TikTok: beneath its fun exterior lies a sinister purpose
Three years since TikTok was launched, the video-sharing social network grown rapidly to accumulate more than two billion downloads, one of the most popular apps of the moment, beating even Instagram or YouTube in consumption time in the United States, United Kingdom or Spain, particularly among younger age segments.
TikTok might be described as a repository of canned content to be conveniently remixed with user-created videos, a viral meme generating machine that makes users feel like rock stars, and has even been used as a way to coordinate protests against Donald Trump by sinking his COVID-19 comeback rally last week in Tulsa, as well as launching denial of inventory attacks on the US president’s merchandising site.
And of course if you dare to criticize TikTok, you’ll simply be told that you’re too old to understand it, that young people have different criteria to yours. Which is all well and good, but what is TikTok? How reliable are the criteria of young people?
A year ago now, I published an article in Forbes criticizing TikTok for its failure to take responsibility for a variety of misuses of the app. Since then, the US armed forces have forbidden personnel from using it and describes it as a threat to cybersecurity. Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point has investigated it and…
