TikTok is backed by a Chinese giant, financed by massive Chinese banks which are de facto arms of the Chinse government and wherein Xi can intervene directly.

TikTok is backed by a Chinese giant, financed by massive Chinese banks which are de facto arms of the Chinse government and wherein Xi can intervene directly. So this is as 'big brother' as it gets. Edit: "Government “golden shares”, tiny investments that give a high degree of control over companies, have been rumoured for years; only recently have they been disclosed in the likes of Weibo and ByteDance." [1] "In April 2021, a state-owned enterprise owned by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the China Internet Investment Fund, took a partial ownership stake in ByteDance's main Chinese entity and placed a government official, Wu Shugang, on its board of directors" [2] "ByteDance's China business has a strategic partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts.[ In 2019, ByteDance formed joint ventures with Beijing Time, a publisher controlled by the Beijing municipal CCP committee" "Yiming issued a letter stating that the app was "incommensurate with socialist core values" and promised that ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the authorities to promote their policies.Following the shutdown, ByteDance announced that it would give preference to Chinese Communist Party members in its hiring and increase its censors from 6,000 to 10,000 employees." "In April 2022, ByteDance announced that it would report users' content on Toutiao and Douyin that engaged in "historical nihilism" in contradiction of official CCP history" ... the list goes on ... [1] https://www.economist.com/business/chinas-communist-authorities-reinvent-state-capitalism/21806311 https://www.economist.com/business/chinas-communist-authorit... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance#cite_note-48 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance#cite_note-48