Two Sides Of TikTok's Popularity That Skip Facebook And YouTube

TikTok application illustration (pixabay)

JAKARTA - The creative video sharing platform TikTok has secretly surpassed YouTube and Facebook. This entertainment application, which was popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, has become the most downloaded non-game application in the world.

Based on the SensorTower report, as of June 2020 TikTok has been downloaded by more than 87 million users worldwide. This result is calculated the average application downloads from the AppStore and Google Play Store.

TikTok's income also skyrocketed 8.3 times compared to June 2019. This means that as of June 2020 TikTok scored an income of 95.7 million US dollars or if converted to the current exchange rate, TikTok's total income reached Rp1.3 trillion.

Of the total number of downloads that TikTok received in June, it is known that 18.8 percent of TikTok's most downloads come from India. Then 8.7 percent of users from the United States.

Under TikTok, the video conferencing platform Zoom also recorded the highest revenue return during the COVID-19 pandemic. Zoom itself managed to collect 94.6 million downloads, up 43 times from June last year.

Meanwhile, Facebook had to settle for third place, as the highest earning non-game application in June. Revenue amounted to 73 million US dollars, or around Rp1 trillion, with the average number of applications downloaded increasing 12 percent from the previous month.

SensorTower survey results

Backlash TikTok Popularity

As the TikTok application is still growing rapidly despite suspicions from the US and several other countries that accuse data collection. These concerns over privacy and data security came when TikTok's parent company Bytedance was in China.

Even US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his government was considering banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok. There is concern that this could threaten national security, especially data on TikTok users in the US.

"Americans should only use TikTok if you want your personal information to be in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party," Pompeo said as quoted by ABC News, Thursday, July 9.

There is good reason to be concerned about the business model that TikTok is running, including other social media platforms. Where TikTok directly collects a lot of information without the user being aware of it.

Collecting information such as name, date of birth, e-mail and telephone number, so the standard for verifying the identity of its users. This includes collecting information from uploaded photos and video content created by TikTok users.

"Like any other app, it's going to harvest your likes and dislikes, and every behavioral memo on the platform. It lifts data. But so is Facebook, and Instagram," said Swinburne University lecturer, Dr Belinda Barnet.

Not only that, TikTok also collects data through surveys by summarizing additional details about its users to personalize content and ads. This accusation became increasingly common when Apple's privacy features in iOS 14 caught TikTok secretly reading its user's clipboard.

Allegations of sharing information and data on TikTok users with the Chinese Communist party have also been widely discussed. Even though TikTok representatives in the US and Australia have denied allegations of sharing data with the Chinese government.

"The data collection practices of all major technology companies need regulation, not just TikTok practices. TikTok's ownership in China is what differentiates it from other US-owned technology companies," Barnet said.