TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin (Chinese: 抖音; pinyin: Dǒuyīn: Shaking sound), is a short-form video hosting service owned by ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes.

Since their launches, TikTok and Douyin have gained global popularity.

In October 2020, TikTok surpassed 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide.

 Morning Consult named TikTok the third-fastest growing infotech brand of 2020, after Zoom and Peacock.^[11] Cloudflare ranked TikTok the most popular website of 2021, surpassing Google.TikTok’s popularity has resulted in the platform having an increasing cultural impact worldwide.

Several governments have or are currently attempting to ban TikTok from either government or public use owing to national security concerns over alleged connections to the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese intelligence operations and disinformation campaigns.

 TikTok has admitted to previously censoring content critical of the Chinese government.