TikTok

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TikTok
Smart people will never use this.
a.k.a.: Musical.ly (a website that was merged into this site)
Type of site: Video sharing
Social networking service
Language:
41 languages
Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, Cambodian, Cebuano, Czech, Dutch, English, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Korean, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese
Created by: Zhang Yiming
Owner: ByteDance
Date of launch: August 2014 (China, Musical.ly)
September 2016 (China, Douyin)
August 2, 2018 (Worldwide)
Status: Active
Predecessor: Musical.ly


   
 
Maybe I’m going to regret this, but I can’t even get to that level of thinking with them. Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it’s always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone. I actively tell people, "Don’t install that spyware on your phone".
 

 
 

—Steve Huffman[1]

TikTok (known as Douyin (抖音) in China, formerly known as Musical.ly) is a Chinese video-sharing website founded in 2014. On August 2, 2018, TikTok merged with Musical.ly and was launched worldwide. The site is mainly used for short "comedy", dance, or lip-sync videos.

Despite the popularity of the app among the youth, the site eventually became one of the most despised websites on the Internet, mainly because of its "cringe" nature and content published by users, as well as being a bad influence towards children.

Bad Qualities[edit | edit source]

  1. Poor moderation: Despite widespread misconduct afflicting the platform, TikTok takes minimal action to address it.
    • TikTok's moderators are frequently criticized for banning or removing accounts without clear justification. This issue is particularly evident with fan accounts dedicated to supporting an idol or media.
    • Their community guidelines are highly unsatisfactory.
  2. The community can be rude, annoying, stupid, prejudiced, toxic, and overall bad.
    • To make matters worse, some formerly good TikTokers went downhill in their later years, such as offbrand_square.
    • TikTokers have posted about getting abortions and acted proud about it, wasted thousands of dollars in Dogecoins (which is a near worthless cryptocurrency), pretended to have survived the Holocaust to "educate" viewers about it (but just comes across as disrespecting the victims instead), etc.
    • Many users are also promoting the bizarre theory that Helen Keller never existed, despite the fact that she is well-documented. Their logic is that a person who was both blind and deaf couldn't have possibly done the things she did.
  3. The app collects tons of data without the user's permission, which includes device hardware, other apps on your device, network related info, your location, etc. which literally means TikTok is spyware. It has also been speculated that this data gets shipped to the Chinese Communist Party. This has led to multiple countries investigating the app, with some banning it under certain circumstances.[2]
    • Despite there being a good amount of evidence, TikTok denies this, claiming that they are "baseless accusations".[3]
  4. The platform exhibits a lack of creativity and originality, as the majority of videos consist of users lip-syncing to popular songs or audio from other users' content.
  5. The brevity and monotonous nature of videos can negatively affect an individual's attention span, particularly in younger individuals whose brains are still in the developmental stage.[4]
    • Not just that, it can be a bad influence to them as it can encourage them to have a toxic mindset.
  6. Although the duet mode appears promising in theory, it creates additional challenges within the community, such as harassment and exploiting other users' videos for personal gain.
  7. In many hypocritical attempts to "combat cyberbullying", they disallowed posts from poor people, LGBTQ+ people, and people with an abnormal appearance from appearing in the featured section, which can be seen as rude and insulting towards them and gives all of those users a disadvantage in getting views and followers, despite creating a policy about spreading false information shortly beforehand.[5]
  8. Numerous irritating, repetitive, and poorly executed music remixes and mashups originate from here, characterized by excessive autotune, generic rap and hip-hop beats, altered audio speeds, and absurdly parodied lyrics to an intolerable extent, ultimately destroying the integrity of the original song. To exacerbate the situation, these distorted versions of songs often become the most popular on the platform, even though the original versions are readily available.
    • An example is "Astronaut in the Ocean" by Masked Wolf, which addresses themes of mental depression and anxiety. While the song was popularized on the platform, its underlying message was overshadowed by the trend, leaving most users familiar only with its introduction.
  9. The influencers on this platform exhibit behavior that is arguably more problematic than that of the users. They are often perceived as lacking talent, humor, and originality, while also being manipulative towards their audiences. Additionally, they tend to engage in frequent conflicts and display a mean-spirited attitude, which further diminishes their credibility.
    • Occasionally, they encounter legal issues but manage to avoid consequences due to their youth and the support of devoted fans.
  10. Because they're owned by a Chinese company, there is a ton of propaganda praising the Communist Party of China (CCP) and the Chinese government.
    • A user who made a video to bring awareness to the ongoing Uyghur genocide was banned from the platform for "hate speech".
  11. The Text-to-Speech voices in almost every video are grating and can get very annoying to listen to.
  12. For some reason, you can't view your profile picture on a computer, so you need a mobile device to view your profile picture on TikTok.
  13. On this site, a variety of inane, reckless, and hazardous "challenges" and trends exist that should be avoided by everyone, especially young people.
    • The utterly vile and unhygienic "#Coronavirus Challenge" involves licking public toilets, leading to a high risk of COVID-19 and other diseases. Consequently, many participants reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
    • The abhorrent "#AutismChallenge" urges users to mock autistic individuals, an act of extreme rudeness and offense.
    • The harmful "#NewTeacherChallenge" involves a parent sending their child a photo of a disabled person, falsely presenting them as their new teacher. The anticipated negative reaction from the child (often fear or crying) is not only offensive to disabled individuals but also instills unwarranted fear.
    • The callous "#GeorgeFloydChallenge" sees users reenacting the deadly restraint used on George Floyd by kneeling on another person's neck. This challenge is not only bigoted but also demonstrates a shocking lack of respect for George Floyd and the suffering of his relatives.
    • The "#SkullbreakerChallenge" is a dangerous trend where two individuals intentionally trip a third person mid-jump. This has led to severe injuries requiring hospitalization and, tragically, even deaths.[6]
    • The extremely dangerous "#BlackoutChallenge" encourages users to choke themselves until they lose consciousness. Tragically, ten-year-old Nyla Anderson died after imitating this challenge, prompting her mother to file a lawsuit against TikTok.[7]
    • The dangerous "#TidePodChallenge" entails the consumption of laundry detergent pods, a severely toxic substance that can cause death.
    • The Outlet Challenge involves people inserting a penny onto a tilted plug's partially exposed prongs which would cause the outlet to spark, possibly frying the wiring or even causing a fire. This happened to a school in Westford, Massachusetts, with the school's breakers and wiring being damaged and the student responsible receiving charges.[8]
    • The abhorrent challenge of dancing on a grave represents an extreme violation and disrespect towards the memory of the deceased.
    • DeviousLicks involves stealing and vandalizing school property. The trend has resulted in the suspensions, expulsions, and even arrests of many students across the United States.
    • The #SchoolShootingChallenge, probably one of the worst ones yet, actually encourages teens to go out and commit a mass shooting at their school or make threats about committing one "just for laughs". This shows they don't care about other people and do this for the sake of scoring popularity points. Not only that, but some of these people also actively support gun control, and yet here they are, making threats about committing mass shootings.
    • In a deeply disturbing incident, the staff of the platform where a 19-year-old posted his suicide video callously prioritized their PR over immediate intervention. Their three-hour delay in contacting the police had irreversible and tragic consequences.
    • In a horrifying incident, a 4-year-old girl in the Philippines nearly died after attempting to hang herself, imitating a dangerous video challenge.
  14. On the mobile website, it forces you to install the app or log in after browsing a certain amount of videos, which is extremely frustrating giving how much criticism the website received.
  15. Much worse, starting in at the end of 2023 you can no longer go on the site not logged in the desktop version, and it forces you to make an account with no X button in the box, thanks to the other social media sites that did it like Twitter, Tumblr
  16. TikTok can annoy you with "verify to continue" if you press the X button it doesn't disappear!
  17. TikTok at times can be buggy such as user profile doesn't load anymore
  18. Users, especially those with Samsung devices, may experience rapid battery depletion while using this app.
  19. This platform has a negative yet oblivious impact on the Internet, as many people tried to replicate its popularity and made them change for the worse.
    • Some companies even started hiring their influencers for roles in web series and movies, which does not do well and gets a lot of negative reception due to the influencers being despised figures outside of TikTok.
  20. Like YouTube, this platform is vulnerable to inappropriate mobile game ads that show up every time you watch 3-4 videos.

Good Qualities[edit | edit source]

  1. The app has popularized trends like "Hit or Miss" (based off the iLOVEFRiDAY's diss track on Mia Khalifa), "I'm Already Tracer", "Rockefeller Street", Food trends, Ratatouille the Musical, Funny JoJo Siwa Parodies, etc.
    • TikTok has even helped revive older songs such as "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac, which was a number-one hit in 1977. Forty-three years later, the song re-entered the Top 20 of the Hot 100.
    • Also, some good songs have TikTok to thank for becoming popular, if through what could be seen as dumb "dances".
  2. Making videos and using in-app features to edit videos is quite easy compared to other video-sharing websites.
  3. Some of the worst users like That Vegan Teacher have been banned from the site. GeminiOfficial was also banned after it was revealed he was a pedophile.
  4. The idea of TikTok was okay; however, it was completely ruined by its poor execution.
  5. They have thankfully cracked down on certain trends that had bad impacts such as the aforementioned devious licks. They began removing videos featuring the trend, and the trend was later banned for violating TikTok's Community Guidelines against illegal activities. Searching for related hashtags results in a message about TikTok's Community Guidelines.
  6. Some of the videos on the platform can be funny or interesting.
  7. While most TikTokers are bad, we have a ton of iconic, friendly, and funny TikTokers:
    1. Ronald Williams (until his death in March 2021)
    2. SeanDoesMagic
    3. DonaldDucc
    4. Papa Gut
    5. Charlesmallet
    6. logan.toth
    7. Gordon Ramsay (despite being already popular)
    8. Nick DiGiovanni
    9. Khaby Lame
    10. Kingzippy
    11. Howieazy
    12. SandTagious
    13. Sonn1c
    14. Taleeasmr
    15. Wooppuup
    16. Createhues
    17. Sosatisfying
    18. Chikn.Nuggit
    19. monkeman317
    20. WyattzWorld
    21. sticksy617
    22. offbrand_square (before mid-2020)
    23. max_lives
    24. sloppyandsunshine
    25. Darren Espanto (despite being already popular since 2014)
  8. Some good artists have become popular with TikTok, such as Ashnikko or Boywithuke.
  9. TikTok can be a fun place as long as it's used responsibly.

Trivia[edit | edit source]

  • TikTok was completely banned in India along with several other apps like WeChat, UC Browser and Player's Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG) on June 29, 2020. An agency called Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released a statement saying the apps were "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order". The ban was made permanent in January 2021. In response to the ban, TikTok argued that it will be forced to lay off over 2,000 employees in India.[9]
  • This site is known for having a user base with age diversity.

See also[edit | edit source]

Videos[edit | edit source]


References[edit | edit source]