Fearing TikTok's brilliance

The saga of TikTokwith its 1.7 billion users may be entering its next act.

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

TikTok is owned by Bytedance, a Chinese company. It has 170 million American users. The United States (US) business may soon be hived off in a deal with the approval ofthe US and Chinese governments.

TikTok has been banned in the US since January 2025. There have been back-and-forth negotiations about an enforced selloff of TikTok US for years. Assuming this happens, (it seems as certain as anything involving the inconsistent Donald Trump administration can be), this would be a mega-billion carveout. Control of the algorithm and processing of US-related data would goto the new owners.

TikTok is the only Chinese social media platform with global traction of the same order as Facebook, Insta, and Twitter. ByteDance is estimated to have reported 2024 revenues of $155 billion, with around $33 billion in profits. About $39 billion of those revenues came from outside China, with $10 billion earned in the US. In 2024, US adult users spent an average of 52 minutes per day on TikTok.

A lot of creative brilliance is required to create a platform that exploits behavioural patterns to inspire huge dollops of content.

Creating a TikTok video isa simple, intuitive process. Anewuser can do it within 15 minutes of getting onto the platform. Uploading video from elsewhere is also easy.