TikTok C.E.O. Shou Chew on China, the Algorithm and More

please welcome Andrew Ross Sorkin and his guest the CEO of tick tock show chew [Applause] shochu is here thank you so much thank you for coming all the way here uh to spend some time with us this afternoon as we try to better understand Tick Tock amid all of the headlines as you know so well um that include National Security issues which we talked about here this morning with the treasury secretary as well as the world of creators and and what Tick Tock is going to be and what you want it to be I want to start if we could uh just with a little bit of your own personal background because more than a decade ago you were an intern at Facebook interestingly enough and you were a student at Harvard Business School and I just wonder if you ever imagined that you were going to end up running they are now biggest competitor well the short answer is no absolutely not um so I'm show I'm from Singapore I'm very jet-lagged because I flew from Singapore it is 20 hours away um I'm a father of two I'm 40 years old and about 10 years ago I um was in China and I met with two young entrepreneurs two young engineers and they were starting a company they recognized a an opportunity to build a good product that people wanted started building a product I had a chance to invest in them and became friends and slowly you know like any good startup Story the product grew bigger and bigger and you know today it's become the size of a tick tock and whatever we have today so that's been a journey it's been unbelievable I couldn't have imagined 10 years ago that it would be of this scale today let's go straight if we could sure to sort of the large headline that I think it is perhaps the cloud that's over to understand how you think about it uh because there has not a lot of bipartisan support for for most things uh here in the US as you know but there seems to be uh some bipartisan agreement around tick tock and what is perceived as the danger of it and this idea that it is ultimately controlled by the Chinese and therefore the Chinese government what what is that what when you hear that headline what do you think I think first of all that we take all these concerns very seriously we have been studying them and for the last couple of years we've been working with cypheus and uh oh with our Engineers to try and solve what we think is a very solvable solvable problem the problem that we have um you know can really requires third party verification and it requires transparency and the solution that we have built you must have read about this is called project Texas that's the project name internally and the idea is that we will take the data that you have in Virginia and in Singapore where Tick Tock user data is stored today move it into a third-party Cloud infrastructure and in this case we have chosen Oracle to be our partner because they have strong capabilities and security they are providing software assurances as well to the code that's inside and we have rigorous data access protocols such that only a team made up of U.S residents can have access to that to that U.S data so again it's a solvable problem now we have built what I think is an unprecedented solution to try and solve this problem it's extremely expensive to build it's incredibly challenging to do it but that's a commitment to when addressing some of these questions let me ask you this so this this is FBI uh leader Chris because Chris Ray to the house Homeland Security committee he said he's quote extremely concerned that under Chinese law Chinese companies are required to do whatever the Chinese government wants them to do in terms of sharing information or serving as a tool of the Chinese government what happens in the reality behind the scenes in terms of how this actually works or happens so the FBI director through his team through cyphius is has um access to the discussions and and the plans that we are building to solve and address this problem and I'm very confident that this will address the concerns that he has raised now for us you know no U.S no foreign government has asked us for U.S user Data before really to happen and if they did we would say no we have a transparency report that we publish every quarter like most other consumer internet companies and in the report will spell out the details of the various data requests that various governments around the world have asked of the citizens of their country and we want to make it very transparent so you can keep your eye on that report to see you know the the kind of requests that we are disclosing one of the things though that people wonder about is the algorithm the famous algorithm I want to get into how how well that algorithm works but the idea that you can separate the algorithm and the technology completely and utterly in the United States versus having to be somehow connected to China the algorithm is separate today the code is also separate at this point in time it's machine learning so the algorithm is trained by input and Tick Tock that operates doesn't operate in China take operators here in the US operates in many other countries around the world and that's the input that is training that algorithm so the algorithm is very separate but so our understanding that the original algorithm was a bite dance algorithm you think is is is is is old news this is uh this is definitely very outdated there is some original code I think that's what you meant there's some original code but the code has been split up ages ago how much influence and power do you think you have at the company and the reason I asked is there's actually a New York Times article that raised this very question um and the uh the argument was that effectively you are at the behest of the folks at bite dance and therefore at the behest of the Chinese government I am responsible for all the Strategic decisions at tiktok but I do want to explain by dance because you raised it it is organized the way you would expect an internet company to be organized about half hour investors on the cap table are Global Investors folks like Carlisle BlackRock General Atlantic we have a board the made up of shareholder Representatives so for example a representative from General Atlantic from Sequoia from code 2 and from Sig which is a financial software firm a very early investor in the company they constitute the board together with Ruble who represents their employees so it is organized exactly what you would expect an internet technology company to be organized and for me I I'm responsible for the decisions at Tick Tock but ultimately I have to be responsible to the shareholders into the board as well so what are we supposed to make there have been reports that there were Chinese who had access maybe not U.S consumers but others along the way access to what access to accounts uh well first of all we have very rigorous data access protocols just like any other consumer internet company in the past data access is organized by requirement every company does this including some of the companies you interviewed today what this means is that if you're an engineer and you have a global talent pool and you require access to some data to build a part of your product you have to request that access and it's based on requirement you know there's a strict protocol do you need it or not if you do requirement is granted access is granted nobody organizes this by nationality nobody goes you know this nationality that National nobody organizes it like that but that's in the past in the future we're going to organize it the way I just described it we're going to move the data to the Oracle Cloud infrastructure and only a team of U.S residents are going to have access to that data this is again like I said a solution that no other company is trying to pursue you made a an interesting comment about the U.S version of tick tock being very different than the Chinese version effectively the US version is different from the UK version but let me ask you this the Chinese version You could argue is censored you agree with that Italian has to follow Chinese throwing is the Chinese company that organ that has the short video product Darwin has to follow Chinese media laws and so when you think about those media laws and then you think about what you're doing here in the U.S one of the things that those media laws are trying to do for example is to prevent children from getting addicted to scrolling on tick tock in the U.S that doesn't exist should it first of all we take minus safety extremely seriously one of the first things I did what I took on this role was to make sure that minor safety is at the top of the list in terms of safety and priority of the company now I also want to describe how the platform actually works please it's user generator content so the content that you're going to see is generated by users here in the US and in the UK and other places where Tick Tock operates we do have rules the way Tech Talk Works is that we do have about 13 rules we call these rules Community guidelines is published on a website you can go have a look and these are rules on what content we allow and this allow on the platform these are things like no pornography no violence no misinformation and we build our trust and safety team to take these roles build policies around them and operationalize it so that we can go through all the content and remove the violative content so that's the way the platform works so far you've managed to I don't think you were keeping it from happening but the way the site is designed you're not really in the news business yet there's not a lot of news if you will on Tic Tac do you ever think I am see so we have news but do you see over time I mean a lot of the issues frankly and we talked about Mark Zuckerberg earlier that he has struggled with that Elon Musk is contending with relates to the news business relates to information in a different way right I I think every company has a different Mission every company is different the mission that we have is to inspire creativity and to bring joy and the product that we have built is a product that is built to fulfill this Mission so that means that you know there's news content Inspire creativity yes does it bring joy yes and that's the kind of content that we have built our product to try and optimize for but are you starting to see more political there will be content and and people talk about the presidential election of 2024 I mean how much do you think about that and then all of the information or misinformation or you know we're talking with Mark Zuckerberg about deep there was a deep fake of him there are various topics here on misinformation it violates our guidelines so we do have a very significant large investment in making sure that we're tackling misinformation so that you know is one of the guidelines that that's very dear to us in terms of political content we don't actually accept political ads and as far as I know we are the only platform of our skill that doesn't allow that because we don't think that this necessarily you know helps us fulfill our mission you know does it Inspire creativity does it bring joy so we've decided that political ads are not necessarily for us if um anyone wants to come and express their view as long as it doesn't violate the commit the 13 guidelines that we've laid down you can express whatever view you want and you're going to see you know SL platform achieves ubiquity and it's loved by millions of people in this country you're going to see all sorts of views appear on the platform what do you think of the metaverse I think it's too early to tell do you do you imagine ever investing in that space I think um I think new technology is that technology is fascinating and you can imagine interesting and useful use cases in the metaverse but at the same time where we are in terms of the adoption curve is so early that I think you know we need to proportionately give it that sort of weight in terms of Investments and of course you know with any of these new formats and Technology we pay a lot of attention to it but our assessment is that it's still quite early at this point in time what do you think about we've talked about it practically now at every session what do you think about a tick tock I'm not I'm sorry you are tick tock I think it's great what do you think about Twitter and what's happening there I'm following the news like I guess all of us on Twitter are you on Twitter I am on Twitter um I'm following the news as well I think look Elon is a very successful entrepreneur he's making changes at the company uh we I think it's early too early to tell what the changes will lead to but we're paying a lot of attention are you surprised that all those advertisers aren't staying on the platform I don't know the details of what the conversations there uh but I do think that platforms need to invest in trust and safety I I think platform safety is something that's incredibly important so you have two kids I do do they use tick tock no they're too young for that so what what ages are they uh eight and six okay Tick Tock is here in the US if you're below the ages of if you're below 13 you get a very restricted version of tech talk and in many other countries around the world we don't allow users for below 13. even if you are a teenager you know we provide we have invested in a lot of tools for the parents of the teenagers to be able to have more control of the experience that the teenage children are having we've also invested a significant amount in understanding the issues that could arise from sort of a Teenage use and making sure we're investing enough to address those concerns as well now if you're a parent here and your teenage child is on Tick Tock go to settings there's family pairing click on it it's going to give you a lot of tools to manage your your teenagers experience what do you think a reasonable amount of time is that people should spend on tick tock I think people should have freedom to spend as much time as they want on anything to be honest but as far as I know we were the first platform to start pushing out messages if you spend too much time on the platform so it depends on your age it depends on the time of the day I'm not I'm not sure how many of you use tick tock here okay I think you got a lot of there's Wi-Fi by the way for those who haven't you can find it on the App Stores in the App Store um where was I uh if you yeah depending on your age and depending on the time of the day we will send you messages to tell you to get off the platform so if you hit one of those messages what's the limit there then there is no heart limit per se but uh once you cross a certain amount of time again depending on the time of day we'll start telling you look maybe it's time to get out I know it's a secret sauce but can you tell us how the algorithm actually works because I think everybody I mean no no it's fascinating how uh frequently it is sending you stuff that you want to see it's and whether that's a good thing by the way uh it's it's just math that's what it is the way uh the way the machine learning algorithm works is that it takes all your behavioral signals which is built into your own experience you're using the app like for example how long you stay on a video how quickly you swipe it do you share it do you comment do you like it it takes those behavioral signals it organizes it mathematically and it matches it with content that matches of your behavior and through that we give you um we give you uh we recommend the content the machine recommends the content to you to your question there's also dispersion mechanisms so that you're not seeing the same thing all the time of course there is um when you think though um about what this is going to be in the future what do you want it to be I mean if we were talking five years from now is this a entertainment company is it a media platform a social media plan what what is this I go back to the mission of the company which is to inspire creativity and to bring joy the the creativity that we mean here is not the narrow definition of just creating a short video what we are hoping to achieve is to unleash human creativity you know through connecting people and through discovery of new new information the way we want to do it is we want to provide three things to our users we want to provide a window to discover the the for you page if you open the app the first thing that you see looks like a window and the recommendation algorithm helps you discover new content so that's the window you know it's like think of it as a window to explore in A Whole New World we then want to provide a canvas for you to create and the canvas is for YouTube you know through our investments in all these effects and filters and you know generation capabilities allow you to publish and express yourself and of course we have the guidelines that we talked about to make sure that it remains a safe environment so that you can feel very safe to publish content again Inspire others and the last thing is Bridges to connect people and this is really fascinating because what we have discovered over time is that through our app people have discovered their communities it can be very trivial like if you're a dog lover you're going to see a lot of dogs if you don't like cats you're not going to see cats if you're a cat lover you're going to see a lot of cats but it could also be important things like there's something called book talk are you aware of it I do know about book talk a book talk has the last time I checked 70 billion views globally is a movement where people post about their favorite books and I read somewhere that it's become one of the most important Trends that's causing young people to read more which I think is great it's given a voice to a lot of minority authors who never had their voice before you know it's about discovering it's about connecting people and finding the community you have and some people build businesses around this you know I've met I've met this uh guy his name is Brian moved from New York to Tennessee I met him in Nashville he used to be a photographer and during covet he was he just he was sick of living in the city because it was lockdowns so he moved the net to to Nashville and he started farming and through that through posting on Tick Tock he discovered a community of people like him you know sort of urban dwellers who had discovered this urge to reconnect with nature and Farm and through this you know he's built a proper business he's selling like his agricultural products on right now you know it's about bridges that we are providing to connect people together and you have millions of these stories all around the country every day um I do want to open up to questions and we only had a couple more minutes and I see a hand I see Bill Ackman actually uh right there in the middle if we can get a microphone uh to Bill that would be great and then we'll try to get around the rest of the room as quickly uh as we can so I think Tick Tock is an amazing product and and Company and it sounds like you care a lot about the content uh that served in the product but I'm aware of some sort of personal tragedies that come from people who spent time on Tick Tock so for example a lot of young women in particular young girls have eating disorders that came about as a result of content on Tick Tock were you know bad it's hard for me to speak because of the echo but so that's one example another example is teenage vaping for example where promotion of teenage vaping as a way to lose weight or as something that's cool Etc how do you think about moderating that kind of content which is not pornography it's not on your list of issues but really can cause profound harm first of all as a father of two children myself whenever I hear about these tragedies like it's heartbreaking a lot of these trends that you talked about have have existed before our platform existed but I think we have a responsibility to invest more to make sure that any of these Trends or any of these type of content that is not suitable for young people is given the right amount of investment to be moderated off the platform we have a differentiated experience if you are below 18 on the platform and I think a lot more investment you know needs to go into that to stay ahead of our growth go ahead sir hello oh there we go you're good uh thank you Andrew for picking a long time fan um I also just arrived from Asia actually we might be the only two coming from Asia I'm coming from Vietnam I also actually own a media company that has the same license as Tick Tock in Vietnam uh tick tock's the only major platform to actually have an office in Vietnam Facebook doesn't or meta Google doesn't they operate from Singapore mostly for data reasons which just leads me to my question um we're talking a lot about U.S data privacy and users um how do you guys operate in other countries a country like Vietnam which is 100 million people it's one of the largest markets for tick tock today all the data on uh all the tick tock user data is stored in Virginia and in Singapore but increasingly in the future we expect data localization to be to be a thief I think data security is important some of these concerns rates are concerns that we have looked into deeply and I think we're a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of investing in data localization and uh I think in the future you know of course um it's not going to be in every single country but data belonging to certain regions are going to be localized in that region I think this is a long-term trend I think we have one more question here it's the finale hi uh Maggie Wilder thank you so much for being here uh one of the questions I had was based upon what you just spoke about you mentioned a number of countries that they are able to have kids watch Tick Tock and experience it at 13. but you said in the United States there's an exception like a different app that takes it down into younger children why do you do that in the U.S it is a legal requirement it is a legal requirement to provide to not to provide uh people are below a certain age in this case under 13 a different app so you'll see this is why all consumers apps have a under 13 experience in the US I'm sorry I think what she's asking it's actually very interesting is why have the app at all I have two uh 12 year old boys who actually are in this room uh by the way right now they they have used Tick Tock guys I don't know where they are um where are they right over here guys and uh they didn't they didn't lie about their age and that you you definitely didn't maybe he did he says um I don't know if that's on me or not um but what do you think of that um just the idea that should this exist for for for kids who are under 13 at all I can share I can share more details with you offline but this is a legal requirement in the United States yeah yes just to just to help help end this uh piece of the conversation I guess the question is I know that you said it's a legal requirement that that kids under 13 have to have a different app effectively but I guess the question is do they have to have an app at all could you limit it so that it that the kids couldn't have access to it is that something you'd ever think about I I the last time I checked no the answer is no like as in terms of the legal requirement doesn't allow me to do this uh but I can get back to you on this okay um final question just for all of us uh old folk who don't know any better who should we be following on Tick Tock oh please follow me I have I have uh I only have 10 000 followers so please follow me follow Andrew as well I'm sure he's gonna I'm sure he's great thank you very very much thank you appreciate it thank you everybody thank you

Channel: New York Times Events

Views: 804,944

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Id: EE5Pcz99JFI

Length: 25min 35sec (1535 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 01 2022