Money Talks: TikTok’s ticking time bomb—an episode from our archive
Money Talks from The Economist
The Economist
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 December 2022
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s the fastest growing app in the world, filled with dance trends, cats misbehaving, and questionable financial advice. Teenagers love it; Western politicians are less convinced. Could TikTok’s popularity be its downfall?
In one of our favourite episodes of 2022, hosts Mike Bird, Alice Fulwood and Soumaya Keynes investigate just who is afraid of TikTok’s growing influence. First, our media editor Tom Wainwright unpacks the relationship between TikTok, its parent company ByteDance, and its Chinese twin, Douyin. Then, AB Bernstein’s Robin Zhu outlines just how big a threat the app poses to the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube. Plus, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr outlines his concerns about TikTok’s ability to harvest user data. And we ask: how long before this ticking geopolitical time-bomb blows up?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's every man for himself. Only those who are ruthless will succeed. Only the |
| 0:06.9 | biggest and strongest will survive. That's the law of the jungle. That's the way |
| 0:12.9 | it's always been. But the rules of business and society have changed. Innovators |
| 0:18.7 | are now top of the food chain. Power has no sex. Prejudice has no place. Strength |
| 0:25.7 | sex is now measured in agility. Tradition is history. The law of tomorrow. Discover |
| 0:33.7 | what you can do with it today at Mishkond.com. Mishkond Araya, its business, but it's personal. |
| 0:43.7 | Money talks from the economist is sponsored by Invest Puerto Rico. More than just a Caribbean |
| 0:49.7 | paradise, Puerto Rico is a business powerhouse. This U.S. territory is a fast-growing hub for |
| 0:56.2 | innovators. Puerto Rico boasts numerous tax credits, business incentives and world-class |
| 1:02.3 | talent that take your business to the next level. Find out why at investpr.org. Game |
| 1:09.1 | changes. Welcome home. |
| 1:20.1 | Hello, it's Mike here. We're away this week, so we thought we would treat you to one |
| 1:24.7 | of our favorite episodes of the year first released in July. We will be back next week |
| 1:30.2 | with a brand new episode. It will come out on Thursday, which is when money talks will |
| 1:35.6 | land in your podcast feed in the future. Thank you so much for listening this year. We |
| 1:39.6 | can't wait to join you again in the new year for more money talks. For now, enjoy this |
| 1:44.4 | deep dive into what keeps TikTokers coming back for more. |
| 1:56.6 | To kick off this episode, we were all given homework to find a favorite TikTok video. |
| 2:01.6 | Look, this job is tough. |
| 2:03.6 | All I can tell you at the moment is that I absolutely hate the text to voice voice, the |
| 2:09.6 | robot voice that you hear reading the text out. I hate it so much. Why do they all speak |
| 2:19.6 | it? I mean, they don't have our dulcet tunes to voice their videos, so maybe that's why. |
... |
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