TikTok Becomes More Popular, What You Should Know

Information | Parents | Safe Kids | Anderson | Indiana

Facebook Whistle Blower Brings New Users By The Masses

The ultra-popular app that many parents know about is gaining popularity. What started off as an app to dance to a short snippet of your favorite song is growing into a whole new platform, but are parents aware? I decided it was time to investigate the in's and out's of this popular application. We think the app should stay proactive in its account management. We have learned that just because they are required to be responsible, does not mean that they will be. We talked to an organization that filters through the live feed videos to make sure unscrupulous actors are not taking advantage of children, he mentioned it is a substantially underserved platform. Eric Reynolds, one of the undisclosed organization members says they often fight with the app to stay on the platform, he mentioned that they are not reachable to discuss what they see, however, users that are abusing the platform are as powerful going back and forth deleting each other.

Who owns this application?

TikTok is owned by Beijing-based technology company ByteDance, founded by the Chinese billionaire entrepreneur, Zhang Yiming. The 37-year-old was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2019, who described him as "the top entrepreneur in the world". ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese multinational internet technology company headquartered in Beijing and legally domiciled in the Cayman Islands. It was founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo, and a team of others in 2012. The TikTok that we know started off as a company called Musically which merged and sold into ByteDance in 2017.

Understanding how it determines what you see.

The app uses a progressive algorithm system (Referred to as A.I.) that identifies the likes of the users off of the short videos that users like. Unlike Facebook, you can follow anyone, and users have to set their own privacy settings. The app has two feeds side by side that you can select from, followers are the video creators that you chose to follow, and the other, and more popular side, is called "for you". This app is popular with the younger crowd because the app has a lot of photo filters you can use when recording short videos. The top two features to post are called "stitch" an act where you tie your video to another user's video that triggers the A.I. to start checking what the two creators have in common and similar content starts showing in your feed. The other popular method is called duet where users copycat the same video side by side with their video.

Parents, Please Read Carefully...

This app has a lot of younger users and we want you to know that anyone can communicate with them, this app really requires adult supervision. The addictive usage of users snowballed out of control during the pandemic according to many parents, and they have faced a multitude of lawsuits. The app was sued and to be shut down in November of 2020 but a Washington D.C. judge halted the executive order to continue the business, as the judge mentioned his reason was the ban would exceed the bounds of the law.

A Huge Surge Of Adult Users Joining

The app became popular with adults as the hashtag's search became more diverse over the past year. Adults are using this app to promote small businesses to expressing opinions from sports and politics. The live feed videos become available to users after they get 1,000 followers and they can monetize after 10,000 followers. The company makes money by selling digital gifts for coins where you can show your support to the party conducting the live feed.

In conclusion...

The app seems simple and harmless, we want to point out a few things, so you can choose how you, your children, or your business should proceed on the platform. This is not an American company, so your data and everything you make on their platform could be shared however they see fit, the link shows the terms of usage page. https://www.tiktok.com/legal/privacy-policy-us?lang=en

We should point out that Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are all American-owned and operated companies. The platform is the 7th most popular social media company according to Google. The platform offers several privacy settings that the user must initiate. The best way to describe this app is that it is short videos that are hyped up by users that share them.