On today’s show: TikTok faces a U.S. ban in one month, and the Supreme Court just decided to hear its case. Lauren Feiner of the Verge talks about what is next. More colleges are offering free tuition to middle-class families. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of the Washington Post explains how that could open the door to more diverse applicants. The New Yorker’s Jennifer Wilson took a personal journey through the new business of breakups. Plus, Dominque Pelicot sentenced to 20 years in landmark French rape case, Trump upended a bipartisan spending bill, a House panel voted to release its ethics report on former Congressman Matt Gaetz, and researchers corrected an alarming study on the toxicity of black plastic. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Thursday, December 19th. I'm Shmeeta Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, why some colleges are offering free tuition to a broader swath of students, Trump comes out strongly against a bipartisan bill to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the week, and the messy, lucrative business of breakups.
But first, TikTok has just one month left to respond to an ultimatum from Congress. Either sell to an approved buyer and divest from its China-based parent company ByteDance, or be banned in the U.S. For the tens of millions of American users, it could be the end of an era for the app, which has built a reputation for curating seemingly tailor-made content just for you.
Here's how Lauren Feiner at The Verge put it.
A lot of people feel like the algorithm knows what they want to see, has like just the right amount of randomness to keep them interested. And that's really powerful.
Lawmakers have warned for a long time that the app poses national security risks, citing policies in China that allow the government to secretly request data from companies and citizens, which TikTok claims has never happened to them.
Forbes says they experienced TikTok's far-reaching ability to spy on users firsthand when the app improperly gained access to some of their journalists' IP addresses and user data. Those reporters were tracked as part of a covert surveillance campaign. ByteDance confirmed that it happened and fired the employees responsible. It was a real-life example of what lawmakers have warned against.
But Feiner told us despite that, a lot of TikTok users are confused about why a law banning the app is necessary, in part because U.S. officials never publicly provided evidence to support their concerns.
Lawmakers got to see all of this classified information, but the general public really hasn't seen the same information. And I think that's really made a lot of people question, well, you know, how dangerous is this app and why can't the government explain to us why this bill needs to be in place to protect us?
TikTok's battle to defend itself hasn't gone well so far. An appellate court earlier this month upheld the law, basically saying national security trumps all other issues. But they were thrown a lifeline yesterday by the Supreme Court, which announced it will hear arguments over the constitutionality of the law next month.
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