For anyone with shareable passions such as dance crazes, sea shanties, knitting patterns or Excel spreadsheets, TikTok is the place to be. The short-form, Chinese-owned video app has emerged as an accessible and playful global platform for 1 billion users to indulge their obsessions, find an audience of like-minded followers and sometimes make money, too.

To those of a more conspiratorial mindset, however, the entertainment platform is an electronic Manchurian Candidate, creating the opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to manipulate public opinion, subvert democracies and peer into teenagers’ bedrooms.

Financial Times