TikTok vs. the US - what is going on?
By now, everyone knows that TikTok comes from China. And it is the only Chinese Social Media service that got traction outside its home country - with more than 2 billion downloads globally, according to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates.
But TikTok could also become the first Chinese internet company that gets banned in the US - just like Facebook, Google or Youtube, which all have been banned from Mainland China for years.
In another interesting post on Stratechery, Ben Thompson explains the possible reasoning behind such a move. He first describes what TikTok did right…
It made it easy to create videos, ensuring a massive supply of content (even if most of the supply is low quality) and then relied on its algorithm to surface compelling content.
….and then goes on to explain why TikTok is so dangerous that it might get banned.
Spoiler: it is NOT about all the different data issues and also not about the fact that TikTok is so addictive especially to kids that in few years, it will probably look as ridiculous as putting Cocaine into Coca-Cola.
Instead, the real danger comes from what makes TikTok so successful: its algorithm!
Because it can drive public opinion in the US the same way Facebook & Twitter can - the difference: the TikTok algorithm is not controlled by an American company…
Btw, our friends at Tech Buzz China have translated and annotated a very interesting interview with Zhang Yiming, Bytedance founder and global CEO. It’s from 2018, but still gives a lot of context about Bytedance, the company behind TikTok.