🆕 Never Post! News Post: Is It Time To Delete TikTok?

Hello from what feels like January 37th. Today, Mike delivers the news you crave, and then he, Hans, and Georgia discuss – you guessed it – TikTok. Now that the app has brokered a sale to stay operational in the United States, what does that...mean? Is it worth sticking around to see what happens to our individual FYP's? Or...should we all just log off for good?

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• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voicemail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com

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DuckDuckYesNo

• Kalshi gets banned
• Court order against Kalshi - Mass Gov
• Boston Globe
• Hackers against ICE - Techdirt
• EFF vs ICE tracking apps
• France bans Zoom - Politico
• Shopify comes to ChatGPT
• The new era of AI storefronts - McKinsey
• Craig Newmark pulls back on funding journalism - Neiman Lab
• NoAI for DuckDuckGo
• YesAI for DuckDuckGo
• DuckDuckGo’s statement on their study
• The U.S. / TikTok deal - ABC News

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.

There is no promise like 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

 blindsides 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 & Leisure and is distributed by Radiotopia

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.

Thank you.

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

TikTok.

And Never Post producer Georgia Hampton.

I don't know what to do.

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.

Yeah. Where do you start? Right?

Where do you It turns out you start in 2020.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

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.

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.

Biden says, we shouldn't do this with an EO. We should do this with law.

Like, we should proper channels. We should do

this based on evidence.

Got it.

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.

But with the backing of congress at this time instead of just Correct.

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

piece of paper. Shouting in different registers

Yeah. And in a very carpeted room. Right.

Yes. Really, that's what it is. That's the difference. The idea of

a carpet of a rug. Yes. A carpet, lacquered wood.

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

all remember constitutional, like, the the law saying no TikTok is constitutional.

Is constitutional. Yes. And that is why TikTok is banned for, like, sixteen hours.

I was gonna say

It goes away last January.

Yeah. We're getting to that moment. Can I

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?

Yeah. I mean, there are TikTok US offices here in New York.

And so because of that, they're subject to

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.

Totally.

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

and enhance. Zoom and enhance on everything.

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.

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.

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.

I was gonna say, I Sweet child. Going to be.

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

and here we are.

Here we are.

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

app Okay.

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.

Perfect. Cool. No notes.

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.

Am now laying on

the ground.

Not Klarna.

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.

Stream blunt rotation. Am I right?

Dys dystopic cyberpunk blunt rotation. God.

Yeah. All that's missing is can we get Peter Thiel in here somehow? Literally.

If only.

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

Oh, no. For what

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?

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?

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.

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

Yes.

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.

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.

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,

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?

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.

Yeah.

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.

Yep.

Literally. It's like

Yeah.

They are like, it's what people are talking about.

Yeah.

And they can't upload those videos. Or they're uploading them and they're being held for review.

Yes.

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

Yep.

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

of Yeah.

The three of us. Yes. I'm curious, like, what your sense of this is from being on the app.

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.

Yeah.

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.

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

all you can do is imagine it.

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.

This is what TikTok has said.

Yeah. This is what TikTok has said.

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

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.

The implication being that, like, someone is manually reviewing these.

Yes. Or that they have this software in place Yeah. That just can flag Some sort of

volunteer level, like, we Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly.

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

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

not sharing. For me. It's auto popped up. Right?

Well, it's an agreement with a new entity.

With a new entity. Exactly right.

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?

Which is wild thing for the governor of California to say.

The truth of it being, it's what it was before as well. It's the same. It is. It's the same.

Words in there, but it's it's really basically the same.

So I think for me, this is really the story.

Yes.

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.

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.

I think the timing of this is also wild.

Yes. Yes.

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

York Times. That that is

nuts. It's nuts.

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,

oh, bloody.

Girl. We're so past that. Who cares

at this point? Hey, guys.

Who cares? You got other stuff going on.

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.

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.

And also, the premise of our entire app is that it's full of artificial intelligence and tracking what you do.

Yes. And that the US government is in the name of the company that owns it?

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?

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

a criminal. It's not a criminal. Mhmm.

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?

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.

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.

A 100%. Oh, I think anyone who uses it has to pay attention to that.

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

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?

Barry Weiss of CBS. You go to Barry Weiss of c

b right. Where do you

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?

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.

Yeah. Thanks Mike. This was helpful.

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 garish suit. We need you to keep this show going.

Head on over to neverpo.st to give us 4 of your monthly dollars, and in return, we will continue to give you thoughtful and expertly crafted audio about a little thing you may have heard about, contemporary existence suffused with technology. Neverpo.st. Become a member. It's just $4 a month. 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 Radiotopia.