Who’s afraid of TikTok?

wholesome dancing and lip-syncing videos, TikTok once billed itself as “the last sunny corner on the internet”. Since launching just five years ago the app has brought a warm glow to its 1bn-plus users, as well as an icy dash of competition to the social-media incumbents of Silicon Valley. With its rise, a part of the tech industry that had seemed closed to competition has been .Yet even as TikTok delights consumers and advertisers, others believe the sunny app has a dark side. ByteDance, its owner, has its headquarters in China, whose government is and propaganda—making it a worrying place for a media app to be based. As and as elections loom in America, there is a brewing bipartisan storm in Congress over its supposed role as a “Trojan horse”.