David Furst: This is All of It. I'm David Furst in for Alison Stewart. Happy Friday, everyone. If you're one of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok, you may have felt like a political football recently bounced from Congress, which voted to ban the platform unless an American company bought it, to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ban. Then to the White House, where President Trump, the day after the ban took effect, his first day in office, signed an executive order putting the ban on hold for 75 days. This is a developing political story. It's a tech industry story. It's a geopolitical story, as US Lawmakers claim that having so many Americans on an app run by a company with ties to a foreign government poses a national security threat. Joining us now with an update on the ban is Sapna Maheshwari, New York Times business reporter covering TikTok technology and emerging media companies. Sapna, welcome to all of it.

Sapna Maheshwari: Thanks for having me.

David Furst: For those of us who haven't been following all of the details, all of the beats of the TikTok ban, can you give us a bit of an overview and an update on the latest?

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes, of course. Basically, as we know, this law was passed way back in April. It was signed by Biden back then, and it said that TikTok had to be sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. TikTok and ByteDance have been gambling for the better part of a year that they would be able to sue and overturn this law by this deadline of January 19th.

This went all the way to the Supreme Court as of a week ago, and the Supreme Court ruled last week that the law was constitutional and it was perfectly legal for the government to threaten this ban if TikTok didn't sell. Because the company was so busy trying to fight the sale and saying that a sale was impossible, they didn't have anything lined up and the government made good on its promise. TikTok actually went dark for about 12 to 14 hours this weekend. I was not on a MTA bus myself, but I heard that from colleagues who were that buses of people, subways erupted as people saw that their TikTok viewing was interrupted.

I thought it was pretty sensational. We just haven't seen anything like that on that scale in the US but as we all know, it was pretty short-lived. It wasn't too long before Trump said he would issue an executive order, and it gave some comfort to some of the tech companies charged with complying with this ban. TikTok got up and running again on Sunday. Now we're in limbo because Trump says he's going to oversee a sale. He has some ideas for it. It's at odds with federal law, and we're living in this strange space where it seems to have a 75-day lifeline, but we really don't know what's going to happen next.

David Furst: Listeners, if you have any questions about the current status of the TikTok ban, we can take your calls at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Maybe you've been a TikTok user for a long time. Maybe you're one of the half million users who've tried the alternative social media RedNote and want to share what that was like or anything else you want to weigh in on about the developing story of the TikTok ban. That's 212-433-9692.

At the beginning of the week when the law officially came into effect, TikTok users in the US were met with a message saying, ''Sorry, TikTok has been banned in the US,'' but they also notably said they were working with President Trump to keep the app available while they negotiate some kind of solution. Does it raise red flags for you that President Trump seems to have been coordinating with TikTok as a civilian before he was sworn in, or is that the wrong thing to take away from all of these indications?

Sapna Maheshwari: I think it's pretty surprising, particularly because a lot of these social platforms try and take a neutral approach to politics because of the way they deliver so much news and information. I think that message was just reflective of the fact that Trump is the only hope at this point for this company to continue in the United States. Of course, they were buttering him up with these messages and lauding him for trying to get back, saying that he was the one they were negotiating with. It's a gamble that seems to have worked well.

David Furst: You talk about the only hope, but also President Trump initially backed a ban. Only seems to have changed his mind because he heard that TikTok helped him get reelected, not because he viewed any national security threat differently. Can you talk about that evolution?

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes. That is the head-spinning part of all of this is you could point to the bipartisan agreement over TikTok in Congress to really be-- the roots of it came from Trump in 2020. He's the one who tried to ban the app and orchestrate a sale during his first administration. Trump changed his tune on TikTok last year around March. He actually met with a conservative billionaire and Republican mega-donor named Jeffrey Yass around that time. Trump has said he did not talk about TikTok with this donor, but around that time he started saying pretty positive things about TikTok, said he changed his stance.

He said he liked TikTok because he didn't want Meta to gain more power. Jeffrey Yass has about 15% of a stake in ByteDance and the co-founder of his financial firm is also on the board of ByteDance, so certainly stands to profit if the company stays in the US.

David Furst: We're speaking with New York Times business reporter Sapna Maheshwari and we're inviting you to join the conversation as well. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's hear from Tony in Fort Lee. Welcome to All of It.

Tony: Hey, thanks, guys. How are you? Yes, honest question. I'm not being sarcastic here, but the worry is the American government is saying that whatever, the Chinese government's going to spy on America. The Chinese government does not need TikTok to spy in America. I guess, yes, what's the worry? I don't understand the whole hullabaloo. I think maybe it's just political posturing. Is that what it is?

David Furst: Well, let's break it down, Sapna. What about that? What is special about TikTok?

Sapna Maheshwari: I think that's a reasonable point of view and definitely one I've heard from a ton of Americans given the availability of data out there. I think what the government and intelligence officials have argued is that in China there's different laws that govern private companies. They say that ByteDance owning TikTok actually gives the Chinese government special access to not just sensitive user data from TikTok users, but the ability to spread propaganda to Americans.

Especially because when you open the TikTok feed, it's really based on your interest. It's not as much of a social feed as Instagram or Facebook might be, but that is definitely a criticism I've heard many times from our readers as well.

David Furst: Is there any talk-- we have a text question here. Is there any talk about banning RedNote? Can you explain what RedNote is?

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes. RedNote is another Chinese app that TikTok users have turned to in droves in the past couple of weeks as an alternative to TikTok. I think that under this same law, if Congress and the President were to take a stance against RedNote, I believe that they would actually be able to ban it here as well. The law that was passed by Congress last year is something around protecting Americans from foreign adversaries, and it targets North Korea, Iran, and Russia, and China.

Basically saying that these companies can own social media in the US and echoes FCC rules that we have in the US where foreign countries can't just buy TV networks and radio stations to spread news to Americans.

David Furst: Let's hear from Madeline joining us in Middletown, New Jersey, picking up on this thread. Hello, Madeline.

Madeline: Hi, good afternoon. I've been a TikTok user basically since it started. I got a lot of followers during COVID and I mean a lot. 50,000 isn't that much in the grand scheme of TikTok, but for me personally, I completely agree, ByteDance and the parent companies of TikTok are using our data to build the algorithm, but Facebook and Google do the same thing, and they were actually in a lot of trouble for providing this information based off of the things that people were clicking on and using.

It's a strange precedent that we're setting to say that TikTok is a security threat when in reality it's just another social media platform. It did a great job of building a community for myself and for a lot of other people. As a younger generation, I feel like we need more news sources that are accessible to everybody, not just to older generations.

David Furst: Madeline, what did it feel like for you when TikTok went dark?

Madeline: I was actually on a train and I felt completely severed. I was literally waiting for midnight, thinking that it would happen at midnight. At 10:00 PM, all of a sudden my feed stops working and I was like, what the heck? Then I get the little message which I screenshotted, saying that, ''Due to a US law, TikTok is no longer available in this area and we hope that President incoming Donald Trump will fix it.'' Then 12 hours later, they've gone onto the Meta servers and we get the little blurb. Thank you so much, Donald Trump. We have fixed the--

David Furst: We have to make sure we don't-- had a word on the air right there we had to dump for. Yes, let's pick up on that point Sapna, where Madeline was comparing TikTok to some other social media.

Sapna Maheshwari: We hear this from our readers again and again too. I understand where people are coming from. It's this idea that just because TikTok is owned by a foreign adversary, does that make what Google and Facebook, and these other companies are doing? Does it make it okay? Because we know there's so many ills from social media. I think it's a fair point. I think, though, that the US Government and the intelligence officials have really pointed to the concern being the Chinese ownership of TikTok.

What's interesting is they're not trying to get rid of it for what it provides Americans, necessarily because they're saying, if some sort of deal can be reached, TikTok can continue in the U.S. It's not an outright ban that some politicians have pursued in the past. It is interesting. I have found in my coverage of this that Americans' feelings about social media are full of frustration.

David Furst: We're talking about TikTok. Richard in Brooklyn. Welcome to All of It.

Richard: Hi. I recently got into a very heated debate with my teenager at home about the issue of free speech with regards to the banning of TikTok. He was adamant that he and a lot of his friends thought that it was a pretty serious cancellation of the rights of free speech. I said it wasn't because I felt like TikTok or this corporation wasn't saying what you could or couldn't say, but more how you could say it and it stuck with me. I didn't know who was right.

Sapna Maheshwari: Right. That very question, it makes sense you guys had such a great and heated debate about it because that is the debate that was in front of the Supreme Court essentially. TikTok said that this law totally violated the free speech rights of its users. What the Supreme Court decided was that it-- They said there was that violation of free speech rights, but that it can be justified in certain circumstances, and that the national security concerns and the wording of the law and the demand for the sale actually met those requirements to go against this, but that has been the big debate, and there's many free speech scholars who have written amicus briefs supporting TikTok in the past year.

David Furst: We'll hear another thought from Joe in Manhattan. Welcome to All of It. Perhaps you're saying the ban doesn't go far enough?

Joe: I am saying that. The ban doesn't go far enough. I think I'm one of those people who've read Infinite Jest, and one of the plot narratives is this ultimate entertainment that makes people lose their minds. That's what TikTok is. It makes people lose their minds. I think it's very easy to control people with it. If the US Government feels that a foreign entity is going to try to manipulate culture or whatever else here in the US, then we have to realize that it's not only being done by a foreign entity.

It's being done by a domestic entity, and we should also be looking at banning Facebook and Instagram or at least seriously curtailing them because they are used to manipulate the population, and fairly certain X was used in this election cycle.

David Furst: Joe, you're not trusting the population to make these decisions for themselves?

Joe: Absolutely not. No, no.

David Furst: Sapna, do you want to respond to that?

Sapna Maheshwari: It's an interesting point. We were pretty familiar with misinformation spreading across all of these platforms. Yes, I do think free speech scholars make that argument that the users can figure it out for themselves. It does feel like a real-time experiment though with all of these algorithms, and what we're seeing and how that's influencing behavior.

David Furst: We are talking about the TikTok ban and taking your calls. 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Speaking with New York Times business reporter Sapna Maheshwari. Thank you for being with us. We'll continue this conversation after a quick break.

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It's All of It on WNYC. I'm David Furst in for Alison Stewart and we're talking about the TikTok ban with New York Times business reporter Sapna Maheshwari. We're taking your calls. 212-433-9692. Sapna, the law that Congress passed in April of last year is called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. I can just about say that. Who were the lawmakers who were most eager to pass and what were their reasons?

Sapna Maheshwari: There was a group of lawmakers largely led by this small committee of China hawks in the House. A couple of those folks actually aren't in Congress anymore. There's Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin. Steve Scalise was also part of it. Honestly, this really was a bipartisan effort though. Things really heated up soon after the TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified in front of Congress in the spring of 2023. If you recall, it was a pretty fiery grilling and lawmakers realized that TikTok is one of those rare issues that Republicans and Democrats really agreed on.

That has also drawn a lot of criticism from our readers because there are so many issues out there that we wish Congress could agree on, but TikTok really just became this issue that folks rallied behind. Ultimately, it came down to this issue of the Chinese ownership. People just felt they really couldn't trust what might happen behind the scenes with these apps. There's so much we don't understand with social media apps and that's how it came together. It passed remarkably fast.

David Furst: One of the few bipartisan issues, and we've been referring to it as a ban, but the law is more complicated than that. What does the law actually stipulate?

Sapna Maheshwari: The law actually demands that ByteDance sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner. TikTok has argued that that's impossible. It said that one big hurdle to a deal is that the Chinese government might block the export of TikTok's algorithm. That's the technology that makes it so TikToky that presents the videos that people find so compelling and interesting to watch. Then, of course, it's this global company with operations all over the world. They've said it's not possible. The government has said, ''You're posturing and you could sell if your back's up against a wall.'' Now we're in this wait-and-see because Trump says he will oversee a sale, but we still don't know what the Chinese government will do and what the terms will be.

David Furst: Let's take another call. 212-433-9692. Adam in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Welcome.

Adam: Hi, guys. How you doing? Quick question, because I just don't know the answer. I don't use TikTok, but I do play the online card game Marvel Snap, and a lot of us who play it were surprised to see that game go down along with TikTok because it's also operated, I guess, in some regard, by ByteDance. Does the legislation mean that ByteDance has to sell off just TikTok or all of its American app properties?

Sapna Maheshwari: My understanding is that the call is for ByteDance to sell TikTok and then those other apps would potentially be able to function because I believe that they were trying to target, ideally the social media properties owned by the company. That's actually interesting. I'll definitely look into that one. I know Lemon8 and CapCut people have been really upset over, but I haven't talked to folks who've played that game from ByteDance.

David Furst: We're going to take--

Adam: Thank you.

David Furst: Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you for calling. Let's also hear from Jyothi calling from Yonkers. Welcome to All of It. You have a question about TikTok as well?

Jyothi: Yes, hi, can you hear me?

David Furst: Yes, I can hear. Hello. Welcome.

Jyothi: Hi. Thank you. Yes, I wanted to point out that TikTok is one of the few places where you could get actual footage. You could hear reporting about what's happening in Gaza from Palestinian reporters on the ground in Gaza. The Israeli government did not allow international reporters in Gaza. The only way to hear what was actually happening there was from Palestinian reporters who were in Gaza. The Palestinian perspective was almost not covered at all by the mainstream media in the U.S. so I found the TikTok reporting on what was happening in Gaza invaluable.

David Furst: Sapna, what about that? The way conflict is covered. Concerns also about the way conflict is covered.

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes, I appreciate this call because the Israel-Gaza war was really actually played into lawmakers' feelings about TikTok. There were lawmakers who directly drafted this bill who pointed to Israel and Palestine coverage on TikTok as showing maybe there was propaganda, et cetera. I think many folks who observed the war coverage there disagreed, of course, but it actually did go into the thinking of the legislation. I think that's also why many Americans have felt frustrated with this law.

David Furst: I imagine a lot of casual TikTok users who scroll past videos of cute pets and skin care tips and celebrity appreciation think national security threats. What?

Sapna Maheshwari: Yes, of course. I think that this conversation in Washington has felt very disconnected from the reality of TikTok for its day-to-day users.

David Furst: Let's take another call. Tiffany In Bergen County, New Jersey, welcome.

Tiffany: Hi. I actually have a TikTok shop and I've had it for a few years. It has been very impactful financially for my family. In fact, I even called my senator about it, considering that this new government plans with their DOGE office to cut services and limit the way to help-- an ability to help the American people. If that's impending and then you're also taking my financial ability, what do I do? I honestly don't trust the government officials anyway, the politicians, because they all have investments in Meta, so they can gain financially while you cut my ability to gain.

Sapna Maheshwari: I appreciate this perspective too because I think for many small business owners that I've spoken with, TikTok has provided a new avenue to getting customers and for advertising because frankly, Meta properties have gotten quite expensive. Ad targeting on Instagram and Facebook has continued to climb and TikTok has offered a new vehicle. I think that it will certainly reshape the social media landscape if TikTok does go away. There's clearly a craving from Americans, including business owners, I think, like yourself, for a third space and no longer a duopoly of Google and Meta.

David Furst: Let's hear from Andrea in Queens. Andrea, your solution is bring back Vine?

Vine: I just think about Vine a lot during all of these discussions and I feel like it was a real missed opportunity to keep an app like this maybe under U.S. control.

David Furst: What about that thought? For those of us who never experienced Vine, can you give a quick refresher course?

Sapna Maheshwari: Oh, yes. Vine was the OG short-form video app without maybe the spicy algorithm of TikTok and earlier in the evolution of social media. Yes, it's come up a lot in the reporting around TikTok, especially with the overnight disappearance of it. People were pretty devastated when Vine went away. I do wonder, it's surprising to me that there hasn't been a really worthy competitor to TikTok in the past five years. Because if you look at changes on Instagram Reels or YouTube introducing YouTube Shorts, there's been no shortage of our country's top engineers trying to beat it.

You could argue this is why international competition and capitalism is a good thing because clearly, TikTok emerged as this outside thought that Americans couldn't come up with. I do wonder if there's an American or European or non-Chinese competitor that people have in the works that could actually take the spot of TikTok if it does go away in April.

David Furst: We're talking about the ban and answering your questions about TikTok with Sapna Maheshwari, New York Times business reporter, and taking your calls. Let's hear from Kyle in Brooklyn. Welcome to All of It.

Kyle: Hello. I just find it strange that everyone's freaking out about a TikTok ban when if you were in China, you wouldn't be able to access Instagram, Facebook, or a myriad of other American social media apps, services, whatever, including just general websites like Wikipedia or the Internet Archive. If anything, I see this as a step towards symmetry between these, I guess, social media cold war, I guess you want to call it. Why is this not being looked at or examined at all?

David Furst: Are you saying America should behave like China to solve this?

Kyle: I'm not saying we should, but it's just a point that I don't see being brought up at all.

David Furst: Sapna?

Sapna Maheshwari: I feel like I actually have included that for a bit of the reporting. I would add to your list, TikTok itself is actually not available in China. They have a version of the app that they offer that's censored in different ways and has different controls on it, called Douyin. It's an interesting point. I think the free speech scholars I've talked to have pushed back on that idea that, look at how American social media companies are treated in China. What's the big deal? We're sort of putting TikToks back to the wall here.

What they consistently say is America has different values and principles around speech and freedom of speech and an open Internet than China and authoritarian countries in general. It's created this split, I think, in folks who study geopolitics where they've felt that America should behave differently in this situation.

David Furst: Just thinking globally, what does your reporting tell us about the actual kinds of threats that it poses to have one country's population adopt a social media platform run by another country, where the two countries are often facing off on other issues on the world stage? What's the difference in terms of the kinds of threats that Congress was worried about between Americans using TikTok and, say, Brazilians using Instagram?

Sapna Maheshwari: I'm not sure. What do you mean?

David Furst: Just the difference of anyone globally using these kinds of different technologies.

Sapna Maheshwari: In this case, if the US is blocking off TikTok, let's say if this ban had actually gone into place on Sunday. You could argue Americans are missing out on points of view that are being shared elsewhere around the world. If you believe what the government is saying about the security risk, you could also argue, well, let's say the Chinese government did have the ability to really influence the algorithm and the content people are seeing. You could argue, well, now they've lost this vector in which to do that.

I think the concern that the government officials I've talked to have repeatedly brought up is they're worried that an app like TikTok could be used when it comes to conflict. Let's say there's an active conflict over Taiwan or something else.

David Furst: Let's take one more call here. Patricia in Westfield, New Jersey, welcome.

Patricia: Yes, thank you. I just wanted to say, Trump and Elon Musk pretty much want to buy TikTok, and that's how I feel about it. It's a bad idea all around. I'll take my response off the air.

David Furst: Okay. What about that thought?

Sapna Maheshwari: Trump said as much on stage the other day with Larry Ellison. I think this is where I have found my mind going as well lately, which is TikTok may not be banned right now, but if a sale goes through, we don't know what's going to happen to the platform because Twitter is not the same Twitter that many people signed up for 10 years ago under new ownership. I think the question around TikTok is, even if it evades a ban in the US if it's sold, it may not be the TikTok that people signed up for and have enjoyed in the last five years in America.

David Furst: Just to wrap up, as you're covering this story, Sapna, what kinds of things will you be watching for in the next few weeks to indicate how this situation will or may resolve?

Sapna Maheshwari: For starters, TikTok and other ByteDance apps still aren't available on the Google and Apple app stores. I'm really curious to see what happens there, the split we're seeing among tech companies. Curious to see, of course, the sale talks, what emerges, what negotiations are going to look like between not just Trump and potential buyers, but with the Chinese government as well. Then, of course, the TikTok creators and vendors like some of the folks who called in today, its users. What are they thinking? What are they going to do as the deadlines draw closer?

David Furst: Sapna Maheshwari, New York Times business reporter covering TikTok technology and emerging media companies. Thank you for joining us.

Sapna Maheshwari: Thanks so much.