[11][12] Countries have fined, banned, or attempted to restrict TikTok to protect children or out of national security concerns over possible user data collection by the government of People's Republic of China through ByteDance.

[58] In January 2025, Chinese officials began preliminary talks about potentially selling TikTok's U.S. operations to Elon Musk if the app faced an impending ban due to national security concerns.

The move came ahead of a Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of a law that would force a sale or ban of TikTok in the U.S. by 19 January 2025, due to national security concerns regarding its ties to China.

[83] In March 2022, The Washington Post reported that Facebook's owner Meta Platforms paid Targeted Victory—a consulting firm backed by supporters of the U.S. Republican Party—to coordinate lobbying and media campaigns against TikTok and portray it as "a danger to American children and society".

[127] In Japan, artists from the 1970s to 1990s, such as Kohmi Hirose, Yōko Oginome, Akina Nakamori, Seiko Matsuda, Momoe Yamaguchi and Saki Kubota, have become popular on TikTok during the Showa (and early Heisei) retro boom.

It starred Titus Burgess as Remy, Wayne Brady as Django, Adam Lambert as Emile, Kevin Chamberlin as Gusteau, Andrew Barth Feldman as Linguini, Ashley Park as Colette, Priscilla Lopez as Mabel, Mary Testa as Skinner, and André De Shields as Ego.

[144] On Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, some celebrities who had garnered large followings as of August 2019 include Dilraba Dilmurat, Angelababy, Luo Zhixiang, Ouyang Nana, and Pan Changjiang.

[145] In the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a Qatari teenage royal became an Internet celebrity after his angry expressions were recorded in Qatar's opening match loss to Ecuador;[146] he amassed more than 15 million followers in less than a week after creating a Douyin account.

To address concerns of Chinese influence, the company is negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) such that future heating could only be performed by vetted security personnel in the U.S. and the process would be audited by third-parties such as Oracle.

Internal guidelines against the promotion of violence, separatism, and "demonization of countries" could be used to prohibit content related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, Falun Gong, human rights in Tibet, Taiwan, Chechnya, Northern Ireland, the Cambodian genocide, the 1998 Indonesian riots, Kurdish nationalism, ethnic conflicts between blacks and whites, or between different Islamic sects.

A more specific list banned criticisms against world leaders, including past and present ones from Russia, the United States, Japan, North and South Korea, India, Indonesia, and Turkey.

[176] That year, TikTok took down a video about human rights abuses in the Xinjiang internment camps against Uyghurs but restored it after 50 minutes as well as the creator's account, saying that the action was a mistake and triggered by a brief "satirical" image of Osama bin Laden in another post.

[184][185] Douyin guidelines also forbid live broadcasting by unregistered foreigners, "feudal superstition", "money worship", smoking and drinking, competitive eating by the "already obese", "toxic" slime, "pornographic" ASMR such as ear-licking, and female anchors wearing revealing clothes.

[189][190] A December 2023 study by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) found a "strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government.

[216] In September 2022, NewsGuard Technologies reported that among the TikTok searches it had conducted and analyzed from the U.S., 19.4% surfaced misinformation such as questionable or harmful content about COVID-19 vaccines, homemade remedies, the 2020 U.S. elections, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Robb Elementary School shooting, and abortion.

It stated that although this and other loopholes were patched by TikTok before the end of March, the initial failure to correctly implement the restrictions, in addition to the effects from Kremlin's "fake news" laws, contributed to the formation of a "splInternet ... dominated by pro-war content" in Russia.

[227][228] Digital spaces like TikTok enable marginalized communities and activists, such as feminists, to feel safer and have an easier place to engage in discussion and dialogue or build an identity which might otherwise be impossible due to circumstances.

[229] The momentum of digital feminist movements through platforms like TikTok have additionally encouraged many social media agents and marketing campaigns around the world to adopt some degree of feminism as a part of their online image or personal brand.

[253] In March 2024, the Italian Competition Authority fined TikTok €10 million for not protecting underage users adequately from harmful content such as the "French scar" challenge, which left heavy pinch marks on a person's cheeks.

[257] In 2021, The New York Times reported that viral TikTok videos by young people relating the emotional impact of books on them, tagged with the label "BookTok", significantly drove sales of literature.

[294] In a November 2022 update to its European privacy policy, TikTok stated that its global corporate group employees from China and other countries could gain remote access to the user information of accounts from Europe based on "demonstrated need".

[24] In October 2021, following the 2021 Facebook leak and controversies about social media ethics, a bipartisan group of United States lawmakers also pressed TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat on questions of data privacy and moderation for age-appropriate content.

[305] In June 2022, BuzzFeed News reported that leaked audio recordings of internal TikTok meetings reveal employees in China had access to overseas data, including a "master admin" who could see "everything".

[306] As a consequence, the Senate Intelligence Committee including U.S. lawmakers Mark Warner and Marco Rubio called for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate ByteDance and whether TikTok had misled them.

[310] In June 2022, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called for Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores, saying sensitive data were being accessed from Beijing[311][312] and ByteDance would be "required by law to comply with [Chinese government] surveillance demands.

[333] In January 2020, Check Point Research discovered a vulnerability through which a hacker could spoof TikTok's official SMS messages and replace them with malicious links to gain access to user accounts.

[335][336] In August 2022, software engineer and security researcher Felix Krause found that in-app browsers from TikTok and other platforms contained codes for keylogger functionality but did not have the means to further investigate whether any data was tracked or recorded.

[337] On 27 February 2019, the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached a consent decree with ByteDance, fining it U.S.$5.7 million for collecting information from minors under the age of 13 in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

[386] In October 2024, U.S. senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn requested that TikTok turn over "all documents and information" related to child safety disclosures that were uncovered by NPR and Kentucky Public Radio.

[388] In December 2022, with the United States experiencing a shortage as well, it was reported that the huge increase in demand for the medicine was caused by a weight loss trend on TikTok, where videos about the drug exceeded 360 million views.