• As privacy concerns over TikTok grow, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said officials were considering a ban of the app.
• TikTok users and creators like Michael Le are trying to fight against this using the hashtag #SaveTikTok, arguing that the app has been a light in dark times for many people.
• On the other hand, big companies like Wells Fargo are telling their employees to delete the app from their work devices, while the DNC and RNC have both warned their staffers about the app.
• Gamer and streamer Ninja announced that he has deleted the app as well, saying he hopes a “less intrusive company” can recreate the successful concept.

TikTok Users Try to Save the App

TikTok creators are fighting to save the video-sharing app from a potential United States ban as security concerns over the platform continue to grow.

In early July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the U.S. is “looking at” banning the app, which is owned by Chinese-based company ByteDance. India banned the app over security concerns in June. Since then, users of the app have been left to wonder where they would go if they lost access to TikTok.

Michael Le, a creator on TikTok who has garnered a following of 33.8 million users, posted a video encouraging people to #SaveTikTok. 

“I’m starting a petition with hashtag #SaveTikTok,” Le said in a video that has now been viewed nearly 9 million times and liked by over 2 million people. “2020 has had so many tragedies, and TikTok has been one of the most positive outlets for us all whether it’s watching or creating content,” he continued.

TikTok has been a popular app for a while, but since lockdown measures began in response to the coronavirus pandemic, its popularity has grown even more. It’s become the social media platform of choice for many, particularly Generation Z, as many parts of the world continue to isolate.

According to Sensor Tower, the app has been downloaded 2 billion times. 165 million of those downloads have come from the U.S.

Le said that while the app has “flaws” it has inspired people in hard times and lifted spirits during the pandemic. He asked that people comment #SaveTikTok on his video to create the social petition. As of Monday morning, his video has received over 460,000 comments, many of which use the hashtag. Some of those comments came from other popular creators like Tony Lopez, Jon Klaasen, and Justin Vibes. The #SaveTikTok hashtag has received a total of 311 million views throughout the app. 

Concerns Remain Strong

However, not everyone is working to save the app. Some large companies and prominent figures have advocated for deleting TikTok.

Wells Fargo has asked that all its employees delete the app from their work devices because of security concerns. The Democratic and Republican National Committees have even warned that their staffers about the app.

Amazon sent out a memo asking their employees to delete it but quickly backtracked the order, explaining it was sent in error. 

On top of all that, popular gamer and streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced that he deleted the app and hopes a “less intrusive company” can recreate the successful concept. 

As for why so many people are wary of TikTok, many believe that the app is sending user information to China. TikTok has repeatedly denied this, claiming that user safety is their top priority and that they have not and will not share information with China.

Geoffrey Fowler, a technology columnist for the Washington Post, has explained that the app does collect a substantial amount of information of its users. It is not exactly clear whether or not that information makes its way to China, though it is possible. In a Monday morning piece, Fowler wrote that the app collects information on the content you consume, in-app messages you send, as well as location information, your phone contacts, age and other social network connections. 

While this is likely not more than the information Facebook might be grabbing from its users, it is still a sturdy haul. To find out what happens with that information, Fowler worked with Patrick Jackson, the chief technology officer at a privacy company called Disconnect to watch data flow out of TikTok. While they did not see it make its way to servers known to be in China, they believe it is possible, and even likely, that data could be transmitted to other locations that they could not verify. 

See what others are saying: (Washington Post) (The Verge) (Wall Street Journal)

• Seed Beauty, the company that manufactures Kim Kardashian West and Kylie Jenner’s makeup lines, believes Kylie Cosmetics gave confidential trade secrets to its competitor, Coty Inc, which Jenner sold 51% of her brand to earlier this year.
• Seed is now suing Kylie Cosmetics and Coty in an effort to stop them from sharing and using those secrets. 
• The lawsuit comes just days after Seed won a temporary injunction in a similar case against KKW Beauty, which Coty recently acquired 20% of, preventing it from sharing confidential information as well. 
• KKW Beauty denied claims that it shared information with Coty, and though Coty and Kylie Cosmetics have not responded to the lawsuit yet, they will likely argue that Seed’s allegations are speculative and that the secrets it claims Kylie Cosmetics shared aren’t actually trade secrets.

Kardashian-Jenner’s Strike Deals With Coty Inc.

The company behind Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian West’s makeup lines, Seed Beauty, is taking legal action to protect its trade secrets now that both stars have massive deals with Coty Inc. 

Coty Inc. is the beauty conglomerate that owns brands like CoverGirl, Sally Hansen, Rimmel, and others. It has recently made headlines for striking million-dollar deals with the sisters in what some view as an effort to refresh their image and attract a younger audience. For some time now, Coty has been struggling to keep up with its competitors in the industry, so it seems like their new strategy is to link up with more social media-driven brands like Kardashian West and Jenner’s.

Earlier this year, Coty bought 51% of Kylie Cosmetics for $600 million, and just this week, news broke that Kardashian West sold 20% of KKW Beauty to the company for $200 million.

The deals were huge for the sisters, valuing both of their brands at around $1 billion and leaving them each with net worths of $900 million. However, the deals were pretty concerning for Seed Beauty, which partnered with Jenner since her line started in 2016, taking care of logistics, manufacturing, development, storage, and distribution. 

Seed also took on the same responsibilities for KKW Beauty when Kardashian West launched the line in 2017. Now, Seed Beauty is worried that Coty has, and will continue to, get access to the secrets that it believes make Seed a strong force in the beauty industry. 

Seed Beauty Sues After Kylie Cosmetics Allegedly Shares Trade Secrets 

On June 30, Seed Beauty filed a civil lawsuit against Coty and King Kylie, the LLC behind Kylie Cosmetics, to prevent the misappropriation of trade secrets. 

The lawsuit says that because of Coty’s inability to “successfully compete in the new digital cosmetics world through its own innovation,” the company has engaged in a plan “to steal the secret sauce behind Seed,” through its deals with the sisters.

The suit claims, “Coty made a $600 million investment in King Kylie, but it really was a subterfuge to learn Seed’s confidential business methodologies.”

“Any competitor who acquired such information would be given an unfair competitive advantage,” it adds. 

The suit also alleges that Kylie Cosmetics knowingly shared Seed Beauty’s confidential intellectual property and Coty knowingly accepted that information. The complaint is highly redacted, so it doesn’t specify the secrets that Seed wants to keep private, but it could include things like information about product formulations, information about the business’ core operations, and the structure of its partnerships, according to Forbes. 

Seed says it repeatedly asked Kylie Cosmetics not to share certain parts of their partnership agreement over the course of negotiations with Coty, which were rumored to have begun in June of 2019. 

However, according to the suit, Jenner’s team refused to confirm or deny whether or not they had shared information. Seed also says it asked Coty not to ask for, or use, its trade secrets, but Coty similarly refused to assure Seed that it wouldn’t.

Now, Seed Beauty is asking the court to permanently bar Kylie Cosmetics from disclosing it’s trade secrets. It’s also asking that the court force Coty to promise not to use information that it’s already allegedly acquired. On top of that, it wants Coty to be prevented from developing any color cosmetics with Kylie Cosmetics for a period of time that was redacted in the suit.

“This action is to stop Coty’s theft of Seed’s pioneering and proprietary digital-first business model that has revolutionized the cosmetics industry,” the suit says.

Injunction Against KKW Beauty 

But again, the Seed’s concerns don’t just focus solely on Coty’s relationship with Kylie Cosmetic. In expectation of a Coty-KKW deal, Seed filed a similar lawsuit against KKW Beauty, also seeking protection of its trade secrets. 

Seed filed the lawsuit on June 19, likely after learning from its experience with her sister’s deal. KKW Beauty then filed an opposition to the lawsuit, claiming that Seed’s legal action was an “attempt to stifle the success of the Kardashian-Jenner family.” It also argued that KKW Beauty did not share any trade secrets with Coty and requested that the court compel arbitration.

KKW Beauty lawsuit reads, “The purported harm to Seed is entirely speculative, unfounded, and already complete,”

“By contrast, KKW stands to suffer comparatively more significant harm if the Court were to enter the amorphous injunction proposed by Seed.”

Ultimately, the court granted the temporary order, which lasts until August 21. That order prevents the brand from sharing details about its partnership with Seed, including “the terms of those agreements, information about license use, marketing obligations, product launch and distribution, revenue sharing, intellectual property ownership, specifications, ingredients, formulas, plans and other information about Seed products.”

Still, that court order didn’t stop Kardashian West and Coty from striking a deal, which was formally announced on June 29, and this legal situation is far from over.

It’s likely that Coty and Kylie Cosmetics will both argue that Seed’s allegations are speculative and that the secrets it claims Kylie Cosmetics shared aren’t actually trade secrets.

Still, the legal battles may be worth it in Seed Beauty’s eyes, as it has built itself quite a good reputation in the industry. According to the lawsuit, Seed goes to great lengths to protect its trade secrets by doing things like limiting access to areas of its factory, requiring all employees to sign non-disclosure agreements, and having security monitor the property.

In the Beauty space, Seed is well known for its speed and efficiency thanks to what it calls its “unique business model,” which makes it capable of turning an idea into a product within weeks. The company is not only known for working with the Kardashian-Jenner’s but is also massively successful for its own line, Colourpop Cosmetics, as well as its partnership with YouTuber Tati Westbrook for her new cosmetics line.

So it’s not surprising to see Seed go to great lengths to keep its secrets to success out of its competitor’s hands.

Coty and Kylie Cosmetics have not yet formally responded to the lawsuit or issued a public comment. The first court hearing is scheduled for October, according to Insider.

See what others are saying: (Forbes) (Business Insider) (The Fashion Law) 

• Reddit banned nearly 2,000 subreddits on Monday, including r/The_Donald, arguing it violated its new policies on hate speech, among other rules.
• The same day, Twitch temporarily suspended President Trump’s account over two videos from rallies where he made racist remarks against the Latinx community– marking the first time one of the president’s personal accounts has been suspended.
• YouTube also permanently banned several accounts belonging to white supremacists including David Duke, Stefan Molyneux, and Richard Spencer.

Reddit Announces Bans

Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube all took steps to crack down on President Donald Trump and right-wing accounts Monday.

In a post on the platform, Reddit announced that it had rolled out several new content rules, including updates to its policies that more explicitly ban hate speech.

“Communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned,” the post said.

As a result of those new rules, Reddit also announced that it was banning about 2,000 subreddits, notably including r/The_Donald, the main forum for Trump supporters on the platform.

The subreddit was created in 2015 when Trump was running for president and quickly became a very significant online base for him, boasting just under 800,000 users. While it does not have an official connection to Trump, he has been known to share memes from it, and in July 2016, when he was running for president, he did an Ask Me Anything.

The page has long been accused of sharing hate speech, conspiracies theories, and promoting violence. Over the years, Reddit has cracked down on the page multiple times for violating its policies.

Last year, the company “quarantined” the page⁠— meaning it was placed behind a warning screen⁠— over comments that Reddit said incited violence. Even before that, the platform had also prevented posts on the subreddit from reaching the front page.

Recently, the page’s moderators and much of its audience have moved to other websites that are similar to Reddit but have fewer content rules, and as a result, the forum has been largely inactive for about three months.

In their post, Reddit noted that the “vast majority” of the 2,000 subreddits they banned were already inactive. The post also went on to explain why they banned the r/The_Donald subreddit.

“All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith,” it said. “We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average, […] antagonized us and other communities, […] and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, we’ve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its users—through warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more.”

Notably, Reddit also said that it had banned the subreddit r/ChapoTrapHouse—which is a spinoff of the popular left-wing podcast—for similar reasons.

“Though smaller, r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned for similar reasons: They consistently host rule-breaking content and their mods have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community,” it said.

Twitch Suspends Trump

Around the same time, as Reddit’s post, Twitch also announced that it was temporarily suspending President Trump’s Twitch account for “hateful conduct.”

In statements to the media, the company noted two recent streams uploaded by Trump that violated their rules. The first was a rebroadcast of his famous 2015 campaign rally where he made racist comments about Mexico sending the U.S. rapists who bring drugs and crime.

The other was a broadcast of Trump’s rally a few weeks ago in Tulsa, where he talked about a “very tough hombre” breaking into a woman’s house in the middle of the night, saying that was something that happened a lot.

“Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch,” a spokesperson said in a statement to the media. “In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed.”

While the company did not say how long the suspension would last, the move is still highly significant as it marks the first time ever that one of Trump’s personal social media accounts has been suspended.

YouTube Bans White Supremacists

Later on Monday, YouTube too took steps to address hate speech and announced that it was permanently banning several prominent white supremacist channels, including ones belonging to former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, podcaster Stefan Molyneux, and white supremacist activist Richard Spencer.

In a statement, the platform said that the channels repeatedly violated its rules by claiming that members of protected groups were inferior, among other violations.

“We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies,” a spokesperson said. “After updating our guidelines to better address supremacist content, we saw a 5x spike in video removals and have terminated over 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech policies.”

These bans come almost exactly a year after YouTube announced that it would start cracking down on supremacist channels. The company, however, has already received pushback for the move.

In a tweet Monday, Spencer said that he would appeal the suspension, which he described as “part of a systemic, coordinated effort.”

Molyneux also took to Twitter to voice his displeasure, writing that that YouTube “just suspended the largest philosophy conversation the world has ever known.”

A Broader Shift

The steps taken by Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube are part of this recent shift many social media platforms have begun to make.

Most companies have long-embraced a more hands-off approach and said they want to remain neutral, but now, more and more are changing their tones— especially when it comes to hate speech and President Trump.

Twitter has now placed labels on multiple Trump tweets for sharing misinformation or inciting violence. Recently, Snapchat said it will not promote Trump’s account anymore because his posts can be seen as encouraging violence.

At the same time, Facebook, the biggest social media platform in the world, has consistently refused to address these issues. While the company has claimed over and over again it does not want to police speech, numerous critics have said that they are simply allowing hate speech on the platform.

With so many other social media companies beginning to make changes, Facebook is now seeing unprecedented backlash for its refusal to follow suit.

Over the last week or so, a steadily growing number of major advertisers like Starbucks, Honda, Verizon, Coca-Cola, and more have joined a boycott of Facebook over its policies on hate speech and misinformation on the platform.

The move comes after civil rights groups pressured companies to stop paying for advertisements on Facebook, specifically, because the company has allowed posts from Trump that other platforms like Twitter have flagged as inciting violence.

Despite the numerous requests—and the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly lost $7 billion last week because of the boycott— the company has refused to take any action in removing the content.

On Friday, Facebook responded to the boycott by announcing it will expand its hate speech policies and label posts from politicians who violate rules as “newsworthy.” However, those labels do not explain why the posts are inaccurate or hateful, and many say the company is just going to label hate speech from political figures “newsworthy” without taking any real steps.

Currently, it is unclear if the boycott has had any real, lasting impact, especially because some of the companies are only boycotting for a month. Because Facebook is such a huge incredibly rich company, losing those advertisers is probably just a drop in the bucket.

The issue of political speech is something Zuckerberg has remained really firm on, and while it seems unlikely he will waiver in any meaningful absent some massive event, it will be interesting to see how other companies like YouTube and Twitter continue to change.

See what others are saying: (NPR) (The Verge) (Business Insider)