Vanessa Poppes: "My big question is what is her relevance? Can she answer the questions?" Cara Delevingne: "It's just at the nexus of all kinds of interesting topics. Big companies like Facebook really are trying to keep up, have had their eyes on TikTok" 'I heard that TikTok came up maybe one or two times Vanessa,' DeGeneres says. "'Do they all work for Xi Jinping?' I don't know if you've ever asked a Chinese president," he adds. ''They're going to be banned if something doesn't happen,'" deGeneres asks.
Kara loves air fryer TikToks. But she only dares to scroll through them on a burner phone, as she tells TikTok’s Chief Operating Officer, Vanessa Pappas.
As the social media platform has gone gangbusters – accumulating over a billion monthly users globally – concerns have emerged about TikTok’s ownership structure and roots in China. The U.S. government has questions about what data the app is amassing, whether that data can be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party and if the platform is a tool for espionage or foreign interference and propaganda. Kara has those questions too. And she asks Pappas all of them.
Before the interview, Kara and Nayeema talk about the newsmakers of the day. They scan through the Elon Musk text messages released in the Twitter-Musk proceedings and explore what the texts reveal about Silicon Valley’s powerful elite – including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. They also discuss recent layoffs at Meta – and how Mark Zuckerberg will navigate the company’s recent struggles without his former right-hand exec, Sheryl Sandberg.
You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter @karaswisher and @nayeema.
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