In this conversation…
A few days ago, shortly after the TikTok ban was lifted, we recorded this conversation about the dueling algorithmic histories of TikTok and Facebook, the strange mirror world they provide for us to understand US vs. China sentiment, and the crack-in-the-universe moment that RedNote offered the world.
In the time since we recorded, a few major news stories have broken:
TikTok users are reporting that TikTok is now removing comments including #freepalestine and labeling them as “hate speech”1
Meta is under fire for allegedly requiring people to follow the POTUS and VP Instagram accounts2, as well as blurring images that relate to abortion care resources
A new trend on TikTok called “cute winter boots” is being utilized to share information on how to resist the Trump administration (the admin’s anti-immigration efforts in particular)
A Chinese start-up, DeepSeek, released an insanely advanced open source AI model that 1) absolutely trounces American AI efforts across all benchmarks, 2) was funded on a fraction of the resources3 that American companies claim to require, and 3) flies directly in the face of extensive US efforts to limit Chinese competition in the space via chip export restrictions
Fortunately for our new audio engineer (and unfortunately for just, like, the general state of America right now), these new developments did not require any last-minute edits—if anything, they reinforce the arguments underpinning this conversation.
You might even want to listen to this episode and then read the news stories linked above for a more layered and contextual understanding of why these seemingly disparate events are happening right now.
TL;DR: IT’S NAHT GEWD! <3
FaceMash/Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg
“Hot or Not? Website Briefly Judges Looks,” an archived 2003 Harvard Crimson article which features a young Mark Zuckerberg looking appropriately contrite for *checks notes* hacking a college photo directory in the name of humiliating his peers
“The Face of Facebook,” a 2010 profile of Zuckerberg by Jose Antonio Vargas for The New Yorker
Mark Zuckerberg’s online diary, which requires dealing with weird ad features but is technically un-paywalled if you are patient enough!
“The Battle for Facebook,” a 2010 Rolling Stone feature detailing the Zuckerberg-plagiarized-Facebook legal claims
The “History of Facebook” Wikipedia page is very helpful for tracking the timeline of internal (algorithmic, etc.) and external (Zuckerberg drama, etc.) events over the last few decades
“Five Points for Anger, one for a ‘Like’: How Facebook’s Formula Fostered Rage and Misinformation,” by Jeremy B. Merrill and Will Oremus for The Washington Post
“A Whistleblower’s Power: Key Takeaways From the Facebook Papers,” by Cristiano Lima-Strong for The Washington Post
“Facebook’s Lost Generation,” by Alex Heath for The Verge
TikTok/China/Oh No, Won’t Someone Think of The Data™️
“TikTok and the Sorting Hat,” the first of an incredible three-part essay series on TikTok by former product manager and blogger Eugene Wei
“TikTok Is Cringey and That's Fine,” a glimpse into the early years of TikTok by Taylor Lorenz for The Atlantic in 2018
“TikTok Hit With Record Fine for Collecting Data on Children,” a CNN report from early 2019 that should have probably started the scaremongering around data but somehow didn’t, it took another six months
This January 2019 warning from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which is the earliest legitimate article I could find that openly worried about TikTok, China, and American data in a comprehensive way
“What’s Going on With TikTok, China, and the US government?,” a Vox article that came out a full year after TikTok’s data fine
“By More Than two-to-one, Americans Support U.S. Government Banning TikTok,” the Pew Research stat mentioned in this episode
“US Increasingly Alone in Israel Support as 153 countries Vote for Ceasefire at UN,” a 2023 Guardian article by Ed Pilkington
“Meta’s Broken Promises,” an extremely comprehensive report from Human Rights Watch detailing exactly how bad the Palestine censorship on Meta was (hint: really bad)
“Donald Trump Has Mark Zuckerberg by the Balls,” a 404 Media article by Jason Koebler that efficiently explains the weird triangle of competing incentives between Trump, Zuckerberg, and TikTok
RedNote/”Freedom of Opinion” vs. “Freedom of Choice”/The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
‘“The Chinese Government Will Lie to You!’ Said the U.S. Government the Day It Was Caught Lying to Us,” the
article which features the quote Katie reads at the end of this episodeThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised lyrics
The RedNote discourse about social credits
The RedNote message about unity that made Caro cry
A RedNote video that made Caro lol
Another RedNote video that made Caro lol even harder
The RedNote discourse comparing medical bills
The RedNote quote about capitalists being the enemies lmfao
The RedNote comment Katie quoted about eating like we have good healthcare
'“American Friends, You Can’t Love Your Country Only When it’s Strong,” a stellar Substack post by
that’s worth a read for anyone fascinated by the RedNote discourseso weird that american news media isn’t covering this!!!!
this is literally so embarrassing lol like sorry james david but you are never going to make fetch happen
is the AI industry in America so corrupt and overvalued that it’s going to become the new dotcom bubble???? caro has no clue which is why she keeps begging katie to do a MWK deep-dive on it
Share this post