TikTok

See also Conservative defense of TikTok.

TikTok is a China-owned short-form video app (software for mobile devices) which ranks #4 in social platform usage in the United States in 2024. TikTok is a competitor of liberal Facebook, and in spring 2024 Congress passed a law to ban TikTok on Jan. 19, 2025 (the day before Inauguration) unless its ownership is transferred from China. The D.C. Circuit upheld this law on Dec. 6, 2024, but then the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to reconsider this issue on an expedited basis such that a final decision would be rendered prior to the deadline of Jan. 19. Meanwhile, evidence shows that TikTok usage helped Trump win reelection by persuading young voters.

Attempting to remain online in the U.S. after Jan. 19, 2025, TikTok warned in a court filing in the D.C. Circuit on December 9, 2024, that 170 million American users would be affected, and:

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U.S. small businesses and social media creators would lose $1.3 billion in revenue and earnings in just one month if the popular app is effectively shut down in the United States on Jan. 19, under provisions of a law targeting national security concerns about its China-based parent company.

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As an unfiltered grassroots platform, overall TikTok appears to be conservative populist in ideology. Political correctness has been unable to take control of the platform, and accounts such as the "Libs of TikTok" have been able to influence many by exposing shocking examples of the homosexual agenda. the transgender agenda, and illegal immigration.

Nearly half of Americans - 150 million people - are active users on TikTok, according to a statement by its CEO Shou Chew on March 21, 2023. Liberals dislike how TikTok users post videos and comments objecting to public school illiteracy or regretting abortion.

Biden, in a tight race for reelection, proposed in March 2023 to try to ban TikTok, which hinders Democrat efforts to exploit and mislead young voters. Dems depend heavily on young voters to win presidential elections. But later Biden's campaign established its own account on TikTok to promote his reelection.

Social media monopolists are perhaps the most opposed to TikTok, and have the most to lose from its competition. TikTok has pulled enormous traffic away from the Leftist Silicon Valley mnopolies.

The average time spent (wasted?) on TikTok is reportedly 91 minutes per day, compared with 60 minutes daily for Facebook and 32 minutes daily for Instagram. TikTok became popular because it facilitates the creation and distribution of short videos on cell phones, without liberal censorship. More females use TikTok than males.

TikTok has been accused of creating "political echo chambers," whereby one's political views are reinforced by a pre-selection of videos constantly fed to him based on his prior selections. ByteDance is the Chinese company that owns TikTok, and ByteDance runs a likewise popular version in China known as Douyin.

TikTok sued in federal court in San Francisco to block Trump's Executive Order against it in late 2020.

On September 14, 2020, TikTok announced a deal with Oracle to try to remain in the United States.

TikTok was largely unknown to the American public until Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez name-dropped the platform while bragging online about TikTok being used to largely cut into attendance at a Donald Trump rally in Tulsa during the 2020 presidential election campaign via fake ticket registrations by teenage anti-Trump TikTok users (some of which she also identified as fans of Korean pop music, or "K-Pop") who would then no-show the event, done with the intent of sabotaging the rally by preventing legitimate attendance by Trump supporters (who were also slandered by Ocasio-Cortez as "white supremacists").

In October 2022 Russia fined TikTok for pushing LGBT content.

Conservative content on TikTok

Some of the videos on TikTok are pro-parent and also pro-family. Almost none of the videos promote the kind of liberal elitism preferred by political Leftists. The popular videos concerning relationships are virtually all heterosexual in their message.

Some of the most popular videos on TikTok are by or about mothers, without the political correctness presented by the liberal media.

It's the Wild West on TikTok, and thus no political impact can be intended (unlike Facebook and the pre-X Twitter). But a checklist of issues indicates an overall conservative impact by TikTok on its predominantly youthful voter demographic:

pro-Establishment (no), pro-liberal-social-agenda (no), anti-homemaker (no), pro-authority (no), pro-parent (yes), pro-kids (yes), pro-drugs (no), pro-video-games (no), pro-young-voters-thinking-for-themselves (yes).

Marketing on TikTok

"TikTok is the number-one app for driving consumer spending, surpassing Tinder for the top spot."

TikTok is rapidly becoming a top site for marketing:

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TikTok can’t be overlooked in marketing. The short-form video platform now hosts 750 million monthly users worldwide, making it the third-largest social media network, according to Insider Intelligence. About 34 percent of travelers were influenced by TikTok in 2022, a 10 percentage point increase from 2021, ....

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TikTok, unfortunately, allows some inappropriate ads.

Greater Influence than other Social Media

"In terms of time spent, TikTok is tied for second place with Facebook. YouTube is still in the top position, holding users’ interest for an average of 23.7 hours each month."

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TikTok has considerably more engagement than either of the other two networks [Instagram and YouTube] at all follower levels. For example, Upfluence found micro-influencers had engagement rates of 17.96% on TikTok, 3.86% on Instagram, and 1.63% on YouTube. At the other extreme, mega-influencers had engagement rates of 4.96% on TikTok, 1.21% on Instagram, and 0.37% on YouTube.

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Video length

TikTok video length continues to lengthen with new releases, and as of January 2023 allows up to 10 minutes.

Bans on TikTok

Donald Trump’s administration planned on banning TikTok as a national security threat long before Biden’s 2021 inauguration, but Biden originally over turned his order. The Biden administration later reversed course and introduced it’s own ban proposal, more or less putting the Democrats’ foot in their mouths. After mostly Republican states banned the use of TikTok on government-issued devices in 2022, the University of Texas blocked access to TikTok through its networks on its Austin campus on Jan. 16, 2023.