S24: Attention Economy
Business History of Modern China
November 7, 2025
Key Questions
- “Truths” about TikTok: How to separate rumors from the real risks?
- To ban or not to ban?
- How to regulate social media in the age of “surveillance capitalism”?
Our Class vs. National Trend: News Consumption
2025 Digital News Report, Oxford University Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ)
Our Class vs. National Trend: Social Media
Our Class vs. National Trend: Social Media
Our Class vs. National Trend: Views on TikTok
Discuss: What is a fair price for your data?
- Scrolling habits, streaming choices and purchases — much of our online data is fed into a database for real-time analysis then re-sold to private companies.
- If data is the new oil, how much is yours worth? Why?
Discuss: History of Tiktok
- Who is Zhang Yiming, founder of Bytedance?
- What is Bytedance’s business model? What makes the company successful?
- Discuss Bytedance’s early products: Today’s Headlines (jinri toutiao) and Subtle Jokes (Neihan duanzi)
Discuss: Bytedance, Tiktok, Douyin
- Who owns Tiktok?
- Who owns Bytedance? Is it a Chinese company?
- From Douyin to Tiktok: How were the apps born? What are their differences?
- What’s Bytedance’s relationship to the Chinese government? Do they share information?
- How does the app recommend and/or moderate content?
Douyin’s Secret Sauce: Not Just the Algorithm
- Help creators grow: Focus on creativity of ordinary people
- Topic marketing: Launching hashtags as trending topics or themes (e.g., #Booktok)
- Make content creation frictionless: Background music, filters, editing tools, etc.
- Turn comment section into a social hub: Where comments are as entertaining as the video
- Personalized recommendation: Constant exposure to new creators
- Where there is content, there is commerce: Seamless shopping
Discussion: Banning Tiktok
- Is the app a national security issue? How?
- How legitimate are Tiktok’s data privacy concerns? How do they compare to other social media platforms?
- Should TikTok be banned for its addictive algorithm and its impact on young users?
- What are economic consequences of banning TikTok, especially for creators and small businesses?
Bytedance’s Choices
Should Bytedance have pursued a different strategy?
- Do nothing and stick to mission
- Lobby with government
- Legal battles
- Sell-off / Spin-off
What changed?
What explains Trump’s shifting stance on Tiktok?
- 2020: “The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect our national security.”
- 2025: “Why would I want to get rid of TikTok?”
Two Mass Notifications, Two Different Outcomes
TikTok: The Latest Deal
- 170 million US users
- US operations valued at 14 billion USD, no sale of algorithm
- Data and privacy for the app in the US will be led by tech giant Oracle, chaired by Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people and a Trump ally.
Is this a good deal? For whom?
TikTok: Reflecting on the Deal
- What did TikTok do right?
- What did it do wrong?
- What lessons does Tiktok offer to Chinese companies, especially social media platforms?
TikTok: National Security
- China’s ownership of the algorithm was the issue prompting the banning of TikTok in the first place. Under this new agreement, China evidently will retain ownership of the algorithm while “licensing” copies of it for American use.
- What does that mean? Will US national security be compromised?
TikTok: Mirror on the Rule of Law
- TikTok’s tech partners face massive legal risks by relying on Trump’s promises not to enforce the ban law, as courts rarely protect defendants who count on executive non-enforcement.
- Can an executive order suspend enforcement? Can it satisfy the SCOTUS ruling on national security?
TikTok: Who’s Business?
- Fear of Chinese government meddling in private businesses motivated the forced sale.
- Now, the White House had not only sold TikTok US to a Trump ally by executive order but also benchmarked the deal at $14bn.
- Is the executive branch now in the valuation business? Is this a new precedent of state capitalism – using political power to intervene in business?
TikTok: One Arm of the Monster
Facebook / Cambridge Analytica
- Cambridge Analytica obtained private Facebook data of 87 million of users in 2014 to sell psychological profiles of American voters to political campaigns.
- An employee from Palantir Technologies helped Cambridge Analytica harvest the data.
- Fear of misinformation – on 2016 US presidential election, on Brexit referendum, and more.
Discuss: Surveillance Capitalism
- What is surveillance capitalism? How is it different?
- What does technology have to do with surveillance capitalism?
- Is it a threat to Western liberal democracies? If so, how?