The company has transformed the very nature of social media, and in the process it has mutated as well—from tech unicorn to geopolitical chess piece.
TikTok’s Incomplete Story
Every niche found its niche audience. That’s one story of TikTok.
Every Screen on the Planet, a recent history of TikTok by
Emily Baker-White, tells another:
All of this happened as the app
teetered on the edge of the void, stuck between the incompatible
interests of the United States and China as it grew to become
indispensable to both.
- That an app this popular could have a future this uncertain presages the end of an economic paradigm.
- Both of these stories—of TikTok’s cultural history and its fraught politics—indicate what might be a fundamental incompatibility between a humane Internet and the structures that currently determine its shape, and what kind of world might emerge in its wake.
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