Deep Dive
How TikTok Conquered the World in Six Years
Zhang Yiming built ByteDance in Beijing in 2012, starting with a news aggregator app called Toutiao that perfected addictive algorithmic content feeds. By 2016, he split into two nearly identical platforms: Douyin for Chinese users (featuring propaganda tabs for the Communist Party) and TikTok for the rest of the world. When TikTok launched in 2017, it had a ready competitor in Musically, a short-form video app popular with teens. ByteDance simply bought and merged Musically into TikTok in 2018, instantly converting millions of users. By 2023, TikTok had 1.7 billion global users and 150 million in Europe alone, reaching those numbers in roughly six years compared to over a decade for Instagram.
The Data and Government Control Problem
CEO Shouzi Chew claims TikTok is internationally owned with 60 percent American institutional investors, 20 percent founders, and 20 percent employees. But that ownership structure masks real control. ByteDance uses a variable interest entity setup where Zhang Yiming retains voting control despite holding minority equity. More critically, China's 2017 national intelligence law requires all companies and citizens to comply with Communist Party intelligence requests. ByteDance is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven that keeps operations opaque. In 2022, TikTok employees in China and the US allegedly spied on journalists, including Financial Times reporter Christina Criddle, trying to identify which staff leaked information about toxic working conditions in the London office.
Addiction by Design and Misinformation at Scale
TikTok's core innovation is removing friction from content discovery. No accounts to follow, no questionnaires about preferences. Users just scroll and the algorithm learns instantly. Kids under 18 spend 1 hour 47 minutes daily on TikTok, nearly double Instagram and YouTube usage. Each dopamine hit from a liked video creates a compulsive loop that Forbes journalist John Coodzir called digital cocaine. The public health angle terrifies governments. Separately, Newsguard research found 20 percent of news content on TikTok is false or misleading. One in three French users aged 16 to 30 now get daily news from TikTok. During the Ukraine invasion, false photos of Zelenski in combat gear from 2021 circulated widely as current propaganda.
Western Governments Strike Back
By early 2024, the US, Canada, and EU parliament banned government employees from using TikTok. The French Senate launched an investigation in 2023 that found disturbing opacity around algorithmic decisions. ByteDance manually boosts or suppresses video visibility but refuses to disclose what types of content get invisibilized. The EU's Digital Services Act takes effect in February 2024 with strict platform regulations. TikTok countered with Project Texas, storing US user data on Oracle cloud infrastructure, and Project Clover, hosting European data in Ireland. The French Senate found these insufficient, recommending suspension rather than permanent ban until TikTok achieves full transparency on algorithm operations and data handling.
A Larger Digital Sovereignty Question
Gaspard G frames TikTok as emblematic of American declining hegemony. One Chinese app outsourced major Western platforms in years, not decades. But he emphasizes the real issue extends beyond TikTok. Data harvesting, algorithmic addiction, and misinformation plague all social platforms whether American or Chinese. The difference is scale and government backing. Upcoming elections in Europe mid-2024 and the US presidential race late 2024 could accelerate bans if protectionist governments take power. Even centrists like Macron and Biden now openly question TikTok's opacity. Whether suspension or permanent ban happens depends on whether ByteDance becomes genuinely transparent on algorithm function and data security.