Background

United States

Users

• In the U.S., TikTok has about 24 million active users, according to mobile data and analytics firm App Annie.
  • About 40% of these users are between the ages of 18 and 24, according to internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
  • Altogether, about 70% of TikTok users in the U.S. are of voting age.
  • ByteDance has stated that U.S. users open the app eight times a day and individual sessions on the app are the longest at 4.9 minutes.
• There is growing awareness across the political spectrum that TikTok could be a powerful tool for connecting with Gen Z, a demographic of largely first-time voters that is expected to make up one in 10 eligible voters in the 2020 presidential election, according to the Pew Research Center.

Elections-related and political content:

• Mostly homemade and posted by users, rather than being formal messages from campaigns. Tends to be whimsical or catchy, often set to music and featuring memes about candidates. The company says it doesn’t encourage political speech but doesn’t forbid it either.
• Videos tagged #Trump2020 were viewed more than 200 million times in the last three weeks of 2019, according to the app’s tally. Posts about Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders are also popular, but on a smaller scale.
• Videos tagged #Bernie2020 received about 24 million views over the same period.
• US teen posted content on Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and was suspended.
• A TikTok whistleblower leaked moderation guidelines to the German publication Netzpolitik that showed moderators are instructed to label any political content as either “not recommended” or “not for feed,” meaning they will not show up on TikTok’s main “For You” page, or will be more difficult to discover in its search fields. As the Washington Post notes, “the changes still give the lie to TikTok’s insistence that ‘political sensitivities’ do not factor into its decisions.”

Official Responses

• The Democratic National Committee last month to suggest presidential campaigns not use the app, according to an email reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The DNC sent a notice to campaigns citing worries about TikTok’s “Chinese ties and potentially sending data back to the Chinese government.” The DNC said campaign staffers who are already using the app should delete it and suspend their accounts. For staffers who need the app for campaign work, the DNC recommended using a separate phone and account, according to the email.
  • The Republican National Committee didn’t respond to a request for comment.
• “With over 110 million downloads in the U.S. alone, TikTok is a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore,” wrote Sens. Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton. “Given these concerns, we ask that the Intelligence Community conduct an assessment of the national security risks posed by TikTok and other China-based content platforms operating in the U.S. and brief Congress on these findings.”

India

Users

• TikTok has 200 million users in India, a number that is still growing.
  • Unable to find more specific information (MAU, DAU etc.)
  • Aman Kumar, chief business officer at KalaGato:
    • “A majority of TikTok’s users (in India) are 18-35 years old and come from tier-2 and tier-3 cities."
    • “Approximately 52% of Indian TikTok users earn less than Rs 25,000 ($350) per month.”
• TikTok also supports 15 Indian languages, the app’s India spokesperson told us, enabling each region in the country to have its own corner on the app with its own stars, trends, and market.
  • Relationship with other Indian vernacular apps? Helo, Vigo etc.?

Political content

Political parties are interested to ramp up presence on TikTok (link). Political advertising is banned, so this is likely to take the form of organic content.

Examples of political content on TikTok:

• The #myfirstvoteformodi hashtag on TikTok around the general elections received over 1.5 million views and saw young and popular TikTok influencers expressing themselves on BJP’s rap song which then led to similar user-generated content around the same hashtag.