On 22 January 2021, the Italian Data Protection Authority demanded that TikTok temporarily suspend Italian users whose age could not be established. Comment sections of “sexy” videos, such as young girls dancing in revealing clothes, were found to contain requests for nude pictures. In March 2023, TikTok announced default screen time limits for users under the age of 18.
- The popularity of pro-Palestine content has also been explained by the app’s younger user base, which has shifted its sympathy away from Israel towards the Palestinians.
- Many platforms and services, including YouTube Shorts, began to imitate TikTok’s format and recommendation page.
- In July 2025, Media Matters reported that Google’s Veo 3 text-to-video model for AI-generated content is being used to generate large numbers of dehumanizing and violent videos with racist and antisemitic tropes which are being shared on TikTok.
- Data collected by TikTok and other social networks can already be purchased through other means.
- TikTok has banned the advertising of cosmetic surgeries on the platform but cosmetic surgeons are still able to reach large audiences using unpaid photo and video posts.
- Food-related content on TikTok is often categorized under the hashtags #TikTokFood and #FoodTok.
- A third party will oversee the cybersecurity policies, data flows, and personnel access independently of TikTok.
TikTok has been downloaded more than 130 million times in the United States and has reached 2 billion downloads worldwide, according to data from mobile research firm Sensor Tower (those numbers exclude Android users in China). TikTok merged with Musical.ly on 2 August 2018 with existing accounts and data consolidated into one app, keeping the title TikTok. While TikTok remains accessible to users in most countries, a minority of countries (including India and Afghanistan) have implemented full or partial bans.
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The Wall Street Journal reported that Silicon Valley executives met with US lawmakers to build an “anti-China alliance” before TikTok CEO’s congressional hearing in March 2023. In March 2024, The Information reported that it is an open secret among investors that TikTok loses billions of dollars annually. According to sources for The Wall Street Journal, the personnel move led to concerns from some TikTok employees and was reported to the office of US senator Ted Cruz for further investigation.
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On 21 December 2024, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that the Albanian government will shut down TikTok in 2025 for at least a year, following a deadly incident in November 2024 in which a teenager fatally stabbed another teen after a dispute that began on the platform. A Meta spokesperson defended the effort, saying that all platforms, including TikTok, should face equal scrutiny. An investigation in 2025 found that TikTok was profiting from sexual livestreams in Kenya involving minors, with teenagers as young as 15 using the platform to solicit explicit content. The Guardian website removed the letter after displaying it for more than 20 years, and TikTok began issuing takedowns of videos featuring the letter. US lawmakers wanting to ban TikTok accused the platform of pushing pro-Hamas and pro-Palestine content. Several former employees of the company have claimed of poor workplace conditions, including the start of the workweek on Sunday to cooperate with Chinese time zones and excessive workload.
In October 2022, TikTok was reported to be planning an expansion into the e-commerce market in the US, following the launch of TikTok Shop in the United Kingdom. In May 2021, TikTok appointed Shou Zi Chew as their new CEO who assumed the position from interim CEO Vanessa Pappas, following the resignation of Kevin A. Mayer on 27 August 2020. In the United States, Jimmy Fallon, Tony Hawk, and other celebrities began using the app in 2018.
Project Texas
- Some of the recordings were made during consultations with Booz Allen Hamilton, a US government contractor.
- Since Mertzlufft’s video, many new elements including costume design, additional songs, and a playbill have been created.
- In June 2021, TikTok made an apology after a shock video, showing a girl dancing which then cuts to a graphic scene of a man being beheaded by a saw, went viral.
- TikTok’s unique platform organization, of spontaneous peer-peer information sharing, has enabled its utilization for community-engaged, digital knowledge mobilization and exchange between social justice communities.
- If an eligible creator’s video reaches the top 4%, they will receive a 50% share of the revenue from ads displayed with the video.
In September 2021, the Ireland Data Protection Commission (DPC) launched investigations into TikTok concerning the protection of minors’ data and transfers of personal data to China. The US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia reportedly subpoenaed information from ByteDance regarding its surveillance of journalists on TikTok. In December 2022, ByteDance confirmed after internal investigation that the data of two journalists and their close contacts had been accessed by its employees from China and the United States.
The deal was completed by January 22, 2026, with investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX, and others including the personal investment entity for Michael Dell will own more than 80% of the new venture, while ByteDance retained 19.9% ownership. The day before the impending ban, California-based conversational search engine company Perplexity AI submitted a bid for a merger with TikTok US. In January 2025, Chinese officials began preliminary talks about potentially selling TikTok’s US operations to Elon Musk if the app faced an impending ban due to national security concerns. In March 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok’s growth in the US had stagnated.
Classic stars are able to connect with younger audiences born decades after a musician’s first debut and across traditional genres. The platform has also launched many songs that failed to garner initial commercial success into sleeper hits, particularly since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, despite never having toured in Asia, the band Fitz and the Tantrums developed a large following in South Korea following the widespread popularity of their 2016 song “HandClap” on the platform.
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In February 2023, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, along with its counterparts in Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec, launched an investigation into TikTok’s data collection practices. In 2022, Turkey’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) initiated a probe into TikTok in relation to millions of dollars in fund transfers involving TikTok accounts that were suspected of money laundering or terrorism financing. He claimed the evidence may prove the company’s involvement in “human smuggling, sex trafficking and drug trafficking”. Paxton claimed that the Texas Department of Public Safety gathered several pieces of content showing the attempted recruitment of teenagers to smuggle people or goods across the Mexico–United States border. In February 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton initiated an investigation into TikTok for alleged violations of children’s privacy and facilitation of human trafficking.
Underage users
The company has been engaged in confidential negotiations over the project with CFIUS since 2021 and submitted its proposal but received little response from the panel afterward. Physical locations would be established so that Oracle and the US government could conduct their own reviews. This applies to those signing contracts with and receiving payment transactions from ByteDance. The whistleblower claimed in a sworn court statement that his father in mainland China had been detained by the authorities in retaliation for his speaking to the media about alleged censorship by TikTok.
App Privacy
To create a music video with the app, users can choose background music from a wide variety of music genres, edit with a filter and record a 15-second video with speed adjustments before uploading it to share with others on TikTok or other social platforms. In October 2021, following the 2021 Facebook leak and controversies about social media ethics, a bipartisan group of United States lawmakers also pressed TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat on questions of data privacy and moderation for age-appropriate content. Sponsored content is not as prevalent on the platform as it is on other social media apps, but brands and influencers still can make as much as they would if not more in comparison to other platforms. Furthermore, The Wall Street Journal in 2021 highlighted its superiority over other social media platforms in understanding users’ preferences and emotions. The mobile app allows users to create short videos, which often feature music in the background and can be sped up, slowed down, or edited with a filter. Since its launch, TikTok has become one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, using recommendation algorithms to connect content creators and influencers with new audiences.
It hosts user-submitted videos, which range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. The developer, TikTok Ltd., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. ■ Explore videos, just one scroll awayWatch all types of videos, from Comedy, Gaming, DIY, Food, Sports, Memes, and Pets, to Oddly Satisfying, ASMR, and everything in between. TikTok offers you real, interesting, and fun videos that will make your day.
The study compares data from before TikTok even existed to show the app has fewer hashtags about historically sensitive topics, distorting the findings. They have been replaced by versions customized by local teams for users in different regions. TikTok moderators were instructed to suppress posts from “For You” recommendations if the users shown were deemed “too ugly, poor, or disabled”. Other human rights activists have also said that their TikTok videos discussing human rights violations of the Uyghurs have been taken down.
This led many creators to stop creating new content which they were not already contractually obligated to create. In December 2022, it was reported that a cosmetic surgery procedure known as buccal fat removal was going viral on the platform. TikTok has banned the advertising of cosmetic surgeries on the platform but cosmetic surgeons are still able to reach large audiences using unpaid photo and video posts. In April 2022, NBC News reported that surgeons were giving influencers on the platform discounted or free cosmetic surgeries in order to advertise the procedures to their audiences. By January 2021, the hashtag #nosejob had accumulated 1.6 billion views, #nosejobcheck had accumulated 1 billion views, and the audio used in the #NoseJobCheck trend had been used in 120,000 videos. Realistic videos about how differently pieces of garment fit on a model compared to how they fit on a typical consumer resonated with many who had believed that they were alone in their struggle.
TikTok’s privacy policy lists that the app collects usage information, IP addresses, a user’s mobile carrier, unique device identifiers, keystroke patterns, and location data, among other data. TikTok creators participating in this trend made videos criticizing products promoted by influencers and asked their audiences not to buy products they ruhtinas did not need. In 2021, The New York Times reported that viral TikTok videos by young people relating the emotional impact of books on them, tagged with the label “BookTok”, significantly drove sales of literature. The platform’s algorithm also contributes to the influencer marketing potential, as it picks out content according to the user’s preference.
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