It’s the darling of the organic social media world. Untold shiny, but not always valuable, metrics await those willing to engage fully with the platform.

It’s a brilliant confidence booster to see those figures, and can certainly help with brand building.

One billion users are invested in it, or maybe more precisely 999,999,999. The UK parliament shut down its TikTok account after posting just one video! They weren’t upset that they hadn’t gone viral yet, they were worried that their data may be accessed by China.

This comes days after leaked audio from internal TikTok meetings suggested that one master admin in China has access to everything.

We’ve seen this situation before as TikTok gained traction through the pandemic. Changes were made then to bring in US leadership and prevent data transfer to China. However, will such a high profile institution as the UK parliament shutting down its TikTok account send waves through the international and social media community?

Probably no waves that will last. TikTok is addictive, useful, valuable, and it is already on the defensive, speaking publicly about pushing back against the CCP’s subversion attempts.