The TikTok platform is in the crosshairs of the European Union and the United States, where it faces accusations of manipulation of public opinion, an extreme denied by its parent company, the Chinese ByteDance, which denies being controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok is immersed in a process in the US that could culminate in its ban if the platform does not separate itself from ByteDance, which Washington suspects could use information about American users to manipulate public opinion.
The European Commission will also investigate TikTok for an alleged failure to mitigate foreign interference in elections such as the recent Romanian presidential one, where the pro-Russian candidate won in the first round.
ByteDance, then known as Jinritoutiao, launched Douyin, the original Chinese TikTok app, in 2016.
Designed for an already competitive domestic market for short video applications, with rivals such as Kuaishou, Douyin differentiated itself by the integration of music, special effects and a sophisticated personalized ‘feed’.
After overwhelming success in China, ByteDance expanded rapidly: in 2017, the company created a global version of Douyin, which it called TikTok, and began its expansion with the acquisition of Musical.ly, a music video platform popular among young people. Americans.
The purchase allowed TikTok to tap into an established user base and gain traction in key markets such as North America and Europe. In the first quarter of 2018, it was the most downloaded in the App Store worldwide.
Since its global expansion, TikTok has been an unprecedented phenomenon for an app developed in China, surpassing giants like Facebook and Instagram in growth speed.
However, the success of TikTok and its position as the first internationally successful social network of Chinese origin soon made it face geopolitical and regulatory challenges: in 2020, India banned TikTok after a border conflict with China, losing its largest market at the time. .
However, in the first months of 2020, when millions of people remained at home due to pandemic lockdowns and felt “drawn to their mobile phones more than ever,” the app exploded in popularity, according to Sensor Tower.
Its global downloads increased from 200 million in the last quarter of 2019 to more than 300 million in the first quarter of 2020, a record downloads in a quarter for any mobile application.
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The influence of TikTok on other social networks and its controversy with data collection
Given the success of TikTok, numerous analysts pointed out, starting in 2021, the “tiktokization” of rivals such as Instagram or YouTube, which adjusted their strategy to prioritize short videos and personalized video recommendations.
The phenomenon underlines the influence of TikTok and the importance of its algorithm, which has forced other social networks to adjust their strategies.
TikTok’s efficient algorithm, which optimizes content based on viewing time, is a key element of the app’s success, but also one of its biggest headaches due to criticism about its opacity.
As in the case of Romania, where the European Commission asked the app to detail the operation of its algorithm, or the accusations that TikTok, which has some 2 billion users in the world, censors content contrary to the Chinese Government, numerous Voices ask for greater transparency from ByteDance.
After pressure from Washington and Brussels, the company decided to store the data of its American and community users in centers outside China, although doubts persist about whether ByteDance employees in Chinese territory still have access to it.
The CEO of TikTok, Singaporean Shou Zi Chew, assured the US Congress in 2023: “ByteDance is not under the control of the Chinese Government. I have no evidence that the Chinese Executive has access to the data,” in an intervention that went viral in China for how Shou responded to the incisive questions from the American congressmen.
ByteDance, led by Zhang Yiming, who became the richest man in China in 2024, repeatedly denied sharing information about its users with the Chinese authorities.
It should be noted that TikTok, like services such as Google, Facebook or X, is blocked in China, where Bytedance operates Douyin, the application that gave rise to TikTok and which is completely independent of its international version.
Douyin, which has about 750 million monthly users in China, is subject to the strict rules of regulators in the Asian country, which require it to thoroughly remove content considered sensitive by Chinese authorities and to promote publications from state media.
With information from EFE
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