The co-founder of ByteDance, parent company of Chinese social media giant TikTok, has become the wealthiest man in China, amassing a fortune of $49.3 billion. Zhang Yiming saw a 43 percent increase in his fortune from the previous year. The 41-year-old stepped down from managing the company in 2021 but retains an ownership stake of approximately 20 percent.
ByteDance’s TikTok claims independence from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state influence, but the United States remains wary. It plans to ban TikTok by January 2025 unless ByteDance divests from it.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, TikTok has become the key news source for young American adults. The survey states that 39 percent of those aged 18 to 29 use the social media platform for news. In 2020, just nine percent of young adults in this age bracket used TikTok to access the news.
“No social media platform we’ve studied has seen faster growth in the share of Americans who regularly turn to it for news,” Pew researchers stated.
While TikTok has officially banned political ads from the platform, it was revealed last month that paid political ads for left-wing groups like ActBlue, a Democrat activist group, were still appearing.
Individual U.S. states have also begun their own action against TikTok. Earlier this month, 14 state attorneys general announced they would be suing the company for negatively impacting the mental and physical health of young people.
The suit alleges that the platform algorithm encourages addictive use and contributes to mental health and body image issues among youth.
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