Who owns TikTok? Britons are warned against using the app

A Conservative MP said TikTok users are at risk of having their data exposed to enemy entities (Pexels).

TikTok has become an undeniable cultural phenomenon in recent years, with over a billion users worldwide.

However, Conservative MP Alicia Kearns has warned Britons against using the app as she believes it is unsafe. She said the video-sharing platform is exposing users’ personal information to “hostile” threats, particularly from the Chinese government.

“It’s not worth having this vulnerability on your phone. It’s the ultimate source of data for anyone with hostile endeavors,” Ms Kearns told Sky News.

She added: “Our data is a key vulnerability and China is building a totalitarian tech state based on our data. So we need to be much more serious about protecting ourselves.”

TikTok has denied that it would ever share users’ personal information with others.

However, TikTok’s parent company is known to have used TikTok data to track several Western journalists and find their sources.

But who owns TikTok? Here’s everything we know about the app’s parent company.

Who owns TikTok?

The popular video sharing app is owned by a Beijing-based company called ByteDance. The Chinese internet technology company was founded in 2012 and has created a number of platforms that are believed to be home to 1.9 billion active users every month.

ByteDance’s first creation was a platform called Neihan Duanzi, which stands for “profound gags”. It was a platform for jokes, memes and funny videos.

Later, in 2012, it also launched a news platform called Toutiao, which means “headlines”.

TikTok allows users to view and share videos in hundreds of categories (Pexels)

In 2016, the company expanded and hired former Microsoft Research Asia executive Wei-Ying Ma to lead its AI lab.

The era of acquiring smaller apps and companies with potential began with Indonesian news platform BABE. Shortly thereafter, it bought Flipgram and Musical.ly. The merger of these two platforms led to the birth of TikTok.

TikTok’s journey began as A.me before becoming Douyin in 2016, an app targeting the Chinese market and racking up over a billion daily video views.

The same app was released to the international market as TikTok in September 2017 and has quickly worked its way up app stores and pop culture trends.

Who else has accused TikTok of leaking personal information?

In November 2019, a class-action lawsuit was filed in California alleging that TikTok transferred US users’ personal data to servers owned by Chinese tech giants Tencent and Alibaba.

The lawsuit accused ByteDance of taking content from TikTok users without their permission. The plaintiff in the case shared how her biometrics were used by the company to create an account on TikTok in her name.

In July 2020, 20 additional lawsuits of the same nature were filed and consolidated into one class action lawsuit in Illinois.

TikTok decided to settle the lawsuit by paying $92 million (£77 million) in February 2021.

The US government has been open about its stance on the platform, and the Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote later this month on whether to ban the app in the country.

Hoping to avoid the ban, TikTok offered in January 2023 to share details on how its recommended algorithms work with US officials.

TikTok is banned in India along with a number of other Chinese apps as the nation believes it threatens its national security and defenses.

Before the ban, India was the largest international market for TikTok, with over 200 million users.

What personal data can TikTok access?

Aside from the personal information that users provide to create their account and profile, TikTok can find out their IP address and what other apps they have on their phone.

Although it can’t learn about your location without your permission, the app has a habit of repeatedly asking for your location even after you’ve declined it.

The app can learn a lot from what you see, when and where you see it, and who you interact with. It uses this type of personal information to customize your algorithm.

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