TikTok is a nuclear-grade peer-to-peer information system. It’s a staggering work of autoethnography. It’s so addictive because it’s so good. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s real, and it’s a totally modern and novel content delivery system.

The influence of TikTok on American culture is hard to overstate. TikTok has over 150 million active users in the United States, with an average watch time of 58 minute a day.

You might know that I was an earlyish adopter of TikTok — I first downloaded it in 2019.

In the beginning, it was incredibly charming, being invited into people’s houses to watch them sing, laugh, cry, tell jokes, and dance. In such a culturally desolate time, it was comforting — and even wondrous at times.

As the platform changed, it lost some of its naive charm and became an optimized and concentrated, perhaps even dangerous, version of itself.

A lot of people who started making content years ago got really good at it — musicians, commentators, filmmakers, all kinds. Meanwhile, the algorithm got more much more sophisticated.

It shows me what I like and agree with, and it also shows me what I love to disagree with. It never shows me right-wing content because it knows I won’t engage. Instead, my feed is full of people who are ostensibly on my side but spreading misinformation, bad-faith takes, or just being dumb. Because it knows that’s my particular kryptonite.

The platform has really crystallized my political opinions. By having them constantly challenged, it’s made me crankier and quicker to argue.

I don’t believe anything I hear for the first time anymore, no matter how inclined I am to agree.

Because TikTok is also the Amazon jungle of misinformation and ideological warfare. For every good, well-thought-out, and intelligent take, you’ll find ten bonkers, reactionary ones, and 10 more outright lies. This information space will absolutely do you more harm than good if your bullshit detector isn’t on 100.

One thing that’s well-documented — and honestly should be part of this lawsuit — is the amount of deliberate, weaponized misinformation and propaganda that bad actors and foreign governments dump into TikTok. Researchers and academics back this up.

And while misinformation runs wild, TikTok also has the worst censorship I’ve ever seen — swift, mercurial, and totally opaque. They’ll yank an account or remove content at the drop of a hat, with zero accountability or clear explanation. And they do this with very little consistency that I can see. It’s baffling how often this fact is ignored.

As the platform has matured, the algorithm has become so sharp that it’s hard to believe it’s not being weaponized.

Congress banned TikTok because ByteDance, its parent company, is based in China. In China, the government (the Communist Party) can legally demand data from any company operating there — anything created, owned, or collected must be handed over if requested.

If China has influence or access to TikTok, it can do two kinds of harm. As with any other social media app, it can access everything on your phone — your movements, your contacts, whom you’re talking to, your likes and dislikes, and it can infer a great deal more for you activity in the app like what you believe in and the size, shape, and age of your body.

Remember when we thought it was creepy how much Facebook knew about us? Forensic tech experts think TikTok knows way more.

I know people say, “I don’t care if the Chinese government has my information. Is it any worse than Meta or Google?” If you’re really asking that question, maybe they’ve already won.

Data privacy and surveillance capitalism are huge problems, and the government should regulate them. It’s bad for any company to have this kind of power, and there are upsides and downsides to that.

But a foreign government — an arguably hostile one — having all that info is just a straight-up bad thing.

The other harmful thing China could be doing is weaponizing the algorithm.

During the hearing the other day, Justice Kavanaugh said, “Are you saying that TikTok might be trying to get American people to argue with each other? Then they’re doing a good job.” He was joking, but he might be right.

During the presidential election the information space on TikTok was rancid. The level of anger and apathy throughout the world is high, but the level of anger and apathy I saw on that app was out of this world. The algorithm spreading that kind of content has undoubtedly had some real world consequences that played out in the election.

Also, Congress knows something we don’t. They had a briefing that scared so many of them that they voted for this ban in great numbers across party lines. Why is this a bi-partisan issue for them?

I’m not here to defend the American government — but the conspiracy theory that they want to ban TikTok because they “don’t want us talking to each other” or they “want to control the money” or whatever doesn’t make sense. There are plenty of ways for Americans to talk to each other and plenty of other “money” around that congress can’t get around to legislating.

It’s surprising how many people are putting all the blame on the government, as if TikTok itself — a massive company owned by ByteDance — is just an innocent bystander. This huge corporation has some of the most opaque data practices and worst censorship policies around, so maybe we should point a few fingers their way, too.

There are three ways this can go: The app can be shut down, the Supreme Court can stop it from being shut down, or ByteDance can divest.

Why won’t ByteDance divest? Because they don’t want to lose the algorithm. That’s what they said, and I think we should believe them.

Why would ByteDance let an app as huge as TikTok be shuttered rather than divest? This is about more than money.

Again, it’s very hard to believe this isn’t being weaponized. It’s hard to believe the Chinese government would have access to a weapon this powerful and not use it. At the very least, they’d reserve the right to use it.

I won’t speculate too deeply on what China wants to do with it, but use your imagination. But you don’t need to be sinophobic to understand that China has its own geopolitical strategy and the free speech of Americans isn’t really a part of that.

I don’t really know how I feel about TikTok being banned. I think the power of surveillance capitalism, surveillance media, and big data is changing the entire landscape of our country and our minds, in some ways for the better and certainly for the worse.

Social media is having a very bad effect on the country’s mental health. It definitely affected mine before I learned to set some boundaries. TikTok is weapons grade — and that has a devastating effect on some teenagers and other vulnerable people.

But it’s also a staggering and monumental work of media and culture — an incredible work of collective description. It’s nonlinear, fragmented, fast, and uses so little artifice to show a mind-blowing look at the human experience. It’s fucking wild.

I love TikTok, as anyone who has followed me on Instagram can attest.

If it gets banned the world will be lesser — there isn’t another company that can recreate this exactly and there isn’t a museum that could possibly house this experiment. It’ll just vanish into the void of time — and there’s something indescribably sad about that.

Hundreds of small businesses and creators will be out of a job. Millions and millions of dollars will fall out of the economy. Very real harm will come to these people who have worked so hard to create things for their audience and this platform.

Only the supreme court can save TikTok now. Even divestiture comes without the algorithm — and who knows if that could be recreated. They have six days, and the odds are good that none of them have ever actually interacted with TikTok in any meaningful way. The youngest, Amy Coney Barrett is 52, and Clarence Thomas is 76.

Goodby TikTok. Thanks for all the fish.

“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.” — A.A. Milne

Culture matters.

I was so excited when I started my last job. I knew I could do great and really sink my teeth into my new role.

I came out blazing. My first week, I was already having meetings with peers across the organization, looking for ways to collaborate, build bridges, and get some early wins.

I went in to my first one-on-one with my boss so proud and excited to tell her about all the connections I had made.

She got mad. “You can’t just ask for a meeting with these people. You need to check with me first. There’s a certain amount of decorum we have to follow. We don’t want to offend anybody.” She told me I couldn’t contact anyone outside of our team without consulting with her first.

That’s when I should have realized that something was not right.

Coming from owning my own business, I was confused about how being focused and proactive could be a bad thing.

I sent her the list of ten people that I wanted meetings with.

A week went by, I asked her if she had heard back from any of them. She hadn’t quite gotten to sending the introductions.

Another week went by and another. And then forever went by.

In a highly political and guarded culture, in a culture where everyone has too much work to, in a culture where people get pissed when you ask them for a meeting…. Nothing can get done. The velocity of creation slows down.

And culture reinforces itself. The slower and more distrustful an organization is, the slower and more distrustful an organization becomes.

I had my first one on one with my new boss this week. I asked him about the protocol for contacting people interdepartmentally. He looked at me confused.

“Talk to whoever you want, whenever you want. How can you do your job without talking to people?”

What a relief to hear him say that.

I’m glad I work here now. With the cultural building blocks of openness and communication, we have the runway to create something spectacular. Now for the fun part.

Growing up, my dad was a delivery driver for a company that sold remanufactured toner cartridges for large printers.

The boss saw an opportunity and paid for my dad to take a two-week class in printer repair. My dad was a good student and technically adept and eventually became the printer repairman for his company.

He got a small raise but had to sign a no-compete contract. This contract said that he couldn’t work for anyone in Washington State doing anything printer related for two years after leaving the company.

He was the repairman for that company for almost ten years before it folded. He didn’t get any real raises, even as he transitioned into doing repair full time and generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for the company along the way.

He asked for a raise and the boss told him no. He was even offered a job from another company making substantially more, but he couldn’t accept. He felt stuck. He WAS stuck.

The no-compete contract effectively locked him out of the workforce and meant he couldn’t try to find a job with another company, or start his own company. His company could pay him whatever they wanted. Our family lost out on tens of thousands of dollars (maybe more) over the course of his career because of this contact.

No-compete contracts literally stifle competition in the labor market. They are damaging to workers and the economy as a whole.

ESHB 1450 was just passed into law in Washington State. This bill drops a bomb on no-compete contracts. It effectively makes all non-compete contracts unenforceable for anyone making below $100,000 a year.

The first lines read “The legislature finds that workforce mobility is important to economic growth and development. Further, the legislature finds that agreements limiting competition or hiring may be contracts of adhesion that may be unreasonable.”

I hope this has a huge impact on families and low- and middle-wage workers. As these workers build skills and become more valuable, I’m glad companies will now be in a position to react to that and pay them more in order to keep them.

Companies make investments in their employees. The return of these investments should be higher productivity, more loyalty, and an increased engagement, not “you work for me now.”

These “contracts of adhesion” stifle the economy and give an unfair advantage to the employer.

Free markets can’t just be one way.

2019. It’s a dizzying time to be in media. Especially, the Public, Educational, and Governmental (PEG) channels space — partly because they may all soon come to an end.

Many in the PEG world consider the “in-kind” rule currently making its way through the FCC to be an existential threat. The rule could be a major blow to PEG stations and might reach further into many municipalities’ budgets.

I don’t know much about the regulation process of the FCC or what local governments can do to convince Ajit Pai that large telecoms shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever they want. However, despite this uncertainty, I can tell you this: 2019 is a great year to be a media organization.

All kinds of organizations are succeeding in the new media environment. The examples are numerous and exciting. The tools are there, the blueprints are there, and the capabilities of video and audio production have never been more relevant.

With smarts, agility, and an innovative spirit, PEG stations all over the country have a chance for a new life.

I’d like to offer you a rough map, a set of tools, a finger pointing at the moon. These ideas come from my experience in PEG, corporate video, and commercial documentary production, from my training as an MBA, and through my time in art school, as an improviser, and a musician.

The following thoughts are geared toward government TV stations (“G” stations), although what I’m suggesting can be certainly be applied to any PEG station and more broadly to any creative team struggling to connect organizational communications with its mission.

I’m coming at this a bit from the outside, but as they say, “the visitor brings the sharpest knife.” I hope this is the beginning of a productive conversation in the PEG world and beyond, and I’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts about the ideas I’ve presented.

The Problem: Cable TV as a Depreciating Asset

PEG stations are confronted with a major problem: a cable TV channel is a rapidly depreciating asset. There’s never been more competition for eyes and ears, and cable TV is losing market share at an alarming rate.

The number of people watching TV in general is dropping, especially people under 50, and many of those are now using on-demand services like Netflix. The effect has been particularly dramatic for many PEG stations. One municipality that does a biannual survey to see how their citizens get information from their government recently reported that TV dropped in importance from 35% to just 5% since 2010.

But all of this is happening during a parallel renaissance. Outside of cable TV, video and audio production have never been more valuable. People are consuming more audio and video than ever. They’re just not doing it on cable TV.

Many other organizations have dealt with chaos in the new media landscape. This uncertainty will continue as new mediums, outlets, and networks come in and out of the landscape. How have these institutions successfully dealt with this change?

Focus on the mission, not on the medium.

The path to successfully navigating an evolution of this type is by clarifying who you serve and what value you want to create. Getting back to basics, and focusing on the core of your mission can clarify the way forward.

Most “G” channels do some combination of these three things: provide transparent and uninflected coverage of public meetings, provide marketing and communications assets to local municipalities, and create original programming, often designed to “tell the story” of a local government or show the intersection of the government’s work and the everyday lives of the people who live there. (Your organization might do something that’s outside of these three categories. Either way, the prescription is the same.)

Meeting & Event Coverage

The bread and butter of many government channels is to provide coverage of public meetings. For some, it’s their core responsibility.

Many “G” channels have already migrated much of their meeting and event coverage online and are doing a great job at anticipating their user’s needs by making the videos easily navigable and available on-demand. These meetings still air on TV, but the primary medium is digital. This is a great example of thinking of the user first, not the medium or distribution channel.

Marketing and Communications

We can apply this same principle to the marketing and communications arena.

Making a great marketing or communications video requires three elements: excellent strategy, technical mastery, and creative execution. Producers don’t normally set their own strategy. This usually comes from the executive producer, manager, or client.

A strategy in this context is knowing what the intended effect of the message is and how success is measured. For example:

• What do I want to say?
• Who am I going to say it to?
• How am I going to get it to them?

The first two parts of the equation are particular to each message. That’s why the producers don’t usually set their own strategy, because they aren’t subject matter experts. Producers create these messages for clients who need a certain result, but aren’t sure how to get it themselves. When considering the third part — “How am I going to get it to them?” — chances are the answer isn’t always going to be via a cable TV channel.

Trying to find out where your audiences are is part art and part science. There are data showing demographic trends on each of the major social media sites. The municipality you work for may already have a website, newsletter, or other communication channels that have their own built-in audiences, and it can also be effective to ask your audience where they are by conducting surveys and interviews.

What if your municipality provides an important service to a particular community, your council wants to give an end of year message, or your upcoming election has some complicated and important issues on the ballot that would merit further explanation? Each of those might be best suited for a particular medium, so it’s important to consider all options before deciding where a particular message belongs. Optimizing your marketing and communications for each medium will take some time and testing, but your engagement will increase and your value will skyrocket.

Original Programming

The greatest opportunity for government stations in the new media landscape comes in telling the story of a municipality and in creating a two-way connection with residents.

Here are a few examples of what this might look like:

• A weekly podcast with an in-depth discussion of one issue a council is investigating;
• A “talk-back” on Instagram live where an executive can take questions live from the audience (author Seth Godin calls them office hours);
• A series of explainer videos that lay out important issues — like a charter or a budget — and can be linked to anytime those issues are written about or referenced (Vox is pioneering this).

There are a million other ways to tell a government’s story online. The principles of good storytelling work across media. What can your organization do to focus on the mission, not the medium?

What about your franchise agreement?

I believe that most municipalities can move toward a more robust approach in their content strategy and still fulfill all of their obligations to the cable company. It’s much easier to make digital-first content and then package it for cable distribution than it is to go the other way (many PEG stations are already doing this). Also, fully implementing this approach will take some time, some trial and error. You can be sure you’re fulfilling your obligations at each step. Making sure you’re complying with your franchise agreement is in no way mutually exclusive with taking a user-focused approach to creating content.

Developing a Culture of Creativity

This new focus will require your producers (from here on I’m referring to all creatives, including editors, shooters, graphic designers, etc. as producers just to save ink) to learn new skills, and to think of themselves in a new way.

In creative agencies there’s a monetary incentive to be innovative and take risks — success is tied to earnings. Most of the production world relies on freelancers which puts the onus of skill building on the producer or creative themselves. As a government entity or non-profit, you usually don’t have that luxury.

Another factor is that in government, there is often a negative incentive for taking risks. Government is notoriously slow and deliberative. Government stations need to figure out how to create a culture of risk taking and creativity within this context.

Although it requires using the same skills and tools — cameras, microphones, storytelling — creating content for new media requires a modern approach to using those tools, and a more robust creative skill set. Said another way, people that have been making hyper-local cable TV for twenty years are not going to be able to make high production value social media content overnight. But there is a way to get there.

The good news is that in many “G” stations, the building blocks of technical mastery and creative interest are already there. Many of the people I met in the PEG world were very skilled technicians, and every single person I have met in the production world started doing it because they were excited to create. Your producers might be tired, disillusioned, or frustrated. But I believe that in almost all cases the raw materials of a dynamic and creative producer are there. The link between where you are now and the future is through a serious investment in developing a creative culture.

A creative culture is one that incentivizes taking risks and innovation, encourages tapping into the inner motivation of the creator, provides structure and strong expectations around the work, offers the tools needed to make great work, and reinforces change with plenty of actionable feedback. A creative culture is focused on what other industries call professional development.

Clear Expectations

To start with, producers need a clear idea of what kind of media they’re trying to make. They need plenty of exposure to modern media, and need to be looking at it with a critical eye.

Art schools provide a perfect example of how to do this; as part of their training, artists have to view and critique an immense amount of work from across disciplines. This experience is guided by a professor, but I think smart and engaged teams can do this themselves. I suggest having periodic vision boarding meetings where your team can consume a wide variety of inspiring, well made, aspirational media.

I keep a running document with videos, songs, podcasts, and pieces of design that I think are exciting and want to emulate. Generally, it’s helpful if everyone in the group brings things to share. We did this weekly at my former production company. It was the creative glue that kept us on the same page.

During the meeting, create space for questions. Why is this good? What are the elements you think are effective and exciting? Who was the audience? What was the message? What can we use? Look critically at the successes and faults and then use what you can.

Tools

Another way to facilitate a creative culture is providing access modern tools. Many “G” stations are under-resourced in this area. I’m not suggesting that your station needs a RED or Arri, but 2019 is an exciting time for gear. The Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera provides access to a 4k cinema camera that shoots in in ProRes or RAW for around $1200. You can buy a very serviceable slider for $250. Drones are getting cheaper everyday. The DJI Osmo 4k+ Action camera provides a 4k camera with a gimbal for around $500 (this one still blows my mind!). There has never been a better time to shoot and edit video. Going from SD to HD was exciting for anyone creating video, but I would argue that the leap from HD to 4k is even more exciting.

Strategy and Feedback

Paradoxically, it’s crucial that a creative culture strictly define success and provides boundaries for producers to work within. Producers need expectations and strong feedback so they can get better and focus on mastering their craft.

We talked about strategy above and the effect it has on the way a message is put together, but a well-defined strategy is also important to the producer as a way to set expectations and give feedback. If a producer knows who the audience is, and what the message is supposed to say, then they can channel their creativity in the telling and crafting of that message. The strategy will hopefully have feedback built in; for example, a video with a strategy of creating awareness of a website will prove its effectiveness via that site’s view count.

Strategy is also a crucial element to job satisfaction. It provides an intrinsic motivation and an element of challenge; something meaningful to push up against. It can be especially difficult to determine the efficacy of TV programming, so having a clear expectation of what the effect of your message should be is so helpful in motivating producers.

There are many other ways to provide feedback to producers. They can include:

• One on one feedback with an executive producer or manager
• Peer feedback or group discussions
• Feedback from clients (done directly or indirectly)
• Feedback from end users, usually collected in surveys

At the production company I used to run, we did all of these, especially peer critique. Like our weekly vision boarding meeting, we had a weekly peer critique meeting. This type of feedback is also used very effectively across other creative communities. Documentary creators, improvisers, musicians, visual artists, and many other communities have designed ways for peers to give feedback to each other.

A good leader can set boundaries around how critique sessions should be run to ensure trust, participation and a positive outcome. Keep the critique about the work, and what is on screen. New producers should be able to participate in peer critique with veterans and feel heard and respected — and vice versa. It’s tricky to have this kind of critique without the producers taking it personally, but the more you do it, the easier it will be for them look at their own work critically. The work will be substantially better for it.

I hope these suggestions help make your station or organization more effective and prepared to deal with the challenges and opportunities new media outlets are presenting.

I don’t know how to make PEG stations more politically impactful any better than I know how to defend against the Night King (or Ajit Pai…). But I’m sure that if you use these ideas, your station can be more operationally effective, and can create more value for your stakeholders, your municipality, and your residents.