Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-360)

Introduction -- Act I. Information looking for people -- The moral champion -- "Very similar to running a country" -- Three ways to make money on the internet -- Manufacturing hype -- A guy named Jorge -- Content moderation -- Rectification -- Expression as a user right -- The fifth estate -- Act II. Leverage -- To infinity and beyond -- "Bro get Kpop stan on this" -- Galwan Valley -- American puppet -- Key money -- TikTok global -- Act III. Driver carries no cash -- The corporate group -- Disappearances -- Ownership and control -- The TikTok tapes -- Internal audit and risk control -- The misguided effort -- Act IV. Wartime -- Sell or else -- Shoutime -- Loyalty tests -- "No insult to ByteDance..." -- Enshittification -- "LOL hey guys" -- PAFACAA -- Act V. The pivot -- A sense of crisis -- Contingency plans -- The TikTok president -- Defensive democracy -- Per curiam -- The flicker -- Two daddies now -- Epilogue.

"Emily Baker-White's narrative charts TikTok's rise from obscurity into the world's most valuable startup, led by its ambitious founder, Zhang Yiming--arguably the father of the modern recommendation algorithm. Shang's products reshaped the global internet from a place where you searched for information to one where information came to you. TikTok seemed to know its users in an almost spooky way, provoking wonder and delight. But virtually everything about TikTok's users--their interests, locations, and even their unspoken desires--was accessible to staff in Bejing. After Baker-White, a Harvard-trained lawyer and investigative reporter, revealed that Chinese engineers could access American's private information, a team of employees used the app to track her location and attempt to identify whistleblowers. This incident triggered an ongoing criminal investigation and escalated the US government's fight against Chinese tech. TikTok was the first Chinese app to become a US juggernaut, and lawmakers soon recognized its potential for surveillance and propaganda--and the threat it might pose in the hands of their rivals. Yet even as hawks in Congress gained support to ban the app, the White House was secretly negotiating for unprecedented control over its information stream. In 2025 Donald Trump declined to enforce the so-called ban law, TikTok seemed to complete a miraculous corporate escape. It retained its influence, profits, and power, but now operated at the pleasure of two strongmen: China's Xi Jinping and Trump himself."-- Provided by vendor.