Snap CEO: TikTok’s Success Due to ‘Billions And Billions of Dollars’ Spent by Communist China

Speaking at the Code Conference in Los Angeles, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel gave his thoughts on how China-owned TikTok has dominated the online video market in such a short space of time. Spiegel explained how Communist China has overpowered social media through seemingly unlimited spending, saying: “What nobody had anticipated in the United States was the level of investment that ByteDance made into the U.S. market, and of course in Europe, because it was just something that was unimaginable — no startup could afford to invest billions and billions and billions of dollars in user acquisition like that around the world.”

Forbes reports that speaking at the Code Conference in Los Angeles, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel discussed the rise of the Chinese-owned app TikTok and its domination of the online short-form video content space. Scott Galloway, co-host of the Pivot podcast and a marketing professor at NYU Stern, said to Spiegel: “It just feels like they are kicking the shit out of everybody.”

Spiegel noted that TikTok has dominated the online video content space due to the massive amount of money backing the company and its corporate parent, ByteDance. “The reason why this has been so challenging for companies to respond to in the United States, but also around the world, is the scale of TikTok’s investment,” Spiegel said.

“What nobody had anticipated in the United States was the level of investment that ByteDance made into the U.S. market, and of course in Europe, because it was just something that was unimaginable — no startup could afford to invest billions and billions and billions of dollars in user acquisition like that around the world,” Spiegel added. “It was a totally different strategy than any technology company had expected before because it wasn’t an innovation-led strategy; it was really about subsidizing large-scale user acquisition.”

Spiegel stated that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm has become powerful due to the huge user base of the app. “TikTok got this great lead early on by really aggressively expanding, spending a huge amount of money to do that, so that people can train the algorithm and ultimately end up with a much more personalized feed that’s harder to get on a new service,” he explained.

Spiegel stated that Snap will attempt to compete with TikTok by focusing on connections with family and friends rather than strangers and other users.

TikTok’s algorithm has been blamed for a rise in destructive behaviors amongst American teens. A lawsuit filed in July claims that TikTok pushes violent videos on black teens more than white teens.

Breitbart News reported:

Bloomberg reports that a recently filed lawsuit alleges that China-owned TikTok’s algorithm purposefully steers violent content to black teens over white teens. The claim comes as part of a lawsuit over the death of a 14-year-old black girl named Englyn Roberts. The complaint further names Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance as defendants.

The lawsuit is the latest in a long line blaming social media companies for teens becoming addicted to their platforms and products. The parents of Englyn Roberts, who died in September 2020 approximately two weeks after she attempted to take her own life, allege that TikTok is aware of biases in its algorithm relating to race and socioeconomic status.

The complaint, which was filed on Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, claims that Roberts would not have seen and become addicted to harmful content that contributed to her death if not for TikTok’s biased algorithm.

Read more at Forbes here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan