Breaking the TikTok Law - DTNS 4939  ## Metadata - Author: [[Daily Tech News Show]] - Full Title: Breaking the TikTok Law - DTNS 4939 - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/b4be1429-0668-461a-bad1-002352d36ac9 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **ByteDance's Message** - ByteDance proactively blocked US users, sending a message. - Their thorough blocking went beyond the law's requirements. Transcript: Tom Merritt Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. Well, if you went to bed early Saturday night and then slept in Sunday morning in the U.S., you might have missed the great TikTok blackout. It was only 14 hours long. It'd be a long sleep win. But, you know, it's possible. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act kicked in on Sunday, January 19th, as ByteDance has not divested itself of TikTok US. So starting around midnight Eastern time Saturday night, technically Sunday morning, Apple and Google in the United States removed all ByteDance app listings that includes TikTok, CapCut, Lemonade, and Marvel Snap in compliance with the law. In addition, TikTok began displaying a message at that point saying a law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok now. TikTok was using what turns out to be a combination of things. They were detecting US IP addresses, but also going by account creation location. So even if you weren't in the US, if your account was U.S., that happened to the Daily Tech News Show account. Our U.K. Social media manager could not log in because it was a U.S.-based account. And also looking at SIM card info in some cases to determine which accounts to block, leading, as I said, some people outside the U.S. To be affected. By Sunday morning, though, those accounts began to work again. And TikTok showed a message saying, thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S. However, it was not restored to the app stores and is still not restored to the app stores in the U.S. Also, at that point, no executive action had been taken yet. After the inauguration the next day on Monday, the president did sign an executive order instructing the U.S. Attorney general not to enforce the act for 75 days and to, quote, issue a letter to each provider stating that there has been no violation of the statute and that there is no liability For any conduct that occurred. Now, it's unclear exactly what legal effect that executive order has. Prosecution for violation of the law can happen up to five years after the commission of the violation. So even after the 75 days, somebody could decide, you know what? I don't like that they didn't follow that law during those 75 days. I'm going to sue them. I'm going to take them to court. Apple and Google seem to not want to risk that. So they have left the ByteDance apps out of their U.S. Stores for the time being, keeping them in full compliance with the law. And it's been my opinion that ByteDance doesn't need to stop offering its service to U.S. Users. The law does not block the service at the ISP level. However, the law does reference online storage and web hosts as entities that should not provide service as a result of this law. That probably applies to Oracle's storage of U.S. User data, which is done for USDS, which manages TikTok's user data in the U.S. And is a U.S. Company. So it gets thorny whether a U.S. Company operating the service would violate the law that requires the service to be divested to a U.S. Company. Apparently, Oracle and USDS believe that it's worth the risk since the full service started working before the executive order was issued and while the law was still in effect. Meanwhile, Senator Tom Cotton posted on X Sunday that, quote, any company that hosts, distributes services or otherwise facilitates communist controlled TikTok could face hundreds Of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from the Department of Justice, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits and state attorneys general. So clearly targeted at Oracle and saying even if the DOJ doesn't enforce the law, somebody else might. All right. We're almost at the end of this long story. Even if Oracle stopped providing service to ByteDance under the law, I think TikTok could still operate. It just wouldn't operate very well. It's fairly clear to me that ByteDance's proactive takedown over the weekend and its thorough blocking were meant to send a message more to comply with the law. ByteDance itself is now required to do anything to comply with the law. Meanwhile, China is loosening up on the idea of a solution that sees increased U.S. Investment. The Wall Street Journal notes that the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday that companies can make their own decisions on operations and acquisitions. The acquisitions part of that is what's important. Previously, the ministry had said a sale or divestiture of TikTok would need to be approved by the Chinese government. Monday, they were seeming to say, man, it's up to them. We don't need to approve. The thinking amongst people who are reading the tea leaves is that ByteDance's co-founder, Zhang Yiming, who has voting control over the company, may come to some kind of investment Agreement. Yiming is friends with Elon Musk, who is also on good terms with the Chinese government. So that is how that kind of deal could be brokered. What happens next anybody's guess. The USDS company in Texas could be beefed up, add some investors and be counted as divestment by the president. It's ready made for that exact kind of thing. Some kind of joint venture with ByteDance for TikTok US could supersede USDS, replace it. That could be created with Musk or just the existing Western investors. ByteDance is majority owned by Western investors. They don't have the voting shares to outvote Yuming, but they own most of the company. So that could be something they do to save the US version of the company. But it looks like everyone involved has a vested interest in getting a deal done. If it is done, it becomes less likely that Senator Cotton's idea of suing Oracle or others would be worth the effort. And it looks like the app stores aren't going to list ByteDance apps until such a deal is secured and certified. So you'll be able to keep using CapCut, keep using Lemonade, keep playing Marvel Snap if you have the app, but you won't be able to get new versions of them. So don't delete them and hope that a bug doesn't come along that needs to be patched. Among all this uncertainty, though, I mentioned Marvel Snap just a second ago. One thing could change regarding that app. Marvel Snap is not made by ByteDance. It's made by Second Dinner, but it's published by ByteDance. And Second Dinner said it's going to bring more services in-house and partner with a new publisher. And if they were able to get that done, that would let app stores list Marvel Snap again without risk because it wouldn't involve ByteDance. So there we are, Huynh. It was a long weekend and a lot to catch people up on. ([Time 0:03:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d578959f-9378-4b5d-b7c2-d99d0eeca4ba)) - **Tech Stack Control** - Huyen Tue Dao expresses surprise at the TikTok distribution ban's impact. - She notes the rarity of single companies controlling the entire tech stack. Transcript: Huyen Tue Dao There was a lot that happened in 14 hours. I'm still not quite – it's just the shock. And it feels like I was in a wind tunnel of TikTok news and updates. I did really – because I did see Tom Post, for example, on Blue Sky, for example, that just being very clear, it's distribution that is outlawed by this legislation, not the service itself. And I think it's so interesting because I feel like, especially in tech, you know, it's very rare that a single company owns the pipes, the tubes, and the software. It's always like this kind of distributed thing. And so I do think it's fascinating all of the kind of pointing at fingers or looking askance at Oracle and, you know, and USDS and saying like, well you know it almost feels like blaming The messenger or more like blaming the pipes but it is you know you've got tom cotton over here like making these like you know wild these very intense uh intense threats let's call them Um it's been a wild not even again not even 24 hours but at the same time i don't know if i'm surprised because i think we kind of spoke and you mentioned last time that you really, you know, Didn't really see this sticking if it happened and it didn't. Tom Merritt So I didn't know how we would get there, but I was fairly confident that on Monday, TikTok would work in the US and it did. It was very interesting to see how it got there. It was not exactly what I would have predicted if I would have predicted it. Again, ByteDance didn't need to do anything. Apple, Google, and potentially Oracle, although I'm a little hazy on how Oracle fits into that part of what is a vaguely worded law about web hosts and file storage. If ByteDance hadn't done anything and Oracle had shut itself off, TikTok could have still worked for existing app users, but they might not have been able to get the same videos that They would have gotten otherwise. They might not have been able to authenticate accounts, which could have caused some things. So there's some people were making the argument of like, well, if Oracle shuts it off, then ByteDance is well served to put a message up saying, hey, it's not our fault. But that's not the message they put up. The message they put up is we've been banned, which was misleading. It wasn't exactly wrong, but it wasn't exactly true. So that's why I was posting all that stuff over the weekend to be like, you know, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. There's a lot more messaging involved in this than actual compliance to the law. And right now, if Oracle is in fact allowing TikTok to access the USDS database, USDS and Oracle would be technically in violation of the law. It's just that the president has said, we're not going to enforce the law for 75 days. But as Tom Cotton pointed out, like, well, that doesn't matter if we bring a securities lawsuit against you or something else. So yeah, it's a mess, but I think it's a mess that's going to end up not meaning much because something's going to be agreed to. Huyen Tue Dao No, it feels like that was the intention beforehand. And it's shocking because I think that a lot of normal TikTok users really did feel like their service was being taken away and that and that's i don't know i know i'm gonna try to leave My tin hole hat off but the public messaging has been a very dramatic you know it feels like a very serious thing tons of people were looking to migrate making you know last tiktok post Were emergency downloading all of their content especially you know for creators we're done oh yeah down on the content and i do but i i do agree with you that especially given like this Law how it's written and how this all rolled out it really does feel more at the very worst perform, or maybe just meant to be kind of politicking with something that people, you know, Average people care about. And we can kind of encourage people to support us because we support their thing. And at the very worst, just a confusing mess of we made some interesting decisions politically and try to create legislation around that, but we actually don't want to do it. It's all very confusing. And just even the idea of attacking or rather indicting, say, the holder of data is really interesting. So I have been, like, I've worked at companies where when a law like in the US, the DMCA, is that right? The DMCA. So I was actually working at companies that, you know, had multiple, like that did business in multiple countries, including the EU. And, you know, when that law came down, that was a very serious, you know, tangible and very kind of very enforceable law. It was very specific. And the things that we had to do took months to comply with the DMCA. And the practices and the procedures that were put in place took months, because this was a law that had a lot of intention behind it and had very specific routes that the governments Were asking us to follow to protect user data. This is a very amorphous thing saying distribution is banned, but then kind of sort of vaguely making threats at basically what a company is like the pipes. They're the pipes. They're more like holding and transmitting the data. And it's interesting to me because just the idea that a law that is vaguely written could implicate the intermediary of the data the holder of the data and yes they're holding the data But there's still a an intermediary service they're a middle person and it's so interesting to me as a tech person that the implicate like there would be so many implications if you could If you could you know indict or bring lawsuits against a middle a middle a middle middleman for lack of a better phrase of that it's it's just kind of astounding to me because we do have Laws that that have like protected that are really solidly and very concretely protecting data and things like that this is not this is not none of this has felt like any of those very Real things that a lot of us in the tech company have had to deal with in like, you know, in recent times. It feels like none of that. It just feels like a kind of like the Tasmanian devil when he spins around in the tornado and there's just all this like mess. It has felt like that very much as a tech person from the outside looking in. ([Time 0:09:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ab300ed7-5d9d-4561-a13f-8cd3d08548dc)) - **Instagram's Edits** - Instagram launched a new video editing app, Edits, capitalizing on CapCut's unavailability. - Edits is expected to release in February, filling the market gap. Transcript: Tom Merritt Mobile video editor CapCut was one of ByteDance apps that stopped working for a couple of days. It now works again, but is not listed in the U.S. App stores. Instagram is taking advantage of that gap and has announced its own app for mobile video editors called Edits. It's only available to preorder. You can't get it yet on the app store. Although Instagram's Adam Mosseri said it should arrive in February. Even though the app listing says March, I think they're trying to push it and get it out as fast as possible. Oh, wow. Huyen Tue Dao So this is one of the, I did not see this collateral damage coming from all of this and going after CapCut, which I think, so I worked at Adobe for a bit and I actually worked on a mobile editor That was meant to be a competitor to CapCut. And CapCut was always held as the standard because it is de facto the video editor that content creators use for mobile video. Oh, yeah. Really good. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's really good. I think there's a reason why it is held up as a model and probably also why it has a big target on its back. ([Time 0:19:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ec5918c9-ea8a-440b-8baf-524bc9321324)) - **Davos and Tech** - The World Economic Forum in Davos has become a significant tech event. - It's a place where global leaders discuss technology's impact. Transcript: Huyen Tue Dao World Economic Forum is happening in Davos, Switzerland, and it has been something of a technology event. Tom found someone attending Davos to explain what it is and why tech folks might care. Tom Merritt I'm talking with Reid Albergati, technology editor from Semaphore, who is in Switzerland. Reid, thanks for joining us. Reed Albergotti Yeah, absolutely. It's good to be here. How is Davos? It is, you know, kind of cold. It's a little, you know, it's not a ton of snow um i went skiing today it was fun yeah it was good um and now everybody's showing up i got i got here sort of a day early um and now the the it's a Tiny little swiss ski town and the roads are jam-packed with black uh suvs and ubers and um people the global elite are filing in for their meetings. Tom Merritt What is it about the elite of the world that they like to meet in very tiny places with small roads like Jackson Hole in Davos? Reed Albergotti Yeah, I don't know, actually, but I think you should have a separate podcast just on that topic. You probably do. I think it's a really great, great question. But as far as I know, my history of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos is that they decided to have this here many years ago. And it was just a small little meeting. And it's grown into something huge. And they've decided to keep it in this small little town anyway. And here we are. Tom Merritt And there you are. So it's the World Economic Forum. It goes throughout this coming week. Tell us a little bit about what it is, you know, the nuts and bolts, and then why folks interested in technology are often, like yourself, interested in it. Reed Albergotti Yeah, I mean, and that's part of the reason this thing has become so big. So, you know, it really started out as kind of this place where the global elite would come and talk about everything going on in the world and kind of set the global agenda. I don't know if they were ever really successful in doing that, but that was sort of how they talked about it. And now it's kind of turned into a sort of technology conference and really like everything conference that's kind of tacked onto it. And so all of that sort of original Davos stuff happens inside this little area called the Congress Center. And then outside of that, you walk around and all the buildings, the storefronts and everything have been transformed into corporate logos. And so there's a house, you know, H-A for every company. And even Semaphore has a house this year, which we're very, very proud of. So it means we've really arrived. Yeah, congrats. Yeah. But I mean, it's funny because for me, it's kind of... We have events here, we do panel discussions and roundtables and everything. But the actual Davos is just something I'm not even allowed to go into the area as a journalist to where all the big elite people talk. And there's probably secret meetings that I don't know about. But I don't actually think... It's actually a little bit... There are all these conspiracy theories about Davos and about the global elite and all this and that. And it's actually kind of... I mean, you come here and it's like... Last year was the first year that I came and it really wasn't what I expected. It's kind of... There's a lot of, um, you know, business executives, wealthy people and people involved in politics and, you know, they, they, it's very, it's all about status and you have to have, There's all these different tiers of badges that costs lots of money. And, you know, if you have the right color badge, you can get into the right, you know, party and all this stuff. So it's really, and it's, and it's all just kind of silly to be honest. I mean, it's something that we all kind of make fun of and, you know, but we come here anyway. Tom Merritt So it sounds like there's the big, you know, world elite meeting, you know, just, just themselves with no, no press around them in the secret halls, et cetera, but also like a mini South By Southwest going on outside or something. Reed Albergotti Yeah, it is. It is like South by Southwest in a ski town. But not many people ski. There was no one skiing today. It seems odd. Tom Merritt But yeah, I guess if you don't ski, you might not learn just for Davos. I know that there's a lot of talk about the various forms of AI, machine learning, large language models, et cetera, et cetera, going to happen in this situation. What do you expect to hear this week? Yeah. Reed Albergotti Well, last year, AI was the big discussion last year. It permeated everything. And I mean, I'm sure it will this year, but last year it was all about, you know, kind of, it was kind of driven by a fear of AI, I would say it was everything was about responsibility and, And, you know, making sure that AI is safe and that it's, that it's here for everybody and, you know, equality and all this stuff. I think we're, I think we've kind of moved past that. So it will be interesting to see if that is still the discussion here or if it's a bit more of like a – I think we've moved into a bit more of like a – this is a race between the West and the East, U.S. Versus China, maybe Europe as well. That's really the message. And obviously we have, you know, the inauguration happening during all of this and that, that really ushers in this sort of new, um, the new thinking I think around, around technology, Which is let's win versus let's contemplate it and maybe pass regulation to stop it. Yeah. Tom Merritt So, and, and are there representatives from China's sphere at Davos? Reed Albergotti Yeah, I mean, there definitely are. But I don't see them as much in the discussions in the tech world. And that's probably just a function of it is a bit of a – I think the tech part of Davos is pretty U.S.-centric, I would say. Tom Merritt It sounds like this is a good thing to keep an eye on if you want to know what kinds of things you'll be hearing from the EU, from the FTC, from the various governmental organizations. Whereas last year was all about safety and we saw a lot of, let's have a committee in the UK to talk about safety. Let's pass an AI rules of the road in the United States executive order. Does that sound right? Is like, keep an eye on what they say this year to kind of understand what you're going to hear from them from the rest of the year? Reed Albergotti Yeah, I would say that's the case, but I don't think anything there will be surprising, right? I think that Europe will continue to be, you know, they'll continue to sort of reign in AI and, and, you know, in doing so sort of sidestep or just not get involved in this massive economic Growth, ([Time 0:24:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eabb3389-b1b9-418f-89f1-37ee358aa521)) - **Android SIM Data Access** - Android apps can access SIM data without specific permission. - Martin, a listener, raised concerns about this privacy issue. Transcript: Huyen Tue Dao End every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. Today, Martin is helping us understand. So Martin noticed that TikTok appeared to be using SIM card data to identify US users and went down a rabbit hole of researching how SIM permissions are handled on phones. He writes, research shows Android API telephony manager methods like GetSim operator and GetSim country ISO still work without additional permissions, as long as the device does Not restrict them. So essentially, any app on an Android phone has access to the SIM data. And I am sure there are other similarly powerful and uniquely identifying data that, to me, should require special permissions. Tom Merritt Yeah, I don't know enough about this to know whether there's valid reasons why apps should just have unrestricted SIM identity operations for network logins or anything like that. I don't know if you know that either, but it could be used for tracking. And so I'm sure there are laws that prevent it from being used for tracking, but not all apps, you know, obey the law strictly. And I think that's what Martin is concerned about here. Huyen Tue Dao Yeah. Actually, as an Android developer, this is astounding to me, just because I know in the early days. So in Android, there are permissions that you see when you pop up, when you install a new app. Now there's like, for example, permissions for notifications even, and the user has to approve it. And then on the developer side of it, we have an API that we actually have to wrap around all of these different things that are sensitive abilities of the phone that we have to write some Code around and say, hey, user, I need this thing. Can you approve? It boggles my mind, actually, that these two things are not covered by the API that we have to use. And it's very restrictive, like media, the phone, even like the internet, all of these things are covered by permissions. Sorry, the internet thing is a little bit different. But so the fact that they missed something like this, which is, you know, in a sense, you know, user identifying information, which is generally the phrase that we all have learned to Be very cautious about, user identifying information, are not covered. My mind is just blown. And the only thing I think of, it's more of just an obscure way of getting this data. And maybe it's harder to use this data than, say, your device ID or your, you know, address, your location. Yeah, like safety through obscurity, but obviously not that obscure. Yeah. Tom Merritt Not really obscure if you know where to look. My mind is blown. Which is always true, I guess. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you think about these two examples that Martin used, country ISO and operator, are also given away by your IP address. So I imagine someone looked at that and said, well, these are on the same level. So, you know, if people are going to see IP addresses, I guess they can see this too. But that doesn't mean that everyone will agree with that, right? Huyen Tue Dao Yeah. And especially since everyone from users all the way up to the actual publishers of software have been very sensitive to data privacy on all levels. Again, this is pretty fascinating and really good work, Martin. And I did not know this. 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