HISTORY OF TIKTOK
Douyin was launched by ByteDance in China in September 2016, originally under the name A.me, before rebranding to Douyin in December 2016.ByteDance planned on Douyin expanding overseas. The founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, stated that "China is home to only one-fifth of Internet users globally. If we don't expand on a global scale, we are bound to lose to peers eyeing the four-fifths. So, going global is a must. " Douyin was developed in 200 days and within a year had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day. TikTok was launched in the international market in September 2017.On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked no. 1 among free app downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries.
TikTok has been downloaded more than 80 million times in the United States, and has reached 2 billion downloads worldwide, according to data from mobile research firm Sensor Tower that excludes Android users in China. Many celebrities including Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk began using the application in 2018. Other celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, Will Smith, and Justin Bieber joined TikTok as well and many other celebrities have followed.
On 3 September 2019, TikTok and the US National Football League (NFL) announced a multi-year partnership. The agreement occurred just two days before the NFL's 100th season kick-off at the Soldier Stadium, where TikTok hosted activities for fans in honor of the deal. The partnership entails the launch of an official NFL TikTok account which is to bring about new marketing opportunities such as sponsored videos and hashtag challenges.
On 9 November 2017, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, spent up to $ 1 billion to purchase musical.ly, a startup based in Shanghai with an office in Santa Monica, California. Musical.ly was a social media video platform that allowed users to create short lip-sync and comedy videos, initially released in August 2014. It was well known, especially to the younger audience. Looking forward to leveraging the US digital platform's young user base, TikTok merged with musical.ly on August 2, 2018 to create a larger video community, with existing accounts and data consolidated into one app, keeping the title TikTok. This ended musical.ly and made TikTok a world-wide app, excluding China, since China has Douyin.
User privacy concerns(उपयोगकर्ता की गोपनीयता की चिंता)
Privacy concerns have also been brought up regarding the app. In its privacy policy, TikTok lists that it collects usage information, IP addresses, a user's mobile carrier, unique device identifiers, keystroke patterns, and location data, among other data. Web developers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk claimed that allowing videos and other content being shared by the app's users through HTTP puts the users' data privacy at risk.
In January 2020, Check Point Research discovered a security flaw in TikTok which could have allowed hackers access to user accounts using SMS. In February, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticised the app, calling it "spyware," and stating "I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it's always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone." Responding to Huffman's comments, TikTok stated "These are baseless accusations made without a shred of evidence." Wells Fargo banned the app from its devices due to privacy and security concerns.
In May 2020, the Dutch Data Protection Authority announced an investigation into TikTok in relation to privacy protections for children. In June 2020, the European Data Protection Board announced that it would assemble a task force to examine TikTok's user privacy and security practices.
National security concerns
United States
In January 2019, an investigation by the American think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics described TikTok as a "Huawei-sized problem" that posed a national security threat to the West, noting the app's popularity with Western users. They included armed forces personnel and its alleged ability to convey location, image and biometric data to its Chinese parent company, which is legally unable to refuse to share data with the Chinese government under the China Internet Security Law. Observers have also noted that ByteDance's founder and CEO Zhang Yiming issued a letter in 2018 stating that his company would "further deepen cooperation" with the ruling Chinese Communist Party to promote its policies. TikTok's parent company ByteDance claims that TikTok is not available in China and its data is stored outside of China, but its privacy policy has reserved the right to share any information with Chinese authorities. In response to national security, censorship, and anti-boycott compliance concerns, in October 2019, Senator Marco Rubio asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to open an investigation into TikTok and its parent company ByteDance. The same month, Senators Tom Cotton and Chuck Schumer sent a joint letter to the Director of National Intelligence requesting a security review of TikTok and its parent company.
In November 2019, it was reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States opened an investigation into ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly.The same month, following a request by Senator Chuck Schumer, U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy agreed to assess the risks of using TikTok as a recruitment tool. Senator Josh Hawley introduced the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act to prohibit TikTok's parent company and others from transferring personal data of Americans to China. Senator Josh Hawley also introduced a bill to ban downloading and using TikTok on government devices because of national security concerns. In December 2019, the United States Navy as well as the U.S. Army banned TikTok from all government-issued devices. The Transportation Security Administration also prohibited its personnel from posting on the platform for outreach purposes. Following its prohibition by the U.S. military, the Australian Defence Force also banned TikTok on its devices. Legislation was subsequently introduced in the U.S. Senate that would prohibit all federal employees from using or downloading TikTok.
In July 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the government was considering banning TikTok. In response, experts suggested that Trump's proposed TikTok ban may threaten free speech and "set a very problematic precedent" for banning apps in the United States.
The Democratic National Committee issued a warning to the Democratic campaigns, state parties, and committees to ensure that additional security measures are implemented while using TikTok, citing concerns regarding the application's spying nature.
On 3 July 2018, TikTok was temporarily banned in Indonesia after the Indonesian government accused it of promulgating "pornography, inappropriate content and blasphemy." Shortly afterwards, TikTok pledged to task 20 staff with censoring TikTok content in Indonesia, and the ban was lifted 8 days later.
In November 2018, the Bangladeshi government blocked the TikTok app's internet access, even though TikTok had no connection to the reason for ban, which was pornography and gambling.
Also in 2018, Douyin was reprimanded by Chinese media watchdogs for showing "unacceptable" content, such as videos depicting adolescent pregnancies.
In January 2019, the Chinese government said that it would start to hold app developers like ByteDance responsible for user content shared via apps such as Douyin, and listed 100 types of content that the Chinese government would censor. It was reported that certain content unfavorable to the Communist Party of China has already been limited for users outside of China such as content related to the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests or Tibetan independence.
TikTok has blocked videos about human rights in China, particularly those that reference Xinjiang re-education camps and abuses of ethnic and religious minorities, and disabled the accounts of users who post them. TikTok's policies also ban content related to a specific list of foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Mahatma Gandhi because it can stir controversy and attacks on political views. Its policies also ban content critical of Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan and content considered pro-Kurdish. TikTok was reported to have censored users supportive of the Citizenship Amendment Act protests and those who promote Hindu-Muslim unity.
In February 2019, several Indian politicians called for TikTok to be banned or more tightly regulated, after concerns emerged about sexually explicit content, cyberbullying, and deepfakes. They called it a "cultural degeneration".
In countries where LGBT discrimination is the socio-political norm, TikTok moderators have blocked content that could be perceived as being positive towards LGBT people or LGBT rights, including same-sex couples holding hands, including in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal. Former U.S. employees of TikTok reported to The Washington Post that final decisions to remove content were made by parent company employees in Beijing.
In response to censorship concerns, TikTok's parent company hired K&L Gates, including former Congressmen Bart Gordon and Jeff Denham, to advise it on its content moderation policies. TikTok also hired lobbying firm Monument Advocacy.
In June 2020, The Times of India reported that TikTok was "shadow banning" videos related to the Sino-Indian border dispute and the 2020 China–India skirmishes.
On 3 April 2019, the Madras High Court while hearing a PIL had asked the Government of India to ban the app, citing that it "encourages pornography" and shows "inappropriate content". The court also noted that children and minors using the app were at risk of being targeted by sexual predators. The court further asked broadcast media not to telecast any of those videos from the app. The spokesperson for TikTok stated that they were abiding by local laws and were awaiting the copy of the court order before they take action. On 17 April, both Google and Apple removed TikTok from Google Play and the App Store.As the court refused to reconsider the ban, the company stated that they had removed over 6 million videos that violated their content policy and guidelines.
On 25 April 2019, the ban was lifted after a court in Tamil Nadu reversed its order of prohibiting downloads of the app from the App Store and Google Play, following a plea from TikTok developer Bytedance Technology. India's TikTok ban might have cost the app 15 million new users.
The Indian government said the decision to ban the apps was in order to protect the data and privacy of its 1.3 billion citizens and put a stop to technology that was "stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorised manner to servers outside India".
In November 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed in California that alleged that TikTok transferred personally-identifiable information of U.S. persons to servers located in China owned by Tencent and Alibaba. The lawsuit also accused ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, of taking user content without their permission. The plaintiff of the lawsuit, college student Misty Hong, downloaded the app but claimed she never created an account. She realized a few months later that TikTok has created an account for her using her information (such as biometric) and made a summary of her information. The lawsuit also alleged that information was sent to Chinese tech giant Baidu.
SOURCE:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok
Douyin was launched by ByteDance in China in September 2016, originally under the name A.me, before rebranding to Douyin in December 2016.ByteDance planned on Douyin expanding overseas. The founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, stated that "China is home to only one-fifth of Internet users globally. If we don't expand on a global scale, we are bound to lose to peers eyeing the four-fifths. So, going global is a must. " Douyin was developed in 200 days and within a year had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day. TikTok was launched in the international market in September 2017.On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked no. 1 among free app downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries.
TikTok has been downloaded more than 80 million times in the United States, and has reached 2 billion downloads worldwide, according to data from mobile research firm Sensor Tower that excludes Android users in China. Many celebrities including Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk began using the application in 2018. Other celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, Will Smith, and Justin Bieber joined TikTok as well and many other celebrities have followed.
On 3 September 2019, TikTok and the US National Football League (NFL) announced a multi-year partnership. The agreement occurred just two days before the NFL's 100th season kick-off at the Soldier Stadium, where TikTok hosted activities for fans in honor of the deal. The partnership entails the launch of an official NFL TikTok account which is to bring about new marketing opportunities such as sponsored videos and hashtag challenges.
Musical.ly merger
Expansion in other markets
As of 2018, TikTok has been made available in over 150 markets, and in 75 languages. TikTok was downloaded more than 104 million times on Apple's App store during the full first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower. It surpassed Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to become the world's most downloaded iOS app.
Douyin
As a separate app from TikTok, Douyin is available from the developer's website. The app can only be downloaded in China and has a slightly older audience than TikTok, as their user base ranges from children to middle-aged adults. The app uses two different types of verification, an influencer personal verification similar to that of TikTok and a business verification requiring a license and yearly fee. Business verified users can promote to a specific audience, which allows them to choose where they want their video to be seen, such as a specific physical location. Douyin also has its own store, in which users can tag and advertise their products, and users can request to work with an influencer for brand deals. Part of the app's popularity has been attributed to its marketing campaigns that launched several activities with Chinese celebrities to engage their fans' interest.
User privacy concerns(उपयोगकर्ता की गोपनीयता की चिंता)
Privacy concerns have also been brought up regarding the app. In its privacy policy, TikTok lists that it collects usage information, IP addresses, a user's mobile carrier, unique device identifiers, keystroke patterns, and location data, among other data. Web developers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk claimed that allowing videos and other content being shared by the app's users through HTTP puts the users' data privacy at risk.
In January 2020, Check Point Research discovered a security flaw in TikTok which could have allowed hackers access to user accounts using SMS. In February, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman criticised the app, calling it "spyware," and stating "I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it's always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone." Responding to Huffman's comments, TikTok stated "These are baseless accusations made without a shred of evidence." Wells Fargo banned the app from its devices due to privacy and security concerns.
In May 2020, the Dutch Data Protection Authority announced an investigation into TikTok in relation to privacy protections for children. In June 2020, the European Data Protection Board announced that it would assemble a task force to examine TikTok's user privacy and security practices.
National security concerns
United States
In January 2019, an investigation by the American think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics described TikTok as a "Huawei-sized problem" that posed a national security threat to the West, noting the app's popularity with Western users. They included armed forces personnel and its alleged ability to convey location, image and biometric data to its Chinese parent company, which is legally unable to refuse to share data with the Chinese government under the China Internet Security Law. Observers have also noted that ByteDance's founder and CEO Zhang Yiming issued a letter in 2018 stating that his company would "further deepen cooperation" with the ruling Chinese Communist Party to promote its policies. TikTok's parent company ByteDance claims that TikTok is not available in China and its data is stored outside of China, but its privacy policy has reserved the right to share any information with Chinese authorities. In response to national security, censorship, and anti-boycott compliance concerns, in October 2019, Senator Marco Rubio asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to open an investigation into TikTok and its parent company ByteDance. The same month, Senators Tom Cotton and Chuck Schumer sent a joint letter to the Director of National Intelligence requesting a security review of TikTok and its parent company.
In November 2019, it was reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States opened an investigation into ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly.The same month, following a request by Senator Chuck Schumer, U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy agreed to assess the risks of using TikTok as a recruitment tool. Senator Josh Hawley introduced the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act to prohibit TikTok's parent company and others from transferring personal data of Americans to China. Senator Josh Hawley also introduced a bill to ban downloading and using TikTok on government devices because of national security concerns. In December 2019, the United States Navy as well as the U.S. Army banned TikTok from all government-issued devices. The Transportation Security Administration also prohibited its personnel from posting on the platform for outreach purposes. Following its prohibition by the U.S. military, the Australian Defence Force also banned TikTok on its devices. Legislation was subsequently introduced in the U.S. Senate that would prohibit all federal employees from using or downloading TikTok.
In July 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the government was considering banning TikTok. In response, experts suggested that Trump's proposed TikTok ban may threaten free speech and "set a very problematic precedent" for banning apps in the United States.
The Democratic National Committee issued a warning to the Democratic campaigns, state parties, and committees to ensure that additional security measures are implemented while using TikTok, citing concerns regarding the application's spying nature.
Censorship
See also: Overseas censorship of Chinese issues and Internet censorship in ChinaOn 3 July 2018, TikTok was temporarily banned in Indonesia after the Indonesian government accused it of promulgating "pornography, inappropriate content and blasphemy." Shortly afterwards, TikTok pledged to task 20 staff with censoring TikTok content in Indonesia, and the ban was lifted 8 days later.
In November 2018, the Bangladeshi government blocked the TikTok app's internet access, even though TikTok had no connection to the reason for ban, which was pornography and gambling.
Also in 2018, Douyin was reprimanded by Chinese media watchdogs for showing "unacceptable" content, such as videos depicting adolescent pregnancies.
In January 2019, the Chinese government said that it would start to hold app developers like ByteDance responsible for user content shared via apps such as Douyin, and listed 100 types of content that the Chinese government would censor. It was reported that certain content unfavorable to the Communist Party of China has already been limited for users outside of China such as content related to the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests or Tibetan independence.
TikTok has blocked videos about human rights in China, particularly those that reference Xinjiang re-education camps and abuses of ethnic and religious minorities, and disabled the accounts of users who post them. TikTok's policies also ban content related to a specific list of foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Mahatma Gandhi because it can stir controversy and attacks on political views. Its policies also ban content critical of Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan and content considered pro-Kurdish. TikTok was reported to have censored users supportive of the Citizenship Amendment Act protests and those who promote Hindu-Muslim unity.
In February 2019, several Indian politicians called for TikTok to be banned or more tightly regulated, after concerns emerged about sexually explicit content, cyberbullying, and deepfakes. They called it a "cultural degeneration".
In countries where LGBT discrimination is the socio-political norm, TikTok moderators have blocked content that could be perceived as being positive towards LGBT people or LGBT rights, including same-sex couples holding hands, including in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal. Former U.S. employees of TikTok reported to The Washington Post that final decisions to remove content were made by parent company employees in Beijing.
In response to censorship concerns, TikTok's parent company hired K&L Gates, including former Congressmen Bart Gordon and Jeff Denham, to advise it on its content moderation policies. TikTok also hired lobbying firm Monument Advocacy.
In June 2020, The Times of India reported that TikTok was "shadow banning" videos related to the Sino-Indian border dispute and the 2020 China–India skirmishes.
Bans in India
2019 provisional banOn 3 April 2019, the Madras High Court while hearing a PIL had asked the Government of India to ban the app, citing that it "encourages pornography" and shows "inappropriate content". The court also noted that children and minors using the app were at risk of being targeted by sexual predators. The court further asked broadcast media not to telecast any of those videos from the app. The spokesperson for TikTok stated that they were abiding by local laws and were awaiting the copy of the court order before they take action. On 17 April, both Google and Apple removed TikTok from Google Play and the App Store.As the court refused to reconsider the ban, the company stated that they had removed over 6 million videos that violated their content policy and guidelines.
On 25 April 2019, the ban was lifted after a court in Tamil Nadu reversed its order of prohibiting downloads of the app from the App Store and Google Play, following a plea from TikTok developer Bytedance Technology. India's TikTok ban might have cost the app 15 million new users.
Permanent ban
On 29 June 2020, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps stating a threat to the sovereignty and security of the country after the military clash between Indian and Chinese troops in a disputed territory along their shared border in Ladakh.The Indian government said the decision to ban the apps was in order to protect the data and privacy of its 1.3 billion citizens and put a stop to technology that was "stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorised manner to servers outside India".
Data transfer class action lawsuit
In November 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed in California that alleged that TikTok transferred personally-identifiable information of U.S. persons to servers located in China owned by Tencent and Alibaba. The lawsuit also accused ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, of taking user content without their permission. The plaintiff of the lawsuit, college student Misty Hong, downloaded the app but claimed she never created an account. She realized a few months later that TikTok has created an account for her using her information (such as biometric) and made a summary of her information. The lawsuit also alleged that information was sent to Chinese tech giant Baidu.
SOURCE:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok
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