Good morning. 🗽 Talk of 30 Rock: Cesar Conde, the newly minted chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, says our company will aim to have "50% of our News organization employees be women and 50% of our total workforce be people of color."

• The initiative, which comes amid a national reckoning over systemic inequality and racial injustice, has no timetable. "We realize that this is an ambitious objective," Conde tells LAT's Stephen Battaglio, "and it will of course take time to do in a proper way."

Join the Market: 🗞️ Newsletter | 🎙️ Podcast

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🇨🇳 Foreign affairs, pt. 1

President Trump says he's 'looking at' a TikTok ban

Moving the Market: President Donald Trump says he may seek to place a ban on TikTok in the United States, the latest in a new White House push to crack down on Chinese tech firms that is ratcheting up tensions between Washington and Beijing.

• "It’s something we’re looking at, yes," Trump told Gray TV's Greta Van Susteren last night, adding that it would be retribution for the coronavirus pandemic, which he blames on China.

• Vice President Mike Pence also said on Fox News last night that the U.S. would “continue to take a strong stand” on Chinese entities that threaten U.S. security, including TikTok.

• Their remarks came one day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the White House was "looking at" a ban on the popular social media app, which has ~30 million active users in the U.S.

• India announced its own ban on TikTok and more than 50 other Chinese mobile apps last week as retribution for a recent border clash between the two super powers that left 20 Indian soldiers dead.

The big picture: The threat of a ban comes as various agencies are taking greater steps to crack down on TikTok amid mounting fears that the Chinese-owned app is violating users' privacy and sharing U.S. user data with the Chinese government.

• TikTok says it has "never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked.”

The latest: The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are looking into allegations that TikTok "failed to live up to a 2019 agreement aimed at protecting children’s privacy," Reuters' Diane Bartz reports.

• Privacy groups have accused TikTok of collecting data from children under 13 without their parents' permission. The company says it "takes the issue of safety seriously" and is working to strengthen safeguards.

What's next: To be determined, but as we noted at the time of India's ban, the world seems to be moving into a new era of tech-centered geopolitics, where nations use their citizens — read: mobile app users — as leverage in international disputes.

• TikTok will be at the center of that effort, which means there will be new pressure on Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok parent ByteDance, as well as Kevin Mayer, the former Disney executive who recently became TikTok's CEO.

China News/Getty

🇭🇰 Foreign affairs, pt. 2

China firewall hits Hong Kong

Big in Beijing, big in the Bay: China's new national security law may push U.S. tech companies out of Hong Kong, extending China's influence in the city and expanding the Middle Kingdom's "great internet firewall," our colleague David Ingram reports.

• "The fear among app developers and human rights advocates is that the Chinese government could begin demanding account information or other online data about Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters in ways they haven't before."

• As we noted yesterday, Facebook, Google and Twitter have all paused data sharing with Hong Kong authorities, while TikTok has pulled out of the region entirely. Since then, Microsoft, Zoom and Telegram have hit pause as well.

• Apple, which does a significant amount of business with China, says it is “assessing” the new law, making it "the largest U.S.-based company to continue cooperation with law enforcement in Hong Kong," per The Guardian.

The big picture: Companies will have to decide if they are going "to comply with a Chinese-style regime in Hong Kong," Matt Perault, director of Duke University’s Center on Science & Technology Policy and a former Facebook public policy director, tells Ingram.

• If those companies exit Hong Kong for good, it will mark "the first big retreat of U.S. tech" in the war between the U.S. and China for global technological influence.

🇭🇰 Big in Hong Kong 🇭🇰

"Big Tech’s reaction could now also have a much wider impact on Hong Kong’s future as a financial hub — potentially sparking an exodus of professionals and businesses," Bloomberg's Jamie Tarabay and Iain Marlow report.

• Hong Kong may soon "feel more like Beijing."

Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Boycott watch

Facebook releases 'damning' civil rights audit

Big in the Bay: Facebook will release the findings of its two-year civil rights audit today, one day after a very unproductive meeting with the civil rights groups who organized the Facebook ad boycott. The audit is "thorough and damning," says NYT's Greg Bensinger, who obtained a draft of it last night.

• In a 100-page report, the auditors say Facebook’s approach to civil rights "remains too reactive and piecemeal.” They also say Facebook is not "sufficiently attuned to the depth of concern on the issue of polarization and the way that the algorithms used by Facebook inadvertently fuel extreme and polarizing content."

• The auditors also fault Mark Zuckerberg's handling of political speech, suggesting that "powerful politicians do not have to abide by the same rules that everyone else does," creating "a hierarchy of speech... that privileges certain voices over less powerful voices."

The big picture: Facebook has indicated it will be more responsive to this audit than to the demands of the boycott organizers. Sheryl Sandberg highlighted the audit yesterday as "a two-year review... led by noted civil liberties and civil rights expert Laura W. Murphy and Megan Cacace, partner in the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax."

• As we wrote two weeks ago, the findings of the audit were always likely to do more to inform how Facebook thinks about civil rights issues than the complaints of the boycott organizers.

What's next: Later this morning, Sandberg will publish a blog post in which she will call the audit "a deep analysis of how we can strengthen and advance civil rights at every level of our company – but it is the beginning of the journey, not the end."

• "What has become increasingly clear is that we have a long way to go," Sandberg will write. "As hard as it has been to have our shortcomings exposed by experts, it has undoubtedly been a really important process for our company."

Market Links

• Dave Wehner sees Facebook ads rebound (Information)

• Peggy Johnson is Magic Leap's new chief executive (NYT)

• Matt Strauss starts the rollout for NBC's Peacock (Variety)

• Bob Iger launches a New York Times docuseries (Deadline)

• Jimmy Pitaro makes changes at ESPN Radio (Variety)

Samantha Burkardt/Getty

Future of speech

Intellectuals, artists warn of 'intolerant climate'

Moving Manhattan: Gloria Steinem, Salman Rushdie, Wynton Marsalis, J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky, Malcolm Gladwell and almost 150 other prominent intellectuals and artists have signed “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" that warns of an "intolerant climate" constricting free speech and open debate.

• The effort was organized by Thomas Chatterton Williams, a columnist for Harper’s, where the letter was published, and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

"The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” the letter states, citing "an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty."

• "We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences."

The big picture: "The letter... surfaces a debate that has been going on privately in newsrooms, universities and publishing houses that have been navigating demands for diversity and inclusion, while also asking which demands ... go too far," NYT's Jennifer Schuessler and Elizabeth A. Harris write.

• The blowback: "On social media, the reaction was swift, with some heaping ridicule on the letter’s signatories ... for thin-skinnedness, privilege and, as one person put it, fear of loss of 'relevance.'"

⚽ What's next: "MLS is Back." The Major League Soccer tournament, which has already suffered a fair share of setbacks due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, kicks off tonight in Orlando.

• The first match is 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.

See you tomorrow.