One in seven people in the world use TikTok. Yet for the company behind such a cultural phenomenon, the last few years have been a rollercoaster.
Concerns over the app first surfaced more than five years ago, prompting President Trump, in his first term, to sign an executive order aimed at removing TikTok from US stores.
Lawmakers were worried that the Chinese government could access user data of the 200 million Americans who use the app and possibly manipulate their feeds.
To address these concerns, TikTok's parent company ByteDance launched Project Texas – storing US user data on domestic servers run by American-owned Oracle. The company also moved its headquarters to Singapore and Los Angeles – in part to distance itself from its Chinese roots.
These were seen as significant concessions at the time. But still, in 2024 Congress passed a law threatening to ban the app outright, unless ByteDance transferred majority ownership and changed how TikTok operates in the US.
