In January 2023, IPVM reported that the China's version of TikTok, Douyin, censors pro-LGBTQ+ content, prohibiting "unhealthy and non-mainstream views on marriage and love."
TikTok is fighting to stay alive in the United States as pressure builds in Washington to ban the app if its Chinese owners don't sell the company. But the wildly popular platform, developed with homegrown Chinese technology, isn't accessible in China. In fact, it's never existed there.
For a long time, TikTok insisted any data collected by their servers could not be accessed by anyone in China. In November 2022, the company changed its privacy policy. It now said staff in China could access data.
TikTok's Chinese version, Douyin, is a unique platform with several in-app features that differ from the global version. One such feature is the “e-commerce” tab that allows users to purchase products within the app directly.
TikTok has been banned on government devices in various countries out of a concern the app's owner, China-based ByteDance, is sharing users' private data with the Chinese government, raising concerns about how much longer many people around the globe will be able to access the app.
No, TikTok is not banned in China, it just isn't available under the same name. Although it is true that TikTok is not available for download in mainland China, it is not banned. The Chinese version of TikTok is actually the original version of the app, called Douyin.
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, has over 750 million daily active users and is one of the most popular apps in the country.
While TikTok has become the most popular app in the rest of the world, a domestic version called Douyin is available to Chinese consumers. The apps are nearly identical — but with one critical difference: users under 14 are required to use Douyin in healthy moderation on “teenage mode.”
Chew told lawmakers that ByteDance, although a Chinese entity, “is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government.” ByteDance is a private company with global institutional investors owning 60 percent of its shares, 20 percent owned by the company founder and another 20 percent owned by employees, he said.
Douyin ( 抖音, meaning “shaking sound” in Chinese) is China's leading destination for short-video content. Released in 2016, the Douyin app has evolved into a super app that currently covers short and mid-video content, livestreaming, and e-commerce.
TikTok has not provided such data to the Chinese government or CCP, nor would TikTok do so.”
WHAT ARE THE CONCERNS ABOUT TIKTOK? Both the FBI and officials at the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China's authoritarian government.
Douyin. First released to the public in September 2016, Douyin (Chinese: 抖音; pinyin: Dǒuyīn), previously named A.me, is the Chinese version of TikTok.
ByteDance pulled the social video app from Hong Kong in 2020 amid concerns over a national security law that gave China enhanced powers in the city. TikTok's chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, appeared at a US congressional hearing in March and denied that the Chinese Communist party had accessed US user data.
Chinese Social Media FAQs
However, these sites are banned in China. Instead, the social media sites Chinese use are WeChat, Sina Weibo, Tencent QQ, Tencent Video, Xiao HongShu, Douban, Zhihu, Meituan, Toutiao, and DouYin (TikTok). What is the most popular social media in China?
Internet censorship and surveillance has been tightly implemented in China that block social websites like Gmail, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others.
TikTok has announced that it's expanding its audience controls feature, giving creators the ability to restrict their videos to adult viewers. Prior to this expansion, the adult-only audience controls feature was only available for TikTok Live. Now the company is bringing the feature to its short-form videos as well.
Revenue at TikTok Owner ByteDance Rose More Than 30% in 2022, Topped $80 Billion. ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, generated more than $80 billion in annual revenue last year, up more than 30% from roughly $60 billion in 2021, according to two people with knowledge of the figure.
Adults looking for a new way to connect with others online can look no further than a social media app gaining popularity. Clapper is a video-sharing app catering to grown-ups and offers local and global videos to users and is available in 40 countries.
However, they have their own counterpart which is called DouYin. So TikTok is a global version of the app, while DouYin is for China users only. If you want to create DouYin, you need to use a Chinese number to register.
The end of China's one-child policy was announced in late 2015, and it formally ended in 2016. Beginning in 2016, the Chinese government allowed all families to have two children, and in 2021 all married couples were permitted to have as many as three children.
TikTok is China's "Trojan horse," according to Rob Joyce, who heads the cyber security unit of America's National Security Agency.
According to the latest data on TikTok's advertising reach, the United States is home to the majority of TikTok users worldwide, with 116.5 million TikTokers residing there.
TikTok's YoY decline.
After hitting a new high in 2022, CivicScience noted a “steep decline” for TikTok among younger generations this year: “Usage fell from 18% to 11% among Gen Z (18-24) and from 10% to 5% among young Millennials (25-34) from August 2022 to June 2023.”