News Information and Media Site: Byers Market: Zhang Yiming loses India; Kevin Mayer faces a conspiracy problem

June 30, 2020

By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles &

AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco

Good morning. 🗣️ The Business Roundtable's economic outlook index fell by 38.4 points in the second quarter to 34.3, its lowest point since the 2008 financial crisis. More than 1 in 4 CEOs don't expect their companies to recover until after 2021.

🤝 But! Deals are still happening. Lululemon is planning to acquire Mirror, the home fitness startup, for $500 million. Uber has made an offer to acquire Postmates, the food delivery app.

Join the Market: 🗞️ Newsletter | 🎙️ Podcast

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Foreign affairs

Zhang Yiming loses India

Moving the Market: India has banned TikTok, WeChat and more than 50 other Chinese mobile apps as tensions mount between Beijing and New Delhi following the recent border clash that left 20 Indian soldiers dead and dozens captured. The ban is a major blow to the Chinese firm's ambitions in the subcontinent.

• India is TikTok's biggest global market, with more than 200 million users and growing. ByteDance, the app's parent company, recently pledged to invest $1 billion in the country.

• In a statement, India's IT minister called the apps a threat to the nation's security and accused the companies of "stealing" users' data and transmitting it to servers outside of India.

• Chinese tech firms have faced similar accusations in other countries, including the U.S., where TikTok is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

The big picture: "As China's government grows more combative abroad, other countries' consumers and regulators have responded by putting pressure on Chinese firms or spurning Chinese brands altogether," WSJ's Rajesh Roy and Shan Li report.

• "The backlash has been fiercest in India. ... Indian officials already have said they would bar their state-run telecom companies from purchasing equipment from Chinese companies such as ZTE and Huawei for future 4G mobile networks."

What's next: India is using this ban as leverage in its stand-off with China, as well as a means to protect the Indian tech industry. But it's not clear how long it will last. A ban last year over concerns about pornography, sexual predators and cyberbullying lasted two weeks.

• Bonus: For more on TikTok in India, read The Atlantic's Snigdha Poonam and Samarth Bansal on how "TikTok Is Taking Over India" (November 2019). Plus, "A TikTok Craze is Minting Celebrities and Ruining Lives in India" by Bloomberg's Saritha Rai (December 2019).

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Domestic affairs

Kevin Mayer's next headache

Big in L.A., big in the Beltway: The 2016 PizzaGate conspiracy, which spread the "baseless notion that Hillary Clinton and Democratic elites were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria," is "making a comeback" via TikTok, NYT's Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel report.

• "This time, PizzaGate is being fueled by a younger generation that is active on TikTok... as well as on other social media platforms. The conspiracy group QAnon is also promoting PizzaGate in private Facebook groups and creating easy-to-share memes on it."

• "PizzaGate [now] targets ... a broader assortment of powerful businesspeople, politicians and celebrities, including [Justin] Bieber, Bill Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Chrissy Teigen, who are lumped together as part of the global elite."

The big picture: TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media company, is running into a very American problem: it's becoming a home for conspiracy theories and misinformation. It's also, as NYT's John Herrman reports, "a prominent venue for ideological formation, political activism and trolling."

• "TikTok is not proactively going out and looking for videos with potentially false and dangerous ideas and removing them," Frenkel says. "There were more than 80 million views of TikTok videos with PizzaGate-related hashtags."

What's next: This is one reason Zhang Yiming hired Kevin Mayer to take on the role of TikTok CEO in May. As a source who spoke to Zhang about the position told us then, the role is really about "deflecting a lot of the incoming fire" from Washington.

• Bonus: Snapchat's Peter Hamby takes a look at TikTok's conspiracy theory problem here.

🚫 Ban Day 🚫

Google's YouTube banned several prominent far right and white supremacist channels yesterday, including those belonging to Stefan Molyneux, David Duke and Richard Spencer.

Amazon's Twitch temporarily banned President Donald Trump for "hateful conduct" that was aired on its stream.

Reddit banned about 2,000 subreddits, including some where supporters of the president had promoted hate.

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State of media

A.G. Sulzberger ditches Apple

Moving Manhattan: The New York Times says it is ending its partnership with Apple News, depriving the iPhone giant of the ability to post its articles in its curated news app. The move comes as the Times is investing in subscriptions and weaning itself off ad revenue.

• The big picture: Apple had touted its news app as a way to bolster the news industry, but the Times said the relationship failed to satisfy its needs, including its desire to have direct access to its readers and their data. (NBC News publishes articles daily on Apple News.)

• "Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments," Meredith Kopit Levien, the Times' chief operating officer, wrote in a memo to employees. "Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters."

• Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr sought to downplay the Times' contribution to the Apple News product, saying it had "only offered Apple News a few stories per day." He also said Apple was "committed to supporting quality journalism through the proven business models of advertising, subscriptions, and commerce."

What's next: The Times is the first major news media company to sever ties with Apple. It is unclear if other publications that have increasingly come to rely on subscriptions and direct-to-consumer relationships will follow suit.

Market Links

• Satya Nadella suspends Facebook advertising (Axios)

• Mark Zuckerberg's ad boycott list keeps growing (CNBC)

• Sundar Pichai removes misleading voter registration ads (NBC)

• Stuart Emmrich steps down as Vogue.com editor (Folio)

• Olivia Nuzzi remembers Betsy Rothstein (NYM)

Kevin Cox/Getty

End of an era

AT&T offloads CNN Atlanta

Talk of TV Land, Pt 1: WarnerMedia is planning to sell its historic CNN Center in downtown Atlanta, the site of its original headquarters, "as parent AT&T looks to shed assets to help pare down its massive debt," Deadline's Jill Goldsmith reports.

• The big picture: "AT&T had planned to sell $10 billion in assets this year [to alleviate] $150 billion debt. ... It sold Central European Media last year... as well as its stakes in Hulu, Hudson Yards offices and... is looking to unload Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment video game division."

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Off camera

Van Jones draws fire

Talk of TV Land, Pt 2: Van Jones, the CNN personality and one-time Obama environmental adviser, is drawing fire from progressives for his ties to the Trump White House and his failure to disclose his involvement with a police reform initiative by the president that he praised on live television.

• The Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove reports that neither Jones nor CNN informed viewers that Jones "had actually participated in secret discussions with his new friend Jared Kushner on ways to frame the presidential project."

• Jones has denied involvement in the creation of the reform order and said he had "never been included in any meetings about police reform." But a White House sources tells Grove that Jones worked closely with Kushner on the order.

The backstory: Jones and Kushner have become "fast friends; Jones has been an occasional dinner guest of Jared and Ivanka Trump at their mansion in Washington's posh Kalorama neighborhood, and Kushner introduced Jones to Kim Kardashian West, a longtime pal —along with her husband Kanye — of Ivanka's."

• "Ironically, Jones has enjoyed far greater access to Donald Trump and his most powerful adviser, Jared Kushner, than he ever did to Barack Obama and Obama's top aides."

The big picture: "Several associates of Jones... speculated... that Jones... is motivated as much by personal advancement, fame and access to power and money as by altruism." Meanwhile, CNN "has repeatedly blurred the lines by placing him in journalistic roles."