TikTok, Boom.

Vancouver Premiere

Keynote Speaker: Avriel Epps-Darling, PhD Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Education

There’s more than dollars and yen at stake as data flows from TikTok back to Chinese server parks. A critical but tech-positive film about the invisible influence of social media, and what to do about it. With over two billion downloads, TikTok is the most downloaded app ever, knocking both Facebook and Instagram off the throne. But the success story behind the Chinese social media, which is particularly popular with children and young people, is also a story of racism, censorship, fear, and algorithms that punish you if you venture outside TikTok’s strict rules. Not least, it’s about China. Through meetings with the site’s young users and conversations with experts, tech-positive director Shalini Kantayya (Coded Bias) explores the flip side of its success and what it can tell us about the tense relationship between the West and China. The question is, what does Tiktok do with the endless amounts of data it collects from the app that looks back at you as you look at it?