TikTok

Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China's ByteDance

by Matthew Brennan  · 9 Oct 2020  · 282pp  · 63,385 words

Rita Liao Cover design, Agnese Lena Illustrations, Valentina Segovia Interior design, Hammad Khalid ISBN: 9798694483292 First paperback edition: October 2020 Attention Factory The Story of TikTok & China’s ByteDance Matthew Brennan Contents Resources Preface Disclaimer Acknowledgments THE BACK END Prologue Gaming the Gatekeepers Yiming ByteDance The Early Years Recommendation, From YouTube

…

and forgotten like thousands of apps before it in China’s fast-paced, cutthroat internet industry. But beyond all expectations, Douyin and its international variant, TikTok, skyrocketed to unimaginable heights of success. These two apps became a global phenomenon, exceeding even the wildest dreams of the founding team. So what

…

acquired, which extensively diversified the company’s offerings and product categories. Each phase builds directly upon the products and technology developed in the previous one. TikTok’s success was predicated on replicating its Chinese sister app Douyin’s technology, product experience, and promotional playbook. In turn, Douyin’s success relied on

…

a small stake of 1.72% in ByteDance but has since sold its stake. Source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tencent-xiaomi-invested-in-tiktoks-parent-bytedance 64 API: application program interface, a set of established rules that specifies how two software components should communicate 65 https://www.ixigua.com

…

is my imperfect translation of 干货 gānhuò, which could also be translated as “the real McCoy” or “something of substance” Chapter 3 Recommendation, From YouTube to TikTok Chapter Timeline 2009 – Netflix awards a $1 million prize for an algorithm that increased the accuracy of their video recommendation by 10% 2011 – YouTube introduces

…

these is that distribution of content is dictated by the users themselves, working within the constraints of the platform’s rules. Recommendation – Toutiao and TikTok Recommendation is the most recent model to have come of age. When fully embraced, it can be highly accessible as recommendation removes the requirement to

…

, including Chen Yuqiang and Zhu Wenjia 94 . Zhu Wenjia later led the team responsible for developing the original recommendation systems used by Douyin and TikTok. The company’s technical expertise had reached such a level by 2016 that they could experiment with methods to algorithmically generate content. During that year

…

media and enjoying engagement levels comparable to articles produced by human writers. Recommendation systems became ByteDance’s core technology, underpinning everything from short videos on TikTok to articles in Toutiao through to comedy GIFs on their app Neihan duanzi (Insider jokes.) Recommendation 101 In January 2018, ByteDance held a public meeting

…

Mindie co-founder Grégoire Henrion demonstrates the Mindie app at LeWeb conference Paris in December 2013. The demonstration is instantly recognizable as the predecessor of TikTok. 127 The reception from early users was excellent, and the team had done enough that they could now go after serious funding. First courting

…

Yiming during a speech to company staff. Positioning around music had helped immensely with attracting the young early adopters’ group. Musical.ly, Douyin, and TikTok are all robust music discovery platforms, something which goes back to the earliest insights of the Mindie team—adding music to videos was the same

…

need to spend a lot of money.” Kelly Zhang, ByteDance China CEO Image: Douyin and Kuaishou start expanding into selected international markets under the names TikTok and Kwai, respectively. Musical.ly reenters the China market at the same time. Chapter Timeline 2017 Feb – ByteDance acquires Flipagram 2017 May – First version

…

desktop internet eras. In general, Asian countries exhibit highly active social media use and strong demand for online entertainment, characteristics that boded well for TikTok’s expansion. TikTok saw it necessary to tailor their approach to each country leveraging localized promotion channels and native-language influencer ecosystems. Some markets would be easier

…

with female celebrity Kinoshita Yukina. 232 Once the operations team discovered she had become a user, they immediately contacted her representative office. Kinoshita enjoyed using TikTok very much and was open to collaboration, but her agency expressed strong reservations. “It took around six or seven rounds of discussions to seal

…

recognizable, reducing self-consciousness and allaying concerns over physical appearance. Much operational expertise had been built up from Douyin that could be transferred over to TikTok Japan. This included a proven back catalog of highly engaging challenges that would generate online buzz, luring in more local stars and celebrities. As mentioned

…

products; localize content A similar story to Japan was playing out in other Asian countries as ByteDance tested the waters and refined their systematic playbook. TikTok’s early markets were Asian, including Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia. At the same time, its Chinese competitor Kuaishou was also making its first

…

opting to focus its efforts on Korea together with several large-population emerging markets such as Russia, Brazil, and Indonesia. The indications were pointing towards TikTok having the potential to work anywhere. At its core, the app simply served up personalized videos based on user profile tagging. This basic concept was

…

all cultures. In one interview, Yiming described the ByteDance approach as to “globalize products and localize content.” Standardized elements – universal across all markets Branding : the TikTok name, logo, and distinctive visual identity UX, UI: The core features and design, product logic Technology: recommendation, search, classification, facial recognition Localized elements – tailored

…

relations, legal and content moderation Central to this system was the concept of regionalized content pools based on geography, culture, and language. 239 The core TikTok experience was the “For You” feed, which was localized for each market. Japanese users would not be recommended content from Indonesian accounts and vice-

…

, and their technological capabilities weak in comparison. They also suffered from limited brand awareness and no point of differentiation. Above: Musical.ly and Douyin/TikTok seemed similar at first glance, but this was only the tip of the iceberg. Founder Alex Zhu bluntly compared how he saw competition between the

…

which fizzled out after failing to gain traction. There was an increasing number of indications that Musical.ly’s growth and engagement had peaked. 249 TikTok, however, was already making encouraging progress across various Asian markets, including notoriously tough Japan. Fortunately, Musical.ly was still in a favorable position to

…

Australia and Canada were grouped together within one region, despite their disparate geographies. 240 This strict “region lock” system has since been loosened as the TikTok content ecosystem has matured. Today it is possible for accounts from one region to become visible in other regions, especially those that have been whitelisted

…

leaders were now involved in a public spat. Screenshots of the exchange rapidly went viral on China’s internet, attracting widespread discussion and speculation. TikTok succeeding where WeChat had failed was a bitter pill for Tencent to swallow. Despite investing hundreds of millions of dollars into advertising and promotions in

…

attention towards the most popular video categories, which for Musical.ly was teenage dance, meme, and lip-sync videos. This didn’t fit with TikTok’s goal to age up the user base and encourage diversification of content categories. The signup process was significantly streamlined, removing the need to register

…

, indicating that the viewer found the video interesting, an attention-grabbing “share” icon would flash. Videos shared to other platforms now contained the flashing TikTok watermark. The logo was difficult to ignore as it alternated from one corner of the video to the other, continually vibrating. The single most significant

…

the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to the London underground through to the Las Vegas strip. Above: ByteDance product guru Kelly Zhang posts pictures online of TikTok advertising in December 2018. Left: New York Times Square, middle: the Burj Khalifa, Dubai, top right: Planet Hollywood, the Las Vegas Strip, bottom right:

…

internet companies look down upon directly cloning competitors. Even so, if an established giant like Google or Facebook chose to promote a similar product to TikTok vigorously, it could significantly hamper their progress. Facebook’s success in cloning rival Snapchat’s video feature “stories” demonstrated a fate that may easily

…

take part. These memes were referred to commonly as “challenges,” a term that explicitly communicated their participatory nature. Memes were undeniably a critical driver of TikTok’s success. The videos typically came across as frivolous fun and resistant to logical analysis. Yet, with enough exposure, formulas begin to emerge. Similar

…

was psychologically similar to flicking between TV channels with a remote control. Not knowing exactly what is coming next provides an addictive element of anticipation. TikTok worked without any need to register an account, subscribe to channels, add friends or expend mental effort choosing which piece of content to consume.

…

video creators. These people invested time and creativity into making unique content for the platform that was timely and meaningful to their niche audiences. TikTok had the most diverse and vibrant ecosystem of short video content creators. Building that community took time and could not be easily recreated at scale

…

Weishi—people would try out the alternative app. Yet, once they discovered it had inferior content, they would simply give up and move back to TikTok. Above: TikTok’s dual virtuous flywheels Fostering a healthy ecosystem of creators required three things. Firstly, users need to convert into becoming creators. Secondly, creators need

…

, or simply stop creating. Many influencers found indirect ways to work with brands to do endorsements and soft ad promotions. To facilitate this further, TikTok set up a marketplace matchmaking brands with creators 302 and began to test monetization features that had proved effective in China, including embedding store links

…

themselves quarantined inside their homes for weeks, leading into months. While airlines, hotels, and restaurants went bankrupt, demand for online entertainment skyrocketed, causing downloads of TikTok to hit all-time highs. The app was the perfect fix for those desperate for distraction, locked inside suffering from the cruel combination of stress

…

-2018-who-are-nations-wealthiest-man-and 259 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-musically/chinas-bytedance-scrubs-musical-ly-brand-in-favor-of-tiktok-idUSKBN1KN0BW 260 Demonstration videos Mindie, Dec 2013 https://youtu.be/ibjbxRBMI30?t=175 Musical.ly June 2016: https://youtu.be/z4haZtTAToI?t=21 Douyin

…

1ZiGM8D-EHc&list=RDCMUCvhRflCjdOgAA-eZLQVvZhg&index=2 274 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQxMW23uTJU 275 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/what-tiktok-is-cringey-and-thats-fine/573871/ 276 https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/as-a-chinese-company-we-never-get-the-benefit-of-the-

…

toy 278 https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-bytedance-plans-slack-rival-even-as-losses-mount?shared=6e04505df99b45f2 279 Image source: https://medium.com/@NateyBakes/tiktoks-growing-pains-in-the-west-attack-of-the-memes-b96e26593649 280 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq7CCoCO6j4 281 Coincidentally, the show that had propelled

…

https://twitter.com/LilNasX/status/1099455087670423553? 286 The original track sample was from the song “34 Ghosts IV” by 9 Inch Nails 287 https://www.tiktok.com/@nicemichael/video/6658388605418867974?refer=embed 288 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxwpKKK3P4s&feature=youtu.be 289 https://youtu.be/ptKqFafZgCk?t=235 290

…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AyKWtJXgNM& 294 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13414527 295 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3UjKrYckA0 296 https://www.tiktok.com/@davidkasprak/video/6640342878226763014?source=h5_m 297 https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/1/20892354/mark-zuckerberg-full-transcript-leaked-facebook-meetings 298 https

…

fund-first-recipients 304 https://www.toutiao.com/i6803294487876469251/? 305 Sources: company financial reports, SinaTech, Reuters, 36Kr, TMT post, Huxiuwang 306 https://medium.com/cheddar/tiktok-doubles-down-on-u-s-with-hire-of-veteran-youtube-exec-91d5bd9353d9 307 https://youtu.be/MwMdTBvpZQw?t=123 308 https://www.cnbc.com/2019

…

HOFMANN, former Musical.ly president of North America, left after the ByteDance acquisition ALEX ZHU 朱骏 ( z hūjùn) , co-founder of Musical.ly, later CEO of TikTok ALLEN ZHANG 张小龙 (zhāngxiǎolóng ), founder of WeChat and Foxmail, senior executive VP at Tencent ARIEL REBECCA MARTIN (BABY ARIEL), social media influencer, most followed Musical.ly

…

account 2016-2018 BLAKE CHANDLEE, joined TikTok in June 2019 as VP of global business solutions, having spent twelve years at Facebook as VP of global partnerships CAO HUANHUAN 曹欢欢 ( cáohuānhuān ), senior

…

LAMAR HILL), American songwriter. Creator of “Old Town Road,” the longest-running no. 1 single in Billboard Hot 100 history and propelled to popularity through TikTok. LIU JUN 刘峻 (liú jùn) , an early investor in ByteDance LIU XINHUA 刘新华 (liúxīnhuá), former president of ByteDance International, later chief growth officer of Kuaishou, currently

…

Paradigm, previously, partner at Sequoia Capital NEIL SHEN 沈南鹏 (chénnán péng), founding and managing partner of Sequoia China, an investor in ByteDance NIKHIL GANDHI, head of TikTok India until the app’s ban. Previously VP at Walt Disney, India PONY MA 马化腾 (mǎhuàténg), co-founder and CEO of Tencent ROBIN LI 李彦宏 (lǐ

…

, Russian investor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, early ByteDance investor ZACH KING, a popular visual illusion video creator, currently operates one of the most popular accounts on TikTok ZHANG HANPING 张汉平 (zhānghànpíng), father of Zhang Yiming ZHANG LIDONG 张利东 (zhānglìdōng), chairman of ByteDance China, joined 2013. A former journalist and vice president at Beijing

…

-09-15 https://www.ifanr.com/minapp/1101125 微视 vs 抖音，为何腾讯未能实现后发先至 2019-10-07 https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/kc-10P4vIJX01oj5ptsjJQ Chapter 7: Going Global with TikTok 从 Vine到 Musical.ly，它们曾大放光彩，却又迅速消失 2018-10-05 http://kuaibao.qq.com/s/20181005A1LWCX00?refer=spider 手握 2.3亿海外用户登顶美国第一，中国唯一国际化成功社交内容公司回国，它将如何对决快手秒拍今日头条？- 新经济 100人 2017-07-19 https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

by Anu Bradford  · 25 Sep 2023  · 898pp  · 236,779 words

’s censorship demands.65 More recently, Chinese tech companies abroad have also had to navigate the difficult terrain of regulators’ conflicting demands. In 2020, TikTok, a social media company owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was attempting to comply with the US government’s requirement that the company must find

…

and became the second largest smartphone maker globally in 2021.12 China also leads as a producer of telecom network equipment and commercial drones.13 TikTok’s popularity—as demonstrated by the company surpassing Facebook as the most visited social media website in 202114—has further shown that Chinese tech

…

set out by President Xi Jinping.123 Another 2019 regulation aimed specifically at audio and video platforms—including Douyin, which is the Chinese version of TikTok—requires that these companies shall “insist on the correct political direction, guidance of public opinions and value orientation, carry forward the core socialist values,

…

with continuing government direction and active monitoring. In a 2021 interview given under the pseudonym “Li An,” an employee at ByteDance—the creator of TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin—shed light on how ByteDance’s censorship machine works and how connected it is to the CAC.126 Li An

…

practices are also complicating the efforts of Chinese tech companies to expand abroad. In 2020, US President Trump signed executive orders to ban WeChat and TikTok in the US within forty-five days on the grounds that these companies’ data collection allowed the CCP to access Americans’ personal information and

…

Code) with four US technology companies: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft.57 Additional companies have joined since, including Instagram and Snapchat in 2018 and TikTok in 2020.58 These signatories agree to “prohibit the promotion of incitement to violence and hateful conduct on their platforms,” and commit to reviewing any

…

regulatory efforts, the Commission developed a nonbinding Disinformation Code, which, in its updated 2022 version, has been signed by leading platforms including Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and Twitter.83 These companies voluntarily commit to measures, including increasing transparency in political advertising, closing fake accounts, facilitating fact-checking, demonetizing the dissemination of

…

be passed on to the Chinese government and deployed toward extortion or other ill-motivated ends. Another fear is that the Chinese government may infiltrate TikTok’s algorithms and thereby channel Communist Party propaganda to the company’s US-based users. As a result, Chinese social media and messaging apps,

…

—at least until recently. Despite the relative openness of the US market, only a few Chinese tech companies have gained traction in the US. TikTok has been the most successful Chinese tech company abroad to date, surpassing Facebook and Google in 2021 as the world’s most popular web domain

…

.103 TikTok straddles the geopolitical divide: it is owned by its Chinese parent company ByteDance, which offers essentially the same short video app in China, known

…

the biggest online fashion brand in the world. While the company is wildly successful abroad, interestingly, it is hardly known in China. Shein and TikTok are rare examples of Chinese tech companies prospering in the US market. Most others have struggled to win market share in the US. Kuaishou, Douyin

…

analysis for personalized information recommendation services,” thus making the export of any such technology conditional on obtaining a government license.123 This definition likely covers TikTok since the company’s app relies on algorithms that deploy user data to generate personalized content for app users. As a result, the Chinese

…

a preliminary injunction before the US District Court for the District of Columbia (DDC) in September 2020.124 The District Court ruled in favor of TikTok later that month, reasoning that the ban would cause irreparable commercial harm to the company, while adding that the government’s action likely exceeded

…

mobile app.126 After his election, President Biden revoked his predecessor’s order and requested a Commerce Department review of the security concerns posed by TikTok.127 As of August 2022, the review is still pending, which has frustrated some US lawmakers.128 The Biden administration’s slow progress on

…

133 The following month, the US Department of Commerce announced a plan to ban WeChat transactions in the US by September 20, 2020.134 Like TikTok, WeChat also challenged the government order before US courts and won some notable victories. The District Court of the Northern District of California held

…

restrictive alternatives to a complete ban, including barring WeChat from government devices, akin to what Australia had recently done.136 Consistent with his policy toward TikTok, President Biden revoked President Trump’s executive order in June 2021, yet ordered the Commerce Department to review the security concerns posed by WeChat.

…

137 The TikTok and WeChat battles represent a significant shift in the US government’s policy toward Chinese tech companies. But those two regulatory battles are also

…

that even communications by ordinary citizens can be viewed by the court as related to “national security.”139 While the December 2020 court ruling helped TikTok secure a short-term victory, the DDC suggested in its opinion that alternative US government actions short of a complete ban can still be

…

legal.140 For example, the government could still use the CFIUS process to require ByteDance to divest its stake in TikTok.141 And despite TikTok’s court victories, Republicans in Congress continue to pressure the company on data privacy concerns,142 with some members still calling for the

…

app to completely sever its ties with its Chinese parent company.143 The battle that the US government has waged against TikTok is not without its critics, even among American commentators. In deliberating its next steps against the social media company, the US government thus needs

…

to weigh both the growing resentment against China and TikTok’s operations on the one hand, and the criticism of any hardline strategy on the other. Some voices call for restraint and warn that,

…

and that is engaging in digital surveillance—is widespread, intensifying the US government’s resolve to press ahead with its battle against a company like TikTok. Some US tech companies have also actively pushed the narrative that Chinese companies are untrustworthy, with the goal of keeping these China-focused vertical

…

battles alive. For example, Meta reportedly hired a consulting firm to run a nationwide public relations campaign against TikTok, with the goal of portraying the Chinese-owned company as “a danger to American children and society.”147 Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg also publicly

…

voice and expression triumph around the world.”148 It is expected that a company like Meta will urge the US government to go after TikTok—after all, TikTok arguably poses the gravest competitive threat to Meta’s own social media platforms. But several other prominent US voices with no such commercial incentives

…

privilege of full internet access—the open internet—should be extended only to companies from countries that respect that openness themselves.”151 The banning of TikTok in the name of reciprocity would, indeed, accomplish the goal of greater symmetry in US–China relations. But critics caution that this symmetry would

…

had done for a long time: use a virtual private network (VPN) to “circumvent the new great firewall of America.”153 Similarly, by banning TikTok, the US can be seen as endorsing—even if unwittingly—the Chinese state-driven regulatory model that lets the government determine what internet users can

…

Chinese government. Oracle has been accused of having forged close links with the Chinese government, as discussed earlier.159 The likely ineffectiveness of the TikTok divestment therefore raises the question of whether it is truly motivated by national security concerns or whether the decision is driven by commercial considerations—making

…

the attempted ban resemble the economic protectionism typically associated with the Chinese state-driven regulatory model. Whether the US bans Chinese tech companies like TikTok or WeChat from its market or not, it is evident that the ongoing struggle with China is fostering a shift in the American market-

…

driven regulatory model. Some commentators have suggested that instead of emulating the Chinese state-driven model as a solution to its concerns about TikTok, the US could emulate the European rights-driven model and adopt its own version of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Under such a

…

also help resolve the regulatory battles over data privacy with the Europeans, as discussed in Chapter 6. Restricting Chinese Listings in the US: DiDi Chuxing TikTok is not the only Chinese tech company finding itself caught between irreconcilable demands of American and Chinese regulators. Such intractable conflicts now also threaten Chinese

…

New York Stock Exchange. Yet others hold on, illustrating the benefits of the global digital marketplace: American teenagers can still dance to the tunes of TikTok, at least for now, thanks in part to the US judiciary. Apple still thrives in China, insisting elsewhere that “privacy is a fundamental human

…

a surprise, as India has otherwise not hesitated in sanctioning Chinese tech companies. In June 2020, the country banned almost sixty Chinese apps—including TikTok and WeChat—due to concerns about China stealing user data and thereby infringing on India’s sovereignty and integrity.59 Governments’ hesitation to ban Huawei

…

Chinese government issued the UEL in September 2020, shortly after the US government announced a ban on US transactions on the Chinese apps WeChat and TikTok—again indicating that the Chinese government was determined to respond in kind.109 The Chinese list targets foreign companies operating in China who “[endanger

…

software industry, including in social media, which is a field that US tech companies have long dominated. In 2019, the Chinese social media company TikTok overtook Facebook as the most popular social media app among US users. In contrast, the US still today leads in several other fields such as

…

have today. Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide, followed by YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.7 Even though the popularity of TikTok is growing, the Chinese-owned social media app still trails behind Facebook in global user numbers.8 Of these leading networks, all but YouTube and

…

instance, gain access to the data that flows through Huawei-built 5G infrastructures, or influence foreign societies by spreading Chinese propaganda through the ByteDance-owned TikTok app that is rapidly gaining popularity abroad.9 Consequently, the Chinese infrastructure power not only entrenches Chinese tech companies’ global influence but possibly also increases

…

noncompliance.113 This law has also been strictly enforced in practice, with the Russian authorities imposing fines in 2021 on Google, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok for these companies’ failure to delete content related to the January 2021 anti-government protests in Russia.114 Another 2020 federal law introduces sanctions for

…

informed by learnings of international examples, such as the European Union Code of Practice on Disinformation.”114 Tech companies Adobe, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Redbubble, TikTok, and Twitter have all signed the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, thereby committing to EU-inspired content moderation practices in Australia as

…

Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain, 85 Fed. Reg. 48641 (Aug. 11, 2020); Exec. Order No. 13942, Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok, and Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency With Respect to the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain, 85 Fed. Reg. 48637

…

Complicated by New Rules From China Over Tech Exports, N.Y. Times (Aug. 29, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/technology/china-tiktok-export-controls.html; Press Release, Chinese Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology Publish Updated Catalogue of China’s Prohibited and Restricted Export

…

. 133.Exec. Order 13943, 85 Fed. Reg. 48,641 (Aug. 11, 2020). 134.Press Release, Dep’t of Comm., Commerce Department Prohibits WeChat and TikTok Transactions to Protect the National Security of the United States (Sep. 18, 2020), https://2017-2021.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2020/09/commerce-department

…

’t of Treasury (Sep. 19, 2022), https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/JDH%20Letter%20to%20Yellen%20re%20TikTok_0.pdf. 144.TikTok and the Splintering of the Global Internet, Fin. Times (Aug. 3, 2020), https://www.ft.com/content/6a1b9b4d-ddbc-4b62-9101-221510fb7b45. 145.Arthur

…

Parashar, UK Parliament Shuts Down Its TikTok Account After Concern from MPs About the Social Media Firm’s Links to China, Daily Mail (Aug. 4, 2022), https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news

…

Webster, App Bans Won’t Make US Security Risks Disappear, MIT Tech. Rev. (Sep. 21, 2020), https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/21/1008620/wechat-tiktok-ban-china-us-security-policy-opinion/. 162.Jing Yang, Keith Zhai, & Corrie Driebusch, Didi Tried Balancing Pressure From China and Investors. It Satisfied Neither,

…

Monthly Active Users, Statista (July 26, 2022), https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. 8.Jennifer Elias, TikTok Looms Large in Tech Earnings Reports as Digital Ad Giants Struggle to Keep Up, CNBC Tech (Apr. 29, 2022), https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04

…

Irish corporate structure, 330–31 lobbying activity, 55–56, 356–57 market capitalization, 2 monopolistic behavior, 53–54 relations with Apple, 358 relations with TikTok, 170 role in Australian news industry regulation, 351–52 role in Brexit, 17–18 role in discrimination against Rohingya, 17–18 role in genocide, 280

…

, 2 MSN Spaces, 160–61 Office 365 applications suite, 154, 261–62 relations with Apple, 358 relations with Google, 247, 358, 383 relations with TikTok, 171–72 Safe Harbor agreement, 229–30 SolarWinds hack, 60 support for Digital Divide projects, 268 support for regulatory action, 276, 383, 385 Threat Intelligence

Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language

by Adam Aleksic  · 15 Jul 2025  · 278pp  · 71,701 words

to create a personalized stream of recommended content we collectively call the algorithm.[*1] This “algorithm” was then applied to Douyin’s international counterpart, TikTok. The exact vocabulary lists were most likely tweaked for the new markets, although we can’t know for sure, because everything about them is shrouded

…

in corporate secrecy. There is substantial reason to believe that ByteDance has suppressed anti-Beijing sentiment on TikTok,[3] and that it has previously censored content related to LGBTQ+ themes and other sensitive topics such as politics, pornography, and self-harm. An

…

this policy is that it became very difficult for online creators to have earnest conversations about topics that might incidentally register as violations of the TikTok community guidelines, such as suicide prevention. Knowing that their video might be removed for talking about their own experiences, some influencers opted to use

…

creators. Well beyond censorship avoidance, I see everybody mold their speech around algorithms anytime language spreads on social media. The personalized recommendation structure of the TikTok “For You” page was a critical vehicle in helping “unalive” expand beyond the context of a niche Spider-Man reference. Since the platform used

…

about their posts being removed. Once the mental health community repurposed “unalive” to suit their needs, the term slowly filtered into other communities on TikTok, since the boundaries of in-groups are much more porous on algorithmically based applications. As more people encountered the word and found it practical, the

…

linguistic innovation. Personalized recommendations aren’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future, because the social media landscape is too competitive. Any country that has banned TikTok, for example, immediately saw rival apps like Instagram swoop in to dominate user attention. Short-form video is simply the most addictive medium we have

…

, especially as people increasingly turn to short-form video for news or advice. Oftentimes, the mysterious rules governing social media are arbitrary or outright discriminatory. TikTok has historically been proven,[1] for example, to artificially suppress videos by “ugly,” old, and poor creators, because they’re not as appealing to

…

around community guidelines wherever we can. * * * In 2022, the Charles Dickens Museum began a desperate social media campaign to get itself un-shadowbanned from TikTok. Whenever users would search for the museum’s account, nothing would show up. Instead, they would be cautioned[2] that “this phrase may be associated

…

village where residents discovered they were unable to create AOL accounts because their hometown contained the word “cunt.” Following an intense #FreeDickens campaign on Twitter, TikTok eventually agreed to unblock Charles Dickens–related search terms. However, it still remains difficult to curse—intentionally or accidentally—on any platform. While your videos

…

option for the many creators on social media making educational content on health, medicine, or sex positivity—which should have been permissible according to the TikTok community guidelines, but was still suppressed. It’s easier for the algorithm to categorically penalize a word than to distinguish between use-specific exceptions. As

…

When the student chose to describe her assault through the “red zone” metonym, she phrased her euphemism such that it would both be seen on TikTok and avoid triggering other assault survivors. This type of evasive language has been getting more common, especially in political discourse. Rather than direct algospeak translations

…

in October 2023, social media users around the globe began voicing concerns that their posts about the conflict were being restricted on social media. TikTok and YouTube videos about Palestine were getting fewer views or outright getting removed, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Azmat Khan reported that her Instagram

…

had been shadowbanned for posting a story about the war. Usually, platforms ignore addressing these kinds of concerns, or justify them through very vague policies. TikTok, for example, has rules nebulously prohibiting “highly controversial topics” and promotion of “violent or hateful actors,” which it uses to suppress or remove content

…

Matter protests, creators talking about race have similarly been abstracting their language online. It can be risky to say the words “Black” or “white,” since TikTok has a policy suppressing or removing videos “exaggerating the ethnic conflict between black and white.” Instead, influencers find loopholes like spelling “white” as “yt”

…

thoughts depending on the domain. One might expect this sociolect to internally differ between apps, due to slight differences in content moderation. However, algospeak on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and every similar platform is nearly identical. Successful creators rarely generate content for just one app, but instead cross-post to all

…

The word “sigma” became popular through the sigma meme templates, and the sigma meme templates became popular because the algorithm rewarded content containing that word. TikTok knew that the people liked sigma content, because it consistently generated more interactions than other words for “successful male.” As a result, “sigma” assumed a

…

of rules governing your feed. On other platforms, it’s even more haphazard: Posting time, for example, seems to matter much less on apps like TikTok. The underlying strategies, however, remain the same. Influencers are still trying to create content that will emotionally or linguistically resonate with people, because that

…

of our new slang is emerging from people finding something catchy online. I’ve watched many of my friends criticize each other for “talking like TikTok,” referring to a slew of grammatical constructions popularized as meme-based phrasal templates online: It’s giving ___ It’s the ___ for me The way

…

what psychological appeal it uses. If this is a fishing metaphor, the way I reel you in is first by hooking your attention. * * * After TikTok hit the scene, a new grammatical construction rapidly became popular among younger generations: the interjection “no because.”[*3] Rather than indicating opposition to something, as

…

the linguistic founder effect. People always look to those before them for social cues. Since the earliest YouTube creators copied the Kardashians and the earliest TikTok creators copied YouTubers, the Kardashian-derivative dialects became established norms on their respective platforms, and were thus seen as prestigious simply because they were the

…

terminology would not have been nearly as extensive without the presence of social media algorithms. By targeting Taylor-related content specifically to Swifties, platforms like TikTok and Instagram gave them a community in which to gather. Each video, stitch, and comment section became a welcome space to share wild speculations,

…

demonstrating this because of the way that social media platforms perpetuate autism misinformation. A 2023 report published by the National Council on Severe Autism highlighted TikTok’s unique ability to spread reductive or inaccurate self-diagnosis information through algorithmic recommendations.[4] One video with more than a million views claims that

…

as an emergent effect. Entire communities have been built around digital rubbernecking. After the Rizzler song went viral, a subset of “cringe creators” emerged on TikTok, making videos with embarrassing meme words like “gyat” and “skibidi.” By talking in an exaggeratedly degrading manner, they attracted attention from viewers drawn in through

…

isn’t surprising when you consider that every social media platform steals trending content from other social media platforms. Instagram Reels is full of recycled TikTok videos, TikTok is full of edited YouTube clips, and YouTube is full of material from both websites. Each app has its own culture and language style

…

are popular in social media algospeak today only because of the early confluence of media and memes on other platforms that eventually diffused to mainstream TikToks. When I talk about the linguistic “innovators” and “majority adopters” in diffusion-of-innovations theory, this is it. The innovators are always niche communities

…

algorithms into directing traffic toward their websites. This practice is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO remains incredibly important on social media. TikTok actively included “search value” as one of the four payment metrics when it introduced its Creator Rewards Program in 2024, since it wanted its videos

…

community around that aesthetic. With new identities come new words, and so websites like Tumblr created the label “pastel goth” in the early 2010s. Once TikTok came along, it further popularized the term, along with other niche Tumblr aesthetics like cottagecore. As with “hyperpop,” many fashion microlabels had already been

…

goes on to explicitly state the following: [Subcultures] personalize your approach, resulting in a stronger connection with customers. Your brand becomes part of their identity. TikTokers turn to subcultures to define their online and offline personas, which means they will actively seek out brands they can identify with and align to

…

prescient words, “The future of business is selling less of more.” Now that Meta, ByteDance, and Alphabet have engineered these niche communities on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, they alone hold an advantage in controlling corporate marketing to their all-new “subcultural demographics.” Their wealth of user data makes it easier

…

and metadata is interchangeable with our everyday language. * * * The creator economy directly feeds into long-tail economics. Some influencers, such as Charli D’Amelio on TikTok and the streamer PewDiePie on YouTube, make incredibly general content appealing to wide audiences—the “head” of the demand curve for content. For users with

…

of products. This remains a major advertising strategy, and it has a symbiotic relationship with social media’s compartmentalization of identity. A quick search on TikTok reveals hundreds of videos showing off “Shein cottagecore hauls,” reinforcing the concept of a cottagecore identity and “cottagecore” as a word itself in a

…

always a prominent instance of how the boundary between words and branding campaigns can get blurred, but this is happening all over, especially on fashion TikTok. I’m particularly drawn to the word “preppy,” which dramatically shifted in meaning since the rise of recommendation algorithms. While older generations still associate

…

About Suicide?,” Wired, May 27, 2022. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 1. How to Play Linguistic Whac-A-Mole Sam Biddle et al., “Invisible Censorship: TikTok Told Moderators to Suppress Posts by ‘Ugly’ People and the Poor to Attract New Users,” Intercept, March 16, 2020. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1 M

…

Some LGBT Hashtags,” BBC, Sept. 10, 2020. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7 2. Sticking Out Your Gyat for the Rizzler Laura Herman, “For Who Page? TikTok Creators’ Algorithmic Dependencies,” IASDR 2023, Oct. 2023, doi.org/​10.21606/​iasdr.2023.576. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1 Ian Stewart and Jacob Eisenstein, “Making

…

Succeed in MrBeast Production,” drive.google.com/​file/​d/1YaG9xpu-WQKBPUi8yQ4HaDYQLUSa7Y3J/​view. Accessed October 15, 2024. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 Sophia Smith Galer, “How TikTok Created a New Accent—and Why It Might Be the Future of English,” BBC, Jan. 23, 2024. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5 Julie Beck, “The

…

the Imagined Audience,” New Media & Society 13, no. 1 (2011), 114–33, doi.org/​10.1177/​1461444810365313. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3 Sydney Lambert, “The TikTok Effect: How the Social Media App Helps Spread Autism Misinformation,” National Council on Severe Autism, Oct. 18, 2023, www.ncsautism.org. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE

…

Caroline Bourque, “The Making of a Microtrend,” Business of Home, Aug. 2, 2023, businessofhome.com. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7 Cory Doctorow, “The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok,” Wired, Jan. 23, 2023. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8 Cory Doctorow, “ ‘Enshittification’ Is Coming for Absolutely Everything,” FT Magazine, Feb. 8, 2024. BACK TO NOTE

…

Algorithms Have Hijacked ‘Social Learning,’ ” Kellogg School of Management, Aug. 16, 2023, insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 Eleanor Cummins, “The Creepy TikTok Algorithm Doesn’t Know You,” Wired, Jan. 3, 2022. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5 10. Are We Cooked? Elian Peltier, “How Africans Are Changing French

…

anti-language, 151 anti-vaxxers, 105 AOL, 17 apocalyptic statements, 137 Arabic language, 207–8 Asian men, 135 Asians, 138 Asian women, 135, 139 ASL TikTok gibberish, 218 ass, substitutions for, 18–20 Associated Press, 4 asterisk (*), 19, 25 ate, 161, 190 Atlantic, 94 attention, monetization of, 181 attention-grabbing

…

neurodivergent community, 115, 116 neurospicy, 115, 117 “neutral” American dialect, 93–94 Newgen, 137 Newman, Kayla, 157–59 news broadcasts, 93–94 News Daddy of TikTok, 211–12 newspaper comics, 18, 188 newspapers, 38, 49, 68, 108, 113 news sources, 211–12 New Yorker, 218 New York Times, 62, 175, 192

…

146 thicc, 152 “This is my least favorite thing about X,” 62 Thompson, Robert, 144 thought-terminating clichés, 130 “360” (song), 176 “throw shade,” 147 TikTok, 52–53, 57, 139–40, 173. See also For You page AAE and, 146, 154 addictive nature of, 40 advice for creators and, 173 American

…

text-to-speech, 30 trends from other platforms and, 121 video length and, 70 video on pen and pencil for, 19–20 Tiktokcel, 137 TikTok Rizz Party, 133 TikTok speak, 73, 82, 121 time stamps, 63 tone, 138 Too Hot to Handle (TV show), 67–68 “top guy of the Germans,” 24

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power

by Jacob Helberg  · 11 Oct 2021  · 521pp  · 118,183 words

domestic and foreign policy around that imperative, and it more readily accepts making hard domestic decisions deemed necessary. For example, would the U.S. suspend TikTok in the context of a mere U.S.-China competition? Unlikely, and has not to this day—the concept of competition implies American social media

…

platforms should simply compete for market share with TikTok in the United States. However, this misses the point: TikTok poses a gaping national cybersecurity risk. Suspending TikTok would seem like an obvious decision in the context of a U.S.-China Gray War—India

…

Still, even if you squinted, ARPANET scarcely resembled the globe-spanning network of communication and commerce that would one day be full of teenagers making TikToks. Until that sci-fi listserv. Unlike typical person-to-person emails, the message that landed in inboxes one day in 1979 was addressed to the

…

believed to have surreptitiously applied its censorship norms to content viewed by Americans in the United States through its control of Chinese-based platforms like TikTok.4 The list goes on. * * * Americans have grown accustomed to possessing overwhelming technological superiority in every war fought. We’ve come to see U.S

…

atypical electricity use, a potential sign of an unregistered inhabitant. Social media behavior is tracked; so is staying off of social media. Companies like ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, have allegedly helped Chinese authorities track down Uyghur women of childbearing age and forcibly sterilize them.57 At supposed health checks, the

…

employees may not want to be in the business of war. But whether they realize it or not, they already are. Just ask Grindr and TikTok. “Jacob, I Think I Know” The developers and engineers building a hookup app most likely never imagined that they were reporting for duty on the

…

.92 In the Gray War—as in life—it can be hard to get rid of an ex. * * * A similar story is playing out with TikTok, the short-form video app that has been called “ ‘Star Search’ crossed with ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ ”93 The wildly popular app has been

…

than two billion times around the world,94 and counts nearly 100 million American users—many of them teens. Like Grindr, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, Beijing-based ByteDance. TikTok’s users delight in silly clips of themselves dancing and cooking. But its capabilities extend beyond frivolous footage. Each of

…

out their databases of non-Asian faces and voices. In addition to recording which videos you watch and any messages you send on the app, TikTok’s privacy policy states that it may collect your location, your contacts, your phone number, and other personal data. This information may be shared “with

…

a parent, subsidiary, or other affiliate of our corporate group.”95 And that’s what TikTok admits publicly. One security researcher found that TikTok transmits an “abnormal” volume of information to its servers, as much as half a megabyte—or 125 pages of typed data—in

…

less than 10 seconds.96 Researchers have also discovered that TikTok was accessing the contents of smartphone clipboards—where users might paste sensitive information like passwords—every few seconds, which one Israeli researcher calls “very concerning

…

to make it difficult for researchers to determine what information it’s vacuuming up.98 In June 2021, a group of former TikTok employees reportedly said “the boundaries between TikTok and ByteDance were so blurry as to be almost nonexistent.”99 Alarmingly, one employee claimed that ByteDance employees “are able to access

…

U.S. user data.”100 On top of the data TikTok collects is what it does—or doesn’t—display. TikTok professes to be uncomfortable with political content, which has led the app allegedly to censor or flag clips featuring everything from

…

Make America Great Again hats to #BlackLivesMatter content.101 TikTok has reportedly removed videos of Tiananmen Square’s Tank Man, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong,102 and content critical of the government’s treatment

…

content, which has even led teens in America to attempt to boost their profiles by posting tongue-in-cheek videos praising President Xi. One Texas TikToker saw his number of fans increase from 2,000 to 90,000 after he posted a clip playing China’s national anthem and calling Xi

…

“my president.”105 With so much control over content, what’s to stop TikTok from wading into U.S. elections? Stratechery’s Ben Thomas speculates that “TikTok could promote a particular candidate or a particular issue in a particular geography, without anyone—except perhaps the candidate

…

, now indebted to a Chinese company—knowing.”106 Perhaps learning from the cautionary tale of Grindr, TikTok has taken steps to insulate itself from allegations that it is a tool of the Chinese state. The app itself is not available in China

…

, though a sister version is. “Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law,” a TikTok spokesperson has asserted. “We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked.”107

…

TikTok employees in China have been stripped of their access to “sensitive data” from overseas.108 After the passage of Hong Kong’s national security law

…

raised the specter of Beijing extending its digital reach into the once semi-autonomous region, TikTok withdrew from app stores in Hong Kong.109 It even hired an American CEO based in Los Angeles, as well as upward of three dozen

…

U.S. lobbyists.110 So far, TikTok’s efforts to present itself as wholly aboveboard have been largely unsuccessful. Following a border clash with Chinese troops, India—home to 30 percent of

…

TikTok downloads111—implemented a “cyber sanction” by banning TikTok and hundreds of other Chinese-made apps.112 India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology stated that it had reports that

…

and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data.”113 (To appreciate the wisdom of such a move, suppose that Indian soldiers stationed at the Sino-Indian border had TikTok on their phones; it’s plausible that the Chinese military could use the app to determine the exact coordinates of those soldiers

…

.) TikTok has faced severe headwinds in the United States as well. The Pentagon has banned it on the phones of its personnel. So did the presidential

…

Congress, Democratic lawmakers like Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have called for a national security review of the app, while Republicans have introduced legislation to ban TikTok on government devices. In August 2020, President Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—which allows the president to regulate international commerce in the

…

event of an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States”—to block any transactions with TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance (or with WeChat).114 In response, TikTok promptly sued the Trump administration.115 TikTok’s CEO stepped down after just four months on the job. “The Clock Is Ticking on

…

writers proclaimed.116 The following month, President Trump announced that he had approved a deal allowing Oracle and Walmart to acquire ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok. Questions remained, however, over the fluid and confusing terms of the deal.117 “This unique technology eliminates the risk of foreign governments spying on American

…

American telecom leaders. More recently, the U.S. government has belatedly begun to recognize that the kind of data owned by companies like Grindr and TikTok could, in the wrong hands, pose a security risk as well. In 2020, Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio called for a review of the attempted

…

been writing her diary in similar circumstances today? What if, rather than writing a diary, she was recording her saga on TikTok? And what if an autocratic regime asked TikTok for information that would allow law enforcement to locate her family and send them to camps, as Beijing has done to so

…

products that pose national security risks was the subject of much media attention during the debate over whether to ban or compel the divestment of TikTok, the video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance. There are those who argue that such restrictions would be tantamount to replicating Chinese behavior, in

…

, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/08/huawei-tested-ai-software-that-could-recognize-uighur-minorities-alert-police-report-says/. 57 Anna Fifield, “TikTok’s owner is helping China’s campaign of repression in Xinjiang, report finds,” Washington Post, November 28, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world

…

/tiktoks-owner-is-helping-chinas-campaign-of-repression-in-xinjiang-report-finds/2019/11/28/98e8d9e4-119f-11ea-bf62-eadd5d11f559_story.html. 58 Andersen, “The Panopticon

…

-grindr-m-a-sanvicente-exclusive/exclusive-winning-bidder-for-grindr-has-ties-to-chinese-owner-idUSKBN2391AI. 93 Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Is it time to delete TikTok? A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks,” Washington Post, July 13, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/13

…

2 Billion Downloads After Best Quarter for Any App Ever,” Sensor Tower Blog, April 29, 2020, https://sensortower.com/blog/tiktok-downloads-2-billion. 95 Fowler, “Is it time to delete TikTok? A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks.” 96 Ibid. 97 Mike Isaac and Karen Weise, “Amazon Backtracks

…

discussing the Uighur crisis,” Technology Review, November 27, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/27/65030/feroza-aziz-tiktok-makeup-video-went-viral-for-discussing-the-uighur-crisis/. 105 Eva Xiao, “TikTok Users Gush About China, Hoping to Boost Views,” Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles

…

as Suspicions Over China Ties Grow,” New York Times, July 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/technology/tiktok-washington-lobbyist.html?smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur. 111 Monica Chin, “TikTok reduces India staff after long-standing countrywide ban,” The Verge, February 3, 2021, https://www.theverge.com/2021/2

…

/2/22262940/tiktok-leaves-india-ban-app-china-government-security-privacy. 112 “AliExpress: India continues to ban China apps amid standoff,” BBC, November 25, 2020, https://www.bbc.

…

Chinese apps amid border standoff,” ABC News, April 29, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/india-bans-tiktok-chinese-apps-amid-border-standoff-71625376. 114 “Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok, and Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency With Respect to the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply

…

House, August 6, 2020, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/11/2020-17699/addressing-the-threat-posed-by-tiktok-and-taking-additional-steps-to-address-the-national-emergency. 115 Kim Lyons, “TikTok confirms it will sue the Trump administration,” The Verge, August 22, 2020, https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/22

…

, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20200920114627/https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/19/walmart-statement-about-potential-investment-in-and-commercial-agreements-with-tiktok-global. 119 “Home,” Defense Innovation Unit, https://www.diu.mil/. 120 Jennings Brown, “Weird Tooth Phone Wins Millions in Pentagon Funding,” Gizmodo, September 12, 2018

…

-china-sentiment-ex/exclusive-internal-chinese-report-warns-beijing-faces-tiananmen-like-global-backlash-over-virus-idUSKBN22G19C. 11 Yi-Zheng Lian, “Trump Is Wrong About TikTok. China’s Plans Are Much More Sinister,” New York Times, September 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/opinion

…

/tiktok-china-strategy.html?referringSource=articleShare. 12 Lidia Kelly, “Australia says China ignores calls to ease trade tension,” Reuters, May 17, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/

…

–17, 122–24, 127–29, 145, 156, 192n, 217, 219, 265–66 Tiananmen Square massacre in, 31–33, 125, 158, 186, 192–93, 195, 205n TikTok and, xvi–xvii, 129, 147, 185–88, 194, 225 U.S. competitiveness investing and, 235, 237–41, 243, 245–49, 265 U.S. relations with

…

–Washington relations and, 166, 168, 170, 182 strengthening Western techno–bloc and, 212, 215–216, 218, 220 tech role reimagining and, 251, 254, 256, 258 TikTok and, 186–87, 190 data centers, 100, 109–12, 124, 166, 170, 184, 187, 220 data voids, 76–77 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

…

and, 52–53 strengthening Western techno–bloc and, 211–12, 215 tech role reimagining and, 252, 257, 259 telecom infrastructure and, 90, 94, 109, 111 TikTok and, xvii, 188 Grindr, 181, 183–85, 187, 190 Gross, Daniel, 136–37 Grossman, Derek, 213 Gruber, Jonathan, 244 Haass, Richard, 200, 224 Hamilton, Alexander

…

–4, 107, 121, 155, 226, 247 cyberattacks and, xvii, 18, 129 digital Maginot lines and, 82–83 strengthening Western techno–bloc and, 212, 215–16 TikTok and, 187–88 information laundering, 69–72 Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC), 250–51 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 237–38, 242 Instagram, 57

…

, 118–21 Silicon Valley–Washington relations and, 7, 165, 168–69, 173–74, 178 supply chains and, 95–98, 101 telecom infrastructure and, 90, 123 TikTok and, 186, 188 Smith, Brad, 140, 180 Snowden, Edward, 146, 166–68, 172, 178 social credit scores, 127, 148–49 social media, x, 42, 52

…

–19 Tencent, 133–35, 257 Tenenbaum, Ehud “The Analyzer,” 24 Terman, Frederick, 164 Thiel, Peter, 4, 16, 175 Thomas, Ben, 187 Tibet, xviii, 111, 152 TikTok, 21, 181, 190 China and, xvi–xvii, 129, 147, 185–88, 194, 225 transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), 21–22, 116 Truman, Harry

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

by Kyle Chayka  · 15 Jan 2024  · 321pp  · 105,480 words

offers a mood board of what its algorithm perceives as my interests: top-down photos of food, architecture snapshots, looping clips of prestige television shows. TikTok serves me an inexplicable avalanche of videos of people retiling their showers, and I inexplicably keep watching them, compelled in spite of myself. Surely there

…

, like a photo filter on Instagram, exaggerating some qualities and downplaying others. The cultural successes of Filterworld are obvious. They include phenomena like the countrified TikTok dance that propelled Lil Nas X’s 2018 song “Old Town Road” to global fame; the cliché design trends that plague Instagram, like minimalist interiors

…

in 2012, “Globalization takes place only in capital and data. Everything else is damage control.” In the Filterworld era, digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have accumulated and spread their data, in the form of user activity, and their capital, in the form of server farms and algorithmic technology, around

…

more efficiently their attention can be sold to advertisers. Feeds have become increasingly algorithmic over time, particularly in the watershed moment of the mid-2010s. TikTok, which launched in the United States in 2018, achieved its major innovation by making its main “For You” feed almost entirely algorithmic. The app experience

…

was less about who the users chose to follow than which content the recommendation algorithm selected for them (hence my bombardment with shower-tiling videos). TikTok quickly became the fastest-growing social network ever, reaching more than 1.5 billion users in less than five years, and its competitors, struggling to

…

other life milestones. These phenomena show how algorithms can warp language itself as users attempt to either game them or evade detection. More recently, on TikTok, euphemisms have emerged for terms that trigger the algorithm to block or slow down a video: “unalive” for kill, “SA” for sexual assault, “spicy

…

the ubiquity of machine influence. From what we can tell using public metrics, Facebook today has nearly three billion users. Instagram has around two billion. TikTok has over one billion. Spotify has over 500 million. Twitter has 400 million. Netflix has over 200 million. For all the people on these platforms

…

be commercially successful, it must already have traction on digital platforms. Boffone’s career, too, has been shaped by algorithmic feeds. When he began learning TikTok dance moves with his teenage students and posting videos of them online, he quickly accrued hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and other platforms

…

published an academic monograph on dance performance, a subject that had quickly become more compelling to universities and editors with its rising public popularity on TikTok. “I’ve had more interest in one month of this year in my work than in the previous ten years combined,” Boffone told me.

…

Renegade, was actually created earlier by Jalaiah Harmon, a Black teenager from Georgia. The Renegade was a series of front-facing movements perfect for the TikTok screen, with swinging punches and hip shakes—not too difficult a sequence, but also tough to memorize and thus rewarding to re-perform. Harmon first

…

, like D’Amelio, have a harder time benefiting from the tides of Filterworld. (Since being recognized for her work, Harmon herself has gained three million TikTok followers.) Given that these capricious systems control so many facets of our lives, from socializing with our friends to building audiences for our creative projects

…

one thing, you’ll definitely like more and more of it.”) Peter had a similar experience with Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry, which became popular on TikTok after it appeared on a reality show, and astrology, a subject Peter briefly followed on Twitter and then lost interest in. But Twitter’s recommendations

…

our first conversations, he explained that in making the videos he was trying to capture certain feelings, an ephemeral atmosphere that the format of a TikTok was particularly good at capturing. It was a way to counteract the stress of quarantine; Kabvina’s bartending job at a chain of specialty cocktail

…

of tea and imagine thirty people walking into the room staring at you intently. Then try to imagine a million,” he said. Every month, his TikTok videos were getting forty million views. Kabvina’s videos, the algorithmic feed, and the rapacious audience formed a feedback loop. He called it “instant gratification

…

”: “I can post on TikTok and in ten minutes I can check back and see thirty thousand people have watched it.” Little in Kabvina’s background would have suggested him

…

or basement of some suburban house. “For most of us life happens against a backdrop of intersecting off-white walls,” Ford wrote. But the archetypal TikTok room, its successor, is fancier. The walls are still white, but the room is coherently decorated and lit by sunlight instead of fluorescents. It complies

…

with the unspoken but ubiquitous aesthetics of Instagram. Kabvina built his own narrative arc into his TikTok account, creating a social-media-era hero’s journey. He studied the most popular accounts. Influencers like Charli D’Amelio and Emily Mariko became famous

…

notice is…[followers] want a protagonist to take them on this journey,” Kabvina said. He also carefully optimized his cooking videos according to the data TikTok gave him. Avoiding too much speaking or text made them appealing to a global audience—his food needed no translation. (It was a successful strategy

…

as less desirable than downtown Manhattan), and the generic style became less associated with a place than with digital platforms, like Instagram and the insurgent TikTok. In a 2020 essay, the writer Molly Fischer labeled it “the millennial aesthetic”; it was also embraced by start-up companies like the mattress

…

creators, who all log in to the same set of apps. In the place of physical hotels and airports, we have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as spaces of congregation that erase differences. Moving past Koolhaas’s “Generic City,” there is now also the generic global consumer, whose preferences and desires

…

lists. “The mass market is turning into a mass of niches,” Anderson wrote. In the Filterworld era, this effect has proven true in some ways. TikTok certainly enables a career in niche content production; one creator I enjoy following sustains herself by making videos about daily life on an Arctic island

…

that visiting Instagrammers stop trespassing on rooftops to capture the perfect photo. The rooftops weren’t just digital content; they were local residents’ homes. A TikTok video from Santorini in 2023, during a post-pandemic resurgence of tourism, observed that this flattening had only intensified, with crowds lining up on the

…

looming threat of a flood of tourists like me detracting from Gamla Laugin’s uniqueness, turning it into another Blue Lagoon, a place to shoot TikTok videos and attract Instagram comments. The most common comment on a dramatic travel Instagram shot is always “Where is this?,” implying another question: How

…

algorithmic gatekeepers can come first. Young writers often find ways to cultivate public presences online even before they enter MFA programs, on Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok. They subject their voices to the force of social media flattening. These pre-prepared personae might even help in competitive grad school applications. At each

…

other offers.) During the pandemic, Hoover made eBooks of her backlist free—another strategy to boost digital engagement—and sparked a wave of fans on TikTok, where the nascent book community made tearful testaments to her writing’s impact. Sales of her more than twenty books are estimated above twenty million

…

of still images and adding stories, for ephemeral posts that mimicked Snapchat; Instagram TV, for longer videos; and eventually Reels, for short videos to copy TikTok. The app gradually lost its identity as a relatively austere space for expressing your own taste. “At no point were these decisions made to make

…

up too much of his creative energy. (Still, the gravity of the latest feed might be irresistible: months after we spoke, he began tentatively posting TikTok videos and accruing followers there, too.) The constant need to figure out the next big social media platform is reminiscent of early silent-film stars

…

to the feed, accruing followers, and selling access to your personal audience. Charli D’Amelio, a relatively unremarkable teenage dancer living in suburban Connecticut, joined TikTok in May 2019, when the social network was mostly oriented around lip-synching and dancing videos. By jumping on trends and participating in choreography memes

…

get the attention of galleries or curators on Instagram; the novelist documenting their writing process with a litany of tweets; the amateur baker making bread TikTok videos and replying to comments as they try to build a business out of their apartment. There are dating influencers and personal finance influencers. For

…

Facebook feeds. One might take advantage of a birthday or wedding to get some extra promotion. But the exposure is not always personally affirming. On TikTok, even when a video might show a person recounting a personal trauma or displaying a new artistic creation, the comments are full of rabid questions

…

Filterworld: The poems have to function as images as much as text and travel seamlessly through various digital platforms, whether Instagram feed, Facebook post, or TikTok slide. The content of the poems themselves has to be relatable and sharable, speaking less to an individualized experience or perspective and more to universal

…

fewer outlets outside of those feeds available for creators to access the audiences they need to survive in such a capitalistic environment. Whether Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or Amazon, the artist contends with the invisible force. They can devoutly follow a personal vision, perhaps to the detriment of their engagement numbers and

…

-up bookshops with a picturesque poofy armchair that visitors could pose for photos in. Later, she adapted her stores to the literary-influencer side of TikTok, called Booktok, too, making space for shooting videos instead of still images. I first met Depp through a mutual novelist friend; she was coming

…

after being taken up by Booktok, mingle the grandeur of ancient archetypes with a very millennial sensibility of love and relationships (Ulysses as marooned fuckboy). TikTok-era popularity tends to be all or nothing, and when one book or topic becomes popular, it drives copycats who want to get in on

…

to new books and magazine articles. She has over seventy thousand followers, a high number for her subject matter. When it comes to literary culture, TikTok’s algorithmic feed “does drive it all toward sameness,” Stern said. Which is a problem because the “For You” feed, your personalized algorithm, is

…

also seen as an “externalized version of your subconscious.” Stern has observed how TikTok encourages users to slot themselves into particular categories or genres of identity, just as it brackets genres of culture. “Whatever it is that you’re

…

just a few companies. STRUCTURAL MONOPOLIZATION Our experiences online today are heavily centralized. Consumers are herded into a handful of massive platforms—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube—and left to seek out whatever it is they want to discover within the platforms’ confines. Because audiences are so concentrated on those platforms

…

projects by allowing supporters to pay directly for what they wanted to see, but they didn’t achieve the kind of momentum that Snapchat and TikTok—the only real competitors to Facebook’s social dominance—later did. Soon the next threat to Facebook emerged: instant messaging. The company was seeing

…

completely safe. The biggest incumbent could be threatened by a tiny newcomer, simply because of a slight technological evolution—like Snapchat’s ephemeral posts or TikTok’s wholly algorithmic feed—or the unavoidable fact that people simply get bored, and technology, like fashion, must constantly change to maintain its hold over

…

is transformed into economic support for creators. Targeted advertising might be one of the worst possibilities. The digital landscape is like a forest; Facebook and TikTok might be towering trees, blocking out much of the sunlight, but there are other possibilities growing in their shadows if you look for them. There

…

increasingly unusable, too, as its feed began promoting video clips above all—provoking mass complaint from its users—in a race to catch up with TikTok. TikTok itself was a kind of numbing, since its responsiveness to user input felt like a form of mind-reading, removing my need to think at

…

fictional Entertainment as “oddly hollow, empty, no sense of dramatic towardness—no narrative movement toward a real story”—which is an apt description, too, of TikTok’s drift toward formless vibes and feelings, away from coherent information. Surely bingeing on these technologies wasn’t making me any smarter or able to

…

halls or independent radio stations to help them discover new music during their formative teenage years, and young people in the twenty-first century have TikTok feeds and Spotify playlists, millennials in the late 1990s and early 2000s had online forums and MP3 piracy. These required much more labor to find

…

to them, the core function of algorithmic feeds is to put one piece of content next to another one, whether on Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, or TikTok. The recommendations decide what belongs together and dictate what path you will follow, which forms an inevitable narrative in your mind. My argument for the

…

how it had been reinterpreted over time. On Idagio, the structure of the platform is adapted to its specific content, improving the cultural experience. On TikTok, by contrast, Satie isn’t even named on the Gymnopédie recording that is used most often, and on Spotify, variations in album cataloging make keeping

…

of art is “designed for reproducibility” through algorithmic feeds, like Patrick Janelle’s cortado glamour shots on Instagram or Nigel Kabvina’s cooking videos on TikTok. They each contribute and conform to a generic, flattened, reproducible aesthetic. Hence the general state of ennui and exhaustion, the sense that nothing new is

…

shape of the containers that we have for it, and the most common containers now are the feeds of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok. In terms of how culture reaches us, algorithmic recommendations have supplanted the human news editor, the retail boutique buyer, the gallery curator, the radio DJ

Four Battlegrounds

by Paul Scharre  · 18 Jan 2023

1.2 billion. The diversity of data also matters a great deal for training robust machine learning systems, and, with the exception of ByteDance’s TikTok, Chinese apps have struggled to gain a foothold outside of China. Tencent, which owns WeChat and other Chinese social media apps, will be in an

…

(founded in 2003), Reddit (2005), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006) were created around the same time, while others such as Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011), and TikTok (2016) are even newer. In the span of a single generation, digital technology has radically transformed the information environment in a revolution as socially disruptive

…

of companies. Meta (which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram), Google (which owns YouTube), Tencent (which owns WeChat, QQ, and Qzone), and ByteDance (which owns TikTok and Douyin) dominate the marketplace. In the United States, over half of adults get their news from Facebook. The choices these companies make—and the

…

the world. While the rules governing social media platforms in the United States are hotly debated, the global rise of Chinese-owned platforms such as TikTok presents a new challenge: platforms that are ultimately beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. The messy and chaotic debates in democracies about what content is

…

content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Algorithms are used to filter, process, promote or demote, and recommend content. When you open Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, or any other social media platform, the information you’re presented with is driven by an algorithm. The goal is to provide quality content that

…

It is even more problematic when it is in the hands of a company that is ultimately answerable to an authoritarian state. The rise of TikTok, a social media video-sharing app optimized for mobile devices, has added a further wrinkle to questions about the rules for promoting and demoting content

…

friends and family back in China. WeChat has an estimated 2.3 million active users in the United States. TikTok is the exception, however, and exploded onto the global scene in 2018. TikTok was wildly successful in India, the United States, Indonesia, Russia, Japan, and Europe, and by mid-2020 had

…

million of whom were in the United States. (ByteDance operates a separate version of the app in China, called Douyin, which has 600 million users.) TikTok’s soaring popularity coincided with a more hawkish turn in U.S. policymakers’ attitudes toward Chinese tech companies. By late 2019, there was bipartisan concern

…

worrying about the implications of a tech ecosystem dominated by Chinese firms. In June 2020, following border clashes between Indian and Chinese troops, India banned TikTok and fifty-eight other Chinese apps. The Indian government issued additional bans over the next several months, prohibiting 267 Chinese apps in total. In August

…

2020, the Trump administration signed executive orders forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States. TikTok sued the U.S. government to halt the ban, launching a series of court battles. In June 2021, the Biden administration

…

the previous Trump executive orders, which had faced legal challenges, with a new executive order on “Protecting Americans’ Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries,” including China. TikTok videos are often quirky and uplifting, in many ways a relief from some of the more politically charged content on Facebook and Twitter. Some critics

…

of the Trump administration dismissed the crusade against TikTok as a knee-jerk reaction against anything Chinese. The Trump administration’s fumbling messaging, combined with President Trump’s personal support for a proposed deal

…

that would have allowed ByteDance to keep 80 percent ownership of TikTok, further clouded the administration’s intentions. Yet the national security risks of TikTok were real. Many worried about U.S. persons’ data being exfiltrated to China, a legitimate concern, but the

…

with a feed of content. But unlike Twitter and Facebook, where content is based on who the user follows or what groups the user joins, TikTok presents an endless stream of videos chosen almost entirely by the algorithm. Over time, the algorithm’s choices are refined based on user feedback, but

…

the TikTok algorithm’s functionality is even more opaque than other platforms in which content derives from the user’s network or who the user follows. On

…

numerous occasions, TikTok has appeared to censor political content. In June 2020, TikTok issued a public apology because “a technical glitch made it temporarily appear as if posts uploaded using #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd

…

would receive 0 views,” according to TikTok. TikTok also had to issue an apology after it said a “human moderation error” caused it to block a user who had posted a viral video

…

criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslims. (TikTok also briefly took down the video before reinstating it.) TikTok similarly apologized after clips of “tank man” (the unknown protestor who stood in front of a column of tanks in

…

censored. The company claimed the video was “incorrectly partially restricted based on guidelines related to displaying identifiable military information.” Independent researchers and journalists have claimed TikTok has a suspicious absence of videos of Hong Kong pro-democracy protestors or content relating to the Houston Rockets basketball team, whose general manager had

…

protestors. Independent researchers also found a glut of pro-CCP propaganda videos about Xinjiang. In 2019, The Guardian newspaper revealed leaked documents from ByteDance outlining TikTok’s moderation guidelines, which included censorship of political content. The bans were wide-ranging and included prohibiting videos of “highly controversial topics, such as . . .

…

use.” If the algorithms on U.S. platforms like YouTube and Facebook pose risks of distorting online information, these risks are far more severe for TikTok. TikTok’s algorithm plays a more dominant role in curating content, ByteDance has been far less transparent than U.S. companies about their content moderation rules

…

is subject to the Chinese Communist Party’s direction. The combination of these factors poses serious risks of TikTok being used in the future for censorship or propaganda on behalf of the CCP. TikTok has struggled to rehabilitate its public image, but even improved content moderation sidesteps the crux of the

…

affirmed his fealty to Xi Jinping thought and stated that “technology must be led by the socialist core value system.” He had no choice. Whether TikTok is actually censoring content, promoting pro-CCP propaganda, or exfiltrating U.S. data back to China is, in some sense, beside the point. So

…

long as TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, the risk remains. If TikTok has not taken these actions yet, it is only because the Chinese Communist Party has not yet forced them to

…

internally and undermine democracies abroad. Social media platforms themselves have used algorithms that, perhaps unintentionally, appear to have promoted inflammatory or divisive political content. And TikTok represents a new front in this fight, as U.S. companies for the first time face competition from China for control of the global social

…

liberals and conservatives, but the United States would be unquestionably better off having Facebook or YouTube dominate the global social media landscape than companies like TikTok that are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. Democracies must find ways to deepen cooperation between tech companies, the government, and civil society groups

…

Are a New Domestic Terrorism Threat,” Yahoo!, August 1, 2019, https://www.yahoo.com/now/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-terrorism-160000507.html. 143TikTok: Jay Greene, “TikTok Sale Deadline Will Pass, Though Regulators Will Hold Off on Enforcing Divestiture,” Washington Post, December 4, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/04

…

/tiktok-sale-deadline/. 143largest social media platforms are controlled by a handful of companies: Wikipedia, s.v. “List of social platforms with at least 100 million

…

July 17, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2155580/tik-tok-hits-500-million-global-monthly-active-users-china-social-media-video; Sarah Perez, “TikTok Surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat & YouTube in Downloads Last Month,” TechCrunch, November 2, 2018, https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/02

…

600 Million Daily Users,” Reuters, September 15, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-bytedance/bytedances-chinese-version-of-tiktok-hits-600-million-daily-users-idUSKBN2660P4. 147national security risks of a Chinese-owned social media app: Tom Cotton, Senator for Arkansas, “Cotton, Schumer Request

…

Assessment of National Security Risks Posed by China-Owned Video-Sharing Platform, TikTok, a Potential Counterintelligence Threat with Over 110 Million Downloads in U.S., Alone,” news release, October 24, 2019, https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press

…

-releases/cotton-schumer-request-assessment-of-national-security-risks-posed-by-china-owned-video-sharing-platform-tiktok-a-potential-counterintelligence-threat-with-over-110-million-downloads-in-us-alone. 147India banned TikTok: “Government Bans 59 Mobile Apps Which Are Prejudicial to Sovereignty and Integrity of India, Defence of India,

…

in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1635206. 147Indian government issued additional bans: Surabhi Sabat, “Full List Of 224 Chinese Apps Banned in India Till Date; Including PUBG, TikTok and Shein,” Republicworld.com, September 2, 2020, https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/apps/how-many-chinese-apps-banned-in-india-till-now-see-the

…

-full-list.html; Pankaj Doval, “TikTok, WeChat, Baidu and UC Browser Among 59 Chinese Apps Permanently Banned in India,” Times of India, January 26, 2021, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india

…

Order No. 13942, 85 Fed. Reg. 48637 (August 11, 2020), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/08/11/2020-17699/addressing-the-threat-posed-by-tiktok-and-taking-additional-steps-to-address-the-national-emergency; Presidential Document No. 2020-18360, 85 Fed. Reg. 51297, August 19, 2020, https://www.federalregister.gov

…

/documents/2020/08/19/2020-18360/regarding-the-acquisition-of-musically-by-bytedance-ltd. 147TikTok sued the U.S. government: Tiktok vs. Trump (complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief, D.D.C., 2020), http://docs.dpaq.de/16820-show_temp.pl-90.pdf. 147Biden administration replaced

…

to Oracle, Walmart Is Shelved as Biden Reviews Security,” Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-sale-to-oracle-walmart-is-shelved-as-biden-reviews-security-11612958401. 147“Protecting Americans’ Sensitive Data from Foreign Adversaries”: Exec. Order No. 14034, 86 Fed

…

www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/06/11/2021-12506/protecting-americans-sensitive-data-from-foreign-adversaries. 147TikTok videos are often quirky and uplifting: Kevin Roose, “TikTok, a Chinese Video App, Brings Fun Back to Social Media,” New York Times, December 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/technology

…

/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html. 147algorithm’s functionality is even more opaque than other platforms: “How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou,” TikTok, June 18, 2020, https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-videos-for-you. 147censor political content: Fergus Ryan, Danielle Cave, and Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, Mapping More of

…

on Muslims in China,” Reuters, November 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-tiktok-xinjiang/tiktok-apologizes-for-temporary-removal-of-video-on-muslims-in-china-idUSKBN1Y209E. 148“incorrectly partially restricted”: Yaqiu Wang, “Targeting TikTok’s Privacy Alone Misses a Larger Issue: Chinese State Control,” Human Rights Watch, January 24,

…

Roots Fuel Censorship Suspicion as It Builds a Huge U.S. Audience,” Washington Post, September 15, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks-beijing-roots-fuel-censorship-suspicion-it-builds-huge-us-audience/. 148Houston Rockets basketball team: Ben Thompson, “The China Cultural Clash,” Stratechery (blog), October 8,

…

2019, https://stratechery.com/2019/the-china-cultural-clash/. 148propaganda videos about Xinjiang: Ryan, Fritz, and Impiombato, TikTok and WeChat, 15–17. 148“highly controversial topics”: Alex Hern, “Revealed: How TikTok Censors Videos That Do Not Please Beijing,” The Guardian, September 25, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep

…

-not-please-beijing. 148“The old guidelines in question are outdated”: Hern, “Revealed: How TikTok Censors Videos That Do Not Please Beijing.” 148ByteDance, like any other Chinese company, must comply: Thompson, “The TikTok War”; Wang, “Targeting TikTok’s Privacy Alone Misses a Larger Issue.” 149“technology must be led by the socialist

…

Whampoa Academy of China’s Internet”; Will Knight, “Microsoft’s Roots in China Have Positioned It to Buy TikTok,” Wired, August 6, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/microsofts-roots-china-positioned-buy-tiktok/. 160surpass human-level performance in image classification: Kaiming He et al., Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-

…

Promote the Development of New-Generation AI Industry,” 73 Tiananmen Square massacre, 68, 97–98, 103, 148, 160, 341, 359 tic-tac-toe, 47, 336 TikTok, 146–49 Tortoise Market Research, Inc., 15, 40 TPU (Tensor Processing Unit), 180 TRACE (Target Recognition and Adaptation in Contested Environments), 210–12 Trade and

…

–19 graduate student visa revocation, 164 and Huawei, 182–84 and JEDI contract, 215–16 national strategy for AI, 73 relations with China, 71 and TikTok, 147 Twitter account, 150 trust, 249–53 Trusted News Initiative, 138–39 “truth,” 130 Tsinghua University, 31, 93, 173, 291 TSMC, See Taiwan Semiconductor

Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

by W. David Marx  · 18 Nov 2025  · 642pp  · 142,332 words

are now more than three hundred million people worldwide who consider themselves “content creators.” Meanwhile, Kyle Chayka, in 2024’s Filterworld, blamed algorithmic platforms like TikTok and Instagram for “flattening” culture. But the blank space emerged well before the advent of these apps. At a broader level, these changes in culture

…

interact with “stars.” This fueled parasocial relationships, in which fans felt one-sided intimacy with their idols. As Amanda Montell observed, platforms like Instagram and TikTok bridged “the parasocial gap,” creating the illusion that a star like Taylor Swift might respond to a fan’s comment in the manner of “the

…

the book’s tens of millions of readers. Years after the initial Secret mania subsided, manifesting surged back into popularity among younger generations, especially on TikTok. Many young women began to diligently write a “manifestation journal” based on the idea that “scripting” a desire makes it more likely to happen.

…

This new faith blended easily with numerology. In one video with two million views, a TikToker recommended the “3x33” method: taking “the sentance [sic] I told you” and writing it down thirty-three times in three days. These New Age

…

s going to live long in prison.” At the same time, astrology served many aspiring entrepreneurs well. Astrologist Maren Altman gained millions of followers on TikTok and YouTube through a mix of astrological musings and lifestyle content (as well as bikini-clad photos and artistic nudes on Instagram). As a teen

…

s timing was perfect. Months earlier, Twitter user Bri Malandro had launched the Yeehaw Agenda, a campaign to reclaim the heritage of Black cowboys. On TikTok, this evolved into the Yeehaw Challenge, in which users dressed in cowboy outfits while dancing to cowboy-inspired songs. Bearded hipster Michael Pelchat posted his

…

Thug’s 2017 mixtape, Beautiful Thugger Girls, but the particularly catchy fusion of country, trap, and alternative in “Old Town Road”—and its rise on TikTok—fueled an especially explosive pop moment. This welcomed country music inside the omnivore monoculture. In 2022, rapper Lil Durk collaborated with rising country star Morgan

…

the need for constant growth meant catering to subscribers in less refined taste worlds. Thus began a glut of mediocre TV: a reality show about TikTokers called Hype House and the vacuous Emily in Paris. This coincided with the dominance of what writer and consultant Venkatesh Rao described in 2017 as

…

new paradigm, the culture industry could no longer sustain itself on culture alone. Personal fame was a loss leader to sell stuff. * * * The most popular TikTok video of 2020 was a ten-second clip of Bella Poarch lip-synching and bobbing her head to the 2016 British grime track “M to

…

the B” before crossing her eyes. The video amassed over five hundred million views. Poarch took up TikTok while stuck at home during the pandemic. The platform soon became her springboard to cultural prominence, establishing her as a leading media icon of Gen

…

by its own arcane conventions. This ecosystem operated largely without the traditional culture industry’s influence. And unlike MTV and YouTube, TikTok had e-commerce baked into the platform. TikTok’s emergence marked a seismic shift in cultural production. It ended the long-standing monopoly of nerds—who pursued film and TV

…

their own short films. In this more competitive marketplace, young audiences overwhelmingly gravitated toward the naturally charismatic and conventionally attractive. “My absolute favorite thing about TikTok,” said millennial stand-up Taylor Tomlinson, “is all these people working so hard on their videos—only to have a super-hot girl lip-sync

…

their video and they get like a billion likes.” Sophistication took a back seat to the raw and random. TikTok’s top content was absurd, amateur, unfiltered, often embracing the strange and surreal: obsessive fandom over a Chinese glycine factory, spinning dances set to

…

wearing no-show ankle socks. Millennials’ performative earnestness had become “cringe,” their kitschy taste “cheugy,” and their habit of waiting a beat before talking in TikTok videos derided as the “Millennial pause.” Z perhaps had a point: Millennials’ long-running collective moaning about structural inequities became harder to take seriously as

…

money in “vertical domain portfolios on the internet.” Nepotism wasn’t limited to traditional media. Actor John C. Reilly’s son, LoveLeo, gained attention on TikTok with his viral hit, “Boyfren.” The definition expanded further to include “nepo friends,” such as Anastasia “Stassie” Karanikolaou, who parlayed her childhood camaraderie with

…

inheritance, cultural capital—connections, industry fluency, or even an ingrained affability—gave the offspring of elites a decided edge in the crowded media landscape. While TikTok dominated as the epicenter of Gen Z culture, the mass media made its first discovery of the generation’s creatives in a familiar place: downtown

…

knowledge more valuable. Where millennials such as Odd Future and Lena Dunham redefined cool for their generations by appealing to existing institutions, Gen Z’s TikTok-era icons largely built careers outside the formal culture industry. This self-isolation created challenges when they attempted to cross over. Bella Poarch secured a

…

record deal with Warner Records but never scored a hit. Louisiana-born Addison Rae attempted to leverage her TikTok following into a mainstream career, appearing in a Netflix reboot of 1999’s She’s All That called He’s All That. But her momentum

…

Naomi Osaka navigated the offline world and won roles as Louis Vuitton spokespeople. In 2021, the establishment dipped their toes in Gen Z waters as TikTokers Addison Rae, Jackie Aina, Nikkie de Jager, and Emma Chamberlain attended the Met Gala. By 2024, the organizers recanted: Only Chamberlain and Wisdom Kaye

…

by transgender artists Sophie and Laura Les of 100 Gecs. Amid this shake-up, the deference to the megastars began to feel comical. Kids on TikTok began a “Thank you, Beyoncé” meme mocking other celebrities’ unbending reverence toward her. Similarly, pop rapper Drake, long a dominant force, saw the bottom

…

to the community’s transgression. That being said, most consumer “rebellions” were still limited to chasing edgier pop stars rather than overturning the entire system. TikTok creators, while innovative, rarely disrupted the power of the entrenched celebrity class. Instead, they filled a new niche: a petite bourgeoisie of middle-class influencers

…

videos promising shocking revelations but delivering literally nothing. Instagram, meanwhile, succeeded in popularizing Stories, copied from Snapchat. Then it tried to steal the mojo of TikTok, stuffing feeds with vertical-video Reels from accounts that the user didn’t follow. Zuckerberg launched Threads in 2023 as a competitor to Twitter, reaching

…

—but only if there were any viable alternatives. It also became clear that the reliance on algorithms further compounded the sense of malaise. Platforms like TikTok were built around algorithmic recommendations, which prioritized content that would maximize engagement. While this democratized visibility for some marginalized creators, it flattened culture into a

…

layoffs. For those who remained, the once-legendary perks of Silicon Valley dwindled. The industry downturn shattered the myth of the ultraefficient tech worker. On TikTok and Instagram, tech employees offered “day in the life” videos in which they spent most of their energy silently attending online meetings and deciding which

…

internet infrastructure offered new opportunities for cultural export, but with their own caveats. ByteDance’s short-video app Douyin, launched in 2016, was rebranded as TikTok for global markets and quickly became a major media platform for youth worldwide. The app’s Chinese origins, however, proved to be a major geopolitical

…

beyond China’s borders. (Xiaohongshu had a brief moment in the global spotlight in early 2025 as Americans flocked to it in protest of the TikTok ban.) Ultrafast-fashion powerhouse Shein, by contrast, made a global splash through its combination of mass production and mobile technology. The company added up

…

social media.” Trad wives ranged from Orthodox Jewish homemaker Abby Roth (sister of political pundit Ben Shapiro) to nonpolitical domesticity influencers like Alena Kate Pettitt. TikTok star Nara Smith, the wife of blond Mormon model Lucky Blue Smith, rose to fame posting artisanal cooking videos with soothing voice-overs. One widely

…

opportunists. Gwen Swinarton, once an ASMR YouTuber who later turned to OnlyFans, eventually found God—and Jordan Peterson. Reinventing herself as “Gwen the Milkmaid” on TikTok, she delivered viral sound bites about subservience to men. Fierce partisanship against liberalism also emboldened some country music stars to push back against the encroachment

…

as “the Rizzler.” After years of failed attempts at stardom, including a “a web show about being a MAN,” Befumo finally cracked the code with TikTok. Their videos pulled massive numbers but existed in a weird limbo. As Max Read asked: “Are there ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ fans of the Costco

…

Vine videos with his brother before pivoting to a lucrative empire built on controversy, bro-ey energy drinks, NFTs, and Betr, his attempt at a “TikTok of gambling.” Boxing became his most successful grift—part sport, part WWE-style entertainment. He “inspires a lot of vitriol,” noted Gen Z analyst Kelsey

…

just don’t register it as ‘culture.’ ” As examples, Dee pointed to new digital forms—Bronze Age Pervert’s persona-driven “internet-personality-as-art,” TikTok’s vaudevillian vertical sketches, and the amorphous aesthetic of “vibe” channels. But no, we should reject calls for lowering our expectations. Certainly, digital tools

…

m Manifesting!” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “the sentance [sic] I told you”: @kayley_2120, “HERES THE TUTORIAL EVERYONES ASKED FOR!!!,” TikTok, July 11, 2020, https://www.tiktok.com/@kayley_2120/video/6847964175956839686. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT took on the moniker woo-woo: RationalWiki, “woo,” last modified December 18

…

Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), 245. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chinese glycine factory: Elaine Lee, “TikTok’s Latest Obsession Is Donghua Jinlong, a Chinese Company Producing Glycine,” Straits Times, April 13, 2024, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia

…

Kate Lindsay, “Are You Sure You’re Not Guilty of the ‘Millennial Pause’?,” Atlantic, August 6, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/tiktok-gen-z-millennial-pause-parody/671069. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Millennials, as a group”: Jean M. Twenge, “The Myth of the Broke Millennial

…

TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT exclusivity and scarcity: Broderick, “Coolness Is Just Scarcity.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT secured a record deal: Jason Lipshutz, “TikTok Star Bella Poarch Signs with Warner Records, Shares Debut Single,” Billboard, May 14, 2021, https://www.billboard.com/pro/bella-poarch-warner-records-label-deal

…

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “cringe” appearance: Arvan Mehta, “Addison Rae’s Appearance on Jimmy Fallon Labelled ‘Cringe’ After Clip of Her Teaching Him TikTok Dances Goes Viral,” SK Pop, March 28, 2021, https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/addison-rae-s-appearance-jimmy-fallon-labelled-cringe-clip-teaching

…

TEXT “People tend to watch”: McGrady, “What We Discovered on ‘Deep YouTube.’ ” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “useless platform Kremlinology”: Doctorow, “The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Given my understanding”: Matthew Yglesias, “The Case Against Meta,” Slow Boring, August 29, 2022, https://www.slowboring.com/p

…

Mireille Silcoff, “Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids,” New York Times, February 22, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/magazine/aesthetics-tiktok-teens.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “wear Nirvana shirts”: Sarah Stankorb, “No Apologies,” Slate, October 6, 2023, https://slate.com/human-interest/2023

…

/10/nirvana-shirts-tiktok-trend-style-preppy-teens.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “favorite clothing brand”: Stankorb, “No Apologies.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 17

…

: ‘Tradwives’ Tout a Conservative American Past…That Didn’t Exist,” Guardian, July 24, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/ng-interactive/2024/jul/24/tradwives-tiktok-women-gender-roles. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “traditionally-minded wife”: Mike Hammer, “Inside Kanye West’s ‘Twisted’ Rules for Wife Bianca Censori: ‘She

…

million searches: Olivia Craighead, “What’s the Deal with ‘Hawk Tuah’ Girl?,” Cut, September 3, 2024, https://www.thecut.com/article/hawk-tuah-girl-viral-tiktok-video-explained.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT costume collaboration: Cassie Morris, “ ‘Hawk Tuah’ for Halloween: How Haliey Welch Is Turning Her Viral Catchphrase

…

Alex Abad-Santos, “Hawk Tuah Girl, Explained by Straight Dudes,” Vox, June 28, 2024, https://www.vox.com/internet-culture/357813/hawk-tuah-girl-meme-tiktok-explained. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “the Costco Guys”: Kyndall Cunningham, “It’s Probably Time You Learned About the Costco Guys,” Vox, November 19

…

, 2024, https://www.vox.com/culture/386361/costco-guys-rizzler-tiktok-aj-big-justice-jimmy-fallon. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “ ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ fans”: Max Read, “What Does Jeff Bezos’ Non-Endorsement Mean?,”

…

a Recent Interview, and I Need to Know What You Think,” BuzzFeed, October 31, 2024, https://www.buzzfeed.com/abbyzinman/jimmy-fallon-new-awkward-interview-tiktokers. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “new Drip King?”: Tim Marcin, “Livvy Rizzed Up Baby Gronk, the New Drip King Meme Explained,” Mashable, June

…

the Wire” (video), 34 Thurman, Uma, 154 Tidal, 169 Tiffany & Co., 209–10 Tiffany, Kaitlyn, 174, 176, 177 Tigers of Money, The (TV series), 77 TikTok, 5, 183, 196, 205–6, 215–17, 222, 229, 231, 232, 245–46, 268 Timbaland, 27, 28 Timberg, Scott, 5 Timberlake, Justin, 28, 46, 87

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman  · 9 Oct 2025  · 312pp  · 103,645 words

 The Great Solano County Land Grab 12 It’s Free Money 13 The Crypto Swamp 14 The Tap Turns Off 15 The Companies Suck 16 TikTok, China, and the Moneyman of the Moment 17 The Road to Vance 18 Didn’t the Last Guy Go to Prison? 19 Best to

…

blurbed it, along with members of Congress. An unapologetic China hawk, Helberg was credited with being a leading influence behind the legislative effort to ban TikTok (or induce its sale). He described himself as a disenchanted Democrat, and by spring 2024, he had emerged as a full-throated Trump supporter.

…

. It got Palantir CEO Alex Karp to the halls of Congress, and it made his advisor Jacob Helberg a leader in the war against TikTok. Helberg had a like-minded colleague in Josh Wolfe, a co-founder of Lux Capital, who said that China was using

…

political parties ran strongly in a June 2024 election, Jacob Helberg, the Palantir advisor who’d emerged as an influential hawkish voice against China and TikTok, asked why Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (NR) party was considered right-wing. This was the party that was forced to expel its

…

of them achieved a major breakthrough.4 Speaking to college students, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt described a way to get beyond a potential TikTok ban: If TikTok is banned, here’s what I propose each and every one of you do: Say to your LLM the following: “Make me a

…

copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and

…

not viral, do something different along the same lines.” He later added an important qualifier: So, in the example that I gave of the TikTok competitor—and by the way, I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody’s music—what you would do if you’re a

…

that, during his first term in office, President Donald Trump claimed that one of the grave problems facing the country came in the form of TikTok, the social video app that counted an estimated 150 million users in the United States and nearly 2 billion globally. He wasn’t alone:

…

politicians and national-security officials issued warnings about the short-form video app, from sensible concerns about foreign data collection to those who felt that TikTok was bewitching America’s youth on behalf of our Chinese communist adversaries. Some Silicon Valley executives saw a foreign rival encroaching uncomfortably on their social

…

-media turf and decided that joining the hawkish consensus against TikTok could be a prudent decision for their business and their politics. Later, Senator Mitt Romney and Senator Mark Warner would separately say that the surge

…

of pro-Palestinian activism on TikTok—including gruesome videos of Israeli atrocities in Gaza—helped galvanize establishment opposition to the platform.1 In August 2020, President Trump had issued an executive

…

order targeting TikTok and WeChat, the latter a popular Chinese messaging app with an estimated 3.3 million users in the United States.2 The order addressed

…

TikTok as a national-security threat in the ongoing cold war with China: “[TikTok’s] data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information—potentially

…

sell the app to Walmart and billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, one of Trump’s political benefactors. That effort ultimately ran aground in court. Meanwhile, TikTok sought to fend off future Trump attacks and takeover bids by beefing up its US operations and promising that it would take measures to ensure

…

that the vast troves of American consumer data the site harvests would remain stateside, in Texas. The movement against TikTok exemplified the shifting political winds in Silicon Valley. As we have seen, during the Obama administration, the tech industry developed a profitable revolving-door relationship

…

of the new, digitally enabled defense-industrial base. It was in this context that a faction of tech leaders decided to go to war against TikTok. Perhaps the most visible—certainly the most militant—was Jacob Helberg, the Palantir advisor who interviewed his boss Alex Karp in that Capitol Hill

…

and committees, telling the Washington Post, “Trump was right on a lot of make-or-break issues for America.”6 Helberg and Trump disagreed on TikTok, but they were both China hawks, and Helberg hailed from the same tech industry clique as future Republican vice president JD Vance. In the

…

video-sharing app could be drafted into a global contest of superpowers. And it’s how both Democratic and Republican presidents could come to see TikTok as a pressing national-security issue requiring drastic intervention. But all that was before Trump met billionaire Philadelphia financier Jeffrey Yass. A top Republican donor

…

donations from Yass since 2010. The Club for Growth also happened to be employing former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway to lobby on behalf of TikTok on Capitol Hill. The retreat seemed to go exactly as planned. Praising Yass as “fantastic,” Trump emerged as a critic of a

…

TikTok ban. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business,” Trump posted in March 2024 on Truth Social. “I don’t want Facebook, who cheated

…

richest man in Pennsylvania, with an estimated fortune of about $28 billion derived from options trading and venture capital investments—including a sizable interest in TikTok. Local politicos and activist groups had long faced off against him and his bottomless war chest in fights over education, social welfare, and unions.

…

In 2012, Susquehanna International Group, the trading and investment giant co-founded by Yass, made an early investment in ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company. By 2024, as the TikTok debate flared up again, this time under the Biden administration, that stake amounted to about 15 percent of the company and

…

under half of that holding—somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 billion—belonged to Yass personally. Yass had an enormous financial interest in ensuring that TikTok could continue to operate legally in the United States. Both the Trump and Biden administrations had made moves to ban the platform. If ByteDance were

…

forced to sell TikTok, then Yass could be well-positioned to assume a larger ownership share. In the meantime, Yass was showering Republicans, right-wing PACs, and big

…

-business groups with millions of dollars in donations, and he was educating them, just as he had done with Trump, on the value of TikTok. Yass checked many of the boxes expected of the post-Citizens United billionaire class. He was passionate about “school choice” and less passionate about

…

right-wing mega-donor trope.) Trump was the most prominent Republican to come around to Yass’s view on TikTok, but he was far from the first. Vivek Ramaswamy used to call TikTok “digital fentanyl.”23 But he eventually had the same epiphany that Trump later experienced. During the summer of

…

2023, Ramaswamy received millions of dollars in donations from Yass—and sure enough, come September, he launched his own TikTok account, saying he wanted to reach young people. Ramaswamy said that he was against banning the app, as were Kentucky senator Rand Paul and other

…

and stoked hawkish concern about the CCP spy app living in American teenagers’ phones. Amidst America’s crude sound-bite-driven politics, the battle around TikTok was reduced to a Sinophobic moral panic, rather than a complex debate about data sovereignty, free speech, the contested definition of “disinformation,” and big

…

tech’s pioneering use of surveillance as a business model. Banning TikTok seemed like a crude policy response when America’s tech giants—and its intelligence community—collected vast amounts of consumer data, and when numerous other

…

companies deemed “to present a significant threat to national security.”24 It’s a law that could be used for much more than just prying TikTok away from its Chinese ownership, potentially allowing the president to shut down access to any app with minimal pretext. As the Biden administration was

…

of a major social-media company to the same tech moguls and financiers whose acquisitive appetites the FTC was attempting to keep in check. A TikTok ban/forced sale was politically unpopular, censorious, a distraction from more pressing political crises, and certain to be challenged in court. But that’s

…

the policy that President Biden chose to embrace. Assuming the law survived legal challenges and the presidential transition, the TikTok ban would be a victory for the national-security directorate, cementing American corporations’ tech sovereignty at a cost to American consumers. Whatever the outcome, Jeffrey

…

much money at stake not to make a deal. That meant that Yass could eventually emerge from this imbroglio with either a greater stake in TikTok or billions of dollars in profit on what was reportedly a low seven-figure investment. The price was going to be high. Former Trump

…

Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin was one of several politically connected financiers who said that he wanted to form a group to buy TikTok. Parking lot mogul Frank McCourt, who bankrupted the Dodgers baseball team and walked away richer than ever, announced his interest in acquiring the platform.

…

August 2024, they were wielding increasing influence over the Trump campaign: Sacks spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Jacob Helberg advised Trump on TikTok and AI policy. Chamath Palihapitiya was one of a number of tech notables who attended a Trump dinner at Sacks’ San Francisco mansion, where the

…

-60-pro-phone/index.html 19 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/04/huawei-export-controls-us-china-trade-chips-telecommunications/ chapter 16: tiktok, china, and the moneyman of the moment 1 https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senator-romney-antony-blinken

…

-tiktok-ban-israel-palestinian-content; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-tiktok-ban-linked-israel-china-insiders-reveal 2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/18/wechat-ban-faq/ 3

…

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/ 4 https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/secret-court-opinion-reveals-mystery-tech-firm 5 https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/28/14428262/google

…

ECON295%E2%A7%B8CS323_I_2024_I_The_Age_of_AI%2C_Eric_Schmidt.txt 12 https://www.axios.com/2024/03/08/trump-claims-tiktok-ban-would-only-help-enemy-facebook 13 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/10/billionaires-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-trump-00162219

…

us/politics/timothy-mellon-trump-donation.html 17 https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors 18 https://www.propublica.org/article/jeff-yass-susquehanna-tiktok-tax-avoidance 19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfu_oWAuusg 20 https://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/11/15/thinkfest-jeff-yass-school-vouchers

…

/09/timothy-mellon-net-worth-top-donor-trump-campaign-elon-musk/ 23 https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/vivek-ramaswamy-flip-flops-tiktok-rcna105062 24 https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521 25 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/business/jeff-yass-shares-trump

…

here, here, here, here, here chatbots here, here China here and AI here, here and Alameda here and fentanyl here OKCoin here and security here TikTok here, here Choi, Emilie here Cicero Institute/Research here, here, here Citadel Securities here, here Citizens for Sanity here, here Citizens United v. FEC here

…

see also Board of Education eight8VC here, here Eisenhower, Dwight D. here election law here Ellison, Caroline here, here, here Ellison, Larry here, here and TikTok here and Twitter here, here espionage see spies Ethereum here exits here Facebook here, here, here, here see also Zuckerberg, Mark Fairshake PAC here, here

…

and Saudi money here and Silicon Valley Bank here France here free speech here, here and Elon Musk here and Saudi Arabia here, here and TikTok here and Twitter here, here, here, here, here FTX here, here, here, here see also Bankman-Fried, Sam Fuentes, Nick here, here G64 Ventures

…

here, here, here, here Elon Musk on here Hashemi, Nader here, here Helberg, Jacob here and defense tech here, here and national security here and TikTok here, here and Donald Trump here and the Trump administration here Hering, John here Herro, Chase here Hill and Valley Forum here Hoffman, Reid here

…

Joseph here Nashville (TN) here Nasiri, Sean here National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) here, here National Rally (NR) party (France) here national security here and TikTok here, here National security Agency here Neighbors for a Better San Francisco here, here, here, here, here Network State concept here, here, here, here New

…

here, here on assassination attempt of Trump here and China here and DOGE here, here running for president here, here and George Soros here on TikTok here Truths: The Future of America First here and JD Vance here reactionary utopians here recalls here Chesa Boudin here George Gascón here Gavin Newsom

…

meeting with Donald Trump here The Diversity Myth here and Donald Trump here, here, here, here, here, here and JD Vance here, here, here, here TikTok here, here, here, here Times Tech Guild here TogetherSF here, here Tornado Cash here Travis Air Force Base (CA) here, here, here Trump, Donald assassination

…

Musk here, here and David Sacks here and Saudi Arabia here and the SEC here and Peter Thiel here, here, here, here, here, here and TikTok here, here twenty2024 election here election day here Twitter account here, here and JD Vance here, here, here and Jeffrey Yass here, here, here

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

by Liz Pelly  · 7 Jan 2025  · 293pp  · 104,461 words

would infiltrate not just streaming, but a lot of the experience of being an internet user. One former Spotify engineer I spoke with described the TikTok feed, and Spotify’s eventual attempts at approximating it, as an ultimate distillation of lean-back listening: “You’re not putting any input in. You

…

now, thanks to a digital environment where 70 percent of internet traffic comes from video and audio streaming—and a whole generation of YouTube and TikTok influencers aiming to soundtrack their videos without navigating the complicated world of sync (short for music synchronization licensing, the process of acquiring rights to play

…

. It was considered a controversial chart-manipulating tactic at the time, but would have hardly registered as a blip just a few years later, when TikTok spawned a pop culture soundscape defined by sticky snippets looping ad nauseam. The 2017-2018-era pop landscape rewarded music that did well across playlist

…

did not want to raise songwriter fees. “When you compare that to things like songwriter camps,” Israelite wrote, “it becomes so hollow.”10 * * * In 2020, TikTok’s pandemic-era success seismically altered the music industry’s order of operations. This was the season when the “top of the music discovery funnel

…

go, Oh, Spotify is getting behind it, we can playlist it on our station,” he explained. “Now, to get Spotify love, you have to get TikTok [hits] on your snippet,” he continued, meaning the small clips of songs that users post to test the waters. With the new pressures of

…

TikTok, artists didn’t only need to make songs that would avoid skips and “do numbers on” lean-back playlists. They also had to answer to

…

the harsh demands of short-form video and TikTok’s fast-moving feeds. The line between the musician and the meme-maker blurred. Everyone had to commodify their personalities now by becoming a comedian

…

needed to open up about their innermost struggles. An extreme sense of literalism in lyrics triumphed, with songwriters angling to position themselves as easily legible TikTok personalities, as relatable underdogs hustling for streams. It was all so tightly controlled, and somehow often also could feel so random and meaningless. One moment

…

hit the app-swiper immediately. Shortly after first joining the app, a video barged its way onto my “For You Page,” wherein a self-appointed TikTok-for-musicians expert explained that in order to go viral on the platform, a song needed not only an immediate hook, but “re-engagement triggers

…

to revolve around snippets. I will never forget the first time a young songwriter explained to me the songwriting process that was emerging in the TikTok era: artists were releasing short bits of works-in-progress, essentially A/B testing their own hooks in order to see what was reacting and

…

professional songwriters with “dead copyrights” they could no longer place.11 In contrast to the tranquilizing effect that the early playlist boom had on songs, TikTok sped things up. In 2022, music fans on short-form video platforms had become obsessed with making “slow” and “sped up” versions of popular songs

…

particularly huge, taking cues from what the online “nightcore” scene had been up to for years. But now that these edits were taking off on TikTok, the majors saw dollar signs. UMG set up its own Spotify pages, “Speed Radio” and “slowed radio,” the former amassing millions of followers. Some artists

…

it was like the audio equivalent of uploading a video to CapCut, a ByteDance-owned video editing platform that quickly makes videos more optimized for TikTok. This next phase of the musical attention economy begged some existential questions, such as, what is attention even for? What even is music? One major

…

the rise of Speed Radio and the sound-snippet whiplash stoking these reckonings with musical purpose, some artists were feeling burnt out. Oddly, by 2022, TikTok burnout—artists posting about how they were so sick of the game—became its own viral trend, with major label artists positioning themselves as disrupters

…

’s ceaseless hunger for artist content. Sky Ferreira summarized the weirdness of this pose in a tweet: “Pretending your label has ‘asked you to make TikToks’ to go viral for outrage clicks is pretty meta.” Ferreira was onto something. The mainstream music industry is built on artifice, but

…

TikTok reached new extremes, as major labels searched for ways to game the system. Take for example the story of a song by a seventeen-year-

…

“ABCDEFU” with the caption “hope you don’t hate it :).” By the end of the year, it was framed as a viral hit, but diligent TikTokers were suspicious; one eventually made a video revealing that the “fan” commenter was actually GAYLE’s label’s marketing director. It wasn’t such an

…

’s label. A whole cottage industry emerged around manufacturing the illusion of organic virality. And record industry payola helped prop up the entire culture of TikTok influencing. Labels were engaged in the elaborate campaigns for “seeding” songs into the algorithm through strategic influencer placements, or just through having their own interns

…

create numerous accounts for the sole purpose of promoting certain sound clips.13 In the end, TikTok was a platform for promoting music, not monetizing it—the platform pays artists virtually nothing, even worse than streaming. As music became even more lean

…

-back, the devaluation continued. TikTok strategy still involved figuring out ways to send users to Spotify or Apple Music; oftentimes, whole campaigns would be built around “teasing” a bit of

…

their collection on release day. In time, what it meant to “do well on Spotify” and “do well on TikTok” started to fold in on each other. Whether on Spotify or TikTok, discovery inside of a corporate digital enclosure was never actually about discovery; it was about risk management, and reducing the

…

you flicked onward? The signals of satisfaction or dissatisfaction were lean-back on another level, as behavioral metrics became ever more passive. The rise of TikTok, in many ways, not only changed the sound of music, and the ways in which it was popularized, but also changed Spotify; it was during

…

this period of TikTok dominance when Spotify reportedly began to deprioritize editorial curation for more personalization; and not just more personalization, but more personalization based on behavioral data. By

…

2023, Spotify had launched its personalized TikTok-like discovery feed for mobile, as TikTok started launching its own streaming service, TikTok Music, in a few markets. At a certain point, it seemed like the two platforms were on a collision

…

course of sorts, headed to a future where they would be serving the same functions; TikTok has since shut down its streaming service. The more things change, the more they stay the same, though. “The numbers, I do keep quite an

…

that cares more about playlist streams than creating a sustainable situation for artists. The problem is not the chill-pop streambait musicians, or even the TikTok plants, but these self-replicating systems that continuously reward the same styles—whatever users will stream endlessly, whether they’re paying attention or not. In

…

sonic variety of it all.6 Then, something curious happened. In August 2019, as a direct response to the viral rise of 100 gecs across TikTok, Spotify rebranded its “Neon Party” playlist, which featured PC Music artists, into a new playlist, “hyperpop.” The next year, the New York Times published an

…

headlining artist on his friend’s gym playlist, but the vast majority of the kids I spoke with told me they were there because of TikTok. “It was one of those videos where someone was walking down the street asking people what kind of music they were listening to,” a twenty

…

time in the group he started to observe the broader tendency toward describing music through microgenres like cottagecore (a pastoral, countryside aesthetic that flourished on TikTok during the pandemic) and dark academia (mood board: poetry books, dusty libraries, black coffee, classical music). He also started seeing “a lot of requests for

…

’s giving Diane Keaton, it’s giving apple pies.” Was someone from Spotify spying on the Facebook group? No, they were just all looking at TikTok. The year before, an influencer had posted a viral video outlining a whole aesthetic universe of white flowy outfits, airy open kitchens, and Ina Garten

…

with the mood board. Cottagecore, dark academia, liminal spaces—not only were these terms floating around the “oddly specific playlists group” and Aesthetics Wiki and TikTok, they each had their own official Spotify editorial playlists, too. As culture became fixated on niche aesthetics, the company absorbed these ideas into its broader

…

, with the digital services, major labels, and VC investors alike all looking for the next frontier of that sweet, sweet commodified attention. Streaming turned to TikTok; crypto turned to AI. The vibes shifted ever on. As the fight for market share between the majors continued, a new factor arrived. How would

…

streams, including six hundred thousand on Spotify, before UMG ordered its removal. The song was released under the artist name “ghostwriter” along with a bizarre TikTok video where the supposed artist wore a ghost costume and big black sunglasses, claiming to be heralding the AI revolution in music. Questions abounded. One

…

to convincingly trace the track back to an AWAL Records-signed pop singer named JVKE, whose viral rise via TikTok pranks had been well documented in a Vox documentary years prior covering the “TikTok-to-Spotify pipeline.” And his manager was a longtime architect of short-form video marketing campaigns going back

…

to the days of pre-TikTok app Musical.ly. Interestingly, by the year’s end, many music industry power players were coming to describe “ghostwriter” in interviews not as a fraudulent

…

for each new song. When in 2023 the company decided to revamp its app’s home page to more closely imitate the experience of a TikTok feed, all of a sudden artists and their labels were expected to produce “clips”—short-form excerpts meant to stoke engagement. As ever, it was

…

Spotify marketing executive commenting on the “high indicators of engagement” around her catalog. AWAL started working with Laufey, a young artist merging viral jazz and TikTok literalism, at the end of 2021.8 At the time of the AWAL sale to Sony—which the UK parliament investigated for potential monopoly issues

…

experiences and emotions” and “characterized by its introspective lyrics.” The name seemed to suggest that the songs might evoke the sense of relatability rewarded by TikTok, like “POV” memes that aim to serve the user a jolt of main character energy. Do you relate to this? Can you see yourself in

…

to anyone else about something more fun. Thank you to all of my students at NYU, including those who expanded my knowledge of hyperpop and TikTok; everyone who took my “Topics: What is Indie?” course in 2022 and helped me unpack some of the ideas explored in chapter 15; and to

…

Among Streaming Platforms Fighting Songwriters Royalty Increase,” American Songwriter, 2019, https://americansongwriter.com/spotify-amazon-among-streaming-platforms-fighting-songwriters-royalty-increase/. 11 Kristin Robinson, “TikTok Is Testing Ground for New Singles—Why Labels Love It (and Some Artists & Writers Don’t),” Billboard, May 27, 2022, https://www.billboard.com/pro

…

/tiktok-song-promo-campaigns-teasers-marketing-songwriter-splits/. 12 Elias Leight, “With Sped-Up Songs Taking Over, Artists Feel the Need for Speed,” Billboard, March 13,

…

2023, https://www.billboard.com/pro/sped-up-songs-taking-over-labels-tiktok/ 13 @gaylecantspell, TikTok, July 29, 2021, https://www.tiktok.com/@gaylecantspell/video/6990510290978786566; @danielswall, TikTok, January 6, 2022, https://www.tiktok.com/@danielswall/video/7050208352160435503?lang=en. 14 Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (University

…

Creators,” Billboard, March 19, 2018, https://www.billboard.com/pro/why-spotify-thinks-self-driving-music-strategy-will-benefit-creators. 2 “Spotify CTO Gustav Söderström: TikTok’s Music; How Olivia Rodrigo Gamed the Algo | 20VC #936,” YouTube video, posted by @20VC with Harry Stebbings, October 12, 2022, https://www.youtube.com

…

A.I. Drake Song,” YouTube video uploaded by @yokai, May 21, 2023. 8 Cory Doctorow, “The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok or How, Exactly, Platforms Die,” Wired, January 23, 2023, https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/. 9 For a basic overview of Endel, see https://endel.io/about. 10 Websites for

…

industry, 13–14, 57 search engine, 24 shareholders of, 201–2 songwriting camps of, 84–85, 170 spotifycore, 82 Strategic Programming, 64–66, 122, 136 TikTok’s influence on, 88–89, 131 tracks’ playlist history, 81, 251n.4 users influenced by, xi–xii, 56 website, 26 “Wrapped” campaign, 97, 102, 107

…

in music distribution, 89–90 music’s impact on, 6 music tech start-ups, 128–29 subscription, 17 Teibel, Irv, 133 Tiber Creek Group, 199 TikTok, 36, 71, 81, 86–89, 110, 118, 126, 131, 168–69, 181 Tlaib, Rashida, 148, 209–13 Toomey, Jenny, 6–7 Tradedoubler, 12–13, 16

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

by Cory Doctorow  · 6 Oct 2025  · 313pp  · 94,415 words

worth the squeeze. Lots of platforms do this. In January 2023, Forbes reporter Emily Baker-White revealed the existence of TikTok’s “heating tool,” a secret back-end feature that TikTok strategists used to lure different kinds of creators onto the platform. Facebook started off with a default feed composed of accounts

…

that you followed and then added in the odd recommendation. By contrast, TikTok went out of the gate with an algorithmic feed, called the For You feed. By accessing commercial surveillance dossiers of new users and then surveilling

…

them further as they used the app, TikTok’s content recommendation algorithm was able to make really good guesses about which videos a user was likely to enjoy

…

offer users the ability to follow other users on the platform, but the algorithmic feed is so central to how TikTok works that most users treat subscribing to an account as a way to hint to the algorithm that they want more things similar to the

…

account they subscribe to posts, not as a way of saying “Just show me what the people I follow are posting.” The social contract with TikTok, then, is that it will spy on you, but it will use that surveillance data to fill your feed with things whose existence you hadn

…

’t suspected but that you find endlessly fascinating. The heating tool violates this contract. Sometimes a TikTok strategist will decide to woo a specific performer or kind of performer in a bid to get them to retool for

…

idiosyncratic format and conventions make it hard for creators to make videos that work well on TikTok and on rival platforms, which means that TikTok has a mass of TikTok-first/TikTok-optimized performers.) The strategist identifies an account they wish to entice, and then applies the heating tool to that account. The heating

…

tool pushes that performer’s content into millions of users’ feeds, irrespective of whether the content recommendation system would have “organically” recommended it. So, if TikTok decides there aren’t enough sports bros making content for the platform, a strategist can pick a random bro and make him king for the

…

, shoving his latest video into tens of millions of users’ feeds. The sports bro doesn’t know this—he just knows that he’s gone TikTok-viral, and whatever system he has for converting attention to money (supplements, sponsorship, etc.) is now ringing up gigantic profits. That sports bro declares himself

…

to be the Louis Pasteur of TikTok. He trumpets his victory to other TikTok-curious sports bros and boasts of the unlimited riches waiting to be claimed by the bold sports bro who optimizes his video

…

in August, he will create an advertisement for his unwinnable peach-basket ball game. TikTok’s heating tool is a way for TikTok strategists to hand out giant teddy bears—and to take them back again. After all, TikTok users will tolerate only a certain amount of artificially promoted, irrelevant nonsense in their

…

feeds, so if a TikTok strategist is satisfied that there is a sufficiency of sports bros locked in to the platform, it can withdraw the heat from its chosen sports

…

you expect to reach your own subscribers on platforms they have explicitly instructed to deliver your feeds, you will have to pay Meta, Twitter, or TikTok to “boost” your content so it actually shows up in the feeds whose users asked to have it there. Australia missed an opportunity with its

…

Meta is the main force keeping “European cyberspace” free from nefarious Chinese rule). This is nonsense, but it’s productive nonsense. It gave us the TikTok ban, and it’s giving America’s bloated, overcapitalized AI giants political cover as they attack nimbler Chinese rivals like DeepSeek. Antitrust is global, but

…

from within a decorative semicircle of tech billionaires: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and, of course, Elon Musk. These men intervened in many ways on Trump’s behalf. Bezos ordered the editorial board at

…

The Washington Post (which he owns) not to endorse Kamala Harris. Cook personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Both TikTok and Twitter changed their algorithms to favor Trump-oriented news in the run-up to the election. Within days of assuming office, Trump illegally fired

…

it and use it to turn your grampy into a conspiracy-addled QAnon follower. Or maybe you think Instagram turned your teenager anorexic. Or that TikTok brainwashed a bunch of millennials into quoting Osama bin Laden. Or maybe you’re worried about Black Lives Matter protesters whose identities were swept up

…

are actually imaginary. But that doesn’t have to matter when it comes to coalition-building. I don’t have to agree with you that TikTok is brainwashing millennials to agree with you that a muscular privacy law would be a good thing. Which is why we are seeing a procession

…

” services to ensure delivery. We can apply end-to-end to social media, of course. When you sign up to follow someone on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, or YouTube, those services should offer you a feed where you see everything posted by the people you follow.2 Yes, that will severely

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global

by Rebecca Fannin  · 2 Sep 2019  · 269pp  · 70,543 words

Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare

by Edward Fishman  · 25 Feb 2025  · 884pp  · 221,861 words

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 9 Sep 2024  · 566pp  · 169,013 words

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination

by Mark Bergen  · 5 Sep 2022  · 642pp  · 141,888 words

The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

by Chris Hayes  · 28 Jan 2025  · 359pp  · 100,761 words

Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future

by Jean M. Twenge  · 25 Apr 2023  · 541pp  · 173,676 words

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart

by Nicholas Carr  · 28 Jan 2025  · 231pp  · 85,135 words

Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters

by Joanna Walsh  · 22 Sep 2025  · 255pp  · 80,203 words

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

Inner Entrepreneur: A Proven Path to Profit and Peace

by Grant Sabatier  · 10 Mar 2025  · 442pp  · 126,902 words

The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors

by Spencer Jakab  · 1 Feb 2022  · 420pp  · 94,064 words

The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results

by Andrew McAfee  · 14 Nov 2023  · 381pp  · 113,173 words

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following

by Gabrielle Bluestone  · 5 Apr 2021  · 329pp  · 100,162 words

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything

by Matthew Ball  · 18 Jul 2022  · 412pp  · 116,685 words

Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life

by Kristen R. Ghodsee  · 16 May 2023  · 302pp  · 112,390 words

This Is for Everyone: The Captivating Memoir From the Inventor of the World Wide Web

by Tim Berners-Lee  · 8 Sep 2025  · 347pp  · 100,038 words

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman  · 17 Jul 2023  · 329pp  · 99,504 words

The Age of AI: And Our Human Future

by Henry A Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher  · 2 Nov 2021  · 194pp  · 57,434 words

Who’s Raising the Kids?: Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children

by Susan Linn  · 12 Sep 2022  · 415pp  · 102,982 words

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World

by Max Fisher  · 5 Sep 2022  · 439pp  · 131,081 words

The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel

by Paige McClanahan  · 17 Jun 2024  · 206pp  · 78,882 words

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon  · 14 Sep 2022  · 371pp  · 107,141 words

The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

by Yascha Mounk  · 26 Sep 2023

It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

by Felix Gillette and John Koblin  · 1 Nov 2022  · 575pp  · 140,384 words

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth

by Guillaume Pitron  · 14 Jun 2023  · 271pp  · 79,355 words

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

by Michiko Kakutani  · 20 Feb 2024  · 262pp  · 69,328 words

Buy Now, Pay Later: The Extraordinary Story of Afterpay

by Jonathan Shapiro and James Eyers  · 2 Aug 2021  · 444pp  · 124,631 words

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything

by Kelly Weill  · 22 Feb 2022

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley

by Atsuo Inoue  · 18 Nov 2021  · 295pp  · 89,441 words

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 7 Sep 2022  · 205pp  · 61,903 words

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

by Cal Newport  · 5 Mar 2024  · 233pp  · 65,893 words

Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

by Zoë Schiffer  · 13 Feb 2024  · 343pp  · 92,693 words

Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix

by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chmielewski  · 18 Apr 2022  · 414pp  · 117,581 words

Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul

by Kurt Wagner  · 20 Feb 2024  · 332pp  · 127,754 words

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

by Madhumita Murgia  · 20 Mar 2024  · 336pp  · 91,806 words

Failed State: The Sunday Times Bestselling Investigation Into Why Britain Is Struggling

by Sam Freedman  · 10 Jul 2024  · 368pp  · 101,133 words

Gambling Man

by Lionel Barber  · 3 Oct 2024  · 424pp  · 123,730 words

Nothing but Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons From One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts

by Mark Mahaney  · 9 Nov 2021  · 311pp  · 90,172 words

Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind

by Annalee Newitz  · 3 Jun 2024  · 251pp  · 68,713 words

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy

by Andrew Yang  · 15 Nov 2021

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall

by Zeke Faux  · 11 Sep 2023  · 385pp  · 106,848 words

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World

by David Sax  · 15 Jan 2022  · 282pp  · 93,783 words

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning

by Justin E. H. Smith  · 22 Mar 2022  · 198pp  · 59,351 words

Vassal State

by Angus Hanton  · 25 Mar 2024  · 277pp  · 81,718 words

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

by Anne Helen Petersen  · 14 Jan 2021  · 297pp  · 88,890 words

The Kickstarter Handbook: Real-Life Success Stories of Artists, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs

by Steinberg, Don  · 14 Aug 2012  · 163pp  · 46,523 words

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein  · 11 Sep 2023

100 Things We've Lost to the Internet

by Pamela Paul  · 14 Oct 2021  · 194pp  · 54,355 words

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt

by Sinan Aral  · 14 Sep 2020  · 475pp  · 134,707 words

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang  · 12 Jul 2021  · 372pp  · 100,947 words

The Stolen Year

by Anya Kamenetz  · 23 Aug 2022  · 347pp  · 103,518 words

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell  · 2 May 2022  · 411pp  · 119,022 words

Reset

by Ronald J. Deibert  · 14 Aug 2020

For the Love of Autism: Stories of Love, Awareness and Acceptance on the Spectrum

by Tamika Lechee Morales  · 23 Apr 2022  · 209pp  · 64,635 words

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

by Vauhini Vara  · 8 Apr 2025  · 301pp  · 105,209 words

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac  · 17 Sep 2024

Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling

by Danny Funt  · 20 Jan 2026  · 285pp  · 100,897 words

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

by Nicolas Niarchos  · 20 Jan 2026  · 654pp  · 170,150 words

Mattering: The Secret to Building a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose

by Jennifer Breheny Wallace  · 13 Jan 2026  · 206pp  · 68,830 words

The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

by Tim Wu  · 4 Nov 2025  · 246pp  · 65,143 words

The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

by Jesselyn Cook  · 22 Jul 2024  · 321pp  · 95,778 words

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma

by Mustafa Suleyman  · 4 Sep 2023  · 444pp  · 117,770 words

Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation

by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber  · 29 Oct 2024  · 292pp  · 106,826 words

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking

by Michael Bhaskar  · 2 Nov 2021

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

by Sebastian Mallaby  · 1 Feb 2022  · 935pp  · 197,338 words

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

by Evan Friss  · 5 Aug 2024  · 493pp  · 120,793 words

The Capitalist Manifesto

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Jun 2023  · 295pp  · 87,204 words

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot

by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein  · 6 Sep 2021

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups

by Ali Tamaseb  · 14 Sep 2021  · 251pp  · 80,831 words

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire

by Bruce Nussbaum  · 5 Mar 2013  · 385pp  · 101,761 words

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

by Amanda Montell  · 14 Jun 2021  · 244pp  · 73,700 words

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid

by Lawrence Wright  · 7 Jun 2021  · 391pp  · 112,312 words

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

by Rush Doshi  · 24 Jun 2021  · 816pp  · 191,889 words

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

by Anil Seth  · 29 Aug 2021  · 418pp  · 102,597 words

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back

by Jacob Ward  · 25 Jan 2022  · 292pp  · 94,660 words

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

by Abigail Shrier  · 28 Jun 2020  · 345pp  · 87,534 words

Abundance

by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson  · 18 Mar 2025  · 227pp  · 84,566 words

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 15 Apr 2025  · 321pp  · 112,477 words

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back

by Bruce Schneier  · 7 Feb 2023  · 306pp  · 82,909 words

Making Sense of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better World

by J. Doyne Farmer  · 24 Apr 2024  · 406pp  · 114,438 words

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

by Dr. Julie Smith  · 11 Jan 2022  · 481pp  · 72,071 words

May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases—And What We Can Do About It

by Alex Edmans  · 13 May 2024  · 315pp  · 87,035 words

Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World

by Parmy Olson  · 284pp  · 96,087 words

Who Will Defend Europe?: An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent

by Keir Giles  · 24 Oct 2024  · 296pp  · 81,440 words

Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead

by Kenneth Rogoff  · 27 Feb 2025  · 330pp  · 127,791 words

A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard

by Simon Jenkins  · 7 Nov 2024  · 364pp  · 94,801 words

Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves

by Nicola Twilley  · 24 Jun 2024  · 428pp  · 125,388 words

Mexico - Culture Smart!

by Maddicks, Russell;Culture Smart!;  · 15 Nov 2023  · 133pp  · 37,859 words

I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict

by Kenneth Payne  · 16 Jun 2021  · 339pp  · 92,785 words

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History

by Alex von Tunzelmann  · 7 Jul 2021  · 337pp  · 87,236 words

The Soul of Wealth

by Daniel Crosby  · 19 Sep 2024  · 229pp  · 73,085 words

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

by Mehrsa Baradaran  · 7 May 2024  · 470pp  · 158,007 words

Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History

by Nellie Bowles  · 13 May 2024  · 207pp  · 62,397 words

Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral

by Ben Smith  · 2 May 2023

Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War

by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff  · 8 Jul 2024  · 272pp  · 103,638 words

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier  · 13 Apr 2020  · 484pp  · 114,613 words

IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives

by Chris Stedman  · 19 Oct 2020  · 307pp  · 101,998 words

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World

by James Ball  · 19 Jul 2023  · 317pp  · 87,048 words

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil

by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Francis de Véricourt  · 10 May 2021  · 291pp  · 80,068 words

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

by Noreena Hertz  · 13 May 2020  · 506pp  · 133,134 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham  · 27 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation

by Kevin Roose  · 9 Mar 2021  · 208pp  · 57,602 words

The Startup Wife

by Tahmima Anam  · 2 Jun 2021  · 297pp  · 83,528 words

Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price  · 5 Jan 2021  · 362pp  · 87,462 words

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet

by Klaus Schwab  · 7 Jan 2021  · 460pp  · 107,454 words

Chokepoint Capitalism

by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow  · 26 Sep 2022  · 396pp  · 113,613 words

The New Snobbery

by David Skelton  · 28 Jun 2021  · 226pp  · 58,341 words

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World

by Alan Rusbridger  · 26 Nov 2020  · 371pp  · 109,320 words

Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion

by Dean Burnett  · 10 Jan 2023  · 536pp  · 126,051 words

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

by Jane McGonigal  · 22 Mar 2022  · 420pp  · 135,569 words

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro  · 30 Aug 2021  · 345pp  · 92,063 words

The Smartphone Society

by Nicole Aschoff

The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip

by Stephen Witt  · 8 Apr 2025  · 260pp  · 82,629 words

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It

by Kashmir Hill  · 19 Sep 2023  · 487pp  · 124,008 words

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement

by Ashley Shew  · 18 Sep 2023  · 154pp  · 43,956 words

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao  · 19 May 2025  · 660pp  · 179,531 words

Growth: A Reckoning

by Daniel Susskind  · 16 Apr 2024  · 358pp  · 109,930 words

Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)

by Rachel Slade  · 9 Jan 2024  · 392pp  · 106,044 words

Secrets of the Sprakkar

by Eliza Reid  · 15 Jul 2021

These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

by Christopher Summerfield  · 11 Mar 2025  · 412pp  · 122,298 words

Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking

by Mehdi Hasan  · 27 Feb 2023  · 307pp  · 93,073 words

Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex

by Rachel Feltman  · 14 May 2022  · 306pp  · 88,545 words

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by Ed Conway  · 15 Jun 2023  · 515pp  · 152,128 words

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

by Devon Price  · 4 Apr 2022  · 456pp  · 101,959 words

Learning to Think: A Memoir

by Tracy King  · 12 Mar 2025  · 248pp  · 84,118 words

Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life

by Alan B. Krueger  · 3 Jun 2019

Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan

by Murong Xuecun  · 7 Mar 2023  · 236pp  · 73,008 words

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again

by Johann Hari  · 25 Jan 2022  · 390pp  · 120,864 words

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It

by Matthew Williams  · 23 Mar 2021  · 592pp  · 125,186 words

Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile

by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek  · 21 Oct 2025  · 330pp  · 85,349 words

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

by John Green  · 18 Mar 2025  · 158pp  · 49,742 words

The Everything Blueprint: The Microchip Design That Changed the World

by James Ashton  · 11 May 2023  · 401pp  · 113,586 words

A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-Or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine

by Gregory Zuckerman  · 25 Oct 2021  · 368pp  · 106,185 words

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze  · 15 Nov 2021  · 561pp  · 138,158 words

Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

by Richard Beck  · 2 Sep 2024  · 715pp  · 212,449 words

Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers

by Jason M. Barr  · 13 May 2024  · 292pp  · 107,998 words

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them

by Nouriel Roubini  · 17 Oct 2022  · 328pp  · 96,678 words

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything

by Nate Silver  · 12 Aug 2024  · 848pp  · 227,015 words

Makers

by Chris Anderson  · 1 Oct 2012  · 238pp  · 73,824 words

The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America's Institutions Against Dissent

by Ben Shapiro  · 26 Jul 2021  · 309pp  · 81,243 words

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World

by Henry Grabar  · 8 May 2023  · 413pp  · 115,274 words

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian  · 7 Oct 2024  · 336pp  · 104,899 words

How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement

by Fredrik Deboer  · 4 Sep 2023  · 211pp  · 78,547 words

Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections

by Mollie Hemingway  · 11 Oct 2021  · 595pp  · 143,394 words

Pattern Breakers: Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future

by Mike Maples and Peter Ziebelman  · 8 Jul 2024  · 207pp  · 65,156 words

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

by Ashlee Vance  · 8 May 2023  · 558pp  · 175,965 words

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

by Jia Tolentino  · 5 Aug 2019  · 305pp  · 101,743 words

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

by Fiona Hill  · 4 Oct 2021  · 569pp  · 165,510 words

Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World

by Mo Gawdat  · 29 Sep 2021  · 259pp  · 84,261 words

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader

by Colin Lancaster  · 3 May 2021  · 245pp  · 75,397 words

The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis

by Tim Lee, Jamie Lee and Kevin Coldiron  · 13 Dec 2019  · 241pp  · 81,805 words

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Eghbal  · 3 Aug 2020  · 1,136pp  · 73,489 words

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth  · 9 Feb 2021  · 651pp  · 186,130 words

Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness

by Tim S. Grover and Shari Wenk  · 17 May 2021  · 192pp  · 59,234 words

The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth

by Michael Spitzer  · 31 Mar 2021  · 632pp  · 163,143 words

Working Hard, Hardly Working

by Grace Beverley

Your Computer Is on Fire

by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip  · 9 Mar 2021  · 661pp  · 156,009 words

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future

by Geoffrey Cain  · 28 Jun 2021  · 340pp  · 90,674 words

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside

by Xiaowei Wang  · 12 Oct 2020  · 196pp  · 61,981 words

Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus

by Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green  · 7 Jul 2021  · 296pp  · 96,568 words

This Book Could Fix Your Life: The Science of Self Help

by New Scientist and Helen Thomson  · 7 Jan 2021  · 442pp  · 85,640 words

The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul

by Isabel Kershner  · 16 May 2023  · 472pp  · 145,476 words

Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond

by Tamara Kneese  · 14 Aug 2023  · 284pp  · 75,744 words

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future

by Julia Hobsbawm  · 11 Apr 2022  · 172pp  · 50,777 words

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

by Maria Ressa  · 19 Oct 2022

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next

by Jeanette Winterson  · 15 Mar 2021  · 256pp  · 73,068 words

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

by Michael Lewis  · 2 Oct 2023  · 263pp  · 92,618 words

Politics on the Edge: The Instant #1 Sunday Times Bestseller From the Host of Hit Podcast the Rest Is Politics

by Rory Stewart  · 13 Sep 2023  · 534pp  · 157,700 words

Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor

by Glyn Moody  · 26 Sep 2022  · 295pp  · 66,912 words

The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation

by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler  · 14 Sep 2021  · 735pp  · 165,375 words

How the World Ran Out of Everything

by Peter S. Goodman  · 11 Jun 2024  · 528pp  · 127,605 words

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno

by Nancy Jo Sales  · 17 May 2021  · 445pp  · 135,648 words

Things That Matter: Overcoming Distraction to Pursue a More Meaningful Life

by Joshua Becker  · 19 Apr 2022  · 215pp  · 62,479 words

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

by Ben Tarnoff  · 13 Jun 2022  · 234pp  · 67,589 words

Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions

by Temple Grandin, Ph.d.  · 11 Oct 2022

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

by Alan Weisman  · 21 Apr 2025  · 599pp  · 149,014 words

Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History

by Ben Mezrich  · 6 Nov 2023  · 279pp  · 85,453 words

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future

by Keach Hagey  · 19 May 2025  · 439pp  · 125,379 words

Narcotopia

by Patrick Winn  · 30 Jan 2024  · 425pp  · 131,864 words

Still Broke: Walmart's Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism

by Rick Wartzman  · 15 Nov 2022  · 215pp  · 69,370 words

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy  · 12 May 2025  · 774pp  · 238,244 words

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

by Greta Thunberg  · 14 Feb 2023  · 651pp  · 162,060 words

App Kid: How a Child of Immigrants Grabbed a Piece of the American Dream

by Michael Sayman  · 20 Sep 2021  · 285pp  · 91,144 words

When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

by Jordan Thomas  · 27 May 2025  · 347pp  · 105,327 words

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future

by Orly Lobel  · 17 Oct 2022  · 370pp  · 112,809 words

The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation

by Cathy O'Neil  · 15 Mar 2022  · 318pp  · 73,713 words

Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers

by Katherine Clarke  · 13 Jun 2023  · 454pp  · 127,319 words

Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization

by Harold James  · 15 Jan 2023  · 469pp  · 137,880 words

Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power

by Rose Hackman  · 27 Mar 2023

Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze

by Tawny Lara  · 19 Sep 2023  · 154pp  · 45,857 words

Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World

by Joshua Paul Dale  · 15 Dec 2023  · 209pp  · 81,560 words

Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth

by Elizabeth Williamson  · 8 Mar 2022  · 574pp  · 148,233 words

Lonely Planet Malta & Gozo

by Lonely Planet  · 233pp  · 61,033 words

Equality

by Darrin M. McMahon  · 14 Nov 2023  · 534pp  · 166,876 words

The Price of Life: In Search of What We're Worth and Who Decides

by Jenny Kleeman  · 13 Mar 2024  · 334pp  · 96,342 words

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet

by Edward Luce  · 13 May 2025  · 612pp  · 235,188 words

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

by Sarah Wynn-Williams  · 11 Mar 2025  · 370pp  · 115,318 words

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America

by Beth Macy  · 6 Oct 2025  · 373pp  · 97,653 words

Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

by Patrick McGee  · 13 May 2025  · 377pp  · 138,306 words