Reid riffs on tech journalism and the TikTok ban

In this episode, Aria asks Reid about the roles and responsibilities of technology journalists, along with his thoughts on the TikTok ban (recorded before President Biden signed the TikTok Ban bill into law). For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Reid Hoffman?

  I'm Reid Hoffman.

• 0:02Aria Finger?

  And I'm Aria Finger.

• 0:03Reid Hoffman?

  Too often, when we talk about the future, it's all doom and gloom.

• 0:08Aria Finger?

  Instead, we want to sketch out the brightest version of the future and what it will take to get there. We're talking about how technology and humanity can come together to create a better future.

• 0:21Reid Hoffman?

  This is possible.

• 0:24Aria Finger?

  We love the community that we're building with this show, and we hear you. You've asked for more of Reid's takes. So, starting this season, every other week, Reid will be in the hot seat. I get to ask him a few questions in the spirit of the previous week's episodes and get his thoughts on the latest on AI, technology, and the future. So Reid, I'd love to know what, in your view, is the primary role and responsibility of a technology reporter like Kara Swisher? Like, where are the lines between sharing personal opinion, being highly critical of those with power, but also thinking positively about the future?

• 1:05Reid Hoffman?

  Well, it's a great question. And, you know, one of the reasons why I've been a fan of Kara's for many years is I do think that it's important to always have people speaking truth to power. And obviously, you know, major technology founders, companies, et cetera, have a lot of power these days. And, and so I think it's important to have people criticizing them, including, as has happened over the years, criticizing me, which is, I think, a very good thing. And I think it's one of the good things. And I think people who get overly bent out of shape about the criticism, you know, are really being thin-skinned, very narrowly self-interested, and a bunch of other things. So I think it's a good thing to have the criticism. Now, that being said, I also share a frequent frustration within the tech industry

• 1:50Reid Hoffman?

  that when all you have is criticism, it actually does a lot of harm. It says, "Just, just bad, just bad," as opposed to, "Well, good and bad, and let's steer towards more of the good and less of the bad." And that doesn't mean it needs to be puffed up or something, but it's like... You know, it's kind of things like people say, well, what has Google ever given me for its use of my data? And the answer is, well, free search, right? Which is pretty handy for a lot of people. Similarly, it's like, well, I'm recording the evils of big tech on my iPhone as I'm doing it. And you're like, well, okay, you know, the iPhone is, is actually in fact, a pretty instrumental thing navigating a whole bunch of places in the world. And like, for example, like a classic one that's a very de jour topic amongst a lot

• 2:34Reid Hoffman?

  of areas is how technology creates, you know, kind of mental health issues, loneliness, et cetera. And I think there are some issues that are real there and need to be improved. But also on the other hand, by the way, technology creates a lot of connection. You know, you can FaceTime with people and you can share pictures and a bunch of other things. And, and it's like, well, but we see these other mental health issues. Like, yeah, that's the reason why it's a complicated landscape. It's kind of like, if you said, you know, there's a thousand people and 900 of them get better connection and five of them have mental health issues, that's one issue. And if a hundred of them get better connections and a hundred of them had worse mental health issues, that's a different issue. And people are unprecise in that because they hand, they hang up that one thing.

• 3:16Reid Hoffman?

  And that leads into some of the challenges with journalism because it's like telling that negative story of that one person who, you know, got crushed by this thing and look, it's bad. It's all, well, it really resonates with us as homo narratus, you know, kind of storytellers. But it actually in fact, leads us to very wrong conclusions. And that's one of the things where I, I worry that journalists do have to hold the critical role, but sometimes cloak themselves in it in a way that they go, look, it's, it's, it's not about judgment. And of course, it's convenient if it's not about judgment because if everything you're saying is really negative, it's just like covering the burning buildings or the plane crashes on things, you get more click through and you get, you know, more attention and,

• 4:00Reid Hoffman?

  and so it tells you that you're doing the right thing. Whereas really, just like, for example, there's a role for holding technology leaders accountable to saying, look, what are the things you're doing well and what are the things you're doing wrong? I think it's also holding, you know, tech journalists accountable for what are the things you're doing right and what are the things you're doing wrong? And part of the thing I think that happens too often, wrong within tech journalists, or maybe journalists generally, but certainly tech journalists, is it's all about the wrong and not about the balance of it. For example, when I look at a lot of the subjects that are the choices of journalist ire, take, you know, Meta slash Facebook, you know, if you read through it, it's like, it can't do anything right. Everything it's doing is wrong.

• 4:45Reid Hoffman?

  And you're like, well, but a billion people are using it every day, very voluntarily. There's nothing that really goes into it. And when I talk to a lot of people who are using it, there's a lot of good things that are coming out of it. And so, you know, you almost by definition know that the press coverage is very slanted and stilted and directional for some set of purposes. Now, that being said, I myself have been a critic of Meta in its civic responsibilities and kind of what, how do you interpret freedom of speech? And how does that, you know, play out to it both a virtue, but how do you, how do you manifest it within a media ecosystem of a democracy?

• 5:28Reid Hoffman?

  But I also see all of the wonderful things that it brings. It's that balance of helping us navigate and kind of forming a zeitgeist set of, of opinions and ideas about the current state of things, about where things might move to, where things could possibly move to, is actually, in fact, I think the thing that tech journalism needs to do more of, while it of course, still occupies its critical role.

• 5:55Aria Finger?

  Yeah, it's really interesting. One of our close colleagues, I won't call him out on the pod, but he has a really interesting point about the technology is often disrupting itself. So when people talk about the music industry and, you know, Spotify is terrible because artists used to be able to make money by selling CDs. It's like, well, a hundred years ago, artists couldn't make money anyway because there was no CD, there was no cassette, there was no record player, there was nothing. It's like, we needed that technology to give these people a living and a way to reach the masses, which was really amazing. And that technology has been progressing and, you know, we hope again that. Journalists will hold people accountable, but we'll also see sort of the amazing new things that could happen. And so you, you know, you brought up Facebook, Meta,

• 6:39Aria Finger?

  another social media company that's obviously super in the news is TikTok. And I am, you know, as a, as a mom of kids, like, I'm pretty moved by the fact that we've, we've seen teenagers say, I would pay money every month if no one could use TikTok. Like, I, I feel compelled to use it because I need to, you know, keep up with the Joneses and keep up with my friends. That doesn't seem to me to be a reason to ban something. Maybe there's regulation, maybe there's worries about young people using it, and there should be an over 18, something like that. But I think what is, what is more interesting is the law we have around foreign ownership. And so it seems to be sort of that, that framing is what legislators are talking about

• 7:20Aria Finger?

  when they're talking about TikTok, either, you know, divesting, being banned, it has to change ownership. I would love to know what you think. Like, is this a way you think we should be going with TikTok and not allowing foreign ownership?

• 7:33Reid Hoffman?

  Well, a whole stack of TikTok questions. Let's start with the simplest one, which is, you know, China implements regulation against any foreign tech companies, including the US, to indicate that they can't be, you know, foreign majority owned and have license to operate within China. And so I think the baseline is it's quite fair for any other country to then say, well, of Chinese companies, right? We will then do the same. If you're going to do that to our, our companies and prospective companies, we will do the same to you. Cutting through all of the noise of discussions of shoulds and censorship and preference and all the rest, I think that's a baseline OK thing for any country to do, right? Including the US.

• 8:18Reid Hoffman?

  And that also then makes it not, you know, hypocritical of the US to say, well, actually, in fact, you shouldn't be regulating or banning Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera, in these different countries because we only, we only do that responsively as opposed to a prospectively responsibly. And we think that that kind of general open ecosystem is, is we prefer it, we will do that. So that's, that's kind of point one. Now, point two is I do think that one of the things in terms of all online kind of media spaces is we're learning new things and the presumption that the old world order is the same one that should apply to the new world order.

• 9:02Reid Hoffman?

  When we have these different things of everybody on all the time, you know, through their mobile phones and through these services about how it extends, you know, the Lord of the Flies atmosphere of a school and the prison yard of a school, you know, into the home and all the rest, you know, for these things. And what that means is, I think, needs to be thought of anew. It isn't just like, well, we have these old principles and that's it. We're done. We made those decisions. Like, no, no, what actually in fact happened? And so I'm actually, in fact, pretty sympathetic, like I am in many things, about saying we make decisions about what can children do? And what could they possibly, you know, it's one of the reasons why it's like,

• 9:47Reid Hoffman?

  well, can't drive to a certain time and can't, you know, have guns and can't drink and a bunch of other things to say, look, there's children. Obviously, it's a broad brush measure. Some people are mature enough to make decisions by the age of 14 or 16, and other people aren't mature enough by the age of 30 or 40. But, you know, we kind of say, okay, 18 or 21 in order to do that. And that's the classic kind of broad brush public policy. And I think the notion of saying, look, how should we engage with and be the right level of both protective and selectively opening up that protectiveness to have children decide their own things is, I think, a very good thing. Now, the question is, when you get to TikTok, you're like, well, but there is a good thing about people expressing their voices. There is a good thing about the ability to kind of form community.

• 10:32Reid Hoffman?

  There's a bunch of good things that come out of that. Actually, on TikTok, just like on YouTube, there's a whole bunch of how to information or other kinds of things that are in it. And so you're like, okay, so what does that mean for how we should balance it? Now, Taking restrictions for children makes total sense. And then you have to have some consideration for what that should be. As to your question, I think a lot of parents would also go, shit, I tried to ban TikTok and then my, my kids hate me. I'd kind of rather the government do it. And he's like, ah, it's like, I'm just, I'm just doing that. And so, you know, there may be some responsibility, you know, kind of in form there. And, you know, maybe it's also kind of a question of, as opposed to just kind of like idiosyncratic, it's like, well, what are the attributes that we should say?

• 11:18Reid Hoffman?

  You know, when can children be, you know, part of free form communities? And what are the attributes of the free form communities? Like, you know, is there things where you say, well, like TikTok, it's fine from 3pm to 6pm. Right? You know, and that's great. And that's what it is. And that's, you know, or, or something like, you know, there's a lot of, there's timing variables. There's, you know, kind of what kind of content, uh, kind of regulation, the kind of what kind of adult participation, parental participation, guidance, all of that stuff. I think we should be principled about it versus, you know, ad hoc. And then now, of course, is when someone smart goes, well, read what universe are you living in? We don't seem to do that anywhere else. And he's like, yeah, it's an aspirational goal.

• 12:02Reid Hoffman?

  Like, is the, you know, what we're, what we're trying to get to. And so, as you know, and I think Cher, it's kind of this question of, look, it's not just as it is, you know, hit it with Dick Bennett, but how do we shape it? So it's actually much more positive. I am very attentive to the importance around, you know, mental health issues and everything else. And how do we shape these so that they're more positive? Like, I think one of the fundamental points, whether it's TikTok, but also Meta and Twitter, is not to say, you know, it's like, look, are you saying there's nothing you can do? Like, there's no low hanging fruit to make small modifications? That increase the level of of positive, you know, kind of civic discussion, mental health, et cetera. You're saying there's nothing you can do and you should allow the people who are

• 12:46Reid Hoffman?

  out there running around going, you know, kill the minority X or whatever else. And that's the more important thing to allow, right? It's like, really? Like, let's, let's have this discussion on like, what are some, some, some, and nothing will be perfect, but what are some small things we could do to improve that and figure that out? And that's part of the reason why the, the, the discussion of criticism of these things, I find frustrating when it's like, shut it all down as opposed to both the critics and the proponents saying, look, what are the specific things we would do to improve it? Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It's hosted by Ari Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Sean Young.

• 13:29Reid Hoffman?

  Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Sarah Schlead, Adrian Bain, and Paloma Moreno Jimenez. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.

• 13:39Aria Finger?

  Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Sayida Sapieva, Ian Ellis, Greg Beato, Ben Relis, Parth Patel, and Little Monster Media Company.