The year 2020 was supposed to mark the demise of TikTok, but it's days into 2021 and the popular social media app is thriving. Somehow, TikTok managed to completely avoid a country-wide ban in the U.S. and stabilize the platform for its creators to continue to grow. Its ability to simultaneously accomplish both those feats proves that TikTok is here to stay.
TikTok has an interesting origin story, one that includes it only having been launched in 2016 and events like its merger with Musical.ly a couple of years later in 2018. The platform's rise to stardom has been more recent and so too have the controversies surrounding it. In September of this year, the Trump Administration nearly banned the app in the U.S. after it was deemed a national security threat because of its alleged ties to the Chinese government. However, the federally-enforced deadline for TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. portion of the social media service came and went and TikTok is still very much alive and well in the country.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly why the Trump Administration seemingly forgot about TikTok. When a pushed-back December 4 deadline to sell its U.S. operations passed without action by the platform, the Treasury Department reportedly told TikTok that the government wouldn't be extending, or enforcing the deadline, according to The Washington Post. TikTok isn't completely out of the woods from a legal standpoint: The FTC recently ordered the company, alongside other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, to explain its policies regarding data collection. That being said, TikTok was downloaded in the region of a billion times around the world in 2020, becoming one of the most popular smartphone apps of the year. Even if the U.S. does eventually succeed in banning the app in the country, TikTok has proved that it holds some serious global staying power.
TikTok Might Be Too Big To Be Banned
The fact of the matter is that TikTok may truly be too successful at this point for it to be served an outright ban in the country. The popularity of the platform has soared during the global pandemic, evidenced by Charli D'Amelio recently becoming the first TikTok creator to reach 100 million followers, with fellow stars like Addison Rae and Zach King not far behind. Several celebrities have gained enormous followings on TikTok too, including Jason DeRulo, Lizzo, and even Jack Black. Whether the government likes it or not, the platform has ingrained itself into American popular culture.
TikTok's influence has been so substantial, in fact, that virtually every other social media service has tried to get in on the action. Dubsmash has emerged as a direct competitor to TikTok, while Instagram and Twitter have countered with their own versions of TikTok's signature short clips and videos. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and every other social media platform seems to have recognized that TikTok is a force that even the U.S. government couldn't reckon with. In other words, TikTok is clearly doing something right after being on the brink of a ban just a few months earlier and everyone else is just trying to get a piece of the action at this point.
Source: TikTok
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January 04, 2021 at 08:30PM
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How Staying Power Proved TikTok Was The Best Smartphone App Of 2020 - Screen Rant
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