TikTok

TikTok is the short-form video platform launched in 2016 by ByteDance, the Beijing technology company founded by Zhang Yiming. It grew out of the Chinese app Douyin, expanded internationally the following year and absorbed Musical.ly in 2018, inheriting its young Western audience overnight.

Its recommendation feed, which ranks by watched seconds rather than by who you follow, changed how music is broken, how films are marketed and how a face becomes famous without a broadcaster in between. That same engine keeps it under permanent political scrutiny in the United States and Europe.