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TikTok: Technology Overview and Issues Background TikTok is a popular video-sharing smartphone application (app) owned by ByteDance Ltd., a privately held company headquartered in Beijing, China. The app is under intense scrutiny by the U.S. government as a potential privacy and security risk to U.S. users. A major concern is that ByteDance is subject to Chinese laws that require companies operating in China to turn over user data when asked to by the national government. On August 6 and August 14, 2020, President Trump signed Executive Orders aimed at stopping U.S. persons and entities from doing business with ByteDance1 and requiring ByteDance to divest from any holding used to support the operation of TikTok in the United States.2 Researchers differ over how TikTok’s collection of user data compares with other social media apps and whether TikTok poses a unique threat to the privacy and security of its U.S. users, including many minors. WeChat, another Chinese-owned app, is often mentioned in conjunction with TikTok, but the two apps are quite different. TikTok has a single function—short video—while WeChat has multiple—voice and data messaging, social media, and digital payment. WeChat is used in the United States primarily by the Chinese language community, whereas TikTok is used more widely. On the same day as the TikTok order, President Trump also signed an Executive Order prohibiting any U.S. individual or entity from engaging in any transaction related to WeChat and its owner, Tencent Holdings Ltd.3 While issues with the two apps are often conflated, their functions, technical capabilities, and the data collected from their users are different. Only TikTok is discussed in this report. Background information about WeChat is in Appendix. What Is TikTok? On August 2, 2018, U.S. users of the Musical.ly app, a short video service headquartered in Shanghai, China, with a U.S. office in Santa Monica, CA, found that it had been merged into TikTok. Musical.ly had been acquired by ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, in November 2017 for $1 billion as a means to enter the U.S. market. The TikTok app is available in over 155 countries in 39 languages, and has approximately 800 million monthly active users.4 In the United States, TikTok has approximately 49 million monthly active users5 and the company maintains offices in Los Angeles and New York. When ByteDance first released the TikTok app in September 2016, videos could be no longer than 15 seconds, but now users are allowed to link together four 15- second segments.6 Longer videos recorded outside the app can also be uploaded to the platform. 1 President Donald J. Trump, “Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by TikTok,” August 6, 2020, at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-tiktok/. 2 President Donald J. Trump, “Executive Order Regarding the Acquisition of Musical.ly by ByteDance Ltd.,” August 14, 2020, at https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/EO-on-TikTok-8-14-20.pdf. 3 President Donald J. Trump, “Executive Order on Addressing the Threat Posed by WeChat,” August 6, 2020, at https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-addressing-threat-posed-wechat/. 4 Katie Brigham, “How TikTok Became the Hottest App of 2020,” CNBC.com, June 16, 2020, at https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/tiktok-sees-rapid-growth-amid-quarantines-but-privacy-concerns-linger.html. 5 Raymond Zhong and Sheera Frenkel, “A Third of TikTok’s U.S. Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions,” New York Times, September 17, 2020, sec. Technology, at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/ technology/tiktok-underage-users-ftc.html. 6 This limitation applies only to videos recorded through the app. Videos recorded using other methods or apps can be longer than 60 seconds. TikTok videos are intended for viewing on mobile device screens, rather than on computers or TV, and are formatted for that purpose. Congressional Research Service 1PDF Image | TikTok: Technology Overview and Issues Updated October 21, 2020 Congressional Research Service
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