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TikTok Music-Video App Gets National Security Review
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The U.S. government has launched a national security review of the popular music-video app TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance Inc., according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Beijing-based ByteDance bought Musical.ly two years ago for almost $1 billion to merge it with TikTok. Musical.ly, based in Shanghai and California and a fast-growing hit in the U.S. at the time, was seen as a way for the Chinese company to expand abroad and capitalize on an increasing appetite for short video. TikTok has since become wildly popular, one of the few Chinese internet companies to catch on in the U.S., and is one of the most-downloaded apps.