Viral trends The app has spawned numerous
viral trends,
Internet celebrities, and music trends around the world. Duets, a feature that allows users to add their own video to an existing video with the original content's audio, have sparked many of these trends. Many stars got their start on Musical.ly, which merged with TikTok on 2 August 2018. These include
Loren Gray,
Baby Ariel,
Zach King,
Lisa and Lena,
Jacob Sartorius, and many others. Loren Gray remained the most-followed individual on TikTok until
Charli D'Amelio surpassed her on 25 March 2020. Gray's was the first TikTok account to reach 40 million followers on the platform. She was surpassed with 41.3 million followers. D'Amelio was the first to ever reach 50, 60, and 70 million followers. Charli D'Amelio remained the
most-followed individual on the platform until she was surpassed by
Khaby Lame on 23 June 2022. Other creators rose to fame after the platform merged with musical.ly on 2 August 2018. TikTok also played a major part in making "
Old Town Road" by
Lil Nas X one of the biggest songs of 2019 and the longest-running number-one song in the history of the US
Billboard Hot 100. TikTok has allowed many music artists to gain a wider audience, often including foreign fans. For example, despite never having toured in Asia, the band
Fitz and the Tantrums developed a large following in South Korea following the widespread popularity of their 2016 song "
HandClap" on the platform. "Any Song" by R&B and rap artist
Zico became number one on the Korean music charts due to the popularity of the #anysongchallenge, where users dance to the choreography of the song. The platform has also launched many songs that failed to garner initial commercial success into
sleeper hits, particularly since the outbreak of the
COVID-19 pandemic. However, it has received criticism for not paying royalties to artists whose music is used on the platform. Classic stars are able to connect with younger audiences born decades after a musician's first debut and across traditional genres. In 2020,
Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" was used in a skating video and a recreation by
Mick Fleetwood. The song re-entered
Billboard Hot 100 after 43 years and topped Apple Music. In 2022,
Kate Bush's "
Running Up That Hill" went viral among fans of
Stranger Things, topping the UK singles chart 37 years after its original release. In 2023
Kylie Minogue's "
Padam Padam" entered the Radio 1 playlist after being shared by
Gen Z, even though many youth radio stations had refused to play it. Other older artists with strong engagement on TikTok include
Elton John and
Rod Stewart. In Japan, artists from the 1970s to 1990s, such as
Kohmi Hirose,
Yōko Oginome,
Akina Nakamori,
Seiko Matsuda,
Momoe Yamaguchi and
Saki Kubota, have become popular on TikTok during the Showa (and early Heisei)
retro boom. In June 2020, TikTok users and
K-pop fans "claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets" for
Donald Trump's
campaign rally in
Tulsa, Oklahoma through communication on TikTok, contributing to "rows of empty seats" at the event. Later, in October 2020, an organization called
TikTok for Biden was created to support then-presidential candidate
Joe Biden. After the election, the organization was renamed to
Gen-Z for Change. On 10 August 2020, Emily Jacobssen wrote and sang "Ode to Remy", a song praising the
protagonist from
Pixar's 2007
computer-animated film Ratatouille. The song rose to popularity when musician Daniel Mertzlufft composed a backing track to the song. In response, began creating a "crowdsourced" project called
Ratatouille the Musical. Since Mertzlufft's video, many new elements including costume design, additional songs, and a
playbill have been created. On 1 January 2021, a full one-hour virtual presentation of
Ratatouille the Musical premiered on
TodayTix. It starred
Titus Burgess as Remy,
Wayne Brady as Django,
Adam Lambert as Emile,
Kevin Chamberlin as Gusteau,
Andrew Barth Feldman as Linguini,
Ashley Park as Colette,
Priscilla Lopez as Mabel,
Mary Testa as Skinner, and
André De Shields as Ego. A viral TikTok trend known as "
devious licks" involves students vandalizing or stealing school property and posting videos of the action on the platform. The trend has led to increasing school vandalism and subsequent measures taken by some schools to prevent damage. Some students have been arrested for participating in the trend. TikTok has taken measures to remove and prevent access to content displaying the trend. Another TikTok trend known as the
Kia Challenge involves users stealing certain models of
Kia and
Hyundai cars manufactured without
immobilizers, which was a standard feature at the time, between 2010 and 2021. As of February 2023, it had resulted in at least 14 crashes and eight deaths according to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In May, Kia and Hyundai settled a $200-million class-action lawsuit by agreeing to provide software updates to affected vehicles and over 26,000 steering wheel locks. In 2023, a trend emerged where streamers acted as if they were video-game characters following prompts from their viewers. On Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, some celebrities who had garnered large followings as of August 2019 include
Dilraba Dilmurat,
Angelababy,
Luo Zhixiang,
Ouyang Nana, and
Pan Changjiang. In the
2022 FIFA World Cup, a Qatari teenage royal became an Internet celebrity after his angry expressions were recorded in Qatar's opening match loss to Ecuador; he amassed more than 15 million followers in less than a week after creating a Douyin account. On Douyin, viral memes and parodies of
North Korea’s tightly choreographed state propaganda such as “general’s dance” or “You came from Dandong” amassed millions of views in 2024. The memes have also spilled offline. In
Dandong, visitors have filmed themselves reenacting exaggerated greeting gestures toward the
Yalu River, set to the same soundtracks popularized on Douyin.
Food and recipes Fashion and body size "Midsize" fashion gained greater exposure on TikTok after many creators opened up about not able to find clothing sizes that fit them well. Women's apparel can roughly be divided into petite, straight, and plus sizes, leaving gaps in between. Realistic videos about how differently pieces of garment fit on a model compared to how they fit on a typical consumer resonated with many who had believed that they were alone in their struggle.
Cosmetic surgery Content promoting
cosmetic surgery is popular on TikTok and has spawned several viral trends on the platform. In December 2021,
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the journal of the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons, published an article about the popularity of some plastic surgeons on TikTok. In the article, it was noted that plastic surgeons were some of the earliest adopters of social media in the medical field and many had been recognized as influencers on the platform. The article published stats about the most popular plastic surgeons on TikTok up to February 2021 and at the time, five different plastic surgeons had surpassed 1 million followers on the platform. In 2021, it was reported that a trend known as the #NoseJobCheck trend was going viral on TikTok. TikTok content creators used a specific audio on their videos while showing how their noses looked before and after having their
rhinoplasty surgeries. By January 2021, the hashtag #nosejob had accumulated 1.6 billion views, #nosejobcheck had accumulated 1 billion views, and the audio used in the #NoseJobCheck trend had been used in 120,000 videos. In 2020, Charli D'Amelio, the most-followed person on TikTok at the time, also made a #NoseJobCheck video to show the results of her surgery to repair a broken nose. In April 2022,
NBC News reported that surgeons were giving influencers on the platform discounted or free cosmetic surgeries in order to advertise the procedures to their audiences. They also reported that facilities that offered these surgeries were also posting about them on TikTok. TikTok has banned the advertising of cosmetic surgeries on the platform but cosmetic surgeons are still able to reach large audiences using unpaid photo and video posts. NBC reported that videos using the hashtags '#plasticsurgery' and '#lipfiller' had amassed a combined 26 billion views on the platform. In December 2022, it was reported that a
cosmetic surgery procedure known as
buccal fat removal was going viral on the platform. The procedure involves surgically removing fat from the cheeks in order to give the face a slimmer and more chiseled appearance. Videos using hashtags related to buccal fat removal had collectively amassed over 180 million views. Some TikTok users criticized the trend for promoting an unobtainable beauty standard.
Film criticism A significant number of users on TikTok, such as
Juju Green, create content surrounding
film criticism and
easter eggs. However, as reported by
The New York Times, these people often do not see themselves necessarily as film critics. These creators would often attend
red carpet premieres of movies and interview the celebrities in attendance, which was the subject of significant debate as some considered the questions the creators asked to be disrespectful. By 2022, TikTok released a Showbiz List, highlighting individuals who were having a larger impact on the film industry. During the
2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, such influencers were told that they would be denied future entry into the union if they partnered with struck studios. This led many creators to stop creating new content which they were not already contractually obligated to create. Creators who posted saying that they would not be changing their content, such as Green, were met with significant criticism.
STEM feed In March 2023, TikTok introduced a dedicated feed for
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) content. It works with Common Sense Networks to check for safety and age appropriateness and with the
Poynter Institute for reliability of information.
Heating In January 2023,
Forbes reported that a "heating" tool allows TikTok to manually promote certain videos, comprising 1–2% of daily views. The practice began as a way to grow and diversify content and influencers that were not automatically picked up by the recommendation algorithm. It was also used to promote brands, artists, and NGOs, such as the
FIFA World Cup and Taylor Swift. However, some employees have abused it to promote their own accounts or those of their spouses, while others have felt that their guidelines leave too much room for discretion. TikTok said only a few individuals can approve heating in the US and the promoted videos take up less than 0.002% of user feeds. To address concerns of Chinese influence, the company is negotiating with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) such that future heating could only be performed by vetted security personnel in the US and the process would be audited by third-parties such as Oracle.
Censorship and moderation TikTok's and Douyin's censorship policies have been criticized as non-transparent. Internal guidelines against the promotion of violence, separatism, and "demonization of countries" could be used to prohibit content related to the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre,
Falun Gong,
human rights in Tibet, Taiwan, Chechnya, Northern Ireland, the
Cambodian genocide, the
1998 Indonesian riots,
Kurdish nationalism, ethnic conflicts between blacks and whites, or between different Islamic sects. A more specific list banned criticisms against world leaders, including past and present ones from Russia, the United States, Japan, North and South Korea, India, Indonesia, and Turkey. In 2019,
The Guardian reported that TikTok had censored videos of topics not favored by the Chinese government. Other human rights activists have also said that their TikTok videos discussing human rights violations of the Uyghurs have been taken down. TikTok moderators were instructed to suppress posts from "For You" recommendations if the users shown were deemed "too ugly, poor, or disabled". The consumption of alcohol, full or partial nudity,
LGBT, and
intersex contents were restricted even in places where they are legal. TikTok has since apologized and instituted a ban against anti-LGBTQ ideology, but censorship continues on Douyin due to regulations in China. Douyin guidelines also forbid live broadcasting by unregistered foreigners, "feudal superstition", "money worship", smoking and drinking,
competitive eating by the "already obese", "toxic"
slime, "pornographic"
ASMR such as ear-licking, and female anchors wearing revealing clothes. A March 2021 study by the Citizen Lab found that TikTok did not censor searches politically but was inconclusive about whether posts are. A 2023 paper by the Internet Governance Project at Georgia Institute of Technology concluded that TikTok is "not exporting censorship, either directly by blocking material, or indirectly via its recommendation algorithm." After increased scrutiny, TikTok said it is granting some outside experts access to the platform's anonymized data sets and protocols, including filters, keywords, criteria for heating, and source code. A December 2023 study by the
Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) found a "strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government." According to its director, the NCRI is an independent non-profit research organization funded by
Rutgers University, the British government, and private donors. TikTok subsequently restricted the number of hashtags that can be searched under its Creative Center, saying it was "misused to draw inaccurate conclusions". A historian from the
Cato Institute said that there were "basic errors" in the Rutgers University study and criticized the uncritical news coverage that followed. The study compares data from before TikTok even existed to show the app has fewer hashtags about historically sensitive topics, distorting the findings. By searching for four keywords—Uyghur, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Tiananmen, the researchers found that TikTok returned a higher percentage of positive, neutral, or irrelevant content related to
human rights in China. For example, more than 25% of results for "Tiananmen" on TikTok were considered pro-China by the researchers, compared to 16% on Instagram and 8% on YouTube. In other cases, however, Instagram and YouTube showed higher rates of pro-China content than TikTok. For example, 50% of searches about "Uyghur" and "Xinjiang" on YouTube were considered positive, compared to less than 25% on TikTok. The researchers said this is because some YouTube accounts are linked to state actors. As TikTok has gained popularity among young children, and the popularity of extremist and hateful content is growing, calls for tighter restrictions on their flexible boundaries have been made. TikTok has since released tougher parental controls to filter out inappropriate content and to ensure they can provide sufficient protection and security. In October 2019, TikTok removed about two dozen accounts that were responsible for posting
ISIL propaganda and execution videos on the app. In Malaysia, TikTok is used by some users to engage in hate speech against race and religion especially mentioning the
13 May incident after the
2022 election. TikTok responded by taking down videos with content that violated their community guidelines. In March 2023,
The Jewish Chronicle reported that TikTok still hosted videos that promoted the
neo-Nazi propaganda film
Europa: The Last Battle, despite having been alerted to the issue four months prior. TikTok said it removed and would continue to remove the content and associated accounts and has blocked the search term as well. In July 2024, the
Institute for Strategic Dialogue reported that an organized neo-Nazi TikTok network promoting neo-Nazi propaganda, including
Europa: The Last Battle, was receiving millions of views and was having its content promoted by TikTok's algorithm. In September 2024,
Sky News reported that clips of
Adolf Hitler's speeches with added music were attracting high levels of engagement on TikTok. Although they were removed by TikTok after the report, mixing audio remains an effective way to evade content moderation on many platforms. In July 2025,
Media Matters reported that Google's
Veo 3 text-to-video model for AI-generated content is being used to generate large numbers of dehumanizing and violent videos with racist and antisemitic tropes which are being shared on TikTok.
Graphic content In June 2021, TikTok made an apology after a
shock video, showing a girl dancing which then cuts to a graphic scene of a man being beheaded by a saw, went viral. The video has been put on TikTok's blacklist, which detects it before being uploaded. TikTok has previously worked to remove graphic content from its platform, including a suicide video that circulated in September 2020, which had appeared among the recommended clips of TikTok's For You section.
Misinformation TikTok has banned
Holocaust denial, but other conspiracy theories have become popular on the platform, such as
Pizzagate and
QAnon (two conspiracy theories popular among the US
alt-right) whose hashtags reached almost 80 million views and 50 million views respectively by June 2020. The platform has also been used to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic, such as clips from
Plandemic. In January 2020, left-leaning media watchdog
Media Matters for America said that TikTok hosted
misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic despite a recent policy against misinformation. In April 2020, the government of India asked TikTok to remove users posting misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. There were also multiple conspiracy theories that the government is involved with the spread of the pandemic. It reported that in the second half of 2020, over 340,000 videos in the US about election misinformation and 50,000 videos of COVID-19 misinformation were removed. To combat misinformation in the 2022 midterm election in the US, TikTok announced a midterms Elections Center available in-app to users in 40 different languages. TikTok partnered with the
National Association of Secretaries of State to give accurate local information to users. In September 2022,
NewsGuard Technologies reported that among the TikTok searches it had conducted and analyzed from the US, 19.4% surfaced misinformation such as questionable or harmful content about
COVID-19 vaccines, homemade remedies, the
2020 US elections, the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, the
Robb Elementary School shooting, and abortion. NewsGuard suggested that in contrast, results from
Google were of higher quality.
Mashable's own test from Australia found innocuous results after searching for "getting my COVID vaccine" but suggestions such as "climate change is a myth" after typing in "climate change". According to an investigation published in September 2025 by
Moldovan newspaper
Ziarul de Gardă, before the
2025 Moldovan parliamentary election, hundreds of accounts with false identities were created to spread
Russian propaganda in TikTok and Facebook. That month,
Bloomberg reported, citing European officials and documents of undisclosed origin, that Russia had prepared a plan to interfere in the election, which would have included a
disinformation campaign in both
Romanian and
Russian on Facebook,
Telegram and TikTok. In the run-up to the election, TikTok removed over 134,000 fake accounts, almost 2 million fake
followers, 1,173 accounts impersonating Moldovan officials and over 9,300 videos that violated rules on civic integrity, disinformation and
AI content generation; prevented 2.9 million fake
likes and 1.8 million fake follow requests, also blocking the creation of over 268,000
spam accounts; and dismantled five coordinated networks with at least 7,593 accounts that "promoted pro-Russian politicians and attempted to discredit the current government". Furthermore, TikTok developed an in-app Electoral Center in partnership with the
Central Electoral Commission of Moldova and worked with Reuters and the STOP FALS! Moldovan organization to fight, identify and educate about disinformation.
Russian invasion of Ukraine As of 2022, TikTok is the 10th most popular app in Russia. After a new set of
Russian war censorship laws was installed in March 2022, the company announced a series of restrictions on Russian and non-Russian posts and livestreams.
Tracking Exposed, a user data rights group, learned of what was likely a technical glitch that became exploited by pro-Russia posters. It stated that although this and other loopholes were patched by TikTok before the end of March, the initial failure to correctly implement the restrictions, in addition to the effects from Kremlin's "fake news" laws, contributed to the formation of a "splInternet ... dominated by pro-war content" in Russia. In December 2023,
BBC News reported that it had discovered nearly 800 fake TikTok accounts promoting Russian propaganda and disinformation. TikTok's own investigation found more than 12,000 fake accounts, including ones using additional languages such as English and Italian. In September 2024, TikTok removed the accounts of Russian state media outlets
RT and
Sputnik.
Feminism The growth of popularity and access to TikTok has contributed to a growth in popularity of
digital feminist movements and discourse originating from the platform. Digital spaces like TikTok enable marginalized communities and activists, such as feminists, to feel safer and have an easier place to engage in discussion and dialogue or build an identity which might otherwise be impossible due to circumstances. The momentum of digital feminist movements through platforms like TikTok have additionally encouraged many social media agents and marketing campaigns around the world to adopt some degree of feminism as a part of their online image or personal brand. TikTok's unique platform organization, of spontaneous peer-peer information sharing, has enabled its utilization for community-engaged, digital knowledge mobilization and exchange between social justice communities. However inversely enabled by the platform's organic potential, both feminist challenges and anti-feminist reinforcement of dominant social, hierarchical, and gender values are widespread and instigated through TikTok, and content labeled as anti-feminist is itself popularized on TikTok. == Usage ==