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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Marguerite Catton

The AI-powered Podcast Player