In the face of those layoffs and restaurant closures, these chefs opted to embrace TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and other social platforms to bring their skills out of restaurant kitchens to an audience of viewers eager to learn from their experience and pick up new recipes.

“From our research experience we know that storytelling is key for communicating the climate crisis in a way that can lead to taking action.” According to Schinko, TikTok has incredible potential as an arts-based activist platform.

The unironic embrace of something that feels old and ethereal also fits right in with the spirit of TikTok. But at the same time, collective culture consumption has been one of the hallmarks of the pandemic, from a collective obsession with Tiger King to “WAP.” Not to mention, gamers were singing chanteys while playing Sea of Thieves long before the pandemic hit.

“It’s probably no accident this stuff is cropping up at a time when there’s nothing but complications out there,” says Ryan Milner, a professor of internet culture at College of Charleston and author of 2017’s The World Made Meme.

She takes us deep inside the world of political TikTok, the impressive creators who are making the videos, and how they’ve helped galvanize young voters who are likely to remain active long past this election season.

Before filming each video, Trevino says, he holds his tarot deck and meditates, asking his spirit guides about the message that the collective needs to hear.Whenever Trevino or his colleagues post a reading, it’s TikTok that delivers it to users’ feeds: The spirit in this spiritual practice is contained within an algorithm.

Last Friday, former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway sent out a tweet that seemed almost inevitable: “Tonight I tested positive for Covid-19.” As the latest in a cascade of positive tests from a White House outbreak that had already infected the president, her condition was newsworthy—but that news had already broken.

I’m referring to the $10 billion JEDI project, one of the most prized government defense contracts in years.

The administration’s odd war on TikTok echoes the period more than half a century ago when the US government was so worried about content from Communist countries that Congress directed the Post Office to detain perceived “Communist political propaganda.”.

It’s been one hell of a week for TikTok. The company is scrambling to get the White House to approve a deal it struck with Oracle, designed to alleviate national security concerns the US government raised about TikTok’s Chinese ownership.

“It is what it is, some platforms just disappear,” says Townsend, citing now-defunct sites like the short-form video app Vine.

In the kind of topsy-turvy story that could only happen in 2020, the UX designer turned comedian is leveraging the fame she's garnered online during the Covid-19 pandemic to put together a special for the streaming giant.

President Trump's executive orders seeking to ban China-owned WeChat and TikTok in the US had been signaled for months.With the election less than 90 days away, and (if the executive order is actually executed) as WeChat might be paralyzed by late September, some Chinese Trump supporters are wondering if the president realizes the implications of what he's doing.

“The Chinese government is the one that is actively in the banning business, and they’ve got a big head start on the Trump administration,” Donald Clarke, a Chinese law specialist at George Washington University wrote in a blog post.

“I don't think that the Chinese government will be upset with Microsoft if the TikTok deal goes ahead,” says Anupam Chander, a professor at Georgetown University who studies China.“I don't think that the Chinese government will be upset with Microsoft if the TikTok deal goes ahead.”.

TikTok may very well be the future of the image.Sign up for our Longreads newsletter for the best features, ideas, and investigations from WIRED.And they're built, by design, on a kind of appropriation—the original lip-syncing app required users to mime existing audio.

Trump’s proposed executive order could face legal review, and TikTok has vowed that it’s “not planning on going anywhere.” But regardless of how this all shakes out, the president’s declaration stinks of rank hypocrisy.But it’s free and open, even in ways that other platforms aren’t.

Friday, Bloomberg reported that Trump will “sign an order” directing TikTok ’s Chinese owner Bytedance to sell off the service.Bytedance doesn’t deny that it censors its Chinese services in line with government rules, but the company says it operates TikTok, which is not available in China, differently.

Absent hard proof, what’s left are more extrapolated dangers, like whether the Chinese government, which the US says was responsible for a notorious series of breaches at American institutions, would pilfer user data from TikTok, or censor content on the platform the way it tightly controls the internet within its own borders.

A clip featuring a group of inmates explaining how they made a bootleg phone charger has been viewed more than 10 million times on the platform.

These people may or may not follow the creator already, but TikTok has determined they may be more likely to engage with the video, based on their past behavior.

The account also began posting videos taken from her official social media profiles on February 19, months before Zynn became available for download.

So it’s no surprise that, as Buzzfeed reported last month, some TikTok users have found disturbing pro-ana content on their For You page, a personalized section of the platform that displays videos users are likely to enjoy.

“Can it be used on my 13-year-old daughter?” one customer asks about a product called “Nose Up Lifting Magic Nose Shaper Clip Beauty Nose Slimming Device Pain Free High Up Tool.” The seller’s answer?

In the case of TikTok, that means China, which means government employees are probably right to take extra precautions .China's 'Cloud Hopper' Hacking Campaign Did Even More Damage Than ThoughtA 2018 indictment detailed how China's elite APT10 hackers used access to so-called managed service providers to steal intellectual properly from dozens of companies.

It wasn’t the first time this month that lawmakers have questioned the security and content moderation practices of TikTok. Two weeks ago, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) called for the Committee on Foreign Investment to investigate ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of , a lip-syncing app popular in the US that was later merged with TikTok. On Twitter, Rubio said he was concerned TikTok is “censoring content in line with #China’s communist government directives.”.

Before you start recording, you can add a song, so that your lip-sync, dance, or skit is in time with the music. Tap the notifications icon at the bottom of the home screen to see who has commented or liked your videos.

The app itself revolves around sharing 15-second video clips, which are set to music often licensed from artists and record labels. Before you start recording, you can add a song, so that your lip-sync, dance, or skit is in time with the music.

TikTok subsequently announced on Wednesday that it was launching a separate portion of its app for children under 13, which “introduces additional safety and privacy protections designed specifically for this audience.” "Companies like TikTok have been all too eager to take advantage of child app users at every turn." Senator Ed Markey By essentially combining Vine with Spotify, Musical.ly captured the attention of around 100 million finicky Generation Z consumers.

TikTok isn’t offering a new service and then scrambling to monetize it, it’s cashing in on a culture other platforms frown upon.Lip syncing and dancing along to popular music is fan behavior with longevity.