President Donald Trump has warned that he will ban TikTok unless an American company buys its US operations. How, then, did this application manage to attract millions of users in just two years, but at the same time be perceived as a security risk?
A red gummy bear stands alone under the dim stage lights and the unmistakable voice of Adele is heard singing.
Then, as the invisible crowd joins in singing the next verse, the camera pulls back to reveal hundreds more gummy bears singing along. someone like meu.
Silly, cute and extremely watchable. And for the young new hope among video apps, TikTok did more in those 15 seconds than marketing budgets measured in the millions.
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Uploaded in December 2018, the video quickly gained millions of views on the app but - more importantly - it was imitated by thousands more imitators on other social networks.
The world took notice of the app and TikTok has since attracted a lively, creative and young audience numbering in the hundreds of millions.
The origin of TikTok is different from the fairy tale startup stories we have heard before. This isn't an empire built by a few friends with a great idea in their mom's garage.
It actually started life as three different apps.
The first was Musical.ly launched in 2014 which started in 2014 in Shanghai but had strong business ties with America and gained an audience in that key market.
In 2016, the Chinese tech giant ByteDance launched a similar service in China called Doujin. In just one year, it attracted 100 million users in China and Thailand.
BytDance realized that there was something there and wanted to expand under another brand - TikTok. And so, in 2018, he bought Musical.ly, "sucked" it into himself and began the global expansion of TikTok.
TikTok's secret lies in its use of music and an extremely powerful algorithm, which learns what content the user likes to watch much faster than many other apps.
The user can choose from a huge database of songs, filters and movie inserts to which he wants to sing along to the playback.
It inspired some huge trends like "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X or "Bored in the House" by Kurtis Roach. Even the topic of BBC News went viral when the British mocked the daily press conferences about the corona virus.
Many people will spend the most time on a page called "For You". This is where an algorithm serves content to users, anticipating what they will like based on the content they have already encountered.
This is where content that is thought to be likely to go viral is displayed. The idea is that if the content is good, it will go far, regardless of how many followers the creator has.
Many TikTok communities have sprung up, connected by the type of content people love.
Other users, including LGBT and non-influencer creators, reside on this platform to create informative or humorous content for related people.
The growth of TikTok and its sister app Doujin has been meteoric.
In July last year, the apps already had one billion downloads worldwide, of which 500 million were active users. A year later, they had two billion downloads and around 800 million active users.
The rapid growth of TikTok inevitably attracted the attention of politicians. What does it mean when a Chinese application so quickly becomes a huge part of modern life?
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Although the allegations are vague, India and the US are concerned that TikTok is collecting sensitive user data that the Chinese government can use for espionage. It is assumed that every large Chinese the company has an internal "cell" which answers to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, many of whose agents are tasked with collecting secrets.
India initially banned TikTok in April 2019, after a court nproposed its removal from app stores due to claims that it is being used to spread pornography. That decision was changed after an appeal.
When is it again banned TikTok, along with a dozen other Chinese apps, in June 2020, the Indian government said it had received complaints about the app "stealing and surreptitiously broadcasting user data."
The US government launched a national security investigation into the platform in late 2019, after Democratic and Republican lawmakers suggested that she was a threat.
More recently, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that TikTok was among a certain number Chinese applications which "send data directly to the Chinese Communist Party"
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Cold relations
Britain's Information Commissioner's Office and Australian intelligence agencies are currently investigating the app, but have yet to reveal what exactly they are looking for.
Of course, it is worth noting that relations between these countries are already strained, since the US is in conflict with China over trade, Indian and Chinese forces are constantly skirmishing on the border, and Great Britain opposes new security laws in Hong Kong.
What exactly TikTik does with the data is disputed.
We know from its privacy policy that it collects a huge amount of stuff, including:
- Which videos have been viewed and commented on
- Location data
- Phone model and operating system
- The rhythm of typing as people type
Most evidence suggests that TikTok's data collection is similar to other data-hungry social networks such as Facebook.
However, unlike its American rivals, TikTok says it is prepared to offer an unprecedented level of transparency to assuage some of the fears about its data collection and flow.
Code sharing
TikTok's new CEO Kevin Mayer, an American former Disney executive, said he would allow experts to investigate the code behind the algorithms. This is of enormous importance in a business where data and codes are otherwise jealously guarded.
However, the concern isn't just about what data is being collected, it's more of a theoretical nature - could the Chinese government force ByteDance to hand over data on demand?
The same concern existed with Huawei.
China's 2017 National Security Law compels any organization or citizen to "support, assist, or cooperate with state intelligence."
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However, like Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, TikTok bosses have insisted that if this were ever to happen, "we would definitely refuse any requests for data".
Another concern is the possibility of censorship or the application being used to influence public debate.
TikTok is one of the first platforms that many young people will come to to share the content of their social activism.
In May, he promoted #BlackLivesMatter as a trend. But while the hashtag in question has attracted billions of views, there has been criticism that content from black creators is being suppressed and that hashtags related to the protests are being deliberately hidden.
It's not the first time that TikTok's algorithm has been criticized for the way it selects content.
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Accusations of censorship
The Intercept report suggested that moderators were encouraged to play it down prioritize the content of anyone deemed too "ugly" or the poor.
Last year, the Guardian wrote about it TikTok censored material declared politically sensitive, including footage from Tiananmen Square protests and demands for Tibetan independence.
A new Washington Post report found that moderators in China have the final say on whether certain videos are approved.
ByteDance stated that such guidelines have since been removed and that all moderation is independent of Beijing.
Negotiations with Microsoft
And again, the negotiations with Microsoft about the possibility of Microsoft buying TikTok's American activities show that it is one of the most important technological products in years.
TikTik has proven to be a meeting place for under-25s, while apps like Twitter and Instagram are often perceived as being for older users.
But for those who use TikTok to make their voices heard, the prospect of a ban feels like a huge loss.
Downloads of rival short-form video app Byte and Thriller have surged in the US of late, as users apparently prepare to abandon the sinking ship.
But it seems that many will stick with TikTok until the last hour - if that hour comes at all.
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Bonus video:
