

dollars, was part of the attempts from TikTok to gain the trust of U.S. The project, which cost approximately 1.5 billion U.S. In March 2022, TikTok entered into talks with Oracle Corporation for the so-called “Project Texas,” which planned for the company to store all their data on U.S.

TikTok was pushed to a major data-hosting restructuring by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). While the Biden administration revoked the executive order in June 2021, the tug of war between TikTok and U.S. app stores and restricting access to users in the country was put in place in September 2020, the apps were never removed from the U.S.

While an executive order aiming at barring the apps from U.S. Trump administration announced it was considering banning Chinese-developed social media platforms TikTok and WeChat due to alleged data collection malpractices.

Australia followed, banning the app from government-owned devices in April 2023. In 2023, TikTok faced a partial ban on institutional and governmental devices in several countries: in February 2023, European Parliament staff were recommended to remove TikTok from their personal devices, and in March of the same year, the UK banned TikTok downloads from government mobile phones – a move that gained the approval of over half of UK respondents in a survey conducted the previous month. Indonesia followed, with 110 million TikTok users, while TikTok’s audience in Brazil was over 82 million users. Short-form video did not just command high engagement among online users, but also achieved the largest return on investment (ROI) according to a survey of global marketers conducted in June 2022.Ī possible TikTok ban? Leading markets and expectationsĪs of the beginning of 2023, the United States was the largest market for the social video app, counting approximately 113.2 million users. Whether it is professionally produced or user-generated – online video content is proving vastly popular with social media consumers, and it is, therefore, expanding across established platforms like Instagram and serving as a springboard medium for newcomer applications like TikTok. This phenomenon was especially highlighted during the coronavirus pandemic, with quality, storytelling, and accessibility standing out as main reasons to watch short videos. It also reflects recent changes in internet user behavior, such as shorter attention span resulting in short-form video platforms becoming major players. TikTok’s immense popularity mirrors one of the most significant technological trends of the past decade, the shift from desktop to mobile. Despite app downloads fluctuating between 2021 and the beginning of 2023, the popular short video platform still ranks as one of the leading apps both worldwide and in the United States. TikTok app downloads peaked in the first quarter of 2020, reaching over 313.5 million. In July 2021, TikTok reached the milestone of three billion downloads worldwide, despite being banned in India in June 2020 and losing a considerably large audience.
