by SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If it feels like TikTok has been around forever, that’s probably because it has, at least if you’re measuring it by internet time. The question now is will it be around much longer and, if so, in what form?
Starting in 2017, when the Chinese social video app merged with its competitor Musical.ly, TikTok has grown from a niche app for teenagers to a global trend. Although, of course, it is also emerging as a potential national security threat, according to US officials.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed legislation requiring TikTok parent ByteDance to sell to a US owner within a year or shut down. It is unclear whether that law will survive an expected legal challenge or whether ByteDance would agree to sell.
Here’s how TikTok got to this point:
March 2012
ByteDance is founded in China by entrepreneur Zhang Yimin. Its first hit product is Toutiao, a personalized news aggregator for Chinese users.
July 2014
Startup Musical.ly was founded by entrepreneur Alex Zhu in China, later known for an app of the same name used to post short lipsyncing music videos.
July 2015
Musical.ly hits #1 in the Apple App Store, following a design change that made the company’s logo visible when users shared their videos.
2016
ByteDance launches Douyin, a video sharing app for Chinese users. Its popularity prompts the company to launch another version called TikTok for foreign audiences.
November 2017
ByteDance acquires Musical.ly for $1 billion. Nine months later, ByteDance merged it with TikTok.
Powered by a binge-watching algorithm, users start sharing a wide variety of videos on the app, including dance moves, kitchen food preparation and various “challenges” to perform, record and post actions that go from serious to satirical.
February 2019
Rapper Lil Nas X releases the country trap song “Old Town Road” on TikTok, where it goes viral and pushes the song to a record 17 weeks in the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The phenomenon begins with a wave of TikTok videos from music artists who suddenly see TikTok as a vital way to reach fans.
TikTok settles federal charges for violating US child privacy laws and agrees to pay a $5.7 million fine.
September 2019
The Washington Post reports that while images of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests and police crackdowns are common on most social media sites, they are curiously absent from TikTok. The same story notes that TikTok posts with the tag #trump2020 received more than 70 million views.
The company insists that TikTok’s content moderation, which is done in the United States, is not responsible and says the app is a place for entertainment, not politics.
The Guardian reports on internal documents detailing how TikTok orders its moderators to delete or limit a range of videos related to topics sensitive to China such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent massacre, Tibetan independence or the sanctioned religious group Falun Gong.
October 2019
US politicians start sounding alarms about TikTok’s influence, calling for federal investigations into the acquisition of Musical.ly and a national security probe into TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps. That investigation begins in November, according to news reports.
December 2019
The Pentagon recommends that US military personnel delete TikTok from all phones, personal and government-issued. Some services ban the app on military phones. In January, the Pentagon bans the app from all military phones.
TikTok is the second most downloaded app in the world, according to data from analytics firm SensorTower.
May 2020
Privacy groups file a complaint alleging that TikTok continues to violate US child protection laws and violate a 2019 settlement agreement. The company “takes the issue of safety seriously” and continues to improve protections, she says.
TikTok hires former Disney executive Kevin Mayer as chief executive officer in an apparent attempt to improve its relations in the United States. Mayer resigns three months later.
July 2020
India bans TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in response to a border conflict with China.
President Donald Trump says he is considering banning TikTok in retaliation for China’s alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
August 2020
Trump issues a sweeping but vague executive order banning American companies from any “transactions” with ByteDance and its subsidiaries, including TikTok. Several days later, he issued a second order demanding that ByteDance divest TikTok’s US operations within 90 days.
Microsoft confirms it is exploring the acquisition of TikTok. The deal never materializes; neither do Oracle and Walmart do the same foreplay. Meanwhile, TikTok is suing the Trump administration for an alleged violation of due process in its executive orders.
November 2020
Joe Biden is elected president. He doesn’t offer a new policy on TikTok and won’t take office until January, but Trump’s plans to force the sale of TikTok start to unravel anyway. The Trump administration extends the deadlines it imposed on ByteDance and TikTok and eventually lets them slide altogether.
February 2021
Newly sworn-in President Joe Biden postpones the lawsuits related to Trump’s plan to ban TikTok, effectively stopping them.
September 2021
TikTok announces that it has more than one billion monthly active users.
December 2021
A Wall Street Journal report found that TikTok’s algorithms can flood teenagers with a torrent of harmful content such as videos advocating extreme dieting, a type of eating disorder.
February 2022
TikTok is announcing new rules to discourage the spread of harmful content such as viral hoaxes and the promotion of eating disorders.
April 2022
“The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical,” a project created by two fans of the Netflix show as a TikTok project, won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.
TikTok is the most downloaded app in the world, overtaking Instagram, according to SensorTower data.
June 2022
BuzzFeed reports that employees of China-based ByteDance repeatedly gained access to non-public information of TikTok users, based on leaked recordings of more than 80 internal TikTok meetings. TikTok responds with a vague comment referring to its commitment to security that does not directly address the BuzzFeed report.
TikTok also announces that its user data has been transferred to US servers managed by US technology firm Oracle. But that does not prevent fresh alarm among US officials about the risk that Chinese authorities could gain access to the data of US users.
December 2022
FBI Director Chris Wrap raises national security concerns about TikTok, warning that Chinese officials could manipulate the app’s recommendation algorithm for influence operations.
February 2023
The White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure that TikTok is deleted from all government-issued mobile devices. Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warn that ByteDance may share TikTok user data with the authoritarian Chinese government.
March 2024
A bill to ban TikTok or sell it to a US company gathers steam in Congress. TikTok is bringing many of its creators to Washington to tell lawmakers to back off, highlighting changes the company has made to protect user data. TikTok also annoys lawmakers by sending notices to users urging them to “speak up now” or risk seeing TikTok banned; users then flood conference offices with calls.
Lawmakers impeach Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, in a six-hour congressional hearing where Chew, a native of Singapore, tries to push back on assertions that TikTok and ByteDance are tools of the Chinese government.
The House of Representatives passes a bill to ban or sell TikTok.
April 2024
The Senate follows suit, sending the bill to President Biden, who signs it.
