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. U.S. lawmakers wanting to ban TikTok accused the platform of pushing pro-Hamas and pro-Palestine content.
In response to security concerns of the United States government, TikTok has been working to silo privileged user data within the United States under oversight from the U.S. government or a third party such as Oracle. In June 2022, BuzzFeed News reported that leaked audio recordings of internal TikTok meetings reveal employees in China had access to overseas data, including a "master admin" who could see "everything". TikTok said it does not give information to China's government and "U.S. user data" is stored within the country with backups in Singapore. Lawmakers also "hammered" TikTok about whether consumer data could be turned over to the Chinese government through ByteDance, its parent company in China.
- On 7 March 2025, the shutdown was officially enacted after the Albanian Cabinet cited concerns over the app’s role in promoting violence and bullying among children.
- 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.
- TikTok merged with Musical.ly on 2 August 2018 with existing accounts and data consolidated into one app, keeping the title TikTok.
- On 30 December 2022, President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, prohibiting the use of the app on devices owned by the federal government, with some exceptions.
- Civil society groups warn that these apps push users down “rabbit holes” and then surround them in an “information cocoon.”
- “Midsize” fashion gained greater exposure on TikTok after many creators opened up about not able to find clothing sizes that fit them well.
Many other countries limit TikTok's use on government-issued devices for security or privacy reasons. The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. The developer, TikTok Ltd., indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features to help make common tasks in the app faster and easier to complete. As many times as you need.Millions of creators on TikTok showcase their incredible skills and every day life. CREATEPause and resume your video with just a tap. WATCHA personalised video feed based on what you watch, like, and share.
In December 2022, with the United States experiencing a shortage as well, it was reported that the huge increase in demand for the medicine was caused by a weight loss trend on TikTok, where videos about the drug exceeded 360 million views. Civil society groups warn that these apps push users down “rabbit holes” and then surround them in an “information cocoon.” The company will no longer send push notifications after 9 pm to users aged between 13 and 15.
Republican Party—to coordinate lobbying and media campaigns against TikTok and portray it as "a danger to American children and society". Many platforms and services, including YouTube Shorts, began to imitate TikTok's format and recommendation page. Competition from TikTok prompted Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, to spend $120 million as of 2022 to entice more content creators to its Reels service, although engagement level remained low. Although the size of its user base falls short of that of Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, TikTok reached 1 billion active monthly users faster than any of them. In 2019, media outlets cited TikTok as the 7th-most-downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019. After merging with musical.ly in August, downloads increased and TikTok became the most downloaded app in the U.S. in October 2018, which musical.ly had done once before.
Competition with other platforms
Following the reports, TikTok confirmed that employees in China could have access to U.S. data. As a consequence, the Senate Intelligence Committee including U.S. lawmakers Mark Warner and Marco Rubio called for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate ByteDance and whether TikTok had misled them. Some of the recordings were made during consultations with Booz Allen Hamilton, a U.S. government contractor. An article in the law insists that all organizations and citizens shall "support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts." Analysts differ in their assessments of the data collection risks. Concerns have been raised about the potential control and influence of the Chinese government over TikTok's owner, ByteDance, in particular the extraterritorial implications of China's 2017 National Intelligence Law. Experts considered them to be "vague" and their implications "problematic" for the United States due to the country's general lack of robust data privacy laws.
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On 30 December 2022, President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, prohibiting the use of the app on devices owned by the federal government, with some exceptions. Recruiters had been using the app to help fill quotas, and some continue to maintain a level of engagement through their personal accounts. On 6 November 2024, Canada ordered TikTok to shut down its offices and subsidiary company (TikTok Technology Canada, Inc.) in the country due to national security concerns, but access to the app was not banned. On 7 March 2025, the shutdown was officially enacted after the Albanian Cabinet cited concerns over the app's role in promoting violence and bullying among children. A Meta spokesperson defended the effort, saying that all platforms, including TikTok, should face equal scrutiny.
- However, a few days later, users on Twitter discovered that the software uses code from the open-source OBS Studio.
- 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 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.
- TikTok responded by taking down videos with content that violated their community guidelines.
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- However, some employees have abused it to promote their own accounts or those of their spouses, while others have felt that their guidelines leave too much room for discretion.
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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 slotrize casino no deposit bonus implemented full or partial bans. It hosts user-submitted videos, which range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. ADD MUSICAdd your favorite sound to your videos with millions of music clips and sounds. CUSTOMISEOur integrated editing tools allow you to easily edit your videos.Trim, cut, merge and duplicate video clips without leaving the app.
Potential data collection by the Chinese government
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. 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.
Several former employees of the company have claimed of poor workplace conditions, including the start of the workweek on Sunday to cooperate with Chinese timezones and excessive workload. 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. A 2025 meta-analysis found that use of TikTok was correlated with symptoms of anxiety and depression, with stronger links in females and users under 24 years old. Some users were able to circumvent TikTok filters by writing in code or using unconventional spelling.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission
TikTok has since released tougher parental controls to filter out inappropriate content and to ensure they can provide sufficient protection and security. As TikTok has gained popularity among young children, and the popularity of extremist and hateful content is growing, calls for tighter restrictions on their flexible boundaries have been made. Some videos were shown to expressly promote Holocaust denial and told viewers to take up arms and fight in the name of white supremacy and the swastika. The study compares data from before TikTok even existed to show the app has fewer hashtags about historically sensitive topics, distorting the findings.
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.
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. On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked first among free application downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries. Employees have reported that multiple overlaps exist between TikTok and ByteDance in terms of personnel management and product development. Its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, is owned by founders and Chinese investors, other global investors, and employees.