SAN FRANCISCO — If it looks like TikTok has been round eternally, that is in all probability as a result of it has, no less than in case you’re measuring time by way of the Internet. The query now could be whether or not it is going to final for much longer and, in that case, in what kind?
Since 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has gone from a distinct segment app for teenagers to a world trendsetter. While, in fact, additionally it is rising as a possible nationwide safety risk, in response to US officers.
Chicago small companies and content material creators are bracing for a attainable TikTok ban that would affect their livelihoods
On April 24, President Joe Biden signed laws requiring TikTok’s father or mother firm, ByteDance, to promote to a U.S. proprietor inside a 12 months or shut down. TikTok and its China-based father or mother firm, ByteDance, filed a lawsuit in opposition to the United States, arguing that safety considerations had been overblown and that the regulation ought to be repealed as a result of it violates the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal regulation banning TikTok beginning Jan. 19 until it’s offered by ByteDance.
Here’s how TikTok received to this juncture:
March 2012
ByteDance was based in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first profitable product is Toutiao, a information aggregator personalized for Chinese customers.
July 2014
Startup Musical.ly, later recognized for an app of the identical title used to publish quick lip-syncing music movies, is based in China by entrepreneur Alex Zhu.
July 2015
Musical.ly hits the highest spot in Apple’s App Store, following a design change that made the corporate’s emblem seen when customers shared their movies.
2016
ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese customers. Its recognition conjures up the corporate to create a model for international audiences referred to as TikTok.
November 2017
ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merges it with TikTok.
Powered by an algorithm that encourages binge-watching, customers start sharing all kinds of movies on the app, together with dance strikes, meals preparation within the kitchen, and numerous “challenges” to carry out, document, and publish acts starting from critical to satirical.
February 2019
Rapper Lil Nas of TikTok movies from music artists who immediately see TikTok as an important approach to attain followers.
TikTok settles federal costs of violating US youngsters’s privateness legal guidelines and agrees to pay a $5.7 million advantageous.
September 2019
The Washington Post stories that whereas photos of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests and police crackdown are widespread on most social media websites, they’re unusually absent on TikTok. The identical story notes that TikTok posts tagged #trump2020 have acquired greater than 70 million views.
The firm insists that TikTok’s content material moderation, performed within the United States, shouldn’t be accountable and says the app is a spot for leisure, not politics.
The Guardian stories inside paperwork that reportedly element how TikTok instructs its moderators to delete or restrict the attain of movies that contact on delicate subjects for China such because the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent bloodbath, the independence of Tibet or the sanctioned non secular group Falun Gong.
October 2019
US politicians are beginning to elevate alarms about TikTok’s affect, calling for a federal investigation into the Musical.ly acquisition and a nationwide safety investigation into TikTok and different Chinese-owned apps. The investigation will start in November, in response to information stories.
December 2019
The Pentagon recommends that every one US army personnel delete TikTok from all telephones, private and authorities. Some providers ban the app on military-owned telephones. In January, the Pentagon banned the app from all army telephones.
TikTok turns into the second most downloaded app on the earth, in response to information from analytics agency SensorTower.
May 2020
Privacy teams file criticism alleging TikTok remains to be violating US youngster safety legal guidelines and violating a 2019 settlement settlement. Company ‘takes the problem of security critically’ and continues to enhance safeguards, says .
TikTok hires former Disney government Kevin Mayer as CEO in an obvious bid to enhance its relations with the United States. Mayer resigned three months later.
July 2020
India bans TikTok and dozens of different Chinese apps in response to a border conflict with China.
President Donald Trump says he’s contemplating banning TikTok in retaliation for China’s alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
August 2020
Trump points broad however obscure government order banning American corporations from any “transactions” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, together with TikTok. Several days later, he points a second order calling for ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations inside 90 days.
Microsoft confirms it’s exploring buying TikTok. The settlement by no means materializes; not even the same opening from Oracle and Walmart. TikTok, in the meantime, is suing the Trump administration for allegedly violating due course of in its government orders.
November 2020
Joe Biden is elected president. He affords no new coverage on TikTok and will not take workplace till January, however Trump’s plans to pressure the sale of TikTok are beginning to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and finally lets them slide totally.
February 2021
New President Joe Biden has postponed authorized circumstances concerning Trump’s plan to ban TikTok, successfully blocking them.
September 2021
TikTok broadcasts it has multiple billion month-to-month lively customers.
December 2021
A Wall Street Journal report finds that TikTok’s algorithms can inundate teenagers with a torrent of dangerous materials corresponding to movies recommending excessive diets, a type of consuming dysfunction.
February 2022
TikTok broadcasts new guidelines to discourage the unfold of dangerous materials corresponding to viral hoaxes and promotion of consuming problems.
April 2022
“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a undertaking created by two followers of the Netflix present as a TikTok undertaking, wins the Grammy for greatest musical theater album.
TikTok turns into probably the most downloaded app on the earth, beating Instagram, in response to SensorTower information.
June 2022
BuzzFeed stories that China-based ByteDance workers have repeatedly accessed TikTok customers’ private data, primarily based on leaked recordings from greater than 80 inside TikTok conferences. TikTok responds with a obscure remark touting its dedication to security that does not instantly tackle the BuzzFeed report.
TikTok additionally broadcasts that it has migrated its person information to US servers managed by US expertise firm Oracle. But that does not cease new alarm amongst US officers in regards to the danger of Chinese authorities accessing US customers’ information.
December 2022
FBI Director Christopher Wray raises nationwide safety considerations about TikTok, warning that Chinese officers might manipulate the app’s advice algorithm for affect operations.
ByteDance additionally mentioned it had fired 4 workers who had accessed information on journalists from Buzzfeed News and The Financial Times as they tried to trace down leaks of categorised materials in regards to the firm.
February 2023
White House offers federal businesses 30 days to make sure TikTok is deleted from all government-issued cellular units. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance could also be sharing TikTok person information with China’s authoritarian authorities.
March 2023
Lawmakers query TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew throughout a six-hour congressional listening to during which Chew, a local of Singapore, tries to push again in opposition to claims that TikTok and ByteDance are instruments of the Chinese authorities.
January 2024
TikTok mentioned it was limiting a instrument utilized by some researchers to investigate widespread movies on the platform.
March 2024
A invoice to ban TikTok or pressure its sale to a U.S. firm is gaining traction in Congress. TikTok brings dozens of its creators to Washington to inform lawmakers to again off, whereas highlighting adjustments the corporate has made to guard person information. TikTok additionally annoys lawmakers by sending notifications to customers urging them to “converse up now” or danger seeing TikTok banned; customers then flood congressional places of work with calls.
House of Representatives passes invoice to ban or promote TikTok.
April 2024
The Senate follows, sending the invoice to President Biden, who indicators it.
May 2024
TikTok and its Chinese father or mother firm ByteDance are suing the US federal authorities to problem a regulation that might pressure the sale of ByteDance’s stake or danger a ban, saying the regulation is unconstitutional.
June 2024
Former President Donald Trump joins TikTok and begins posting campaign-related content material.
July 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris joins TikTok and in addition begins posting campaign-related materials.
December 6, 2024
A federal appeals court docket panel has unanimously upheld a regulation that would result in a ban on TikTok, handing a powerful defeat to the favored social media platform because it fights for its survival within the United States. The panel rejected the corporate’s problem to the statute, which it argued ran afoul of the First Amendment.
December 27, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump has requested the Supreme Court to droop the potential TikTok ban from taking impact till his administration can pursue a “political answer” to the problem.
January 17, 2025
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal regulation that bars TikTok from beginning until it’s offered by its China-based father or mother firm, discovering that the nationwide safety danger posed by its ties to China outweighs considerations in regards to the app’s limiting of free speech. The ban will come into impact on January 19, 2025.
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