The War Over TikTok (with Emily Baker-White)

TikTok is no different than any other social media company (it wants to serve you irresistible content by predicting your tastes algorithmically), and its processes aren't either (it threw spaghetti and money against the wall until it stuck). But its status as a Chinese company, the first globally successful Chinese media export, and a deeply powerful geopolitical tool means it's the center of a battle over the future of the Internet. In her new book Every Screen on the Planet: The War Over Tiktok, Emily Baker-White describes her years covering the company. (She did it so well executives there even attempted to spy on her phone to find out who she was speaking to inside TikTok.) She tells the story of the most effective attention-grabbing algorithm ever devised — its strange beginnings, and the “messy” people who operate the levers behind its curtain — and explains the legal limbo in which it and its billions of users are now caught.