Nobody knows what to do with TikTok

Good morning! This Wednesday, nobody knows what to make of TikTok, everybody wants to deliver internet connections from space, and some people are going to ride scooters really, really fast.
(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to get Source Code every day.)
Facebook execs met with the #StopHateForProfit organizers, and Color of Change's Rashad Robinson was not impressed with the conversation:
Peacock boss Matt Strauss thinks an ad-based streaming service is exactly what the world needs right now:
A group of writers, professors and thinkers published a letter in Harpers basically saying the world is devolving into cancel culture and needs to stop:
Digital and real-world privacy are the same thing, head of WhatsApp Will Cathcart told TED:
Donating money is a good thing right now, but not the only thing, Salesforce philanthropy chief Ebony Beckwith said:
Pretty much the only thing I can tell you with certainty about TikTok is that a lot of people really like it. Beyond that, figuring out what to make of the app is like reading tea leaves through a telescope.
I bring this up because two seemingly mutually exclusive things happened yesterday: TikTok pulled out of Hong Kong over concerns about the Chinese government, and the U.S. threatened to kick TikTok out of America … over concerns about the Chinese government.
That's the thing about TikTok: Who does know? It's owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, but doesn't operate in China, has an American CEO in Kevin Mayer, and swears up and down that it doesn't share data with the Chinese government. "Our data centers are located entirely outside of China, and none of our data is subject to Chinese law," it said last year.
In a way, TikTok's popularity might be its downfall. Tech is politics now, and so when Huawei became a global force, it got huge international pushback. Now TikTok's getting the same. (You'll notice the U.S. isn't particularly worried about WeChat, which is much more popular and collects much more data, but nobody in the U.S. really uses it.)
As Facebook has gone from "social network for chatty college kids" to effectively powering a version of the internet with data centers and offices all over the world, the company's begun to think a lot more about sustainability. Good for the world, good for the bottom line, everybody wins!
This year should be a big milestone in its sustainability efforts. Facebook has said its goal is to have its own operations be 100% sustainable by 2020, and to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 75% compared to 2017 levels. On Tuesday, Facebook put out its most substantive sustainability report yet, with a look into how all that was going as of the end of 2019. (Luckily not much has changed since then, eh?)
First, the numbers. Facebook's reduced its GHG emissions by 59% since 2017, up from the 44% reduction it had achieved by the end of 2018. It's still short of the 75% goal, but getting closer. It's also up to having 86% of operations powered by renewable energy, compared to 75% in 2018.
But are those numbers good or not? I looked at other sustainability reports, and it turns out Facebook's doing pretty well! Amazon, for instance, runs 42% of its (obviously much more complicated) operations on renewable energy. Though Apple says it's already at 100% renewable energy, and has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 64%.
Stronger Care ... from anywhere, to anywhere
At Philips, we're pioneering stronger care networks with technologies we've spent decades innovating. With connected care solutions from telehealth to at-home monitoring, today's healthcare workers can face today's greatest challenges with smarter virtual tools. See how our telehealth technologies help doctors and nurses deliver care from anywhere, to anywhere.
Google's balloon-internet service is finally online. The Loon fleet of 35 balloons, floating about 12 miles up in the air, is providing service to a wide swath of Kenya that includes the city of Nairobi. It's not super fast — reportedly just shy of 19Mbps down and 5Mbps up — but then nor is my Comcast connection most of the time.
It's interesting timing, this launch, coming right after the U.K. government bought up the remnants of OneWeb, which was trying to launch a satellite-internet product and basically just ran out of money.
These kinds of data connections are not a new thing. I'm assuming that through all the Starlink news, someone at Viasat is sitting at their desk saying, "Hi, yes, hello, we've been doing this for like two decades."
But we've seen just how underserved many people are by existing internet infrastructure over the last several months, and also how hard it is to convince ISPs to dig trenches out to rural areas.
Peggy Johnson is the new CEO of Magic Leap. She was Microsoft's head of bizdev, and makes perfect sense as the leader of the newly enterprise-focused company. Magic Leap needs deals, and Johnson is by all accounts a great dealmaker.
Microsoft has hired a bunch of designers and engineers from a Finnish company called Movial, which, the company told ZDNet, is a way "to boost Windows and Android development efforts." Not really an acquihire, but not not an acquihire?
Friends, I will not lie to you: I am outrageously excited about eSkootr, the new electric scooter racing series that's set to debut next year. Imagine motocross racing, plus Tron aesthetics, on scooters that can hit 60 mph. (Going, like, 19 mph on a scooter feels death-defyingly fast, so this is going to be insane.) We don't know much of anything about how it'll work, but I've now watched the teaser video about 10 times, and have graduated to Googling things like "how to hack a Bird scooter to go faster." The championship starts next year, but training starts now.
Stronger Care ... from anywhere, to anywhere
At Philips, we're pioneering stronger care networks with technologies we've spent decades innovating. With connected care solutions from telehealth to at-home monitoring, today's healthcare workers can face today's greatest challenges with smarter virtual tools. See how our telehealth technologies help doctors and nurses deliver care from anywhere, to anywhere.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.