Broadband Breakfast on January 15, 2025 - Is TikTok Toast?
Join us for a timely discussion about the future of the platform that changed how America creates, consumes, and shares content.
With a potential nationwide ban set for January 19, TikTok's future hangs in the balance. At the heart of the battle: a bipartisan law requiring the platform to break ties with its Chinese ownership, and TikTok's counter-argument that such a ban would violate the First Amendment. As millions of Americans face the prospect of losing access to one of their favorite apps, our panel explores the high-stakes questions: Can TikTok survive this latest challenge? Will a forced sale save the platform? And what happens to the vast ecosystem of creators and businesses if the app goes dark? Join us for a timely discussion about the future of the platform that changed how America creates, consumes, and shares content.
Panelists
- Anton Dahbura, PhD, Executive Director, Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute
- Adam Kovacevich, Founder and CEO, Chamber of Progress
- Nora Benavidez, Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice & Civil Rights, Free Press
- Karim Farhat, Ph.D., Assistant Director, Internet Governance Project
- Drew Clark (moderator), CEO and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast
Broadband Breakfast
Anton Dahbura is Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy and is also Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute in Baltimore, MD. He joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science as an Associate Research Professor in 2012. He also holds an appointment in the Johns Hopkins University Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. Prior to that, he served as a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories, was an Invited Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, and served as Research Director of the Motorola Cambridge Research Center in Cambridge, MA. He received the BSEE, MSEE, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University in 1981, 1982, and 1984, respectively. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Adam Kovacevich is the founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, a new center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology’s progressive future. Adam is a veteran Democratic tech industry leader and expert in helping lead technology companies through today's challenging political environment. He was named a “Tech Titan” by Washingtonian magazine and an “Antitrust Super Influencer” by Baron Public Affairs.
Nora Benavidez works at the intersection of law, tech and democracy, elevating interdisciplinary solutions to complex threats facing our society. Benavidez leads Free Press’ democracy and tech initiatives, including its policy, legal and campaign efforts to curb disinformation, hate and other manipulation online while protecting digital civil rights, privacy and free expression. Benavidez has appeared before the U.S. Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, the Canadian House of Commons and other regulatory bodies. She is the lead author of the Free Press research reports Big Tech Backslide (2023), which examines how tech companies’ retreat from platform integrity harms democracy, and Empty Promises (2022), which analyzes the role social-media platform policies play in elections.
Karim Farhat is a tech policy expert with 10+ years’ experience producing research, analysis, and opinion pieces on the digital economy. As the Assistant Director of the Internet Governance Project, he oversees a team of driven researchers who work to preserve an open and competitive digital landscape, free trade in information services, and human expression. Karim is also an Instructor at Georgia Tech Professional Education, where he teaches telecommunications policy to mid-career professionals.
Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing tool to collect and verify broadband data left unpublished by the Federal Communications Commission. As CEO and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media community advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.
