- TikTok has over 800 million users in the world, 120 million active users in India only.
- TikTok’s parent company ByteDance now has one billion monthly active users.
- It was earlier banned in India citing child violence and privacy.
Tiktok- Breaking the Bharat Code:
Sustaining in Indian Code has been broken by Chinese video applications, but that may not be so nice. Millions of smartphone users in tiny town India have downloaded TikTok, LIKEE and Kwai, using them to share private videos, away from the glare of scrutiny on more mainstream social media platforms.
The applications have greatly benefited from the short-video craze that pre-teens and adolescents have taken hold of, but this puts predators in risk, specialists said. The content on these applications could be in breach of the law, they said, given the mature nature of much of the content and the age of consumers.
The social network based in China produced its U.S. debut in 2017 and now has 104 million U.S. downloads (1.2 billion globally). Since January, it has constantly ranked behind Facebook-owned duo WhatsApp and Messenger among the top three most downloaded applications. The average user spends approximately 45 minutes a day on TikTok, more time than they spend on Facebook.
What’s the attraction? On its surface, according to user data analyzed by App Ape, TikTok is sheer social media candy that is extremely addictive to its twin crowd. Users create 15-second videos (think funny dances, pranks, and pieces of lip-syncing), then use TikTok instruments to include music and impacts. They can then publish their YouTube-style creations to the entire globe.
While all platforms have a disclaimer saying that they are not targeting kids, specialists said their target audience includes preteens and adolescents in tier-2 and tier-3 towns.
If (these applications) operate in a way that is used by under 18 kids, then one has to verify what are the other safeguards they have constructed for parental consent— this is certainly something that needs to be looked into,” said Supratim Chakraborty, associate partner at the law firm Khaitan & Co. “From the point of view of domestic safety, kids fall into the delicate category. There’s a lack of legislation today to advance rigid adherence.
ByteDance- The Parent Company of Tiktok using AI:
The parent business of TikTok is hardly as hot and fluffy as suggested by the platform. Valued at $75 billion, ByteDance, based in China, owns a suite of AI-based applications that are powered by user data. ByteDance is quickly becoming a giant of social media among the first Chinese platforms to make important inroads in the U.S. It has 40,000 staff (about 10 times as many staff as Twitter) and expressed severe interest in purchasing Twitter and Snapchat.
Meanwhile, unwanted attention from sexual predators has been attracted by the youthful crowd of TikTok. Indian authorities have gone so far as to completely prohibit the platform. At a time when trade tensions are simmering between the U.S. and China, issues have also spread from the Chinese government about information surveillance and censorship.
Tiktok As a Social Media Giant:
Unlike previous channels such as Facebook and Twitter that grew organically (if exponentially), TikTok has purchased its way to the front of the queue. Even their trending memes are mainly produced. The firm employed a virtual army of social media celebrities to produce content for the platform before its U.S. launch— paying one influencer for a single clip over $1 million.
State oversight is an even greater problem. It is a truism that private corporations are closely connected in China and the Communist Party. The national equivalent of TikTok, Douyin, is believed to be supervised carefully by officials. Also, the same sophisticated algorithms that monitor and collect user preferences make it simple to recognize, for instance, a traditional Uighur song sung in the native language and alert officials. There is no proof that monitoring capacities outside of China have been implemented, but the possibility has been raised.
It remains to be seen whether all this will effectively affect TikTok’s development and attitudes towards the platform. Despite the timid reaction, feasible alternatives to current models of monetization— whether in the form of ad-free social media subscription services or information marketplaces where consumers choose to share their information for a price — have yet to come off the ground. But what’s evident is that the clock is ticking with TikTok’s increase. In complicated and sometimes unpredictable ways, AI and user data converge. Will we be able to maintain up the pace as the users?
