TikTok

“That's where I think TikTok is actually really important. It's essentially a vehicle to spy and backdoor into Americans.”

“I think that TikTok, unless they basically have ByteDance sell under 20 or 30% of the company and get it into the hands of Americans it will get banned.”

“It's bite dance paying political protection money to Larry Ellison to be their bodyguard in this political process. But, and I, but that's why I don't think it's going to fly.”

“I think the sad reality is that the whole TikTok thing is going to get swept under the rug. I think there'll be no restrictions on TikTok.”

“No, but I do think that TikTok needs to get carved out of ByteDance and it needs to have a completely American cap table, but that shouldn't be a government edict. That should be something that the ByteDance investors and board are scrambling to do right now b…”

“They also control all the data of everybody that uses TikTok in America.”

“My blunt force instruments are you're not allowed to have well, the ones that we've, we, they're not allowed to have TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.”

“Don't you think the biggest winner here is going to be TikTok because if Twitter does go forward with the standing. Yeah, if they say, look, you can't put user generated content on our platform if it has video and images of personal of people without their con…”

“And then the Chinese are running it, and they're programming our children and have all their data and locations.”

“Whatever problems people have with Facebook, they should have them like, 10 x with TikTok.”

“I think TikTok should be banned.”

“It's such a compelling product. You feel so terrible using it. So you love it at something and then you feel very vapid for having used it and you have regret.”

“There's effectively no difference between Doyun and TikTok.”

“Look at how big TikTok has gotten. It is bigger than YouTube almost, or will be soon.”

“And my runner-up is TikTok is gonna divest under duress. I think that it's going to have to go public, and the Chinese are gonna divest their interest in it and just take their chips because they're gonna be faced with the existential threat during the politic…”

“According to the New York Times, ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, said on Thursday that an internal investigation found that employees had inappropriately obtained the data of US TikTok users, including that of two reporters.”

“The default settings when you install TikTok, it turns on local network, turns on microphone, turns on camera. Turns on background app refresh and turns on cell data.”

“I think the next big shoe to drop is going to be advertisers who come under a lot of pressure.”

“Now it's become, I think, where a lot of Americans are by default saying, let me read the tick, let me read the substacks, TikToks, and Twitter before I trust the New York Times.”

“Will it be banned? Yes, because it's the most obvious cultural way to pick a fight with China without actually picking a fight with China.”

“I don't think Chamath is right that TikTok is going to be GPC roadkill.”

“I think it is divestiture or shutdown for TikTok.”

“I think it'll be shut down. I think they're getting kicked out of the United States.”

“I think they're probably gonna have to spin this thing out. And if they hold any equity, if the Chinese parent company holds any equity interest, it'll probably be non-voting shares. And there'll be a mandate that the majority of the shares and some degree of …”

“And if you truly can't move the servers to the United States and vet the code base, I feel like you could, I think you could have an acquirer figure it out, you know, vet the code base, move the data centers, make sure there's no back doors. I think it's not i…”

“What the act provides is that a US citizen using a VPN to access TikTok could theoretically be subjected to a maximum penalty of one million in fines or 20 years in prison or both.”

“I'm gonna say this year that I think TikTok goes public, and they'll be under pressure from different political factions to get the CCP off the board. So I'm going to go with by dance taking, going public or tick tock spinning out and going public.”

“All the gains in advertising have gone to those two firms and now TikTok obviously. And Amazon, Uber building respectable ad businesses as well. So all of that takes ads out of publications and puts it closer to the point of purchase, right?”

“After October seventh, that there was a significant surge in pro Hamas videos relative to Israel support video.”

“Facebook is infiltrated. Google is infiltrated. Apple is infiltrated. TikTok is infiltrated. So on that dimension, I think that it should be considered a hundred percent certainty that this data is getting back to not just the Chinese, but multiple state spons…”

“Nonetheless, I do agree that for data collection reasons and reciprocity reasons, I think it's, like I said, we're within our rights to require the divestment of TikTok.”

“Practically speaking, you should not make this a culture war issue. Don't talk about how it's ruining our youth ideals. Just say strictly on a trade basis. Yes. We cannot allow them to sell this thing to us if we can't sell the same thing to them.”

“And then there are guys like Trump and Vivek, who I believe are flip-flopping based on securing bags.”

“And it looks like in the Senate, there may be some refinements that happened, but it's going to get largely overwhelmingly approved there as well.”

“If TikTok gets banned in the US, it's going to benefit Meta. It's going to benefit Instagram. It's going to benefit a few other, you know, social networks. It's going to benefit Elon at Twitter. There's a few folks that are going to benefit pretty significantl…”

“I deleted TikTok about a month ago. It's been liberating. I was a slave to that app.”

“In the absence of that algorithm, which I think is just incredible, as somebody who was a voracious user of that app until I deleted it, I don't think the product is much of anything. It's probably no better or no worse than shorts or reels or some of these ot…”

“So I don't think they're going to be able to divest. I think they're just going to get shut down.”

“I don't agree that the Chinese government will shut it down.”

“How many of you use TikTok or one of those programs at least once a week? The great, not everybody, but the great majority of hands go up. How many of you wish that it was never invented? The great majority of hands go up.”

“So you had the gamification of Twitter and Facebook, which was likes. Retweets, follower count, Instagram, and then now it's transitioned into something even more pernicious, which is some black box on, in TikTok knows this is going to maximize the dopamine hi…”

“TikTok and then YouTube shorts are the ones copying it you know, Instagram reels. They're uniquely horrible.”

“TikTok will be banned, 24 hours after the Taiwan invasion.”

“In the same survey you're talking about, 95% of adults that use TikTok say they use it because it's entertaining.”

“Four in 10 U.S. Adults aged 18 to 29 are now regularly getting their news from TikTok.”

“And I think that this idea that it's somehow a propaganda tool around, you know, programming our youth, I think that's a moral panic that's been exaggerated.”

“And I think that we'll probably find one. And I think that it probably happens under the Trump presidency and whoever gets their hands on it, gets their hands on an incredible asset. That they will be able to buy extremely cheaply, because there is no way that…”

“We had 1.3 million people sign a petition.”

“My understanding is 60% of the investors already are U.S. Investors.”

“I will work with him and Mike Waltz, I know very well. We were co-chairs of the India caucus together in Congress. I will work with him in a bipartisan way to figure out how do we have this app operational.”

“More people watch president Biden's state of the union address on tick tock than anywhere else.”

“I mean, I think Donald Trump is going to allow TikTok.”

“I do worry a lot about the precedent being set here with respect to foreign government actions on U.S. Companies in their local countries. Imagine the CCP tells Tesla they have to sell their Chinese operations and give 50% of the Chinese operations to the Chin…”

“We never attributed much value to the, you know, the TikTok US asset in the sense of our analysis was always based on the value of the Chinese business, specifically because it's just hard to know what the, you know, the TikTok asset X China would be worth, ri…”

“So we get about a hundred million DAUs in the US, but the time spent on the platform is the equivalent of Facebook plus Instagram.”

“One TikTok sub is worth, you know, a hundred TikTok subs is maybe worth one YouTube sub.”

“I think that deal will happen, and America will buy TikTok, because the alternative is It just shuts it off, and that just seems illogical.”

“Well, the president is reasonably positive about tick tock, provided it goes into American hands. And it's controlled by American technology, right? I think that's his view, is that they've got to be out of it. It's got to be on an American technology stack, a…”

“I just look at how China has utilized TikTok as a PSYOP weapon in a myriad of ways, gathering data, putting out its own propaganda.”

“I personally think that you could build a competitive product to TikTok with crypto if the magic, you caught that kind of lightning in a bottle, because the monetization mechanism with crypto is so different than the ad-based one.”

“So I do think that the distribution that Has been delivered by this kind of social media model, like YouTube and TikTok combined with the premium model may end up creating a real category killer that can challenge both YouTube and Netflix.”

“It's only five percent, five to eight percent of the overall TikTok business.”

“If we start thinking about the influence that Ellison, the Ellison family is having on the Trump administration, whether it's quid pro quo or it's the appearance of quid pro quo, it's best for Trump to stay out of it because already we have the TikTok deal. No…”

“Look, if you actually look at the data, if you look at what kids are doing, it's so much more interactive and engaging for them to talk to their friends on Snap or to watch videos on TikTok. Those things are super engaging. Whereas doing research on an AI chat…”