Abstract
This article discusses the rise of TikTok, a relatively young but extremely popular Chinese social network for sharing short-form original videos (mostly entertaining). By the end of 2021, TikTok had surpassed the American search engine Google as the most visited website on the Internet. With its billion unique visitors each month, it is the only top 10 website whose parent company (ByteDance) is located outside the U.S. In the article, I analyze the specifics of TikTok’s presence in the Russian segment of the Internet, its gradual politicization, and the problems the platform has faced over the last two years. In 2021, TikTok surpassed VKontakte, the most popular social network in Russia, in terms of time spent using the app. And, although the service had some friction with the Russian authorities, there is still no full-fledged replacement for it. So far, Yappy—the Russian analog for TikTok—does not look like its serious competitor at all. The article covers what concerns the authorities of other countries have about this social network, and how TikTok in general affects Internet culture. I look into the values propagated by TikTok among young people. In the conclusion, I put forward a hypothesis, which requires further study, that TikTok is now a super effective world-scale soft power tool of the People’s Republic of China.
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