There's a code phrase on TikTok called "cute winter boots," but what does it mean and why are users making videos about it?

In a historic development, Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok has become the center of a bipartisan bill to ban the app nationwide in the name of national security. Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a prominent scholar in the study of state censorship,

It took only about a day for Chinese censors to crack down on posts from Americans who had flooded onto the Chinese social-media app Xiaohongshu. American TikTok users started downloading Xiaohongshu,

President Donald Trump's flurry of day-one actions included a reprieve for TikTok, the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an order on social media "censorship," a declaration of an energy emergency, and reversal of a Biden order on artificial intelligence.

After a US law temporarily forced Americans to find a new home for their short-video habit, TikTok clone Likee saw a surge in usage.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok’s CEO Shou ZI Chew both attended the inauguration, alongside former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the first tech boss to hitch his wagon to Trump.

TikTok isn’t the villain here. It’s a symptom of a much larger issue: the lack of clear, enforceable rules for data privacy and security. Instead of banning the app, the government should focus on fixing the system.

China’s internet companies and their hard-working, resourceful professionals make world-class products, in spite of censorship and malign neglect by Beijing.

Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™. Last week, the Chinese social app RedNote grew in popularity as a potential TikTok replacement. As TikTok users waited for the Supreme Court to rule on the ban,

After nearly three hours of Supreme Court arguments Friday morning, Americans are one step closer to learning whether a TikTok ban will take effect in nine days.

Is TikTok’s time up? The popular video platform finds itself at the center of yet another whirlwind of controversy.