The future for TikTok in the United States
Tech Life
BBC
4.3 • 227 Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2020
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why the popular video app faces being bought out or banned in the US. Chris Fox is joined by the BBC's North America technology reporter James Clayton to discuss the history of the app and why Donald Trump appears determined to ban it. Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook, discusses whether TikTok is really a security concern. Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains why banning an app is tough to do. Vishal Shah from Instagram touts his TikTok alternative 'Reels' - one of the platforms hoping to attract TikTok users.
(Photo: TikTok logo, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, so I'd like to tell you where you'll find more just like it. |
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| 0:41.7 | Thank you. sounds. There's probably another podcast on there that you're absolutely love. Hi, this is TechTent from the BBC. I'm Chris Fox. Every week we take a closer look at the |
| 0:47.0 | biggest stories in technology and this week all eyes are on TikTok, the video sharing app used |
| 0:52.6 | by millions. What makes it so appealing? And why does |
| 0:55.8 | President Trump want it banned? Does it really present a national security risk? |
| 1:00.7 | We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. |
| 1:06.0 | There are a couple of options. But a lot of things are happening. |
| 1:14.7 | So let's go back to the beginning and to help explain all this. And with our North America technology reporter, James Clayton, and James, |
| 1:19.6 | I believe you have a big following, no posts on TikTok, but already 11 followers. Yeah, I don't want |
| 1:24.9 | to brag about that, Chris, but my ratio is pretty good. It's no big |
| 1:29.9 | deal. Okay, so where did TikTok come from? TikTok originated in China, and it kind of originated as |
| 1:36.2 | another company musically, which is a lip syncing app. So you can just essentially lip sync your favourite artists. And then TikTok kind of copied that |
| 1:48.3 | and also became wildly popular and then bought musically. And then since then TikTok has really |
| 1:54.6 | broadened out to become this huge social media app. So it's not just about lip syncing. It's |
| 1:59.7 | about creating funny videos, |
... |
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