How TikTok could fail
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
With Facebook under antitrust scrutiny around the world, the company is spending more time making the case that it is beset on all sides by competitors. There are other messaging apps, other professional networking apps, and other video apps. And when it comes to good old-fashioned social networking — public broadcasts, following influencers, and that sort of thing, there’s TikTok.
”In just three years, TikTok has become one of the world’s most popular online social network platforms,” Facebook wrote today in a letter to Rep. David Cicilline, D-RI, who has championed an antitrust inquiry into the company. “The app has been downloaded more than one billion times globally, is available in more than 150 countries, and in 2018 was installed…
