TikTok Shares Total Number of US Users For the First Time

For the first time since the app has been available in the US, TikTok reveals its total number of active daily and monthly users.

TikTok’s status as the most downloaded social media app has been well documented, but it’s never been known how many people are using the app every day.

Now, TikTok’s user numbers have been shared in documents filed as part of a lawsuit against the US government.

The lawsuit has been filed in response to proposed ban that is scheduled to come into effect next month.

Here’s more on what is stated in the lawsuit filing.

100 Million Active Users

TikTok is used by 100 million users in the US every month, and 50 million users every day.

Also revealed in the filing is TikTok’s user growth over time, showing it’s grown 800% since January 2018.

These are some milestones related to TikTok’s user growth:

• 11 million monthly US users in 2018
• 27 million monthly US users in 2019
• 91 million monthly US users in June 2020

That brings us to today’s total of 100 million monthly active users in the US.

Global Numbers

To date, TikTok has been downloaded 2 billion times globally.

As of July 2020, there 700 million monthly active users around the world.

Here are some global user growth milestones:

• 54 million monthly active users in January 2018
• 271 million monthly active users in December 2018
• 507 million monthly active users in December 2019

To add some context to these numbers, Facebook is currently sitting at 2.7 billion global monthly active users.

So TikTok is still well behind Facebook in terms of the number of people logging in and using it every day.

Although, if TikTok maintains its exponential growth, it could conceivably catch up within a few years.

That could all come to a halt if TikTok ends up being banned in the United States, which is exactly what will happen if the Trump administration follows through on its executive order.

The Trump administration considers TikTok a national security risk because parent company, ByteDance, is based in China.

There’s a concern that ByteDance may using the US version of TikTok to collect data on United States citizens.

TikTok is fighting the proposed ban saying the company has been denied due process.

“We do not take suing the government lightly, however we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees.

With the Executive Order threatening to bring a ban on our US operations — eliminating the creation of 10,000 American jobs and irreparably harming the millions of Americans who turn to this app for entertainment, connection and legitimate livelihoods that are vital especially during the pandemic — we simply have no choice.”

In the event that TikTok is not able to successfully fight the ban, it may end up being sold to either Microsoft or Oracle.

The ban of TikTok in the US is set to take place on September 15, according to an executive order signed by Trump.

TikTok contends that it is not a security risk, saying measures are taken to protect US user data by storing it outside of China.

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Sources: CNBC, TikTok