For example, users have accused the company of deleting articles on BaBe that were critical of the Chinese government. In 2019 TikTok user Feroza Aziz’s account was suspended after she posted a video criticizing the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghur Muslims. A ByteDance spokesman initially claimed that Aziz was suspended because of a previous offense that violated TikTok’s policies. TikTok later claimed that a “moderation error” caused the ban and offered Aziz an apology.
TikTok has said around 60 percent of ByteDance is owned by institutional investors including US giant BlackRock. ByteDance has rocketed in recent years to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth around $225 billion, according to market intelligence firm CP Insights. But with such a large number of engaged users and a steep upward trajectory, it also shouldn’t have too much trouble finding ways to turn a profit.
In addition, in November 2022 the European Union (EU) confirmed the existence of an ongoing investigation into TikTok’s data practices, including data transmissions to China. ByteDance has also been accused of using apps like TikTok to employ intrusive data-gathering techniques. In 2022 Forbes technology reporter https://www.day-trading.info/ishares-ibonds-2025-term-high-yield-and-income-etf/ Emily Baker-White claimed that she had been spied on and tracked by ByteDance after writing an article critical of TikTok. Company officials initially rebuffed these claims but later admitted that their employees had obtained data from American TikTok users, including journalists and those connected to them.
- In 2019 TikTok user Feroza Aziz’s account was suspended after she posted a video criticizing the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghur Muslims.
- The app has been a diplomatic hot potato between the United States and China since the administration of former president Donald Trump, who once wanted to ban the app.
- ByteDance, Chinese technology company that developed novel video-sharing social networking applications, most notably TikTok.
- In 2016 ByteDance released the video-sharing app Douyin, exclusively for users in China.
The company bought short movie-making app Flipagram last year and rebranded it as Vigo Video, then followed up by acquiring Musical.ly to merge with its similar service Douyin. The app was an international version of Douyin, which was released in China in 2016 and now has hundreds of millions of users. With TikTok, rebranded from the joining of Musical.ly and Douyin, Bytedance has a global hit. The company says it racked up more downloads in the US than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube in both September and October, and TikTok now has over half a billion people worldwide using it monthly.
In 2016 ByteDance released the video-sharing app Douyin, exclusively for users in China. The popularity of Douyin in China inspired the team to develop TikTok for international audiences. TikTok is an app platform that allows users to post short-form videos and share content from their cell phones.
Censorship, surveillance, and data privacy concerns
The Chinese commerce ministry published rules in 2020 that added “civilian use” to a list of technologies that are restricted for export. A large number of US lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — are not convinced that TikTok is independent of Beijing despite being headquartered outside China. AFP, along with more than 100 fact-checking organisations, is paid by TikTok and Facebook parent Meta to verify videos that potentially contain false information.
According to Baker-White, this misuse of data included spying on her and other users’ IP addresses in an attempt to track an internal mole at the company who was thought to be in contact with reporters. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that they had begun an investigation in late 2022 into the claim against ByteDance. House Committee on Energy and Commerce to address accusations that the app is a threat to American national security. Chew downplayed any connection to or favouritism toward China’s government and elaborated on the steps the company planned to take to better protect the data of American users.
Xigua Video
Despite this reassurance, the U.S. state of Montana passed a law to ban the app in the state. Increased regulatory barriers were also introduced against the company because of tensions between the United States and China. National security concerns about the collection of user data led the U.S. government to ban the app from being installed on government-issued devices. Legislation was also introduced that could lead to a national ban of the platform altogether. Despite the company’s grandiose success, ByteDance has faced international scrutiny as a result of accusations that the company imposes censorship in favour of the Chinese government.
The Nintendo Switch 2 will now reportedly arrive in 2025 instead of 2024
TikTok recently attained the traditional social network rite of passage of having Facebook brazenly rip it off. And Bytedance’s news services inevitably risk running into the same algorithmic pitfalls that have plagued Facebook for years; the company’s apps have been accused of spreading fake news in countries such as India and beyond. The first product the group produced was the app Neihan Duanzi (“profound gags”), which allowed users to share jokes and memes. This was followed by the news aggregator app Toutiao, which used machine and deep learning algorithms to deliver a personalized news feed to users. Toutiao became an early flagship of ByteDance and continues to have more than 300 million monthly active users. The company also developed the Indian social media app Hello, as well as the popular Indonesian news aggregator Baca Berita (BaBe).
Bytedance believes that its algorithmic approach to content could work around the world, and it has developed Toutiao-like apps for other markets. Helo, for example, is a similar product aimed https://www.topforexnews.org/brokers/rubix-fx-review-2021-traders-ratings/ at India with support for 14 local vernaculars, and TopBuzz does a similar thing in English. But so far, its highest-profile efforts in Western markets have focused on creative communities.
At just 10 years old, ByteDance, the most valuable startup in the world, has shattered records for growth. In 2021, with 1.9 billion monthly active users in 150 countries, and an employee base of over 110,000, the company recorded an astonishing $58 billion in revenues. Most forex crunch wins best fundamental analysis report at fxstreet users know the company only by its hit short-video app TikTok, which has been downloaded over 3 billion times globally, a feat only exceeded by Meta and its family of apps. Respectively, Toutiao and Douyin account for 20% and 60% of the company’s total advertising revenues.
Recent News
ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, and the app took the world by storm, crossing a billion users in four years. “Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, describing the bill as “bullying”. TikTok’s CEO has told Congress that the firm has never been asked by the Chinese government for US user data nor has it provided it. These concerns have been echoed by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies — including by the FBI director this week — as well as regulators elsewhere. The app has been a diplomatic hot potato between the United States and China since the administration of former president Donald Trump, who once wanted to ban the app.
The founder, 35-year-old Zhang Yiming, rarely gives interviews, and the company’s Western-facing media presence is close to nonexistent. Bytedance is the first Chinese internet company with a significant, genuinely engaged following around the world, which means it’s worthy of serious attention. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing apps TikTok and Douyin. Thanks to the explosive growth of these apps, ByteDance has branched out into e-commerce and travel bookings, and also released a video editing app. The valuation is eye-grabbing, to be sure, and it would be perfectly reasonable to suggest that, say, Uber will ultimately be the bigger deal in the future. At this point, though, it wouldn’t be so reasonable to ignore Bytedance altogether.
The app has been downloaded nearly 80 million times in the US, with even the likes of Jimmy Fallon giving it high-profile endorsements. TikTok is banned from government employees’ work phones in the United States and several other nations including Australia and Canada over security concerns. Of course, TikTok’s devoted and rapidly growing audience wouldn’t say that the appeal of the app has anything to do with AI. But the app’s success does follow a familiar pattern for Bytedance, which has demonstrated a startling ability to launch, grow, and sustain services that have users hooked. You could be forgiven for not having heard the name Bytedance before the recent news.