From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour could be made on Sunday.

There's been a lot of talk about one of the most popular social media apps going dark in the United States.

You might have been hearing about the TikTok ban.

170 million Americans use TikTok.

And for the moment, TikTok has been preparing to shut U.S. operations of its app.

On Sunday, when a federal ban was set to take effect.

That, at least, was the introduction I wrote 12 hours ago.

But things are moving fast.

Here's NBC news this morning.

Quote President Joe Biden's administration is considering ways to keep TikTok available in the United States if a ban that scheduled to go into effect Sunday proceeds, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

Americans shouldn't expect to see TikTok's suddenly banned on Sunday.

And administration official told NBC news, adding that officials are exploring options for how to implement the law.

So TikTok does not go dark on Sunday, end quote.

The Biden administration and some members of Congress had raised national security concerns about TikTok.

A number of federal leaders have said that TikTok is dangerous.

On the following grounds TikTok is owned by a Chinese company.

That company is essentially overseen by the Communist Chinese government.

The Chinese government would love to have access to the personal data of 170 million Americans.

And if the United States ever gets into a direct confrontation with China over, say, Taiwan, TikTok could become an instant tool for propaganda if it's not already.

But influential TikTokers have pushed back, saying that this ban could represent a direct threat to free speech.

Banned TikTok, they say.

And what's next?

If the government can just raise the specter of national security and then ban speech, they warn that it won't stop with TikTok.

One of the voices calling to stop a ban is a Rochester Marine who has amassed a huge following.

This beer has more than 3.3 million followers on TikTok, and it is not an overstatement to say that they are one of the breakout stars of the platform.

How it happened is remarkable.

The kind of organic success story that wasn't possible before social media on January 6th, 2021, while the insurrection was happening in Washington, we posted a roughly 12 second video on TikTok addressed to Vice President Pence.

We had crawled under their desk in the neighborhood of the Arts in Rochester and urged pence to invoke the 25th amendment, and added that if pence did so, he could become president for 14 days.

Well, the video exploded almost overnight.

V earned a reputation as someone who could distill complex news in easily digestible ways.

As V puts it, they do the news in a kind of way, in a kind way, from a safe space.

Here's a recent example of what these TikToks sound like.

If you haven't heard, Donald Trump is now named Tom Homan to be.

The borders are home and had worked in the Trump administration previously as the director of Ice.

Homan was the architect of the separating families at the border policy.

1400 children separated at the border have still not been reunited with their parents.

After time home and left the Trump administration.

He went to work for heritage, where he authored all the parts of project 2025 having to do with mass deportations and immigration.

He calls for a nationwide deportation machine that would allow Ice to go into places like schools, hospitals and religious institutions to find people that they think are illegal immigrants and move them to detention camps.

The private prison industry has already committed to escalating their construction projects, to build these detention camps, and to funding technology that would help the government track millions of people.

Upon notice that Tom home and had been named borders are private.

Prison stocks jumped.

That's just a taste of it.

I want to stress if if you already know V and you follow one of the best news, this hour of connections is a big deal.

If you're not on TikTok, you might have no idea why this matters.

My own view is that we cannot keep media separated forever old and new.

Legacy media and social media.

Millions of people are getting their news from TikTok.

We can ignore that.

We could sneer at it or we can understand how media is evolving.

It's not my expertise, but I'm listening and this is very much vs expertise.

And now, of course, TikTok.

Well, I guess it could be shuttered in the United States, if not on Sunday, then in the future.

The Washington Post reports that president elect Trump is considering an executive order to keep TikTok available.

Trump even urged Americans to vote for him this past November on the grounds that he could save TikTok.

Trump has millions of followers of his own.

His fans have used TikTok to boost both his message and his campaign.

It's also possible that the US Supreme Court could intervene in the TikTok case before Trump's inauguration.

And Pam Bondi, Trump's pick for attorney general, refused to commit to enforcing a TikTok ban when she was asked about it at her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday.

This hour, we welcome vSphere of under the desk news to break it all down.

It is great to have you in the studio.

Thank you for making the time.

Thanks for having me, Evan, and thanks for calling me a rich history.

And there is a TikTok conspiracy out there that I'm not from here.

I'm very proud to be from here, and I'm glad to be with you today.

I would say prove it, but you're literally sitting in the Rochester studio and I put on because I knew you were on YouTube.

I was like, I have a Rochester New Yorker as well.

Yeah, I wear it out and about in DC, so they know.

I mean, literally, your story is pretty well known.

And if, maybe you've already heard some of these story through my colleague Leah Stacy.

In fact, one of the reasons this interview came together today, I want to give Leah credit for making this connection, for facilitating this interview, for writing an outstanding piece in City Magazine about Under the Desk News.

So thank you for being here and with us in studio.

My pleasure.

and you had a good time, I think writing that piece, because you got to know a little bit about what Vee thinks about writing.

Oh, yeah.

We had so much fun talking for that one.

what's an example here, Vee?

You got you got to prove your Rochester bona fide.

There's a little bit more here.

How are you going to do it?

go.

Bills number one.

So, I mean, I got you.

That should cover a good bit of it.

And the the thing is, when I get asked, you know, people are like, hey, I'm going to come visit Rochester.

I've even had people move to Rochester because they were fleeing somewhere like Texas or Florida, where the laws for LGBTQ plus people are becoming increasingly more difficult to live under.

And they're like, you made it sound like a safe space.

You made it sound like a great community to join a place.

I want to raise my kids.

the person who cuts my hair was like, look, I don't want this to be weird.

I know you just booked with me.

You didn't know this, but I actually moved here because I watched your TikToks, so, like, shout out to.

That's an amazing thing to hear.

Shout out to her.

and it just is the best place.

And I think it's best exemplified by when people ask me, what would you do in Rochester in a day?

I'm like, oh my God, let me tell you everything.

First, you got to pick up their latest city magazine.

It's going to give you all the events.

You're going to do everything.

People in Rochester show up to a letter opening.

We go to everything.

There are always packed events, and then they're like, for real?

And then they're like, so they're like, you know, where should I get coffee?

I'm like, okay, well, it depends on what neighborhood you're in, right?

Are you going to get mellow, get a little coconut mocha, you're going to go down to Montgomery Coffee at the far end of Park Avenue.

They're really trying to build up that area like that.

Oh, I have a brand new, brand new fantastic.

Love it.

You are.

You got to hit Ugly Duck for the like.

You know, the frozen drinks that they do over there.

Also their merch.

I wear a lot of, Ugly Duck Rochester merch, but it's just a place that you can't stop being excited about the next thing that somebody is going to get to experience.

And so I think that's what makes me Rochester.

Rochester real.

I like this conspiracy.

This is really funny.

We're not actually in a Rochester studio.

Where are we actually in California, aren't we?

Yeah.

What do they think you are?

California.

They were like, there's no way you're from Rochester.

You're from California, maybe from Cal.

You live with your parents?

That was the second part.

I was like, my parents live in an over 55 community in Florida.

Shout out to the, you know, villages.

We love them.

Like, they're really in the village.

They are next to the villages.

And my mom is actually very specific that I stop calling it The Villages.

I'm like, come on, it's right next to it.

And she's like, it's not the same.

People are going to think things about me and your father, okay?

It's like we could go in so many different directions this hour.

I'm already enjoying this, view.

Why don't you start by making sure our.

The audience today knows more about you and how you ended up on Insurrection Day in that space, and then maybe what's going from there, but kind of take me through the timeline.

Sure.

So my whole career, I've been really good at communicating difficult things in a quick way and in a friendly way.

And I think that comes from my history in restaurants.

When you are expediting on a line in a restaurant somewhere, you're getting a lot of information in from the waiters that oftentimes is not very well put together.

And you're having to decipher that, call it out to the line, and then get that food back out to the guest.

And you hope everybody has a good experience.

That's been my take on how I do the news.

I get a sort of imperfect narration, whether that's from traditional media reporting coupled with, first person narratives, and try to bring it together and be like, okay, what does this actually mean for like the average person?

Like what do we need to know about this?

And then I get curious about, like, could they even do it?

Like you just played that part about time home in the new, I director.

And my thing was like, well, they say they're going to do all these mass deportations.

Can they?

Oh, wow.

The prison system is preparing for it.

Oh, wow.

He did it before.

That's how I build the story.

So oftentimes I'm trying to just like, give people enough to be conversational, where if you listen to my quick report, you get curious.

Maybe you talk to your friends about it.

You get to sound like the expert.

You get to fill in the pieces.

But I'll get asked, you know, who are your inspirations as a kid to be a journalist?

And I'm like my mom who used to listen to the police scanner and then, like, tell my dad the T on what was happening in the town.

That's the approach that I take to news in a lot of ways, which is this, hey, I got this story I want to tell you.

What do you think about it?

How are we going to deal with this together, as opposed to being an authority figure who's sort of trying to, like, create this wall of, of non-biased ness to to report on something without emotion.

So I see the latest numbers at 3.3 million, right?

Yes.

What was the trajectory post insurrection day?

How fast did it move?

It was a steady growth, and I can point to certain events that I covered in a way that people found to be more relatable than what they were getting in cable media or their newspaper.

The first big bump that I got was the way that I covered the pull out of Afghanistan, because as a millennial, almost all of my friends served in Afghanistan, and the way that they were receiving the news about that pullout was very emotionally challenging for them.

So I tend to I ended my broadcast with, like, here's the number for the crisis hotline for veterans.

Hey, if you served in this capacity, this failure is not on you.

You did everything you could.

And then I would say what was happening.

And I think people liked that personal touch, that sort of hand holding the news when it's difficult.

And that was the first time that I think I hit a million after the Afghanistan pullout.

Then, the war in Ukraine broke out.

and President Biden's then press secretary, Jen Psaki called me, the white House has your phone number and they know where you live, by the way, that is was that a surprise to you, Jared?

The first time?

Who's calling me?

Hello.

Yeah.

Hi.

This is the the white House.

is that what they say?

By the way, this is the white House.

Hi.

Don't be scared.

This is the white House.

Now, they don't do this.

They're very nice.

And, they were like, we'd love.

You know, we've been watching your TikToks and the way that you're covering this.

And we'd love to make sure that you have proper information.

So for the very first time, we'd like to include you in the press briefings, like the big boy press briefings that everybody gets.

And we're going to have you come down to DC if you'd like, and sort of show you how it works so that you understand how to receive the information, how to research the information, all that kind of stuff, because we recognize that people are watching you sometimes more than some of the other networks that were giving, you know, these big exclusive interviews, too.

So my first time going to DC was that time, President Biden came out to take a picture with TikTokers, which became sort of like very iconic.

It's him doing a selfie with us.

and he was asking me what I do.

And I was like, well, I, I deliver the news from under my desk.

And he was like, show me.

And we went into the Oval Office, and he let me get under the desk of the Resolute Desk.

The reason he was like, that's the ultimate under the desk.

It was.

And he was like, do you know how it works?

I was like, no, I don't know how to open the Resolute Desk.

He's like, okay, you go under, there's a little wood tab, you push it forward and then you'll be able to come out the front like, you know, John F King Jr did or whatever.

And I was like, okay, so I did it.

And he was like, okay, so go ahead, do it.

Like do the news.

Like he wanted to see what the mechanics were of it.

And that was, you know, my first like, endearing moment with Joe Biden.

And I had several throughout his career.

And so from there, you've built, a remarkable audience.

And I say remarkable because they are devoted.

They, they comment a lot.

They ask a lot of questions.

and I see occasionally you'll follow up or explain.

But why do you think this has had the staying power?

Why do you think it was not?

That was a viral video on on January 6th, 2021.

Why is it so big now?

I'm so dedicated to them.

So the folks who follow under the desk call themselves the Dust Bunnies because we're under the desk together.

You know, we're all kind of like watching.

And I spend more time in my DMs and in my comments than I do in actually making the video.

And I think that's the power of TikTok.

It isn't just, I sit here as an authority and deliver information.

It's a two way street.

I'm going to other people's content and cheering them on.

There's been lots of folks who have have come up as citizen journalists themselves because they watched me and they were like, why not me?

Maybe.

Maybe I should talk about labor.

Maybe I should talk about Boston news in 60s like these niche things.

TikTok just gave people the confidence, the editing tools and the platform to try.

And I think that that's the magic of this platform.

That is why we're all so trauma bonded.

I mean, we all kind of came up during the pandemic together, and people trust me because I trust them and I care about them, and that's evident to them.

Leah, give me a sense, for you, we're kind of in these crossover generations.

I'm not going to date anybody here, but did you just call me old?

No, not even a little younger than me.

You're younger than me.

timeless.

And I'm.

But you have your your your work in a lot of different worlds or a lot of different platforms.

Yeah.

And you have experience on a lot of different platforms, what we would call legacy and what we would certainly call new or social media, you know, the, the evolving media.

So why do you think, as someone who's admired for his work, why do you think this has taken off?

Well, I'm also one of the dust bunnies because my first introduction to V was their first video.

and I started following right away.

Didn't know the Rochester connection for a while, I think I figured, I think someone I think I like reposted one of your videos on Instagram and one of my followers told me you lived here.

Yeah.

And I was like, no way, that's amazing.

And from there, you know what I was like, I will be interviewing them at some point.

but it, you already touched on this.

It's because it's a conversation.

TikTok might be my favorite social media.

And that's big because I have always been like an avid Instagram user.

I think a lot of millennials are like avid Instagram users.

it goes back to like the FOMO.

Like, here's what I'm having for lunch days, right?

but TikTok, during the pandemic, especially being like a single person, isolating you had the trauma, you had the loneliness, and it felt like this window to the world back then.

And still it's still not like my comfort.

Social media.

And I have like my, comfort followers.

And I would say that you're one of them.

And by that, I mean these are places I go to be informed, to laugh, to feel like I'm not alone in some way.

you know, even when things have been scary within our industry, TikTok is a place I will go to see.

Like, hey, there are so people innovating.

This is really cool.

We are having conversations.

I love the comment section on TikTok that actually might be my fave.

I mean, I was watching a video last night.

I was laughing so hard.

I was crying just because of the comments.

I mean it, it allows everyone to make it better.

If that makes sense.

Yeah.

So I want to talk a little bit about what it means to be a journalist.

And then what we're going to do is if you haven't seen these latest TikTok is not going dark on Sunday.

So says V that's big, right?

That's the way I have been working really hard on that.

So excited that it's not okay every second is a new moment.

I know that's what I feel.

I'm like, I thought I was prepared, I was up at like one in the morning writing this intro, and then I wake up and it's like, oh, this is a toxic relationship in which we are we are working out our stuff, but we are not sure if we're staying together.

But right now it looks good.

So we're going to explain why.

But then I'm going to have the respond to some of the support for the band.

And one of the one of the examples recently was a column and then a conversation that New York Times columnist David French had.

He is an attorney, a constitutional attorney, and a longtime conservative writer.

He's in the Never Trump category, but, he supports ban.

And I want to hear some of that most takes and we'll talk about it.

but before we even do that, if you're just joining us under the desk, news is, is huge.

I mean, this is not like we got a big guest and we're trying to overinflated because if you know, you know, this is one of those classic if you know, you knows and this beer is with us from under the desk news, they are huge on the platform.

Like flat out three plus million followers, a really trusted voice among consistent users on a very, very popular platform.

And so some of the criticism is, well, is it journalism?

What are you.

I'll give you an example.

I got an email before the program once we were teasing this.

If I can find it.

And I have too many notes here, too many notes, a lot of notes here.

Throw.

And Jane, Evan, your guest seems impressive as a news aggregator, but unless I'm missing something, they're not a journalist.

Is your guest doing any original reporting?

So I'm going to start with Jane's question, and then I want to talk about why I'm uncomfortable with some of the gatekeeping I see, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

But what would you say to Jane?

So I think it's a really good question.

And it speaks to the fact that folks who aren't necessarily native users of TikTok understand it as the way it's been described to them, which is like a children's dancing app or like a very silly thing I do.

Original reporting.

I've actually been named a media wise ambassador by the point, your institute for my original reporting and ethics and truth telling.

I'm bad at bragging about myself and I feel like it.

I don't want to let you know.

I want to be like one of the people, right?

So every time I win an award, I'm like, don't tell anybody about that.

Right?

Like, well, okay.

as far as covering the TikTok ban has gone, I am the one for original journalism when it comes to following the law.

A lot of times what we have coined trad media has wanted to present it in a way of like, well, all these guys are going to have to get real jobs now.

Like that has been the story.

It hasn't been the constitutionality of the law, the different moves, the way that it plays with our, international tensions with China.

Every time we have a little fight with China, they want to ban TikTok.

And then when we're cool with China, they don't want to ban it anymore.

so yes, I do original reporting and, but I did start as a news aggregator, and I think it gave me a great education in like how to qualify information building, media literacy.

And as I was learning, I was teaching other people about the mistakes I was finding or the way that sometimes you read a headline and then the body of the article doesn't reinforce what the headline said at all.

And so we've done a lot of media literacy education.

to help people.

And in that way, I've been able to do my own work as well.

I've spoke directly to, world leaders on the NATO stage.

I have covered John Kirby and his work, and I've been, covering the white House with original reporting, including interviews with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris several times over the last four years.

Yeah.

I mean, when it comes to promoting your work, listen, you're talking to what did I just win in city?

What was the best of that?

So you don't even know?

I've never won Best of Rochester.

I'm hoping this year I don't think you were nominated.

This is why I can brag about this.

Because the second people don't think.

Actually, I know you did have some credence, did I?

Okay, yes.

You did have some ratings for the same category, best media personality, media personality.

So yeah, I'm not good at that either.

Watch out.

But I want you to know, the second people actually realize you live here, it's like you're going to own that category.

It's like, this is Davis favorite drag queen because she's been on, RuPaul's Drag Race.

Yeah, she's gonna win.

I should I love it here.

Yeah, I I'm Darien Lake.

Rochester.

Rochester's got more of those than people think.

The New York Times pitch very popular Twitter account.

Obviously has some Rochester ties.

If you just read all of the references to the different neighborhoods you got, and that's just an inference.

But I'm just saying this is where it's at, though.

Jenna marbles, who was the first huge YouTube influencer?

Forget about this.

Also from here, Rochester.

It is the it is the it is the birthplace of creativity and social media greatness.

Okay.

It's the cold weather here.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

You have to be inside.

You gotta work out your creativity to figure out something to do.

Here's why I don't love some of the gatekeeping that gets directed at you sometimes.

And I, I want to say, if this comes off as pandering to a guest, so be it.

But I'm just going to be honest, I think some of the best journalism I have seen in my career has come from people who became very specialized, especially in the early days of blogging.

So blogs come out, you know, back in the blog era, they weren't just people posting their thoughts in a stream.

They became places where people could really specialize on issues and go deep and report in ways that often general assignment reporters couldn't.

There was some phenomenal journalism that has come out of that world on health care, on the military, on government policy, on poverty, from people who are not, who don't have journalism degrees and became journalists through the work of doing journalism and some of the worst journalism I've seen, and I'm not going to name comes from people with journalism degrees.

Name it.

And then I write it.

Not not make a TikTok about it.

Yeah.

I think standards matter, but I think part of what you have explained, and I want to give you some space to talk about this, is you feel like your editors are often the viewers who will let you know if they think something is wrong, unclear, etc..

Yes, that's absolutely correct.

one of the criticisms that I've gotten from folks has been like, well, because I've had like big, The New York Magazine, follow me.

All these different people follow me trying to find where the flies, where the secret is, and then they'll be like, okay, I spent a whole day with me and what they're doing seems like what they're saying they're doing, but who's their editor?

And I'm like, the people are my editor in many ways, because no one will love you as much and no one will take you down quicker than your comment section.

So when I get it wrong, I know right away and then I, I, I don't know if it's the undergraduate degree in theater that I have or when people criticize me, I immediately go, how can I improve on that as opposed to get defensive?

Or if it's the chef thing where I'm like, yes, chef, I'm a terrible person, then I'm going to fix it like, but but that is all sort of worked out to me.

Being a pretty decent TikToker and existing in the culture of TikTok.

Well, and it is those people that I count on to ensure that I am telling the truth or I'm getting the story from the angle they want.

Something that I'm afforded as an independent journalist is the ability to be really agile.

If I take a story in a certain direction and people are like, I actually don't care about that, I don't have to go through weeks of approvals to sort of rewrite it this way.

I just sort of go, okay, what do you care about?

Let me try and just switch over and focus on that and see what we can find out there.

I think in many ways, what I've called citizen journalism or peer led journalism or TikTok journalism is replacing local news which has been so disseminated in many ways, we don't get those little stories that matter so much.

the chance to tell a story about your own community is lost when your local newspaper isn't really as robust as it once was gone, or it's totally gone.

So I think that social media news, there's good people in it and bad people in it, but overall, it seeks to replace what we lost with just local storytelling and gossip.

In some ways.

Yeah.

And yeah, I want to say, as well as someone who has like a lot of my world in that old school.

Yeah, I it took me some time to gain a little more comfort with what he's talking about.

I admit that, and there are people, I think, with big followings on social who I'm like, I like, I like, what do we what are we doing here?

V is not one of them, but but it exists.

That also exists on a lot of different platforms.

And it becomes a question of how do you filter out the quality, do you think sort of the marketplace of ideas, people are doing a good job of finding the best voices?

Are are you worried that some not very well trained or not very ethical people are out there earlier?

Yeah, I mean, there's of course you can always go with the echo chamber, like people are going to follow people who believe the things that they do.

Right?

Yeah, we saw that, especially lately with Twitter slash X. but then there's also the algorithm that we have to factor in.

I mean, I have to believe that V came up on my for you page, my, my algorithm on TikTok because TikTok was tracking other things.

I was interested in journalism, news about the government and politics.

but I think it goes back to what's always been the case.

People who want to find information are going to find the information.

People who just want to be served information are just going to be served information.

We can find those echo chambers.

But but a lot of times those things intersect on something like TikTok.

And somebody on TikTok might think they don't care about news or they're not going to vote.

And then they might see one of these videos and that could change everything.

So sometimes it's about meeting the people where they are, which we've said that in media for a long time.

And again, like listening to your audience, it's not it.

It's not this like situation of pandering.

Right?

It's a situation of listening which good media should always be doing.

Good journalists should always be doing.

So.

When we come back from the only break of the hour, what I want to do is I want to listen to some of the support for a TikTok ban.

it appears right now that the Biden administration is signaling hard.

They don't want to see a ban on Sunday.

the Trump, the incoming administration, the Trump administration, same, and we'll talk to Vee about what that means, where this is where the different possibilities post Sunday.

If it's not going to be a ban on Sunday, how much time what has to happen next?

but then on the substance of why, we'll talk about why V is so opposed to some of, those arguments.

So, it's all coming up on the other side of this only break of the hour.

Wherever you're joining us from, if you're listening on the old terrestrial radio, if you're listening online, if you're streaming Zorg, if you have the mobile app, if you're watching on the Sky news YouTube page, wherever you are, it's great to have you on.

We're right back on the other side of the only break.

Coming up in our second hour as part of our dialog on disability, a conversation about taking sports journalism beyond the stats.

All right, faculty and students are doing that by working with Special Olympians to tell their stories in deeper and more meaningful ways.

And we'll talk to some of the people involved next.

Our.

China's answer to American tariffs might just be found in our neighbor to the South.

They're trying to make sure that they hire enough Mexican labor, Mexican inputs for local suppliers.

I'm kind resolve trade war tactics next time on marketplace.

Tonight at 630.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

This beer under the desk.

News reporting today.

No TikTok banned Sunday.

It's not going dark in the United States.

A little bit of background.

this was the date because there were supposed to be, a forced purchase of TikTok.

So it gets out of Chinese hands.

And if didn't happen by this coming Sunday, that's it.

It goes dark in the United States, but now it looks like the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration agree.

We don't want it to go dark.

What do you want people to know?

So I want people to know that TikTok puts $24 billion into the American GDP a year.

There's 7 million small businesses on here, and hundreds of thousands of creators who literally make their living or make ends meet from the money that they generate through their content on TikTok.

Now, when you don't know that, it's very easy to go bad if it's a Chinese app or whatever.

But when you start to look at the economics that are generated via this platform, that becomes, a really big deal to politicians, because they maybe want to take a deeper look at how much of this is Chinese owned, what really is going on when it comes to affecting the finances of their constituents.

The other thing that a lot of folks don't know, because this just hasn't been covered properly, is that ByteDance, it was created by the Chinese ownership of TikTok or knows.

Yeah, this is how it was started.

So the Chinese in the CCP don't own TikTok.

It was started by two Chinese entrepreneurs who now live in Singapore and have since 2015 and it was started with $5 million in investment from Jeff, or $50 million investment from Jeffrey.

As the richest man in Philadelphia.

He then partnered that with Sequoia Capital, gave another hundred million dollars in that first year that they were investing in these entrepreneurs.

And that is what built TikTok.

So there's a second question of can American venture capitalists invest in Chinese technology?

If at some point that technology becomes successful and the government will ban it, saying a national security threat?

Since the inception of TikTok, there's been more Americans on the board than any other nationality.

And again, the only two Chinese people that are involved in ByteDance now live in Singapore and have never had, nor do they have now a tie to the Chinese Communist Party.

TikTok is 60% owned by global investors, which also makes the sale more difficult because it's not like one little person you go to and say, hey, we'd like to buy this product.

You'd have to get buy in from all of the global investors who are like, why would we want to do that when things are running smoothly?

If your issue is national security, tell us what you're scared of.

And so they did.

They said, we want American data to be firewalled from China.

And they said, okay, cool.

Because since 2017, the headquarters that runs the American version of the app has been in Santa Monica, California, in the Cayman Islands.

It's never been in China.

So I think this is addressing that first clip.

So let's listen because what V is saying is a, I think a direct counterpoint to what you're about to hear.

But I'll let V respond on the other side, this is a New York Times columnist and attorney, David French, talking about why he does support a TikTok ban.

But the reason why that's itself, that's that's that's about 170 million Americans who will be immediately affected, who use the TikTok app regularly.

That's an awful lot of people.

But the reason why, even though I am a lifelong free speech advocate, I support the ban on TikTok.

This particular law is because the issue here really isn't about the content of the speech on TikTok.

Everything that's on TikTok you could put on Instagram and it would be fine.

Facebook, it would be fine.

Maybe not fine.

From the standpoint of it being worthwhile content.

There's a lot of trash on TikTok, but constitutionally fine.

The issue here is control.

Can we allow a social media company that the government believes to be under the direct control of the People's Republic of China, to have that kind of access to American data and to the American public square.

And that's the real issue, in my view.

Who controls TikTok is of enormous consequence.

And the Chinese government does not have a constitutional right to operate in the American public square.

And in fact, there's a lot of potential dangers and problems if we allow China to have that continued access.

That's David French in The New York Times.

What do you think?

So I have a lot of respect for David French's reporting outside of this particular case, in which I think his bias against the platform is very evident, he says.

The American government believes that the Chinese government owns the app.

We have proven that the Chinese government does not now, nor have they ever owned the app when it comes to Americans free speech and where their data is.

And can China come in and like, create all this propaganda?

No, they can't, because is headquartered in Santa Monica.

The Cayman Islands, and now Virginia.

All of the data has been firewalled through this thing called Project Texas, which put all of the data servers in Texas and Virginia under the control of Oracle and American Larry Ellison.

So every time people tend to report on the dangers of it, they tend to leave out the fact that they haven't done any research on what's what the actual structure of the building looks like.

And so that's why I think his reporting sort of falls short.

Well, how do we get to this point then, that so many actors involved here still believe the Chinese government, if what you're saying is correct, why doesn't everybody know this and accept this and why?

Why do you think there's still needs to be a sale?

So for the last four years, every single time I've been invited on to any traditional media news outlet to talk about TikTok, it is surrounded by the ban and it is almost been a gleeful what are you going to do when TikTok's not here?

You'll have to go back to the regular media or, like Mr. French says, what they post on TikTok could just be posted on Instagram or Facebook and it would be fine.

I had this conversation with John Kirby in which he also, two years ago, had this perspective of like, why can't you just go do it on another platform?

And it was like, Mr. Kirby, Admiral, you can't burn down my house and tell me to move in with my neighbor.

It's full over there.

The culture of each one of these platforms is so uniquely different.

The algorithm is so uniquely different.

And you can't just take everything that's created on TikTok using the editor tools of TikTok and put them on Facebook and Instagram.

If we could, I promise you I'd have a much bigger following on YouTube where you make a lot more money, right?

It's not for creators lack of trying to be on these other platforms.

It's either that they don't have the editor tools and know how to create a dynamic video that will perform well on a YouTube platform, or it's a saturated market.

Like you said earlier, people have been on Facebook, Instagram, and Reels for so many years that it's very hard to break into that.

TikTok was new, which is what made it feel like the most democratized platform anybody could go viral.

There was all this room for new creators to create new trends.

So I think that all kind of plays into it.

And Adam Kirby did say to me he would go back and look at it and on record and on video, you can find.

The TikTok said that he no longer believed that a unilateral platform ban was the best way to achieve national security, while protecting the economic interests of Americans.

Lee, I saw you nodding as someone who teaches media.

you agree with the idea that saying, well, just get on YouTube, just get on Instagram is not a solution here.

It is not a solution.

I was fervently agreeing.

Yeah, it's everything's different.

It it's like it's almost like learning a new language and and joining people who have spoken it for years and years and then trying to be like the top order, like you're it's not going to have I love the house, moved, for example.

Like that is perfect.

yeah.

I, I mean, even here, we're having all of these discussions about getting on different platforms that we haven't tried before.

And anyone who is a native social media user understands everything that you just said.

You have to have a different toolkit for all of these platforms.

You cannot just copy paste something you create to every single platform and expect that it's going to work the same on every single platform.

So we now let me ask you to weigh in on some of the the things I've been seeing in regards to this possible ban, and then you tell me how you perceive some of that.

So starting with the Supreme Court, there was a lot of talk about the US Supreme Court intervening by Sunday in some direction if it was needed.

and so the court hears arguments, and sometimes we do our best to infer what they might do based on the questions are asking or even the comments that the justices are making.

Everything I've seen on this particular case indicates that it looks like if you left this in the Supreme Court's hands, there would be a TikTok ban that they the comments from the justices on both ideological sides are pretty consistently anti TikTok, from what I can see.

Is that a fair analysis?

I think so okay, so when this goes back to how TikTok appeared at the Supreme Court in the first place, the law that was written, the protecting Americans from foreign adversary owned apps law that was written back in March and signed in April that is now called the TikTok ban law, was never debated on the on the House floor or the Senate floor.

It was taken and it was pushed into a humanity, an aid package that was a must pass package that said, well, if ByteDance doesn't divest by January 19th, then then they would be blacked out.

And the way that it was presented and Ed Markey has spoke to this, President Biden, I spoke to this, was that there was some agreement that ByteDance could sell, that this was a fair option, that this was just like when they made them sell grinder, and which is a different platform that was American owned, became Chinese owned, had to be resold to America.

That structure did not exist.

So much of the law, the way that it was explained to these non-native users, was made to seem like this wasn't a big deal.

And let's just get this humanitarian aid package done and we'll deal with it later.

So it's TikTok.

Then you know, when Bill passed, they sued saying that it was infringing on First Amendment rights.

TikTok had two choices, in which case they would take to the Supreme Court.

One was the First Amendment case in which they had eight creators join them and say, you are shutting down American speech.

TikTok's case says we are an American company, and per Citizens United, we are People.

The corporation is our people.

Right?

Thank you, Mitt Romney.

And so we have speech, and we use our speech and our money to do things as Americans and as an American corporation.

So they were suing on one a now, the argument that I wish that they had taken that like, again, what do I know?

I'm like a chef with a theater degree, but this is the one I would have done was Ed Markey tried to prove that Congress had actually passed what's called the bill of attainder.

Congress passed a law that punishes company without evidence, due or due process, and that is illegal.

Therefore making the law something they'd have to rework.

They did not take that case to the Supreme Court.

They instead, instead took this First Amendment case, to which the Supreme Court's bias continues to read.

Why is this a big deal?

Why can't they just go on other platforms?

Why can't they just sell to an American?

Why can't X, Y, Z buy it?

We already know that Elon Musk, Zuckerberg and Snapchat for some reason are eliminated from being able to buy if it were for sale by TikTok because of antitrust issues.

The mass of it is the rush of it.

Typically, to prepare for a Supreme Court case, you have a year.

They had three weeks.

So is that fair?

It was denied.

It had to go directly to this D.C. appellate court, as opposed to whatever court they thought would be maybe better for hearing their argument or give them more time.

So now what we're in is a situation where we're up against the wire.

People are realizing the economic apocalypse that shutting down TikTok would be.

The people are very angry about losing their free speech in their space and the way the law is written is it allows the president to just point to any entity and go national security risk.

I will not be presenting evidence or giving you a trial because even for this trial, the government presented secret evidence that couldn't be shown.

So like, what are we even doing, Evan?

Like that's nuts.

So your concern is that if the government can just say, forget all the the typical rules here, we're going to deem in a national security threat and shut it down.

You're saying they'll do this to TikTok?

They'll do this to any speech they don't like?

Absolutely.

Because that's the way the law would that was rushed through and written and passed is written.

It gives the president unprecedented power to point at any entity and deem it based on secret evidence, a threat to national security.

So the ostensible concern about the authoritarian Chinese government, you're seeing an authoritarian lurch in the United States with the goal of banning TikTok.

And I even think it's an accidental authoritarian lurch.

In some ways.

I think, again, this truly comes back down to people who are not digital natives to this platform, who have put no effort to understanding the structure or the way that it functions, or the economic impacts of it, saying, well, you could just go somewhere else.

Why not?

Wouldn't it be great if if meta stock was doing a little bit better?

Hey, if we got rid of TikTok, y'all would just go on Instagram and maybe that would be okay.

You guys could still make your content and it's just not fair.

Now, what I think is a big deal.

And what I told Kirby when I met with him the two times I met with him is like, I come from a military family, okay?

Like I'm an American first.

I'm a deeply patriotic American.

If you were to tell me you don't even have to give me evidence.

Hey, kid, I promise you, this is a danger to the American people.

I'd be the first one to be like, okay, what can I do to help you communicate that?

What we were told is we don't have any evidence that it is a national security threat.

We have an idea that it could be.

Should these other circumstances that are hypotheticals fall into place?

David French writes about how, let's say there's a confrontation in Taiwan, and all of a sudden TikTok becomes flooded with pro-China, anti Taiwan anti-American content and it becomes a propaganda machine.

I think you got to trust the American public, right?

We are a patriotic republic mostly.

I don't think that.

And the fact is, Americans have the right to view propaganda if they want to.

That's still part of our speech.

We can view it if we want to.

This happened when Nancy Pelosi took a diplomatic trip to Taiwan and China said, hey, don't do that.

And President Biden said, hey, don't do that.

John Kirby said, don't do that.

Anthony Blinken said, hey, you know, we can't tell you what to do, what we think it's going to make it a bad deal.

And then China punished Taiwan for her making that trip.

That was one of the times that they revived this.

Or we should ban TikTok because people are saying, you know, that this was a bad idea.

So again, I think we do plenty on our own to inflame tensions with other countries.

and in the four years we've been here hasn't come through TikTok.

So some feedback from listeners, Susan, on YouTube in the chat, you said these are fantastic stories.

V glad to have V on the front.

Thank you Susan.

Chris says I'm curious about TikTok.

I heard a conspiracy theory that the ban has to do with competitors Facebook and Instagram.

Could it be that Zuckerberg is behind this?

Am I the only one who's heard that?

Well, Zuckerberg did spend $7.5 million lobbying Congress to promote the idea that an American social media app should be the number one in the world.

And that was it fair that TikTok was the number one downloaded app in the world.

So, sure, there's like all that kind of like lobbying stuff that goes on.

I don't tend to I think there's room for all of us in this space.

And actually competition in the social media space makes each one of the platforms better.

I mean, as TikTok came in and gave better editing tools, made it easier to make a video sooner be known to us than reels, all of a sudden had great editing tools that they weren't offering before.

So I think there's room for all of us in it.

and Charlie wants to know.

Charlie says Evan, I'm a trained journalist who came of age during the heady Woodward and Bernstein days.

Okay.

By the way, Charlie, you should know, I think.

Where did I see this?

It's in my notes that are too many.

I think you have praised Woodward and the.

And Woodward.

Have breakfast together.

We're pals.

Okay.

Humble pie.

That's what I was expecting.

Both the real Bob Woodward, the real Bob Woodward.

Two things for folks who are like, is this a journalist or not?

The New York Times, who was notoriously not friendly to TikTokers, called me Gen Z's Walter Cronkite.

They did a beautiful piece on under the desk.

And like what the future of creator led media could look like.

It was, the one and only time that they did it.

I was at New York Times Dealbook summit, and Mr. Woodward was like, I watch your TikToks.

My wife shows them to me because he's interested in journalism and what's going on in this industry.

I also worked for The Washington Post.

I was the face of their tick tock for a while, while Dave was on paternity leave, and he was like, I'd love to have you come to my home for breakfast.

And I, like, almost blacked out.

I like what's And so I've, I have this wonderful relationship with him in which he has told me that he, you know, he's like, you know, I didn't go to Jay school.

And I'm like, you didn't?

And he's like, no went.

And so his comment to me in his challenge to me through these meetings that we have is you need to maybe help people write.

What is a journalist?

Was I a journalist when I was in the Navy?

Was I was a journalist when the Washington Post fired me two times for not being a good enough reporter.

Or was I a journalist when I went to my first Pulitzer Prize?

That's what we need to decide.

What is a journalist?

What is journalism?

so Bob Woodward's fan, Kara swisher, Kara swisher, also a pal.

she's very nice to me, and she's not nice to a lot of people, but now she's tough.

We she's tough.

But I we have agreed.

She is very.

She said to me, you got to understand that we need reciprocity with China.

And I was like, I do understand that and I agree with that.

I think there are issues with if this was a Chinese owned app, if they were spying on us, that would be an issue that has not been proven.

She also has stuck up for me a bunch of times in saying this person in particular has, you know, it has ethics, has standards, has a process to what they're doing.

And if you have that, then you're welcome in this space.

Sorry, Charlie, I'm going to get back to your email.

By the way, are you saying that if the Chinese government, if Jie Jinping and his pals could get access to all the TikTok data, you think a ban would still be a good idea?

I don't know that a TikTok ban would be a good idea, but I think we would need to do something to protect Americans data.

And we've been working with AOC on this comprehensive Data Protection and Privacy Act that would mirror what they have in Europe.

That's all we're asking for is like bare minimum, protect us.

Also, if the Chinese could get all our data from TikTok, then why did they hack all the telecommunications companies the other day to try and get the data?

Like, sometimes I just want to know, like, come on.

So here's the thing.

It makes sense.

Yeah.

So Charlie says, when I was an English teacher, my students hipped me to V and explained they had an incredible talent in taking complex news and distilling it into a concise edit that had zero frills.

Yeah.

and Charlie says, I am a trained journalist who came of age during those heady Woodward and Bernstein days.

Would you please ask me whether they see themselves in other online journalists as investigative reporters?

Fourth estate watchers of the flame?

What?

I think it's a mix.

I don't think it's any one thing.

I think you see some people who are activist journalists, which is a term that a lot of trad media doesn't like that term activist journalists.

But I think a lot of the reporting that's been done on union and labor in the organizing of workers is both journalism and activism.

And so I think folks want to look at TikTok and go, okay, are they news anchors?

Are they news aggregate hours?

Are they doing original reporting?

I don't really understand it.

And I have a lot of like time and compassion and patience for that because it's so many different types of people.

There are entertainment reporters who do red carpets.

Yeah, yeah.

As someone who has been a TV news anchor, I can tell you that on the days where I just read the news in a prompter, I was not committing an active journalism.

I was reading, I was presenting the news.

And then there were days where I was interviewing people as videos.

I was as, of course, as my colleague Leah Stacey does.

there are times when you're gathering stories, you're making calls, you're getting information, you're distilling it, you're editing.

I mean, that's journalism doesn't matter where you went to school.

That's journalism.

And it's different on different days.

This program is different on different days.

That's it's designed to be that way.

It is a journalistic program, but every hour is not exactly the same.

And I would say every one of the TikToks I've seen of yours are not all in that same category.

Is that fair?

That's fair.

And that's something that I like about this program, and I like about my own program, is the fact that we've been trained with the 24 over seven news media television cycle that we've had over the last like two decades, that everything is breaking news, everything is as light in here and on my show.

There's a lot of reflection, which is like, hey, we just talked about this thing.

Let's let's like, let it breathe.

Let's look at it.

Let's just sort of and is that journalism or are we just kind of like gossiping about what we just heard and trying to sort what's entertain ourself sometimes.

And I think you do need a little bit of both.

There's so little reflection time built into what we get from news media, because so much of it is like breaking news, breaking news, breaking news, breaking news.

And so by the time you start to feel one story, you're already been served seven more and you're just like, you can't pay attention under the desk.

News on tick tock, tick tock.

Still available.

Probably will be available after Sunday.

Hopefully.

Hopefully.

Okay.

And before we go, this hour has flown by.

I want to ask you, do you see President Biden and President elect Trump as being on the same team on this issue?

Are they TikTok allies right now?

I don't know that they're TikTok allies.

I think they're both, presidents who have a responsibility to the American people and to economic stability.

And when you hear $24 billion in GDP, it's going to go poof because of a law that was maybe rushed through.

I think both of them want to be the hero of the youth and of the people who use this app.

And, I'm really hopeful that President Biden I know he's working on it today, does put forth that executive order to say, hey, we just need more time.

It at this point, I'd be very surprised if we see a ban anytime soon based on everything that not only V is saying, and who's deeper on this issue than V, but what the Biden administration going out is saying with the Trump administration coming in and saying now, 90 days from now, next year, we'll see.

there's a lot that has to get sorted out.

Leah.

Stacey, we do as an organization have a commitment to beginning on other platforms.

And I we you may not be good at in day one, but, we all have to figure out some way on TikTok.

I mean, like, have I did TikTok?

Did you make a TikTok like an account?

He's going to be on it tonight when I take this YouTube video and put it on TikTok.

Thank you.

This is my day.

She's got have yeah.

There's gotta be somebody who's.

Yeah.

Come on Julie.

no, I mean we have to be where people are.

And that's the reason that when Amna and Jeff came to the PBS NewsHour a couple years ago, first thing they did was said we're going to be on TikTok and we're going to be where people are of all ages, all backgrounds no matter where you are income, whatever, we're going to find you and we're not going to discriminate.

And I know we got we'll figure it out later.

Stacey.

Yeah, well, city is on TikTok.

We paused how much we were putting on TikTok just because we were waiting.

We're we're doing bandwidth things.

and we're, we've been closely watching your content.

and Berta was actually not here today, but we've had a lot of conversations about this.

He's our multimedia reporter.

And that has been something that we have prioritized.

And now yeah, watching to see what happens with the ban.

But we have content that's queued up for TikTok and, and YouTube is our next one that we'll be tackling.

A couple listeners sent a note saying, really glad you had V on this hour.

After NPR National did them dirty.

Now, listen, I would just say these were the exact words.

That was literally the term here.

I would just freelance that, NPR has posted today their response to V's criticism.

And I think this is a learning experience for everybody involved for NPR.

And I haven't read the full response.

This hour was not about re adjudicating that.

Ultimately, V has said that you respect NPR.

Sure.

You think that they missed the mark on that conversation.

but again go to under the desk news check.

Take a look at what V has been saying.

And if you want to read NPR's rebuttal today, read that.

But that is not the crux of this.

The crux of this is, is TikTok going to be here?

And how do you get 3 million followers?

How do you get 170 million Americans on TikTok?

And if that's where we are today in 2025, can you just snap your fingers and go, I don't like TikTok.

That is not happening, so I'm grateful for the time.

Thank you.

Thank you for making it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Under the desk.

News on TikTok, also on YouTube, by the way.

Yeah.

On Instagram.

Yeah.

Snapchat.

Follow me everywhere, man.

But really on TikTok really just suck.

And YouTube, we're growing the YouTube.

So YouTubers true Rochester and V spear.

That's right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And Leah Stacy, editor of City Magazine, the best.

Thank you for making this happen.

Thank you for having me.

I should get the credit for that one.

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