US TikTok Ban Chances Increase
Good day everyone,
Welcome to the weekly free edition of the newsletter. Lots of TikTok news and some good context-clearing things today.
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Please enjoy!
Tom
Big Story
"TikTok divest-or-ban legislation could suddenly be fast-tracked in the Senate - The Verge"
"US TikTok Ban Odds Rise: House Fast-Tracks Bill, Gets Senate Support"
"TikTok’s Origin Story: Court Files Show Role of GOP Megadonor Jeff Yass - The New York Times"
"ByteDance's Gauth climbs to second-most downloaded in US"
"Europe gives TikTok 24 hours to explain its latest app • The Register"
Loads of TikTok news today so I'll break it down into chunks
The potential ban in the US
The US House Of Representatives already passed a bill that would ban TikTok unless Bytedance sold it, but it is close to passing it again. The bill is included in another bill that imposes new sanctions on Russia and Iran. That will make it harder to vote against when it gets to the Senate. A vote on that bill in the House as well as bills related to funding for Ukraine and Israel are scheduled for Saturday.
All of my political understanding of this is thanks to the helpful insights of Justin Robert Young over at takepoliticsseriously.com. The Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell was the one dragging their heels on this previously, saying that the entire industry, not just TikTok needed to be regulated and the bill needed to be changed to make sure it's constitutional. That's the kind of thing you say when you want to sound perfectly reasonable and kill a bill. Let the perfect be the enemy of whatever it is their proposing. Senator Cantwell has now changed that line and said that she would support a new version of the bill being ushered into the House. That bill is almost identical to the previous one except it increases the period Bytedanve would have to sell TikTok from 6 months to 9 months after the bill is passed. And gives the president the discretion to add 90 days to that. That doesn't came anywhere close to regulating the entire industry. Nor does it in any way preclude the expected challenges from Bytedance that the law violates First amendment protections, an argument Bytedance has made successfully in court against Montana's state measure. It does make sure divestiture wouldn't have to happen until after the election.
Justin's theory, which makes sense to me is that Senator Schumer and the White House made a deal with Cantwell but for what, we have no clue. Something else is up here and another shoe may drop. With the vote on Saturday the attention is low, but expect it to heat up over the weekend.
If the bill does pass the House and Senate, the President has said he will sign it. If it becomes law, it is very unlikely that Bytedance would agree to sell TikTok. China has already said it would not be OK with that. Keep in mind that a separate company called USDS already operates in Texas on Oracle servers in order to handle US user data and algorithm implementation. That's as far as Bytedance is likely to go. Instead, expect Bytedance to take the bill to court and challenge it on constitutional grounds, likely getting an injunction to delay its implementation until the court case is heard.
That's just the FIRST TikTok story today.
The Origins of TikTok
The New York Times has what I would normally put in the interesting reads section. It's a rather normal story of the weird founding and pivots of a startup. Except it's of much more interest to folks because it's the founding of Bytedance and thus TikTok. It's more of an eye opener about how startups work and how they often start as one concept, and then fail a few times before pivoting to the thing that finally succeeds. You could write a similar story about how Odeo and a few other ventures eventually became Twitter. The New York Times article tries to paint a pivot from real estate to media as unusual. I don't think they are correct. If you haven't ever read up on these kinds of things go read this story. It's edifying. Just keep in mind that the sensational parts of the story are pretty typical, including that an early investor, in this case Susquehanna, would have an outsized influence over small startups.
OK What else?
Bytedance Makes more than TikTok
The second most popular education app in the US is AI Homework Helper from Bytedance subsidiary GauthTech. I assume Congress will ban that too, right?
Europe Wants a Different Piece of TikTok
The European Commission gave TikTok 24 hours to explain how it assessed risks to teens before its launch of TikTok Lite which gamifies TikTok and the EU calls "addictive and toxic." The app is smaller and requires less data than the full version of TikTok.
OK that's it for TikTok.
Other Stories
"Meta Releases Latest AI Model With Plans to Highlight More on Instagram, Other Apps - WSJ"
Meta released Llama 3 Thursday. The new Large Language Model will be used to upgrade the Meta AI tool which will feature more prominently in the search functions for Facebook, Messenger Instagram and WhatsApp. It can also summarize links in those apps. You can try it out on its own at meta.ai. This is the first major upgrade since Llama 2 in July. Llama 3 has both a 70 billion parameter and 8 billion parameter version. Parameters are a measure of how much data the model can consider at once. The more parameters the more context got can include. Llama 2's most powerful model had less than 7 billion parameters.
"Huawei launches Pura 70 smartphones in challenge to Apple in China"
Huawei continues its climb back ups the charts in China, stealing marketshare from almost everybody, including Apple. The latest line is the Pura 70 series which replaces its P series. They are priced just less than or equivalent to Apple's iPhone models. Huawei did not reveal the processor but several people suspect it's a version of Huawei's Kirin 9010.
"TSMC Q1 2024 earnings on strong AI chip demand"
"TSMC will charge more for chips made outside of Taiwan, possibly making devices more expensive"
The demand for chips needed in data center to power cloud services, predominantly made up of new AI services has increased chipmaker TSMC's revenue quite a bit. The company reported a 16.5% increase in net revenue on the year and an 8.9% increase in net income. That beats expectations and TSMC says it continues to expect high demand for its chips made on 3- and 5-nanometer processes. AKA, the chip industry is back in the black and rising. Meanwhile TSMC says it will have to charge more for chips if a company requests they be made at one of TSMC's factories outside of its home country of Taiwan. That's because it costs more to make chips outside of Taiwan for multiple reasons including labour and materials.
"US Air Force confirms first successful AI dogfight - The Verge"
An AI controlled jet successfully confronted a human pilot in an actual in-air dogfight in September last year. The AI system from DARPA was put on board an experimental X-062A aircraft. A human pilot was on board as a safety but did not have to take control. Successfully confronted does not mean won. DARPA doesn't say who won the fight. No live rounds were fired of course. But the planes did fly within 2,000 feet of each other at 1,200 miles per hour.
For Context
"ChatGPT is a squeeze away with Nothing’s upgraded earbuds | TechCrunch"
It's a little more than linking the ChatGPT app to a headphone squeeze. But not much really.
"Google terminates 28 employees after series of protests: Read the memo"
Google says they went beyond protests and disrupted the work of others during the sit-in. 9 were arrested during the protests. They were not charged.
"Third-party iPhone app store AltStore PAL is now live in Europe - The Verge"
"The free Delta game emulator for iPhones is live on Apple’s App Store - The Verge"
You can get third-party apps from a third-party app store officially in the beta of iOS in Europe from AltStore PAL. It costs €1.50 (plus tax) a year. Also the Nintendo emulator Delta launched on the App Store in Europe.
"Good riddance, WH-XB910N: Sony’s confusing product names are going away"
Sony is revising product names to be understandable by humans for its home audio and TV lines.
Interesting Reads
"Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals - WSJ"
"US Navy Trying Experimental Tech to Help Secure Guam - Bloomberg"
"BREAKING RESEARCH: human hair transformed into renewable energy storage - CSU News"
"Samsung shifts to six-day workweeks to ‘inject a sense of crisis’ - The Verge"