Russia And Technology Companies Photo Illustrations

Netflix, TikTok, Major Accounting Firms Suspend Service—Here’s The List Of Companies Cutting Ties With Russia Over Invasion

As the Fourth of July drew to a close, Ziggi Tyler, 23, of Chicago, decided to use his holiday downtime to update his bio on TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, a new part of the app where influencers like Tyler connect with brands to strike sponsorship deals. Tyler is a Black influencer who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@ziggityler?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">uses TikTok</a>&nbsp;and other platforms to post comedy vlogs, and he wanted to highlight his background to marketers who might want to launch racial justice campaigns or ads featuring more diverse talent. But when he went to include words and phrases like “Black,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Black support,” he made an uncomfortable discovery: The app wouldn’t allow him to include them, flagging the words as inappropriate content and making it impossible for him to publish the new bio.



“It’s very odd, it’s very strange—it’s very frustrating,” says Tyler.



TikTok doesn’t deny that this happened to Tyler. It says the content moderation algorithm within the Creator Marketplace, launched in mid 2020, is a work in progress. The problem stretched into Wednesday afternoon—at that time, TikTok placed a block on anyone updating their marketplace bios. The company says it has since corrected the faulty AI, though any changes to the bios still cannot go through.



TikTok says the algorithm flagged the phrases because Tyler had also written the word “audience” in his bio, and the AI had been taught to flag bios that included the word “die,” which is contained within the word “audience,” and things like “Black” and “Black Lives Matter” as possible hate speech.



“Our TikTok Creator Marketplace protections, which flag phrases typically associated with hate speech, were erroneously set to flag phrases without respect to word order,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement. “We recognize and apologize for how frustrating this was to experience.”



For his part, Tyler finds TikTok’s explanation specious. “I could write out ‘neo nazi’ and ‘white supremacy’ no problem, and that’s cool,” he says. “But I just went in 30 minutes ago and tried to add ‘Black Lives Matter’ again, and it wasn’t allowed.” While TikTok had an explanation for why Tyler couldn’t fill out his bio with those phrases, the company didn’t offer one for something else: Tyler’s videos for now can’t be as easily shared on TikTok as videos from most other influencers. The Stitch and Duet functions, two common features that allow users to republish another person’s TikToks, have been disabled on Tyler’s account, making it harder for his videos to go viral. (TikTok denies turning off these features, saying only a user can do so. Tyler, in turn, says he didn’t mute them either.) Nonetheless, his videos talking about his experience over the past few days have done nearly 2.5 million views.  



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There’s been a growing tension between TikTok and the Black community on its app. During last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, several Black creators&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/5863350/tiktok-black-creators/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">alleged</a>&nbsp;that TikTok was suppressing content about the protests and George Floyd’s death, something the company has denied doing. TikTok did admit a “technical glitch” affected the view counts around hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd, making it seem that they had received zero or very few views when in fact they’d been watched millions of times. Most recently, some Black influencers staged what they called&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/06/25/heres-why-black-dancers-are-protesting-against-tiktok/">a virtual strike</a>, going silent on the app to protest an unfair bias among advertisers on the app that favors white creators.&nbsp;



Moreover, TikTok has struggled at points to grow from an app featuring dances and stunts into a social network where politics and other weighty issues are discussed—even as its user base has ballooned to more than 700 million users worldwide, complicating that calculus. As recently as late 2019, the company’s top executives&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2021/05/05/tiktok-trump-bytedance/">were actively weighing</a>&nbsp;whether they should find ways to tamp down content about politics, going as far as to consider turning off its key algorithmic feed during elections, including the 2020 presidential contest in America.&nbsp;



Tyler, bearded and habitually clad in a knit cap, joined TikTok back in February 2020 and established a niche for himself with humorous videos, talking about topics like his apperance, sex and white influencers. He has since accumulated 368,000 followers, and in October, he joined TikTok’s Creator Fund, which pays out to creators who create popular enough videos. Tyler, a recent Southern Illinois University graduate, joined the Creator Marketplace the following January. He hasn’t struck any brand deals yet—rejecting a few overtures from companies he found less than reputable—but hopes to in the coming months.



“I’m genuinely just here to make people laugh, feel good about themselves, feel confident, feel sexy,” Tyler says. “I just want people to love themselves and have a good time. Because there&#8217;s so much hate in the world.”

Trump Approves TikTok Takeover By Oracle And Walmart

TikTok Blocked Creators From Adding ‘Black’ And ‘Black Lives Matter’ To Bios

The Covid-19 pandemic has dealt Black-owned businesses a tough hand. Stifled by stay-at-home orders, on-again off-again store closures and stricter limits occupancy limits, many businesses are struggling to outlast the seemingly unending virus outbreak.&nbsp;



Although they’ve&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-black-owned-firms-make-surprise-comeback-to-pre-covid-level/2020/10/28/be1e3100-194b-11eb-8bda-814ca56e138b_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rebounded</a>&nbsp;slightly in recent months, Black-owned stores have experienced the greatest decline this year, plummeting from 1.1 million businesses in February to 640,000 in April—a&nbsp;<a href="https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/20-022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">41% drop</a>.



But spurred by a national movement to support Black businesses, which kicked off this summer, a new number of corporations are taking small steps to put the Black in Black Friday.



Black Friday online sales pulled in a record $7.4 billion in 2019— the second largest online shopping day ever and a 19.6% increase over the previous year—while the holiday season overall generated more than $72 billion in online sales, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2019/12/02/adobe-data-shows-record-cyber-monday-with-9-2-billion-in-online-sales.html#gs.lqxvdv" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Adobe Analytics</a>. Online sales for this Black Friday are projected to generate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/www/us/en/adi/2020/pdfs/Adobe_Holiday_Forecast_Press.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$10.3 billion</a>.



The surge in digital spending over the holiday season and the heightened visibility that’s been awarded to small businesses through corporate sponsorships could have a considerable impact on Black businesses in particular, sustaining them through the a few more months of the pandemic.



Facebook, for one, launched its #<a href="https://about.fb.com/giftguide/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BuyBlackFriday initiative</a>&nbsp;and a corresponding toolkit and gift guide in October as part of a broader three-month campaign to buttress small businesses during the holiday season.



The gift guide features products from Black-owned businesses and was curated alongside the U.S. Black Chambers and several corporate partners.&nbsp;



“Black-owned businesses have been hit especially hard by the pandemic, closing at twice the rate of other small businesses,” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a blog post announcing the initiative. She added, “But we know that millions of people want to help.”



The campaign runs through Black Friday on November 27, a symbolic starting gun for the holiday shopping season.



More recently, Google partnered with Grammy-winning musician Wyclef Jean and the U.S. Black Chambers to promote its&nbsp;<a href="https://smallbusiness.withgoogle.com/blackowned#!/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">#BlackOwnedFriday</a>&nbsp;campaign, an effort to make November 27 “Black-owned Friday” and galvanize shoppers to buy Black beyond the Thanksgiving weekend.



The tech giant has also showcased Black-owed businesses on its social platforms since mid-October and now&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/Google/status/1331266675543564292" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">allows users</a>&nbsp;to find nearby stores that identify as Black-owned through its search engine.



“I’ve seen firsthand the strain and struggle that Black-owned businesses face,” Jean said in a statement. “For many of them, this holiday season will be critical to their survival.”



TikTok, the latest viral social media platform, threw its weight behind Black-owned businesses months after facing&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/1/21277505/tiktok-black-creators-censorship-algorithm-donation-diversity-council" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">censorship allegations</a>&nbsp;from Black creatives in June. Earlier this month, the video sharing platform, which has about 200 million monthly active users in the U.S., launched&nbsp;<a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/amplifying-black-owned-businesses-on-tiktok" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Support Black Businesses</a>, a digital hub to amplify Black entrepreneurs.&nbsp;



TikTok also announced #ShopBlack, an in-app campaign that allows users to create videos spotlighting their favorite Black-owned businesses or to share their experience as a Black entrepreneur.



As small businesses reel from the pandemic’s economic disruption, many big retailers have had breakaway growth. Amazon’s profits and sales exceeded analysts’ expectations, reporting a 37% sales growth and tripling its third-quarter profits as more shoppers turn to the e-commerce giant during the pandemic.&nbsp;



But celebrities and influencers alike have started to leverage Amazon’s omnipresence to highlight Black sellers on the platform.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.oprahmag.com/style/a34480587/oprah-favorite-things-2020-black-owned-businesses/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nearly 70%</a>&nbsp;of the products on Oprah Winfrey’s highly anticipated annual list of her favorite things are created by Black-owned or Black-led businesses this year and all are available for purchase on Amazon.



The billionaire media mogul has partnered with Amazon on the list&nbsp;<a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/get-your-oprah-on-this-holiday-season-2015-11-05" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">since 2015</a>&nbsp;and her yearly picks have provided brands with considerable gains in sales since the list’s 1996 advent.



Black Americans have developed a growing presence among small businesses owners and could stand to gain considerable sales from dedicated shopping holidays like Small Business Saturday, which raked in an estimated<a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191201005232/en/American-Express%E2%80%99-10th-Annual-Small-Business-Saturday%C2%AE-Hits-a-Record-High-with-an-Estimated-19.6-Billion-in-Reported-Spending" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;$19.6 billion</a>&nbsp;in 2019. And while physical distancing measures will significantly curb foot traffic this year, more than 112 million Americans visited a small business on that day last year, a record high.



As shoppers increasingly reject winding lines that snake around the store, a trend that’s long been in the making but was exacerbated by the pandemic, they’re also looking to support independent local businesses, providing a potential economic windfall for Black businesses with an online presence this holiday season.



-by Ruth Umoh, Forbes Staff

man in black carrying bags, legs only

Black Businesses Receive Tech Industry Push Ahead Of Holiday Shopping Bonanza

TikTok received a lifeline Sunday evening when a federal judge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pacermonitor.com/view/W23REIQ/TIKTOK_INC_et_al_v_TRUMP_et_al__dcdce-20-02658__0029.0.pdf?mcid=tGE3TEOA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">issued a preliminary injunction</a>&nbsp;against the U.S. government’s decision to ban downloads of the app.



The ban was set to begin at midnight tonight, and the legal maneuver was TikTok’s final gambit to prevent the ban from going into effect, a decision that it had said would begin to erode its business across the world.



“I am very happy that the court has granted an injunction preventing the implementation of the TikTok ban that would have prohibited new users to download the app,” TikTok’s interim chief Vanessa Pappas&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/v_ness/status/1310390934190792704" target="_blank">wrote on Twitter</a>. “We will continue to seek to protect the rights of our users, partners, artists, employees, businesses, and creators.”



President Trump is forcing TikTok’s China-owned parent company, ByteDance, to sell off the app, citing concerns that ByteDance could be unduly pressured by the the Chinese government. ByteDance appears to have a deal worked out with Oracle&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/oracle" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ORCL</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/oracle">+0.8%</a>&nbsp;and Walmart&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/walmart" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WMT</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/walmart">+0.4%</a>, but the terms of the transactions aren’t clear, and both sides have made conflicting comments since announcing the deal last week.



The deal seems to have the U.S. government’s approval, and it now must get a sign off from China’s government. It’s not certain that Chinese authorities will do so with many critics in China unhappy about Trump’s pressure on ByteDance to spin off what was a crown jewel of the country’s technology sector into American hands.



TikTok was a social media phenomenon until it found itself in the president’s crosshairs. It has more than 100 million users in America, and until this summer, it was adding more than 400,000 daily users each day. Then, in August, Trump issued two executive orders that would kill the app in American, a move meant to force ByteDance into selling TikTok.



The first executive order is what TikTok and the government were fighting about in federal court this weekend. It prohibits new downloads but allows the app to keep operating. The second executive order would halt TikTok’s entire U.S. operations beginning Nov. 12. But even this first ban would curtail TikTok’s growth and drive users toward other competing platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube and several much smaller rivals.



Sunday’s court proceedings were only the latest dramatic chapter in the drama surrounding TikTok, which has played out in surprisingly public fashion and involved some of the richest and most powerful figures in politics and business. While lawyers appeared in court early Sunday morning, Judge Carl Nichols did not hand out his decision until around 8:30 this evening, hours before the ban’s start.



-By Abram Brown,Forbes Staff

In this photo illustration the TikTok logo seen displayed on

TikTok Stays Alive With Judge Temporarily Delaying Download Ban

Like any self-respecting cult, the Stepchickens follow a strict code of conduct as dictated by their absolute leader, Mother Hen, a comedian named Melissa who posts on TikTok as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@chunkysdead</a>. Mother Hen&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead/video/6827103874424376582?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">has widely preached</a>&nbsp;a message of peace, telling her 1.7 million TikTok followers: “We do not rule by being cruel, we shine by being kind.” Further, she has asked all Stepchickens to make themselves easily identifiable and make her photo their TikTok profile picture.



Mother Hen has created TikTok’s first “cult.” (Her word.) Boiled down, she is a social media influencer, and the Stepchickens are her fans, just as more famous TikTok influencers—Charli D’Amelio,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@addisonre?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Addison Rae</a>&nbsp;and the like—all have their fanbases. But Mother Hen’s presence and style is quite singular, particularly in the way she communicates with her followers, what she asks them to do and how the Stepchickens respond to her. After all, not every member of the Charli hive use her image as their profile pictures.



“These influencers are looking for a way to build community and figure out how to monetize their community. That&#8217;s the No. 1 most important thing for a creator or an influencer,” says&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/tiffany-zhong/">Tiffany Zhong</a>, cofounder of ZebraIQ, a community and trends platform. “It&#8217;s become a positive for Gen Z, where you&#8217;re proud to be part of this cult—part of this community. They are dying to be part of a community. So it&#8217;s easy to get sucked in.”



Mother Hen, who didn’t return a request to comment for this story, already had a popular comedy vlog-style TikTok account on May 6&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead/video/6823732594560027910?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">when she asked</a>&nbsp;her followers to send suggestions for what they could name their cult. From the ideas offered up, she chose Stepchickens, and in the 19 days since, her following has more than doubled. (It was around 700,000 back at the beginning of this month.) She has posted videos&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead/video/6825025000567753989?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">about taking edibles</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead/video/6826138962034232582?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">her celebrity lookalikes</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead/video/6825303907648965893?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">her relationship status</a>&nbsp;(“all this cult power, still no boyfriend”). And perhaps in violation of her first-do-no-harm credo, Mother Hen has implored her followers to embark on “battles” and “raids,” where Stepchickens comment bomb other influencers’ videos, posting messages en masse. She has become the mother of millions: TikTok videos with #stepchickens have generated 102 million views on the app, and her own videos have received 54.6 million likes.



Mother Hen is now concentrating on feathering her nest. She has launched&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stepchickens.com/shop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a large range of merch</a>: smartphone cases ($24), hoodies ($44), t-shirts ($28) and beanies ($28). Corporate sponsorships seem within reach, too. TikTok accounts for the Houston Rockets, Tampa Bay Rays and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead/video/6826826102409809158" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">one for the</a>&nbsp;Chicago Bulls mascot, Benny, all changed their profile picture to the image distributed by Mother Hen. The Rays sent her a box of swag, addressing the package to “Mother Hen,” of course. She dressed up in the gear (two hats, a fanny pack, a tank top) and recorded herself wearing it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chunkysdead/video/6830515719269141765" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in a TikTok</a>, a common move by influencers to express gratitude and signal that they’re open to business sponsorship opportunities. Mother Hen has launched a YouTube channel, too, where she’ll earn ad revenue based on the views that her 43,000 subscribers generate by watching her content.



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Then there is the Stepchickens app available on Apple devices. This digital roost is a thriving message feed—it resembles a Slack channel or a Discord server—where Stepchickens congregate, chat and coordinate their raids. They can also use it to create videos, ones “to glorify mother hen,” the app’s instructions read.



The app launched last Monday and has already attracted more than 100,000 users, a benchmark that most apps do not ever see and the best reach within months of starting. Since its debut, it has ranked as high as the ninth most popular social media app in the world on the download charts and in the Top 75 most downloaded across all types of apps. The Stepchickens have traded 135,000 messages, and the app’s most devoted users are spending as long as 10 hours a day on it, says Sam Mueller, the cofounder and CEO of Blink Labs who built the Stepchickens app.



“There&#8217;s this emergence of a more active—a more dedicated—fan base and following. A lot of the influencers on TikTok are kind of dancing around, doing some very broadcast-y type content. Their followers might not mobilize nearly as much as” the Stepchickens, says Mueller. Mother Hen’s flock, by contrast, “feel like they&#8217;re part of something, feel like they&#8217;re connected. They can have fun and be together for something bigger than what they&#8217;re doing right now, which is kind of being at home bored and lonely. There&#8217;s untapped value here.”



&#8211;

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Birds Of A Feather: The Stepchickens Cult On TikTok Is The Next Evolution Of The Influencer Business

TikTok, the ultra-popular short-form video app, has hired a top Walt Disney&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/walt-disney" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DIS</a>&nbsp;Co. executive to be its new CEO.



Kevin Mayer, who ran Disney’s video-streaming business, will also serve as the chief operating officer of ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company of TikTok. Mayer was seen as a favorite to get the top job at Disney but was passed over to replace Bob Iger in favor of Bob Chapek earlier this year.



“Kevin has had an extraordinary impact on our company over the years,” Chapek <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://v/" target="_blank">said in a statement</a>. “Having worked alongside Kevin for many years on the senior management team, I am enormously grateful to him for his support and friendship.”



Disney has been badly damaged by the pandemic as Covid-19 forced it to close its lucrative parks and cruise line businesses. Iger has taken back some control over the company—he remains the executive chairman—while Disney rushed to assemble a $6 billion debt offering in March. It has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/04/22/disney-furloughs-100000-workers-while-top-executives-will-still-get-big-bonuses/">furloughed workers and cut pay</a>&nbsp;with Chapek agreeing to halve his salary and Iger agreeing to forgo one entirely.



Mayer could not be leaving for a more different environment. TikTok was already a big hit before lockdown—and has seen its popularity soar since. It was downloaded more than 315 million times in the first quarter, according to data from SensorTower, which tracks app downloads. That figure represents the most downloads in a single quarter that SensorTower has ever counted up.



Mayer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2020/02/27/did-bob-chapek-win-disneys-latest-game-of-thrones---or-is-it-just-starting/#3738a7f17251">was the deals guy</a>&nbsp;at Disney, acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox. And there was nothing more important to Disney recently than the expansion of its streaming business, which&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbean/2020/04/08/report-disney-overtakes-netflix-as-top-streaming-app-in-2020/#2d35cc817aa6">has proven a success</a>. Disney+ launched last year and was downloaded 14.1 times in 2019, more than even Netflix&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/netflix" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFLX</a>&nbsp;(11.9 million) or Hulu (8.1 million). Disney said it&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnchmielewski/2019/11/12/disney-plus-launches-capstone-bob-iger-tenure/#27a9432b2dd1">would spend $1 billion in the first year</a>&nbsp;alone on original content for the streaming service, building out a line-up that already includes the Star Wars series&nbsp;The Mandalorian&nbsp;and soon a recorded version of the musical&nbsp;Hamilton.



Mayer will face some challenges ahead at TikTok. It has become an off-and-on-again target of criticism that its Chinese ownership makes it a security risk. And a group of 20 advocacy groups last week&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/05/14/tiktok-isnt-keeping-its-promises-to-better-protect-kids-critic-groups-say/">filed an FTC complaint</a>&nbsp;that it hadn’t lived up to a deal reached with regulators last year to better protect children using its app.



He replaces Alex Zhu, one of the founders of Music.ly, the China-based app that ByteDance <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/11/10/lip-syncing-video-app-musical-ly-has-been-sold-possibly-for-1-billion/#48312e1a1443">bought in 2017</a> and turned into TikTok. Zhu had made efforts to do what Mayer will now have to do: convince America that TikTok isn’t a threat.



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/">Abram Brown</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/business">Business</a>

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As TikTok Takes Over America, It’s Making A Disney Executive Its New CEO

Zhang Yiming, the 36-year-old Chinese billionaire founder of social media app TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, has pledged $10 million to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, a project founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Other donors to the Accelerator include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Michael &amp; Susan Dell Foundation, and singer Madonna.&nbsp;



“While [Zhang] has met Bill Gates a couple of times in passing, he does not know him well but has tremendous respect for Bill and Melinda Gates’ systematic approach and ongoing efforts in contributing to philanthropy,” a spokesperson for Zhang said. “He sees them as an inspiration for all entrepreneurs fortunate enough to be in a position to give back to the community.”&nbsp;



The Accelerator was launched in March as a $125 million fund, initially backed by the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and Mastercard. In <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2020/04/03/a-bill-gates-backed-accelerator-for-covid-19-coronavirus-therapeutics-treatment-partners-with-madonna-and-mark-zuckerbergs-chan-zuckerberg-initiative/#d007e668067a">early April</a>, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s philanthropic arm CZI announced a $25 million gift to the fund. The U.K. government and Madonna also became donors; the size of their gifts were undisclosed.



The Accelerator’s mission is to coordinate research, remove barriers to drug development, and scale up treatments to the coronavirus with fast and flexible funding, according to the Accelerator’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.therapeuticsaccelerator.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a>. It is working with the World Health Organization, researchers, governments, the private sector and global regulators to fast track drugs related to COVID-19.



“Philanthropic, government and private sector organizations, as well as individuals like Zhang Yiming demonstrate the wide array of donors who understand the value of collaboration in developing effective drugs  to help turn the tide of this pandemic,” said Trevor Mundel, president of the global health division at the Gates Foundation. “Until we have a vaccine, expanded testing, isolation and treatment are our best options.”



Forbes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2019/11/04/meet-zhang-yiming-the-chinese-billionaire-behind-tiktok/#466a82ad75b3">pegs</a>&nbsp;Zhang’s net worth at $16.2 billion, based on his estimated ownership of about one quarter of ByteDance. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Beijing, the privately held company last raised financing in 2018 at a massive $75 billion valuation.&nbsp;



TikTok launched in 2016 and reached international markets the next year. The short video app, which has around 625 million users worldwide, according to App Annie, appeals particularly to the Gen Z demographic.&nbsp;



This is the first known significant philanthropic donation by Zhang.&nbsp;



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/">Angel Au-Yeung</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/worlds-billionaires">Billionaires</a>

Tag: Tik Tok