Is TikTok Just Entertainment?

TikTok is one of those rare platforms that feels like two completely different apps depending on where you open it. In China (where it’s called Douyin), the feed leans toward science clips, history lessons, and career tips. In the West, it’s people eating laundry detergent, dancing to sped-up pop songs, or debating why thinking about the Roman Empire is apparently a male condition.

It’s almost as if the same company designed two different curriculums: one that grooms students into engineers, and another that trains them to lip-sync like it’s an Olympic sport. Both entertaining, sure, but it does raise the small question of why the algorithm treats audiences so differently.

ByteDance: A Company That Dances Around Questions

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has a corporate structure that would make a Russian doll jealous. It’s headquartered in Beijing, registered in the Cayman Islands, and also headquartered (again) in Singapore, depending on which lawyer you ask.

Every so often, reporters trace the ownership trail and find a government-linked stake here, a party committee there, and a sprinkling of offshore shell companies in between. Perfectly normal behaviour, of course, if you’re running the world’s most downloaded app. Nothing suspicious about that at all.

The Data Buffet

All social media apps collect data. Facebook knows what you “like,” Instagram knows what you linger on while pretending to work, and X knows what you rage-tweeted at 3 a.m.

TikTok, however, prefers a more comprehensive tasting menu:

• Your keystrokes

• Your exact GPS location

• What’s on your clipboard (yes, including that password you just copied)

• Device IDs, networks, and even how you tilt your phone

Other apps track you to sell ads. TikTok feels like it’s writing a very detailed biography, complete with footnotes.

Cultural Exports vs Imports

In China, kids get daily time limits on Douyin and are nudged toward patriotic trivia and STEM lessons. In the West, TikTok’s algorithm proudly serves up prank fails, “de-influencer” shopping lists, and teenagers diagnosing each other with rare psychological conditions.

The contrast is striking. One app promotes civic pride and curiosity. The other promotes… well, let’s just say it’s unlikely to spawn the next generation of aerospace engineers. Unless the engineering project involves fireworks, a shopping trolley, and a trip to A&E.

So What’s the Goal?

The official line is that TikTok just wants to “inspire creativity and bring joy.” A noble mission statement. But when you notice how much it hoovers up from your phone while simultaneously promoting radically different behaviours depending on your country, it does make you wonder:

• Why does it need to know the contents of your clipboard to show you a dance trend?

• Why does an “innocent” app encourage one audience to study physics and another to eat drywall?

• Why does ByteDance have more headquarters than a Bond villain syndicate?

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just good business. Or maybe, like a magician with a suspiciously long hat, it’s hiding more than it shows.

Final thought: TikTok is either the greatest cultural exchange project of our time or the most elaborate behavioural study ever conducted at scale. Either way, keep dancing, the algorithm is watching.