TikTok Boom Quotes

“What Biden realises that Trump didn’t – and what this book tries to explain – is that TikTok fits into a wider story of tech supremacy between the United States and China. Whoever wins this battle wins the future.”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App

“if you want to be a global company, you’re serving different consumers with different cultural tastes.”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App

“Charli D’Amelio won’t appear one morning, put down her Dunkin’ coffee, and start proselytising about Mao’s Little Red Book (at least not until college, anyway). You aren’t going to find yourselves subject to a call from Chinese Communist Party members asking you to spy for them because you’re spending more time than most on TikTok. Those fears can be put to bed.”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App

“If these platforms are coded by kids who live in multi-dorm rooms in China, they’re going to be coding in different norms,’ the politician says. “It’s complicated” doesn’t really matter. What does matter is concepts of what it means to be private, what does private space mean, and what is the state or the company allowed to know.”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App

“Waterworth believed that Instagram Reels would struggle to emulate TikTok’s dynamism. ‘You can’t copy the creative spirit that is at the heart of our community, and so we feel really confident and excited about where TikTok is going, and other people can focus on whatever they want to do.”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App

“(The app’s AI is seen as so powerful that in public-facing interviews between staff, employees are asked to describe the types of videos they encounter on their For You page as a way of learning more about the person.)”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App

“In that sense, Vine was unlucky: its popularity coincided with an era in which social media wasn’t the established entertainment platform. Traditional media snootily dismissed any stars of the small screen then with the moniker ‘e-celebrities’ or ‘social media stars.”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App

“YouTube attained two billion monthly active users after 15 years of existence, and Facebook took 13 years. If TikTok keeps its current trajectory, it will probably reach that level in a quarter of the time.”
― Chris Stokel-Walker, TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App