In light of TikTok's ban in the United States, we bring you an overview of the video-sharing platform's rise.
Genesis
In 2016, Beijing-based company ByteDance launched Douyin, a short video sharing app, in the Chinese market.
ByteDance launched TikTok in the international market the following year, shortly before buying the "lip sync" app Musical.ly and merging it with TikTok.
The social network became a hit, with its algorithm offering endless collections of short, looping and usually funny videos posted by users.
Pandemic boom
TikTok's popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic Covid-19, announced in 2020, as people who were stranded at home relied on the internet for entertainment and fun.
As a result, authorities around the world began to monitor TikTok's influence and addictive appeal.
TikTok became one of the most downloaded apps in the world, and countries became increasingly wary of the possibility of the Chinese government influencing ByteDance or having access to user data.
India banned TikTok in July 2020 due to tensions with China.
Trump's role
While Donald Trump was President of the United States in 2020, he signed an executive order banning TikTok in the United States.
Trump accused TikTok, without evidence, of downloading American users' data for the benefit of Beijing and of censoring publications at the direction of Chinese officials.
Trump's decision was made at a time when his administration has come into conflict with Beijing on a number of issues.
During his failed bid for re-election in 2020, the Republican continued to campaign with anti-China messages.
Between the court battles and Trump's loss to Joe Biden in that year's presidential election, the executive orders did not take effect.
In September 2021, TikTok announced it had one billion monthly users globally. Concerns grew that TikTok users faced risks of addiction, propaganda and espionage.
In 2022, BuzzFeed reported that ByteDance employees based in China had gained access to TikTok users' personal information.
ByteDance tried to cool privacy concerns by hosting users' data on servers managed in the United States by Oracle.
The move did not appease Washington, however, and TikTok was banned for devices used by the U.S. military.
A number of other government agencies and academic institutes followed suit and banned their employees from using TikTok.
Singapore TikTok CEO Shaw Chu was grilled by members of the US Congress during a six-hour session in March 2023.
Sell or end
TikTok sat on the hot seat in the United States again in 2024 when President Joe Biden signed a law requiring a ban on TikTok if ByteDance did not sell the app to a company not affiliated with a national security adversary.
Washington's stated goal was to reduce the risk of Beijing spying on or manipulating TikTok users, especially the app's 170 million U.S. users.
TikTok's management is adamant that it has never shared user data with the Chinese government or carried out its orders on the social network.
ByteDance is suing the US government, claiming the law violates free speech rights.
The final decision in that case was made by the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the law, effective Jan. 19.
The court ruled that the law did not violate free speech rights and that the US government had demonstrated a legitimate national security concern about the Chinese company owning the app.
President-elect Trump, who will take office on Monday, January 20, has signaled he may intervene in TikTok's favor.
But the company said that if the outgoing Biden administration did not give "categorical" assurances that the law would not be enforced, it would be forced to halt its operations in America. | BGNES, AFP
