That’s why Silicon Valley is so worried about it. TikTok, which is run by a seven-year-old company in Beijing called ByteDance, allows people to create short, snappy videos and share them around the world. That simple concept has fueled its rise to quickly become one of the world’s largest social networks and to mount the most direct incursion yet by a Chinese company into Silicon Valley’s turf. Through knockoffs, potential acquisitions and not-so-subtle references to Chinese censorship, TikTok’s competitors have been trying to protect their home turf from the service’s advancement. But TikTok’s American competitors could still get some help from their government.

Source: New York Times November 03, 2019 17:48 UTC