Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Poke. Following her high-profile departure from OpenAI, ex-tech chief Mira Murati has poached about 10 researchers and engineers from competitors — including her former employer’s head of special projects, Jonathan Lachman — for her new research lab exploring AGI.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Prod. In a move that indicates the EU’s willingness to confront Elon Musk’s new political power, regulators in Brussels are ramping up their investigation on disinformation and illegal content on X. It’s the second blast for Musk in 24 hours after SpaceX’s latest Starship launch ended in a fiery explosion.

TikTok users scramble as SCOTUS upholds US ban

THE NEWS

Gen Z is prepping for their own social doomsday. The US Supreme Court today unanimously upheld the law forcing TikTok to part from its Chinese parent company or face a ban on US soil. With only two days until that law takes effect, users are finding creative ways to protest the government’s sanctions and bypass the impending firewall.

If TikTok shuts down its US services on Sunday, some Americans will likely turn to virtual private networks, or VPNs, which replace a device’s IP address with one from another location. Internet searches that include the words “TikTok” and “VPN” have skyrocketed in the last week, Google Trends shows. The hope is that logging into TikTok, which Washington sees as a national security threat because of its Chinese ownership, from an IP address associated with another country would allow users to access their content.

“TikTok would probably allow that,” said Karrie Karahalios, who teaches computer science at the University of Illinois. “They want people to look at the content regardless of where they are.”

TikTok is “part of the popular culture right now,” she added. “If the people you talk to every day use TikTok, if you get your news from there, it’s hard to walk away.”

In an effort largely seen to poke fun at the US government, TikTokers have also flocked to another social media app with even closer ties to the Chinese government, loyal readers will remember from Wednesday’s newsletter. The upshot — TikTok users are fighting tooth and nail to keep their beloved app, and it might work.

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to save the platform and will be sworn into office a day after the ban takes effect, with TikTok’s chief executive watching from the wings. Trump has floated ways to keep TikTok going while the Biden administration won’t enforce the ban, making it less likely that Americans will actually lose access to the social media app.

KNOW MORE

At the heart of the court case and the issues around a sale is the value of an algorithm. The ability for TikTok to quickly deliver relatable content, and do so better than its competitors, is the special sauce that captivated half of America.

During the Supreme Court hearing, TikTok argued the algorithm is an editorial expression and therefore protected speech — an argument that didn’t hold weight in the end. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has said it will not sell TikTok with its proprietary algorithm, leaving buyers with a shell of an app. A new owner would have to implement their own algorithm, but it is unclear if users would continue returning to the app without the level of curated content they once received.

Read on for Rachyl’s view about how the core data privacy concern got lost in the politics. →

As Donald Trump’s second inauguration approaches and global leaders head to Davos for the World Economic Forum, Mixed Signals asks: what will the media’s role be in an increasingly unstable era? Will it bring more order or disorder to global politics?

Ben and Max invite Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group, to explore how global leaders interact with new media and whether digital media is shaping global politics or vice versa. They also discuss Ian’s run-in with Elon Musk in 2022 and how Donald Trump’s second term could influence media leaders like Zuckerberg and Bezos.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

It was going so well for Mark Zuckerberg after years of being slammed by the tech media following the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Threads became the favored social media app for Elon haters. His image makeover, including mixed martial arts fights and gold chains, made him a press darling once again.

Now, it looks like Trump has once again caused Zuckerberg’s likeability to plummet. This time, it’s Zuckerberg’s ostensible cozying up to Trump that has everyone up in arms. Last week, he ended the company’s fact-checking program. And on Thursday, The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg blamed his former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, for Meta’s diversity practices, citing an anonymous source who knew about the meeting.

Throwing Sandberg under the bus allegedly occurred at Mar-a-Lago late last year in a meeting with Stephen Miller, a hardline anti-immigration Trump aide. Tech journalists are not mincing words. Zuckerberg “is a small little creature with a shriveled soul,” wrote Kara Swisher on Threads, in response to the Times article.

What’s missing from these missives is the real and visceral feeling in the US, and abroad, that the policing of online speech and DEI efforts went overboard. Zuckerberg is in charge of an online platform that, on a daily basis, serves a user base six times the size of the US population. His most vocal critics, meanwhile, are sequestered in niche social media apps like Bluesky and Threads. And throughout the various periods of backlash against Meta and its CEO over the years, the number of people on the platform and the advertisers who want to reach them haven’t gone down. Whether that changes this time around remains to be seen. But its scale suggests its platforms, and Zuckerberg, will be fine.

As our colleagues at Semafor Business pointed out, regulators in the Biden administration are spending their last days in government slamming companies left and right. In one of the more serious actions, the Federal Trade Commission referred a case about Snap to the Justice Department, a move that is usually kept under wraps. But the agency said it was in the “public interest” to disclose the referral in which the FTC alleges Snap’s My AI chatbot posed risks and harms to young users. Like the other enforcement actions, it’s unclear if the Snap case will go anywhere once Donald Trump’s team takes over. Republican FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson, the president-elect’s nominee to lead that agency, said he declined to participate in the “farcical” vote to refer the matter to the DOJ and called it an “affront” to the rule of law.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is one major tech boss breaking away from the pack by not attending Donald Trump’s inauguration. Instead, he’s traveling to celebrate the Lunar New Year with employees and their families, and is currently in Taiwan, where he was born. He also told reporters that he hasn’t talked to the incoming administration about new chips restrictions that the Biden White House just proposed, but he looks forward to “congratulating the Trump administration when they take office.” Nvidia is seeing surging demand for its products, no matter who is leading the US. But global access to its GPUs will depend on Trump officials’ willingness to roll back current restrictions, which isn’t a guarantee given the China hawks in the next White House. Still, Huang’s absence in Washington reflects self-confidence in Nvidia’s importance and unique dominance in the tech ecosystem.

Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Energy Chris Wright laid out his vision of how to achieve energy “dominance” during his Senate confirmation hearing, Semafor’s Tim McDonnell reports.

Wright’s comments indicated he may represent more of a departure on energy policy from Trump’s first term than from the Biden administration status quo, and he’s among the least controversial of Trump’s picks.

For more on the relationship between Trump administration and the energy transition, subscribe to Semafor’s Net Zero newsletter. →