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TikTok's extraordinary rise signals a more multipolar Internet
Despite criticism that it is either too trivial or too threatening, the Chinese-owned platform has ‘out-blitzscaled the blitzscalers’ of Silicon Valley
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There is no doubt TikTok has become an extraordinary cultural and business phenomenon.
PHOTO: REUTERS
John Thornhill
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(FINANCIAL TIMES): For anyone with shareable passions such as dance crazes, sea shanties, knitting patterns or Excel spreadsheets, TikTok is the place to be. The short-form, Chinese-owned video app has emerged as an accessible and playful global platform for one billion users to indulge their obsessions, find an audience of like-minded followers and sometimes make money, too.
To those of a more conspiratorial mindset, however, the entertainment platform is an electronic Manchurian Candidate, creating the opportunity for the Communist Party of China to manipulate public opinion, subvert democracies and peer into teenagers' bedrooms.
