TikTok is private, so you cannot buy a share of it even if you wanted to. What you can own, and probably already do, is the listed infrastructure underneath it.
ByteDance, its owner, has a 2030 carbon pledge and no published total for its emissions. This page is here so that what sits behind the app is something you chose.
Most companies in this series publish one annual report that can be looked up and argued with. TikTok’s paperwork comes in pieces: audited accounts for one regional arm, a responsibility report for its owner’s business in China, and no figure for the whole.
the company
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a privately held company founded in 2012 and registered in the Cayman Islands. The US Supreme Court described it in January 2025 as a company “that has operations in China” and that owns TikTok’s algorithm, “which is developed and maintained in China”. TikTok said in 2023 that about 60% of ByteDance was owned by global institutional investors.
In the United States a 2024 law, upheld by the Supreme Court in January 2025, required ByteDance to give up control of TikTok’s US business. Since January 2026 the US app has been run by TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC: Oracle, Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi firm MGX hold 15% each and ByteDance keeps 19.9%, while TikTok’s global business still handles US advertising and e-commerce. A lawsuit filed in March 2026 against President Trump and his attorney general argues the deal does not satisfy the law, because ByteDance still owns the algorithm. Outside the US, Australia included, TikTok is still part of ByteDance.
TikTok says more than a billion people use it every month. It does not publish its revenue, and ByteDance has no listed shares: a sale reported by Reuters in February 2026 valued the company at US$550 billion. The accounts that are filed are regional: TikTok’s UK-registered arm, which covers Europe, Latin America and Africa, reported turnover of US$9.19 billion for 2025 at Companies House.
the good stuff
TikTok’s creator economy is real. The company launched a Creator Fund in 2020 and said it would grow to US$1 billion in the US over three years. A report TikTok’s US business commissioned from the research firm PF Global estimated that activity on the app supported US$81 billion of US GDP and 410,000 jobs in 2025.
BookTok shows up in sales data. The roughly 180 BookTok authors tracked by Circana BookScan sold 13 million print copies in the US in 2020 and about 47 million in 2022, Publishers Weekly reported. Those positives are real. They are also what makes the next sections harder to sit with.
hold on to this one
the part worth keeping in mind
The good and the uncomfortable here come from the same engine. The feed that gets a small business discovered is the same feed about a fifth of US teenagers say they are on almost constantly.
the data appetite
The privacy policy that applies in Australia lists what the app can collect: your IP address and device identifiers, your browsing and search history on the app, “keystroke patterns or rhythms”, inferences about your interests, gender and age range and, with your permission, your clipboard and precise location. The US policy says the app may also collect “faceprints and voiceprints” from what users post.
In December 2022 ByteDance said four employees had improperly accessed TikTok data on journalists, including their IP addresses, while trying to trace leaks. It said all four had been fired.
In May 2025 Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined TikTok €530 million over transfers of European users’ data to China, where staff could reach it remotely. In June 2026 the Irish High Court upheld the finding and sent the order to suspend the transfers back to the regulator. TikTok says it has never received a request for European user data from the Chinese authorities and has never provided any.
the energy behind the scroll
ByteDance has made a climate pledge. In March 2023 it committed to carbon-neutral operations by 2030, by cutting operational emissions at least 90%, buying 100% renewable electricity and offsetting the rest. What neither it nor TikTok publishes is a total for worldwide emissions, so the number the pledge starts from is not public.
Two partial pictures exist. ByteDance publishes a corporate social responsibility report each year. The latest, its eighth, came out in April 2026, covers its business in China and gives no emissions total. TikTok’s UK-registered arm has to report its own emissions under British company law: its 2025 accounts give 1,031 tonnes of direct emissions and 22,990 tonnes from purchased energy, before renewable contracts are counted, and no figure for its supply chain.
Outside estimates fill the gap. In December 2024 the carbon accounting firm Greenly put TikTok’s footprint at about 50 million tonnes of CO2e a year. TikTok disputed it: a spokesperson told Fortune that ByteDance’s total emissions for 2023 were less than 20% of that. ByteDance has assessed its footprint every year since 2021, Fortune reported, and has not published the result.
the algorithm and your brain
An internal TikTok document reported by The New York Times in December 2021 said the company optimises its feed for two metrics: “retention” and “time spent”. In February 2026 the European Commission said in preliminary findings that TikTok’s design, including infinite scroll and autoplay, breaches the Digital Services Act. TikTok called the findings “categorically false and entirely meritless”.
In a Pew Research Center survey in late 2025, 21% of US teenagers aged 13 to 17 said they are on TikTok “almost constantly”. The American Psychological Association’s 2023 advisory said using social media “is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people”, and that features such as endless scrolling should be tailored to what adolescents can handle.
Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 took effect on 10 December 2025. Platforms must take reasonable steps to stop under-16s holding accounts, and the eSafety Commissioner lists TikTok among those covered.
the creator fund problem
The original Creator Fund paid from a fixed pool, so the more creators joined, the less there was to go around. The creator Hank Green said in January 2022 that it paid him about 2.5 US cents per 1,000 views, or about US$25 for a million, NBC News reported. TikTok closed the fund in the US, UK, France and Germany in December 2023 and replaced it with a programme it said could pay up to 20 times more.
how it got here
Eight dates, so a run of decisions reads as a run of decisions rather than one bad week.
ByteDance agrees to buy Musical.ly for between US$800 million and US$1 billion, and in August 2018 merges it into TikTok.
President Trump orders a ban on transactions with ByteDance. Federal courts block it before it takes effect.
ByteDance says four employees improperly accessed journalists’ TikTok data and have been fired.
TikTok chief executive Shou Chew testifies before a US House committee for more than five hours.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act becomes US law. ByteDance must give up control of TikTok’s US business by 19 January 2025 or see the app banned there.
The US Supreme Court upholds the law. TikTok goes dark in the US for a night, and President Trump orders a 75-day delay in enforcing it, the first of several.
Australia’s minimum age of 16 for social media accounts takes effect, with TikTok among the platforms covered.
TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC takes over the app in the United States, under a plan President Trump approved in September 2025. ByteDance keeps 19.9%.
what this means for your money
TikTok is private, so you cannot buy its shares directly. The companies around it are listed. Oracle owns 15% of the US joint venture and hosts its US user data. ByteDance spent roughly 85 billion yuan on Nvidia’s AI chips in 2025, about US$12 billion, the South China Morning Post reported. Both are in the S&P 500, where Nvidia was the largest company on 2 October 2026, so a fund that tracks the index holds a slice of each.
Default investing means you do not choose what you own. An index holds every company in it, in proportion to size. It does not ask whether a company publishes its emissions, or how its feed is built.
inaam exists for people who want to know what they hold, so that when you invest you have read the fine print.
We hold ourselves to the same reading. Every company in the fund is named in the app, with the reason it got in and the trade-off written next to it. The three checks a company has to pass are set out on how it works, and the five themes members customise for themselves are on investment areas. The subscription is $10 a month, which is $120 a year, and it is separate from the money you invest. The minimum to invest in the fund is $100. Sign-up happens in the app, not on this website. SMSFs and family trusts are welcome.
key sources
Companies House · US Supreme Court · Ireland’s Data Protection Commission · Pew Research Center
General information only. It does not take your objectives or circumstances into account. Consider the PDS and TMD, and we recommend independent advice, before investing. This article is general information only and does not constitute financial advice. Readers should do their own research before making investment decisions. The inaam Impact Investments Fund is ARSN 691 614 132. inaam is not affiliated with ByteDance, TikTok, Oracle or any entity discussed in this report.
