TikTok is the world’s fastest-growing – and goofiest – digital platform, but should we fear it?

In November last year, an internet video made by a 17-year-old American went viral. The video was less than a minute long and began with its creator, Feroza Aziz, looking directly into the camera and talking viewers through a makeup tutorial. ‘The first thing you need to do is grab your lash curler. Curl your lashes, obviously. Then you’re going to put them down and use your phone… to search up what’s happening in China, how they’re getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there, separating families from each other, kidnapping them, murdering them, raping them, forcing them to eat pork, forcing them to drink, forcing them to convert.’

The words gush out not in fiery anger but in the slightly bored instructional tones of all makeup tutorials, while she continues to curl her lashes. To end, Aziz flashes a cutesy, knowing smile: ‘Please be aware. Please spread awareness and, yeah, so, you can grab your lash curler again…’ As subversive political messaging goes, it was a masterpiece. One of the first truly consequential videos to be made using TikTok, the world’s fastest-growing — and at its best most creative — digital platform.

Though it launched only two years ago, TikTok already has more users than Twitter and Snapchat combined. It hit that all-important one billion mark last year, while its rivals spent triple the time reaching the same figure. Its parent group, the Beijing-based ByteDance, is estimated to be worth $75 billion, the highest-valued tech startup to date. TikTok is also the first Chinese-owned platform to become the most downloaded app in America, and what its dominance might mean for the future of the internet, entertainment, music and society are questions that people are increasingly interested in and worried about.

Shortly after Aziz posted her video about the maltreatment of the Uighur Muslims, TikTok temporarily took down her account.