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Future of Social Media Under Trump

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Bloomberg Dec 27 03:32 · 11.9k Views

Syracuse University Associate Professor of Communications Jennifer Grygiel joins Bloomberg's Vonnie Quinn and Sonali Basak to discuss the future of social media under the upcoming administration and the fate of TikTok as it awaits the Supreme Court's decision about its potential ban in the US. They speak on "Bloomberg Markets."

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Transcript

  • 00:00 So we're looking at what the president-elect might do moving forward.
  • 00:04 We're trying to read the tea leaves.
  • 00:06 How do you think social media is going to play a role
  • 00:10 in the upcoming
  • 00:12 in the upcoming world?
  • 00:13 I mean, how do you think they're going to really use Musk platforms relative to some of the other more established ones you've seen out there?
  • 00:21 Yeah,
  • 00:22 hello.
  • 00:23 Well,
  • 00:23 maybe a little context because I know over the last four years, you know, I've kind of been sitting back a little bit more and watching this all play out.
  • 00:31 And I know Musk is the person of the moment and we're throwing around these like sophisticated terms like
  • 00:37 retail investors, you know, but like,
  • 00:39 it's, it's really about the public.
  • 00:41 Sometimes
  • 00:42 the market's trying to make sense of what's going on.
  • 00:44 And
  • 00:45 for me, the one piece that I've seen lacking in the media over the last four years, and especially this past year is any critique
  • 00:52 of really the Biden administration and
  • 00:55 how they've handled
  • 00:56 not just like their leverage over social media, but even this upcoming potential TikTok ban that that's looming.
  • 01:02 And now it's going to the Supreme Court.
  • 01:05 And I, I know you're just talking about meme stocks and also Bitcoin.
  • 01:08 Like,
  • 01:09 you know, like it or not, President Trump is coming to power
  • 01:12 next year.
  • 01:13 And he has an incredible amount of leverage, ability to cut deals, not just with
  • 01:20 TikTok, but any of those competitors.
  • 01:22 So, you know, again, circling back to Facebook,
  • 01:25 you know, it's no surprise that, you know, kind of late
  • 01:29 in the last election you saw
  • 01:31 like Mark Zuckerberg, you know, kind of maybe, you know, kind of
  • 01:34 closing up a little bit more.
  • 01:35 And I think it's because we were missing that context.
  • 01:38 I know for me, it was really
  • 01:40 difficult to cut through at times and to provide that critique.
  • 01:43 But I'm
  • 01:44 not sure the markets or the public have really
  • 01:47 heard enough critique going into this.
  • 01:49 It's it's been really focused on Musk.
  • 01:51 And obviously
  • 01:53 he has the president's ear.
  • 01:54 You know, again, I know there's jokes about him being the unelected president.
  • 01:58 Of course, he's
  • 01:59 incredibly rich
  • 02:01 and he has Twitter, but he has, again, he has made that work for him.
  • 02:05 So
  • 02:06 for me, I think we just need a little bit more history and, and looking into,
  • 02:10 you know,
  • 02:11 those who are in power,
  • 02:13 they I think they they had a lot of
  • 02:15 confidence going into this that Biden would continue.
  • 02:18 And then they passed laws like that too.
  • 02:20 So I think it's going to be actually
  • 02:22 unsettling to some of those, those larger social media companies.
  • 02:26 I'm not sure.
  • 02:27 You know, again,
  • 02:28 their future is, is so sure.
  • 02:30 And that we should only be talking about TikTok, for example.
  • 02:33 Yeah.
  • 02:33 Jennifer, I mean, what would Donald Trump like to do?
  • 02:35 Because
  • 02:36 on the one hand, he needs leverage with a country like China, especially if he's going to be imposing
  • 02:41 extra tariffs and so on.
  • 02:42 And this seems sort of like a, you
  • 02:44 know, easy pick.
  • 02:45 It's
  • 02:47 exactly.
  • 02:48 And he's got easy pickings with with Bitcoin, you know, do you make a,
  • 02:52 a reserve or don't you?
  • 02:53 Right.
  • 02:53 So he
  • 02:55 man, he has so many levers going into this, this next
  • 02:59 term, right.
  • 03:00 So
  • 03:01 I think when we think about, you know, I was taking some notes
  • 03:05 looking at the last section,
  • 03:08 this is not a moment of clarity like we do not have
  • 03:12 confidence, we don't have certainty.
  • 03:15 And I think
  • 03:16 I think the markets are reacting to that more than just this Fed, you know, announcement.
  • 03:21 Obviously, we saw a major market moment there, but I see uncertainty coming into the end of the year, not just because it's the end of the year,
  • 03:29 but because we really don't know how President Trump is going to play his cards.
  • 03:34 We just know that he has a lot in his hand.
  • 03:36 And Jennifer, all these tech executives that are visiting Mar a Lago and, you know, digging deep for their $1,000,000 or whatever it's costing them,
  • 03:43 what will and these US executives, I mean, in particular, what will that buy them?
  • 03:47 Yeah,
  • 03:48 well, that was what was interesting about the TikTok case was that they went to extraordinary length
  • 03:54 to legislate the carve out TikTok.
  • 03:58 Otherwise
  • 03:59 it would have looked just like every other platform.
  • 04:01 You know, Facebook would have been in the same
  • 04:04 situation.
  • 04:04 And that was kind of what I think gave TikTok comfort for a while.
  • 04:09 I think going into
  • 04:11 this legislative path was incredibly risky.
  • 04:15 It is a
  • 04:16 huge threat to Freedom of Information, freedom of expression.
  • 04:22 Unfortunately, I you know, again, but even the expiration date was right in front of the the next term.
  • 04:27 It, it, it was,
  • 04:29 I, I believe it's just an incredibly dangerous
  • 04:33 piece of legislation
  • 04:34 to target one
  • 04:36 platform like that.
  • 04:37 It doesn't matter if it was
  • 04:39 an external, you know, kind of for an actor or whatever the reasoning was, it's, it, it was,
  • 04:43 it was very, very targeted.
  • 04:45 And the timing, you know,
  • 04:48 would have given the Biden administration some leverage, not only with TikTok,
  • 04:52 but with maybe the sitting platforms
  • 04:54 going into the last election.
  • 04:56 They could have maybe you know again struck us some type of sweetheart deal with.
  • 05:00 Book
  • 05:01 So it's it's really, you know, again, we have to look at the timing of all that that was passed in April last year
  • 05:07 March, you know, we knew
  • 05:08 in March Trump was taking the helm at the RNC
  • 05:12 again, I just I don't like it.
  • 05:14 I don't like it.
  • 05:15 Professor,
  • 05:16 you know,
  • 05:17 you look at how TikTok has been treated by lawmakers and you've seen both parties really voice their concerns.
  • 05:22 At the end of the day,
  • 05:23 do you think that whether or not there is a full on ban that is pursued in the early days of a Trump administration or
  • 05:30 a wholesale
  • 05:32 sale of the platform,
  • 05:35 does that pressure really go away?
  • 05:37 Well, and
  • 05:38 great point.
  • 05:39 Again, I'm just trying to sneak in just a tiny
  • 05:41 piece of critique on Biden here because we really haven't seen it.
  • 05:44 I mean, that's just that's just
  • 05:46 been my experience in the last four years.
  • 05:47 I haven't seen it much in the media.
  • 05:48 But
  • 05:49 as you point out, it was like bipartisan to get that through.
  • 05:52 But that, again, is
  • 05:54 is something that is telling, I think that
  • 05:56 on both sides of the aisle
  • 05:58 that
  • 05:59 President Trump was
  • 06:00 a threat, you know, and
  • 06:02 that it wasn't just Biden per SE, but it was all of the incumbents.
  • 06:07 And we saw this actually way back in
  • 06:10 this reminds me, honestly, in 2012 when we saw
  • 06:14 under the Obama administration,
  • 06:16 they instituted the modernization of what was called the Smith Mont Act.
  • 06:20 And,
  • 06:21 you know, again, Trump is starting to make waves at that time, starting to maybe, you know, put his hat in the presidential rank
  • 06:26 and the incumbents were bipartisan.
  • 06:29 It's again, it's a little bit of a gatekeeping action
  • 06:32 from those who are currently in Congress,
  • 06:34 in the White House
  • 06:36 saying, hey, we don't want this out
  • 06:37 outsider maybe coming in, you know,
  • 06:40 so it, it spoke to maybe the,
  • 06:42 the,
  • 06:43 the the political climate of those who were sitting in power to that.
  • 06:46 Maybe
  • 06:47 maybe they were trying to gate keep a little bit.
  • 06:49 But I just believe that it gave
  • 06:51 incredible amount of of leverage to any incumbent
  • 06:54 at that time.