Bytes: Week in Review — TikTok shutdown, Biden’s AI policies and Zuckerberg asks Trump for a favor
Marketplace Tech
American Public Media
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
On this week’s Marketplace “Tech Bytes,” we’ll dive into President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence plus a request Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made to President-elect Donald Trump. But first, tech news site The Information reported that TikTok plans to completely shut down its app in the U.S. on Sunday and will instead direct users to a website where they can read about the platform’s ban. According to that reporting, TikTok will allow American users to download their data — and, if the ban is overturned down the road, those users will be granted access to it immediately. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams is joined by Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, to break down these stories.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | TikTok, AI, and the EU, some of the topics for the big tech headlines this week. |
| 0:07.6 | From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Kimberly Adams. |
| 0:24.8 | It's Friday, which means it's time for Marketplace Techbytes. We're going to dive into Biden's executive order on AI and a request Mark Zuckerberg made to President-elect Donald Trump. |
| 0:33.1 | But first, earlier this week, Tech News site The Information reported that TikTok plans to completely |
| 0:39.2 | shut down its app in the U.S. this Sunday and will instead direct users to a website where |
| 0:44.7 | they can read about the platform's ban. According to that reporting, TikTok will allow American |
| 0:49.9 | users to download their data, and if the ban is overturned down the road, those users will be |
| 0:55.5 | granted access to it immediately. To help digest these big tech headlines of the week, I'm joined |
| 1:01.1 | by Maria Curie, tech policy reporter at Axios. I think the important thing to note with this is that |
| 1:07.0 | the law itself does not require TikTok to take any of these actions. What the law says is that |
| 1:13.5 | unless TikTok finds a new parent company that does not have ties to China in the way that |
| 1:19.9 | BytDance does, that the app stores, you know, Google, Apple, that these companies will simply have to |
| 1:26.4 | remove the app from their app stores so that people |
| 1:29.5 | don't have access to them. And so I think that this decision by TikTok to have some, you know, |
| 1:34.9 | a pop-up come up and say this is what the ban entails. This is what you could do with your data |
| 1:39.0 | is really a nod toward the incoming administration and and what Trump might be able to do to save this app. If |
| 1:46.2 | you know, Trump on day one, you know, the app, the ban takes place January 19th. Trump comes in |
| 1:52.2 | January 20th. If Trump comes in on January 20th and saves the app, I think that will be a very strong |
| 1:57.7 | signal for his administration as well as, you know, TikTok's |
| 2:01.0 | partnership with the incoming administration. |
| 2:03.7 | Now, this week, a lot of us were waiting for a decision from the Supreme Court, but while |
| 2:09.0 | people have been waiting, a lot of folks have been flocking to other apps, especially Red Note, |
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