16 Facts About ByteDance

1.

ByteDance is the developer of the news and information platform Toutiao .

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2.

ByteDance has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang internment camps and other topics deemed controversial by the CCP.

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3.

From late 2016 till 2017, ByteDance made a number of acquisitions and new product launches.

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4.

In December 2018, ByteDance sued Chinese technology news site Huxiu for defamation after Huxiu reported that ByteDance's Indian-language news app Helo was propagating misinformation.

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5.

In March 2021, the Financial Times reported that ByteDance was part of a group of Chinese companies that aimed to deploy technology to circumvent Apple's privacy policies.

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6.

Later on the same day, an official ByteDance representative announced that the company's investment arm has been dissolved and there are plans to reassign the department's staff and its head, Zhao Pengyuan, to the strategic business unit.

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7.

From June 2020 to his resignation 26 August 2020, Mayer served as the CEO of TikTok and the COO of ByteDance, reporting directly to the company CEO Zhang Yiming.

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8.

ByteDance is financially backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group.

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9.

In 2019, ByteDance formed joint ventures with Beijing Time, a publisher controlled by the Beijing municipal CCP committee, and with Shanghai Dongfang, a state media firm in Shanghai.

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10.

In 2021, ByteDance announced that its partnership with Shanghai Dongfang had never been in operation and was disbanded.

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11.

On 9 November 2017, ByteDance acquired Shanghai-based social media start-up Musical.

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12.

In November 2019, the CAC ordered ByteDance to remove "slanderous" information on Fang Zhimin from Toutiao.

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13.

In May 2021, the CAC stated that ByteDance had engaged in illegal data collection and misuse of personal information.

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14.

ByteDance later added a kids-only mode to TikTok which blocks the upload of videos, the building of user profiles, direct messaging, and commenting on other's videos, while still allowing the viewing and recording of content.

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15.

On 3 August 2020, U S president Donald Trump set September 15 as the deadline for TikTok, a social media app under ByteDance, to find a US buyer, and he then issued executive orders that would effectively ban TikTok from operating in the country if it is not sold by ByteDance within 45 days.

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16.

On 28 August 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology announced that any sale of ByteDance's technology to foreign firms is a matter of "national security" and would require prior approval.

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