Podcasting “How To Make a Child-Safe TikTok”

My Medium column on a surveillance-free internet.

THIS IS THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, “How To Make a Child-Safe TikTok: Have you tried not spying on kids?” The column was inspired by one of the most bizarre exchanges during the Congressional grilling of TokTok CEO Shou Chew:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-make-a-child-safe-tiktok-be08fbf94b0d

If you heard anything about that hearing, it was likely this. Rep Buddy Carter, Republican of Georgia, demanded to know whether Tiktok used “the phone’s camera to determine whether the content that elicits a pupil dilation should be amplified by the algorithm?”

https://www.c-span.org/video/?526609-1/tiktok-ceo-testifies-house-energy-commerce-committee-hearing

Chew replied, “We do not collect body, face or voice data to identify our users. We do not.” Carter pressed him, asking “How do you determine what age they are then?”