好文要文 TikTok的成功与宿命：夹在中美之间的时代产物How TikTok Became a Diplomatic CrisisALEX W. PALMER2022年12月27日

TikTok的成功与宿命：夹在中美之间的时代产物How TikTok Became a Diplomatic CrisisALEX W. PALMER2022年12月27日 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO DELCANOn March 10, two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House convened a Zoom call with 30 prominent TikTok creators. Jen Psaki, then the White House press secretary, and members of the National Security Council staff briefed the creators, who together had tens of millions of followers, on the latest news from the conflict and the White House’s goals and priorities. The meeting followed a similar effort the previous summer, in which the White House recruited dozens of TikTokers to help encourage young people to get vaccinated against Covid. 3月10日，即俄罗斯入侵乌克兰两周后，白宫与30名知名TikTok创作者开了一次Zoom会议。当时的白宫新闻秘书珍·萨基和国家安全委员会的工作人员向这些粉丝数以千万计的创作者简要介绍了冲突的最新进展，以及白宫的目标和优先事项。白宫在去年夏天也做过类似的工作，招募了数十名TikTok用户，让他们去鼓励年轻群体接种新冠疫苗。 The app had only become more popular in the intervening months. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest,” the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, told the assembled group. “So we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source.” Yet at the same time, the Biden administration was more than a year into negotiations with ByteDance, the Chinese company that created and owns TikTok, about national security concerns surrounding the app. In fact, the White House staff members who organized and briefed the TikTok creators were barred from downloading the app on their work phones. 在此期间，这款应用的人气越来越高。“我们认识到，这是美国公众了解最新情况的一个至关重要的途径，”白宫数字战略负责人罗伯·弗莱厄蒂向与会者表示。“所以我们希望确保你们能得到有权威来源的最新信息。”但与此同时，拜登政府就围绕该应用的国家安全问题已经和创立并拥有TikTok的中国公司字节跳动进行了一年多的谈判。事实上，组织并向TikTok创作者做介绍的白宫工作人员是不允许在工作手机上下载该应用的。 The administration’s contradictory approach to TikTok — its embrace of the app as a vital conduit to the public, and its fear of the app as a potential tool of foreign influence — is perhaps a fitting response to the utterly unique problem that TikTok poses. Seemingly overnight, TikTok has managed to remake American culture both low and high, from media and music to memes and celebrity, in its own image. TikTok turned Olivia Rodrigo into a household name and propelled the author Colleen Hoover to the top of the best-seller list, with more copies sold this year than the Bible. TikTok coined “quiet quitting,” one of the hallmark phrases of 2022, and introduced a whole new dialect of algospeak — “seggs,” “unalive,” “le dollar bean” — that is now spreading across pop culture. Corporations and brands, from Goldfish crackers to Prada, have redirected billions of dollars worth of advertising to the platform in recognition of its all-encompassing reach, which can, at seemingly any moment, turn even a decades-old product into a must-have item. Last year, TikTok had more site visits than Google, and more watch minutes in the United States than YouTube. Facebook took almost nine years to reach one billion users; TikTok did it in five. 一方面接受该应用，视之为接触公众的重要渠道，另一方面又担心它会成为外国施加影响的潜在工具，拜登政府对TikTok的矛盾态度，或许恰好反映了TikTok带来的独特难题。TikTok似乎在一夜之间就以其自身为形重塑了美国文化，从低俗到高雅，从媒体到音乐，再到米姆和明星，无所不包。TikTok让奥利维亚·罗德里戈家喻户晓，将作家科琳·胡佛推上了畅销书榜首，今年的销量比《圣经》还多。TikTok开创了“躺平”(quiet quitting)，这是2022年的年度流行语之一；它还发明了一套全新的算法黑话——“seggs”（性爱）、“unalive”（死亡）、“le dollar bean”（女同性恋）——在流行文化中蔓延。从金鱼饼干到Prada，企业和品牌在这一平台投放了数以十亿计美元的广告，证明了其用户范围无所不包，似乎随时都能将一件几十年前的产品变成必备单品。去年，TikTok的网站访问量超过了谷歌，美国用户的观看时长也超过了YouTube。Facebook用了近九年时间用户数才达到10亿，TikTok只用了五年。 The app’s extraordinary success is made even more remarkable by the fact that it is a product of America’s greatest geopolitical rival. Despite decades of trying, no Chinese company has ever conquered American society like TikTok. It’s difficult to imagine a Russian or Iranian company — or, increasingly, even another Chinese company — pulling off a similar feat. TikTok’s provenance has stoked persistent and longstanding worries about its vulnerability to exploitation and manipulation by the Chinese government. Over the last year in particular, TikTok has faced an unceasing stream of bad press, with each week seeming to bring a fresh revelation about the company’s questionable data practices and spotty internal safeguards. In just the last six months, TikTok and ByteDance have been accused of lying about the access of China-based employees to American user data, using a news app to push pro-Beijing content abroad and allowing Chinese state media accounts to run unchecked and unlabeled as they criticized the American political process. 这款应用是美国最大地缘政治对手的产品，这一事实也让它的巨大成功更加意义非凡。尽管付出了数十年的努力，但没有任何一家中国企业能像TikTok那样令美国社会趋之若鹜。很难想象俄罗斯或伊朗的企业——或者哪怕是另一家中国企业——取得类似的成绩。TikTok的出身引发了长久以来始终存在的担忧，即它可能很容易就被中国政府利用和操纵。特别是在过去一年，关于TikTok的负面报道源源不断，似乎每周都有揭露该公司数据操作可疑和内部安全措施漏洞百出的新爆料。就在过去半年里，TikTok和字节跳动被指控在中国员工访问美国用户数据的问题上撒谎，它利用一个新闻应用在海外推动亲北京内容的传播，并允许中国官媒帐号运营不受审查和标记，让其大肆批判美国的政治进程。 If TikTok’s popularity has thus far provided it some insulation against government action, the app’s time may be running out. In November, Brendan Carr, a commissioner of the F.C.C., said it should be banned outright. Senator Mark Warner, co-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said of a ban, “The sooner we bite the bullet, the better.” Christopher Wray, director of the F.B.I., told Congress he was “extremely concerned” about TikTok’s operations in the United States. Earlier this month, Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation that would effectively prevent TikTok from operating in the United States by banning all apps “subject to substantial influence” by China, Russia and other foreign adversaries. 如果说到目前为止TikTok都能凭借其人气而在一定程度上免于美国政府的制裁，那现在，它的时间可能不多了。11月，联邦通讯委员会委员布伦丹·卡尔表示应该直接封禁TikTok。参议院情报委员会联合主席马克·沃纳参议员谈到封禁行动时表示，“长痛不如短痛。”联邦调查局局长克里斯托弗·雷告诉国会，他对TikTok在美国的运营“极为担忧”。本月早些时候，参议员马可·卢比奥提出一项立法，通过禁用所有受中国、俄罗斯等外国敌对势力“严重影响”的应用，实际上阻止TikTok在美国的运营。 The Biden administration, meanwhile, is said to be nearing a deal with TikTok. Speaking at a conference of tech leaders, Kemba Walden, the principal deputy national cyber director, said that the White House had not made any final decision on a ban, but voiced support for “any measure that will raise security.” Maryland, South Dakota, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Alabama and Utah have already banned use of the app on state devices. A bill passed by the U.S. Senate last week would do the same at the federal level. The military has also barred the app from government devices. 另一方面，据称拜登政府即将与TikTok达成一项协议。国家网络第一副总监肯巴·沃尔登在一次技术领袖会议上表示，白宫尚未就封禁做出任何最终决定，但表示支持“任何提升安全水平的措施”。马里兰州、南达科他州、南卡罗来纳州、内布拉斯加州、得克萨斯州、阿拉巴马州和犹他州已经禁止在州府设备上使用这款应用。美国参议院上周通过的一项法案将在联邦层面采取同样的措施。军方也禁止政府设备使用该应用。 What often goes unnoticed in these conversations is that TikTok is as much a product of the West as it is of China. ByteDance owes its very existence to the intermingling of ideas, capital and people that defined the last five decades of U.S.-China engagement. The United States sought to woo China with the appeal of its model and the benefits of the existing international order, in the hope that a liberalized market economy would foster domestic political reform. At the same time, Beijing seemed eager to build up its own tech sector as an engine of economic growth and global soft power. The success of a product like TikTok was only the most visible example of a deeper tech symbiosis that once appeared inevitable. 这些讨论经常忽视的问题在于，TikTok既是中国的产物，也是西方的产物。字节跳动将其存在归功于思想、资本和人才的融合，是过去五十年间美中往来的象征。美国试图以自身制度和现存国际秩序的利益吸引中国，希望一个自由化的市场经济能促进该国国内的政治改革。但北京似乎渴望打造属于自己的技术产业，作为推动经济增长和全球软实力的引擎。TikTok这类产品的成功，只是曾经看似不明显的更深层技术共生关系最为明显的案例。 But now the world has changed. In the United States, being tough on China is one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement. And in this fraught geopolitical context, TikTok is considered a Trojan horse — for Chinese influence, for spying, or possibly both. In China, meanwhile, a broad crackdown has sought to rein in high-flying tech companies and their founders, out of fear that, with their influence, independence and popularity, they were becoming alternative power bases to the Chinese Communist Party. The campaign is only one part of a broader political and social chill that threatens to pull the country back to the days of Mao. TikTok itself is not available in China — users there must access a different ByteDance app, which follows Chinese government directives on censorship and propaganda. 但如今世界已然改变。在美国，对华强硬立场是两党能达成共识的少数领域之一。在这种令人担忧的地缘政治背景下，TikTok就像暗藏着中国影响力、间谍活动、抑或二者兼而有之的特洛伊木马。而在中国，雄心勃勃的科技企业及其创始人遭遇了大规模打压，影响力、独立性和声望正在将其变成能取代中共的政治势力基础，从而引发了担忧。这场运动只是更广泛的政治和社会寒潮的一部分，可能导致这个国家重回毛时代。TikTok本身在中国并不可用，那里的用户只能使用字节跳动的另一款遵循中国政府审查和宣传指示的应用。 Just a few years ago, the rise of ByteDance seemed like a harbinger of an era of Chinese app dominance. Indeed, it would be hard to find a company more self-consciously modeled, in both spirit and substance, on America’s tech giants. ByteDance’s founder internalized the mythos of Silicon Valley, taking to heart the idea, long promoted by Washington, that the American market was the ultimate prize, and that it welcomed any entrepreneur with the talent and ambition to succeed. But now, with walls going up on both sides of the Pacific, TikTok seems likely to be the last of its kind as well as the first. The company is caught in the middle between the old era and the new — too Chinese for America, too American for China. 就在几年前，字节跳动的崛起似乎预示着中国应用程序主导时代的到来。事实上，几乎没有哪家公司在精神和实质上比字节跳动更主动效仿美国的科技巨头。字节跳动的创始人将硅谷的神话内化，将华盛顿长期倡导的理念牢记在心，即美国市场是终极大奖，它欢迎任何有才能和雄心的企业家取得成功。但现在，随着太平洋两岸筑起围墙，TikTok似乎既是第一个，也是同类产品中的最后一个。这个公司夹在新旧时代的中间——对美国来说太中国化，对中国来说太美国化。 On Christmas Day in 2010, a short, bespectacled 27-year-old Chinese programmer named Zhang Yiming logged onto Douban, a Chinese hybrid of Rotten Tomatoes and Goodreads, to share his thoughts on a movie he had just watched. Zhang used his Douban account as a chronicle of his personal development, recording the books he wanted to read (“What Would Google Do?” “Catch-22” and “The Road to Serfdom”) and the movies he’d seen (“The Departed,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Inception”). The movie Zhang watched that Christmas was “The Social Network.” The movie was of particular interest to Zhang; he was only a year older than Mark Zuckerberg and, after several years spent bouncing between small start-ups and an unhappy stint at Microsoft, he had recently become a founder himself. Zhang’s company, 99fang, was a real estate search engine, but he had ambitions to build something bigger. The story of Zuckerberg and his ruthless climb to the top was both inspiration and warning. He gave it four out of five stars. 2010年圣诞节，一位戴着眼镜的矮个子中国程序员登上了豆瓣，那是27岁的张一鸣。豆瓣可以看做是中国版本的烂番茄网站和Goodreads的结合。他分享了对刚看过的一部电影的看法。张一鸣用他的豆瓣帐号作为他个人发展的编年史，记录了他想读的书（《谷歌会怎么做》[What Would Google Do?]、《第二十二条军规》[Catch-22]和《通往奴役之路》[The Road to Serfdom]）和他看过的电影（《无间道风云》[The Departed]、《心灵捕手》[Good Will Hunting]、《盗梦空间》[Inception]）。张一鸣在那年圣诞节看的电影是《社交网络》(The Social Network)。他对这部电影特别感兴趣。他只比马克·扎克伯格大一岁，此前在小型初创企业和微软的一份不开心的工作之间流转，最近自己也成为了一名创始人。张一鸣的公司是“99房”，一个房地产搜索引擎，但他有更大的抱负。扎克伯格的故事和他爬到顶端的义无反顾既是启迪也是警告。张一鸣给了这部电影五颗星中的四颗。 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO DELCANBorn in 1983 as the only son of a librarian and a nurse, Zhang came of age in a China flush with reform and newfound connections to the West. He moved to Tianjin for college, where he studied computer engineering. Zhang loved the freedom that technology offered and displayed a fondness for the West, politically as well as culturally. In 2009, when Chinese authorities blocked access to several websites, he took to his personal blog to voice his disapproval, according to a Wall Street Journal profile. “Go out and wear a T-shirt supporting Google,” he wrote. “If you block the internet, I’ll write what I want to say on my clothes.” 张一鸣生于1983年，是一名图书管理员和一名护士的独生子，他成长的时代正赶上中国改革开放并开始与西方建立联系。他到天津上大学，在那里学习计算机工程。张一鸣喜欢技术带来的自由，并在政治和文化上表现出对西方的喜爱。据《华尔街日报》报道，2009年，当中国当局屏蔽多个网站时，他在个人博客上表达了他的不满。“穿一件支持谷歌的T恤走出去，”他写道。“如果你封锁互联网，我会把我要说的话写在衣服上。” In 2011, smartphone shipments in China exceeded those in the United States for the first time. Riding the subway in Beijing, Zhang noticed that fewer and fewer people were reading newspapers; instead, they turned to their phones to pass the time. Zhang, a restless entrepreneur, developed an idea for a new company, one that would take advantage of the rise of the mobile internet and the birth of early artificial intelligence. “Just like Zuckerberg founded Facebook to connect people with people, and Travis founded Uber to connect people with cars,” he later said, he wanted to “connect people with information.” 2011年，中国智能手机出货量首次超过美国。在北京乘坐地铁时，张一鸣发现看报纸的人越来越少，相反，他们选择看手机来打发时间。作为一名不安分的创业者，张一鸣产生了创办一家公司的想法，利用移动互联网的兴起和刚出现的早期人工智能。“就像扎克伯格创立Facebook是为了将人与人联系起来，特拉维斯创立优步是为了将人与汽车联系起来，”他后来说，他想“将人与信息联系起来”。 The problem with a lot of the internet, Zhang believed, was the paralyzing number of options it presented to users. The website was “an outdated form of information organization,” he told an interviewer — messy and imprecise and filled with extraneous information. And the RSS feed was an unsuitable replacement, he wrote in a now-deleted blog post, because people were “forced to figure out ‘what I like and what I want’ themselves.” At one meeting with an investor, Zhang sketched out on a napkin his vision of a superior system, powered by artificial intelligence — it would be information finding users, rather than the other way around. In early 2012, he started ByteDance. 张一鸣认为，互联网上的很多问题在于它向用户提供的选项数量多到令人感到麻痹。他告诉一位采访者，网站是“一种过时的信息组织形式”——凌乱、不精确，充满了无关信息。他在一篇现已删除的博客文章中写道，RSS是一个不合适的替代品，因为人们“不得不自己弄清楚‘我喜欢什么和我想要什么’”。在与一位投资者的一次会面中，张一鸣在一张餐巾纸上勾勒出他对由人工智能驱动的高级系统的愿景——信息将会找到用户，而不是反过来。2012年初，他创办了字节跳动。 An early backer took Zhang to almost two dozen Chinese investors, but none of them were interested. Digital media was not a great business, and China had its own emerging internet giants that could simply copy anything novel ByteDance devised. It didn’t help that Zhang was still so baby-faced that, when introduced, people often ignored him and spoke to his colleagues instead. On top of this, Zhang was not an A.I. expert, nor were any of ByteDance’s early employees. There were not yet any detailed reference texts available in Chinese, and, according to Chinese Entrepreneur Magazine, when Zhang tried to buy one that was in pre-publication, he was rebuffed. Zhang eventually taught himself to write a recommendation engine from scattered resources on the internet. 一位早期投资者为张一鸣介绍了20多个中国投资者，但他们都没有兴趣。那时数字媒体不是一项大业务，中国拥有自己的新兴互联网巨头，它们可以直接复制字节跳动设计的任何新鲜事物。而且张一鸣的娃娃脸也是个阻碍，当他被介绍给别人的时候，人们常常不理他，而是跟他的同事说话。最重要的是，张一鸣和字节跳动的任何早期员工都不是人工智能专家。当时还没有任何详细的中文参考文本，据《中国企业家》杂志报道，当张一鸣试图购买一本预出版的参考文本时，他被拒绝了。张一鸣最终从互联网上分散的资源中自学，编写了一个推荐引擎。 A few months after ByteDance’s founding, Matt Huang, an American investor and venture capitalist, visited Beijing to check out the tech scene. A friend told him about ByteDance and set up a meeting. When Huang arrived at the company’s offices, he found a humble operation, with Zhang overseeing about 20 people jammed into two apartments. After two hours of conversation, Huang was ready to invest in Zhang’s idea, despite hesitations about the business model. “I was skeptical of the idea but blown away by the person,” Huang said. Most of his lingering doubt came down to the viability of applying A.I. to a news app. But, he said, “I thought if someone was going to figure it out, it was him.” 字节跳动成立几个月后，美国投资人和风险投资家黄共宇来北京访问，考察了技术行业。一位朋友向他介绍了字节跳动，并安排了一次会面。黄共宇来到公司总部后看到的是几间简陋的办公室，张一鸣带着大约20人挤在两套公寓里工作。经过两个小时的交谈后，黄共宇已准备为张一鸣的想法投资，尽管他对其商业模型有顾虑。“我对想法持怀疑态度，但被人打动了，”黄共宇说。他迟迟不去的疑虑主要是关于手机新闻应用中使用人工智能的可行性问题。但他说，“我当时想的是，如果有人能想办法做这个的话，那个人就是他。” In August 2012, ByteDance launched the first version of Jinri Toutiao (“Today’s Headlines”), an app that used A.I. to, in Zhang’s words, “let every user, at every moment, see their own front news page.” Toutiao pioneered the system that TikTok would later ride to global dominance. Other content platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, required users to manually accumulate friends and connections, whose posts then populated the user’s feed. Toutiao, by contrast, didn’t care whom you knew, only what you liked. It required no sign up at all — no need to create an account and password, or to describe interests or preferences. Users were simply presented with articles upon downloading the app. Based on how a user reacted to a piece of content — reading the whole article or just a few sentences, pausing on a particular paragraph, swiping back up to read something again, leaving a comment — Toutiao’s underlying technology began to generate a picture of who the user was and what they wanted. 2012年8月，字节跳动推出了“今日头条”的第一个版本。用张一鸣的话说，这款使用人工智能技术的应用程序，“让每一个用户，每时每刻，都能看到属于他们自己的资讯头版。”今日头条开创了后来让TikTok登上全球霸主地位的系统。其他的内容平台，如Facebook和Twitter，需要用户手动积累朋友，建立关系，然后朋友们发的帖子构成该用户的信息推送。相比之下，今日头条不关心你认识谁，只关心你喜欢什么。使用这款应用根本不需要注册——不需要建帐号，不需要有密码，也不需要告诉它你的兴趣或偏好。用户只需要在下载该应用后看文章。今日头条在用户对一段内容的反应——比如是阅读了整篇文章，还是只读了几句话，在某个段落停留了较长时间，返回前面读过的内容再读一遍，发表评论——的基础上，用背后的技术开始描绘一个用户是什么样的人，他们想要什么。 Best of all, the recommendation engine got better with every use. It was a virtuous cycle: more users meant more data; more data meant a smarter algorithm; a smarter algorithm meant more users; and on and on. The app hit one million daily average users only four months after it started. By one count, revenue grew from almost nothing in 2014 to $2.5 billion in 2017. The bigger it got, the more criticism Toutiao faced. Detractors said the app catered to the basest human interests — celebrity gossip, scandal, disaster and violence — to keep users hooked as long as possible. The average user was spending more than an hour a day on the app, and Toutiao was, by revenue, one of the fastest-growing apps in the history of the internet. Still, Zhang could see the ceiling: According to the Chinese business press, an internal company assessment placed the total size of China’s newsfeed market at around 240 million daily average users. If Toutiao claimed half the pie, it would max out at 120 million daily average users. To keep growing, the company had to look abroad. 最重要的是，推荐文章的引擎越用越好用。它与用户形成一个良性循环：用户越多意味着数据越多，数据越多意味着算法更聪明；更聪明的算法意味着更多的用户，如此等等。这款应用程序在推出仅四个月后就达到了日均100万用户。据一个估计，收入从2014年的几乎为零，增长到2017年的25亿美元。今日头条发展得越快，面临的批评也越多。批评者说，这款应用为了让用户在其上花尽可能长的时间，迎合了人类最卑鄙的兴趣——名人八卦、丑闻、灾难和暴力。普通用户每天花在该应用上的时间超过一个小时，以收入计算，今日头条是互联网历史上增长最快的应用之一。尽管如此，张一鸣还是看到了天花板：据中国商业媒体报道，一项公司的内部评估认为，中国新闻推送市场的总规模约为2.4亿日均用户。如果今日头条得到其中一半的用户，日均用户的峰值是1.2亿。为了保持增长，公司不得不将目光投向国外。 But the push also reflected something more fundamental than business strategy. Chinese companies, Zhang has said, are “born to be global,” just like American companies. “There was a different kind of leadership, a hunger for growth,” a former ByteDance executive told me. “It was a challenge, in some sense self-imposed — if the big Western tech can do it, why can’t we? We are no less.” 但这种推动也反映了一些比商业战略更根本的东西。张一鸣一直说，中国公司“生来就全球化”，像美国公司一样。“有不同的领导方式和对增长的渴望，”字节跳动的一名前高管对我说。“这是个挑战，在某种意义上是自我强加的——如果西方科技巨头能做到，我们为什么不能？我们也不逊色。” In 2014, Zhang visited Silicon Valley with a group of Chinese founders, touring the offices of Facebook, Tesla and Airbnb. He spotted Xiaomi phones in the hands of American tech workers, and heard conversations about Alibaba’s hotly anticipated American I.P.O. Back in Beijing, Zhang summarized his feelings on his blog: “The golden age of Chinese tech companies is coming.” 2014年，张一鸣与一群在中国做初创的人一起访问了硅谷，参观了Facebook、特斯拉和爱彼迎的总部。他在美国技术人员手中看到了小米手机，听到了人们对热切期待的阿里巴巴在美国上市的讨论。回到北京后，张一鸣在他的博客上总结了他的感受：“中国科技公司的黄金时代即将到来。” A lip-syncing app called Musical.ly was already showing the way. Started in Shanghai by a pair of Chinese entrepreneurs, Musical.ly was a surprise hit in the U.S. market, particularly among teenagers. Musical.ly’s rise intrigued ByteDance, which was on the hunt for a new product to plug into its recommendation engine. In March 2016, the company assigned a handful of employees to a new initiative called Project X, with the goal of replicating Musical.ly as closely as possible. The team discovered that none of the existing Chinese video-sharing apps — there were hundreds of them — had the technology to sync videos with soundtracks. The gap, of about 200 to 300 milliseconds, was small, but noticeable enough to turn off potential users. Fixing the syncing issue was the original selling point of the new app, dubbed Douyin (“Shaking sound”). 一款名为Musical.ly的对口型应用程序已经指明了方向。由两名中国企业家在上海创立的Musical.ly，出人意料地在美国市场大受欢迎，尤其是在青少年中。Musical.ly的成功引起了字节跳动的兴趣，该公司当时正在寻找一种新产品来使用其推荐引擎。2016年3月，公司指派少数员工参与了名为Project X的新计划，目标是尽可能复制Musical.ly的功能。这个研发团队发现，当时中国市场上的视频共享应用程序有数百个，但没有一款有将视频与配乐同步的技术。虽然视频与配乐的时差很小，只有200到300毫秒，但足以让潜在用户望而却步。解决了同步问题是这款名为抖音的新应用的最初卖点。 Douyin was a near pixel-level recreation of Musical.ly. Opening the app, you were thrust immediately into a video, with no play or pause buttons. Swipe up, and you could scroll through a seemingly endless feed of 15-second videos, one after another, filling the full screen of the phone’s display. The interface was doubly effective: simple and intuitive enough for anyone to figure out on the first use, while also designed to capture as much data as possible for the recommendation engine. In most vertical scrolls, you’re shown several items at once, making it difficult for the platform to know what you’re looking at or what you think of it. By putting one video in front of you at a time, Douyin could better decipher how the user reacted, and use that data to refine future recommendations. 抖音是一款基本原封不动地抄袭Musical.ly的娱乐应用。打开抖音，用户会立即看到一段视频，视频没有播放或暂停按钮。上推屏幕，用户可以浏览似乎无穷无尽的15秒短视频，一个接一个，每段视频都占据了手机的整个屏幕。这个用户界面的设计有双重效果：简单直观，让任何人第一次使用时就能上手，而且这个设计同时也尽可能多地为推荐引擎捕获数据。大多数手机应用在用户上下推屏时，会把几条内容同时提供给他们，这让平台很难知道用户在看什么或对内容怎么有何想法。通过一次只播放一段视频，抖音可以更好地辨别用户的反应，并用这些数据来改进未来的推荐。 Douyin took a canny approach to growth. While many other ByteDance products catered to older or more rural populations, Douyin initially focused on young people from first-tier Chinese cities, the kinds of users whom other people wanted to emulate. “They built influencers,” Erin Huang, one of Douyin’s first contracted creators, told me. “They weren’t shouting, ‘Use our app!’ They were saying, ‘Hey, do you see this person? You can be like them.’” Growth exploded around February 2017, as challenges like “Dance as if taking a bath” went viral on other Chinese social media platforms, drawing in new users and stocking Douyin with more and more content. By May, the app had surpassed one million daily average users. Around the same time, Zhang reached out to the founders of Musical.ly, proposing an acquisition. Zhang believed it would be a perfect fit, according to an investor involved in the deal, because each had what the other needed. ByteDance offered algorithmic capability and business acumen; Musical.ly offered a way onto the phones of millions of American teenagers, the most valuable customers in the world. 抖音采取的增长方式颇为精明。虽然字节跳动的许多其他产品更多迎合的是老年人或者农村人口，但抖音从一开始关注的就是来自中国一线城市的年轻人，这些用户是其他人想效仿的。“他们扶植了网红，”抖音的第一批签约创作者之一伊琳·黄告诉我。“他们没有大喊‘使用我们的应用程序！’他们说，‘嘿，你看到这个人了吗？你可以像他们那样。’”用户人数在2017年2月前后爆炸式增长，“像洗澡一样跳舞”等挑战在其他中国社交媒体平台上疯传，吸引了新用户，也为抖音提供了越来越多的内容。到2017年5月时，抖音的日均用户已超过100万。大约在同一时间，张一鸣与Musical.ly的创始人进行了接触，提出了收购建议。据一名参与了交易的投资者说，张一鸣认为两家公司是完美匹配，因为双方都有对方需要的东西。字节跳动提供了算法能力和商业头脑；Musical.ly为占据世界上最有价值的客户——数百万美国青少年的手机提供了一个途径。 According to reporting by Benita Zhang, a prominent Chinese business journalist, Musical.ly put two key conditions on a deal with ByteDance. First, the name of the app had to be changed, to break free from the association with lip-syncing preteens. Second, ByteDance would spend at least $1 billion on marketing. Zhang agreed, and acquired Musical.ly in November 2017 for roughly $1 billion. By that point, ByteDance had already created an international version of Douyin, but had not yet determined how to combine the new acquisition with the existing product. 据中国著名商业记者贝妮塔·张的报道，Musical.ly在与字节跳动的交易中提出了两个关键条件。首先，必须改变应用程序的名称，以摆脱与青春期前孩童对口型的联系。第二，字节跳动将至少花10亿美元用于营销。张一鸣同意了，他于2017年11月以大约10亿美元的价格收购了Musical.ly。当时，字节跳动已经造出了一个国际版的抖音，但尚未确定如何将新收购来的应用与现有产品结合起来。 The company had struggled, too, when figuring out what to name the new app. A team at ByteDance had drawn up a list of English words and whittled down the choices. One possibility was “TikTok.” It sounded cool, but the team reportedly worried that, to Western ears, it would call to mind the 2009 Kesha song. Ultimately the imperatives of ByteDance’s global ambitions overrode any concerns. “TikTok” was a name ripe for virality: It could be pronounced in much the same way across the globe, no matter the language, from Japan to India to Argentina. With a name like that, an app could take over the world. 公司在为新应用程序起名时也遇到了困难。字节跳动的一个团队挑选了一批英文单词，然后将选择进一步缩小。一个可能的名称是“TikTok”。虽然这个词听起来很酷，但据称该团队曾担心，这个名字西方人听到后，会让他们想起Kesha在2009年的那首歌曲。最终，字节跳动的全球野心压倒了所有的担忧。“TikTok”这个名字很适合广为传播：从日本到印度再到阿根廷，不管用户使用什么母语，它在全球范围内的发音几乎一样。有了这样一个名字，这款应用就能控制世界了。 ByteDance’s Beijing offices were located in Haidian, the heart of China’s tech industry, and they were laid out much like any millennial-dominated internet firm. Desks were arranged in long rows, internet-cafe style, with a conference room set in the middle of the floor plan and retro-themed phone booths sprinkled throughout. Every corner had a break room stocked with drinks and snacks. Even the very top executives, like Zhang Yiming, worked out of shared offices. 字节跳动的北京办公楼位于中国科技产业的中心海淀区，办公楼里的布局与任何千禧一代主导的互联网公司非常相似。像网吧里那样的一排排办公桌，每层楼中间有会议室，还零星地点缀着几个复古主题的电话亭。每层的四角都是休息室，里面摆满了饮料和小吃。就连张一鸣这样的高层管理人员也在多人共用的办公室里工作。 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO DELCANThe fidelity to American business culture ran deep. Zhang was known to quote Jack Welch and Steve Jobs frequently, particularly Jobs’s famous injunction to “stay hungry, stay foolish.” When Zhang organized a book exchange within the company, the title he chose was “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” The first tenet of ByteDance company culture, reinforced through banners and posters throughout the office (including, on occasion, in the bathrooms), is “Always Day 1,” a maxim taken directly from Amazon. 对美国商业文化的忠诚深入内心。据说，张一鸣经常引用杰克·韦尔奇和史蒂夫·乔布斯的话，尤其是乔布斯的名言“保持饥饿，保持愚蠢”(stay hungry, stay foolish)。在公司内部组织的一次图书交流上，张一鸣选择的书名是《高效能人士的七个习惯》。字节跳动公司文化的第一条宗旨是“总是第一天(Always Day 1)”，这是直接取自亚马逊的格言，并通过张贴在办公楼各处（有时包括厕所）的横幅和海报进行强化。 Zhang wore a T-shirt and jeans most days, and insisted that everyone call him by his given name, Yiming — a rarity in the formal and status-obsessed world of Chinese corporations, especially for a high-profile founder. “I hate formality, I hate hypocrisy,” Zhang told an interviewer. He was a frequent Douyin user himself, often creating videos and experimenting with new stickers. At mealtimes, Zhang waited in the same line as the rest of the staff. The idea that executives would have individual elevators, not uncommon at large companies, was “very cheesy,” he once wrote in a note to employees. 张一鸣大部分时间穿的都是T恤和牛仔裤，并坚持让所有人用“一鸣”称呼他，这在做法正规、迷恋地位的中国企业界中是很罕见的，尤其是对于一位知名度很高的创始人来说。“我讨厌形式，我讨厌虚伪，”张一鸣告诉一位采访者。他本人也是抖音的常客，经常制作视频和尝试新的贴纸。吃饭的时候，张一鸣和公司其他工作人员一起排队。为公司高管设置专用电梯的想法在中国的大公司并不少见，张一鸣曾在写给员工的信中称这种想法“非常可笑”。 But according to interviews with current and former ByteDance employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for professional consequences, the company was caught between the cultures it was trying to bridge. Employees say they were expected to work “996,” meaning 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — 72 hours — a standard schedule for Chinese tech companies. During this early period of expansion, calls with overseas offices often ran as late as midnight, and important meetings took place on Sundays. ByteStyle, the company’s code of values, preaches a culture that could have been lifted wholesale from Google or Amazon: diverse, inclusive, radically honest and transparent. But discussing salaries was “a line drawn in blood,” one former employee said, and speaking with the press was absolutely forbidden. The structure was flat, especially by Chinese standards — ByteDance abolished titles for senior positions, and let all employees access other employees’ metrics, including Zhang’s. But it was still clear in which direction orders flowed, and managers were rarely questioned. 但对字节跳动现任和前任员工的采访表明，公司夹在中美文化之间。出于对职业后果的担忧，这些人要求不具名。员工说，公司希望他们“996”工作，即每周工作六天，从早上9点到晚上9点，相当于每周工作72个小时，这是中国科技公司的标准时间表。在扩大业务的早期，与海外办公室通的电话经常打到午夜，重要的会议在星期天举行。被称为“字节范儿”的公司价值观宣扬的文化与从谷歌或亚马逊那里全盘端来的差不多：多元化、包容性、极端诚实和透明。但讨论薪水是“一条用血画的线”，一名前雇员说，而且绝对禁止与媒体交谈。公司的结构是平的，尤其是从中国标准来看，字节跳动取消了高级职称，所有员工都能看到其他员工的衡量指标，包括张一鸣的。但命令从何而来仍然很明确，很少有员工质疑管理人员。 “ByteDance is run like a machine,” a former employee said. In China, the company is nicknamed the Super App Factory, in recognition of its streamlined system for pumping out new products. (By one count, ByteDance had more than 140 apps under its umbrella between 2018 and 2020.) The high level of organization and systematization is one of the company’s strengths, because it allows for rapid progress and growth. But it can also be cold and dehumanizing. “Your goals are publicized, and they instill the mantra that your peers are your competitors, not your friends,” the employee said. “It’s like a boiler room, a Wall Street boiler room.” “字节跳动的运作就像一台机器，”一名前员工说。在中国，该公司被称为“超级应用工厂”，以称赞其推出新产品的精简系统。（据统计，在2018年至2020年期间，字节跳动旗下有140多个应用程序。）高度的组织和系统化是公司的优势之一，因为它允许快速进步和增长。但它也可能是冷酷和非人性化的。“你的目标是公开的，他们灌输的口号是：同事是竞争对手，不是朋友，”这名员工说。“就像一个锅炉房，华尔街的锅炉房。” When the company’s international expansion began, all staff members were told to learn English. Zhang was learning, too, and he sometimes mentioned books he had heard on “Speak English,” a popular E.S.L. app, like the Eckhart Tolle book “The Power of Now.” In 2020, ByteDance hired 40,000 new employees — an average of 150 every working day — many of them outside China, and most under pandemic conditions. Some Chinese employees bristled at the consequences of the expansion abroad. “A lot of Chinese employees may have been working for ByteDance for years, and they didn’t want to start studying English or talking to foreigners or switching the company values,” another former employee told me. “For a lot of people in the Beijing office, they felt they were losing their company to Yiming’s conquest of foreign markets.” Some Chinese employees were reportedly upset at the way that foreign hires described themselves as only working for TikTok in their LinkedIn profiles, with no mention of ByteDance. 当公司开始国际扩张时，所有员工都被告知要学习英语。张一鸣也在学习，他有时会提到自己在热门的语言课程应用“说英语”(Speak English)上听过的书，比如埃克哈特·托尔的《当下的力量》(The Power of Now)。2020年，字节跳动雇佣了4万名新员工——平均每个工作日150人——其中许多人在中国境外，而且大多数是在大流行的情况下雇佣的。一些中国员工对海外扩张的后果感到愤怒。“很多中国员工可能已经在字节跳动工作多年，他们不想开始学英语，不想和外国人交谈，也不想改变公司的价值观，”另一名前员工告诉我。“对于北京办公室的很多人来说，他们觉得自己的公司正在被张一鸣的海外扩张所吞噬。”据报道，一些中国员工对外国雇员在LinkedIn的个人资料中称自己只为TikTok工作，绝口不提字节跳动的做法感到不满。 The integration was complicated for the foreign employees too — particularly those who came to ByteDance from senior roles at big American tech companies. Having been promised autonomy and independence, they found it could be difficult to accept that ultimate authority rested in Beijing. “America has been so used for so long to being the standard setter and arbiter of business practice, to be the home market and the HQ, that it’s not in the American psyche to be one of the regions,” the second former employee said. “The Americans aren’t used to not having their way.” 对于外国员工来说，融入也是很复杂的——尤其是那些从美国大型科技公司的高级职位来到字节跳动的人。在得到独立运作的承诺后，他们可能很难接受最终权力掌握在北京手中。“长期以来，美国一直习惯于充当商业惯例的标准制定者和仲裁者，是本地市场和总部，因此对美国人来说，成为地区分市场之一，在心理上很不适应，”第二位前雇员说。“美国人不习惯不能随心所欲。” For the foreign employees at the Beijing headquarters, the role of cultural translator was an unavoidable part of the job. When ByteDance tried to internationalize one of its short video products, the first former employee recalled, he was called in to consult. In China, the product was known as Xigua Shipin (“Watermelon Video”), and the internationalization team announced that they had chosen an overseas name: “Ripe Melons.” He told them that they couldn’t call it that. “They said, ‘Why?’” the former employee said. “I said, ‘Just trust me, you can’t.’ They thought it was a great name. I said, ‘Melons are a slang word for women’s breasts.’ They’re like, ‘No, it’s melons that are fresh.’” The product was eventually named BuzzVideo. 对于北京总部的外籍员工来说，充当文化翻译是工作中不可避免的一部分。前一位前员工回忆说，当字节跳动试图将一款短视频产品国际化时，他被叫去做咨询。在中国，这款产品被称为“西瓜视频”，国际化团队宣布他们选择了一个海外名字：“Ripe Melons（熟瓜）”。他告诉他们，不能这么叫。“他们说，‘为什么？’”这位前雇员说。“我说，‘相信我，不能这么叫。’他们觉得这是个好名字。我说，‘瓜是一个俚语，指的是女性乳房。’他们说，‘不，就是新鲜的瓜。’”这款产品最终被命名为BuzzVideo。 Gliding across cultures as a kind of internet-era anthropologist was part of what made working at TikTok interesting and novel. When the app was first introduced, every country and every market had a slightly different proclivity. Thai users liked videos of people dancing at school; Japanese users preferred funny videos about otaku, young people obsessed with anime, manga and video games; Vietnamese users especially enjoyed deft camera work. The United States proved harder to crack, until TikTok’s product managers let the users drive the creation of a new category — Americans, it turned out, had an unusual attachment to memes. 作为互联网时代的人类学家，在不同文化之间穿梭，是在TikTok工作新颖有趣的部分原因。当这款应用刚推出时，每个国家和每个市场都有略微不同的倾向。泰国用户喜欢人们在学校跳舞的视频；日本用户更喜欢关于御宅族（沉迷于动漫和电子游戏的年轻人）的搞笑视频；越南用户尤其喜欢灵巧的运镜。事实证明，美国市场更难攻破，直到TikTok的产品经理让用户推动一个新类别的创建——事实证明，美国人对米姆有一种不同寻常的痴迷。 But often, ByteDance’s rapid foreign growth resulted in a strange mash-up. “TikTok’s culture is incredibly Chinese in a way contrary to the advertising materials, in a way that’s jarring to foreigners,” the second former employee said. “But on the flip side, it’s a much more foreign tech company than most Chinese people have worked in before.” In Beijing and foreign offices alike, turnover was often high, as employees burned out on the long hours, the coordination across time zones and the juggling of cultures. But success eventually brought its own kind of stability. “It’s become a mainstream tech firm — we’re getting people from Google, Facebook, Snapchat, consulting, blue-chip firms,” a current American employee said. “It no longer feels in any way like a pariah Chinese company.” 但字节跳动在海外市场的快速增长往往导致了一种奇怪的混搭。“TikTok的文化非常中国化，在某种程度上与它的广告宣传相反，在某种程度上对外国人来说显得不和谐，”后一位前员工说。“但另一方面，这是一家比大多数中国人以前工作过的公司更外国的科技公司。”无论是在北京还是外国办公室，员工流动率往往很高，因为长时间的工作、跨时区的协调以及不同文化之间的复杂切换让员工筋疲力尽。但成功最终带来了稳定。“它已经成为一家主流科技公司——我们从谷歌、Facebook、Snapchat、咨询公司和蓝筹公司招人，”一名现任美国员工说。“它再也不像一家不受欢迎的中国公司了。” While ByteDance was pushing abroad, China was changing. When Zhang first started the company, in 2012, Xi Jinping had not yet taken power, and it was still possible to envision the country moving on a path, however gradual and uneven, toward greater reform and openness. But under Xi, that hope has been smothered. Since taking office, he has embarked on a far-reaching reassertion of state power. Among Xi’s priorities has been a widespread crackdown on big tech, one part of a broader effort to rein in private companies. While most big American tech firms had long been barred from operating inside China, the country’s domestic giants had been tolerated, even nurtured. But fearing that tech firms’ wealth and influence could pose a threat to party power and economic stability, the Chinese government has punished, fined and regulated the sector into line with party objectives. One by one, China’s most prominent firms and their founders came under the hammer. 当字节跳动开始进军海外，中国也在改变。2012年张一鸣创办这家公司时，习近平还没有上台，无论过程多么缓慢崎岖，中国朝着更大程度的改革开放迈进仍是一种可能。但在习近平领导下，这种希望破灭了。自上任以来，他对于国家权力的强调带来了深远影响。大举打击大型科技企业正是习近平的优先事项之一，这是控制私营企业的更广泛努力的一部分。虽然长期以来大多美国大型科技企业在中国的业务都被禁止，但中国国内的科技巨头却得到了容忍，甚至还有滋养。但由于担心科技企业的财富和影响力可能对党的权威和经济的稳定构成威胁，中国政府凭借惩处、罚款和监管，让该行业的方向与党的目标相一致。中国最知名企业及其创始人一个接一个受到了制裁。 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO DELCANWhen Ant Group, the financial services arm of Alibaba, was nearing an I.P.O. that was anticipated to be the world’s largest, the government ordered it suspended, and soon after announced a probe into Alibaba’s supposed monopolistic practices. The company’s charismatic founder, Jack Ma, briefly disappeared. In April 2021, Chinese regulators called in the leaders of nearly three dozen of the country’s largest tech companies, ordering them to “learn from Alibaba” and conduct a “comprehensive self-inspection” within a month. In July, Didi, the Chinese version of Uber, was ordered to halt new user registrations just two days after the firm’s American I.P.O.; the company announced that it would delist a few months later. New rules unveiled soon after required internet companies with more than one million users to seek government clearance before listing on overseas stock exchanges. Once seen as the embodiment of China’s economic dynamism and the carrier of Chinese soft power abroad, the country’s tech sector was reminded that it exists at Beijing’s mercy. 当阿里巴巴金融服务部门蚂蚁集团准备完成全球规模最大的上市时，政府将其叫停，并在不久后宣布对阿里巴巴所谓的垄断行为进行调查。该公司个性鲜明的创始人马云一度失踪。2021年4月，中国监管部门召集了近30家国内最大科技企业的负责人，责令他们“吸取阿里巴巴的教训”，并在一个月内进行“全面自查自检”。7月，中国网约车应用滴滴在美国上市仅两天就被勒令停止新用户注册；该公司也宣布将在几个月后退市。此后不久出台的新规要求，用户超过100万的互联网企业在海外证券交易所上市前必须获得政府许可。曾被视为中国经济活力象征和中国海外软实力载体的中国科技行业得到了警告，那就是它的命运完全由北京掌控。 A raft of legislation has made clear the government’s priorities. The Cybersecurity Law and National Intelligence Law, each of which took effect in 2017, created affirmative legal responsibilities for Chinese companies and citizens to assist the investigative and intelligence-gathering activities of state organs. “Any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence work in accordance with the law,” the National Intelligence Law states, “and maintain the secrecy of all knowledge of state intelligence work.” In 2021, two new laws on data security asserted the extraterritorial reach of the Chinese state over any data on Chinese citizens anywhere in the world. 一系列立法明确了政府的优先事项。2017年生效的《网络安全法》和《国家情报法》规定了中国企业和公民所要承担的法律义务，即协助国家机关的调查和情报收集活动。“任何组织和公民都应当依法支持、协助和配合国家情报工作，”《国家情报法》规定称，“保守所知悉的国家情报工作秘密。”2021年，两项关于数据安全的新法案宣称，中国政府对全球任何地方的所有中国公民数据都拥有治外法权。 Communist Party cells, a fixture of China’s state-owned enterprises, have taken on a larger and more prominent role throughout the economy. Under Chinese law, all organizations with more than three party members are required to form a party cell, which reports directly to the party bureaucracy and often exerts control over business decisions. Companies frequently publicize the activities of their Party cells as a way of currying favor with the state. “At the end of the day, the Chinese state holds all the cards,” Jordan Schneider, a China analyst at the Rhodium Group and host of the “ChinaTalk” podcast, said. “Firms and their leadership have learned that pushing back too much on government demands can have severe consequences.” 作为中国国企必须设立的部门，党支部在经济中发挥了更大、更突出的作用。依照中国法律，所有拥有三名以上党员的机构都要成立党支部，受党组织直接领导，通常也会对商业决策加以管控。企业经常宣传其党支部的活动，以此来讨好政府。“归根结底，牌都在中国政府手里，”荣鼎咨询的中国分析师、《话中国》播客主持人司马乔丹(Jordan Schneider)表示。“企业及其领导层已经认识到，过度抵制政府的要求可能会带来严重后果。” In late 2017, as ByteDance passed $20 billion in valuation, government regulators ordered that updates to several popular verticals on Jinri Toutiao be halted for 24 hours. The app, regulators said, was “spreading pornographic and vulgar information” and “causing a negative impact on public opinion online.” ByteDance later announced that it would hire 2,000 new “content reviewers,” with preference given to party members. The company also shut down the gossipy Society section and created a new vertical called New Era, featuring state media coverage. 2017年底，在字节跳动估值超过200亿美元之时，政府监管部门下令要今日头条多个热门垂直频道暂停更新24小时。监管部门称该应用“传播色情低俗信息”，并“对网上舆论生态造成恶劣影响”。字节跳动后来宣布将招募2000名“内容审核员”，优先考虑党员。该公司也关闭了议论不休的社会频道，并开辟了新的垂直频道“新时代”，主打官媒报道。 A few months later, ByteDance pulled one of its short-video products from app stores after state media accused the platform of glorifying teen pregnancy and hosting advertisements for fake products. Within a week, Jinri Toutiao was temporarily pulled from app stores as well. Regulators then ordered ByteDance to shut down the company’s oldest product, a humor app called Neihan Duanzi (“Subtle Jokes”). The app’s content — a mix of not-so-subtle jokes and sketch videos — had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” the authorities said. 几个月后，在被官媒批评美化未成年怀孕以及投放假冒商品广告后，字节跳动将一款短视频产品从应用商店下架。一周之内，今日头条也在应用商店暂时下架。监管部门随后命令字节跳动关停其最古老的产品，一个名叫“内涵段子”的搞笑应用。该应用的内容包含了相当露骨的玩笑和段子视频，当局称其“引发网民强烈反感”。 At around 4 a.m. Beijing time the morning after the measures were announced, Zhang posted a long apology. He said he had been unable to sleep, filled with remorse and guilt. Neihan Duanzi had failed to live up to “core socialist values,” Zhang continued. “Over the past few years, the regulatory authorities have provided us with much guidance and assistance, but in our hearts we failed to properly understand and recognize it.” For that, he was sorry — and grateful for the government’s leadership. “As a start-up company developing rapidly in the wake of the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, we profoundly understand that our rapid development was an opportunity afforded us by this great era,” Zhang wrote. “I am grateful for this era. I am grateful for the historic opportunity of economic reform and opening; and I am grateful for the support the government has given for the development of the technology industry.” 禁令下达次日的北京时间凌晨4点左右，张一鸣发文致歉。他说自己一夜未眠，充满自责和内疚。内涵段子“与社会主义核心价值观不符”，张一鸣接着写道。“过去几年间，主管部门给了我们很多的指导和帮助，但我内心没有真正理解和认识到位。”对此，他非常抱歉，并感谢政府的领导。“我们作为一家十八大后快速发展起来的创业公司，深知公司的快速发展，是伟大时代给的机会，”张一鸣写道。“我感恩这个时代，感恩改革开放历史机遇，感恩国家对于科技产业发展的扶持。” In order to ensure that ByteDance would improve its understanding and implementation of the “four consciousnesses” of Xi Jinping Thought and hew to “public opinion guidance,” the company would “strengthen the work of party construction,” deepen cooperation with party media and “strengthen the editor-in-chief responsibility system” — a role that, only a few years earlier, Zhang said ByteDance did not need, since it would privilege the preferences of one individual over the aggregated wisdom of all the company’s users. 为确保字节跳动能更深刻地理解和践行习近平思想中的“四个意识”，遵守“公序良俗”，该公司将“加强党建工作”，深化与党媒的合作，并“强化总编辑责任制”——就在几年前，张一鸣才宣称字节跳动不需要总编辑岗位，因其存在会将个人喜好置于所有用户的聚合智慧之上。 The contrast with Zhang’s blog post from a decade earlier, when he criticized the expulsion of Google, was stark. It is unlikely that Zhang, who was not a party member, had any great love for the party’s demands. Perhaps he had changed; he now had a multibillion-dollar business to consider, and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of employees. But either way, China certainly had. 这与张一鸣十年前批评谷歌被驱逐的博客文章形成了鲜明对比。这并不是说本身并非党员的张一鸣对党的要求有多大的热情。或许他是变了；现在他要考虑的是价值数十亿美元的企业前途，以及数以万计员工的生计。但无论他改变与否，中国肯定是变了。 Major American platforms at first saw little to worry about in TikTok. No Chinese platform had ever truly captured the American market, and for all that TikTok had gained from the Musical.ly deal in terms of users, it seemed likely to pay for in terms of future growth. Musical.ly had swept up a preteen audience and then stagnated; there was little reason to think TikTok would fare any differently. Besides, TikTok was not really a social network at all. The reason people wanted to be on Facebook, Snap or Instagram was because their friends were on it. “People thought the social network is where the moat comes from; it’s why Facebook is hard to compete with,” an early adviser to ByteDance told me. The major players in American social media were considered so entrenched and immovable that they faced calls to be broken up on antitrust grounds. 美国主流平台起初并没把TikTok放在心上。此前没有任何中国平台能真正占领美国市场，虽然TikTok靠着收购Musical.ly获得了用户，但其未来增长可能会受到打击。Musical.ly曾在青少年受众中极度风靡，随后遭遇瓶颈；几乎没有理由认为TikTok能够另辟蹊径。此外，TikTok根本也算不上真正的社交网络。人们想用Facebook、Snap或Instagram的原因是他们的朋友也在那里。“大家以为社交网络才是护城河；那正是Facebook难有敌手的原因，”字节跳动的一位早期顾问告诉我。美国的主流社交媒体平台看起来是如此稳固不可动摇，以至于它们面临着以反垄断为由被拆分的呼声。 If anything, the flush newcomer from China seemed like good news. In 2018, ByteDance spent almost $1 billion in advertising for TikTok, with a budget that reportedly doubled for three straight quarters. TikTok blanketed Facebook, Instagram, Snap and other American social media platforms with ads. TikTok upped the pace again in 2019, reportedly doling out $3 million a day in U.S. advertising alone, a majority of it on Snap. Executives at Snap, who believed their niche as a messaging service was insulated from any threat by TikTok, welcomed the spending. “We were buying so many ads, the money was eye-popping,” a former ByteDance employee said. The response from Snap, he recalled, was, “What can we do to keep this coming?” 因此，有个来自中国的新兴对手似乎是件好事。2018年，字节跳动为TikTok投入了近10亿美元的广告，据称其广告预算连续三个季度翻番。TikTok广告席卷了Facebook、Instagram、Snap和其他美国社交媒体平台。2019年，TikTok加快步伐，据称在美国的单日投放广告费用就达到300万美元，绝大多数都在Snap。Snap高层对这样的广告投入表示欢迎，他们以为TikTok不会对自己在即时通讯服务细分市场的地位产生任何威胁。“我们买了那么多广告，投入的金钱堪称惊人，”一位前字节跳动员工表示。他回忆称，Snap对此的态度是，“要我们怎样做才能继续保持这种投入？” At the time, TikTok’s 30-day user-retention rate was rumored to be just 10 percent. By the standards of most social media companies, TikTok was flailing — burning money with nothing to show for it. But ByteDance was playing a different game. Before it could take off, TikTok’s recommendation algorithm needed to be trained to know what was cool — this time for an American audience. The data from Musical.ly’s users provided a first tranche, but in order to make TikTok a compelling product, the algorithm needed to feed on as much data as possible. “It was about getting people, people, people,” a former executive at an American social media company told me. “The more people we get, the more it learns and the more people we can get. That’s the flywheel.” 当时有传闻称，TikTok的30天用户留存率只有10%。按照大多数社交媒体企业的标准，这都是徒劳的挣扎——烧了钱却一无所获。但字节跳动在玩一种截然不同的游戏。在取得成功之前，TikTok的推荐算法需要经过训练才能了解什么内容很酷——这一次是针对美国受众。Musical.ly的用户数据是个开始，但要让TikTok成为一款引人注目的产品，算法还需获得尽可能多的数据。“一切都在于吸引用户，用户，用户，”一家美国社交媒体企业的前高管告诉我。“获得的用户越多，它学到的东西就越多，我们就能吸引越来越多的人。这就是飞轮效应。” By mid-2019, the other platforms began to realize that TikTok was not going away. The app had eclipsed 100 million daily average users worldwide, and minted its first bona fide superstar in the artist Lil Nas X, establishing TikTok as a launching pad for musical fame. Then, with the pandemic driving whole countries into lockdown in 2020, TikTok prospered like never before. According to reporting in the Chinese business press, TikTok gained 110 million daily average users between March and April alone. In Iraq, TikTok counted 40 percent of the country’s total mobile-internet population as monthly active users, despite conducting no advertising, promotion or outreach there. The mobile-intelligence firm Apptopia estimated that TikTok was downloaded 89 million times in the United States in 2020, eclipsing even Zoom. In just the first half of the year, according to the research firm Sensor Tower, the app had more than 620 million downloads worldwide. 到2019年年中，其他平台开始意识到TikTok不会消失。这款应用在全球的日均用户数已突破了1亿，还造就了第一个真正的超级巨星——歌手Lil Nas X，使TikTok成为了音乐知名度的孵化器。然后，随着疫情在2020年导致各国进入封锁状态，TikTok以前所未有的速度繁荣起来。据中国的商业媒体报道，仅在3月至4月期间，TikTok的日均用户数就增加了1.1亿。在伊拉克，TikTok的月活跃用户占该国移动互联网总用户的40%，尽管它没有在那里做广告、促销或推广。据移动情报公司Apptopia估计，2020年，TikTok在美国的下载量为8900万次，甚至超过了Zoom。根据研究公司Sensor Tower的数据，仅今年上半年，这款应用在全球的下载量就超过6.2亿次。 For Facebook in particular, the threat was acute. The platform was bleeding young users, and engagement was plunging; its fortunes seemed to be cratering just as TikTok’s surged. ByteDance had also been poaching Facebook executives, including Instagram’s head of public policy for the Asia-Pacific region, and Facebook’s public policy leads for Indonesia and Japan. 对Facebook来说，威胁尤其严重。该平台正在流失年轻用户，用户粘度大幅下降，它的命运似乎随着TikTok的骤升而跌落。字节跳动还一直在挖Facebook的高管，包括Instagram的亚太地区公共政策主管，以及Facebook在印度尼西亚和日本的公共政策负责人。 In a speech at Georgetown University in October 2019, Zuckerberg drew the battle lines. He draped Facebook, which had tried unsuccessfully for years to enter the Chinese market, in the American flag, portraying the contest between the two platforms as one of freedom versus oppression. “China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries,” he said. He noted the strong encryption protections on WhatsApp, a Facebook product, and its use by protesters around the world. By contrast, he said, TikTok was said to be censoring discussions, even in the United States. “Is that the internet we want?” he asked. 2019年10月，在乔治城大学的一次演讲中，扎克伯格开战了。多年来，Facebook一直试图进入中国市场，但未能成功。他给Facebook披上了美国国旗，将这两个平台之间的竞争描绘成自由与压迫的较量。他说，“中国正在建设自己的互联网，专注于非常不同的价值观，现在正在向其他国家输出他们的互联网愿景。”他指出，Facebook的产品WhatsApp拥有强大的加密保护功能，世界各地的抗议者都在使用它。他说，相比之下，据说TikTok正在讨论审查，甚至在美国也是如此。“这是我们想要的互联网吗？”他问道。 According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, at a dinner with President Trump during the same Washington visit, Zuckerberg pressed Trump on the threat to American businesses from Chinese internet companies. Stopping Chinese platforms should be a higher priority than concerns over Facebook’s hegemony, he reportedly argued. (A representative for Facebook said that Zuckerberg did not remember discussing TikTok in particular.) Facebook set its substantial lobbying operation to work, meeting with lawmakers and White House staff members to fan the flames against the Chinese app. 根据《华尔街日报》的报道，在同一次华盛顿之行期间，扎克伯格在与特朗普总统的晚宴上，就中国互联网公司对美国企业的威胁向特朗普施压。据报道，他认为阻止中国平台应该比关注Facebook的一家独大更重要。（Facebook的一位代表说，扎克伯格不记得自己具体提到过TikTok。）Facebook启动了大量的游说行动，与立法者和白宫工作人员会面，煽动对这款中国应用程序的不满。 TikTok had opened a Washington office earlier that year, with a single employee. Sitting at the intersection of three of the most contentious issues in American politics — China, big tech and social media — TikTok knew it would face scrutiny. “There was no way this wasn’t going to be a tough slog,” a person familiar with TikTok’s lobbying operations said. “It wouldn’t matter who was here or what they did; just the basics of the company make it very hard.” 当年早些时候，TikTok在华盛顿开设了分公司，只有一名员工。TikTok处于美国政治中最具争议的三个问题——中国、大型科技公司和社交媒体——的交汇点，它知道自己会面临审查。“这绝对是一个艰难的过程，”一名熟悉TikTok游说活动的人士说。“谁在这里或他们做了什么都不重要；仅仅是这家公司的基本情况就让事情变得困难重重。” When the Facebook campaign began, the office was just starting its Washington outreach. According to someone who was present at a September 2019 event at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, Zhang asked officials from SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate and one of ByteDance’s biggest investors, for guidance on how to staff up a D.C. operation at a rapid clip. The pace of hiring quickened later in the fall as Zuckerberg pressed the case against Chinese companies. The resulting ByteDance lobbying team was a who’s who of Washington, composed of former congressional aides to leaders in both parties, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; Kevin McCarthy, House minority leader; Chuck Schumer, Senate majority leader; and Jim Clyburn, House Democratic whip. From just over $500,000 in 2019, ByteDance’s lobbying budget grew nearly eightfold in 2020, then almost doubled again the next year. “They literally went from one person to, like, 30 in a year and a half,” the person familiar with TikTok’s lobbying operations told me. “It was one of the biggest ramp-ups I’ve ever seen.” Facebook开始行动时，这个华盛顿分公司刚刚开始在当地的推广活动。据出席2019年9月在帕萨迪纳市朗廷酒店活动的人士透露，张一鸣向日本企业集团、字节跳动最大的投资者之一软银的高管请教，如何快速为华盛顿的业务配备人手。秋天晚些时候，随着扎克伯格对中国公司施压，招聘步伐加快了。由此组建的字节跳动游说团队都是华盛顿的名人，由两党领袖的前国会助手组成，包括众议院议长南希·佩洛西、众议院少数党领袖凯文·麦卡锡、参议院多数党领袖查克·舒默，以及众议院民主党督导吉姆·克莱伯恩等人的前助手。字节跳动的游说预算从2019年的50万美元多一点，到2020年增长了近八倍，第二年又几乎翻了一番。“他们真的在一年半的时间里从一个人变成了30个人，”熟悉TikTok游说活动的人告诉我。“这是我见过的最大规模的扩充之一。” In mid-July 2020, President Trump, Vice President Pence and members of the cabinet gathered in the Cabinet Room of the White House for a meeting. Among the agenda items was TikTok. After a briefing by the deputy national security adviser, Matt Pottinger, there was a short discussion. “It was clear that there was more or less unanimity that TikTok is a national security threat,” a person present said. “The discussion was how to deal with it.” 2020年7月中旬，特朗普总统、彭斯副总统和内阁成员在白宫内阁厅开会。会议议程之一是TikTok。副国家安全顾问马特·波廷格介绍情况后，众人进行了简短的讨论。“很明显，大家或多或少一致认为，TikTok是国家安全威胁，”一名在场人士说。“讨论的是如何应对。” Administration officials had first begun outreach to Capitol Hill about TikTok in early 2019. At the time, the administration was preparing a series of actions against Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications firm, and TikTok seemed to evoke some of the same concerns about data privacy and Chinese government influence. But while TikTok was growing in popularity, it was still confined to a small enough audience to keep it from being a government priority. “There was hope that it would be a fad, like Myspace,” said a Trump White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal governmental deliberations. “That it would just fade out.” 政府官员于2019年初首次就TikTok问题与国会山联系。当时，美国政府正准备针对中国电信公司华为采取一系列行动，TikTok似乎也引发了人们对数据隐私和中国政府影响力的一些相同担忧。不过，尽管TikTok越来越受欢迎，但它的受众仍然很小，无法成为政府的优先事项。“人们曾希望它会像Myspace一样，成为一时的时尚，”特朗普政府的一名官员说。由于是在讨论政府内部的议情况，他要求匿名。“然后就会慢慢消失。” By 2020, it was clear that wouldn’t happen. TikTok’s growing dominance provoked two primary concerns: First, that the data gathered on American users could be accessed by Beijing and deployed for the purposes of blackmail, harassment or espionage. Second, that the algorithm itself could be used to advance the Chinese government’s foreign-policy goals, whether by promoting content favorable to Beijing or by suppressing views deemed objectionable. The company had already been accused of censoring content considered politically sensitive in China, as well as removing or burying videos related to Black Lives Matter, protests in Hong Kong and the repression of the Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang Province. (TikTok has said that these were temporary issues that do not reflect the current workings of the app.) 到2020年已经很明显，期待中的情况不会发生。TikTok日益增长的主导地位引发了两个主要担忧：首先，北京可能会获取收集到的美国用户数据，并将其用于勒索、骚扰或间谍活动。其次，该算法本身可以被用来推进中国政府的外交政策目标，无论是通过推广对北京有利的内容，还是通过压制被视为不受欢迎的观点。该公司已经被指控审查在中国被视为政治敏感的内容，并删除或掩盖与“黑人的命也是命”、香港抗议活动和新疆维吾尔族镇压有关的视频。（TikTok表示，这些都是暂时的问题，并不能反映该应用程序当前的运行情况。） Trump’s cabinet considered three options. The first was to let the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States take the lead. CFIUS — an interagency panel tasked with assessing the national-security implications of investment from overseas — had already opened an investigation into ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly. The committee would make a recommendation to the president, suggesting either a full divestment of Musical.ly — a death sentence for TikTok in its most important market — or mitigation measures that could allay the government’s concerns. The second option, favored by the U.S. Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, was to allow TikTok to remain a Chinese company but operate in partnership with an American company, which would host its data servers on U.S. soil. 特朗普内阁考虑了三个选择。第一个是让美国外国投资委员会牵头。这是一个负责评估海外投资对国家安全影响的跨部门小组，已经对字节跳动收购Musical.ly展开过调查。该委员会将向总统提出建议，要么完全剥离Musical.ly——这等于是在TikTok最重要的市场宣判了它死刑——要么采取缓解措施，减轻政府的担忧。美国财政部长史蒂文·马努钦支持的第二种选择是允许TikTok继续保持中国公司的身份，但要与一家美国公司合作运营，后者将把数据服务器设在美国本土。 The third option was an outright ban of the app. The government of India had already banned TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps on national security grounds, following deadly border clashes with China. In the United States, a similar move would require a strong and well-developed legal theory, taking into account First Amendment concerns and the distinction between objectionable publishers, which cannot be banned, and a foreign-owned platform. 第三种选择是直接禁止该应用程序。在与中国发生致命的边境冲突后，印度政府已经以国家安全为由禁止了TikTok和其他几十款中国应用程序。在美国，类似的举措需要强有力的、完善的法律基础，这关系到第一修正案方面的担忧，并且令人反感的出版商与外国拥有的平台也存在差异，前者不能一禁了之。 Presented with three choices, Trump chose the flashiest and most legally dubious: an outright ban. The previous month, TikTok users pranked Trump’s re-election campaign by organizing people around the world to register for a rally in Tulsa with no intention of showing. Brad Parscale, the chairman of Trump’s re-election campaign, tweeted that they had received more than one million ticket requests; about 6,200 people ultimately showed up. The botched rally seemed to have put TikTok on the president’s radar. “That was a pretty major factor in the executive order,” said a former Trump administration official who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the White House’s decision-making. Trump signed an executive order preventing further downloads and updates of TikTok in the United States if the company was not sold to an American buyer within 45 days. Eight days later, CFIUS concluded its investigation, recommending that the president order a divestment. 面对三个选择，特朗普选择了最触目惊心、在法律上问题最大的一个：一禁了之。之前一个月，TikTok用户组织世界各地的人注册参加在塔尔萨举行的特朗普连任竞选集会，但只是恶作剧，并不准备真的露面。特朗普的连任竞选经理布拉德·帕斯卡尔发推表示，他们已经收到了超过100万张门票申请；最终约有6200人参加。这次失败的竞选集会似乎让TikTok进入了总统的“雷达”。“这是导致行政命令出台的一个相当重要的因素，”特朗普政府的一名前官员说。他要求匿名以便坦率地谈论白宫的决策。特朗普签署了一项行政命令，如果45天内TikTok没有出售给美国买家，将禁止这款应用程序在美国的下载和更新。八天后，美国外国投资委员会结束了调查，建议总统下令撤资。 The weeks following Trump’s announced ban were a circus to rival anything the administration had produced to date. Seeing a chance to snatch the world’s most popular app at a fire-sale price, suitors swooped in. Seemingly every major American tech company was rumored to be pursuing a deal, including Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Eventually, the contours of an agreement were reached. Walmart and Oracle would jointly purchase a stake in a new U.S.-based entity, with ByteDance remaining the majority shareholder. Oracle would oversee the app’s data, ensuring that the personal information of American users was stored only in the United States. At the same time, ByteDance reportedly redoubled efforts already underway to move more of the company leadership to Singapore. 特朗普宣布禁令后的几周引发的混乱不亚于特朗普政府在此前造成的任何一场闹剧。看到有机会以极低的价格抢走世界上最受欢迎的应用程序，追求者蜂拥而至。据传，似乎所有美国大型科技公司都在寻求交易，包括微软、苹果和谷歌的母公司“字母表”。最终达成了一份协议框架。沃尔玛和甲骨文将联合购买一家新的美国实体的股份，字节跳动仍是大股东。甲骨文将监督该应用程序的数据，确保美国用户的个人信息只存储在美国。与此同时，据报道，字节跳动公司也在加倍努力，将更多的公司领导层转移到新加坡。 Zhang reportedly learned of the proposed ban when a friend sent him a link to an interview with Trump. From his base in Beijing, Zhang kept American hours, huddling with advisers and investors about how to respond. He wrote a letter to his employees, reiterating his desire to lead “a trustworthy global company.” In China, Zhang’s letter received hundreds of sharp replies, condemning him as a traitor, a coward and an American stooge, sometimes referencing his youthful blog posts that favorably described American culture and politics. Zhang hardly deserved to be called Chinese at all, some angry online commenters said — really he was a jingmei fenzi, an “American at heart.” 据称张一鸣是在朋友给他发了特朗普采访的链接之后才得知拟议禁令一事。在北京总部里，以美国时间作息的张一鸣与顾问和投资者商议应对办法。他给员工写了一封信，强调了他领导“一家值得信任的全球公司”的意愿。张一鸣的全员信在中国收到了大量尖刻回复，谴责他是叛徒、懦夫和美国的走狗，他年轻时发表的称赞美国文化和政治的博文有时还被引用。一些愤怒的网络评论者称张一鸣不配为中国人，他其实是是个“精美分子”，有一颗“美国心”。 And then, just as capriciously as it had burst forth, the drama subsided. After the 2020 election, the proposed deal was shelved, and the Trump administration seemed to forget about the issue entirely. Though Biden quickly rescinded Trump’s executive order, the CFIUS divestment order remained in place. TikTok was left in limbo: operating normally for all appearances, but with the lingering threat of a ban or other government action constantly overhead. 然后闹剧就平息了，和它的爆发一样难以捉摸。2020年大选后，拟议中的交易被搁置，特朗普政府似乎完全忘记了这个议题。尽管拜登迅速撤销了特朗普的行政命令，但美国外国投资委员会的撤资令依然有效。TikTok被困在了悬而未决之中：业务运营看起来一切正常，但禁令和其他政府行动的威胁始终挥之不去。 The Biden administration came into office promising to repudiate its predecessor in both style and substance. But China policy — and China tech policy in particular — has represented a clear continuity. The Biden administration has come to see tech advancement as a zero-sum game that the United States must not lose. The centerpiece of Biden’s China tech policy thus far has been a set of sweeping restrictions on the sale of the most advanced semiconductor chips and chip-making equipment to China. Semiconductors are the lifeblood of the digital age, powering every industry and field in which the United States and China are competing, from autonomous cars to artificial intelligence, supercomputing and advanced missiles. The new rules were striking for their unprecedented breadth, cutting off not just the chips themselves but also access to any U.S.-made software or components needed to make the chips. 拜登政府上任后承诺要在执政风格和实质上与前任背道而驰。但对华政策——尤其对华科技政策——的延续性非常明显。拜登政府已将技术进步视为美国决不能输的零和博弈。迄今为止，拜登对华科技政策的核心内容就是全面限制向中国出售最先进的半导体芯片和芯片制造设备。半导体是数字时代的命脉，从自动驾驶汽车到人工智能、超级计算和先进导弹，它为美中竞争的每一个行业和领域提供了动力。新规前所未有的覆盖范围引人瞩目，不仅切断了芯片供应，还禁止中国获得制造芯片所需的任何美国制造的软件或部件。 Under the policy, any “U.S. person” — citizens, permanent residents, anyone who lives in the country and U.S. companies — must receive a government license to work with a Chinese company in the field of advanced-semiconductor production. Taken together, the restrictions seem designed to smother China’s tech industry before it can catch up to America’s. Tech decoupling between the United States and China, once seen as extreme option, is now debated only in its details: when, how and where. “This is going to manifest across trade, investments, people and ideas,” said Schneider, the Rhodium Group analyst. “You’ll likely end up seeing decoupling as a slow and steady march on every dimension.” But in the middle of the Biden administration’s China tech policy sits a TikTok-size hole. 在此政策下，任何“美国人”——包括公民、永久居民以及居住在美国的任何人和美国企业——都必须获得政府许可才能在先进半导体制造领域与中国企业合作。总而言之，这些限制措施似乎就是为了在中国科技产业赶超美国之前将其扼杀。美中之间的技术脱钩曾被视为极端选项，但如今，争议仅存在于细节：何时脱钩、如何脱钩、以及在何处脱钩。“这将影响到贸易、投资、人文和思想，”荣鼎咨询分析师司马乔丹说。“最终可能会看到一个在各个层面上缓慢而坚定的脱钩进程。”然而，拜登政府的对华科技政策存在一个可供TikTok利用的漏洞。 If TikTok has escaped the scrutiny faced by other Chinese companies (or even other American social media giants), it is in part because the user base skews so young. According to the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of 13-to-17-year-olds in the United States use TikTok. Few lawmakers or regulators even understand TikTok. The app’s opacity has also offered a shield. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, TikTok does not share data with researchers or allow outsiders to study the platform. (Last month, TikTok said it was preparing a beta version of a platform-research tool.) 如果说TikTok之前躲过了其它中国企业（甚至其他美国社交媒体巨头）所要面对的审查，那么部分原因在于其过于年轻的用户基础。根据皮尤研究中心的数据，美国13至17岁青少年中有三分之二的人使用TikTok。连TikTok是什么都不知道的议员或监管机构不在少数。该应用的不透明也成为了一种保护盾。与Facebook和Twitter不同，TikTok不与研究人员共享数据，也不允许第三方对该平台进行分析。（上个月，TikTok表示正在准备一个平台分析工具的测试版。） The controversies swirling around TikTok have done little to blunt the app’s ascent. In September 2021, the company announced that it had reached one billon active monthly users, meaning that it had been adding new users at an average rate of nearly 550,000 per day for five straight years. Even with the ban in India, TikTok was the most-downloaded and highest-earning nongame app in the world for the first half of this year. Between Douyin and TikTok, more than one billion people around the world use a ByteDance app every day. On Douyin alone, the average cumulative use time each day accounts for something like 90,000 years. 围绕TikTok的争议并没有阻碍这款应用的崛起。2021年9月，该公司宣布月活用户已达10亿，这意味着该公司的新用户连续五年以每天近55万人的平均速度增加。哪怕在印度被禁，TikTok仍是今年上半年全球下载量最高、收入最高的非游戏应用。综合抖音与TikTok数据，全球每天有超过10亿人在使用一款字节跳动的应用。仅在抖音上，每天平均累计使用时间就有差不多9万年。 Facebook, which renamed itself Meta in 2021, is still pressing Washington for help. According to emails viewed by The Washington Post, the company has hired one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to lead a nationwide public relations campaign against TikTok. The firm, Targeted Victory, has placed opinion columns and letters to the editor in regional newspapers, encouraged journalists and politicians to dig into TikTok and helped spread damaging news stories. The overall aim is to “get the message out that while Meta is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat, especially as a foreign-owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using,” a director for the firm wrote in a February email. 2021年更名为Meta的Facebook仍在向华盛顿施压，寻求帮助。根据《华盛顿邮报》审阅的电子邮件，该公司聘请了美国最大的共和党咨询公司之一，领导了一场打击TikTok的全国性公关活动。这家名为“目标胜利”(Targeted Victory)的公司给地方报纸投放专栏文章和读者来信，鼓励记者和政客深挖TikTok内幕，并帮助散播损害性的新闻故事。其终极目标是让“外界知道，虽然眼下Meta成了出气筒，但TikTok才是真正的威胁，尤其是作为一款外国应用，它分享青少年正在使用的数据是最多的，”该公司一名主管在2月的一封电邮中写道。 TikTok has proved a ripe target. Over the summer, BuzzFeed reported on leaked audio from dozens of internal company meetings revealing that, contrary to TikTok’s public assertions, data on American users was still routinely accessed by China-based employees. Soon after, BuzzFeed reported that ByteDance had used TopBuzz, a now-shuttered American news app modeled on Toutiao, to push pro-China content to users, while also censoring stories critical of Beijing. (ByteDance has denied this, calling it “ridiculous.”) More recently, Forbes found that Chinese state media accounts were flourishing on TikTok, often by promoting attacks on specific U.S. politicians and the state of American institutions in general. Forbes also reported that a team at ByteDance headquarters planned to use TikTok to track the location of specific American users — exactly the nightmare scenario that critics had warned about. Taken together, these stories have only amplified concerns that TikTok cannot be trusted with its power over American data and attention spans. TikTok已被证明是个现成的靶子。BuzzFeed今夏对大量公司内部会议的泄露音频进行了报道，揭示了TikTok的行为与其公开声明相反，中国员工仍在频繁访问美国用户的数据。那之后不久，BuzzFeed有报道称字节跳动利用TopBuzz（一款模仿今日头条的美国新闻应用，现已关停）向用户推送亲中国的内容，并对批评北京的报道进行审查。（字节跳动予以否认，并称之为“荒谬”。）《福布斯》近来发现，中国官媒账号在TikTok上人气高涨，其流量通常来自于宣扬对特定美国政客和美国机构的状况的攻击。《福布斯》还报道称，字节跳动总部的一个团队计划使用TikTok追踪特定美国用户的位置——这正是批评者警告过的噩梦场景。总的来说，这些报道只会放大外界担忧，即TikTok对美国用户数据和关注时长的掌控是不可信任的。 The company’s response has done little to allay concerns. Instead of acknowledging the unique hazards of their situation, company officials have sought to distance TikTok as much as possible from its Chinese origins and ownership. TikTok has claimed, for instance, that it is not a Chinese company because the legal entity that owns TikTok and all of the businesses in China is actually registered in the Cayman Islands. TikTok and ByteDance executives have also repeatedly said, including in sworn testimony to Congress, that TikTok has never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would it if asked — an assertion that the company would knowingly violate Chinese law. “If you look at the people who draw the analogies between Google and Facebook and TikTok, they’re either unsophisticated or they have an ax to grind in favor of TikTok,” said Dan Harris, a lawyer who works with foreign companies in China and writes the China Law Blog. “Most serious people see a difference. It doesn’t mean they’re all great or all bad, but there is a difference.” 该公司的回应并没有减轻担忧。高管没有承认该公司自身情况所带来的独特风险，反而在尽力让TikTok与其中国血统和所有权保持距离。例如，TikTok声称自己并非中国公司，因为拥有TikTok的法人实体以及所有中国业务实际上都在开曼群岛注册。包括在向国会宣誓作证时，TikTok和字节跳动高管都一再申明，TikTok从未向中国政府提供用户数据，即便被要求也不会提供——这一说法意味着该公司可能故意违反中国法律。“那些把Google、Facebook和TikTok相提并论的人，要么论点经不起推敲，要么就是暗藏支持TikTok的企图，”丹·哈里斯说，他是为在华外企工作的律师，同时也是中国法律博客的作者。“严肃看待此事的人都能找到不同之处。这并不意味着这些应用都很棒或都很烂，但它们是有区别的。” TikTok is reported to be making progress on a deal with the Biden administration that would allow the app to retain its Chinese ownership, but keep its American user data on servers in the United States. That arrangement seems unlikely to satisfy anyone, but all the available solutions are imperfect. An outright ban, especially one targeting Chinese companies writ large, risks looking like Sinophobia, and also — somewhat counterintuitively — like acquiescence to the Chinese Communist Party’s view that every citizen and entity in China is a willing appendage of the party. Yet to turn a blind eye to the potential risks posed by a company like TikTok is to ignore the political, economic and social infrastructure of control that the Chinese government under Xi has spent more than a decade constructing. 据报道，TikTok正在与拜登政府达成一项协议，允许该应用保留其中国所有权，但将其美国用户数据保存在美国的服务器上。这种安排似乎不太可能让任何人满意，但所有可用的解决方案都不完美。彻底的禁令，特别是针对中国公司的禁令，有可能看起来像是恐华症，而且——有点违反直觉——像是在认同中国共产党的观点，即中国的每个公民和实体都是党的自愿附属品。然而，对TikTok这样的公司所带来的潜在风险视而不见，就是忽视了习近平领导下的中国政府花了十多年时间所构建的政治、经济和社会控制的基础设施。 Whatever happens with ByteDance, the lessons for the next Chinese entrepreneur are sobering. “He can do what ByteDance is trying to do: get a Singaporean passport and incorporate there,” said Ivan Kanapathy, a former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia on the National Security Council staff. “There’s no answer if he’s in China. If he wants to be a global tech company, that’s it. You can’t have both. If you want the China market, go to China. If you want the West, go West. That’s where we’re going. I have no doubt.” 无论字节跳动发生了什么，对下一位中国企业家来说，教训都是深刻的。“他可以做字节跳动试图做的事情：拿到新加坡护照，在那里注册企业，”曾在国家安全委员会担任中国、台湾和蒙古事务主任的伊万·卡纳帕提说。“如果他在中国，那就没有办法了。如果他想成为一家全球科技公司，那就是这样。你不能两者兼得。如果你想要中国市场，那就去中国。如果你想去西方，那就去西方。这就是我们的趋势。我毫不怀疑。” In May 2021, Zhang Yiming announced that he would transition out of his role as C.E.O. of ByteDance over the next six months. It was time for him to take on a new role, Zhang said in a letter to employees, both to avoid the trap of becoming too central to the organization, and to help spur the type of longer-term thinking that would lead to ByteDance’s next breakthrough. “The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager,” he wrote. He preferred to spend time alone, reading, being online and daydreaming about the future. 2021年5月，张一鸣宣布，他将在未来六个月内辞去字节跳动首席执行官的职务。张一鸣在给员工的一封信中说，是时候让他承担新角色了，这既是为了避免成为组织的中心，也是为了帮助激发字节跳动的长期思考，从而实现下一个突破。“事实是，我缺乏成为理想管理者的一些技能，”他写道。他更喜欢独处，读书，上网，幻想未来。 A few months later, news broke that the Chinese government had taken an ownership stake in a ByteDance subsidiary. The subsidiary held operating licenses for some of the company’s most important Chinese businesses. Though the size of the stake was small — just 1 percent, divided between the China Internet Investment Fund; China Media Group, controlled by the Communist Party’s propaganda department; and the Beijing municipal government’s investment arm — the implications were unavoidable. The Chinese government took one of three seats on the subsidiary’s board, wielding a level of influence incommensurate with its nominal stake. 几个月后，有消息称中国政府收购了字节跳动一家子公司的所有权。该子公司持有该公司一些最重要的中国业务的经营许可证。虽然股份的规模很小——只有1%，由中国互联网投资基金、共产党宣传部控制的中央广播电视总台、以及北京市政府的投资部门分担——其影响是不可避免的。中国政府占据该子公司董事会三个席位中的一个，其影响力与其名义上的股份不相称。 Zhang is reported to have spent most of his year in Singapore, ostensibly to escape the onerous restrictions and lockdowns of China’s “zero Covid” policy. But it’s not hard to see the relocation as driven by other factors. “I don’t think Zhang Yiming is all that interested in being a tool of any government,” Schneider said. “I think he wants to build an online empire and make a lot of money. Most entrepreneurs in most corners of the globe don’t have to worry about their success being branded a tool of the state.” 据报道，张一鸣今年大部分时间都在新加坡度过，表面上是为了逃避中国“清零”政策的繁重限制和封锁。但不难看出，此次搬迁是由其他因素推动的。“我不认为张一鸣有兴趣成为任何政府的工具，”司马乔丹说。“我认为他想建立一个网络帝国，赚很多钱。全球大多数地区的大多数企业家，都不必担心自己的成功会被贴上政府工具的标签。” In 2016, just after the release of Douyin, Zhang gave a long and wide-ranging interview to the Chinese magazine Caijing. Though Toutiao was a well-established success, Zhang was not yet a household name in China, and he was almost totally unknown overseas. Over the course of the interview, Zhang talked about human nature, corruption, integrity, books that had influenced him, the importance of delayed gratification and much else. It was his dream, Zhang said, to “learn English well,” though running a company left little time for anything besides work. 2016年，抖音发布后不久，张一鸣接受了中国《财经》杂志的长篇采访，内容很广泛。尽管今日头条已经取得了巨大的成功，但张一鸣在中国还不是一个家喻户晓的名字，在海外也几乎无人知晓。在采访过程中，张一鸣谈到了人性、堕落、正直、影响他的书籍、延迟满足感的重要性等等。张说，“学好英语”是他的梦想，尽管经营公司令他在工作之外几乎没有时间做其他事情。 Toward the end, the interviewer asked Zhang about his reputation for being extremely realistic, “like a robot.” Zhang replied that failing to face reality always created problems for people. “The best way to predict the future is to create it,” he said, “but only if you face it.” 采访快结束的时候，采访者问张一鸣，他有非常现实主义的名声，“像机器人。”张一鸣回答说，不能面对现实总是会惹来麻烦。“预测未来的最好方式是创造它，”他说，“但前提是面对现实。” Alex W. Palmer是时报杂志的特约撰稿人。他于2019年撰写的关于美国缉毒局对北达科他州一名青少年因芬太尼过量死亡的调查的封面故事曾入围国家杂志奖。Pablo Delcan是来自西班牙的设计师和艺术总监。他于2014年在纽约创立了设计工作室Delcan & Co.。 翻译：纽约时报中文网 点击查看本文英文版。 相关报道TikTok CEO被指决策权有限2022年9月20日 TikTok难题：拜登政府将如何权衡？2022年8月15日 研究称TikTok浏览器可追踪用户键盘操作2022年8月22日 TikTok是如何让你上瘾的2021年12月10日 张一鸣宣布辞任字节跳动CEO2021年5月20日 最受欢迎中国出现儿童肺炎感染潮，WHO要求提供更多信息 WHO称中国已提供儿童肺炎数据，未检测到新病原体 驾摩托艇逃往韩国的中国异见人士在韩被判缓刑 瑞士人真的不爱买房爱租房？ 人工智能现已属于资本主义 关于以色列与哈马斯的临时停火协议，你应该知道的 人工智能将把我们带往天堂还是地狱 旧金山之行让外界窥见习近平更为真实的一面 为何中国和波音仍需要彼此 币安CEO赵长鹏对洗钱指控认罪，公司被罚43亿美元 国际 中国 商业与经济 镜头 科技 科学 健康 教育 文化 风尚 旅游 房地产 观点与评论 免费下载 纽约时报中文网 iOS 和 Android App 点击下载iOS App点击下载Android App © 2023 The New York Times Company.