3 ms·

I thought this was common knowledge but I guess not. But then again I lived with my preteen siblings when the whole musically/TikTok merger happened so for them

• dimmke 4y ago
  It's definitely not common knowledge- especially for people who don't use TikTok and only became aware of it in the last 2-3 years. And I actually think it benefits the Chinese government for this revisionist history of the app to be the story that "wins" - because it portrays China as this mysterious force with previously unknown insight, power, and plans. When in reality the bones of TikTok came directly out of the same place as most new social apps do. If you look at the Wikipedia article for Musical.ly - it goes through great effort to talk about how it was a Chinese company that happened to have a "Santa Monica office" but if you look at the Crunchbase profile for Musical.ly - the story is different. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/musical-ly/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/musical-ly/company_f... The companies that participated in those funding rounds are not blue chip VCs and do have foreign ties - but they are specifically focused on investing in US startups. I would love to see a journalist at The Verge or somewhere that writes about tech in the same way tackle this topic. I think it's a missing piece in a lot of the discourse around TikTok.