Things you might not know about TIKTOK

TWO cops committed gross misconduct by posting “offensive and inappropriate” TikTok videos while in uniform, a misconduct panel has found last week.

PCs Amy Taylor and April Cooper, of Cambridgeshire Police, were given final warnings after they posted clips of themselves “shouting offensive language” in a police car and dancing inappropriately in a police station.

But what is TikTok? Here are some facts you may not have known… 1

TIKTOK is a Chinese video- sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing- based internet technology company founded in 2012 by

Zhang Yiming.

2

IT is used to create short music, lip- sync, dance, comedy and talent videos of three to 15 seconds, and short looping videos of three to 60 seconds.

3

THE TikTok mobile app allows users to create a short video of themselves which often feature music in the background, can be sped up, slowed down or edited with a filter. They can also film short lip- sync videos to popular songs. 4

IN its country of birth – China – TikTok is known as “Douyin” – which means “vibrating sound”. Although they spell it with their funny squiggles.

5

BYTEDANCE first launched Douyin for the Chinese market in September 2016.

6

TIKTOK launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China.

But it only became available worldwide – including the US – in August 2018.

TIKTOK also has global offices, including in Dublin, Los Angeles, New York City, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo.

8

IT now has around 700 million regular users and the app has been downloaded two billion times.

9

IN August this year President Donald

Trump threatened to ban TikTok in the US, unless it was taken over by a “very American” company – such as Microsoft. 10

IT was banned in India in June after border clashes between China and India.