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TikTok has been spying on reporters – exactly no one is surprised

Inside the social video app's new scandal. Plus, Musk continues to Trump tech and Apple might finally make the metaverse interesting
TikTok.
TikTok. Photograph: Mateusz Słodkowski/SOPA Images/Rex/Shutterstock

Chris Stokel-Walker

Hello and welcome to TechScape. Alex is now off on paternity leave, and in his place a rotating cast of writers will give their takes on the world of tech.

Apologies to any readers who have begged Alex for fewer stories about Elon Musk and crypto, but in a post-Twitter takeover world there are no quiet weeks for tech reporters. In the last few weeks, Musk has handed over documents for the latest edition of the "Twitter Files" to controversial author Alex Berenson (with the not-so revelatory news that Twitter was asked not to spread vaccine misinformation); hinted that we're getting 4,000-character long tweets; and tweeted messages about the arrest of disgraced influencer and the "king of toxic masculinity" Andrew Tate.

All of this has happened while the share price of his electric car company, Tesla, has cratered. For good or ill – and it appears mostly, so far, to be ill – Musk became the main character of 2022, Trumping tech.
Twitter and Tesla chief Elon Musk.
Twitter and Tesla chief Elon Musk. Photograph: Aly Song/Reuters

Which is why I hope you'll forgive us for focusing quite so much on him – and continuing to do so into 2023. Because, like Trump, Musk's way of doing things has a butterfly effect beyond Twitter. Musk (pictured above) is redrawing the TechScape, and how we as journalists (and politicians as regulators) should treat it.

Alex Hern has, like I have, long treated big tech with a healthy dose of scepticism. The Guardian was among the main outlets to hold Facebook's feet to the fire during the Cambridge Analytica scandal; it uncovered issues with TikTok's content moderation system; it (rightly) laughs at the metaverse. It's long been obvious that social media executives can't always grapple with the issues they need to, given their companies' central role in our society, and I personally have felt that they're just not up to the job of understanding their own impact.

Yet with hindsight we might now appreciate how lucky we were. Even if big tech's executives weren't always up to the task, they recognised the enormity of the problem. Mark Zuckerberg made plenty of bad decisions and acted many times in his own flagrant self-interest, but he seemed to realise his company's position in our lives meant he had to try and keep his platform in check.

There's little sense of that with Musk. The risk is that, just as politicians started flouting the norms after they realised Donald Trump got away with it, other tech executives could start doing the same. We may look back on 2022 and think we never had it so good when it comes to big tech's behaviour – which is a worrying thought.

The metaverse … lives?
Facebook's Meta Quest Pro VR headset might have some competition from Apple.
Facebook's Meta Quest Pro VR headset might have some competition from Apple. Photograph: Meta Connect/AFP/Getty Images

Breaking news this week that the flatlining folly known as the metaverse could – and I stress could – be resuscitated. Ever since Facebook overhauled its entire business and rebranded itself as Meta in late 2021, the metaverse has been little more than a dream of Mark Zuckerberg's looking for a use case.

The reason? No consumer wants to spend thousands of pounds on virtual reality hardware (pictured above) that could increase the likelihood of tripping in their own home just to enter a universe with sub-Sims graphics.

Until now. Bloomberg reports that Apple is due this spring to unveil a virtual and augmented-reality headset, in what is the world's worst-kept secret.

It's a significant moment, not least because there's a supposition (which may be wide of the mark) that Apple could do to virtual reality headsets, and therefore the metaverse, what it did to the smartphone in 2007. Back then, people didn't see the point of having an all-in-one device that could replace one's camera as adeptly as it could take a call. They didn't always see the point of apps. But 16 years on, we're in thrall to Apple's world.

The theory is that the headset, which may be called Reality Pro, could propel the metaverse out of the realm of wonky tech nerds and into the mainstream. But as with everything Apple, it'll come at a (hefty) cost. The metaverse just got interesting again.

Ticktock for TikTok?

Another major news story broke in the tech world. TikTok slipped up for the first time – and it was a biggie. Two days before Christmas, TikTok sent an internal email from parent company ByteDance general counsel Erich Andersen revealing that staff members spied on reporters covering the company.
ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok.
ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

I have some experience covering TikTok and, like a phalanx of reporters, I have been searching for the story that torpedoes the company. Not out of malice, but because every tech company has skeletons in the closet. So far, plenty of talented reporters couldn't find much beyond the issues that blight every big tech company: bullying (£), content moderation missteps and white lies (£) that aim to make the platform seem less intrusive than it is.

It turns out that we didn't need to dig to find the smoking gun. TikTok did it for us.

It's hard to overestimate how much of an own goal their spying is for TikTok. Sinosceptic politicians in the UK and US, for instance, might argue it confirms their fears that the company is not truly westernising itself, and they might argue that claims TikTok is unmooring itself from Chinese government control are little more than lip service.

The spying decision is, in its own way, as significant as Elon Musk ripping up of the rule book on how to be a big tech executive. It's the worst possible start to 2023 for TikTok, and means the company must rebuild trust not just with politicians and users but also with the reporters who cover the company.

The wider TechScape
Demonstrators hold a banner during a protest against Amazon in New York in 2019.
Demonstrators hold a banner during a protest against Amazon in New York in 2019. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

  • The cost of our convenience is laid bare in this Guardian report alleging that Amazon warehouse workers were encouraged to continue working around a deceased colleague after he died of a cardiac event at the workplace.

  • Maybe shopping isn't all it's cracked up to be? Following reports in recent months that TikTok Shop – the video app's shopping function – was struggling in the US and Europe, Instagram has announced it'll be downplaying the role of e-commerce in its app, according to the Verge. However, the concept of in-app shopping is thriving in Asia, where TikTok parent company ByteDance reported surging sales.

  • Think you've had a bad start to the year? Sam Bankman-Fried just lost the best part of half a billion dollars as the US Department of Justice seized more of the FTX founder's assets.

  • Taiwan is planning to launch its own domestic satellite internet company (£), similar to Elon Musk's Starlink. "The project is part of Taiwan's broader efforts to build communications infrastructure that could survive an attack by China," the FT reports.