Daily hours of entertainment screen media (Social Medias) may displace healthy behaviors such as socializing face to face, chores, hobbies, homework, family meals time, exercise, and sufficient sleep. A trend making fun of autism eventually created a huge backlash, even on the platform itself, and the company ended up removing the hashtag altogether. 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. In 2025, a Canadian investigation found that TikTok had collected sensitive personal data from children in violation of federal privacy laws. The company claimed that no illegal activity of any kind is supported on the platform. In March 2025, the ICO opened another investigation into TikTok concerning its use of children's personal information to recommend content to them.
Their short attention spans posed a challenge for TikTok to pivot towards longer content formats. This is a concern as many of TikTok's audience are younger children, whose brains are still developing. TikTok uses popular influencers to encourage viewers to stop using the app and take a break. Vox noted in 2018 that bullies and trolls were relatively rare on TikTok compared to other platforms. In December 2023, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner announced an inquiry into TikTok's data harvesting of Australian citizens amid allegations that it contravened Australian privacy law.
The company has been engaged in confidential negotiations over the project with CFIUS since 2021 and submitted its proposal but received little response from the panel afterward. Physical locations would be established so that Oracle and the U.S. government could conduct their own reviews. This applies to those signing contracts with and receiving payment transactions from ByteDance. The whistleblower claimed in a sworn court statement that his father in mainland China had been detained by the authorities in retaliation for his speaking to the media about alleged censorship by TikTok. It also announced that U.S. user traffic would now be routed through Oracle Cloud and that backup copies would be deleted from other servers.
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. 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.
- Their short attention spans posed a challenge for TikTok to pivot towards longer content formats.
- In 2019, media outlets cited TikTok as the 7th-most-downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019.
- TikTok’s algorithm, recognized by The New York Times in 2020 as one of the most advanced for shaping user experiences and social interactions, stands out from traditional social media.
- TikTok reportedly made as much as a 70% commission on some of them, a figure that the company disputed.
- It would also digitally sign software code, approve updates, and oversee content moderation and recommendation.
- It hosts user-submitted videos, which range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes.
- In July 2020, TikTok, excluding Douyin, reported close to 800 million monthly active users worldwide after less than four years of existence.
App support
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. Charli D'Amelio remained the most-followed individual on the platform until she was surpassed by Khaby Lame on 23 June 2022.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission
- TikTok uses popular influencers to encourage viewers to stop using the app and take a break.
- In January 2020, Check Point Research discovered a vulnerability through which a hacker could spoof TikTok’s official SMS messages and replace them with malicious links to gain access to user accounts.
- In March 2022, The Washington Post reported that Facebook’s owner Meta Platforms paid Targeted Victory—a consulting firm backed by supporters of the U.S.
- On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked first among free application downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries.
- In a November 2022 update to its European privacy policy, TikTok stated that its global corporate group employees from China and other countries could gain remote access to the user information of accounts from Europe based on “demonstrated need”.
- Since its launch, TikTok has become one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, using recommendation algorithms to connect content creators and influencers with new audiences.
Some adult content creators have found a way to game TikTok's recommendation algorithm by posting riddles, attracting a large number of viewers that struggled to solve them. In response, they began substituting words in their captions and videos and using filters to censor explicit images. In 2020, TikTok updated their terms of service to ban content that promotes "premium sexual content", impacting a large number of adult content creators. TikTok is regularly used by sex workers to promote pornographic content sold on platforms such as OnlyFans. In 2020, digital media companies such as Group Nine Media and Global used TikTok increasingly, focusing on tactics such as brokering partnerships slotrize casino no deposit bonus with TikTok influencers and developing branded content campaigns.
Douyin
In March 2023, TikTok announced default screen time limits for users under the age of 18. The differences between Douyin and TikTok have led some U.S. politicians and commentators to accuse the company or the Chinese government of malicious intent. Out of TikTok's top 100 male creators, a 2022 analysis reported 67% were white, with 54% having near-perfect facial symmetry. The average user, daily, was spending 1 hour and 25 minutes on the app and opening TikTok 17 times. As of the first quarter of 2022, there were over 100 million monthly active users in the United States and 23 million in the UK. TikTok's unique platform organization, of spontaneous peer-peer information sharing, has enabled its utilization for community-engaged, digital knowledge mobilization and exchange between social justice communities.
By searching for four keywords—Uyghur, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Tiananmen, the researchers found that TikTok returned a higher percentage of positive, neutral, or irrelevant content related to human rights in China. ByteDance said its early guidelines were global and aimed at reducing online harassment and divisiveness when its platforms were still growing. The consumption of alcohol, full or partial nudity, LGBT, and intersex contents were restricted even in places where they are legal. A more specific list banned criticisms against world leaders, including past and present ones from Russia, the United States, Japan, North and South Korea, India, Indonesia, and Turkey. However, some employees have abused it to promote their own accounts or those of their spouses, while others have felt that their guidelines leave too much room for discretion. The practice began as a way to grow and diversify content and influencers that were not automatically picked up by the recommendation algorithm.
Australian Information Commissioner inquiry
By January 2021, the hashtag #nosejob had accumulated 1.6 billion views, #nosejobcheck had accumulated 1 billion views, and the audio used in the #NoseJobCheck trend had been used in 120,000 videos. Realistic videos about how differently pieces of garment fit on a model compared to how they fit on a typical consumer resonated with many who had believed that they were alone in their struggle. Another TikTok trend known as the Kia Challenge involves users stealing certain models of Kia and Hyundai cars manufactured without immobilizers, which was a standard feature at the time, between 2010 and 2021. Since Mertzlufft's video, many new elements including costume design, additional songs, and a playbill have been created. In June 2020, TikTok users and K-pop fans "claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets" for President Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma through communication on TikTok, contributing to "rows of empty seats" at the event.
Enjoy an endless stream of short videos on things you love most. From your morning coffee to your evening commute, TikTok has the videos to make your day. Discover videos from around the world and create your own with easy-to-use tools to capture your life. TikTok had earlier drawn criticism for hosting content by organized crime groups promoting the gang lifestyle and fights. According to computer security specialist Bruce Schneier, which company owns TikTok may not matter, as Russia had interfered in the 2016 US elections using Facebook without owning it.
Trovo – Live Stream & Games
Other TikTok creators have spoken out against accepting sponsorship deals indiscriminately and criticized those who posted undisclosed FeetFinder ads. Publishers were increasingly using the platform as a venue for influencer marketing. 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.
These creators would often attend red carpet premieres of movies and interview the celebrities in attendance, which was the subject of significant debate as some considered the questions the creators asked to be disrespectful. However, as reported by The New York Times, these people often do not see themselves necessarily as film critics. The procedure involves surgically removing fat from the cheeks in order to give the face a slimmer and more chiseled appearance.
The company's survey reported that nearly 50% of social media users find it stressful to watch a video longer than a minute and a third of users watch videos at double speed. Musical.ly was a social media video platform that allowed users to create short lip-sync and comedy videos, initially released in August 2014. Numerous social media users, including Americans, expressed their opposition to U.S. foreign policy by sharing the resurfaced copies of the letter and its contents. To create a music video with the app, users can choose background music from a wide variety of music genres, edit with a filter and record a 15-second video with speed adjustments before uploading it to share with others on TikTok or other social platforms. In October 2021, following the 2021 Facebook leak and controversies about social media ethics, a bipartisan group of United States lawmakers also pressed TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat on questions of data privacy and moderation for age-appropriate content. Sponsored content is not as prevalent on the platform as it is on other social media apps, but brands and influencers still can make as much as they would if not more in comparison to other platforms.
Privacy and security concerns
The users had shared on TikTok an article published by celebscritic.com alleging that K. TikTok partnered with the National Association of Secretaries of State to give accurate local information to users. TikTok removed some of these videos and has generally added links to accurate COVID-19 information on videos with tags related to the pandemic. Although they were removed by TikTok after the report, mixing audio remains an effective way to evade content moderation on many platforms. In September 2024, Sky News reported that clips of Adolf Hitler's speeches with added music were attracting high levels of engagement on TikTok. In Malaysia, TikTok is used by some users to engage in hate speech against race and religion especially mentioning the 13 May incident after the 2022 election.
They have been replaced by versions customized by local teams for users in different regions. TikTok moderators were instructed to suppress posts from "For You" recommendations if the users shown were deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled". Other human rights activists have also said that their TikTok videos discussing human rights violations of the Uyghurs have been taken down. This led many creators to stop creating new content which they were not already contractually obligated to create. Some TikTok users criticized the trend for promoting an unobtainable beauty standard.