TikTok Stole Our Hearts, but Can It Last?

On a Sunday in January, TikTok users were greeted with a notification in the app which said that TikTok was no longer available to use in the US, but that it hoped to be back soon. The following day, President Trump took office and signed an executive order keeping the app around another 75 days. But, it’s still unclear what will happen with TikTok after those 75 days are up. This week we break down years of drama around the potential ban on TikTok, and we ask each other: What makes this app so unique and so uniquely vulnerable?

You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Bluesky at @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Threads @reporterzoe. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Michael Calore: Question for the group. What is your favorite TikTok video?

Lauren Goode: I’m going to look to Zoe because Zoe is, I think among us, the only one who is a TikTok influencer.

Zoë Schiffer: Oh. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. 75,000 views. I can give autographs after this podcast. My favorite subsection of TikTok is undoubtedly Booktok.

[Archival audio]: Romantasy books that were recommended to me that were absolutely bangers. Popular romantasy books. Actually good romantasy books.

Zoë Schiffer: Booktok got me fully immersed in the romantasy world. Now I’m incapable of reading normal literature. Thank you.

Lauren Goode: I’m going to assume that romantasy is romance and fantasy?

Zoë Schiffer: Oh, yes it is. Dragons. There’s fairies, there’s dragons. I’m not proud of this, but I guess I’m not not proud of it either.

Lauren Goode: Wild.

Michael Calore: Lauren, you have to spend more time on TikTok.

Lauren Goode: I know. Zoe, this is a whole side of you that I was not aware of as my podcast cohost. Respect.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I generally don’t lead with it, I’ll be real.

Michael Calore: Lauren, what’s your favorite video?

Lauren Goode: A friend sent me the Moth Girl.

Moth Girl [Archival audio]: Two years ago, I found this giant moth sitting on my driveway.

Lauren Goode: Her handle on TikTok is talalovesyouart. But she’s the moth girl.

Moth Girl [Archival audio]: … with wings scared the hell out of me.

Lauren Goode: Actually, as TikTok was about to be banned and my friend was sort of freaking out. She was like, “Beautiful creators like this aren’t going to be able to reach audiences.”

Moth Girl [Archival audio]: But I had no idea what I was about to get myself into.

Lauren Goode: I was tearing up a little bit. There were onions in the room. It was really beautiful. What about you, Mike?

Michael Calore: My favorite TikTok personality is Smac, S-M-A-C.

Sarah McCreanor [Archival audio]: I don’t know why you followed me, it was probably for dance or whatever.

Michael Calore: Sarah Mccreanor, she’s an Australian interpretive dancer, and comedian, and creative person. She’s also known as Hydraulic Press Girl because she took the viral hydraulic press crushing things videos and did interpretive dances of them-

Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh.

Michael Calore: With costumes that are amazing.

Lauren Goode: Wow.

Michael Calore: She’s great.

Zoë Schiffer: Honestly, the creativity on TikTok is pretty unmatched.

Lauren Goode: It really is.

Michael Calore: Too bad it’s all going away.

Zoë Schiffer: Aw.

Michael Calore: This is WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley. I’m Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture here at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: I’m Lauren Goode, I’m a senior writer at WIRED.

Zoë Schiffer: I’m Zoe Schiffer, WIRED’s director of business and industry.

Michael Calore: Today we are talking about TikTok. What makes this app so unique and so uniquely vulnerable? We all have our favorite TikTok personalities, and our favorite videos, and our favorite subsections. But what is TikTok, really? Where does it come from? When did we first start getting obsessed with it? And why are we so obsessed with it?

Zoë Schiffer: The short answer is TikTok is a Chinese social media app that has about 170 million monthly active users in the United States. And specifically, a ton of young people. It’s really got a choke hold on Gen Z specifically.

Lauren Goode: TikTok has an interesting history because it stems from a Chinese app that was called Musical.ly, and then ByteDance, which is a company we’re going to be talking about a lot on this podcast, bought Musical.ly in 2017, and then repurposed that app as TikTok. When you hear people talk about TikTok or its origins as a dancing teens app or an app where you watched a lot of lip sync videos, that’s where that came from because that’s actually what Musical.ly was. A common misconception persists that TikTok is all fun and games. When actually, to Zoe’s point, it has ballooned to have this massive user base in the US. It now has a lot more content than just dancing teenagers.

Michael Calore: Yeah. I think if you checked out when you first heard that, “Oh, it’s just a thing for teens, I don’t need to pay attention to it,” then you would have missed out on a lot of things that made TikTok super popular and pretty special. There’s all these stories about influencers getting discovered and becoming Hollywood or musical stars, or writers and actors getting their big breaks. This all happened on the app. Plus, there’s a whole shopping angle where creators can earn affiliate revenue through the TikTok Shop. But to your point, Lauren, it’s not just fun and games. There’s a lot of social commentary on there, too.

Lauren Goode: I think almost from the start of TikTok, there have been two obsessions with it. One is how does this Chinese-owned app actually handle US data, which we’re going to get to. Two is the algorithm. Everyone talks about the algorithm. This is just a fundamental part of social media apps these days. There is so much content out there that all of the companies that run these platforms say, “We have to sift through it in some way. We’re introducing an algorithm ‘personalizes’ it to you.” Although I always like to say the internet personalizes but it’s never quite personal.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: The thing about TikTok is it’s very good about knowing what you want to see next and that’s how you get sucked into the app.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I feel like we need to pause on that point because it really is what differentiates TikTok from Twitter and YouTube, and some of the other apps. It broke the standard model of the follower or following feed. The idea that you as a user need to seek out creators, you need to click follow, you need to look at their content. If you stop liking their content, you need to manually unfollow them. TikTok was like, “No, no, no. All you need to do is open the app.” The founder actually has talked about how his fundamental breakthrough idea was, “Let’s make it easier for content to be discovered on social media.” If someone makes a video and I just show that to one other person, based on how that person interacts with it, I might show it to another person, and another, and then exponentially more. It’s very easy to go viral on TikTok compared to the other social platforms.

Lauren Goode: Yes. You’re totally right, Zoe. I think it’s easy to make the comparison with, say Instagram Reels, because when you open Instagram Reels now it looks and feels a lot like TikTok. But there are differences, even though we don’t fully know what they are because there are these black box algorithms. But there are differences in the way that discovery works. Would you agree, Mike?

Michael Calore: Yeah, I would. I think what I see when I open Instagram and what I see when I open TikTok are two completely different things, just talking about Reels. If you go to the Explore page on Instagram or the For You page on TikTok, the things that I see on Instagram feel trashy, or I don’t know, kind of rage-bait-y. Whereas the things on TikTok are mostly fun and interesting. There are comedians, there are stupid human tricks. They just feel more creative and it just feels more lively, whereas Instagram feels like it’s thirsty.

Lauren Goode: Oh, that’s so interesting.

Zoë Schiffer: With TikTok, because you’re relying on the algorithm, I feel like a lot of people have had this ramp up period where they were like, “I don’t get it. I don’t get what this is about and it feels like it’s not for me.” Where on Instagram, this is also somewhat true. You have to find people and follow them. But because it’s based usually on who your friends are, you have some minimum number of accounts that are interesting to you. On TikTok, it feels like you have to get over a hump almost. At first you’re like, “This feels random and not like me.” Then two weeks later you’re like, “I didn’t know that I was a romantasy lover, but here I am.” It teaches you who you are.

Michael Calore: Yeah, it really does.

Lauren Goode: Zoe, is messaging a big part of the TikTok community? Because I think the way that messaging is so baked into Instagram now, that feels so natural to me to send Reels to friends, but I never do that on TikTok.

Zoë Schiffer: Not in my experience. I do feel like I’m not enough of a heavy user to have an experience that’s true for people who are legit creators on TikTok. I feel like the messaging is really confusing. The feature just doesn’t work that well. It’s confusing to find messages. It’s not super intuitive to send TikToks in DMs to people. The other thing that I hear a lot from TikTok creators that I just never experienced is I was really used to, as a journalist, sharing things on X, previously Twitter, back when I was using the platform, and having people just be so, so mean to me. If I shared an interview or something, people would talk about my voice or the way I looked. It felt really negative. On TikTok, I was posting these videos of me talking to the camera, and I’m talking about the same content, it was a lot of Elon Musk stuff at the time. People were so nice.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: And just cheered me on. I was like, “Wow! It feels like a really positive community.” But then I would read stories about bullying on TikTok and be like, “OK, wow.”

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: I guess this isn’t true for everyone.

Michael Calore: One thing that I feel like they haven’t necessarily figured out at TikTok is the shopping angle because they do go pretty hard on shopping. But anecdotally, I can say that I know a lot of people who have bought things that Instagram recommended to them. “Oh, I saw it on Instagram. I bought this jacket on Instagram. I bought this hat on Instagram.” But I cannot say the same for TikTok. I don’t know a lot of people who’ve bought something off of TikTok.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. TikTok’s shopping vibe is very different. Even though I’m not on TikTok as much as Zoe is or other people, I do feel like there was this light switch that went on around September 2023, which is when TikTok introduced shopping. I think the time, what they were doing is they were actually subsidizing some of the products and they were really trying to incentivize influencers with big audiences to start selling stuff. But the stuff felt a little cheap, or tacky, or gimmicky. Whereas, to your point, Mike, and I understand that Instagram is hyper-targeted so the stuff I’m going to see is different from what other people are going to see, but I felt like I would see a really nice sweater and be actually tempted to buy it, versus the tchotchke that was being hocked to me on TikTok.

Zoë Schiffer: I’ve never bought anything from a targeted ad on social media.

Michael Calore: Never?

Zoë Schiffer: Actually, Lauren, the sweater you got me when my kid was born that was from this obscure farm in Wales or something, I was like, “That’s my perfect shopping experience. An expensive one-of-one item that I can only buy one of every 10 years, that’s the kind of shopper I am.”

Lauren Goode: Zoe, I have to say, that sweater was very curated. I flew to Ireland.

Zoë Schiffer: For that sweater.

Lauren Goode: I saw the Irish wool sweaters. The wool came from the Aran Islands. Then I returned home after doing my shopping curation and ordered it for you specifically. I really did discover that one in person and ordered it after the fact. But yeah, the sweater game on Instagram is strong. It’s funny that we’re talking about sweaters, because I feel like that is the thing I see the most of. And it makes me wonder if Mark Zuckerberg also sources his sweaters from Instagram. If it’s just this total infinite loop of Mark Zuckerberg getting more money. But yes.

Michael Calore: Zoe, Lauren is your algorithm now.

Zoë Schiffer: Aw. Lauren is.

Lauren Goode: I would gladly be everybody’s curated shopper. You just let me know.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, I like that. That feels good. You use AI to shop and then you shop for me.

Lauren Goode: Sounds good.

Michael Calore: We need to take a break, so let’s do that and we’ll come right back. A few weeks ago, everyone thought TikTok was over. Influencers went on the platform to tell all of their people goodbye and they started planning public TikTok funerals.

[Archival audio]: TikTok was a wonderful app, everybody knew the app. If you wasn’t on TikTok, your life was not in order.

Michael Calore: But the so-called TikTok ban threatened by the US government didn’t really play out.

[Archival audio]: I was getting ready to go to TikTok’s funeral, and then my friend messaged me and said, “TikTok’s back.” I’m like, “Damn.”

Michael Calore: Donald Trump came into power on January 20th, and pretty quickly prevented the app from going dark, giving it a stay of another 75 days. But the app is still on shaky ground. It’s not in the Apple Store, it’s not in the Google Store. Some other providers have picked it up again. We need to back up here and talk about how we got to this point that the US wanted to ban TikTok.

Zoë Schiffer: Let me take you back to 2020, because this is when the ban conversation really started to pick up steam. If you’ll remember, the person who was president at the time was Donald Trump. He starts to get pretty negative about TikTok specifically because he’s pissed with how China has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Donald Trump [Archival audio]: We got hit by the virus that came from China. China’s secrecy, deceptions, and cover up allowed it to spread all over the world, 189 countries, and China must be held fully accountable.

Zoë Schiffer: Seemingly in retaliation he’s like, “TikTok’s going to go.” Then within that conversation, national security concerns start to pick up speed as well. It’s this idea that China is using TikTok to surveil and influence Americans. Trump issues an executive order saying he’s going to force ByteDance to divest TikTok US, but the executive order is blocked by a federal judge so this doesn’t move forward. Until the 2024 election cycle, when Biden picks it up, a law is passed. Free speech experts really thought that this law was going to be struck down at the Supreme Court because it felt like they were trying to shoehorn a national security argument into what was really a free speech concern. The Biden Administration basically didn’t seem to love that young people were very anti-Israel on TikTok. They were like, “There’s no way that sentiment is real.”

Michael Calore: They didn’t think that sentiment was real. They thought that the Chinese government was seeding anti-Israel messaging on the app and showing it to people?

Zoë Schiffer: Exactly. There was no evidence that that was actually taking place, but it is a concern because China does spy on a lot of people, including many Americans. They’re known for hacking, and whatnot. But yes, it seemed like what was happening was that US politicians were quite upset that there was a lot of anti-Israel sentiment on TikTok. Then they were trying to say, “Oh, it’s a national security concern. We have to ban the app.” The case goes all the way up to the Supreme Court and all nine justices agree that the app is a national security concern and should be banned. Ironically, by the time this happens, it’s days to go until Biden is going to leave office and Trump is going to take over again. The Biden Administration just says, “Eh, we’re going to leave enforcement up to Trump.”

Lauren Goode: Shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling and just before Trump’s inauguration, millions of people around the US opened their TikTok app and were greeted with this message. I think this was a Sunday night. “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the US,” et cetera, et cetera. Then it says below that, “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”

Zoë Schiffer: The exclamation point really did it.

Lauren Goode: In my years of covering consumer tech, social media, I’ve never seen a message like this in an app.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. This was a wild night. Not to make it about me, but it was very shortly after I started at WIRED. I was like, “Oh, sorry. My weekend’s gone. This will be what we are doing.” But yeah, we were all waiting to see what was going to happen. The lock screen comes up, no one can access the app. Then it goes away from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. It was a very dramatic moment. The CEO of TikTok reassures employees internally that they’d made some sort of a deal with the Trump Administration and it’s all going to be fine. Lo and behold, the next day Trump gets to save TikTok, which is deeply ironic since he started this entire thing.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Zoë Schiffer: Lauren, can you say any more about the free speech arguments at the Supreme Court level? That part feels pretty important.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. This has been one of TikTok’s strongest arguments for why it should not be banned. I listened to the highlights of the Supreme Court arguments. Basically on one side, you had the US Solicitor General arguing for the ban because of those national security concerns. TikTok’s US lawyer was arguing in response that this is a burden on free speech. That basically, TikTok is this really big influential platform and by the US deciding to ban it, it is encroaching on free speech rights. Now a lot of First Amendment scholars do find the ban disturbing for that reason, but I think just as many people here are arguing that a China-based company doesn’t necessarily have access to US free speech protections. Also, because the content creators on TikTok are such a huge part of this app, a lawyer for the content creators also made the argument and made the case for why TikTok is essential to this expression of and exchange of ideas. But ultimately, the national security concerns, and particularly around people’s phone contacts, prevailed. You guys know, and I think we all know at this point, that when you go to download and create an account for a new app, it will often ask for your contacts. It’s one of the permissions. I don’t think I’ve said yes in years. I don’t know about you guys.

Michael Calore: No, certainly not.

Lauren Goode: But the idea is that even if only, say between 150 and 170 million Americans are using TikTok and everyone else isn’t using TikTok, it almost doesn’t matter because if those active users grant the app access to their contacts, then contacts from all the other people could be sucked into what it ultimately a Chinese-based database. That’s part of the concern here. The idea is that the Chinese government is just going to be able to put together this massive profile of Americans, whether your active users of the app or not. Zoe, when you said something earlier about, “Well, there’s no really specific evidence of the Chinese seeding anti-Israel content,” it makes me so curious about these national security concerns because, as a journalist, I would just love to know the specifics of those concerns or more about them. Because that’s just a call-out for tips for WIRED.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: If you work in national security and you know, please contact us.

Zoë Schiffer: Or if you work at TikTok or ByteDance, we’re here for you.

Lauren Goode: We want to hear from you. But ultimately, that argument prevailed.

Michael Calore: What, if anything, can Trump’s White House actually do to stop the app from disappearing entirely?

Zoë Schiffer: Trump can say that the ban is going to go into effect unless ByteDance agrees to divest TikTok US. What Trump is saying right now is that he wants the US to have a 50 percent ownership take in TikTok and he’s putting forward people, like Larry Ellison, as potential buyers. Elon Musk’s name has also been floated. Perplexity AI in the mix as well. It’s very TBD what is going to happen with this, but I think Trump has actual levers and then soft levers that he can pull in order to influence what happens.

Michael Calore: I have to say that the US government having a 50 percent stake in one of the world’s most popular social networks does not exactly fill me with ease.

Lauren Goode: You’re saying that wouldn’t encourage you to use TikTok more, Mike?

Michael Calore: Well, I think the same First Amendment claims, that a government is trying to influence the United States population would still hold. It would just be the US government instead of the Chinese government. Do we know at all how the government share would work?

Zoë Schiffer: It’s not even clear to me that he means US government has a stake, or just a US company. All of this has been vague. It’s Trump so he’s saying things on stage.

Donald Trump [Archival audio]: But I could see making a deal where the US gets 50 percent of TikTok, polices it a little bit or a lot.

Zoë Schiffer: I honestly have no idea. The experts I’ve talked to haven’t really been able to figure it out either.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Yeah, I was unaware of the fact that at government itself wanted a 50 percent stake. I just thought it had to be an American entity.

Zoë Schiffer: Again, the way he says it, it’s deeply unclear. I also didn’t interpret it that way until someone on our politics team at WIRED was writing a story and said a US government stake. I was like, “Wait, did he say that?” They were like, “Didn’t he?” Clearly, it’s a point of confusion.

[Archival audio]: How would it get that 50 percent?

Donald Trump [Archival audio]: Well, you’d take 50 percent of TikTok for the approval that TikTok could continue in business.

Michael Calore: Lauren, I want to ask you to talk a bit about Grindr, because the company actually sets a precedent for this sort of scenario.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. This is pretty wild, just to think about how this very popular LGBTQ dating app could come into play here. Back in 2020, a group if US investors bought Grindr. But what had forced the sale was that there’s this US committee, it’s often referred to as CFIUS, it stands for Committee of Foreign Investments in the US, mandated that the Beijing-based owner of Grindr sell the app. This was after reports came out that Beijing-based engineers had had access to US user data on Grindr. Because it’s a dating app, this included very personal, private messages. And also HIV status for some users—that was reported by Axios. After that, there were all these changes made to Grindr’s management team and the board. It had to be made up of US execs. Most of the engineers in Beijing had either been moved to Taiwan or they left the company. The new owners had to sign this new national security agreement with CFIUS.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. It’s worth saying that Grindr’s whole thing was that it showed you who was steps away from you. You could find people to hook with who were in your immediate proximity, so it’s a level of location data that’s, as Lauren said, hyper-specific and potentially really dangerous.

Lauren Goode: Right. It’s not just in who’s in the five-mile vicinity of you. It’s, well, who’s in the same bar as you?

Zoë Schiffer: Right.

Michael Calore: Yeah. OK. Well, since there’s a precedent here, I can’t wait to see what happens once we figure out all of the different types of data that people are typing into DeepSeek, the Chinese AI chatbot, and all of that data going to China. And then, maybe the United States will decide whether or not it wants a US company to own that one, too.

Lauren Goode: Right. Mike, I feel like you’re teeing us up for a third segment here.

Michael Calore: Maybe. That’s a good point, though. We should take a break and we’ll be right back. There’s obviously a lot of drama and a lot of uncertainty around TikTok. Whatever happens, it’s going to change social media in the United States. Where do we think those changes are going to be felt first and most powerfully?

Lauren Goode: Well, I think we’ve already felt a lot of the changes from a user perspective because since TikTok really captured the zeitgeist, we’ve seen all these other apps introduce different tweaks to their algorithms, more short form videos, shopping. I think in a way, the landscape has already been altered by TikTok. Look at something like YouTube Shorts. Look at, I think even for a while, Pinterest did an app that was supposed to be sort of like TikTok. It was called Shuffles. It was a moment.

Zoë Schiffer: I do not remember this.

Lauren Goode: Then of course, there’s Reels, which we know can only stand to benefit I think, if TikTok is ultimately banned. Whatever shreds of our attention spans existed before TikTok, now because of the copycat effect, I think they’re just completely destroyed.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: That’s the future, folks.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Unfortunately for Mike, who hates an algorithmic feed famously, I feel like that is the feature that all other social media is like, “Oh, this is the way to get people to go into an internet hole and never emerge,” so they’re all doing that.

Lauren Goode: Yes.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Every app has Stories now, which I think is maddening. There’s something-

Zoë Schiffer: Then LinkedIn.

Michael Calore: Yeah. There’s something very specific about just sharing photos, or just sharing videos, or just having messaging, or just doing job interviews. The specificity of every platform is what makes the platform unique, it’s what makes the platform sticky. This urge to copycat the most popular feature of social media across all of the platforms really just has me very upset.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Meta seems to be the worst offender of that because in fairness, Snapchat, which is now called Snap but it was Snapchat, they were the first ones who I think created the 24-hour disappearing circle, and then Meta copied it.

Zoë Schiffer: Meta, specifically with the TikTok ban, wasted no time. A lot of people were saying that the last thing they saw on TikTok were ads for Instagram. I was like, “OK. Well, not subtle, but here we are.”

Michael Calore: There have already been some apps that are swooping in to try and capture some of the escaping TikTok audience. Red Note, the Chinese app famously got a lot of people interested right around the beginning of the year. There’s also an app called Clapper and an app called Flip that are basically TikTok analogs. Although those two, they’re so small and they’ve been having such a huge flood of users that the apps have become unreliable and they won’t load, or they just load the same video over and over.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: One of the most hilarious anecdotes to me from all of this is that there’s reportedly been an increased interest in Chinese language learning apps because people who are now flocking to these other social apps, some of which are originating from China, are trying to learn Mandarin on the fly.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: That is one of the hardest languages to learn, so godspeed to you.

Zoë Schiffer: Just Duolingo that real quick. That was a giant and very explicit fuck you to the US government. It was a lot of young people being like, “Oh, you don’t want us to be on a Chinese-owned app? Well, we’re going to go to one that’s fully based in China, definitely does not have servers in the United States to the extent that TikTok does. In fact, we’re going to be posting memes and jokes about saying goodbye to our trusted Chinese spy.”

[Archival audio]: Hello, guys, this is your Chinese Spy speaking. Hello, it’s me, your Chinese Spy. You’re just on the other side of the world doing your job. But to me, you’ve been there for me when no one else was. And now, TikTok’s going away, and with it, us.

Lauren Goode: Yes. There was one screenshot that I did not verify if it was real, but it was apparently two people painstakingly trying to chat in Mandarin on the app. Eventually, one of the people just said, “Dude, you can stop translating. I’m from wisconsin.”

Michael Calore: I think we’ve also, over the course of this conversation, have landed on the fact that Instagram is probably going to be the big winner here. If there’s anybody who was only using TikTok and not using Instagram, given the news that TikTok is going to be going away possibly, they’ve maybe tried Instagram or moved some of their followers over to Instagram, or at least moved some of their activity over to Instagram. I can’t see a world in which Instagram does not win something here. They probably won’t win all of it, but they’re definitely going to get a big bump.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I feel like there was a lot of talk about how this is the US versus China, and we really need to support and invest in US companies. I don’t know, it feels a little ironic, or a little sad or something, that it will just further consolidate the monopoly that a few tech giants already have on the social media landscape. It seems unlikely that some little upstart company will come in and grab a big slice of the pie.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, I tend to agree. I think TikTok was and has been really unique because it feels like it came out of nowhere, whereas all of our other social apps were or have been entrenched for over 10 years now. Truly, what is new? We have Facebook’s family of apps, Twitter’s old news. I just don’t see any of the incumbents creating something new that captured the zeitgeist the way that TikTok has.

Zoë Schiffer: But you know what we’re probably going to see are a lot of pitches for AI-based social media apps for the next few years, and they’re all going to feel gross, and hype-y, and not be very good. That’s my best prediction.

Michael Calore: Yeah, those are garbage. That’s my best prediction. I do think that that uniqueness of TikTok, the thing that made it really capture everybody’s attention is irreplaceable and it’s not something that can be copied. As much as the Metas and the LinkedIns of the world want to try to copy the TikTok experience, they’re just not going to be able to because it’s so unique. We saw this happen when people started the big Twitter exodus a couple years ago, after Elon Musk bought it and the rules started to change. Everybody was like, “What’s the new Twitter? Where are we going to go? Where are we all going to hang out now?” The answer is there is no new Twitter, sorry. There are things that replicate the experience and there are things that might feel kind of Twitter-y, but there was no next Twitter. It was its thing and its time is gone. I think the same thing, regardless of what happens with the sale, could happen to TikTok.

Zoë Schiffer: I agree with you on the Twitter point. It feels like we have many different little Twitters based on your political ideology now.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: At the top of the show you mentioned this thing about what makes TikTok uniquely vulnerable, and I do want to say that there is a feeling of time-wasting associated with the app. You’re less attached to friends and people you actually know and specific creators, because the algorithm is just serving you video after video. That I think, while it’s tough to lose all of that creative horsepower, it does feel more replaceable in a way than other social apps.

Lauren Goode: I’m snapping my fingers right now. Yeah. I think this is what I was picking at but probably not articulating when I asked you about the messaging, too. Because the messaging function of Instagram is, to me, what makes me feel like I have some sense of community even when it’s mind-numbingly scrolling at night. I know I’m not supposed to be doing that. But at least if I can connect with friends in some way, or look at some cool art and then share that, I feel like I’m, I don’t know, participating in a conversation in a way that feels different from just scrolling on TikTok.

Michael Calore: I’m going to say get out your flashlights, because I have to throw some serious shade and I don’t care.

Lauren Goode: Throw it.

Michael Calore: Anybody who thinks that Americans are not going to flock to something that is a colossal waste of time, to anybody who thinks that, I have two words, reality television.

Zoë Schiffer: Oh. He’s so wise.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. It’s true.

Michael Calore: I was expecting you to throw …

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: I think our brains are probably trained at this point that there comes a time in your day when you need to turn on a screen and have some passive consumption. Reality TV does that for people. For some people, it’s listening to classical music on the radio.

Lauren Goode: Oh my God, Mike. Jesus Christ.

Michael Calore: No, I’m serious. There are a lot of people who, that’s how they relax.

Zoë Schiffer: Some of us read Tolstoy, others rot your brains on Desperate Housewives.

Lauren Goode: Real Housewives.

Zoë Schiffer: Those shows I don’t watch.

Michael Calore: My point is that there are tens of millions of Americans for whom that “Let me give my brain a rest and do some passive consumption” is TikTok. I think there’s always going to be a need for an app that scratches that itch for people.

Lauren Goode: I absolutely do not judge the reality-TV consumption. I think if that’s your jam, that’s your jam. I watched a little bit of it during the pandemic because the reality TV was better than the reality. I totally understand it. What I want to know is why didn’t TikTok’s lawyer make that argument in front of the Supreme Court? “I would just like to say that Americans are going to numb-out on reality TV anyway, and that brings joy to their lives.”

Michael Calore: Yes!

Lauren Goode: Why not let TikTok be that?

Michael Calore: Why not? Why not? All right, that feels like the best place to wrap. Thank you for listening to Uncanny Valley. If you liked what you heard today, make sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. If you’d like to get in touch with any of us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@WIRED.com. Today’s show was produced by Kyana Moghadam and Gianna Palmer. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Matt Giles and Daniel Roman fact-checked this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Katie Drummond is the editor in chief of WIRED. And Chris Bannon is the head of global audio. Be sure to follow WIRED on TikTok while you can @WIRED.