Chinese people are increasingly using TikTok’s sister app as a way to complain about products and are finding it a powerful asset.
Our research shows that Douyin, which is produced by ByteDance the same company that owns TikTok, has become influential in offering Chinese people a way of putting consumer pressure on companies.
This short-video platform has the largest number of users in China (over 730 million at the end of 2022). According to Douyin, its users range from teachers based in rural China who record the impoverished living conditions that many local children face, to laid-off Chinese workers making a living live streaming.
