The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 81 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Mignot: Social media algorithms must be public and auditable
“I think it should be loud, but there should be a bigger conversation about social networks and about the openness of algorithms, which don't only apply to TikTok, but, you know, applies to X, applies to Facebook. I think those algorithms should be should be pu…”
Singlehurst: Baillie Gifford expects 5x ByteDance return despite US TikTok ban
“I mean, like, our base case is that it does get banned, and we still see a path. After making at least five times our money, even with TikTok not being part of that investment case.”
Hoffman: U.S. Should Ban TikTok Based on Commercial Reciprocity
“The right way, I think, to think about this from an American or any other perspective is to say China bans Competition in China from Meta, Twitter, etc. And so the right way to say is like, look, if you're banning our companies, we should ban yours. Commercial…”
Torsten Reil: If running ByteDance, he would immediately shut down TikTok
“Probably ByteDance, and I would shut down TikTok immediately.”
Grimm: TikTok should have been banned in the US years ago
“Hundred percent absolutely yesterday, if not years ago.”
Eisenberg: China is 10 years ahead of US in TikTok AI psyops
“I think they were 10 years ahead of the U.S. On AI and psyops using TikTok. I think they were 10 years ahead of the U.S. In sophistication of how to manipulate the minds of young people.”
Lonsdale: China Controls TikTok's Algorithms to Brainwash Tens of Millions of Americans
“Yeah, I would force them to divest of Tik Tok. I think that, I think that's fine for Americans own Tik Tok. I think right now, China controls the Tik Tok algorithms. I don't care if the guy's based in Singapore, some of the data's here. It's very clear China c…”
Dash: TikTok's strength lies in disregarding privacy and conventional rules
“Probably a disregard for privacy and conventional rules.”
Masad: TikTok is a slimy app that lacks transparency
“Right now they're like, not very transparent. They use it like every growth hack. It's like a very slimy app in that way.”
Schultz: Snap Cloned TikTok Despite Public Denials
“Faster than Snap, who also cloned and copied TikTok despite everything they've said about that.”
Mignano: Suno has unlimited upside potential like YouTube or TikTok
“So we believe that Suno has, you know, I'm using this term loosely, but unlimited upside potential. You know, if you look back at the history of media on the internet, and you think about the generational platforms that truly democratized a medium, right? YouT…”
Wix CMO Omer Shai says TikTok ads and sports endorsements have failed
“I think TikTok didn't work for me yet. I think that sports endorsement in some kind of way didn't work for me as I expected it to work.”
O'Driscoll: TikTok US generates $15B-$16B revenue and was bought for ~1x
“I think the company's doing 15 or sixteen billion dollars in the US revenue, And they bought it for like one times revenue plus or minus.”
Slonimski: Scaling TikTok Growth Requires Launching 1,000 Ad Creatives Weekly
“With TikTok, you need to launch around Thousand of creative per week to make it successful.”
Shulman: Hit songs succeed via algorithms and promotion, not quality alone
“I think that they probably reverse the causality. Things break on TikTok, and then they become famous on Spotify, but that is a function of both algorithms and people pushing music, and not necessarily only a function of the quality of the music.”
TikTok's Feed Model Was Born From Chinese Government Follower Limits
“It was a genius invention that came about of necessity because the Chinese government didn't want to have any social networks with more than 500 followers.”
Duolingo's real competitors are TikTok and social media, not Babbel
“And I'm a firm believer, and I know our CEO said this too, that I don't think like Babbel or Rosetta Stone or other language learning places are our actual competitors. Like our real competitors are like TikTok. And other social media platforms that are like t…”
Söderström: TikTok succeeded through UI design, not novel recommendation algorithms
“It wasn't really the algorithm of TikTok. It was the UI that maximized what was, you know, pretty traditional export export algorithm, like since the day so hot or not.”
Dash: TikTok's 2019 Ad Spend on Facebook and Snap Cannibalized Their Users
“The ad targeting at this point in 2019 had gotten so granular You could actually get to, like, a city level, a user demographic level, and TikTok leveraged all of that. And Facebook and Snap all benefited because they saw tons of money coming in in the form of…”
TikTok Is the Most Well-Executing Competitor Meta Has Ever Faced
“They're, I think they still are the most well-executing competitor I think we've ever faced. There's a couple others that are up there, but they're, I think, at the top of that.”
TikTok Creator Payouts Are Unpredictable Lottery Checks Compared to YouTube
“If you're kind of getting these lottery-type checks, I think it gets much more harder to plan. I think that's a common complaint I've heard about how TikTok's payments compare to YouTube's payments, for instance, which are much more predictable.”
Masad: TikTok will not be banned outright without full Republican control
“Banning them outright, I don't see that happening unless there's like a full Republican government and like, you know, will of, you know, political will.”
Jordan: TikTok Buys Users at Scale Unlike Early Google or Facebook
“That's not a categorical rule, because TikTok buys users at monstrous scale. But, you know, Google really didn't buy many users, Facebook didn't buy many users, you know, tick, tick, tick, tick.”
Stebbings: 45% of Millennials Use TikTok Over Google for Search
“I saw an unbelievable stat, which is like, 45% of millennials use TikTok instead of Google as their primary search engine.”
Stebbings: 45% of millennials use TikTok over Google for search
“I saw an unbelievable stat, which is like, 45% of millennials use TikTok instead of Google as their primary search engine.”
Söderström: TikTok is the biggest music innovation of the last seven years
“I think the biggest innovation clearly in the last six, seven years has been TikTok who found like a new format of using music for something completely different.”
Mignano: Meta has equal chance to displace TikTok within 24 months
“I think Meta has just as good a chance as them or anyone else to displace them Over the next couple of years. So I think this battle sort of will be won over the next, let's call it, 24 months.”
Ian Lee: NFT-Powered Spotify and YouTube Alternatives Will Emerge by 2024
“So good example of this is that I think that like NFT powered commerce in Web three, NFT powered digital media and various kind of social media platforms. That I knew or believed were gonna happen in 10 years or so, I think are now possible in the next two to …”
Weitzman: Live Streaming Is Now the Best Format for Content Creators
“Now, the best place to be a creator is to be a streamer. Partly because streams get clipped, and then those clips can get watched seven billion times in a week on TikTok and Instagram Reels and all these other places.”
Lemkin: Hollywood entertainment employment is in permanent decline
“The permanent decline of Hollywood. Employment. It's permanently in decline. It's not there. It's on, it's in decline because fewer movies and TV shows are being made. TikToks and YouTubes are doing it, and it's in permanent decline because every other country…”
Using massive capital as a weapon rarely succeeds in consumer tech
“Capital as a weapon in consumer, most of the time it's, it doesn't really work. Like I would say TikTok is maybe the exception, maybe Uber.”
Lemkin: A US-China TikTok deal will be signed within 60 days
“Whatever this crazy deal is, it's going to get signed in the next 60. I think these deals are going to get done this calendar year, and I think it's going to get signed”
Lemkin: ChatGPT mobile downloads rival TikTok, Meta, and X combined
“It was ChatGPT over the last 28 days, 29.5 million downloads. ChatGPT, 29.5 million. Just mobile. That's just its mobile app. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X, thirty two million. So ChatGPT mobile downloads just about equal to all the social media guys combi…”
Lemkin: ChatGPT reached 800M users in 17 months
“ChatGPT is the fastest, even though Sam Lesson said he's not sure it's important, it's the fastest Gain of users in, in the history of the world. Zero to eight hundred million in 17 months. Okay. That's, it took Netflix 15 times longer. It took TikTok five tim…”
Stebbings: Social media feeds are like diets and users control them
“I think people demonize social in the way that diet can be demonized. If you go on my TikTok, Instagram, you name it, there's protein recipes, there's inspirational talks from Tony Robbins, and Alain de Botton, and great thinkers there's baby videos, I think b…”
Riparbelli: TikTok Is a Great Product With Mostly Educational Content
“I think TikTok is actually a really great product, potentially like a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I think what TikTok has done, when I look at my TikTok feed today, I would say it's 90% highly informative, educational, really great content.”
Mikey Shulman: Modern pop is shorter and more homogenous due to TikTok
“I think songs have gotten Shorter, yes, but also much more homogenous in melodies, harmonies song structures, and they, and music innovates very much sonically. Like, they're really interesting sounds, and they all fit into the same song structure, and this is…”
Allebest: Short-form video completely drove Chess.com's latest growth wave
“Our most recent wave was Completely driven off of short forms, whether it's YouTube shorts, Instagram, you know stuff or reels or, you know, TikTok. It is totally driven.”
95% of Duolingo's TikTok impressions are completely organic
“Candidly, most I would say about 95% of our impressions are completely organic and they're for the cost of like maybe duo's costume and like the sushi I had for dinner while like filming and like staying late a little bit.”
Duolingo's TikTok views drive app downloads rather than cross-platform followers
“We haven't seen direct correlation, if I'm being honest. I would say more of, like, a one million view thing on TikTok might, would actually have more correlation with, like, app downloads but it kind of stays within its own little realm.”
Duolingo's TikTok strategy operates like a sitcom with ongoing storylines
“I always say our TikTok is like a sitcom. Everything we put out there is an episode. Some are amazing and go super viral. Some are just there to build the storylines, but it's something that can live and function as short form video content, even if it was to …”
TikTok spent Dubsmash's entire $7M bank balance every week
“We were a startup that had just kind of raised seven million dollars. We had the, that was the cash in the bank. They were spending that in like a week”
Dash: ByteDance Used Chinese Revenues from Douyin to Buy US Market
“I think they did it at a scale leveraging all of the revenues that they had gotten in China already via Dao Win and To Tiao and actually leverage that to really buy out the U.S. Market.”
Paik: TikTok could not exist before Twitter due to bandwidth constraints
“There's a very clear reason why the order of founding went from Twitter first, to Instagram, to Snapchat, to TikTok. And it is because mobile as infrastructure and bandwidth in its earliest stages, supported the lowest packet size, text. And then next compress…”
TikTok Will Not Be Banned Due to Deep Youth Adoption
“Oh, I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. I think that there's too much of a single generation that uses that app that would go crazy if it disappeared.”
Wenger: TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook must be user-programmable
“I don't feel different about TikTok than I feel about Twitter or Facebook for that matter. These systems need to become programmable. If they're not programmable, we're being programmed by them.”
Mignano: Social networks need novel toolsets to delay incumbent copycats
“And so I think the key for a new social network to break out is it has to do something different That is hard for another platform to travel to, and arguably no platform did this better than TikTok, right? They built a new tool set which ended up creating a ne…”