TikTok (ByteDance)

Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance in Beijing in 2012, initially building a news aggregation app called Toutiao — "Today's Headlines" — that used machine learning to personalise content without requiring users to select their interests. The algorithm learned what each individual user wanted to see faster than any human editor could. Toutiao reached 13 million users in 90 days. Zhang had discovered something important: the algorithm was better at predicting human attention than humans were.

ByteDance launched Douyin — a short video app — in China in September 2016. Within a year it had 100 million users. ByteDance launched TikTok as the international version in 2017. In 2018, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly, a lip-sync video app popular with Western teenagers, for $1 billion and merged it into TikTok. The acquisition instantly gave TikTok 100 million existing Western users.

In August 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump signed executive orders attempting to ban TikTok, citing national security concerns about Chinese access to American user data. TikTok sued the U.S. government. Microsoft, Oracle, and Walmart all entered negotiations to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations. The ban was blocked by courts. TikTok continued operating. By 2021 it had one billion monthly active users.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before the U.S. Congress for five hours in March 2023. Lawmakers asked whether TikTok could access users' home WiFi networks, whether the app's algorithm was influenced by the Chinese Communist Party, and whether TikTok was "like a cigarette." Chew answered every question carefully and definitively satisfied no one. The hearing became a meme. TikTok continued growing.

The U.S. passed legislation in April 2024 requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok's American operations or face a ban. The deadline came and went. TikTok briefly went dark in the U.S. before service was restored. President-elect Donald Trump, who had previously tried to ban TikTok, now indicated he would not enforce the law. The situation remained unresolved — TikTok operating in legal limbo, used by 170 million Americans.