Russia has fined TikTok for failing to remove banned content. Romania's presidential election results were thrown out over concerns that the app had been used to spread foreign influence. Albania banned TikTok for a year following the death of a teen at the hands of another teen after the two argued online.
“Either TikTok protects Albania's children, or Albania protects its children from TikTok,” Prime Minister Edi Rama said on X.
That was all in the last month.
This week in the United States, where about 150 million people use the app, TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance are asking the Supreme Court to strike down a law forcing it to be sold or banned.
TikTok has faced legal and political scrutiny around the world in recent years, facing outright or partial bans in at least 20 countries, as governments have grown alarmed by its ties to China and its widespread influence, especially among young people .
Despite mounting criticism, TikTok remains incredibly popular worldwide. More than a billion people use the app every month.
TikTok's novelty comes from its proprietary algorithm, which recommends a constant stream of content, usually short videos, calibrated to keep people scrolling. ByteDance pioneered the technology in 2016 with TikTok's sister app Douyin, which has become one of China's most popular apps and generates the majority of the company's revenue. ByteDance knew it could be a hit abroad and launched TikTok in 2017.
But as TikTok's algorithm captured attention around the world, it alarmed lawmakers, who say TikTok has quickly turned from a domain of cat videos and dance trends into a potentially disruptive social, political and economic force.
Officials from Montana to New Zealand have warned that TikTok could be used to incite violence, spread false information and worsen mental health. Lawmakers are also concerned that TikTok could share user data such as location and browsing history with the Chinese government. Young people must be protected from “the terrifying pitfalls of the algorithm,” said Mr Rama, the Albanian prime minister.
TikTok has insisted the concerns are exaggerated. It has teams dedicated to countering influence operations, the work of which is made public, the company said in a statement. TikTok's algorithm, which aims to “maintain content neutrality,” ranks content based on what users show interest in, the company said.
TikTok has said ByteDance is majority owned by global investors. At the same time, the Chinese government has claimed the authority to oppose any sale.
As other Chinese companies look to do more business abroad, TikTok has become both a model and a cautionary tale. The app showed that a new type of entertainment that first became popular in China could catch on elsewhere. But it also paved the way for a backlash against Chinese apps like Temu and Shein.
“It feels like every Chinese entrepreneur needs a degree in political science or international relations to control their future now,” said Kevin Xu, the U.S.-based founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in artificial intelligence technologies.
Other companies with global internet products, such as Meta and Google, are also under scrutiny around the world, said Jianggan Li, the CEO of Momentum Works, a consultancy in Singapore. “But as American companies, they do not face the distrust that TikTok has faced in the eyes of politicians and regulators in the West,” Mr. Li said.
Here's how governments have gone after TikTok.
Total ban: India and Nepal
A ban in the United States could cut TikTok off from one of its most important markets. But TikTok has already had the experience of losing its largest audience at the time. The Indian government banned the app in 2020 after India's simmering geopolitical conflict with China culminated in hand-to-hand combat along their shared border.
TikTok disappeared from app stores and the website was blocked, forcing creators who had made their money from the app to rebuild their audiences on other platforms. A few homegrown alternatives emerged, but the US tech giants were the biggest winners. Both YouTube and Instagram now have about twice as many users in India as in the United States.
Officials in neighboring Nepal took TikTok offline for nearly a year over its refusal to restrict content that the government described as hate speech that disrupted “social harmony.” The ban was overturned in August after current Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli took charge of the government for the fourth time.
Fines and forced local ties: Russia and Indonesia
The Russian government has repeatedly fined TikTok for circulating content that does not comply with the country's censorship rules, including on topics such as sex, gender and feminism. The two most recent fines, imposed by Russian courts in the past six months, totaled about $90,000.
In Indonesia, TikTok launched online shopping, which it is fully banking on as a new revenue stream. The app has almost as many users in Indonesia, the largest country in Southeast Asia, as in the United States. But in 2023, the government passed a law that forced TikTok to close its online store operations within days.
TikTok Shop was only able to reopen after merging its operations with Tokopedia, Indonesia's largest e-commerce company. It's been slow for many store owners to rebuild their audiences, but for TikTok, the ordeal came with a perk: access to a network of delivery drivers and logistics services built to deliver packages across Indonesia's 17,000 islands.
Blocked on government devices: Taiwan, Great Britain, Canada and others
Some governments have tried to balance TikTok's security concerns with free speech.
Taiwan banned the app on government devices in 2019. But officials say they are not considering a wholesale ban because they do not want to curb Taiwan's culture of public debate. Britain, Australia and France, as well as the European Union executive and New Zealand's parliament, have taken the same approach.
TikTok was already banned in Canada on government-issued mobile devices when the government ordered TikTok to close its offices in the country in November, citing ByteDance's national security risks.
In documents filed in Canadian court last month to challenge the order, TikTok claimed the Canadian government had ordered it to delay overdue paperwork until the United States made a decision on how to deal with the company.
