TikTok Wikipedia

Users also can set specific videos to either "public", "friends only", or "private" regardless if the account is private or not. Content is curated by TikTok's artificial intelligence depending on the content a user liked, interacted with, or searched. On 18 April 2024, Notes first released to users in Canada and Australia for limited testing. Many platforms and services, including YouTube Shorts, began to imitate TikTok's format and recommendation page.

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Classic stars are able to connect with younger audiences born decades after a musician's first debut and across traditional genres. The platform has also launched many songs that failed to garner initial commercial success into sleeper hits, particularly since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, despite never having toured in Asia, the band Fitz and the Tantrums developed a large following in South Korea following the widespread popularity of their 2016 song "HandClap" on the platform.

A significant number of users on TikTok, such as Juju Green, create content surrounding Film criticism and Easter eggs.
For example, despite never having toured in Asia, the band Fitz and the Tantrums developed a large following in South Korea following the widespread popularity of their 2016 song "HandClap" on the platform.
In 2019, media outlets cited TikTok as the 7th-most-downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019.
The day before the impending ban, California-based conversational search engine company Perplexity AI submitted a bid for a merger with TikTok US.
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.
There is insufficient public evidence to show that American user data has been accessed by or shared with the PRC government, with some claims reportedly exaggerated.

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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.

This marked the company's first instance of withdrawing its music from a major platform, in contrast to Warner Music, which had recently renewed its own licensing deal with TikTok.
TikTok has taken measures to remove and prevent access to content displaying the trend.
In 2021, the platform revealed that it will be introducing a feature that will prevent teenagers from receiving notifications past their bedtime.
Although the size of its user base falls short of that of Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, TikTok reached 1 billion active monthly users faster than any of them.
TikTok tends to appeal to younger users, as 41% of its users are between the ages of 16 and 24.
Comment sections of "sexy" videos, such as young girls dancing in revealing clothes, were found to contain requests for nude pictures.

In November 2023, Osama bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to the American people" went viral on TikTok and other social media. The company stated it banned praising Hamas and removed more than 775,000 videos and 14,000 livestreams. The popularity of pro-Palestine content has also been explained by the app's younger user base, which has shifted its sympathy away from Israel towards the Palestinians.

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Since 2021, TikTok has created "election centres" on its platform leading up to European Parliament elections. This increased potential Web traffic linked to the riddle posters' accounts on OnlyFans. Other TikTok creators have spoken out against accepting sponsorship deals indiscriminately and criticized those who posted undisclosed FeetFinder ads. Some of the recordings were made during consultations with Booz Allen Hamilton, a US government contractor. An article in the law insists that all organizations and citizens shall "support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence efforts." Analysts differ in their assessments of the data collection risks. Concerns have been raised about the potential control and influence of the Chinese government over TikTok's owner, ByteDance, in particular the extraterritorial implications of China's 2017 National Intelligence Law. Experts considered them to be "vague" and their implications "problematic" for the United States due to the country's general lack of robust data privacy laws. Influencers on the platform who earn money through engagement, such as likes and comments, are referred to as "meme machines". As the platform has grown significantly over the past few years, it has allowed companies to advertise and rapidly reach their intended demographic through influencer marketing. The court cited TikTok's negligence in failing to implement "necessary and adequate measures" to prevent the viral video challenges. On December 30, 2024, Venezuela's Supreme Court fined TikTok $10 million over viral challenges that authorities say led to the deaths of three children. 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 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. TikTok has been downloaded more than 130 million times in the United States and has reached 2 billion downloads worldwide, according to data from mobile research firm Sensor Tower (those numbers exclude Android users in China). TikTok merged with Musical.ly on 2 August 2018 with existing accounts and data consolidated into one app, keeping the title TikTok. While TikTok remains accessible to users in most countries, a minority of countries (including India and Afghanistan) have implemented full or partial bans. In May 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that former employees complained about TikTok tracking users who had viewed LGBT-related content. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) actively recruits influencers on TikTok and other social media platforms, often with what commentators have dubbed "Thirst traps". In October 2020, the e-commerce platform Shopify added TikTok to its portfolio of social media platforms, allowing online merchants to sell their products directly to consumers on TikTok. In response to the exposé, Kenya's Communications Authority (CA) launched a formal inquiry, directing TikTok to ruhtinas remove all sexual content involving minors and submit a detailed plan to strengthen its moderation and child protection systems. Reporting in The Washington Post suggested that the virality of the letter had been limited prior to media coverage, having never trended on TikTok. TikTok was also accused by Malaysia's minister of communications, Fahmi Fadzil of suppressing pro-Palestinian content. The Jewish Federations of North America expressed support for TikTok to be banned, while Israel's critics denounced the "criminalisation of pro-Palestinian voices", including on TikTok, which has been used to condemn "Israel's atrocities", according to The New Arab. TikTok said that a significant proportion of its userbase comes from non-US regions such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia and that hashtags should not be cherry-picked due to differences in the number of views per post and the age of a post or tag. Prominent Jewish individuals such as Sacha Baron Cohen, Debra Messing, Amy Schumer, and TikTok creator Miriam Ezagui raised the issue with Adam Presser, TikTok's head of operations, and Seth Melnick, its global head of user operations, both also Jewish. In 2025, a Canadian investigation found that TikTok had collected sensitive personal data from children in violation of federal privacy laws. In March 2025, the ICO opened another investigation into TikTok concerning its use of children's personal information to recommend content to them. In April 2023, the ICO imposed a £12.7 million fine on TikTok for misusing children's data.