New push to ban TikTok as CEO testifies before Congress

TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before Congress on Thursday amid calls for the hugely popular app to be banned. There’s a chance the days of endlessly swiping through videos on the platform are numbered. So how did we get here?

Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang originally launched an app called Musical.ly way back in 2014. It became especially popular in the U.S. among tweens and preteens who would use it to share videos of themselves lip syncing to songs. ByteDance, meanwhile, was already running TikTok, and seeing how popular Musical.ly was, bought the company for $1 billion in 2017. It merged the two apps in 2018, bringing all Musical.ly users over to TikTok and kickstarting what would become one of the world’s most popular social media platforms.

But TikTok’s connection to China, coupled with the fact that it’s so popular with younger users, sent regulators and politicians in the U.S. and abroad into overdrive. The government’s beef with the app is over whether it’s shipping U.S. users’ data to China which then uses it to spy on Americans and spread pro-Beijing propaganda and disinformation. A number of states and federal agencies, not to mention the military, have banned the use of the app on official devices and networks.

Key video takeaways

0:10 How TikTok controversy started

0:45 Calls for TikTok to be banned

1:10 U.S. Govt.’s main beef with TikTok