Beginning in 2017, when the Chinese language social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a distinct segment teen app into a worldwide trendsetter. Whereas, after all, additionally rising as a possible nationwide safety risk, in response to U.S. officers.
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On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed laws requiring TikTok mum or dad ByteDance to promote to a U.S. proprietor inside a yr or to close down. It isn’t clear whether or not that regulation will survive an anticipated authorized problem or that ByteDance would comply with promote.
This is how TikTok got here to this juncture:
March 2012 ByteDance is based in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao, a personalised information aggregator for Chinese language customers.
July 2014 Startup Musical.ly, later identified for an eponymous app used to publish brief lipsyncing music movies, is based in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.
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July 2015 Musical.ly hits #1 within the Apple App Retailer, following a design change that made the corporate’s brand seen when customers shared their movies. 2016 ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese language customers. Its recognition conjures up the corporate to spin off a model for international audiences referred to as TikTok.
November 2017 ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. 9 months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.
Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, customers start to share all kinds of video on the app, together with dance strikes, kitchen meals preparation and numerous “challenges” to carry out, document and publish acts that vary from severe to satirical.
February 2019 Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country-trap music “Outdated City Highway” on TikTok, the place it goes viral and pushes the music to a document 17 weeks within the #1 spot on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart. The phenomenon kicks off a wave of TikTok movies from musical artists who all of the sudden see TikTok as a important technique to attain followers.
TikTok settles federal prices of violating U.S. child-privacy legal guidelines and agrees to pay a $5.7 million tremendous.
September 2019 The Washington Put up stories that whereas photographs of Hong Kong democracy protests and police crackdowns are frequent on most social media websites, they’re surprisingly absent on TikTok. The identical story notes that TikTok posts with the #trump2020 tag acquired greater than 70 million views.
The corporate insists that TikTok content material moderation, performed within the U.S., will not be accountable and says the app is a spot for leisure, not politics.
The Guardian stories on inside paperwork that reportedly element how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or restrict the attain of movies bearing on subjects delicate to China such because the 1989 Tiananmen Sq. protests and subsequent bloodbath, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned non secular group Falun Gong.
October 2019 U.S. politicians start to boost alarms about TikTok’s affect, calling for a federal investigations of its Musical.ly acquisition and a nationwide safety probe into TikTok and different Chinese language-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, in response to information stories.
December 2019 The Pentagon recommends that each one U.S. army personnel delete TikTok from all telephones, private and government-issued. Some providers ban the app on army owned telephones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all army telephones.
TikTok turns into the second-most downloaded app on the earth, in response to knowledge from analytics agency SensorTower.
Might 2020 Privateness teams file a criticism alleging TikTok remains to be violating U.S. child-protection legal guidelines and flouting a 2019 settlement settlement. The corporate “takes the problem of safely critically” and continues to enhance safeguards, it says.
TikTok hires former Disney government Kevin Mayer as its chief government officer in an obvious try to enhance its U.S. relations. Mayer resigns three months later.
July 2020 India bans TikTok and dozens of different Chinese language apps in response to a border conflict with China.
President Donald Trump says he’s contemplating banning TikTok as retaliation for China’s alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
August 2020 Trump points a sweeping however imprecise government order banning American corporations from any “transaction” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, together with TikTok. A number of days later, he points a second order demanding that ByteDance divest itself of TikTok’s U.S. operations inside 90 days.
Microsoft confirms it’s exploring acquisition of TikTok. The deal by no means materializes; neither does an identical overture from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, in the meantime, sues the Trump administration for alleged violation of due course of in its government orders.
November 2020 Joe Biden is elected president. He would not provide new coverage on TikTok and will not take workplace till January, however Trump’s plans to power a sale of TikTok begin to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it had imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and finally lets them slide altogether.
February 2021 Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the authorized instances involving Trump’s plan to ban TikTok, successfully bringing them to a halt.
September 2021 TikTok publicizes it has greater than a billion month-to-month lively customers.
December 2021 A Wall Road Journal report finds TikTok algorithms can flood teenagers with a torrent of dangerous materials similar to movies recommending excessive weight-reduction plan, a type of consuming dysfunction.
February 2022 TikTok publicizes new guidelines to discourage the unfold of dangerous materials similar to viral hoaxes and promotion of consuming issues.
April 2022 “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a mission created by two followers of the Netflix present as a TikTok mission, wins the Grammy for Finest Musical Theater Album.
TikTok turns into probably the most downloaded app on the earth, beating out Instagram, in response to SensorTower knowledge.
June 2022 BuzzFeed stories that China-based ByteDance staff have repeatedly accessed the nonpublic data of TikTok customers, primarily based on leaked recordings from greater than 80 inside TikTok conferences. TikTok responds with a imprecise remark touting its dedication to safety that does not straight handle the BuzzFeed report.
TikTok additionally publicizes it has migrated its consumer knowledge to U.S. servers managed by the U.S. tech agency Oracle. However that does not stop recent alarm amongst U.S. officers in regards to the threat of Chinese language authorities accessing U.S. consumer knowledge.
December 2022 FBI Director Chris Wrap raises nationwide safety issues about TikTok, warning that Chinese language officers may manipulate the app’s suggestion algorithm for affect operations.
ByteDance additionally stated it fired 4 staff who accessed knowledge on journalists from Buzzfeed Information and The Monetary Occasions whereas making an attempt to trace down leaks of confidential supplies in regards to the firm.
February 2023 The White Home provides federal businesses 30 days to make sure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued cellular units. Each the FBI and the Federal Communications Fee warn that ByteDance may share TikTok consumer knowledge with China’s authoritarian authorities.
March 2023 Legislators grill TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at a six-hour congressional listening to the place Chew, a local of Singapore, makes an attempt to push again on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are instruments of the Chinese language authorities.
January 2024 TikTok stated it was proscribing a instrument some researchers use to investigate well-liked movies on the platform.
March 2024 A invoice to ban TikTok or power its sale to a U.S. firm gathers steam in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington to inform lawmakers to again off, whereas emphasizing adjustments the corporate has made to guard consumer knowledge. TikTok additionally annoys legislators by sending notifications to customers urging them to “converse up now” or threat seeing TikTok banned; customers then flood congressional places of work with calls.
The Home of Representatives passes the TikTok ban-or-sell invoice.
April 2024 The Senate follows swimsuit, sending the invoice to President Biden, who indicators it.
