December 18, 2025 • 32 mins
What is a conspiracy theory, and why have they become so common? In Part Two, we continue the story of how TikTok was pushed to the brink of banishment in America. Along the way, we see how a Western artificial intelligence company created a machine that woke the sleeping giant…and ignited a global arms race.
Support the show: https://redpilledamerica.com/support/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You guys.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
We're working really hard here behind the scenes to bring you,
guys the best stories possible. If you want to listen
to Red Pilled America ad free, then please become a
backstage subscriber. So visit Redpilled America dot com click join
in the top menu. I think you're going to love it.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And be sure to share, like, and subscribe to this
podcast wherever you're listening to it. We need you guys support.
Tell a friend about the show. This is how people
hear about it is through word of mouth. And now
on with the show. Previously on Red Pilled.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
America, Politicians have been debating whether to block the social
media behemoth TikTok.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Five Dance, the parent company of TikTok.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
They must divest themselves with.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
This the bill poses a significant risk of being Patriot
Act two point zero.
Speaker 6 (00:57):
The CCP is using TikTok as a spyware tool.
Speaker 7 (01:00):
The social media players, including Facebook, giving them tons of
money to bantiktom.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
For the first time ever, the US government took a
direct action that could lead to the takedown of a
major social media platform.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Umen would launch one of the most disruptive technology companies
in history ymen was.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Building an extraordinarily powerful recommendation engine. A new creator economy
was forming.
Speaker 8 (01:22):
We are on the eve of a content explosion.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I'm Patrick Carelci and I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pill America. We're at part two of our series
(02:13):
of episodes entitled TikTok Conspiracy. If you haven't heard part one,
stop and go back and listen from the beginning. We're
looking for the answer to the questions what is a
conspiracy theory and why have they become so common by
telling the story of how TikTok was pushed to the
brink of banishment in America. So to pick up where
(02:35):
we left off. By twenty sixteen, pressure was building on
Jiang Yi Ming, the Chinese founder of ByteDance. His news
Aptotiau exploded into popularity in China, reaching five hundred and
fifty million users, but the success made him a target.
One of the big three Chinese tech firms, Tencent floated
the idea of purchasing his company. Yi Ming wanted to
(02:57):
go it alone, and that was a problem. If he
didn't take the deal, his company would become a target
of the kartel that dominated the Chinese tech industry. Most
would have given in, but Yi Ming had a secret weapon,
the same weapon that propelled his news app to prominence.
His team had been developing an incredible recommendation algorithm powered
(03:17):
by artificial intelligence. His algorithm captured all the likes and
dislikes of its users and then used that data to
create a machine that delivered exactly what each user wanted.
But it wasn't just his AI machine that gave him
a fighting chance. Yiming also had another critical insight. His
Totiyau news app had been registering an extraordinary demand for videos.
(03:41):
From twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen, video views exploded by
a reported six hundred and five percent to roughly one
point three billion views per month. So to expand the
company and prepare for the coming war with China's tech
cartel Yiming, decided to create a video sharing app that
could go global, and that timing couldn't have been better
(04:01):
because China was about to embark work on a digital
arms race that would put the world on notice.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It was March ninth, twenty sixteen, when Google woke the
sleeping giant. The Silicon Valley company had developed an artificial
intelligence program that mastered a four thousand year old Chinese game.
They called their algorithm Alpha Go, and it delivered a
direct blow to the ego of the Chinese Communist Party.
Games have long served as benchmarks and the evolution of
(04:44):
artificial intelligence. They provide clear rules and objectives, making them
ideal for testing the capabilities of AI algorithms. Over the decades,
computer scientists have used games like backamm and checkers and
chess to measure the progress of AI systems, pushing them
to compete against the best human players in the world.
In nineteen ninety seven, IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world
(05:08):
chess champion Gary Kasparov. It marked the first time a
computer program defeated a reigning world champion in a sanctioned
chess match. It was an extraordinary feat, but AI developers
considered it only a stepping stone to the real test,
that being the Chinese game of Go. A computer mastering
Go would mark a monumental leap in the development of AI.
(05:32):
For one simple reason. Go is the most complex board
game in human history. Go or Paduke, as it's known
in some locales, is played on a large board with
a grid of lines like a graph paper, typically nineteen
by nineteen. Two players take turns placing black and white
stones on the grid intersections. The objective of the game
(05:53):
is to surround more territory than one's opponent. Despite its
simple rules, Go is known for its strategic complexity. Unlike Chess,
where the average number of possible moves is about twenty,
Go offers approximately two hundred possible moves at any given position,
making the strategic depth exponentially greater. Take, for example, the
(06:14):
nineteen ninety seven match between IBM's Deep Blue and Casparov.
Deep Blue was designed to figure out the roughly twenty
potential chess moves through brute force calculations. Then, like the
branches of a family tree, for each of those twenty moves,
it would calculate the next possible twenty moves, and so
on and so on, going several layers forward in search
(06:36):
of the move that would give it the best long
term odds of winning. By contrast, the problem with Go
is that there are on average two hundred possible moves
for any given position. In other words, there are far
more possibilities in Go than in chess. To put it
another way, the number of possible configurations in the game
of Go is more than the number of atoms thought
(06:58):
to be in the universe. So an algorithm that uses
a brute force calculation method just wouldn't work for Go
because there are too many possibilities to efficiently calculate. To
play Go, artificial intelligence would need to think, so it
could eliminate most of the unnecessary calculations. The AI would
(07:20):
need to effectively have intuition, and that would mean a
paradigm shift in the way artificial intelligence worked. So experts
believed that getting AI algorithms to master Go was a
far off dream. That is until Google created the AI
program Alpha Go. Alpha Go marked a shift from brute
(07:41):
force calculations to machine learning, a method that enables the
AI to develop a form of intuition by training computer
neural networks with thousands of human played Go games, Alpha
Go learned to evaluate positions and predict the most promising moves,
much like a human player develops a fuel for a game.
(08:02):
They further inher anst AlphaGo by allowing the AI to
play millions of games against itself, refining its strategies through
reinforcement learning, a method first popularized in the nineteen eighty
three science fiction movie War Games.
Speaker 9 (08:16):
Tich so thick numb.
Speaker 10 (08:20):
There's no way you win that game.
Speaker 11 (08:22):
I know that it doesn't.
Speaker 12 (08:23):
It hasn't learned.
Speaker 11 (08:24):
Is there not going to make it play itself?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yes?
Speaker 11 (08:26):
Number players zero.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And the extraordinary thing was the flexibility of Google's AI.
Deep Blue was a chess master that was as dumb
as a brick when facing any other game. However, Google's AI,
if given time and the right data, could learn to
master practically any game played by humans. All you had
to do was give the algorithm a goal like acquire
(08:49):
the most territory, eliminate all of the blocks, accumulate the
highest score. Just give it a concrete goal, and Google's
AI algorithm could play the game millions of times to
figure out the best strategy. The concept of machine learning
was a giant leap in the development of AI, but
it still had to be put to the ultimate test
of beating a human Go champion. Google's AI team developed
(09:15):
their Alpha Go algorithm in a little under two years,
and by the end of twenty fifteen they believed it
was ready for prime time. So in early twenty sixteen,
Google challenged South Korean Go champion Lisadol to a five
game match, and it became international news.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, we're all familiar with chess playing computers. Deep Blue
famously beat Gary Gasparov twenty years ago, but the ancient
game of Go, which is known as Padug in Korea,
is considered a more significant challenge for artificial intelligence because
the overwhelming complexity makes it an intuitive game. A new
(09:54):
program has beat that challenge, and a huge match of
Go or Padug is expected to take place between the
world's longtime Padu grad mass You're Human and Alpha Go,
a computer program developed by Google.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
With eighteen international championships under his belt. Lisidal was the
Novak Djokovic of Go. The Chinese Communist Party's media arm
covered the Western world's infiltration into their game, and they
expressed a sense of doubt that Google's AI had the
power to master Go.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Alpha Go is fundamentally different from Deep Blue. Deep Blue
played chess, and chess is much less complex than Go
on a geometric scale. Back then, Deep Blue basically used
brute force methods calculating all possible moves. Yes, it calculated
everything as it had incredible processing speed. But with Go
you can't use brute force methods because the number of
(10:46):
possible moves is astronomical, so it can't use brute force methods.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Few believed the algorithm had a chance against the Korean champion.
Even Google's team thought their odds of winning was a
coin toss.
Speaker 12 (10:59):
Up until now, the ancient game of Go or poduk
has been singled out as a board game that computers
couldn't crack due to its complexity, but this belief may
soon change. US tech giant Google says its computer has
a fifty to fifty chance to be some of the
strongest part of players in the world when we quit
with an artificial intelligence program called Alpha Go, developed by
(11:21):
Google's London based company deep Mind.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
The head of deep Mind spoke about why they initiated
the Go challenge.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
The problem is this is why we want to have
this match is we need to see if there are
any weaknesses we don't know about. So of course we've
tried to fix weaknesses that we know, but there may
be something that our systems don't do that brilliant players
like Lisudol can create.
Speaker 12 (11:46):
Google says. Alpha Go is trained to learn like a
human being by observing others play and repeatedly predicting the
outcome of each game, as well as by using its
instincts to make the best move in uncharted situations. This
gut instinct is what makes Alpha Goo more advanced compared
to previous software programs, including IBM's chest supercomputer Deep Blue.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The best of five match was held in Soul, Korea
between March ninth and March fifteenth, twenty sixteen, and it
became a spectacle throughout East Asia, especially China.
Speaker 12 (12:22):
The winning side will be awarded a million US dollars
as price money. But whatever the outcome, one thing's for
sure is that the upcoming match will be a milestone
and the development of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Lisadel agreed to the match thinking he'd go undefeated against
the computer, but after the algorithm was explained to him,
his confidence waned.
Speaker 7 (12:44):
I thought that it would be a bit difficult for
a computer's artificial intelligence to catch up with human intuition
in such senses. So I said I was confident, But
after hearing the explanation of the algorithm this time, I
feel that intuition can be somewhat mimicked. Therefore, I don't
think there will be as big a difference as I
mentioned before. So I think I need to be a
bit more cautious. I now think that the likelihood of
(13:05):
it being five to zero is lower. Of course, I
could lose to the computer. However, since the computer doesn't
understand or play based on the beauty of go or
human beauty, I believe the value of Go will continue
in this game. I will do my best to protect
that human element.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
The match was televised from the Four Seasons Hotel and Seoul,
and tens of millions of people tuned in. It was
broadcast in China as well, who watched an anxious anticipation
to see if their ancient game could be mastered by
a Western computer.
Speaker 13 (13:36):
Good afternoon, I am today's referee. The match will be
in Chinese rules. Please start the game.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
As the first match progressed, it wasn't clear whether the
human or the machine had the upper hand.
Speaker 13 (13:48):
Might have some potential in that course, some potential in
this corner as you show you forty points with one
more move, but other than.
Speaker 14 (13:54):
That, hether that point doesn't have anything yet. It's looking
like Black has some potential at this point.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
But after nearly three and a half hours, Lisa was exhausted,
the algorithm drew the first blood.
Speaker 13 (14:07):
You're pretty comfortable calling it for Alpha Go though.
Speaker 14 (14:09):
Yeah, Alpha Go one, Okay, Lisa resigned.
Speaker 13 (14:14):
A computer program has just beaten the nine professional.
Speaker 14 (14:17):
Happened once, is probably gonna happen again. Now, this is
a big surprise.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
The win rocked not only Go enthusiast and the tech community,
but China as well, because you see, to the Chinese,
Go is more than just a fun game. It is
deeply embedded in their culture. Chinese folklore tracks the creation
of Go back to twenty three hundred BC. As the
story goes, Chinese Emperor Yao is thought to have created
(14:44):
the game to teach his son concentration, discipline, and strategic thinking.
This ancient game has been used by Chinese citizens to
pass down the art of strategy from generation to generation.
With Google's Alpha Go defeating Lisadal in the first match,
it signaled a new threat to China. There's a strategy
teaching tool had now been mastered by the Western world.
(15:07):
But as China media covered the event, they weren't yet
ready to admit that Google's AI had conquered their ancient game.
Speaker 11 (15:14):
See so, if you had to make a prediction now,
with four more games to go, who do you think
will win in the end?
Speaker 15 (15:21):
I still think Lisadol will make a comeback.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
So you think Lisadol was just testing the waters yesterday
to see what was going on.
Speaker 15 (15:28):
I feel like his initial play style was different from
his usual style. He was constantly probing Alpha Go. So
my guess is, if I had to predict, the final
outcome might be a three to two comeback.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
But as the best of five match progressed, the alarm
bells woke the sleeping giant Jendal.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
The battle between human intelligence and artificial intelligence enters the
second round. The South Korean Go champion Lisadall, who lost
the first round, looks tense, resting his right hand on
his cheek, hesitating.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
And it was during the second round that Alpha Go
displayed a level of creativity that baffled the experts. Of
the game.
Speaker 14 (16:06):
That's a very that's a very surprising move.
Speaker 13 (16:08):
I thought was that it was a mistake. Lee has
left the room.
Speaker 14 (16:14):
He left the room, left the room after that move.
Speaker 13 (16:16):
Uh huh.
Speaker 14 (16:16):
He had to go and watch his face or something
just to recover from it. It's a very surprising.
Speaker 13 (16:21):
It's a surprising move. I think we've seen an original
move here, and so that's tremendously excited what I.
Speaker 14 (16:26):
Was doing before. I don't really know if it's a
good or bad move at this point that by.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
The time the second match was over, Alpha Go's surprising
move would turn out to be a stroke of genius
because it put Lisa Daal on the defense for the
rest of the game. Alpha Go would eventually take match
two as well.
Speaker 15 (16:43):
Shocking Chinese media jungle artificial intelligence Alpha Go has caused
Lee Seidong, who holds eighteen Go World Championship titles, to
lose two consecutive games. International Go masters are filled with
a sense of crisis.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
After the win, the Google Ai team leader's excitement left
him at a loss for words.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Well, I think a bit speechless. Actually, it was a
really amazing game today, unbelievably exciting and incredibly tense all
the way through. We're very pleased also that Alpha Go
played some quite surprising and quite beautiful moves according to
the commentators, which was pretty amazing to see.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Alpha Go would take game three as well. It wasn't
until game four that Lisadol finally secured a win.
Speaker 14 (17:35):
Oh, looks like Alpha Goo has resigned.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
But by the time the match was finished, it was
clear who was the dominant player.
Speaker 13 (17:46):
I wonder if we have a resignation here.
Speaker 14 (17:48):
It could be that Lisa always resigned.
Speaker 13 (17:51):
Getting word Lee has resigned. Big congratulations, I think too.
Once again to the to the Alpha Go team. With
the final result of for one four wins for Alpha Goo,
a very impressive.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Google's artificial intelligence crushed the human go champion. The writing
was on the wall and the Chinese media had to
face the obvious fact the Western world was at the
forefront of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 16 (18:17):
But Danji, look at how smart machines have become yesterday.
Alphago's victory exceeded my expectations. So I was thinking from
another perspective, are we underestimating the development of many emerging technologies.
We might have thought that such advancements would take five
(18:37):
or ten years but the pace of technological development might
surpass our expectations within just one or two years in
many areas.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Then a year later, Alpha Go did the unthinkable. It
defeated the Chinese world champion.
Speaker 12 (18:54):
Well.
Speaker 13 (18:54):
As we mentioned, a Google computer program has once again
beaten a world champion in Go, an ancient Chinese game
similar to chess.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
China Google coming in and beating their champion felt like
a national security concern. After the Chinese champion lost game one,
Chinese Communist Party or CCP, banned further live streams of
the event. AI, developed by a Western company, had humiliated
China at their own game in their homeland. This could
(19:23):
not stand, so began the AI arms race. China went
into action. That its first step was like an AlphaGo move,
Silicon Valley and Washington d C wouldn't fully grasp its
significance for years to come. It implemented the Cybersecurity Law
of the People's Republic of China. The law required that
(19:45):
sensitive personal data generated inside China's border had to be
stored within the country. But more importantly, the law granted
broad powers to the CCP, including the authority to access
the data of Chinese companies. The new loss and shockwaves
throughout the business world.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
China's new cyber security law goes into force on Thursday,
with an aim to tysan what is already one of
the world's most restrictive online environments.
Speaker 10 (20:15):
Data collected within China will have to stay inside the country,
raising suspicions that Beijing could steal trade secrets or intellectual
property from foreign firms doing business there.
Speaker 11 (20:26):
China says it's necessary to safeguard's cyber security and protect
against hackers from within and outside the country. What concerns
critics are the broad powers the law will give China
as it pursues so called cyber sovereignty, that is, control
(20:46):
of the Internet within its borders. Companies in key industries
will need to open up their computer systems for security examinations.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
But what almost everyone was missing at the time was
that this move could be used to grab personal data
from outside the country as well. The Chinese company were to, say,
create a social media app that were wildly popular in
the United States, the new law could be used by
the CCP to access the personal data of Americans. That
(21:15):
kernel went almost completely unnoticed by Silicon Valley and Washington
d C, largely because at the time, there were no
popular Chinese social media apps in America. Like in the
Game of Go, it appeared that China was thinking many
moves into the future. But it was China's next move
that did catch the attention of America's political antech leaders.
(21:37):
In a document published by the CCP entitled China's New
Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, China declared that by twenty
thirty it would become the world's leader in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 17 (21:50):
That it was a bold.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Declaration given that in twenty seventeen, Silicon Valley was far
and away the leader in AI. Now it was about
to get its first major challenge.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
There's the environment that Jong Yiming entered when he decided
to create a new byteedance product, a short video social
media app powered by his AI algorithm. He called the
app Doyen, which roughly translates to shaking Sound, and his
team used an interesting philosophy to develop it. They embarked
on the pursuit of the extreme, the extreme and technology
(22:24):
the extreme and experience the extreme in operation, and by
the time they were done by Dance effectively made digital opium.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Do you want to hear red pilled America Stories ad
free then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled
America dot com and click join in the topmenu. Join
today and help us save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So in twenty sixteen,
the founder of Bait Dance, Jung Yimin, embarked on creating
a short video social media app called Douyin, and his
team used an interesting philosophy to develop it. Duyen's product lead,
a woman named Kelly Jung, would later explain how they
developed the short video.
Speaker 17 (23:17):
App back to the second half of twenty sixteen. At
that time when we decided to enter the short video market,
I believe everyone already knew that this was a booming
period for short videos and the industry was extremely competitive. However,
we still decided to join this battlefield because we saw
that short videos had tremendous potential for future development. We
(23:41):
believed that short videos were worth investing in, so we
joined this battle kuyadkhivn TANDIA fit on them. We tested
almost every short video product available in the market, not
just in China but internationally as well. Over one hundred
different short video products. We installed them on our phones,
(24:03):
and our entire team used these short video products every
day to experience and understand them. As they're saying goes,
know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never
be defeated.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The research pushed them towards four key elements for the
short video app. First, it decided to make their videos
play in high definition full screen, something almost no app
was doing at the time.
Speaker 17 (24:27):
Additionally, we added music. Our slogan for Dyin was a
music short video app. While this might seem like a
way to differentiate the product, it was more than that.
Music is like a filter that enhances the audio visual
experience of short videos, so we approached the product from
the music angle.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
They also decided to add special effects and filters.
Speaker 17 (24:53):
If our product was going to serve young Chinese users,
we needed to include features like special effects and filters.
After all, who doesn't like a better looking version of
themse elves, So we made special effects and filters one
of the key elements of Douyin. The last key element
is personalized recommendations. What Byte Dance, the parent company of Doyin,
(25:15):
does best.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Byte Dance launch Doyen exclusively in China about six months
after Alpha Go beat Lisa dol The app slowly gained downloads,
but in March twenty seventeen, the team landed on a
strategy it made the app go viral.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
Yesterday, Governor Chris Christy challenged me to the als ice
bucket challenge. Governor, I accept your challenge.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
A few years earlier, a fundraising challenge went viral in
America and jung Yi means American doppelganger Mark Zuckerberg participated
in the challenge.
Speaker 9 (25:46):
After I dumped the bucket of ice on my head.
I get to nominate three new people to challenge, So
I'm going to challenge Bill Gates, my partner at Facebook,
Charyl Sandberg, and Netflix's founder and CEO Read Hastings to
do this within the next twenty four hours. So you
have twenty four hours to do this, or you have
to donate one hundred dollars.
Speaker 13 (26:03):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 14 (26:07):
That was really cold.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Doyen saw creating challenges as the perfect tool to help
their short video app grow.
Speaker 17 (26:14):
Kelly Jong explained challenges are intended to provide users with
some directional guidance when creating content, since users often struggle
with what to film or how to film challenges help
solve that problem, so.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
In March twenty seventeen, they created a dance challenge to
no scrubs, a song by American girl group TLC. Doyenne
lead Kelly Young would later explain the mechanics behind this
dance challenge.
Speaker 17 (26:41):
The scrub dance challenge became very popular within Duyin in
March twenty seventeen, and even spread to other social media platforms.
This challenge was initiated by a user who worked with
our operations team to develop the concept, aiming to create
a challenge that people would enjoy and want to participate in.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
This was the point that the app Douyenne went viral.
When users logged on, their expectations were exceeded by the experience.
A combination of short videos, music filters, and an algorithm
that delivered exactly what the user liked made for an
addictive experience, the likes of which no app had ever accomplished.
By the end of twenty seventeen, Doyenne was number one
(27:25):
in the Chinese App Store. Their short video app was
a massive hit in China, and Jung Yi Ming quickly
concluded that it was time to take the app global.
As the jewel of the global market. America became an
obvious initial target. The problem was how to break in
the United States. Byte Dance couldn't just make Doyenne available
(27:45):
to American users. The Chinese government had strict regulations on
content entering their country, so opening up the Chinese app
to international creators was out of the question. So byte
dance would have to make a separate clone of Doyen
for the global market. They decided to use the same
logo as Doyene, which was the lowercase letter D shaped
(28:05):
into a musical note, but they did come up with
a different name. They called the new app TikTok, and
it was going to start from scratch in the United States. However,
that created another problem. A recommendation algorithm only works with
a critical amount of users feeding it content. Whitedance had
the kinks in their short video app worked out, but
(28:26):
they needed users to feed their AI machine to make
it work, so they decided to turn to an app
that they'd come across while creating Doyen.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I like singing, and it's really fun because you can
find any type of song that you want and then
he just lip sync or dance.
Speaker 9 (28:41):
Sofia has used Musically to make one hundred and one
lip sync videos, drawing more than one hundred fans.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
In twenty fourteen, two Chinese nationals launched a lip syncing
app in the United States called Musically. The app became
a hit with American tweens, and by July twenty fifteen,
it reached number one in the iTunes app Store. A
year later, they attempted to release a version of Musically
in the founder's homeland, but the app didn't make much
(29:07):
of a splash in China. Nevertheless, it caught the eye
of Byte Dance and Jung Yi Ming. By November twenty seventeen,
Musically had racked up an estimated sixty million active users
in the United States. It was the perfect trojan horse
for Byte Dance to enter America. In early November twenty seventeen,
Byte Dance purchased Musically.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
As you know, I'm a poor member of Musically, I
think the synergy between the two companies are very interesting.
Total put out a press release in English about twelve
hours ago and clearly indicated that Musically as the first
Chinese team to build a mainstream app that's well accepted
in the US and Europe, and the Western World, and
(29:48):
then Totel has the strong AI powered algorithm and recommendation
engine and also monizition capability on top of that, and
the strong presence in China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia
make it a very natural fit both a product capa
building standpoint as well as geographic fit. So I think
the two together we will be able to build a
(30:09):
very interesting platform for a global expansion.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
By Dance would eventually merge musically with TikTok, and the
app officially landed in America in twenty eighteen. Almost overnight,
it became wildly popular. The algorithm had become extraordinarily powerful,
delivering an experience that surpassed every social media app on
the market. Its artificial intelligence also helps people who'd come
(30:42):
late to the social media scene. Trying to make a
video go viral on YouTube or Facebook at the time
had become difficult because their algorithm favored more established users. TikTok,
on the other hand, could make a new user's video
go viral immediately. Creators were quickly building a following on TikTok,
where on other apps they'd stalled. TikTok Dance challenges provided
(31:04):
an easy way for people to become creators. And the
surprising thing was the Chinese app snuck past the Silicon
Valley gatekeepers. American tech giants didn't take the app seriously,
allowing TikTok to rapidly grow in twenty eighteen. In twenty nineteen,
but it was an unexpected international event that would shoot
(31:24):
TikTok into the stratosphere, making it the first Chinese social
media app to break into the global market. And it
was this rapid global success that spelled trouble for the
ByteDance app, because as TikTok rose in prominence in America,
it started to rack up a long list of enemies.
By the end of twenty nineteen, one Washington, DC politician
(31:46):
decided to take on the Chinese own social media app,
and when he did, it exposed the true nature of
a conspiracy theory and why they've become so common.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Coming up on Red Pilled America.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
Executives from TikTok they will never come and take the
oath and testify in public. That I think is unusual
and I think it begs the question, what is it
they have to hide?
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortes for
Informed Ventures. Now you can get ad free access to
our entire catalog of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
To subscribe, just visit Redpilled America dot com and could
join in the topmenu. Thanks for listening.
This is Red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You guys.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
We're working really hard here behind the scenes to bring you,
guys the best stories possible. If you want to listen
to Red Pilled America ad free, then please become a
backstage subscriber. So visit Redpilled America dot com click join
in the top menu. I think you're going to love it.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And be sure to share, like, and subscribe to this
podcast wherever you're listening to it. We need you guys support.
Tell a friend about the show. This is how people
hear about it is through word of mouth. And now
on with the show. Previously on Red Pilled.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
America, Politicians have been debating whether to block the social
media behemoth TikTok.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Five Dance, the parent company of TikTok.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
They must divest themselves with.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
This the bill poses a significant risk of being Patriot
Act two point zero.
Speaker 6 (00:57):
The CCP is using TikTok as a spyware tool.
Speaker 7 (01:00):
The social media players, including Facebook, giving them tons of
money to bantiktom.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
For the first time ever, the US government took a
direct action that could lead to the takedown of a
major social media platform.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Umen would launch one of the most disruptive technology companies
in history ymen was.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Building an extraordinarily powerful recommendation engine. A new creator economy
was forming.
Speaker 8 (01:22):
We are on the eve of a content explosion.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I'm Patrick Carelci and I'm Adriana Cortes.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
And this is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans at the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Red Pill America. We're at part two of our series
(02:13):
of episodes entitled TikTok Conspiracy. If you haven't heard part one,
stop and go back and listen from the beginning. We're
looking for the answer to the questions what is a
conspiracy theory and why have they become so common by
telling the story of how TikTok was pushed to the
brink of banishment in America. So to pick up where
(02:35):
we left off. By twenty sixteen, pressure was building on
Jiang Yi Ming, the Chinese founder of ByteDance. His news
Aptotiau exploded into popularity in China, reaching five hundred and
fifty million users, but the success made him a target.
One of the big three Chinese tech firms, Tencent floated
the idea of purchasing his company. Yi Ming wanted to
(02:57):
go it alone, and that was a problem. If he
didn't take the deal, his company would become a target
of the kartel that dominated the Chinese tech industry. Most
would have given in, but Yi Ming had a secret weapon,
the same weapon that propelled his news app to prominence.
His team had been developing an incredible recommendation algorithm powered
(03:17):
by artificial intelligence. His algorithm captured all the likes and
dislikes of its users and then used that data to
create a machine that delivered exactly what each user wanted.
But it wasn't just his AI machine that gave him
a fighting chance. Yiming also had another critical insight. His
Totiyau news app had been registering an extraordinary demand for videos.
(03:41):
From twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen, video views exploded by
a reported six hundred and five percent to roughly one
point three billion views per month. So to expand the
company and prepare for the coming war with China's tech
cartel Yiming, decided to create a video sharing app that
could go global, and that timing couldn't have been better
(04:01):
because China was about to embark work on a digital
arms race that would put the world on notice.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It was March ninth, twenty sixteen, when Google woke the
sleeping giant. The Silicon Valley company had developed an artificial
intelligence program that mastered a four thousand year old Chinese game.
They called their algorithm Alpha Go, and it delivered a
direct blow to the ego of the Chinese Communist Party.
Games have long served as benchmarks and the evolution of
(04:44):
artificial intelligence. They provide clear rules and objectives, making them
ideal for testing the capabilities of AI algorithms. Over the decades,
computer scientists have used games like backamm and checkers and
chess to measure the progress of AI systems, pushing them
to compete against the best human players in the world.
In nineteen ninety seven, IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world
(05:08):
chess champion Gary Kasparov. It marked the first time a
computer program defeated a reigning world champion in a sanctioned
chess match. It was an extraordinary feat, but AI developers
considered it only a stepping stone to the real test,
that being the Chinese game of Go. A computer mastering
Go would mark a monumental leap in the development of AI.
(05:32):
For one simple reason. Go is the most complex board
game in human history. Go or Paduke, as it's known
in some locales, is played on a large board with
a grid of lines like a graph paper, typically nineteen
by nineteen. Two players take turns placing black and white
stones on the grid intersections. The objective of the game
(05:53):
is to surround more territory than one's opponent. Despite its
simple rules, Go is known for its strategic complexity. Unlike Chess,
where the average number of possible moves is about twenty,
Go offers approximately two hundred possible moves at any given position,
making the strategic depth exponentially greater. Take, for example, the
(06:14):
nineteen ninety seven match between IBM's Deep Blue and Casparov.
Deep Blue was designed to figure out the roughly twenty
potential chess moves through brute force calculations. Then, like the
branches of a family tree, for each of those twenty moves,
it would calculate the next possible twenty moves, and so
on and so on, going several layers forward in search
(06:36):
of the move that would give it the best long
term odds of winning. By contrast, the problem with Go
is that there are on average two hundred possible moves
for any given position. In other words, there are far
more possibilities in Go than in chess. To put it
another way, the number of possible configurations in the game
of Go is more than the number of atoms thought
(06:58):
to be in the universe. So an algorithm that uses
a brute force calculation method just wouldn't work for Go
because there are too many possibilities to efficiently calculate. To
play Go, artificial intelligence would need to think, so it
could eliminate most of the unnecessary calculations. The AI would
(07:20):
need to effectively have intuition, and that would mean a
paradigm shift in the way artificial intelligence worked. So experts
believed that getting AI algorithms to master Go was a
far off dream. That is until Google created the AI
program Alpha Go. Alpha Go marked a shift from brute
(07:41):
force calculations to machine learning, a method that enables the
AI to develop a form of intuition by training computer
neural networks with thousands of human played Go games, Alpha
Go learned to evaluate positions and predict the most promising moves,
much like a human player develops a fuel for a game.
(08:02):
They further inher anst AlphaGo by allowing the AI to
play millions of games against itself, refining its strategies through
reinforcement learning, a method first popularized in the nineteen eighty
three science fiction movie War Games.
Speaker 9 (08:16):
Tich so thick numb.
Speaker 10 (08:20):
There's no way you win that game.
Speaker 11 (08:22):
I know that it doesn't.
Speaker 12 (08:23):
It hasn't learned.
Speaker 11 (08:24):
Is there not going to make it play itself?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yes?
Speaker 11 (08:26):
Number players zero.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And the extraordinary thing was the flexibility of Google's AI.
Deep Blue was a chess master that was as dumb
as a brick when facing any other game. However, Google's AI,
if given time and the right data, could learn to
master practically any game played by humans. All you had
to do was give the algorithm a goal like acquire
(08:49):
the most territory, eliminate all of the blocks, accumulate the
highest score. Just give it a concrete goal, and Google's
AI algorithm could play the game millions of times to
figure out the best strategy. The concept of machine learning
was a giant leap in the development of AI, but
it still had to be put to the ultimate test
of beating a human Go champion. Google's AI team developed
(09:15):
their Alpha Go algorithm in a little under two years,
and by the end of twenty fifteen they believed it
was ready for prime time. So in early twenty sixteen,
Google challenged South Korean Go champion Lisadol to a five
game match, and it became international news.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, we're all familiar with chess playing computers. Deep Blue
famously beat Gary Gasparov twenty years ago, but the ancient
game of Go, which is known as Padug in Korea,
is considered a more significant challenge for artificial intelligence because
the overwhelming complexity makes it an intuitive game. A new
(09:54):
program has beat that challenge, and a huge match of
Go or Padug is expected to take place between the
world's longtime Padu grad mass You're Human and Alpha Go,
a computer program developed by Google.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
With eighteen international championships under his belt. Lisidal was the
Novak Djokovic of Go. The Chinese Communist Party's media arm
covered the Western world's infiltration into their game, and they
expressed a sense of doubt that Google's AI had the
power to master Go.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Alpha Go is fundamentally different from Deep Blue. Deep Blue
played chess, and chess is much less complex than Go
on a geometric scale. Back then, Deep Blue basically used
brute force methods calculating all possible moves. Yes, it calculated
everything as it had incredible processing speed. But with Go
you can't use brute force methods because the number of
(10:46):
possible moves is astronomical, so it can't use brute force methods.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Few believed the algorithm had a chance against the Korean champion.
Even Google's team thought their odds of winning was a
coin toss.
Speaker 12 (10:59):
Up until now, the ancient game of Go or poduk
has been singled out as a board game that computers
couldn't crack due to its complexity, but this belief may
soon change. US tech giant Google says its computer has
a fifty to fifty chance to be some of the
strongest part of players in the world when we quit
with an artificial intelligence program called Alpha Go, developed by
(11:21):
Google's London based company deep Mind.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
The head of deep Mind spoke about why they initiated
the Go challenge.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
The problem is this is why we want to have
this match is we need to see if there are
any weaknesses we don't know about. So of course we've
tried to fix weaknesses that we know, but there may
be something that our systems don't do that brilliant players
like Lisudol can create.
Speaker 12 (11:46):
Google says. Alpha Go is trained to learn like a
human being by observing others play and repeatedly predicting the
outcome of each game, as well as by using its
instincts to make the best move in uncharted situations. This
gut instinct is what makes Alpha Goo more advanced compared
to previous software programs, including IBM's chest supercomputer Deep Blue.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The best of five match was held in Soul, Korea
between March ninth and March fifteenth, twenty sixteen, and it
became a spectacle throughout East Asia, especially China.
Speaker 12 (12:22):
The winning side will be awarded a million US dollars
as price money. But whatever the outcome, one thing's for
sure is that the upcoming match will be a milestone
and the development of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Lisadel agreed to the match thinking he'd go undefeated against
the computer, but after the algorithm was explained to him,
his confidence waned.
Speaker 7 (12:44):
I thought that it would be a bit difficult for
a computer's artificial intelligence to catch up with human intuition
in such senses. So I said I was confident, But
after hearing the explanation of the algorithm this time, I
feel that intuition can be somewhat mimicked. Therefore, I don't
think there will be as big a difference as I
mentioned before. So I think I need to be a
bit more cautious. I now think that the likelihood of
(13:05):
it being five to zero is lower. Of course, I
could lose to the computer. However, since the computer doesn't
understand or play based on the beauty of go or
human beauty, I believe the value of Go will continue
in this game. I will do my best to protect
that human element.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
The match was televised from the Four Seasons Hotel and Seoul,
and tens of millions of people tuned in. It was
broadcast in China as well, who watched an anxious anticipation
to see if their ancient game could be mastered by
a Western computer.
Speaker 13 (13:36):
Good afternoon, I am today's referee. The match will be
in Chinese rules. Please start the game.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
As the first match progressed, it wasn't clear whether the
human or the machine had the upper hand.
Speaker 13 (13:48):
Might have some potential in that course, some potential in
this corner as you show you forty points with one
more move, but other than.
Speaker 14 (13:54):
That, hether that point doesn't have anything yet. It's looking
like Black has some potential at this point.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
But after nearly three and a half hours, Lisa was exhausted,
the algorithm drew the first blood.
Speaker 13 (14:07):
You're pretty comfortable calling it for Alpha Go though.
Speaker 14 (14:09):
Yeah, Alpha Go one, Okay, Lisa resigned.
Speaker 13 (14:14):
A computer program has just beaten the nine professional.
Speaker 14 (14:17):
Happened once, is probably gonna happen again. Now, this is
a big surprise.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
The win rocked not only Go enthusiast and the tech community,
but China as well, because you see, to the Chinese,
Go is more than just a fun game. It is
deeply embedded in their culture. Chinese folklore tracks the creation
of Go back to twenty three hundred BC. As the
story goes, Chinese Emperor Yao is thought to have created
(14:44):
the game to teach his son concentration, discipline, and strategic thinking.
This ancient game has been used by Chinese citizens to
pass down the art of strategy from generation to generation.
With Google's Alpha Go defeating Lisadal in the first match,
it signaled a new threat to China. There's a strategy
teaching tool had now been mastered by the Western world.
(15:07):
But as China media covered the event, they weren't yet
ready to admit that Google's AI had conquered their ancient game.
Speaker 11 (15:14):
See so, if you had to make a prediction now,
with four more games to go, who do you think
will win in the end?
Speaker 15 (15:21):
I still think Lisadol will make a comeback.
Speaker 7 (15:23):
So you think Lisadol was just testing the waters yesterday
to see what was going on.
Speaker 15 (15:28):
I feel like his initial play style was different from
his usual style. He was constantly probing Alpha Go. So
my guess is, if I had to predict, the final
outcome might be a three to two comeback.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
But as the best of five match progressed, the alarm
bells woke the sleeping giant Jendal.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
The battle between human intelligence and artificial intelligence enters the
second round. The South Korean Go champion Lisadall, who lost
the first round, looks tense, resting his right hand on
his cheek, hesitating.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
And it was during the second round that Alpha Go
displayed a level of creativity that baffled the experts. Of
the game.
Speaker 14 (16:06):
That's a very that's a very surprising move.
Speaker 13 (16:08):
I thought was that it was a mistake. Lee has
left the room.
Speaker 14 (16:14):
He left the room, left the room after that move.
Speaker 13 (16:16):
Uh huh.
Speaker 14 (16:16):
He had to go and watch his face or something
just to recover from it. It's a very surprising.
Speaker 13 (16:21):
It's a surprising move. I think we've seen an original
move here, and so that's tremendously excited what I.
Speaker 14 (16:26):
Was doing before. I don't really know if it's a
good or bad move at this point that by.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
The time the second match was over, Alpha Go's surprising
move would turn out to be a stroke of genius
because it put Lisa Daal on the defense for the
rest of the game. Alpha Go would eventually take match
two as well.
Speaker 15 (16:43):
Shocking Chinese media jungle artificial intelligence Alpha Go has caused
Lee Seidong, who holds eighteen Go World Championship titles, to
lose two consecutive games. International Go masters are filled with
a sense of crisis.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
After the win, the Google Ai team leader's excitement left
him at a loss for words.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Well, I think a bit speechless. Actually, it was a
really amazing game today, unbelievably exciting and incredibly tense all
the way through. We're very pleased also that Alpha Go
played some quite surprising and quite beautiful moves according to
the commentators, which was pretty amazing to see.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Alpha Go would take game three as well. It wasn't
until game four that Lisadol finally secured a win.
Speaker 14 (17:35):
Oh, looks like Alpha Goo has resigned.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
But by the time the match was finished, it was
clear who was the dominant player.
Speaker 13 (17:46):
I wonder if we have a resignation here.
Speaker 14 (17:48):
It could be that Lisa always resigned.
Speaker 13 (17:51):
Getting word Lee has resigned. Big congratulations, I think too.
Once again to the to the Alpha Go team. With
the final result of for one four wins for Alpha Goo,
a very impressive.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Google's artificial intelligence crushed the human go champion. The writing
was on the wall and the Chinese media had to
face the obvious fact the Western world was at the
forefront of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 16 (18:17):
But Danji, look at how smart machines have become yesterday.
Alphago's victory exceeded my expectations. So I was thinking from
another perspective, are we underestimating the development of many emerging technologies.
We might have thought that such advancements would take five
(18:37):
or ten years but the pace of technological development might
surpass our expectations within just one or two years in
many areas.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Then a year later, Alpha Go did the unthinkable. It
defeated the Chinese world champion.
Speaker 12 (18:54):
Well.
Speaker 13 (18:54):
As we mentioned, a Google computer program has once again
beaten a world champion in Go, an ancient Chinese game
similar to chess.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
China Google coming in and beating their champion felt like
a national security concern. After the Chinese champion lost game one,
Chinese Communist Party or CCP, banned further live streams of
the event. AI, developed by a Western company, had humiliated
China at their own game in their homeland. This could
(19:23):
not stand, so began the AI arms race. China went
into action. That its first step was like an AlphaGo move,
Silicon Valley and Washington d C wouldn't fully grasp its
significance for years to come. It implemented the Cybersecurity Law
of the People's Republic of China. The law required that
(19:45):
sensitive personal data generated inside China's border had to be
stored within the country. But more importantly, the law granted
broad powers to the CCP, including the authority to access
the data of Chinese companies. The new loss and shockwaves
throughout the business world.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
China's new cyber security law goes into force on Thursday,
with an aim to tysan what is already one of
the world's most restrictive online environments.
Speaker 10 (20:15):
Data collected within China will have to stay inside the country,
raising suspicions that Beijing could steal trade secrets or intellectual
property from foreign firms doing business there.
Speaker 11 (20:26):
China says it's necessary to safeguard's cyber security and protect
against hackers from within and outside the country. What concerns
critics are the broad powers the law will give China
as it pursues so called cyber sovereignty, that is, control
(20:46):
of the Internet within its borders. Companies in key industries
will need to open up their computer systems for security examinations.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
But what almost everyone was missing at the time was
that this move could be used to grab personal data
from outside the country as well. The Chinese company were to, say,
create a social media app that were wildly popular in
the United States, the new law could be used by
the CCP to access the personal data of Americans. That
(21:15):
kernel went almost completely unnoticed by Silicon Valley and Washington
d C, largely because at the time, there were no
popular Chinese social media apps in America. Like in the
Game of Go, it appeared that China was thinking many
moves into the future. But it was China's next move
that did catch the attention of America's political antech leaders.
(21:37):
In a document published by the CCP entitled China's New
Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, China declared that by twenty
thirty it would become the world's leader in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 17 (21:50):
That it was a bold.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Declaration given that in twenty seventeen, Silicon Valley was far
and away the leader in AI. Now it was about
to get its first major challenge.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
There's the environment that Jong Yiming entered when he decided
to create a new byteedance product, a short video social
media app powered by his AI algorithm. He called the
app Doyen, which roughly translates to shaking Sound, and his
team used an interesting philosophy to develop it. They embarked
on the pursuit of the extreme, the extreme and technology
(22:24):
the extreme and experience the extreme in operation, and by
the time they were done by Dance effectively made digital opium.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Do you want to hear red pilled America Stories ad
free then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled
America dot com and click join in the topmenu. Join
today and help us save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So in twenty sixteen,
the founder of Bait Dance, Jung Yimin, embarked on creating
a short video social media app called Douyin, and his
team used an interesting philosophy to develop it. Duyen's product lead,
a woman named Kelly Jung, would later explain how they
developed the short video.
Speaker 17 (23:17):
App back to the second half of twenty sixteen. At
that time when we decided to enter the short video market,
I believe everyone already knew that this was a booming
period for short videos and the industry was extremely competitive. However,
we still decided to join this battlefield because we saw
that short videos had tremendous potential for future development. We
(23:41):
believed that short videos were worth investing in, so we
joined this battle kuyadkhivn TANDIA fit on them. We tested
almost every short video product available in the market, not
just in China but internationally as well. Over one hundred
different short video products. We installed them on our phones,
(24:03):
and our entire team used these short video products every
day to experience and understand them. As they're saying goes,
know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never
be defeated.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The research pushed them towards four key elements for the
short video app. First, it decided to make their videos
play in high definition full screen, something almost no app
was doing at the time.
Speaker 17 (24:27):
Additionally, we added music. Our slogan for Dyin was a
music short video app. While this might seem like a
way to differentiate the product, it was more than that.
Music is like a filter that enhances the audio visual
experience of short videos, so we approached the product from
the music angle.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
They also decided to add special effects and filters.
Speaker 17 (24:53):
If our product was going to serve young Chinese users,
we needed to include features like special effects and filters.
After all, who doesn't like a better looking version of
themse elves, So we made special effects and filters one
of the key elements of Douyin. The last key element
is personalized recommendations. What Byte Dance, the parent company of Doyin,
(25:15):
does best.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Byte Dance launch Doyen exclusively in China about six months
after Alpha Go beat Lisa dol The app slowly gained downloads,
but in March twenty seventeen, the team landed on a
strategy it made the app go viral.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
Yesterday, Governor Chris Christy challenged me to the als ice
bucket challenge. Governor, I accept your challenge.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
A few years earlier, a fundraising challenge went viral in
America and jung Yi means American doppelganger Mark Zuckerberg participated
in the challenge.
Speaker 9 (25:46):
After I dumped the bucket of ice on my head.
I get to nominate three new people to challenge, So
I'm going to challenge Bill Gates, my partner at Facebook,
Charyl Sandberg, and Netflix's founder and CEO Read Hastings to
do this within the next twenty four hours. So you
have twenty four hours to do this, or you have
to donate one hundred dollars.
Speaker 13 (26:03):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 14 (26:07):
That was really cold.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
Doyen saw creating challenges as the perfect tool to help
their short video app grow.
Speaker 17 (26:14):
Kelly Jong explained challenges are intended to provide users with
some directional guidance when creating content, since users often struggle
with what to film or how to film challenges help
solve that problem, so.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
In March twenty seventeen, they created a dance challenge to
no scrubs, a song by American girl group TLC. Doyenne
lead Kelly Young would later explain the mechanics behind this
dance challenge.
Speaker 17 (26:41):
The scrub dance challenge became very popular within Duyin in
March twenty seventeen, and even spread to other social media platforms.
This challenge was initiated by a user who worked with
our operations team to develop the concept, aiming to create
a challenge that people would enjoy and want to participate in.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
This was the point that the app Douyenne went viral.
When users logged on, their expectations were exceeded by the experience.
A combination of short videos, music filters, and an algorithm
that delivered exactly what the user liked made for an
addictive experience, the likes of which no app had ever accomplished.
By the end of twenty seventeen, Doyenne was number one
(27:25):
in the Chinese App Store. Their short video app was
a massive hit in China, and Jung Yi Ming quickly
concluded that it was time to take the app global.
As the jewel of the global market. America became an
obvious initial target. The problem was how to break in
the United States. Byte Dance couldn't just make Doyenne available
(27:45):
to American users. The Chinese government had strict regulations on
content entering their country, so opening up the Chinese app
to international creators was out of the question. So byte
dance would have to make a separate clone of Doyen
for the global market. They decided to use the same
logo as Doyene, which was the lowercase letter D shaped
(28:05):
into a musical note, but they did come up with
a different name. They called the new app TikTok, and
it was going to start from scratch in the United States. However,
that created another problem. A recommendation algorithm only works with
a critical amount of users feeding it content. Whitedance had
the kinks in their short video app worked out, but
(28:26):
they needed users to feed their AI machine to make
it work, so they decided to turn to an app
that they'd come across while creating Doyen.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I like singing, and it's really fun because you can
find any type of song that you want and then
he just lip sync or dance.
Speaker 9 (28:41):
Sofia has used Musically to make one hundred and one
lip sync videos, drawing more than one hundred fans.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
In twenty fourteen, two Chinese nationals launched a lip syncing
app in the United States called Musically. The app became
a hit with American tweens, and by July twenty fifteen,
it reached number one in the iTunes app Store. A
year later, they attempted to release a version of Musically
in the founder's homeland, but the app didn't make much
(29:07):
of a splash in China. Nevertheless, it caught the eye
of Byte Dance and Jung Yi Ming. By November twenty seventeen,
Musically had racked up an estimated sixty million active users
in the United States. It was the perfect trojan horse
for Byte Dance to enter America. In early November twenty seventeen,
Byte Dance purchased Musically.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
As you know, I'm a poor member of Musically, I
think the synergy between the two companies are very interesting.
Total put out a press release in English about twelve
hours ago and clearly indicated that Musically as the first
Chinese team to build a mainstream app that's well accepted
in the US and Europe, and the Western World, and
(29:48):
then Totel has the strong AI powered algorithm and recommendation
engine and also monizition capability on top of that, and
the strong presence in China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia
make it a very natural fit both a product capa
building standpoint as well as geographic fit. So I think
the two together we will be able to build a
(30:09):
very interesting platform for a global expansion.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
By Dance would eventually merge musically with TikTok, and the
app officially landed in America in twenty eighteen. Almost overnight,
it became wildly popular. The algorithm had become extraordinarily powerful,
delivering an experience that surpassed every social media app on
the market. Its artificial intelligence also helps people who'd come
(30:42):
late to the social media scene. Trying to make a
video go viral on YouTube or Facebook at the time
had become difficult because their algorithm favored more established users. TikTok,
on the other hand, could make a new user's video
go viral immediately. Creators were quickly building a following on TikTok,
where on other apps they'd stalled. TikTok Dance challenges provided
(31:04):
an easy way for people to become creators. And the
surprising thing was the Chinese app snuck past the Silicon
Valley gatekeepers. American tech giants didn't take the app seriously,
allowing TikTok to rapidly grow in twenty eighteen. In twenty nineteen,
but it was an unexpected international event that would shoot
(31:24):
TikTok into the stratosphere, making it the first Chinese social
media app to break into the global market. And it
was this rapid global success that spelled trouble for the
ByteDance app, because as TikTok rose in prominence in America,
it started to rack up a long list of enemies.
By the end of twenty nineteen, one Washington, DC politician
(31:46):
decided to take on the Chinese own social media app,
and when he did, it exposed the true nature of
a conspiracy theory and why they've become so common.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Coming up on Red Pilled America.
Speaker 8 (31:58):
Executives from TikTok they will never come and take the
oath and testify in public. That I think is unusual
and I think it begs the question, what is it
they have to hide?
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortes for
Informed Ventures. Now you can get ad free access to
our entire catalog of episodes by becoming a backstage subscriber.
To subscribe, just visit Redpilled America dot com and could
join in the topmenu. Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal: Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a brand new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-4 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.