Okay, so this has been through Cypheus prior to the bite. Administration as well. During the Trump Administration Trump had an executive order that wanted to outright ban the app, but it got struck down in the courts. There's been a slew of legal challenges on that executive order.

Then the Biden Administration comes in. They had to redo that executive order set up. Sypheus again. That is why you have this issue we have today.

It really got hobbled up in the court structure. Congress is the one that needs to move and give the authority to the executive branch to make a move on. Tick Tock Right now I know you guys will be speaking to Senator Mark Warner in the next hour. It's his bill in the Senate that has the White House backing that will give the Commerce Department to look into items like Tic Tac not just Tick Tock.

They want to give it broad support. What is interesting about this: This will obviously take months. They need to make sure the house gets on board as well to then send it to the president. and then once it goes to Commerce then Commerce needs to do their review.

This is going to come very close to the 2024 presidential election when Democrats certainly need those young eyeballs on Tick Tock That's where they get their news and these individuals lean liberal and likely would be voting for a Democratic president. That's where I was going to go. and Maria for making life that is very scary that young people get their news from Tick Tock the problem and I also to some extent feel a little concerned about Twitter although less so than Tick Tock Uh, it's just when you get short context information, it's very difficult to actually think critically about the information that's presented. Usually the the stuff that does well on Tick Tock is is very very out of context short term and and uh, dare I say like designed to be viral? Uh, you know and that's fine.

like that's the goal. but I I think the level of quality there is is not. uh, not something we should be very excited about. I Also think it's very interesting that Tick Tock is taking out an insane amount of ads.

Watch this. So check this out. I have this uh this Tick Tock that I put together here and I want you to watch it for a second because it really relates to what's going on with the Tick tock CEO being in Congress uh to to defend this idea that oh, we protect your user data. keep in mind almost every single time that I open up my phone, Tick Tock's begging me to look at my contacts and I don't know how many times I need to tell it no, but it just is begging me to get my contacts and it's really, really annoying.

Uh, and one of the big concerns is Tick Tock says oh well, we only store U.S data in the United States Yeah well, why did the New York Times then find us Tick Tock data on a server and Singapore controlled by China So these are these are just the concerns that people don't really trust Tick Tock And that's a little bit of a problem now. I Want to play this for you because it gives you a little bit of an idea of what Tick Tock is doing now. Part of the reason they're doing what I'm about to show you is because they don't want to lose advertisers. so they're trying to send this signal that.

Don't worry, we are doing everything we can. We will make sure you're safe because there are a lot of advertisers that think oh, we might end up losing our ability to advertise to Americans on Tick Tock and that's not good. We don't want to lose our ability to advertise to Americans on Tick Tock we like Americans on Tick Tock This is, despite the fact that people have been and this has been studied, people have been uh, found to be relatively passive on Tick Tock to where you don't actually get the kind of AD Revenue that you get on YouTube shorts or on Tick Tock because of the mood people are in when they're using short form content and I found this myself as well. So I'll use myself as an example here.

but I really try to avoid doing this because I I find personally I Find the value that I get out of tick tock is probably maybe one to two minutes of value out of an hour of scrolling. But what happens is you get into this this mindset of of just scrolling and from an advertising point of view, you actually become a very passive person. Whereas when you're listening to let's say, a YouTube video, you're not sitting there, usually actively scrolling, You're usually doing something else. like maybe you're typing emails, you're getting ready for your day, you're getting dressed, you're driving somewhere, or whatever.

But because you're also so capable of doing something else without constantly having to change the video every you know 30 seconds. you're also capable of getting yourself life insurance in as little as five minutes by going to Metcaven.com life, or getting to all free stocks with Weeble by going to Metcaven.com Free. You know, interacting with a paid sponsorship. Uh, that is different than what you get on on Tick Tock So advertisers are already worried about the the revenue that they can pull off of Tick Tock.

Uh, and now they're worried. Are we just gonna totally lose that partnership? Because one thing that you can do well on Tick Tock is brand advertising. This is really talking up a brand. Uh, rather than expecting some form of direct response like somebody going to a link like Met Kevin.com Life or Metcaven.com free or or the programs like that, but whatever, right? All right, let's listen to this Tick Tock here because uh, the one that I made because I think it's uh, enlightening about what's going on.

Watch this. Tick Tock Just did. So there's been a lot of talk about banning Tick Tock. There have even been bills introduced to ban Tick Tock because people are worried that Tick Tock is farming our location and contact data and selling it to the Chinese Communist party where Tick Tock's parent company Bite Dance is based.

This right. Here is today's print edition of The New York Times. It is the paper version of the newspaper. They make money selling ads and it's pretty typical to see full page ads like this is a full page ad right here.

It's very expensive, but what's not pretty typical to see is when we go to the middle a full page ad from Tick Tock solely talking about privacy. But it's not just a full page ad from Tick Tock in the primary, a section of the paper, It's actually a whole centerfold about taking our data concerns seriously. A whole four-page section on this me thinks thou protest too much. oh I can't believe what Tick Tock just did.

Yeah, so it's basically this argument of uh Hey like wow, that's a lot of effort y'all putting out there Tick Tock which which is fine, but uh, that's a that's a lot of an ad in the New York Times and that's just the New York Times Now uh, another thing to consider is that the monetization value from a data point of view for Tick Tock is deemed to be about one-third that of Facebook and just one fifth of that of Instagram Uh, The Tick Tock CEO is testifying before Congress today about uh, you know he's going to have to answer questions about hey basically like why why should we not ban you right Tick Tock has about 150 million users in America and Tick Tock changed? Uh, really? the way social media and video really worked I mean they were transformative in this idea of people using uh, short form content and I find it very interesting to look at the forecasts and projections and and the growth rates of people using Tick Tock uh versus people using saying say Snapchat or Facebook The uh The Economist put together a fantastic piece on this data. I Really enjoyed it. Uh, the uh. The chart basically shows when I show it to you this decline of a Facebook viewership a while.

At the same time, we see a rise in viewership on Tick Tock The problem is uh, that or maybe for Tech talk If there is any problem, even that growth is slowing down a little bit. take a look here at the chart. So here you've got a time spent per day in minutes and then this is the 18 to 24 year old age group and you can see Tick Tock over here I Had a lot more of an explosion in 2019, but then you had an inflection point here where that slope slowed again. In 21, the slopes slowed again.

at 22, the slopes load and again, it's expecting to slow in 2023.. So there's really a limit. You're approaching some form of limit to how much people are going to be able to want to watch Facebook But at the same time as that limit is being approached, Instagram and Snapchat are sitting roughly flat and Facebook is in Decline. Now that's not too terribly much of a surprise.

You could see that uh actually throwing out a little bit more clearly. even in this age group here 25 to 34. you could see Tech talk. The orange line is growing very nicely Instagram somewhat slowly Snapchat flat and Facebook down these charts.

Uh, thank you to the Uh The Economist for them. but uh, Tick Tock basically directly takes time away from people using these other platforms. The problem is they they don't create as much advertising value. The advertising spend per hour for Instagram is expected to go up to an approach about two dollars of advertising spending per hour of content watched.

whereas Tick Tock is not really expect to take seed about 40 cents per The Economist Uh now uh. It's also worth noting that Tick Tock expects to make about sixty seven dollars off of every single American user. Uh, this year Instagram is expected to make about two hundred dollars So if you use both Tick Tock and Instagram you're worth 67 bucks and uh 200 respectively. Uh, currently.

Uh, the uh monetization is expected to improve for all these products as well. Although then again, for YouTube, we were told that YouTube shorts would be somehow game changingly profitable for YouTube content creators. And and the amount of money that YouTube Shorts create is a joke. Uh, I mean there was this idea that oh, maybe if uh, YouTube shorts actually generate good Revenue people would be motivated to make better short form content like better quality stuff.

But the reality is, no, there's like no money in in shorts, it's it's almost a waste of time. But anyway, uh, there's uh. let's see here, the uh The Economist makes the argument that, uh, that maybe ad Revenue will improve because right now these platforms are still relatively quote unquote. immature.

Uh, they suggest a reference to Facebook where Instagram stories took a while for advertisers to sign up, but now it's a big money earner stories. Although in stories, it seems like people are a little bit more active in actually responding uh, now, uh yeah. Unfortunately though, the uh, the ads that you get on on a short form video are almost always going to be less valuable than that. On a say, five to eight to ten minute YouTube video.

Uh, so uh, looks like about 40 of all Meta's advertisers, about 10 million different brands. That's why I'll use Instagram reels for ads now. It's pretty impressive. So there's a suggestion that maybe there could be a coming shift over to some more uh advertising for these shorts.

However, uh, more than two dozen governments have now placed uh, track, uh, basically now banned uh, Tick tock on uh, government phones and government devices. Uh, and the reason for that is there's an argument perhaps that Tick Tock can be watching and recording you uh, while, uh, what? while you're you're basically performing other tasks on your phone. uh, whether that's uh, you know, logging into your bank account or or or going and browsing through other websites. Apparently, there's this potential risk that tracking pixels are following you around to all of these other websites when you're using your phone.

Uh, now some say uh, that this is exactly the reason why Tech talk needs to be banned. of course. I think you can regulate this? Uh, but uh, this could also just be sort of like a China versus America like we're angry. A disaster.

But really, uh, I think uh, given the the drama that we're about to see unfold in Congress with Tick Tock uh, I I Think the idea is that Tick Tock's probably not going to go away. Uh, it's probably going to remain, even if it ended up getting worse. Case spun off into sort of a quote-unquote Us-owned entity with data more strictly controlled in the United States I Don't see Tick Tock fully going away even though some some governments are starting to ban their Uh employees and and officials from actually having tick tock on their phones. and that's fine.

but uh, you know this. Uh, this space is still relatively new. It's interesting though, because uh, it's the amount of content that gets produced on Tick Tock that doesn't generate a lot of Revenue is actually surprising at some point the hope is because people are so captive on on Tick Tock that maybe it will end up driving a lot of Revenue the future we'll see. But that gives you a little bit of an update on some of, uh, the madness that's going on with uh with Tick Tock Some speculation about whether maybe uh, Microsoft or Oracle will end up snagging Tech talk and basically taking control of tick tock us from bite from bite dance.

Uh, we'll see for now. I I Don't know how big of a deal it is I mean I have Tick Tock Hey, maybe you know what? Maybe the trick is, everybody just needs to have two different phones. You know, one that you could use tick tock on and one that you use for everything else. That's it.

Every household needs a tick tock phone. Yeah, how about that? That's the phone you're allowed to use if you want to go on. Tick Tock Uh, this by the way, is the Wall Street Journals Review of U.S State government websites use Tick Tock trackers. Review finds: More than two dozen governments have placed web tracking code made by Tick Tock on their official websites, so this is a little different from spying on your phone.

Uh, some say that Tick Tock can actually like turn on the camera to your phone without you knowing to get what your reaction is to certain content to determine whether or not to feed you more of that content. When we're talking about tracking pixels, we're usually talking about a section of code that you can take from Tick Tock like as an Advertiser and purposefully embed into websites that you control. And then there are little plugins that you could run to see. Hey, which websites are actually using that tracking pixel? Uh, and it's actually pretty useful for the purposes of retargeting ads.

And I Suppose it's possible that if let's say the IRS wanted to run ads about, you know, make sure you don't cheat on your taxes on Tick Tock They probably want to put a tracking pixel in because they'd probably hire an advertising firm that would Implement that tracking pixel. But anyway, a review of more than 3 500 websites, organizations, and government entities by a Toronto based company a Fee Root Security found the so-called tracking pixels from Tick Tock were present in 30 government websites across 27 States including some states where the app had been banned. Presence of the code means the U.S Governments around the country are inadvertently participating in the data collection efforts of a foreign owned company I Think this foreign owned company thing sometimes is a little uh, but fear-mongery I I Don't know how really terrible it is. It's like oh no, you know China has some of my data I Think that sounds a lot more scary than it is and there's a there is a privacy element I Do think it's worth, uh, being able to consent and control that data I Think that's very important, right? If I want to be able to share stuff with my contacts on Tick Tock I should be able to opt in or opt out I Do think it's annoying that basically every time they I open the app, I have to deny access to my contacts because they want it so badly.

It just makes me a little bit more concerned. like what are you going to do with it. But anyway, Tick Tock has previously emphasized its user data is stored in the US not China right? But we've also seen that data in Singapore controlled by the Chinese Communist party. so the data has certainly made its way out of the U.S Now with some of the arguments here that oh well, those were just backups.

Oh okay, all right. uh. Anyway, so so this Wall Street Journal piece goes into a little bit of this uh uh, tracking code here and then of course, uh The Tick Tock CEO will be testifying in Congress today. Uh, against the Banning of Tick tock in America China and Russia routinely deploy shell companies and proxies to extract marketing and consumer information from advertising exchanges that display ads according to people familiar with the matter.

In many such cases, data can be used to obtain precise geolocations of devices based on location information in the apps see. That's also a little weird if they could sort of track your information like your location around. I Think that's that's where privacy concerns. Elevate Even more, uh, or you start getting access to potentially banking information or financial information.

the uh, the Uh tracking data information I think has always been very fascinating. Uh, think about this. The US government might not be able to track your phone per se, like may not technically be able to go into a computer and say, give me the location of Kevin's phone and now I'm gonna track it. but they would be able to zoom in essentially on a heat map to my home and uh, find.

Oh look, there are two or three phones in that house. Because there are three. You know, geolocations we're getting. Let's just track those three and Kevin's probably one of those you know? And so it's It's kind of scary.

Uh, how how your data and your location can be tracked? Uh, very well. And I think the biggest concern about privacy when it comes to things like this is we just don't know yet, right? We just don't know yet what the data is being used for. For example, somebody here writes: Dreamer Spring Walks rights. it's a foreign country using your data, not in your best interest.

Yeah, you're probably right. and I think that's the thing is, we have almost this potentially dangerous apathy towards. well, like, what does it matter if it has some of my data? uh, you know. uh, let's see.

I agree I hate that it tries to get me to text message people my videos. yeah I mean they do want to make it viral to spread the stuff, but you're right. In order to do that, they want your contacts and those numbers. Uh, come on now.

like people even know about a code and if they did, 95 of them still wouldn't use it. I Well I think you I mean regarding the tracking pixel? Well, that's advertising companies using that. Yeah, it's it's to contain metadata exactly looking at some of your content here. Uh, the in-app editor is nicer.

Yes, uh, yes, uh that. The Tick Tock in-app editor is pretty good. You aren't really missing anything if you don't have Tick Tock I mean I hate to say it. but I I agree with that I really agree with that I I think uh providing value on uh on on YouTube is uh is so much more of a conversation and and deep based perspective whereas usually on shorter form media content you just get Snippets of information.

uh like I'm gonna show something here and this is not to be political but I know it's gonna probably piss some people off. but I think 95 percent of you are going to look at this and go I mean that's a reasonable you know? uh uh. explanation potentially of uh of uh, you know, uh of where we might want to be a little bit more jaded, right? So so y'all have heard about the the Trump indictment right? and I'm gonna keep this one very very brief. Well uh, the idea is that uh, basically Donald Trump uh paid money to Michael Cohen who set up various different entities uh and then paid Stormy Daniels off for hush money and again, this video is not designed to be about Trump So I'm going to keep it very very short.

but what? I think about short form content on sort of the topic of tick tock uh what? I think about short form content is you get Snippets like this. So here's this guy who pretty much only covers stuff that's super pro right? I haven't seen something Pro left ever. But anyway, so this guy Benny Johnson New bombshell document destroys Manhattan's District Attorney case against Trump 2018 Letter from Michael Cohen's lawyer to the Federal Elections Commission declares Cohen used his own personal funds to pay Stormy Daniels Trump Camp not party to transaction, did not reduce or reimburse Cohen for payment. it's over and makes this argument that basically this is over like like there's no case against Donald Trump anywhere you know.

but but like I hate to be jaded and I'm not I'm not here. This is a this is a video. This is a segment about Tick Tock Okay, and in this segment about Tick Tock I Just want to talk about like logic and perspective, not about left or right. Okay, so it's not about politics, just about logic.

So from a logic point of view, looking at this from a logic point of view. First of all, the source of this letter allegedly is the lawyer for Michael Cohen. So Michael Cohen is is who has already been punished for this. Uh is is the source of this document.

Uh and uh it. And so there's this potential that what if if Michael Cohen was always set up to be potentially the Fall Guy for this Uh and they knew they would be the Fall Guy for this, which is why we ended up with the conviction against Michael Cohen. Is it not possible that yes, hush money could have been paid by Donald Trump or somehow to Stormy Daniels and this letter is maybe potentially slightly untruthful? We we don't exactly know we know there's a segment in here that says uh, neither the Trump organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction. Uh, where Cohen was potentially reimbursed directly or indirectly? That's fine.

But what about Donald Trump Personally, you see what I mean Like, there can be holes here. See, neither the Trump organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction. Okay, well, was Donald Trump's trust Maybe Donald Trump's Family Trust was a party to the organization of reimbursing Michael Cohen right? And so my point is. and then like, dude, come on.

Any any person can write highly confidential on their document to make it seem more official, right? I could do that. I I could send you an email back and go hey, here's a bundle coupon and put highly confidential on it. Like anybody could put highly confidential on it. Okay, so my point is I think short form content.

Uh, while it's really fun to go to sleep with, I think often. Uh, and it frustrates me about Twitter frustrates me about uh, about uh Tick Tock or shorts is you tend to lack that sort of nuance and even just asking the question raising the question, right? Uh, so I I think it's uh I think it's very interesting to just actually think about sort of just on the Note briefly of that short form content. uh is uh, you know that same person wrote a message on Tick Tock the same person and uh, suggested that in 2018 Stormy Daniels said she never had an affair with Trump. In fact, she said it was all made up to get the money.

Stormy lost her lawsuit against Trump and was ordered to pay him 300K for legal fees. So what's interesting here is that she has obviously argued that well, she made that statement under duress. but this, of course, this person doesn't mention her argument that that was made under duress. which is fine.

Maybe she's she's either lying then or she's lying now, right? Like somewhere there's a lie. it was either them. Now we know that something's fishy here, but we also know that when you say that she made it up and lost her lawsuit, it implies that a judge actually ruled she was a liar, but that's not actually what a judge ruled. So I replied and I said the lawsuit was about defamation regarding Trump's tweets about her which were rightfully protected by the First Amendment which was why she lost the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was not about whether or not the affair occurred. Of course, somebody replies because she admitted there was no Affair Well, again, she's admitted to both directions and I'm not trying to take sides, just trying to say the short form content never gives you the depth of information that I think is actually required to have a full understanding of of.