In September 2021, the Ireland Data Protection Commission (DPC) launched investigations into TikTok concerning the protection of minors’ data and transfers of personal data to China. The US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia reportedly subpoenaed information from ByteDance regarding its surveillance of journalists on TikTok. In December 2022, ByteDance confirmed after internal investigation that the data of two journalists and their close contacts had been accessed by its employees from China and the United States.
Plans to sell TikTok’s US operations
- In 2021, The New York Times reported that viral TikTok videos by young people relating the emotional impact of books on them, tagged with the label “BookTok”, significantly drove sales of literature.
- TikTok was downloaded over 104 million times on Apple’s App Store during the first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower.
- In March 2023, TikTok introduced a dedicated feed for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content.
- It is reported that TikTok Music features songs from major record companies like Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group.
- TikTok has come under scrutiny due to data privacy violations, mental health concerns, misinformation, offensive content, addictive algorithm, and its role during the Gaza war.
- In October 2022, TikTok was reported to be planning an expansion into the e-commerce market in the US, following the launch of TikTok Shop in the United Kingdom.
- This led many creators to stop creating new content which they were not already contractually obligated to create.
According to The Times of Israel, antisemitism at the company was “rampant” after the October 7 attacks, allowing anti-Jewish and anti-Israel content to increase on the platform. With reports that Palestinians resorted to TikTok for promoting their cause after platforms like Facebook and Twitter blocked their content, Israeli analyst Yoni Ben-Menachem called the app a “tool of dangerous influence” inciting violence against Israelis. In December 2022, with the United States experiencing a shortage as well, it was reported that ruhtinas the huge increase in demand for the medicine was caused by a weight loss trend on TikTok, where videos about the drug exceeded 360 million views.
- The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features.
- TikTok’s own investigation found more than 12,000 fake accounts, including ones using additional languages such as English and Italian.
- An investigation in 2025 found that TikTok was profiting from sexual livestreams in Kenya involving minors, with teenagers as young as 15 using the platform to solicit explicit content.
- There were also multiple conspiracy theories that the government is involved with the spread of the pandemic.
- The app has spawned numerous viral trends, Internet celebrities, and music trends around the world.
Duets, a feature that allows users to add their own video to an existing video with the original content’s audio, have sparked many of these trends. In December 2021, TikTok started beta-testing Live Studio, a streaming software that would let users broadcast applications open on their computers, including games. Users can choose whether any other user, or only their “friends”, may interact with them through the app via comments, messages, or “react” or “duet” videos. The app’s “react” feature allows users to film their reaction to a specific video, over which it is placed in a small window that is movable around the screen.
Amazon Prime Video
Wegovy, a drug that has been specifically approved for treating obesity, also became popular on the platform after Elon Musk credited it for helping him lose weight. A 2025 meta-analysis found that use of TikTok was correlated with symptoms of anxiety and depression, with stronger links in females and users under 24 years old. Some users were able to circumvent TikTok filters by writing in code or using unconventional spelling. Daily hours of entertainment screen media (Social Medias) may displace healthy behaviors such as socializing face to face, chores, hobbies, homework, family meals time, exercise, and sufficient sleep. A trend making fun of autism eventually created a huge backlash, even on the platform itself, and the company ended up removing the hashtag altogether. In February 2024, the European Commission launched an investigation into TikTok for potential violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA), involving content aiming at children and advertising transparency.
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
The deal was completed by January 22, 2026, with investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX, and others including the personal investment entity for Michael Dell will own more than 80% of the new venture, while ByteDance retained 19.9% ownership. The day before the impending ban, California-based conversational search engine company Perplexity AI submitted a bid for a merger with TikTok US. In January 2025, Chinese officials began preliminary talks about potentially selling TikTok’s US operations to Elon Musk if the app faced an impending ban due to national security concerns. In March 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok’s growth in the US had stagnated.
Restrictions and bans
To combat misinformation in the 2022 midterm election in the US, TikTok announced a midterms Elections Center available in-app to users in 40 different languages. It reported that in the second half of 2020, over 340,000 videos in the US about election misinformation and 50,000 videos of COVID-19 misinformation were removed. In April 2020, the government of India asked TikTok to remove users posting misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. TikTok responded by taking down videos with content that violated their community guidelines.
In June 2021, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the Trump administration ban on TikTok, and instead ordered the Secretary of Commerce to investigate the app to determine if it poses a threat to US national security. In January 2020, the United States Army and Navy banned TikTok on government devices after the Defense Department labeled it a security risk. An analysis estimated that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, could gain between $2.46 billion and $3.38 billion in advertising revenue if TikTok were banned.
Douyin includes an in-video search feature that can search by people’s faces for more videos of them, along with other features such as buying, booking hotels, and making geo-tagged reviews. While TikTok and Douyin share a similar user interface, the platforms operate separately. TikTok has come under scrutiny due to data privacy violations, mental health concerns, misinformation, offensive content, addictive algorithm, and its role during the Gaza war. The popularity of TikTok has allowed viral trends in food, fashion, and music to take off and increase the platform’s cultural impact worldwide.
The momentum of digital feminist movements through platforms like TikTok have additionally encouraged many social media agents and marketing campaigns around the world to adopt some degree of feminism as a part of their online image or personal brand. In July 2025, Media Matters reported that Google’s Veo 3 text-to-video model for AI-generated content is being used to generate large numbers of dehumanizing and violent videos with racist and antisemitic tropes which are being shared on TikTok. In October 2019, TikTok removed about two dozen accounts that were responsible for posting ISIL propaganda and execution videos on the app. TikTok pushed back against the NCRI, saying that making “accounts that interact with the app in a prescribed manner” is not the same as the experience of real users and some of the events being compared happened before TikTok existed. In 2019, The Guardian reported that TikTok had censored videos of topics not favored by the Chinese government.
Doctors suggested that the cause may be a social one as users who consumed content showcasing various tics would sometimes develop tics of their own, akin to mass psychogenic illness. Many were also concerned with the app affecting users’ attention spans due to the short-form nature of the content. ByteDance responded by adding a kids-only mode to TikTok which blocks the upload of videos, the building of user profiles, direct messaging, and commenting on others’ videos, while still allowing the viewing and recording of content. In August 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok tracked Android user data, including MAC addresses and IMEIs, with a tactic in violation of Google’s policies. The company said its algorithm tracks interests not identity, and non-LGBT users also view such content.
The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. The developer, TikTok Ltd., indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features to help make common tasks in the app faster and easier to complete. Enjoy a better video browsing experience on our enhanced feed. ■ Be entertained and inspired by a global community of creatorsMillions of creators are on TikTok showcasing their incredible skills and everyday life. ■ Pause recording multiple times in one videoPause and resume your video with just a tap. TikTok had earlier drawn criticism for hosting content by organized crime groups promoting the gang lifestyle and fights.
TikTok said only a few individuals can approve heating in the US and the promoted videos take up less than 0.002% of user feeds. NBC reported that videos using the hashtags ‘#plasticsurgery’ and ‘#lipfiller’ had amassed a combined 26 billion views on the platform. TikTok content creators used a specific audio on their videos while showing how their noses looked before and after having their rhinoplasty surgeries. In the article, it was noted that plastic surgeons were some of the earliest adopters of social media in the medical field and many had been recognized as influencers on the platform.
Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said TikTok would have no right to appeal requests for data made by the Chinese government. TikTok is also able to track information about web users even if they are not users of the TikTok app. Other information collected includes users inferred interests based on the content they view as well as content created by users.
User Data Privacy
It covers the “top 4% of all videos on TikTok” and is only available to creators with more than 100,000 followers. In October 2021, TikTok launched a test feature that allows users to directly tip certain creators. Private content remains visible to TikTok but is blocked from TikTok users who the account holder has not authorized to view their content. TikTok’s algorithm leverages this insight to present similar content, creating an environment that users often find hard to disengage from. While typical platforms focus on active user actions like likes, clicks, or follows, TikTok monitors a wider array of behaviors during video viewing.
