Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host Mike
Rugnetta. This intro was written on Wednesday, 01/28/2026 at
09:47AM eastern, and we have a considered show for you today.
This episode marks the first in a change to the way that we are
producing and releasing Neverpost, which you can hear
more about in detail in our state of the pod upload from a
few weeks ago. But the long and short is in this news episode,
me, Hans, and Georgia take a look at the saga of the sale of
TikTok.
How over the last six years and two presidents we got to where
we are today. And then we ask, is this really where we want to
be? But right now, we're gonna take a quick break. You're gonna
listen to some ads unless you're on the member feed. And when we
return, we're gonna talk about a few of the things that have
happened since the last time you heard from us.
Also, you might notice that I sound a little bit different
this episode. It's because the power in the studio is out,
which is a fun thing to have happen when it's eight degrees
outside. So I am recording on my mobile setup. Back to my normal
microphone and setup hopefully in the next upload. Fly me to
the moon and let me play among the stars.
Let me see seven stories on Jupiter and Mars. Kalshi, a New
York based prediction market web service comparable to Polymarket
was sued last September by Massachusetts AG Andrea Joy
Campbell, who said the company allowed people to place bets on
the outcomes of sporting events without being licensed to do so
in the state. On the January 20, Campbell got a court order to
prevent Kalshi from operating within the state, saying in a
statement that the move is part of her, quote, ongoing efforts
to combat the public health harms associated with sports
betting and gambling, especially among young people, end quote.
That court order is now on hold. Calshey claims it is
appropriately regulated federally and that Massachusetts
should butt out.
Suffolk County judge Barry Smith disagrees and says the temporary
injunction will hold but is giving both sides until February
4 to confirm. The Boston Globe reports that if the injunction
holds, which it seems like it will, Kulsi might be unavailable
in Massachusetts for months or years while litigation unfolds.
It's unclear what this means for other prediction markets like
Polymarket. Hackers are fighting back against ICE, the
militarized federal police force currently occupying several
American cities, kidnapping innocent people including
toddlers and children, and who People Magazine reports are
responsible for quote at least thirty two deaths in the last
year. Tech Dirt reports that hackers have started to chip
away at the extensive surveillance dragnet employed by
ICE and the CBP to inform and manage their campaigns of state
sponsored violence.
The projects range from the fairly straightforward like ICE
list wiki, which aggregates publicly available information
about ICE and its operations, to the more technologically
involved like apps and gadgets which allow people to track the
presence of surveillance equipment like flock cameras,
drones, and Ray Ban meta sunglasses. Tech Dirt is also
currently suing the US DOJ over the removal of ice tracking apps
from the Apple App Store, citing the possibility that the
government engaged in, quote, unconstitutional coercion to
restrict constitutionally protected speech documenting
public information. France has officially banned Zoom and Teams
for its federal workers. As part of the growing digital
divestiture movement whereby governments and other
institutions are seeking to move away from US based technologies,
France has announced its plans to restrict the use of Zoom,
Teams, Google Meet, and other American platforms for video
conferencing, opting instead for the domestically developed
Vizio. This comes on the heels of a previous requirement that
French officials discontinue the use of WhatsApp and Telegram.
Now, if we can just make it illegal for anyone in The US to
use Teams as well, we'd really be cooking. Shopify will let you
hawk your wares in, chat GPT, and levy an additional 4% fee
for the pleasure. Purchases via other artificial intelligence
services like Google's Gemini will not trigger additional
fees, reports payments.com. This is part of a new set of features
Shopify is calling agentic storefronts where people can
browse, compare, ask questions about, and ultimately purchase
items via AI chat services. Over the last year or so, massive
payment processors like Visa and Mastercard have spilled much ink
and spent all kinds of money forwarding the idea that the
future of payments is so called agentic commerce, where
consumers are accompanied and aided by all manner of AI
agents.
In October, on the topic, consulting giant McKinsey
described it as quote, a rethinking of shopping itself in
which the boundaries between platforms, services, and
experiences give way to an integrated intent driven flow
through highly personalized consumer journeys that deliver a
fast, frictionless outcome. Craig of list fame isn't going
to be funding as much journalism anymore. Newmark most famously
lent his surname to the eponymous j school at CUNY, but
says that his decades of giving to support journalistic
endeavors haven't had the impact that he hoped. Talking to Neiman
Lab, he says quote, I really didn't understand that audience
development and related marketing needed to be a really
big deal for everyone in journalism and didn't understand
that very few really good journalists were aware of that.
But I've started discussing that in maybe every engagement, end
quote.
Newmark explains his big question for journalistic orgs
going forward is whether they plan to attempt growing outside
of their very narrow base and emphasizes that it is a massive
undertaking simply keeping journalists safe in today's
climate. He plans going forward to focus his philanthropy more
heavily on cyber security as well as veterans and their
families. DuckDuckGo asked and you answered. The privacy
focused search product asked its users a simple question to vote
for one of two options, yes AI or no AI. And 90 of respondents
chose no AI.
The vote seems to be a way to announce the search site's
bifurcated approach. Votes for yes or no led to two different
versions of the site. According to a statement by CEO Gabriel
Weinberg, no ai.duckduckgo.com turns off search assist buttons
to duck.ai and automatically turns on the hide AI images
filter. While yes ai.duckduckgo.com turns search
assist too often, features duck AI on the homepage, and turns
off the hide AI images filter. At the time of writing, duck
duck go has just released its first public statement about the
result emphasizing that their approach to AI going forward
will always be one involving choice on the part of the end
user.
Georgia Hampton: Thank you.
Mike Rugnetta: And finally, TikTok is now under majority
control by US interests. On January 22, a deal was finalized
bringing the app previously controlled by Chinese based tech
company, ByteDance, to American data centers and under the
control of American business interests and to some degree or
another, maybe, the American government. After a short break,
Hans, Georgia, and I discuss. Joining me to discuss are Never
Post senior producer Hans Buto
Hans Buetow: TikTok.
Mike Rugnetta: And Never Post producer Georgia Hampton.
Georgia Hampton: I don't know what to do.
Mike Rugnetta: Friends friends, hello. Okay. So before we really
get into the discussion part of this, I wanna go over the
history of this so far, which has been fast, because it's
been, both multiple years and multiple presidents.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Where do you start? Right?
Mike Rugnetta: Where do you It turns out you start in 2020.
Hans Buetow: Okay. Okay. Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: So in 2020, Trump says that TikTok should be
banned, over national security concerns that the Chinese owned
app is a threat to American national security. ByteDance,
then its parent company, sues and wins, and then Joe Biden
gets in off us. Right. He reverses Trump's executive
order, and sends the issue to lawmakers who say almost the
same thing as Trump. So congress passes a law that Biden then
signs, which says that TikTok has to be sold to US interests
within a certain amount of time.
Hans Buetow: Let me see if I got this straight. Biden said, Trump
is wrong. You don't have to sell. Congress said, no. You do.
And then Biden was like, never mind. Yeah. You do.
Mike Rugnetta: Biden says, we shouldn't do this with an EO. We
should do this with law.
Hans Buetow: Like, we should proper channels. We should do
Mike Rugnetta: this based on evidence.
Georgia Hampton: Got it.
Mike Rugnetta: And we're gonna go, and I'm gonna ask for a
commission to look at the national security's concerns
that are possible with this Chinese owned app, and they're
gonna advise me and blah blah blah blah blah. And what comes
out at the end is basically the same thing that came out, you
know, a couple years earlier or a year or two earlier, which was
like, yeah, it seems like this could be a problem. We should
figure out how to solve this from a national security
perspective.
Hans Buetow: But with the backing of congress at this time
instead of just Correct.
Mike Rugnetta: Yes. We should do this with laws instead of just
with shouting, which really just is the the only difference there
is that there is a ostensibly a piece of paper or at least
Hans Buetow: piece of paper. Shouting in different registers
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. And in a very carpeted room. Right.
Mike Rugnetta: Yes. Really, that's what it is. That's the
difference. The idea of
Georgia Hampton: a carpet of a rug. Yes. A carpet, lacquered
wood.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Yeah. So congress passes a law that Biden
signs, which says that TikTok has to be sold to US interests
within a certain amount of time. ByteDance then sues again.
Right.
Trump gets back in office with a changed tune. He's not so
adamant now that it needs to go. Okay. So both ByteDance and
Trump ask the Supreme Court to delay a ruling on whether the
law banning TikTok if it doesn't get sold is constitutional. The
Supreme Court says, uh-uh.
We're gonna rule. They say that it is constitutional, and so
then, as we
Hans Buetow: all remember constitutional, like, the the
law saying no TikTok is constitutional.
Mike Rugnetta: Is constitutional. Yes. And that is
why TikTok is banned for, like, sixteen hours.
Georgia Hampton: I was gonna say
Hans Buetow: It goes away last January.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. We're getting to that moment. Can I
Hans Buetow: ask a clarifying question really quick, Mike,
about while all this is swirling, how how are we able to
do this about a Chinese company? Do they have an American
contingent to them?
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I mean, there are TikTok US offices here
in New York.
Hans Buetow: And so because of that, they're subject to
Mike Rugnetta: Absolutely. They operate in The United States.
They have local offices. Yeah. Like every tech company, you
know, they are, beholden to the jurisdiction of the markets in
which they operate.
Hans Buetow: Totally.
Mike Rugnetta: You know, there's there's all kinds of regulation
that they need to comply with. You know, famously, California
has really specific regulations that they need to abide by. And,
you know, we'll talk about this later, but there's all this
concern about American data being sent overseas to the
Chinese parent company being held in Chinese data centers,
and TikTok US, at least, maintained for quite a while
that if that did happen, it didn't happen to the degree that
it would be like a national security concern. That it would
basically just be like anonymized data for compliance
and, like, you know, business operations and stuff. And it's
not like we're sending every video scanned Right.
And AI monitored over to our Chinese counterparts. So the
Zoom
Hans Buetow: and enhance. Zoom and enhance on everything.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Exactly. It's not being stored in Chinese
data centers, right, which is like the the idea that was
forwarded by a lot of people at the time.
Georgia Hampton: The feeling I remember from when TikTok was
banned for, you know, less than a day was that somehow that
would happen. Like, the threat of that was real.
Mike Rugnetta: I mean, I think in the minds of in my
perspective, at least, it was in the minds of some people it was.
Yep. They're they're gonna come and get your data, which I mean,
you know, again, we can talk about this behind a little bit,
but, like They're spoilers. Everybody's coming to get your
data, honey.
Georgia Hampton: I was gonna say, I Sweet child. Going to be.
Mike Rugnetta: They're all coming for it. Everyone wants
it. Yep. So, anyways, so TikTok is banned for a very short
amount of time. Trump then signs another executive order saying
that the law should not be enforced and the app returns.
And at the time, I had posted something like, it will be funny
to look back on this in four years and see how the total
dissolution of law in The United States began with an executive
order unbanning a popular video app. Mhmm. And well Well
Hans Buetow: and here we are.
Georgia Hampton: Here we are.
Mike Rugnetta: So after several extensions to the requirement
for the sale, a sale is brokered between ByteDance, who will
retain a 20% stake in the American offshoot of this
Chinese social media
Hans Buetow: app Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: With tech giant Oracle, who is helmed by the
Trump friendly CEO Larry Ellison, who is himself father
to the Paramount Skydance and CBS owner David Ellison.
Hans Buetow: Perfect. Cool. No notes.
Mike Rugnetta: No notes. Private equity group Silver Lake, who
have made investments in Mhmm. Get ready. Okay. Electronic
Arts.
Yep. Airbnb. Yep. Oh. Waymo.
Dell. What? Skype. Woah. And Klarna.
Hans Buetow: Am now laying on
Mike Rugnetta: the ground.
Georgia Hampton: Not Klarna.
Mike Rugnetta: And Abu Dhabi based investment firm MGX who
focuses entirely on artificial intelligence technologies. So,
like, they are partnering with NVIDIA and OpenAI and, like, all
of the people you would expect to be on that list.
Georgia Hampton: Stream blunt rotation. Am I right?
Hans Buetow: Dys dystopic cyberpunk blunt rotation. God.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. All that's missing is can we get Peter
Thiel in here somehow? Literally.
Hans Buetow: If only.
Mike Rugnetta: Each firm is gonna hold a 15% stake in
TikTok. The LLC, which has been formed to operate the platform,
is called TikTok USDS Joint Ventures LLC. USDS standing for
the United States Digital Service, which is the
traditional name
Hans Buetow: Oh, no. For what
Mike Rugnetta: has more recently been known as Doge. Good lord.
So all of those investors, anybody who is operating the
platform, which is primarily gonna be Oracle and various
other, you know, entities, they're all operating under this
TikTok USDS joint ventures LLC. So I mean, my first question
that I have written down here is one that I feel like we already
know the answer to, which is, you know, how do we just feel
generally about this about this outcome of things? How does this
group of people make us feel in comparison to say, like, Mark
Zuckerberg and Meta or, you know, Elon Musk and X?
Just the the various other people who helm all of the
social media networks that we use every single day. Like, do
we feel like this group is better? Is this group worse? Is
this group the same? How do we how do you feel?
Hans Buetow: I feel like this group is more directly connected
to existing media infrastructure in a way that makes me nervous.
So the fact that they also that they are cousins with CBS News,
with Barry Weiss's Free Press, with, like, all the stuff that
we're watching happen there, we already know what their
priorities are. We already know what their ethics are. We
already know what their journalistic integrity is. We
already know what their sense of privacy is.
That all just becomes transferred in. Right?
Georgia Hampton: Oh, yeah. It is a very terrifying thing to
behold in a very different way. Because with, Mike, the examples
you gave of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta or Elon Musk and X, you
have this sort of mad king situation. But there is
something uniquely chilling about how structured and
organizational this is, where there isn't some guy who's
running amok.
Mike Rugnetta: Sure. Like, Elon Musk is like a piece of shit and
not good at running a company very clearly. Still very, very,
very, very, very dangerous
Georgia Hampton: Yes.
Mike Rugnetta: But is but is a bit of a clown. People like
Larry and David Ellison appear to be very good and practiced at
making the world worse.
Hans Buetow: Mhmm. But are they better in this particular
instance? Part of what made TikTok glorious was the careful
refinement of the FYP and the algorithm and maintaining the
algorithm in a certain way, which if there's pressure being
put by these people who, yes, know how to make the structural
changes, they know like, oh, we wanna highlight this or de
highlight that or de emphasize this or like if they wanna make
changes, when you start putting those sort of external pressures
into the tenderness of a delicate little algorithm, is
what they're able to be good at translatable into an algorithm
that makes it work.
Mike Rugnetta: So they have said I have seen two what feel to me
like conflicting reports, which is, hey, if you're a TikTok user
and you like the algorithm, don't worry. The TikTok
algorithm is is not going anywhere. It's Okay. It you're
gonna get the same, like, service that you expect. You're
gonna get a feed that's tailored to your interests, etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera.
But then I've also seen we're gonna be retraining the
algorithm specifically for US audiences. It is our job now to
maintain. Yeah. You know, it is a domestic operation, so we're
not relying on Chinese artificial intelligence. You
know, that was the security concern to begin with.
So it's all domestic now, and we're gonna retrain everything
and, like, here we go. Don't worry. I can see how those two
if you're, like, inside it, those two things seem do not
seem like they contradict one another. Right. To me, they very
much do contradict one another.
Absolutely. Oh,
Georgia Hampton: I mean, the word tailoring is doing a lot of
smoothing over here of, cool. Yeah. No. For sure. For sure.
What does that mean?
Mike Rugnetta: You know, all those those, beautiful Chinese
folk songs you've been seeing for the last year, people do
covers of? Those are gone. Those are gonna go gone. Gone. I hope
you don't like those because Yeah.
I think to a certain degree, people want to imagine that
software is serving them. Or like software lives in two kind
of modes. Right? You have the mode where the software is
serving you, and you go to it because it gives you things that
you can't get elsewhere. I'm never leaving this app.
I built this FYP brick by brick, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. Or
it's working against you. Right? The adpocalypse, the algorithm
can't, you know, nobody's seeing my videos, blah blah blah blah
blah.
And I think the important thing that we didn't talk about just
now as far as the group of people is the connection to
USDS, which is huge. Right? That is an explicit connection to the
United States government.
Hans Buetow: Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: Right? Mhmm. Which is important because so on
January 22, the TikTok USDS joint venture LLC releases a
statement that says, amongst other things, this is their,
hey. Get ready. Things are about to change.
Okay. They say US data will be protected by USDS joint ventures
in Oracle's secure US cloud environment. The joint venture
will operate a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity
program that is audited and certified by third party
cybersecurity experts. The program will adhere to major
industry standards, including the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, blah blah blah, like all these ISOs,
cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency security
requirements for restricted transactions. The joint venture
will retain, test, and update content recommendation algorithm
on US user data.
The content recommendation algorithm will be secured in
Oracle's US cloud environment. The joint venture will secure US
apps through software assurance protocols and review and
validate source code on an ongoing basis, assisted by its
trusted security partner, Oracle. Right? And then people
start trying to upload videos about ICE, which, of course,
they are because that's what's happening in the moment. Yeah.
It the biggest story that is happening in The United States
right now. And, I mean, you know, if it is to be believed,
based upon what I've read online, in other parts of the
world as well, that, like, people in Australia and Spain
and Germany are looking at what's happening in your
backyard, Hans.
Hans Buetow: Yep.
Mike Rugnetta: Literally. It's like
Hans Buetow: Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: They are like, it's what people are talking
about.
Hans Buetow: Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: And they can't upload those videos. Or they're
uploading them and they're being held for review.
Georgia Hampton: Yes.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Or they're uploading them. They're being
published, but then they're getting zero views. Yes. Or
they're getting zero views and people can't comment on them.
Yeah. So, of course, people look at the new group of owners Yep.
The TikTok USDS joint venture LLC
Hans Buetow: Yep.
Mike Rugnetta: And they think, here it is, the new TikTok. The
United States government is censoring me. Georgia, I think
you are the most on TikTok
Georgia Hampton: of Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: The three of us. Yes. I'm curious, like, what
your sense of this is from being on the app.
Georgia Hampton: So there's real precedence for this concern. Say
what you want about really sanitized terms like unalive and
pew pew for gun and stuff like that.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: A community around this sort of language
developed on on TikTok because of very real issues with
censorship that do genuinely exist on TikTok. Like, I have I
have tested this where, like, I've tried typing out trans in a
comment, and it would, like, publish my comment with, like,
the trans flag. I would put the trans flag in a comment, and it
would just publish it with, like, a question mark, which
there is precedence for this concern of where is the app
controlling what I see? I think it all comes back to the
algorithm and how fine tuned it is, that it's so fine tuned that
there's this feeling that it's not just providing, it is
controlling.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. I think this is where these sorts of things
always algorithms get us into trouble, like the black box
algorithms get us into trouble every single time. Because we
know so little about them, we have to
Mike Rugnetta: all you can do is imagine it.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. You just suppose you can and then, like,
supposing very quickly goes into conspiracy theories. When you
start adding up things like like, was reading about the
number of outages that have been reported and how many how how
many people have had trouble actually even loading it in the
first place. The way that they describe it is that there's
problems with a data center power outage.
Mike Rugnetta: This is what TikTok has said.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. This is what TikTok has said.
Mike Rugnetta: Yes. So, I mean, it's yeah. I've seen the same
thing. Like, I see people on Blue Sky. I see people on
Instagram.
Right? People are taking to other social media networks to
say, like, for the last four days at time of recording, I
have had all of these problems. And it really it feels like, the
comedian Megan Stalter
Georgia Hampton: is the one who I was about to suggest. Georgia,
tell us about what it is that happened. Meg Stalter is a
comedian, and she posted on Instagram this whole carousel of
herself, basically saying, I have been trying to upload
videos about ICE, and every single time they get taken down
or nobody's able to see them or they're under review forever,
there's some issue that makes it so that no one ever sees them,
including, in her own words, when she's tried to mask them as
like a comedy video or something. So not even showing,
like, visuals of something, just talking, that it's always being
flagged. It's always being taken down.
It's never being published.
Mike Rugnetta: The implication being that, like, someone is
manually reviewing these.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. Or that they have this software in place
Yeah. That just can flag Some sort of
Mike Rugnetta: volunteer level, like, we Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Hans Buetow: Exactly. Exactly.
Georgia Hampton: So she basically said, you know, I am
downloading all of my videos from TikTok. I'm gonna start
sharing them on here, which is Instagram, urging all of her
followers to delete the app, delete their account, because
she that's what she's doing. She's removing herself
completely, taking everything off, deleting her existence on
TikTok because of this. And alongside this, people
Mike Rugnetta: are also noting they're, like, going now to the
terms of service and noting the, like, draconian, you know, like,
data data sharing location
Hans Buetow: not sharing. For me. It's auto popped up. Right?
Mike Rugnetta: Well, it's an agreement with a new entity.
Hans Buetow: With a new entity. Exactly right.
Mike Rugnetta: And so people people are now reading it in
this new context and and are getting scared by it or getting
upset by it. I think even Gavin Newsom is like, we're gonna look
at this. Like, who knows what's going on here?
Hans Buetow: Which is wild thing for the governor of California
to say.
Mike Rugnetta: The truth of it being, it's what it was before
as well. It's the same. It is. It's the same.
Hans Buetow: Words in there, but it's it's really basically the
same.
Mike Rugnetta: So I think for me, this is really the story.
Hans Buetow: Yes.
Mike Rugnetta: There was a massive technical changeover
after which there were technical difficulties. Yep. We have a
bunch of people who notice these things, a bunch of popular
people who notice these things, and then draw, I think, a fair
conclusion given the actors involved in the transfer.
Completely. And then people who whose attention has been drawn
now to a terms of service that has always been bad, but maybe
now feels worse in that the actors are domestic and
associated with a fascistic invading force on Yes.
United States soil, and they're newly suspicious of this app
that has, you know, colonized a lot of their time over the last
several years. You know, like, was looking at Rusty Foster, who
writes Today in Tabs, said that he's seeing all of these things
as well, while, in fact, TikTok is the only place that he's
seeing people openly call for violence against ICE and the
CBP. Yeah. He said, if anyone still believes the rumors that
TikTok is being censored, my whole FYP is anti ICE right now,
almost without exception. People are performing panic for clout.
At the moment, TikTok is the only social media where I'm
seeing regular people openly and vigorously advocate for the
assassination of federal agents, in fact. Yeah. True. And I think
I think that this is the story. This is there's like the
strength of this I don't know at this point if it's even
algorithmic imaginary.
It's almost like platform imaginary. The idea of what the
platform is for and what it does even outside of its content
service algorithm that, like, people are now imagining it as
an extension of the United States government.
Georgia Hampton: I haven't gone on TikTok since this change
happened. I wanted to give myself a break and also to kind
of think about this and be like, do I wanna participate in this?
I am not surprised to hear that there's a much more direct, very
explicit conversation. Because in the midst of the unaliving
language and things like that, there is also just very flat out
face to face feeling addressing of current events and
documentation of current events that I don't see on something
like Instagram ever. Ever ever ever.
Hans Buetow: I think the timing of this is also wild.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. Yes.
Hans Buetow: I have never seen this level of widespread openly
voiced distrust of anything the government says. The New York
Times is starting to call them liars. Like, the New
Mike Rugnetta: York Times. That that is
Georgia Hampton: nuts. It's nuts.
Hans Buetow: It's nuts. You have, like, Laura Ingraham is
turning on Kristi Noem. Like, over the past weekend, you have
have seen maybe the limits of what it is that we're willing to
put up with without calling it direct lies. And I think being
here in Minnesota, you know, there was a I looked at my
podcast feed. This is maybe a week or so ago.
So after Renee Good was killed, but before Alex Preti was
killed. And I think Fresh Air had the title of one of their
episodes was, is what ICE is doing illegal? And I was like,
Mike Rugnetta: oh, bloody.
Hans Buetow: Girl. We're so past that. Who cares
Mike Rugnetta: at this point? Hey, guys.
Georgia Hampton: Who cares? You got other stuff going on.
Hans Buetow: That's not the point. Right? Like, these
statements come out and, like, there's so much the government
has so little credibility, I think, on the ground here, at
least in Minnesota, that it's a wild time to launch something
and put the former name of a government group into the name
of the company that's organizing it and expect to have anything
you say be believed.
Georgia Hampton: Well, and also, a very understandable reaction
to that is, okay. You're gonna be watching all of us. Yeah. So,
of course, anyone who is on an app that then opens the app and
there's a little dialogue box that's like, hey. You can't use
this until you agree to our terms of service, which include
that we are data tracking you.
Mike Rugnetta: And also, the premise of our entire app is
that it's full of artificial intelligence and tracking what
you do.
Hans Buetow: Yes. And that the US government is in the name of
the company that owns it?
Georgia Hampton: And, yeah, the app that already has had people
have to completely change the way they talk about things out
of fear of I I've seen people on Instagram being, like, I don't
wanna talk about this because the last time I've talked about
this, I weirdly had a day where I was at the airport and they
pulled me and, like, ripped apart my suitcase. And I don't
like those two things being together, and I don't know if
that was real, but I don't know if it wasn't real. Like, there's
just this fear that I think is very real. How could anyone see
what's going on with TikTok and not be like, what the fuck is
happening?
Mike Rugnetta: I think that this these two things, the fact that,
like, you know, NPR is asking, like, is what ICE is doing
illegal? And Oh, god. And then people worrying that what before
this point would have been maybe innocuous if somewhat
politically afield actions taken online could get them in some
sort of trouble. Both of those things are are two sides of an
old anarchist saying, which is the only thing that makes
criminals is laws. Yep.
And that works both ways. If there's no law to stop you from
what you're doing, you might be doing something that is morally
reprehensible, but it's you're not
Hans Buetow: a criminal. It's not a criminal. Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta: If you're doing something that is, morally just,
that is pro social, that is communitarian, If there's a law
that says that you can't do it, then you're a criminal. You have
been already a criminal. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
And this administration wants to put that idea to use in as many
places as they can and in as many ways as it seems like they
can. So this gets me to, I think, the, like, last and the
big question that I wanna ask, which is maybe it's always been
the time, but is now really the time to ditch TikTok?
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. I I don't I don't know. I mean, the easy
answer, I think, is, yeah. Of course. Everyone get out of
there.
But, like, as a journalist, a part of me wants to be there and
see what's happening. I use it constantly for the work I do on
this show. Obviously, I am out of the three of us, the person
who's been on the app the most and uses it the most. And I
don't know how to feel, frankly, right now.
Mike Rugnetta: Maybe what you're saying, Georgia, is like, keep
using TikTok if you feel like you have to or if you really
enjoy it, but do it knowing the context you're in and maybe with
a little bit of a, like, personal data safety protocol.
Georgia Hampton: A 100%. Oh, I think anyone who uses it has to
pay attention to that.
Mike Rugnetta: And Like, you know, do you do you have to get,
like, a TikTok only device? Oh god. Just get an old Android
phone from eBay and Wi Fi only and
Hans Buetow: I was never on TikTok, so I have a very
different perspective of having watched it for all of these
years. And the thing that I feel like I've watched is so many
people close the Venn diagram between Internet and TikTok Yes.
To where I think there's a sizable number. I I can't say
for sure how many, but think that TikTok is the Internet or
the Internet is TikTok. I think that the question for me is
where does everyone go?
Yeah. And if they don't feel like they have anywhere to go, I
think that's a lot of the bet that's being made right now.
100%. Don't feel like they're easy because where are they
gonna go? They go to Instagram?
Mike Rugnetta: Barry Weiss of CBS. You go to Barry Weiss of c
Georgia Hampton: b right. Where do you
Hans Buetow: go is a really, really big question. So who's
gonna activate? Just like the explosion of blue sky, is there
gonna be explosion of new TikTok equivalent based on an open
protocol, something that's gonna actually take people over?
Mike Rugnetta: Okay. So obviously, I think, no easy
answers here. This has been a long saga. The saga will
continue. The feelings about these things complicated as they
always are, as they always will be.
Audience, listeners, we really wanna hear from you. What do you
think? Are you staying on TikTok? Are you leaving TikTok?
Do you need a replacement if you leave it?
And if so, where do you go to fill it? And why isn't that
place reels? Alright. Thanks everybody. Thank you, Hans.
Thank you Georgia.
Hans Buetow: Yeah. Thanks Mike. This was helpful.
Mike Rugnetta: That is the news we have for you this week. We're
gonna be back here on the main feed on or around Thursday,
02/05/2026 with a segment about Pornhub's 2025 in review dataset
and what we can learn about the skyrocketing growth in
popularity of safe for work content on the traditionally not
safe for work platform. Neverpost is listener funded.
That means, please imagine me pointing and wearing a really
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Head on over to neverpo.st to give us 4 of your monthly
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Neverpost's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the
mysterious doctor first name last name.
Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is
Jason Oberholzer. The show's host, that's me, is Mike
Grenada. There's no promise at the present, though the
present's not promise at all. The grifter flashes a glimmer
like it was a sure thing.
Clinging to these turns blind sides what's before the eye, a
fist behind dice. I want distraction even more than you,
but both of us lost the duel when our seconds went missing.
Excerpt of Against Hope by Charles Bernstein. Never post is
a production of charts and leisure and it's distributed by
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