WR 51: TikTok rises from the dead
Weekly Reckoning for the week of 20/1/25
Welcome back to the Ethical Reckoner. This week, the Weekly Reckoning is coming to you from India, where I’ve been attending a friend’s wedding and thus have not been as keyed into the news as usual (honestly, it’s been great). But I’m diving back in because, well, the tech news stops for no one. In this Weekly Reckoning, we cover, of course, the death and resurrection of TikTok, but also a sort of heart-warming story about a short-lived TikTok alternative and something the blockchain might actually be good for.
This edition of the WR is brought to you by… Indian sleeper trains
Apologies for the late arrival, which I promise is due to a Substack glitch.
The Reckonnaisance
American and Chinese netizens connect on Xiaohongshu
Nutshell: When it was looking like TikTok was gone for good, “TikTok refugees” fled to another Chinese app.
More: Xiaohongshu (小红书, translates literally to “little red book”) has been dubbed “Rednote” by American users, who pushed it to the top of the Apple App Store. But it’s a deeply Chinese app, with no in-app translation and complete with censorship1 on politics, LGBTQ+ topics, and protests. Some Americans described their use of XHS as an act of rebellion against the US government, others as an act of desperation amidst a need for entertainment. Any port in a storm, I guess.
Why you should care: Honestly, this is delightful but won’t last—I commented for New Scientist about it—because this app isn’t built for Americans. There will be some passionate power users, but I expect most will get bored, especially if TikTok is back for good. Plus, the app’s censors are quite uneasy about the Americans who have come in and started running their mouths. Still, the moments of cultural exchange have been heartening, and while it’s likely not large-scale enough to make a measurable impact on US attitudes towards China, it’s still nice to see.
Something blockchain is good for: shaking up the diamond industry
Nutshell: A startup is using blockchain to trace diamonds and pay more to Botswana than established diamond companies.
More: The startup, HB Antwerp, sources its diamonds from a mine that’s been producing some absolutely massive diamonds, but its business model is the more remarkable thing. Basically, it tracks every interaction with a diamond is tracked and its “family tree” recorded on a blockchain, which creates an indelible pedigree for each gemstone cut from the rough diamonds, which makes the whole process more transparent. As a result, HP Antwerp pays the Botswanan government 80% of the price of the finished diamonds, rather than 50% of the price of the rough diamonds (which is what De Beers pays). Another cool tech thing is a high-tech scanner called XRT that pinpoints where diamonds are so you don’t have to gouge out enormous amounts of earth and sift them for diamonds, which seems to make the whole process less environmentally damaging.
Why you should care: There’s a lot wrong with the diamond industry, from child labor to environmental damage to fueling conflict. And yet we still want these sparkly gemstones. The motivation behind HB Antwerp’s tech is commercial: amongst declining demand (in large part because of the aforementioned issues) “storytelling” is expected to make a customer “fall in love” with a diamond. But there’s hope that this tech could also make the the diamond industry (and other mining industries) more ethical. Besides giving more revenue to the country where they’re mined (and thus less to multinationals like De Beers), increased transparency may actually help counter exploitation in the industry.
Bluesky finds that more users require more moderation
Nutshell: In their content moderation report for 2024, Bluesky detailed how their suddenly increased user base created a flood of violating content.
More: Bluesky grew nearly eightfold last year, and reports grew by 17x. This required them to increase their moderation team to 100 people. They provide psychological counseling for their content moderators (who are exposed to graphic content), hired more Portuguese-speaking moderators when they got an influx of Brazilian users, and increased their use of automated moderation systems (which have a 99.90% accuracy rate). All in all, this report is pretty boring because it just describes a social media company responding well to problems they face.
Why you should care: A social media site that’s willing to do content moderation so that its users have a good experience?? Be still my beating heart.
Extra Reckoning
It’s baaaaaack. As has been looking increasingly clear over the last few days, the political winds have shifted in TikTok’s favor—at least for now. The app shut down for a few hours, and then came back online after Trump vowed to pass an executive order staying the ban. My bet is this is so that he can negotiate a sale—he floated a 50% US-China joint venture—to one or several of his many Silicon Valley supporters. Whether an extension is legal is another question, and I’d expect action over it soon.
As we discussed last week, more and more companies are currying favor with the incoming administration. TikTok’s in-app statement thanking Trump for bringing the app back is just the latest example. A lot of seems to be an attempt to stave of the kind of active antitrust enforcement that kicked off in the first Trump administration and continued apace during the Biden administration. Basically, everyone is watching the Google case that might get them broken up and quaking in their boots. There’s also the culture war dimension—no one wants to end up targeted like TikTok, although that’s turning out not as bad as it could have. Both of these are causing tech companies to donate at least monetarily to the Trump inauguration; other overtures are likely. The same is true of The question is whether cultural overtures like Meta’s—ending DEI and fact checking, moving teams from California to Texas—are attempts to build goodwill that will be adjusted in four years when a new administration takes office or if they’re genuinely held beliefs that will permanently shape the company. Another question is what the EU will do; reports differ on if they’re considering backing off or doubling down on their Big Tech lawsuits. Regardless, it’s harder to curry favor in the bloc, so my guess is they’re betting that the EU will follow the US’s lead and so trying to maximize their success in the US.
WR 50: Meta's big pivot (and some other things)
Last week, I promised constructive ideas for moving forward in the light of the Meta moves. Honestly, I was too busy with wedding revelry to think of constructive ideas. But I will say that in this new era of tech and tech policy, the way to understand what’s going on is to understand the individuals at the center of it all—the CEOs, venture capitalists, and politicos. We’re entering an era of character-driven tech policy, and we’ll be here for all of it.
I Reckon…
that it’s very clear why Wes Anderson made The Darjeeling Limited.
This word has been thrown around a lot—including by Mark Zuckerberg—and I don’t like when it’s used to refer to good-faith content moderation, but in the context of the CCP I feel comfortable using it.
Thumbnail generated by ChatGPT with the prompt “Please create a brushy abstract Impressionist painting with the theme of red books”.