TikTok rival Zynn draws attention on the Hill
With help from John Hendel
Editor’s Note: Morning Tech is a free version of POLITICO Pro Technology’s morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
Advertisement
— Parents and policymakers, meet Zynn: TikTok competitor Zynn, from the Chinese firm Kuaishou, has been the top free iPhone app in the U.S. App Store since Friday — and now, the FTC is being asked to investigate.
— Meet Michael Seibel: Days after Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigned from the board, calling for his seat to be filled with a black candidate, the company is delivering — replacing him with Reddit’s first-ever black board member, Y Combinator partner Seibel.
— The broadening base behind Trump’s EO: President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on alleged social media bias is gaining steam among Republicans in the Senate and at the FTC.
OOOOH, WE’RE HALFWAY THERE. IT’S WEDNESDAY; WELCOME TO MORNING TECH. I’m your host, Alexandra Levine.
Got a news tip? Write me at [email protected], or follow along @Ali_Lev and @alexandra.levine. An event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. Anything else? Full team info below. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.
TIKTOK LOOKALIKE ZYNN DRAWS ATTENTION ON THE HILL — Following bipartisan demands from House and Senate lawmakers for the FTC to investigate TikTok, the agency is now being pressed to probe a similar video app called Zynn — which has been the top free iPhone app on Apple’s U.S. App Store since June 5, according to SensorTower. (While Zynn is similar to TikTok, it stands out by paying users to watch videos and refer friends.) Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a TikTok critic who has focused on national security and children’s privacy issues with the app, wrote to FTC leadership today raising the same concerns about Zynn.
— Zynn diagram: Hawley said Zynn may be violating federal children’s online privacy law; that its pricing scheme could unfairly drive rivals out of the market; and that, like TikTok, it might put U.S. national security at risk. (Zynn is made by Beijing-based Kuaishou, a main competitor of TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed concerns about how China-based companies, under a cybersecurity law there, may funnel American users’ data to the Chinese government.)
“There are serious reasons to question whether Zynn’s ultimate objectives are aligned with the interests of the United States,” Hawley wrote to the FTC. “In China, Kuaishou’s video-sharing service has promoted members of the Chinese Communist Party, censored content at the behest of the Party, distributed forced confessions of detained Uighur Muslims, platformed Party officials bragging about the suppression of religious freedom, and suppressed criticism of Party leadership. The spread of TikTok, given its well-documented ties to the Chinese government, was worrisome enough; now there are two apps for Americans to be concerned about.”
— What this means for TikTok: In all likelihood, more heat.
REDDIT HEEDS CALLS TO APPOINT NEW BLACK BOARD MEMBER — Ohanian resigned Friday as a member of the board, calling for his seat to be filled with a black candidate. Less than a week later, Reddit is making good on that request. The company this morning announced that its newest board member (and Ohanian’s replacement) is Seibel, who is CEO of the Y Combinator startup accelerator program that helped Reddit get off the ground in 2005.
— Seibel is the first-ever black board member for Reddit, and his appointment comes as activism across the tech sector is putting pressure on company leadership to make change — and fast. Case in point: Facebook, Amazon and IBM, to name just a few.
CHEERLEADERS FOR TRUMP’S SOCIAL MEDIA EXECUTIVE ORDER — Trump’s recent executive order aimed at punishing social media giants for alleged anti-conservative bias has continued picking up support from Republicans this week. (The order targets internet platforms’ legal liability shield known as Section 230, effectively asking the FCC and FTC, respectively, to review when websites qualify for the statute’s protections and determine whether companies have censored users’ political speech.)
— On the FCC front, four Senate Republicans came out Tuesday to endorse the president’s move pushing the FCC to narrow the scope of Section 230: Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, and Hawley. John has more here for Pros.
— On the FTC front, Republican FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson on Tuesday also called for agency action on the social media executive order. Leah has more here for Pros.
ROBO-BUSTED — The FCC unanimously voted on Tuesday to propose a $225 million fine for health insurance telemarketers alleged to have made a billion illegally spoofed robocalls. This is the biggest proposed fine in the agency’s history and follows telecom industry efforts to trace the source of the robocall scams. FCC Democrats cautioned they would need the Justice Department’s help to collect any money.
— “Scamming consumers and — as we saw in this case — tricking them into buying products under false pretenses cannot and will not go unchecked,” Chairman Ajit Pai said.
— State attorneys general from Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas, meanwhile, sued the same individuals.
WHO, US? CHINESE TELECOM COMPANIES DEFEND RECORD — The U.S. divisions of China Telecom, China Unicom and ComNet are all defending their records before the FCC, which earlier this year pressed these China-affiliated telecom providers over why they should keep their authorization to operate in the U.S. The Trump administration in April urged the FCC to revoke China Telecom’s license to operate, warning that likely Beijing government sway over the company creates a risk of espionage.
— “Most of [the administration’s] factual allegations involve potential or imagined future conduct by third parties, not actual misconduct,” China Telecom countered in its filing posted Tuesday. China Unicom, too, said it has generally abided by FCC regulations and posed no threat over its two decades of operation in the United States. Pacific Networks and ComNet also argued that they have acted responsibly.
— The FCC is following a “well-established process” for this review, Pai told reporters Tuesday: “The due process we are affording them is notable because it is not necessarily [a] process which is afforded in other countries, notably the People’s Republic of China.”
Former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte is now lobbying on behalf of Ligado Networks, John reports for Pros.
Facebook backlash: Two left-leaning advocacy groups, New America’s Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge, announced they would no longer accept funding from Facebook because of its lack of action on incendiary social media posts by President Trump, John reports for Pros.
Facebook responds: “We've heard from some organizations about their disagreement with a number of the content decisions we've made and we appreciate their feedback,” a Facebook spokesperson told POLITICO Tuesday night. “We look forward to continuing to work with them on these important topics and others.”
Advertisers also back away: “Ever since Mark Zuckerberg defended the platform’s hands-off policy toward posts by President Trump that contained misinformation or promoted violence, some companies are staying away,” NYT reports.
ICYMI: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on his platform that "both Twitter and Square are making #Juneteenth (June 19th) a company holiday in the US, forevermore. A day for celebration, education, and connection.” Learn more about Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, here.
Misinfo monitor: Trump floated a conspiracy theory to his 82 million Twitter followers claiming that the 75-year-old protester who suffered a head injury after being shoved by Buffalo cops was was an “ANTIFA provocateur” seeking to “set up” the police officers who assaulted him, POLITICO reports.
Plus: Here’s how Republicans reacted to that tweet, per POLITICO. (Hint: Not well.)
Hack attack: An Indian hacking-for-hire firm was paid “to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years,” Reuters reports. Among the organizations attacked were digital rights groups Fight for the Future and Free Press, during the divisive net neutrality debate in 2017.
Opinion: “The Protests Prove the Need to Regulate Surveillance Tech,” Justin Sherman, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, writes in WIRED.
Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([email protected], @bkingdc), Heidi Vogt ([email protected], @HeidiVogt), Nancy Scola ([email protected], @nancyscola), Steven Overly ([email protected], @stevenoverly), John Hendel ([email protected], @JohnHendel), Cristiano Lima ([email protected], @viaCristiano), Alexandra S. Levine ([email protected], @Ali_Lev), and Leah Nylen ([email protected], @leah_nylen).
TTYL.
Gloss