Tiktok’s logo was all over the October Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, perhaps the region’s most important diplomatic get-together. Videos touted the social media platform’s ability to elevate creators, while an exhibition booth played a constant stream of short videos. TikTok executives onstage highlighted the billions of dollars its platform generates in Asia and promised to build “a trusted digital ecosystem.” Delegates got a TikTok-branded baseball cap as part of their swag bag. TikTok creators, at a private lunch on the shores of Gyeongju’s Bomun Lake, praised the platform for bringing them to an audience of hundreds of millions.
“I found my TikTok life when I became a single parent…I had to find ways to support my son,” Ryssi Avila, a Filipino singer who went viral on TikTok, told the assembled delegates. “TikTok made everything easier…It became a lifeline.”
