TikTok

TikTok is a social app that allows users to make short videos. Users can add filters, text, sounds, and music, and it is especially popular to make creative, lip-synched music videos. Users scroll through a newsfeed, react to content, and navigate with hashtags.

The app was launched in 2016 in China, where it’s called Douyin. It went international in 2017 as TikTok; the name, apparently, is a play on tick-tock, onomatopoeia for clocks and a term for countdowns and minute-by-minute action. In 2017–18, TikTok bought and merged with competitor, musical.ly. 

In 2018–19, TikTok came into prominence with a video trend where people transform into cowboys and cowgirls while lip-synching and dancing to Lil NaS X’s “Old Town Road.” The trend, sometimes called the #YeehawChallenge or Yee-Yee Juice Challenge, helped make the country-rap track “Old Town Road” a smash hit.

More context on TikTok

In 2020, TikTok notably trended in the news for several reasons. The app has come under fire from President Donald Trump, has been a source of privacy and security concerns due to it being owned by a Chinese tech company, and it has been the target of an acquisition by Microsoft.

All three of these issues have become interconnected: On Friday, July 1, 2020, Trump said that he had the authority to ban TikTok from the United States based on concerns that the data the app collects would fall into the hands of the Chinese government. Trump shortly thereafter slowed down his threatened ban by giving Microsoft a short deadline to finalize an acquisition of TikTok. It’s reported that Microsoft has had a keen interest in purchasing the app from Chinese tech company ByteDance due to its hugely increasing popularity and the vast amount of user data that the app collects (which Microsoft would gain legal access to). 

As for TikTok users themselves, the overwhelming response seems to be animus towards Donald Trump, who was already unpopular with the app’s majority younger users even before the President targeted the app. It remains to be seen if TikTok users will seek a new platform—or if they will feel the need to if the app is “safe” thanks to a possible purchase by Microsoft. Regardless, multiple apps such as Triller or the Indian app Chingari have tried to seize the situation by marketing themselves as TikTok alternatives.

Trump says TikTok will close in the United States on Sept 15 unless Microsoft buys it. He says he’s fine with Microsoft buying it. pic.twitter.com/rwfZjVP27R

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) August 3, 2020