she tells us about the platform's changing attitude towards political content. plus, is bro culture still prevalent in silicon valley? we ask our tech experts if they've seen a shift in attitudes and how it compares to the uk. first, in the uk, the general election campaign is heating up ahead of polling day injuly. prime minister rishi sunak and keir starmer, leader of the main opposition party, labour, are hitting the campaign trail in their battle buses. but how are they also using tiktok and other social media platforms as a campaign tool? some people are dubbing this the uk's first tiktok election. after the conservatives announced their proposals for national service

for 18—year—olds, rishi sunak also did his first video on the conservative party's tiktok account. hi, tiktok, sorry to be breaking into your usual politics—free feed, but i'm making a big announcement today and i've been told that a lot of you already have some views on it. so, first thing — no, i'm not sending everyone off to join the army. what i am doing is proposing a bold new model of national service for 18—year—olds. well, i want to bring in shona ghosh from bloomberg. everyone here listening to rishi sunak there. give us the basics, shona, because lots of people will think of tiktok as a platform for kids... mm. ..who clearly don't vote, but who is consuming political content on tiktok? so tiktok itself has been trying to dispel the idea that it is mostly a platform, an app used by children. and that seems to be true. erm, it is also widely used by the elder millennials... ..won�*t say which camp i'm in, and also gen z, erm, you know, which is a pretty big cohort

and they can all vote and have often very strong political views. so they are on tiktok looking for political content. i don't know that they're necessarily looking to be fed political content by the political parties. so it's been interesting to see some of the reactions to, erm, each, you know, the two major party videos. erm... and it's also important to say, isn't it, that tiktok bans political adverts. so this isn't advertising. so what are the parties doing on there? so, you know, a little like any social media platform, the parties are allowed to have accounts and even issue out content. but what they can't do is pay to disseminate that content more widely to a broader audience on tiktok. so they can't pay for spread. they have to try and go viral naturally, as it were. i don't know if we'll see those videos going particularly viral any time soon, but that's the goal, is that, you know, they can't pay. you know, one drawback is that tiktok isn't necessarily particularly transparent about how it's

policing this stuff. so, you know, we don't necessarily know, you know, probably the major political parties are not breaking the rules, but we do know that there are influencers who sometimes skirt the line in terms of what they're posting. so that's not to say that, you know, even though there is this ban on political advertising, you may not see content that sort of skirts that a little bit. 0k. well, it's a perfect moment to bring in sean topham from the creative ad agency topham guerin, because sean is known as borisjohnson�*s social media guru, having worked on his 2019 general election campaign. sean, welcome to the media show. great to be here. great to have you. i think your use of tiktok as a useful election tool actually came later, last year in new zealand. you ran the right—wing national party's social media campaign and that party won that election. why then did you focus on tiktok? and presumably you believe it translates into votes? that's right. you know, we saw a huge

shift in the way people were using social media in new zealand. and the best example i can give you is we were, we know we're working in the office and creating our tiktok videos with the now prime minister and he came in one day and he said, "oh, you wouldn't believe what's just happened. i've just had someone stop me on the street and say they recognised me from tiktok." and that sort of represented, very simplistically, a watershed moment for the platform's ability to have genuine cut—through with audiences at scale and with voters. and, you know, to be honest, here in the uk, we've already seen that the labour party have racked up, you know, ten million views in the last few days on tiktok alone. the conservatives, you know, a few million themselves. now, to pay for those views on other platforms would be extremely expensive and that's all organic. that's all based on the quality, or lack thereof, in the content that they've been sharing. and, you know, memes are a really effective form of communication. you know, i'd go as far

to say half the internet isjust memes. and political parties, you know, are still and clearly needing to embrace them to disseminate their message. so, yeah. 0k, sorry to interrupt. just tell us how it works, then. you're trying to create, you know, you can't buy your way to prominence on tiktok. so you're trying to create these memes, whatever it might be. what are you doing? sitting around with a young team talking about how to do that? how? just talk us through how you do it. yeah. that's right. look, i think it would be helpful to have a young team at the helm of that. a lot of these are sort of trends or internet subcultures that sort of captured different audiences on tiktok. and when you can find a way to mash your political message in with this trend or aesthetic or content style, that's when you can really start to get viral content going. you know, the cilla black, surprise surprise, is a meme that's been going around on tiktok for a while, and labour were able to latch on to that

with the national service policy to poke fun at the conservatives. so if you've got a young team who is really well versed with these sorts of subcultures and trends on tiktok, then you can leverage it really hard. but there are other good ways to use, you know, tiktok for content as well, where you can engage with voters and respond to videos. well, we're also joined by sam jeffers, who's the founder of who targets you, an organisation that campaigns for transparency in the way politicians campaign online. sam, what's your reaction to what sean has said? i mean, do you have your suspicions about the online tactics used by political parties? the suspicions, - maybe not so much. i mean, ithink, you know,| one of the things that's sort of been a positive over the last few years hasl been there is now more - transparency at least, right? you can actually see the ads. people are generally running, roughly the audiences they'rel trying to reach with those ads. you can see - what they're saying. you know, tiktok, erm, - you know, has an ad archive, again, although there's no political ads there. -

but you can look at the videos people are running and see i what they're trying to achieve with them and so on. - i think, you know, - in a sense, who targets me is a response to that, right? a kind of organisation that's| there to try and monitor this content, point out interesting stuff, show how people - are trying to use it _ in different ways, try and just kind of make people aware of the ways that's going. to going to happen to them over the next six weeks or so. - and how much have the parties spent already? i know it's early days, but do you have an assessment of how much they've spent on digital campaigning so far in this election? yeah, i mean, - it's a lot of money. i mean, obviously- the spending rules have changed for this election. they've nearly doubled. erm, you know, labour, since. the election was announced has spent about £375,000| on google/youtube ads alone, which is half. as much as they spent last time already. so in the first week- of the campaign, where notionally things are just - getting set up and we're just trying to work things out, - they're already 50% of the way to what they did in 2019. erm, the conservatives - are a bit slower off the mark. i mean, certainly their- advertising spend is maybe not even a quarter of what labour

have done so far. _ but, you know, they'rel still significant amounts of money and i think we're going to see both parties i absolutely breeze past - what they did last time fairly quickly in the campaign. and, just, have we got any evidence? i mean, sean, who we werejust speaking to, clearly thinks they do work, but have we got any evidence that micro—targeted digital campaigns actually work? i mean, presumably they wouldn't be spending all this money if they didn't think they did. yeah, i think there's| a few...there's a few reasons for this. i mean, part of this isjust- you have all of these channels available and all of these . audiences available to you, there is just a sort _ of mutually assured destruction logic to political campaigning, which is, you know, _ there is no tomorrow, - we have a budget, we have to spend it, we have. to reach people, and, you know, we'll see - what the other guys are doing and we'll try and match it. and back and forward we go. so i think there's some of that. - ithink, you know, there is evidence from various places over time where, you know, for example, | it's a while ago now, i but the 2015 campaign, for example, the tories targeted a lot of lib - dem—held marginals. there was no transparency. you couldn't really see into what was going i on in that election.

and then after they won, they sort of credited - the ability to spend a load of money on facebook - in those places. so, you know, ithink. there is...there's a kind of mixture of, like, - you know, mutual logic, folk folklore, but also - the ability to raise money and get volunteers mobilised and do those sorts of thingsl that help campaigns move as well. - well, we've talked about the role online campaigning might play in the general election here in the uk, but whoever wins, a small number of unelected tech bosses in silicon valley will still have a huge say in the lives and interactions of billions of people around the world. i want to think now about some broader questions about how big tech impacts society. to discuss all this, i'm joined by katy balls, political editor at the spectator, timandra harkness, tech commentator and author of technology is not the problem, and, as mentioned, baroness martha lane fox, tech entrepreneur, co—founder of lastminute.com and former board member of x. and timandra harkness,

if i could bring you in, i mean, do you think these ad campaigns contribute positively to political discourse? well, it depends what they are and what they're trying to say. i'm really struck by what sean said, about you've got to talk to voters where they are. if you want to talk to people where they are now, we are on social media. so i think it's less a case of it's a new thing to use technology and it transforms politics, it's more a case of political parties always want to reach us and persuade us and get us to do things. we're not usually members of political parties any more. a lot of the old kind of traditional ways to reach us have maybe fallen away. but what we do have is social media. i'm quite tickled by the mutually assured destruction. like, we've got a budget and we have to spend it! katy balls from the spectator, i mean, ijust said earlier, you've written recently about tiktok. i was saying earlier i was surprised that rishi sunak was doing his, you know, his first tiktok on the conservative party account. but then, of course, that's presumably because they banned tiktok from government phones not very long ago last year, ithink, because

of security concerns. they did. and i wonder if that's part of the reason that both labour and the tories have been so slow in really getting in on tiktok as a way to campaign or get votes, because if you compare it, we heard about new zealand, but if you look at argentina, if you look even at in america and how the democrats use it, you know, it feels like we're a bit behind also some european countries on that, which might go back to security. i think it's a really interesting medium because in terms of length of time, when you speak to political strategists about how they rank the different social medias, i mean, twitter, ithink is really seen almost as the lowest of the lows, where you put your nastiest attacks and just try and, you know, drive the westminster bubble. perhaps i'd be accused of being a member of it, mad for a day on a media row, whereas facebook's much more targeted and there you can do paid targeting, and instagram, i think similarly. linkedln, rishi sunak's team really like, i think perhaps because they think he speaks

well to young professionals. we'll see if that pays off in a month's time. but tiktok is where actually you probably get the most screen time if you can get it right. and martha lane fox, erm, katy was mentioning the role of x, formerly twitter, might play in our general election here and how the parties use it. i mean, you were on the board. how much has twitter, now x's, public role changed, do you think, since elon musk bought the company? i would say a great deal. erm, i remember in my interview i in 2016 with jack, when i askedl him what the proudest thing had been for him since _ founding twitter. that's jack dorsey. jack dorsey, the founder, one of the co—founders. i he said, oh, the arab spring. now, there's a lot to unpick in that. i but clearly at that point back in 2016, there was still- a narrative that was certainly very strong in jack's - head, maybe slightly- weaker in the rest of us, but still there that somehow. twitter had unlocked this kind of unrest around the world, that people could change i the course of political stories and histories because of it. l and i don't think that feels

the case at all now. - katy's just confirmed it _ with a huge, red, enormous pen. erm, you know, ithink- the thing that i'm much struck by and i haven't been- in the company for 18 months, but the teams that have been responsible for making sure l that the quality of the content is as good as it can be, - and bear in mind, twitterl is much smaller and more resource constrained - than the other platforms, has been decimated. the interaction with i the civil society groups that they used to talk- to a lot, through to the actual moderators of the content and so on and i think- that does matter. i think it makes the content less reliable, which makesl it less useful, which, - you know, feeds the loops that we've all been talking about. and i want to talk to you a little bit more about that, but i do know you haven't spoken that much about your departure from the company. i mean, what i remember is the sort of battle to force elon musk to buy after he signed the contract and then he appeared to want to back out of it. i also remember him tweeting, you know, his arrival, carrying the sink, but you were on the inside. what was that period like? well, it was extraordinary.

i think it was kind - of once—in—a—lifetime career—defining stuff in a way, which is a peculiar— thing as a nonexecutive - of a company because you're not an executive, but it felt - as though i did personally kind of cross into being a bit- of an executive because i was chairing the nomination - and governance committee, when you have to worryj about how people come on and off the board - and so we firstly were thinking about how to get elon . on the board and then off the board, and i was chairing. the compensation committee, so that was how we were going to look after all the staff and l the rewards and the bonuses, and i was on the transaction l committee, which is the - committee that worries about how the sale and the process of selling the company- goes through. and, you know, i still pinch myself because i certainly. did notjoin the board of twitter to uphold l the law in delaware, - which is what we ended up having to do. you know, ijoined it because it was kind. of an extraordinary company. i found it interesting. i liked the people and hoped i could bring a european- perspective, but actually - what it was like was extremely, extremely intense, | as you can imagine. because just to explain, the law in delaware

is that he had to buy because he'd signed? yes, because he had a contract, because that's where the law. is the law is the law. and i think it's easy to - imagine you've got boardrooms full of lawyers and bankers. but actually, that wasn't the case. i you know, there were three of us on the - transaction committee. we did have a stellar team| of litigators and of contract lawyers to help us, and of course, - the management team. but it was pretty - focused, pretty clear. and when we had our contract, that's what we had to do, - because that's what you have to do for the shareholders. . so it was so far away from - what your normal board activity is that it is still...still, i kind of feel i'm still. processing it 18 months on, i and i would just be very wary of ever doing business with elon musk. - because? because i don't thinkl he has any high moral values or much integrity. 0k. erm, he's obviously not here to defend himself. i'm sure he would say something entirely different, but you've hinted, erm, in your answer previously about, you know, how x's moderation apparatus has

changed. when it comes to the us election, the election here, how much are you worrying about the impact x, twitter, could have? 0r actually, is it less of an important medium than it was in previous elections already? it feels as though it is less| important, partly because, you know, despite really reorganising the cost - base, the revenues have| clearly collapsed as well. and advertisers have left i the platform, which again, means that you don't get. the quality loop that we've been discussing and, you know, deferring to the expert shona . on one side and katy. on the other side, but, you know, i am really struck. by how people underestimate tiktok at their peril, in my opinion. - you know, it isn'tjust- children and young people. it is people of all ages - and i was reading something about al recently that said - that one of the biggest sources of quality content that people are learning about al - is on tiktok. mm. and that's not just . seven—year—olds and 13—year—olds and 18—year—olds. it's, you know, 35, 45, even 50—year—olds, dare i say it! | so i think we underestimate

at our peril and that shift i isjust interesting, i how quickly that can happen and how it's hard. as a political party to keep across all these different pieces of the puzzle. - it's been so swift, i remember how important twitter was for journalism, and now i feel like it, you know, i don't look at it nearly as much as i used to. stay with us, please, because timandra harkness, your new book looks at how our anxieties about the power of big tech might be unfounded. it's called technology is not the problem. so what are you saying? what is the problem? well, unfounded might be putting it a bit strongly, but i think what i came down to, i started off writing more about the tech and how our data is gathered and we're profiled and everything is personalised, including political messaging, but then, ijust became curious about why that's the technology

to now and to western societies now, i think. does that mean you're letting the tech companies off the hook? not entirely. i mean, i do think there's a lot of things that they could be doing better, and certainly they can be quite unscrupulous in the way they do tap into those insecurities in ways that are not healthy. but i also think if we go completely over and say everything is the tech companies' fault, oh, no, i'm completely helpless, the technology made me do it, then you are actually giving up your human agency in a way which is really harmful, and we should hang on to the idea that we do actually have choices about what we do and how we use the technology.

i mean, you know, 0k, maybe...maybe it didn't cause a wave of liberation around the world with the arab spring, but certainly we can use it for our own positive purposes. we don't have to lie back and just keep clicking on the menus that we're fed. and are you saying how we should do that? not entirely! are you saying we should come off it a bit more than we are or..? not necessarily. i think it's much more a case of are you using it or is it using you? you know, if you know what you want to be doing, if you have an idea about what you would like to do with your life, how if maybe you'd like to have an impact on the rest of the world, maybe...maybe you should stop thinking about how you appear, how you're coming across on social media, or even in the real world, how other people see you, and think a bit more about what impact would you like to have on the world, politically and otherwise, then maybe technology's a thing that you can use to do that, because it is great for connecting us with each other, with other human beings. i mean, thinking particularly about the social media, it does allow us to connect with other humans

in a fantastic and unprecedented way. and very little, i would say, very little meaningful in human society has been achieved by one person on their own. we do achieve things much better when we do it with other people. and clearly regulation is coming in some territories. but what's your sense of whether tech platforms should be forced into regulating their content? i think that's a very difficult area because sometimes it feels as if it's governments who think content should be regulated, but they don't want to be directly accountable for what gets regulated, what's allowed and what's not allowed. and so they outsource it to the tech companies, in sometimes the same breath as saying, oh, these tech companies are terrible and irresponsible, and so they make the tech companies responsible for deciding what may or may not be said or seen or heard or read on social media platforms.

so it's a kind of arm's length censorship and the way things are going at the moment, certainly if you look at the things like the 0nline safety act, that is going to cause tech companies to lean towards caution and saying, well, we won't allow this to go out because you never know, we might end up finding that we've transgressed the law, so we'll be on the safe side and keep it quiet. katy balls? yeah, i think it'sjust a classic struggle currently in terms of what you can get social media and big internet companies to do, and also the impact a government can have in doing that, because obviously we're also talking on this show about the election, but it can feel as though some of these big tech bros, if you call them that, or, you know, tech chiefs have, you could argue, the same power, if not more, than some prime ministers do, in terms of what they have access to, but yet they are held to a lot less scrutiny than, you know, an elected leader would be. and you see with the uk government and online

harms and so forth, and, you know, the struggle it is, you know, lots of tech companies say, oh, governments don't get what we have to do and why, but also just working out what is in the remit and, you know, getting other countries on board. i think it is a bit of a wild west and something that we're going to be debating for some years to come. well, in the studio it's all women, five of us. so that term "tech bros", i'd be interested in what all of you think of it. i mean, we've heard so much the term "tech bro" about silicon valley, that bro culture, if you like. martha, is that something that you've encountered? i think you have to unpick it a bit beyond just - bro, in my experience. i think it, you know, it's irrefutable that i the silicon valley, er, - make—up of silicon valley is predominantly male. you know, it's lots of - different immigrant heritage, erm, people running different scales of tech companies - in silicon valley, . so that's a nuance. and an additional nuance, in my opinion, is the - networks that exist. so, you know, stanford. is a very strong network,

ex—paypal is a very strong network _ meta and facebook isl a very strong network. and i think when you| start to see the webs upon webs upon webs — . excuse me — then you start to see the real power- that a very small number of people have. and it's not that they are all- going around chugging beer and, you know, ripping up pictures of women and saying, - "never in my lifetime," i but it's that there is just a very, very particular kind - of style and network and hidden way of getting things done, getting jobs done, hiring i people, finding money and all that stuff. - and, you know, when sam i was talking before, i wasjust sitting here thinking, brilliant. _ everything he said means that all the money we've talked . about on this show so far has basically gone to two - companies, google or meta. and it is astonishing that it sucked up so| fast into a monopoly. and ijust find it breathtaking. . because regulation can come in many forms. l the harms part can be - regulated, but the competition part, we've been very, very, very lax on. - and shona ghosh, just to bring you back in,

you're from bloomberg, previously business insider. you have covered tech for a long time. when it comes to this idea of the tech bro or the bro culture, is it changing? have you noticed a change? not really. and if anything, i'd argue it's worsening, perhaps. i mean, i think where i would potentially route it, erm, you know, with my ancient history of covering tech, is there was a period earlier in these companies' lives, you know, i'm primarily thinking of facebook now, meta, but google, erm, you know, particularly the online platforms where growth at all costs, particularly after these companies were in the run up to and then immediately after they went public, was the driving factor. and so we've ended up in a world where it's normal that, you know, 13—year—olds have accounts on these platforms, and this all derives from this "we must reach new audiences" both in terms of age and location. but actually, you know, i think it would be a valid

question to the point about child protection to say, should we raise that age? like, why do there need to be 13—year—olds on facebook? do they need that? are they equipped to deal with what they see on these platforms? so you know, i think we're dealing with lots of problems that began at a time of extreme growth for these companies and, you know, really more than a decade on, trying to, you know, retcon retrospectively fit a regulatory framework to manage that growth. thank you so much. we've run out of time. thank you so much to you all for coming on the programme. i'm not going to have time to name you all, sadly, because we really have run out of time. but i want to just thank you all for coming on. we'll be back at the same time next week, but until then, goodbye from me, katie razzall. thanks for your company. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search bbc the media show wherever you get your bbc podcasts. hello there. on tuesday, we had a cold front

move southwards across the uk. now, after a cloudy and wet start to the day across northern areas, once that cold front had moved its way through, well, the skies brightened up and we had a mixture of sunshine and these big shower clouds. the other thing that the cold front did was what cold fronts do — it's really dumped the temperature. so, for example, in aberdeen, we started on monday at 21 degrees for the highest temperature. it was just 15 degrees, though, for tuesday. and those temperatures dropping by five or six degrees was quite typical as this colder polar air mass worked its way in. that means the air started from a long way to our north. now, at the moment, we have plenty of showers around, particularly near coastal areas in the north—west. 0therwise, some lengthy, clear spells. and it's a chilly start to wednesday morning, with temperatures widely down into single figures, the coldest spots probably down to about1 in sheltered areas of scotland. that really is cold for a start to a summer's day. despite the chilly start, though, there will be plenty of sunshine. showers from the word go around these north—western areas, particularly near to the coast.

but through the day, as those temperatures rise, the showers become really widespread, particularly across the northern half of the uk and especially in scotland, where, again, we're looking at some hail and thunder. it's going to feel quite chilly, particularly in the brisk winds here. but further south, 0k, temperatures below average, but in thejune sun, it should probably feel 0k but on the fresh side. now, our weather pattern�*s blocked at the moment. this is a blocking pattern that's out in the jet stream, out in the atlantic to our south—west. what that's doing is it's forcing this north—westerlyjet stream across the uk, and that continues to pull in cold air, particularly to the northern half of the uk. and because we've got a blocking weather pattern, well, that means the weather doesn't change very much from one day to the next. wednesday, we have loads of showers in the forecast across the northern half of the uk. it's the same thing for thursday. again, with those showers coming in across scotland, there'll be quite a few that turn heavy with some hail and thunder, and it will continue to feel quite chilly here. spot the difference, then, for friday. again, loads more showers, particularly affecting scotland, quite a few for northern ireland, northern england. drier weather further south with some sunny spells.

and again, we've got those same kind of temperature contrasts — chilly in the north, temperatures fairly close to average in the south, but feeling 0k in thejune sun. and guess what? into the weekend, we don't really see a great deal changing with the weather. you'll have to wait till next week for some changes.

live from washington, this is bbc news. presidentjoe biden issues expansive executive actions to slow down illegal migrant crossings — earning criticism from both sides of the aisle. prime minister narendra modi declares an historic third victory in india — but fails to win an ouright majority. and with a month to go before

voters across the uk head to the polls, rishi sunak and sir keir starmer clash in their first tv debate of the general election campaign. hello, i'm caitriona perry. you're very welcome. us presidentjoe biden has announced sweeping new measures aimed at deterring migrants from crossing into the united states from mexico. under the new actions, officials can quickly remove migrants who enter the us illegally without processing their asylum requests. the white house says that will happen once a daily threshold is met and the border is "overwhelmed." in this case, overwhelmed means when the seven—day average for daily crossings hits 2,500 triggering the restriction. that threshold of of 2,500 has already been passed this week — meaning these policies will likely go into effect at midnight on tuesday. the us southern border will reopen to asylum—seekers

only when the average holds at 1,500 over