These trends amassed popularity in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people spent more time cooking at home while engaging with social media for entertainment. A viral TikTok trend known as «devious licks» involves students vandalizing or stealing school property and posting videos of the action on the platform. «Any Song» by R&B and rap artist Zico became number one on the Korean music charts due to the popularity of the #anysongchallenge, where users dance to the choreography of the song. Other creators rose to fame after the platform merged with musical.ly on 2 August 2018. This marked the company’s first instance of withdrawing its music from a major platform, in contrast to Warner Music, which had recently renewed its own licensing deal with TikTok.
The differences between Douyin and TikTok have led some US politicians and commentators to accuse the company or the Chinese government of malicious intent. Out of TikTok’s top 100 male creators, a 2022 analysis reported 67% were white, with 54% having near-perfect facial symmetry. The average user, daily, was spending 1 hour and 25 minutes on the app and opening TikTok 17 times.
TikTok — Videos, Shop & LIVE
In June 2020, TikTok users and K-pop fans «claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets» for Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma through communication on TikTok, contributing to «rows of empty seats» at the event. However, it has received criticism for not paying royalties to artists whose music is used on the platform. TikTok has allowed many music artists to gain a wider audience, ruhtinas often including foreign fans.
In 2025, a Canadian investigation found that TikTok had collected sensitive personal data from children in violation of federal privacy laws. In March 2025, the ICO opened another investigation into TikTok concerning its use of children’s personal information to recommend content to them. In April 2023, the ICO imposed a £12.7 million fine on TikTok for misusing children’s data.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
It covers the «top 4% of all videos on TikTok» and is only available to creators with more than 100,000 followers. In October 2021, TikTok launched a test feature that allows users to directly tip certain creators. Private content remains visible to TikTok but is blocked from TikTok users who the account holder has not authorized to view their content. TikTok’s algorithm leverages this insight to present similar content, creating an environment that users often find hard to disengage from. While typical platforms focus on active user actions like likes, clicks, or follows, TikTok monitors a wider array of behaviors during video viewing.
Platform
- Another said TikTok had to employ better data collection practices than Meta or Google due to the scrutiny it received.
- TikTok content creators used a specific audio on their videos while showing how their noses looked before and after having their rhinoplasty surgeries.
- Physical locations would be established so that Oracle and the US government could conduct their own reviews.
- TikTok is regularly used by sex workers to promote pornographic content sold on platforms such as OnlyFans.
- In June 2021, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the Trump administration ban on TikTok, and instead ordered the Secretary of Commerce to investigate the app to determine if it poses a threat to US national security.
- Wegovy, a drug that has been specifically approved for treating obesity, also became popular on the platform after Elon Musk credited it for helping him lose weight.
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.
In April 2024, TikTok users started receiving notifications that their current and future picture posts would be shown on a new app called TikTok Notes. Under the deal, the app will remain the same, and the algorithm will be adjusted over time to favor American topics for those users. The Financial Times reported that TikTok will launch a video gaming channel, but the report was denied in a statement to Digiday, with TikTok instead aiming to be a social hub for the gaming community. In July 2020, TikTok, excluding Douyin, reported close to 800 million monthly active users worldwide after less than four years of existence. In January 2019, TikTok allowed creators to embed merchandise sale links into their videos.
Influencers on the platform who earn money through engagement, such as likes and comments, are referred to as «meme machines». As the platform has grown significantly over the past few years, it has allowed companies to advertise and rapidly reach their intended demographic through influencer marketing. The court cited TikTok’s negligence in failing to implement «necessary and adequate measures» to prevent the viral video challenges. On December 30, 2024, Venezuela’s Supreme Court fined TikTok $10 million over viral challenges that authorities say led to the deaths of three children.
Product features
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.
- In August 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok tracked Android user data, including MAC addresses and IMEIs, with a tactic in violation of Google’s policies.
- A viral TikTok trend known as «devious licks» involves students vandalizing or stealing school property and posting videos of the action on the platform.
- However, as reported by The New York Times, these people often do not see themselves necessarily as film critics.
- In August 2024, the NCRI released a subsequent report based on user journey data from 24 accounts that they created across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
- TikTok said that a significant proportion of its userbase comes from non-US regions such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia and that hashtags should not be cherry-picked due to differences in the number of views per post and the age of a post or tag.
In July 2023, Iranian Mehr News Agency reported «experts from Douyin» will meet Iranian business in Tehran to enable Iranian exports to China. It was also the most-downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in 2018 and 2019, surpassing Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. TikTok was downloaded over 104 million times on Apple’s App Store during the first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower.
There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.
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.
In 2020, TikTok updated their terms of service to ban content that promotes «premium sexual content», impacting a large number of adult content creators. TikTok is regularly used by sex workers to promote pornographic content sold on platforms such as OnlyFans. In 2020, digital media companies such as Group Nine Media and Global used TikTok increasingly, focusing on tactics such as brokering partnerships with TikTok influencers and developing branded content campaigns. Existing sellers on FeetFinder said that the videos often misrepresented how «easy» it is to make money from posting feet pictures. In 2022, it was reported that a trend called «de-influencing» had become popular on the platform as a backlash to influencer marketing. TikTok reportedly made as much as a 70% commission on some of them, a figure that the company disputed.
■ Watch endless amount of videos customized specifically for youA personalized video feed based on what you watch, like, and share. All you have to do is watch, engage with what you like, skip what you don’t, and you’ll find an endless stream of short videos that feel personalized just for you. On TikTok, short-form videos are exciting, spontaneous, and genuine.