maybe 2% of the problem"
"when it comes
to Americans' privacy",
adding that without
adequate privacy law,
"there are millions of apps collecting
and abusing Americans' data."
There is just no good reason why
we don't have better protections.
The U.S. is the only country
in the G20 that doesn't have
some kind of comprehensive privacy
law protecting consumer data.
We've been behind the rest
of the world on this issue
for an embarrassingly long time.
There was actually an effort to shore
things up earlier this year,
called
The American Privacy Rights Act,
which contained
robust data protections,
like the requirement that companies
minimize the data they collect,
so the onus
is on them to collect less
and not on us having to play constant
defense with different opt-outs.
Unfortunately, it was stripped
of some of its most crucial parts
and support for it
eventually evaporated.
But we badly
need something like it,
just for a baseline level
of protection here.
I guess what I'm saying is,
this TikTok ban ultimately
may not even be necessary,
but it definitely isn't sufficient.
Or, to summarize all of this
the only way anyone on TikTok
can seem to internalize, that is,
while watching someone make fancy
chocolates or dancing,
if we really want to better
protect Americans and their data,
that's great,
that's a penis by the way,
but you don't just do that
by just addressing one company.
That's a chocolate penis
with ridges around it.
You do that by addressing by
Yeah, it's totally a screw.
Or, you know what?
It's a robot penis.
It's a chocolate robot penis.
You know what? Hit it!
And now, this.
And Now: Jesse Watters
Is Not Invited To Thanksgiving.
Deb from Minneapolis,
"Maybe Tulsi should have
Thanksgiving with your family."
I'm actually not having dinner
with my mom and my dad
this Thanksgiving.
I've not been invited.
People are taking some space
in the Watters household.
I'll have you know
that I was not invited
to my mother's house
for Thanksgiving.
Apparently,
there wasn't enough room.
She said it was
a scheduling situation.
Last Thanksgiving, I cleared
the whole table out.
I don't know if everybody knows,
my family's all Democrats.
I just sat at the end of the table
by the end of the night.
I had my wine. No one wanted
to have anything to do with me.
I find it irritating on Thanksgiving
when my mother starts
yelling at me about politics.
My mother's
a crazy radical liberal.
Trust me,
Thanksgiving's a nightmare.
Jesse, you love to spend
time with family.
Yeah, but they don't like
spending time with me.
I drove my parents crazy.
Literally drove my mom crazy.
I would make her listen
to Limbaugh on car rides
and she'd have fits of road rage
and almost drive into shrubbery.
But I survived.
Some of the Thanksgivings were
awkward but here I am now
on "TheFive" and "Jesse Watters
Primetime." I think I turned out okay.
No, you didn't. Moving on.
This is our last show of the season.
And honestly? It has been a weird one.
We started by offering Clarence
Thomas a million dollars a year
and an RV in exchange
for his resignation,
which he very rudely
did not take.
And since then, things got pretty
weird here in the studio.
I got lost in some corn,
we had an indoor rainstorm,
I got swarmed by these
furry freaks from "Cats"
and shuttled offstage by what
appeared to be a flock of big,
spooky raviolis, which I'm sure
made sense in context.
We also tracked down a prolific stock
photo model from Azerbaijan
and flew him here
to take some more.
We got Will Ferrell to sing
a new patriotic song
to replace "God Bless the USA"
at citizenship ceremonies.
We bought the contents
of a shuttered Red Lobster,
and then, for reasons
I don't have time to get into,
sent some kitchen equipment
to a New York bakery
after bullying them into making
John Oliver cake bears
with a sumptuous donk,
which they very much did,
as well as making us this
spectacular bear likeness of me,
which I then ate ass-first,
proving that I'm not new to this.
I'm true to this.
Ya boy's an eater for real.
And much of that helped distract
from the genuinely bad year
that was 2024.
So bad, in fact, we were forced
to spend eight different main stories
covering issues
surrounding the election,
forgoing much more interesting ones
that we wanted to tackle like:
"Liev Schreiber just dropped
an enormous jar of vodka sauce"
"in the Whole Foods self-checkout.
Sauce everywhere."
We had 23 minutes on that planned,
but had to scrap it for an episode
on all the ways Trump would fight
the election results if he lost,
which, of course, he did not.
So tonight, before we leave,
I'd like to try and look forward.
The end of the year always has me
thinking about the next one
and what I hope 2025 will look like.
In 2025, I'd like Elon Musk
to jump so high,
he never comes back down.
I'd like to go just one day without
hearing about the "Wicked" movie.
And in 2025, I'd like the final
"Mission Impossible" film
to end with Tom Cruise taking
off his face mask
to reveal Shelly Miscavige.
That would be an amazing twist!
I know none of that is likely
to happen.
And that we're gonna have to cover
a lot of terrible shit next year.
But if there's one thing
I really do hope for,
it's that we still get to talk
about some ridiculous stuff, too.
So my plea to the rest of world
is to please keep being weird
in fun ways.
Keep making terrible statues,
holding weird contests
and auctioning off bizarre items.
And if I can talk
to New Zealand specifically,
please keep doing
exactly what you are doing.
I don't have to tell you to be
weird. Just be yourselves
and we'll find something
we can work with.
Look, the next four years
are going to be exhausting.
All we can really hope for
are little pockets of time
between new horrors
and calamities.
Maybe the goal should be to savor
those minutes of calm as best we can.
Basically,
I guess what I'm saying is,
when chaos becomes the norm,
we need to appreciate every second
we've managed to go without
a fresh affront to humanity.
Every day without an incident
going forward should be cherished.
I know,
we're gonna be hitting reset a lot.
Maybe the clock's been
ticking up for a while
and suddenly
you get a news alert:
"Rudy Giuliani Appointed
to the Supreme Court."
And then boom, you find
yourself back at zero again.
Maybe you're lucky enough
to get a second to catch your breath
and the clock climbs up for a bit,
only for suddenly
"Secretary of State Turns Out
to Be Putin in a Fake Mustache."
And boom,
you got to reset again.
And this is the time that
you really should treasure,
because deep down you probably
know it's just a matter of seconds
Hold on, we're out of helium now?
Like, it's all gone?
And maybe you're not sure what
to make of that story,
so you kind of barrel on,
only to get an alert that says
all aquariums are indefinitely
closed to the public,
which is so confusing it feels okay
to kind of just ignore
until you get the alert: "Please Stay
Inside; The Sky Is Full of Sharks Now."
I get it, the helium, from before.
I'm not sure what the exact
chain of events was,
but the sky's full of sharks,
and that's very bad. It makes sense.
And boom, we've got
ourselves a big old reset.
Again, the point here is,
we will be here for you next year
to talk about the bad moments
and hopefully
the moments of joy in between.
So, that is our show, thank you
so much for watching us all this year.
We'll see you in February.
Good night!
No, come on!
Fucking shit.
Motherfucker.