One billion users, but controversies mount up for TikTok
Hindustan TimesTikTok's breakneck rise from niche video-sharing app to global social media behemoth has drawn intense scrutiny, particularly over its links to China. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said Saturday the government would shut down social network TikTok for at least a year from 2025. The EU is probing whether far-right presidential candidate Calin Georgescu's surprise victory in the first round of Romania's presidential election was aided by Russian meddling and "preferential treatment" by TikTok. The United States in April passed a law obliging TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to sell off the platform by January 19 on the grounds it allowed China to access data on US users. {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} To protect data, the US government, the European Commission and Britain's government had already banned TikTok from their employees' work devices in 2023.