TikTok is a free social media app available for iOS and Android. Tik Tok was launched in China in September 2016 as Duyin (Chinese: 抖音) and was launched outside of China as Tik Tok in 2017. Tik Tok allows users to create and upload videos from 3 seconds to 10 minutes and earn dollars from showing them.
Since its launch, Tik Tok and Doin have gained worldwide fame. In October 2020, its app exceeded 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide. Cloudflare announced that TikTok was the most popular website in 2021, surpassing Google. This application is considered one of the main competitors of Instagram and Facebook Mobile, and its main features include Entertainment, dance challenges, culture, hidden camera and informational content.
Some Tik Tok content such as Ukraine war news and twerk dance by European women, which increased girls’ earnings from Tik Tok through female domination, were criticized by the media. Many media also pointed to the use of white women’s hip dance to keep more users on Tik Tok. Many male users of the Android app said in a survey that after seeing Tik Tok dance clips, they immediately followed all social networks of dancing women and at least twice a year, they deposited large amounts of money to the payment links on the pages of dancing women. This application started working in western countries by buying and rebranding the American application Musical Lee. In 2020, concern about the threat to the national security of the United States and the data of the American people being in the hands of the Chinese Communist government made the federal government of the United States of America threaten to close it within its territory. However, talks were started by the American company Microsoft with the Chinese side to buy a part of it by the American side and thus ensure the security of users’ data. The deadline for talks was set for September 15, 2020. The American division of TikTok will become an American company called TikTok Global, which will be headquartered in the United States. Of this new company, 12.5% of the shares will belong to Oracle, 7.5% to Walmart and 80% to the Chinese company ByteDance, the current owner of Tik Tok. But because 40% of the shares of Byte Dance are owned by American investors, the majority of this new company will be owned by American companies. It is said that Oracle and Walmart are going to pay a total of 12 billion dollars for this amount of shares to Bytedance.
Features and content
A view of the web version in 2022, which includes the user profile and the possibility of displaying posts and the possibility of creating an account.
This mobile app allows users to create short videos that mostly have music in the background and can be transformed or edited with filters. They can also add their own voice to the background music. To create a music video with this app, users can select background music from a wide range of music genres, edit it with filters, and preview it before uploading it or sharing it on other websites.
Income for users
From May 2022, a new system was activated to generate dollar income for users, which in some cases gives the user up to half of the income from displaying advertisements in the app. Advertising revenues were mostly allocated to official pages and women’s dance.
PAWG Culture
Tik Tok has continuously been an infrastructure for the dissemination and promotion of PAWG culture (in English: PAWG; meaning: white girl with big hips) and white (western) girls using Tik Tok and the possibility of various types of butt dance and mixing with music in this application. They have the most visited hashtags. In 2022, from dance and music tags to economic and news, some of the top recommended posts have always included the dance of Pawg girls.
E-Girl and E-Boy
E-girls and e-boys, sometimes referred to collectively as e-kids, are a Generation Z youth subculture that emerged in the late 2010s, particularly popularized by the video sharing app TikTok. .
Fashion and clothing
In the fashion and clothing sector, Tik Tok is also active in various sizes. Models with different sizes have accounts in this app.
Safe mode (for children)
In February 2020, TikTok rolled out a “Family Safety Mode” for parents to control their children’s presence on the app. There has been an option to manage screen time, limited mode, and an option to set limits for direct messages. Dance tags are also sometimes filtered in limited mode, and PAWG, Twerk, White Girls Dance are among the millions of tags filtered in limited mode. Safe Mode prevents most of the content of feminization of men by women and fandom (financial domination of women over men) but is not accurate. Esmars that are considered sexual are also filtered in the same way.
Effect on health
There are concerns that some users may find it difficult to stop using the app.
Availability in countries
Iran
Since October 21, 2018, the access of Iranian users has been unilaterally cut off by Tik Tok and filtered by the working group to determine examples of criminal content, which has the responsibility of censoring the Internet for the people of Iran. This application is not available for most users even with a filter breaker and is completely out of order.
Russia
TikTok is the 10th most followed app in Russia. After a new set of laws against the spread of Russian fake news was passed in March 2022, the company introduced a series of restrictions on affiliate posts.
America
In 2019, as tensions between the United States and China escalated, TikTok and its owner, ByteDance, came under the spotlight.
Purchase offer by Microsoft
According to Forbes magazine, after Donald Trump talked to reporters about the plan to ban the use of TikTok in the United States, the talks between Microsoft and the Chinese company “Byte Dance”, the main owner of this social media, were suspended. After some time, on August 12, 2019, Microsoft’s official blog announced in a new article that Trump agreed to continue the talks for the possible purchase of TikTok.
The CEO of Microsoft announced that the conversation with the Chinese owner of the TikTok application will be resumed following the approval of the US President to buy the social media company Tiktok. Reuters news agency reported on August 13, 2019 that the President of the United States has given “Byte Dance” 45 days to come to a conclusion regarding the sale of this application to Microsoft.
Deadline for purchase
On August 13, 2019, US President Donald Trump said that if the Tik Tok application does not sell its activities in the United States by September 15, the activity of this media will be banned in the United States. The President of the United States continued, “I have set a deadline of September 15, 2020, at which point the application will cease to operate in the United States.” Donald Trump stated: “I will close Tik Tok unless Microsoft or another company can come to an agreement and buy Tik Tok.” He further added that for security reasons, you should not be allowed to be controlled by China.
Availability in countries
On August 16, 2019, Donald Trump, the former president of the United States of America, issued a decree and announced that from one and a half months from now, transactions between Americans and Chinese companies that own the “TikTok” and “WeChat” applications will be prohibited. This ban started 45 days after August 16, 2019 and included two companies “Byte Dance” and “Tencent”. Based on this decree, the licenses of these two companies for the use of the mentioned applications in the United States are not allowed to be renewed.
In his order, Trump stated that the TikTok application can be used in disinformation campaigns for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party, and therefore the United States “must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok in order to protect our national security.” In another order, the US president said that the WeChat application “automatically records a large part of its users’ information, and this collection of information allows the Chinese Communist Party to access the personal and legal information of Americans.”
Finalization of purchase
In early September 2020, Microsoft’s talks to buy TikTok stalled after China’s export laws changed.[36] But in the same month, talks between ByteDance and Oracle and Walmart were concluded. This result was supported by Donald Trump and Byte Dance. Based on this agreement, a new company called “TikTok Global” will start working, its headquarters is in America, and Oracle’s share is 12.5% and Walmart’s share is 7.5% of this company.
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