TikTok originates from the Chinese social media app "Douyin," which was developed by ByteDance in 2016. After Douyin merged with Musical.ly, another Chinese social media service, the app was launched worldwide in 2018 and renamed TikTok outside of China. TikTok is valued at upwards of $140 billion and set to have a massive IPO that would take form as TikTok Global, with ByteDance as the substantial majority stakeholder.
However, a formal deal between the relevant parties has yet to create TikTok Global because of complicated international politics. President Trump has threatened to ban TikTok from the U.S. over data privacy concerns, and his unpredictability, in conjunction with a lack of transparency from China, has been a huge headache for ByteDance. The company is essentially being forced to make a deal with American companies and split ownership to appease U.S. government.
As of November 2020, the pre-emptive deal planned would make ByteDance an 80% stakeholder, followed by Oracle at 12.5% and Walmart at 7.5%. It is unclear how the Biden administration will treat the situation if ByteDance is still being hindered by U.S. and/or Chinese government.
Content Moderation and TikTok's Future
TikTok has entered the tech world at an interesting time in the The United States, with legislators offering rare bipartisan support for enacting reform to curb the power of giants like Google and Facebook. TikTok isn't necessarily thought of as "big tech" by a lot of people, but the future consequences of this could still be significant for the company. There is a large debate around the existing "Section 230" legislation which basically prevents a company like TikTok or Twitter from being held liable for user behaviors on their platforms - and which had the important effect of upholding free speech. Although TikTok is not being targeted, any changes could potentially reshape the way TikTok conducts transparency in its operations and will likely cause them to spend even more on content moderation.
TikTok is an interesting case for content moderation because its user base ranges from young girls to adults in their 20s and 30s, and users have little control over what is shown in their For You Pages. TikTok prohibits explicit sexual content, but the line becomes very blurry especially when young children are viewing the videos. TikTok's 'Safe' mode can only do so much when turned on, especially since it can easily be turned off. To Jack Dorsey, Twitters CEO and one of big tech's frontmen, the solution to this is to give people more control of what they see by giving consumers the option to choice which algorithms best fit their preferences. In the next decade, it's not unimaginable that this will come to fruition - which could give TikTok users the ability to 'personalize their personalizations' if the company choses to go that route. Regardless, TikTok shows no signs of going away anytime soon and will surely be an integral part of tech innovation for years to come.
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