This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 12,

2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Legislation that would effectively ban the video app

Tic- Talk is making its way through Congress.

Tens of millions of Americans use the app regularly

either as producers or viewers.

And it's not at all clear that the proposed law

would survive the inevitable First Amendment challenges.

Cato's Jennifer Huddleston and Paul Matzco detail

the state of the debate.

Paul helped me understand because I am not a Tik-Toc person.

As I've said before, I watch two-week-old Tic- Talks on Instagram like an adult. Help me understand why this is such a radically different kind of app than what we're used to.

It's interesting because Tik-Tok is not the first short form video app.

We had YouTube. There are other competitors now that have tried to imitate Tik-Tok.

Instagram has...

I'm more of a Vine guy.

You're more of a Vine guy, yeah.

It's the late departed Vine.

So it's not new in that sense, but what it is new is the way in which it uses algorithmic discovery.

It uses AI, it uses machine learning to very, very accurately predict what you're interested in.

So it looks at how much of a video you watch, what videos you engage with, and learns from that

...