Douyin. Douyin was launched by
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese technology company Bytedance, has long maintained that it does not share data with the Chinese government.
An additional twenty percent of the company is owned by ByteDance employees around the world, including Australians. The remaining twenty percent is owned by the company's founder, who is a private individual and is not part of any state or government entity. Myth: TikTok and ByteDance are headquartered in China.
TikTok, known as Douyin in its home market, was launched in China in September 2016. It quickly started to gain traction in China and parent company ByteDance launched an international version the following year.
TikTok (aka Douyin)
It's one of the biggest Chinese social media platforms to date, with more than one billion monthly active users around the world.
“TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, US user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honour such a request if one were ever made,” Chew will testify on Thursday, according to written testimony posted on Tuesday by the House committee.
TikTok is fighting to stay alive in the United States as pressure builds in Washington to ban the app if its Chinese owners don't sell the company. But the wildly popular platform, developed with homegrown Chinese technology, isn't accessible in China.
ByteDance says 60% of its shares are owned by non-Chinese investors such as U.S investment firms Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Japan's SoftBank Group. Employees own 20% and its founders the remaining 20%. Some details of the relationship between TikTok and ByteDance remain unclear to outsiders.
Currently, Chinese company ByteDance owns TikTok. Zhang Yiming is the owner and founder.
Zhang Yiming is the main founder of Chinese tech giant ByteDance, best known for its insanely popular app TikTok, which has more than 1 billion users worldwide.
A recent BuzzFeed report, citing leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meetings, revealed that “Everything is seen in China.” TikTok tracks users' keystrokes to capture their personal data, such as credit card information, passwords, and location.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese technology company Bytedance but it insists it is run independently and does not share data with the Chinese government. It is currently carrying out a project to store US user data in Texas, which it says will put it out of China's reach.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, and the company is required to turn over any data and information they collect to the Chinese government at a moment's notice. Therefore, your data can be shared with the Chinese government and used to spy on you or spread misinformation about the American people.
The Indian government banned TikTok in June 2020, along with several other Chinese apps, over national security concerns. Before the ban, the app had about 150 million monthly active users in India.
Chingari is a popular TikTok replacement in India that grants talented individuals a platform to perform.
In Japan, the use of TikTok and other social networking services (SNSs) are prohibited on government devices that handle confidential information. Nakayama said further restrictions should be considered only after looking into their data-handling and other operations.
TikTok does not directly pay creators to produce and upload videos. TikTok does offer funding for creators in the form of the TikTok Creativity Program. Still, payment varies based on factors like the number of video views, engagement rates, and the authenticity of users engaging with the post.
According to the latest data on TikTok's advertising reach, the United States is home to the majority of TikTok users worldwide, with 116.5 million TikTokers residing there.
TikTok is Most Popular With Younger Generations
Ages 10-19 are 25% of users. Ages 20-29 are 22.4% of users. Ages 30-39 is 21.7% of users. Ages 40-49 is 20.3% of users.
No evidence of TikTok national security threat but reason for concern, experts say. App faces a potential U.S. ban as bipartisan hostility grows.
WHAT ARE THE CONCERNS ABOUT TIKTOK? Both the FBI and officials at the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China's authoritarian government.
TikTok is a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. The app is used by young people as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing, and allows users to create videos and share them across a community.
For now, Montana is the only U.S. state to sign legislation into law that would ban TikTok on all personal devices in the state. But many public universities and university systems in the U.S. have banned TikTok from operation on campus Wi-Fi and university-owned devices.
Congress has four primary concerns about TikTok. First, that TikTok collects data about you; second, that kids get addicted to spending time on TikTok; and third, that people can find misinformation and violence.
Instead, there's a different version of TikTok — a sister app called Douyin. Both are owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, but Douyin launched before TikTok and became a viral sensation in China. Its powerful algorithm became the foundation for TikTok and is key to its global success.