TikTok, China and the fear of digital propaganda

DW Documentary • Season 9 • Episode 111

About this episode

TikTok is the most popular app among young people, with more than 1.6 billion users worldwide today. Streaming videos featuring influencers in particular draw huge numbers of viewers. But TikTok is highly controversial. Not just because the app has a very opaque content management system and collects a massive amount of its users' personal data. This, after all, is also the case with many other social media and apps. However, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, Byte Dance. This is why the governments of Europe and the US in particular suspect that all the data collected could be passed on to the Chinese regime. They, in turn, could use it to influence public opinion worldwide.