Mar 13, 2024 · 34m · another-podcast
Tiktok, Apple and Temu
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Benedict Evans and Toni Karen Brown analyze the diverging regulatory philosophies of the United States and the European Union through the lenses of the EU's antitrust enforcement against Apple, congressional efforts to force the divestment of TikTok, and the disruptive rise of Chinese e-commerce giants Temu and Shein.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 84.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 7.6 Guest teaching 1.9 Guest disagreement 1.3 The hosts pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 27:16 Banter regarding live searching for Meta revenue figures
Tony jokingly challenges Benedict about searching live during recording, teasing that he does not hold all knowledge in his head.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 33:46 Host corrects timeline on Apple's developer disputesBenedict pushes back against Tony's assumption that Apple's developer clashes were from last year, noting rapid policy flip-flops within the past week.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:00 Guest reframes US TikTok panic via European tech experienceTony educates listeners and reframes the conversation by explaining that American panic over TikTok mirrors Europe's long-standing reliance on US-built social networks.
The host holds their own ▶ 28:45 Host explains the $800 de minimis customs duty exemptionBenedict demonstrates deep analytical expertise by detailing how Shein and Temu exploit the sub-$800 US tariff threshold to outprice traditional retail supply chains.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple, Spotify, and the Digital Markets Act | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Benedict provides an in-depth historical breakdown of Apple's 30% App Store fee, citing Steve Jobs' 2011 emails and detailing the friction between the EU Digital Markets Act and platform security. Tony acts as an engaged co-host, asking clarifying questions and validating Benedict's points. | |
| EU Horizontal Rules vs. US Direct Intervention | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Benedict contrasts the EU's broad horizontal regulatory framework with US ad-hoc interventions, using an analogy of automotive regulation and detailing TikTok's algorithmic curation concerns around geopolitical events. | |
| Cultural Irony and the US Divestment Bill | 8 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Tony offers insightful cultural commentary on how Americans are now experiencing the foreign tech dominance Europe faced for decades. Benedict builds on this by explaining national security designations, foreign adversary lists, and Hong Kong extraterritoriality laws. | |
| Evaluating Spin-Off Feasibility and Systemic Policy Design | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Benedict examines the mechanics of a forced ByteDance divestment, comparing it to spinning off Instagram or YouTube and highlighting the systemic trade-offs between broad horizontal legislation and targeted bills. | |
| TikTok's Political Paradox in the US Elections | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Tony brings up the political contradiction of the Biden administration leveraging 70 TikTok creators for the State of the Union while advancing a ban. Benedict adds color regarding TikTok's in-app mobilization of teenagers contacting Congress. | |
| Temu, Shein, Meta Ad Revenues, and Tariff Loopholes | 8 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Tony teases Benedict for live-searching Meta's advertising revenue figures. Benedict then delivers an extensive explanation of the US $800 de minimis import duty loophole and Shein's on-demand inventory model. | |
| Supply Chain Disaggregation and Platform Aggregators | 8 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Benedict traces the structural shift from Amazon's $50B ad-driven marketplace model to direct-to-consumer aggregators like Temu and Shein. Tony synthesizes this into the core theme of defining the underlying policy problem. | |
| Apple's Ecosystem Battles and Episode Conclusion | 7 | 1 | 1 | 3 | When Tony asks if Apple's Epic battle took place the previous year, Benedict corrects the timeline, clarifying that Apple's EU reversals on web apps and the Epic store happened in the preceding week. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Evans: The EU Issued Apple a €2 Billion Fine Over Spotify
“Apple has just got its first first find from the EU. Two billion euros over Spotify, and also there's a bunch of to-ing and fro-ing over exactly how it implements the DMA and rules for third-party apps and Epic and web apps and so on.”
Evans: US and EU Exhibit Radically Different Approaches to Tech Regulation
“And I thought there was just kind of an interesting symmetry there in these two sort of radically different approaches to regulation and to political control of technology companies.”
Evans: Spotify is twice as large as Apple Music in the EU
“Spotify, of course, is still twice as big as Apple Music or anything else in the EU, so they've done just fine despite this rule.”
Evans: Forcing Phones to Operate Like Windows Harms Users and Developers
“Apple actually doesn't want your phone to work like Windows, and that would be actually pretty bad for users and developers, and B, the EU has kind of come in with the sort of classic middle manager foolishness of saying, there's a trade-off here, and you have…”
Evans: Generalized EU tech rules become complex when platforms implement them
“The EU is trying to say, look, let's just have like a kind of general, generalized rules that will sort of try and capture lots of different questions at once. The problem is, of course, as soon as you get into how does Apple actually implement this in the app…”
Evans: TikTok's Real Threat Is Algorithmic Control, Not Data Collection
“The real Policy problem with TikTok is not that it has personal data, it kind of doesn't really, it's that it's deciding what you see.”
Evans: Any Chinese company is effectively beholden to the Chinese government
“Any Chinese company is in effect beholden to what the Chinese government says.”
Brown: TikTok Gives Americans a Taste of Foreign Tech Dominance
“Saying that, like, basically Americans are experiencing what the rest of Europe has experienced over the last 10 years of, yeah, your citizens are loving a piece, a social media app that wasn't designed by Americans for Americans with Americans in mind.
yeah,…”
Evans: US TikTok Bill Structures Ban Around Foreign Adversary Powers
“And so this, the kind of the rule, this, you know, the latest piece of proposed legislation is that the, you know, the president would be able to designate specific
Social media apps as national security risks
and require them not to be controlled by a foreign…”
Evans: Hong Kong security law technically applies to US firms in America
“The Hong Kong national security law, technically applies to American companies in America. So if you work for a company that happens to be covered by that law and you set foot in Hong Kong, then they can arrest you, even if the company isn't in Hong Kong.”
Evans: EU and UK moderation laws force global compliance everywhere
“The UK and the EU now have laws requiring, that basically require you to have what most people would consider like best practice content moderation, which is basically you've got to do what Facebook is kind of doing anyway. And applying it to country companies…”
Brown: Biden Administration Enlisted 70 Creators For the State of the Union
“Just ahead of the State of the Union, they went out and found 70 creators, I think about half of them, TikTokers, to sort of spread awareness about the State of the Union and spread the message of Biden”
Evans: TikTok Displayed In-App Prompts Urging Americans to Call Congress
“TikTok put up a banner every time when any American opened the app this week that said call your congressman.”
Brown: TikTok Has Stricter Political Ad Rules Than Meta
“And they also have the strictest policy when it comes to political advertising, much more stricter than Meta”
Evans: Temu and Shein Accounted for $4 Billion of Meta's Revenue
“10% of revenue, five percent of revenue growth. And so that's about four billion dollars, and so apparently half of that was Temu, and well, presumably quite a lot of the rest was Shein.”
Evans: US De Minimis Rule Gives Temu a Massive Tax Advantage
“There is a rule in the US that for orders of a value of less than 800 dollars, there's no import taxes or different, much less, or different import taxes. And so if you were running a store in the U.S. And shipping a shipping container full of garments to Amer…”
Evans: Amazon generated $50 billion in ad revenue last year
“And Amazon did fifty billion dollars of advertising last year by selling ads on Amazon to appear in search results.”