Trump's TikTok Trepidation Troubles Teens
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2020
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and technology reporter Bobby Allyn.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi NPR, this is Holly from Olympia, Washington, where I am sitting outside my local seafood shop |
| 0:06.8 | that is so small it can only fit three customers at a time, but we're in the Pacific Northwest, |
| 0:12.5 | so there's a line around the building, even on a weekday. This podcast was recorded at |
| 0:19.6 | 2.40 pm on Tuesday, August 4th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. All right, |
| 0:26.8 | enjoy the show. So my question is, is that three people with social distancing or without social? |
| 0:37.1 | Well hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast, I'm Asma Khalid, I cover the presidential campaign. |
| 0:41.8 | I'm Franco Ordonia as I cover the White House. And today we've got a special guest on the show, |
| 0:46.6 | NPR Tech Reporter Bobby Allen is joining us from San Francisco. Hey Bobby. Hey everyone. |
| 0:51.8 | And so Bobby, we wanted George expertise on the show because we're going to talk about |
| 0:55.4 | TikTok today and all the political controversy around this app. And we need your help because I will |
| 1:01.3 | admit I myself am not a frequent TikTok user, in part because I admit I'm kind of paranoid about |
| 1:07.1 | a lot of these national security concerns that we've heard that we're going to talk about later |
| 1:10.2 | in the show. But Franco, do you use TikTok? You know, it's kind of similar to you. I don't have it |
| 1:16.0 | on my phone, but I am familiar with it and I confess I've kind of gotten sucked into the viral |
| 1:21.5 | videos that sometimes end up on other apps. All right. So if you are not a big consumer of TikTok, |
| 1:28.9 | Bobby, why don't you explain what the app is? Sure. So TikTok is this video sharing app where |
| 1:36.9 | you can record yourself doing viral dance challenges to a Beyonce song or you could impersonate |
| 1:44.0 | the president. There's this woman Sarah Cooper who's become a viral sensation by just |
| 1:48.8 | basically melting the words of the president and sharing that. And what's really distinctive about |
| 1:57.2 | TikTok is the algorithm allows just an average Joe to take a video and have it be seen by like |
| 2:03.2 | tens of millions of people overnight. The way the algorithm works is you can go from having like |
| 2:08.0 | 10 followers to like 50,000 snap. So because it has that potential, it really has become this, |
... |
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